Martial Arts Worlds

As the darkness fell over Irio, Kiernan stumbled over to the light switch and flicked it to illuminate the room.

He then stumbled back to his desk, almost tripping on the loose rug on the floor, but he survived to his chair, sat down, and started typing on the keyboard.

"FightTube, was it?" Kiernan typed it and then pressed enter.

While the page loaded, he grabbed his spoon and enjoyed the soup that warmed his tongue and the rest of his throat.

FightTube's page appeared on the television screen. It had lots of videos on the main page with millions of views on all of them.

There were some high-class tournament videos, tutorial videos, and even some behind-the-scenes footage of the fighters preparing for their matches.

Kiernan moved the mouse cursor to the search bar and then began typing.

"Kiernan Hunter versus Johan Yeager, New Rakuya…" Kiernan pressed enter, and quite a few videos of their match popped up.

After last time checking the video's view count, it had increased by another 100 thousand, now having about 200 thousand views.

It was quite an amazing amount of views.

There were also recommendations for other videos of the same nationals, but Kiernan's and Johan's fight had easily the most views. It wasn't even close.

"Oh, what is this?" Kiernan saw a video at the bottom of the page.

It was a video from someone called The Boxing Guru that had only about 100 subscribers with less than a thousand views.

The person was analyzing their fight step by step.

"Oh?" Kiernan clicked on the video and enjoyed the soup while the video started playing.

The person on the video was middle-aged and slightly overweight with messy hair, but the wall of his room had a lot of posters, and shelves had all sorts of fighting books with action figures of his favorite fighters.

It was clear that this person was a fighting enthusiast.

"If he likes fighting that much, why isn't he training to become a fighter himself?" Kiernan wondered out loud but kept watching nonetheless.

At first, the analyzing wasn't anything special. It was mostly obvious things.

The video then showed the moment Kiernan used his Iron Smash and pushed Johan back a couple of steps.

"After this, Kiernan made his very first mistake!" The Boxing Guru said.

"Johan jumped straight back into the fray and threw his punch. There were a couple of choices Kiernan could've made. His defense is clearly impressive, and he could've used his so-called rock-solid defense, but he chose to dodge.

"See? The dodge was very clumsy, his posture was messy as hell, and Johan immediately followed with a roundhouse kick, which was a very smart move.

"However, then something strange happened. Kiernan simply pulled his body back, and the roundhouse kick missed.

"Johan should've extended his kick, and it would've landed; it most likely would've knocked Kiernan out!

"People clearly think Kiernan is a very smart fighter, but in this situation, he was idiotic!"

"You idiot," Kiernan bent the spoon slightly. "Of course my dodging was awkward since I don't know how to dodge!"

He almost threw the mouse into the screen, but he kept his calm.

"Iron Style wasn't meant for dodging. I don't like to dodge. So, of course it looked awkward as hell, but that analysis afterwards is complete bullshit.

"Yes, I could've used Rendering Edge afterwards, but Johan would've punched a hole in me. His punch doesn't look like anything special, a punch thrown from an awkward angle and stance.

"This 'Boxing Guru' probably thought it was thrown out of desperation, but Johan is Natural Fighter, and even though he punched from an awkward stance, it still was as powerful as his other punches, if not stronger!

"It's because he is Natural Fighter that he can adapt to poor stances. I had to dodge; there was no other way!

"His roundhouse was a smart move, and possibly the only move he could've done in that position. I used World Equilibrium to control the center of my gravity and balance my body backwards to dodge the kick.

"Even if he had extended his roundhouse kick, I would've been able to bend my body even further back to avoid it completely!"

Kiernan took a deep breath as he got slightly heated.

"I would like you to try to fight him." Kiernan mumbled under his breath and sipped on the soup.

At that moment, he thought about making his own video as "fuck you" to the Boxing Guru.

"I don't have any video-making tools…" Kiernan sighed and finished the soup.

He then left the computer open, left his room, and went to the kitchen to wash the spoon and the bowl plate.

"How was the soup?" Karma asked from the living room, peeking over the couch's backrest.

"Good!" Kiernan shouted, finished washing the plates, and put them away in the cupboard.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"I heard some shouting from upstairs; is everything alright?" Karma asked.

"Yes…" Kiernan stepped on the stairs, but then stopped and walked over to the couch. "I was watching a video."

"Oh, what kind?" Karma turned around at his son, who was leaning against the couch's backrest.

"Some fool was analyzing my fight, and he called me an idiot." Kiernan clicked his tongue.

"Oh, you've fallen into that swamp of content." Karma wryly smiled. "I also used to watch some "professional analyzing videos" but those kinds of people speak out of their ass most of the time."

"Oh, how come?" Kiernan asked. "It can't be that hard to analyze."

"It's because they can't really know what the fighter is thinking about at that moment." Karma said.

"Sure, they can pinpoint mistakes as much as they want, but it's different when you're actually fighting.

"Those analyzers usually haven't experienced it, so they just stick with what they see on the surface."

"Mmh…" Kiernan nodded. "By the way, dad, why aren't you fighting?"

"…" Karma turned silent and then tapped his chest. "Well, my martial soul has shelled itself."

"Shelled? What do you mean by that?" Kiernan asked.

"When you lose the faith in your martial arts, your martial soul will turn its back on you and will hide behind a shell. A shell that can't be broken."

Karma sighed deeply.

"Thus, I am without my strength."

"What happened?" Kiernan asked.

"Eh." Karma waved his hand and shook his head. "It's in the past. I don't really want to talk about those times."

"Alright then…" Kiernan stretched his arms. "I'll go exercise a little bit."

"Take it easy." Karma said firmly. "Don't overdo it."

"Yeah, just a short jog." Kiernan rubbed the back of his neck and headed out.