Martial Arts Vs Magic - Chapter 120

Chapter 120: The Cripple's Dance

Lailah's heart plummeted to the pit of her stomach as the one-armed stranger they'd rescued limped toward the doorway. 

Had Alexander completely lost his mind? 

A crippled man with barely enough strength to feed himself was about to face five armed thugs—men who routinely broke bones for entertainment. They weren’t weak either, they were all at least 2nd Ascension!

No, no, no, you fool! she silently screamed, her fingers digging into her father's shirt. She'd witnessed what these men did to those who defied them. The butcher who'd refused to pay had lost three fingers. The old grain merchant had been found face-down in the well after arguing over their rates.

The problem was their leader. It was Malek the Mauler himself leading them today, his face a permanent sneer. Malek, whose laughter was said to curdle milk, whose touch left bruises that lingered for weeks. He stood at the peak of 2nd Ascension, and unlike her Father's Farmer Class, he had a powerful fighter class.

She'd heard the whispers in the marketplace, how he’d crippled the old spice merchant, Omar, with a single, casual backhand for being short on "protection fees." They said Malek could shatter stones with his bare fists, that he once dragged a man behind his sand-skimmer for three miles just for looking at him wrong. And now, this injured stranger, Alexander, was walking right into the mauler’s sting.

She’d done so much to take care of him, and now she was going to see him die?!

"Stay back," her father hissed over his shoulder. "Alexander, get inside. These men—"

Malek the Mauler guffawed as his pockmarked face crinkled with cruel amusement. "Look at this! The cripple wants to play hero." His eyes, small and dark like a desert scorpion's, glittered as he assessed Alexander. "What're you going to do, bleed on us?"

The four men behind him joined in the laughter. One of them, a swarthy man with a nose that had been broken multiple times, drew a serrated blade from his belt and twirled it between his fingers.

"Get back inside," Lailah whispered desperately. "Please."

But Alexander continued forward, his gait steadier than she'd seen before. He looked like a different man compared to whom she’d hand fed earlier. There was something different about his posture—a subtle shift that sent an inexplicable chill down her spine.

"Khadim," Malek barked to one of his men, "break the cripple's other arm. Make the old man and his witch daughter watch." He leered at Lailah. "Show them what happens to those who resist before we have our fun."

A hulking brute with arms thick as tree trunks stepped forward. Khadim cracked his knuckles, lips curling into a sadistic grin that revealed several missing teeth. He drew back his fist, muscles bunching beneath sun-hardened skin.

Lailah squeezed her eyes shut, unable to watch the inevitable violence. A meaty thud followed—the unmistakable sound of flesh striking flesh—but no cry of pain came. Confused, she peeked through her lashes.

"Huh?" Khadim stood frozen, his massive fist still pressed against Alexander's cheek.

Alexander hadn't moved. Hadn't flinched. Hadn't even blinked. He stood there as if the blow were no more significant than a desert breeze. His hair wavered in the wind, obscuring his face, as two golden suns stared from behind them.

"Playing tough?" Khadim snarled, recovering from his surprise. He drew a knife from his belt—a wicked, curved blade designed for gutting. "Let's see how tough you really are."

With practiced swiftness, he drove the blade toward Alexander's side. Rafin cried out in warning, but too late—the knife struck home, plunging toward vulnerable flesh.

CRACK!

Metal shattered against Alexander's ribs, breaking into glittering fragments that scattered across the dusty ground. The blade hadn't penetrated; it had broken, leaving only a superficial tear in the thin fabric of his tunic.

Silence fell over the yard like a physical weight.

"I came to talk earlier," Alexander said quietly, his voice somehow more terrifying for its softness, "but I’ve changed my mind."

He raised his single hand, almost lazily, and delivered an open-palmed slap to Khadim's ear. The sound was deceptively gentle, like a desert wind shaking dried palm fronds. The hulking brute's eyes rolled back, blood suddenly gushing from both ears as he crumpled to the ground, limbs twitching spasmodically.

Lailah's breath caught. This made no sense. She'd been tending to this man for days. Had felt no significant energy from him, no presence of power. Yet here he stood, shattering steel against his skin, dropping grown men with a touch.

This wasn't magic like hers—this was something else entirely.

"What was that again?" Alexander's voice cut through the stunned silence, addressing the remaining thugs. His tone remained conversational, almost pleasant, but undercut with something that made Lailah's skin prickle. "What did you say you'd do to me? No, what did you say your intentions for the young lady was after you were done with the 'cripple'?"

The leader recovered first, his face contorting with rage. "Kill him!" he screamed, drawing his sword.

The remaining four men charged in a coordinated wave, weapons glinting in the morning sun. Lailah's heart lurched as they converged on the one-armed man—surely even he couldn't face so many at once.

Alexander moved.

What followed burned itself into her memory forever.

Despite his missing arm, despite his injuries, despite everything that should have made him vulnerable, he flowed like water between their strikes. His movements occasionally stuttered—a slight hesitation here, a fractional delay there—but each motion was executed with terrifying precision.

A thug swung a club at his head. Alexander ducked beneath it with millimeters to spare, then drove his knee upward in a perfect strike that shattered the man's elbow. The attacker hadn't even begun to scream before Alexander's foot connected with his temple, silencing him instantly.

Two men attacked simultaneously from opposite sides. Alexander pivoted, somehow using their momentum against each other. One stumbled into the other's blade with a shocked gasp. Alexander's single arm snaked out, grabbing the wrist of the man still holding the sword, and twisted. Bone cracked like dry kindling. The sword clattered to the ground as its owner shrieked.

"The human body," Alexander remarked casually as he drove his heel into the fallen man's knee with a sickening crunch, "has seventy-eight major breakage points. How many can you endure?"

His elbow slammed backward, catching Malek in the solar plexus with such force that Lailah heard ribs splinter. The man folded like parchment, gasping for air that wouldn't come. Alexander grabbed him by the throat—fingers digging into precise points that made the thug's eyes bulge—and lifted him one-handed off the ground.

"Seven," Alexander said calmly, as if continuing a conversation over tea. "You seemed to enjoy making women and old men tremble. How does it feel when the roles are reversed? Let's make it an even ten."

He dropped the choking man and, in a perfect spinning kick that defied his previous sluggishness, connected with Malek’s shoulder. The joint dislocated with an audible pop.

"Eight."

The last standing thug turned to flee. Alexander's foot lashed out, sweeping the man's legs from beneath him. As he fell, Alexander's knee rose to meet his descending face. It was as if his foot exploded. Teeth scattered across the dirt like bloody pearls.

"Nine."

With methodical calm, Alexander grabbed the dazed man's arm and bent it backward at an unnatural angle. The snap echoed across the silent yard.

"Ten."

Lailah stood transfixed, her mouth slightly open, silver eyes wide with shock and—she realized with a jolt of confusion—something akin to admiration. She'd never seen violence executed with such... artistry. Each movement, despite occasional hesitations that hinted at some hidden limitation, flowed into the next like a choreographed dance.

Where her desert wind was chaos and intuition, his combat was mathematics and precision.

The entire fight had lasted less than thirty seconds. Five trained, armed men lay broken around Alexander's feet. Not dead—she could see their chests still rising and falling—but thoroughly, efficiently disabled.

Alexander turned to face them, wiping a light sheen of sweat from his brow. His breathing had barely quickened. There was no triumph in his eyes, no righteous anger—only a cold, calculating assessment of his work.

This wasn’t even a fight worth remembering for him.

Lailah suddenly understood: he hadn't spared their lives out of mercy. He'd simply measured exactly how much force was required to neutralize the threat without creating complications for her and her father. Like a craftsman using precisely the right tool for the job—no more, no less.

"So," he asked, brushing dust from his simple tunic as casually as if he'd just finished sweeping rather than dismantling five men, "what do you want to do with them?"

Rafin stood slack-jawed beside her, his weathered hand still clutching his small knife. "I... how did you...?"

Alexander shrugged his single shoulder. "Some men mistake having weapons for knowing how to fight. I just showed them how wrong they were."

Lailah found her voice at last, though it emerged as little more than a whisper. "No, really… Who are you?"

He looked at her then, really looked at her, and for a moment Lailah caught a glimpse of something ancient and terrible beneath his calm exterior—a darkness that had seen empires fall and gods bleed.

"Just a traveler," he said, his expression softening slightly, "who doesn't tolerate men threatening kind hosts. I still have a clear head, sorry."

The desert wind whispered around them, stirring the dust at their feet and carrying the groans of the fallen thugs. In that moment, watching Alexander stand amid the broken bodies of their tormentors, Lailah realized a fundamental truth about the mysterious stranger they'd rescued.

They hadn't saved a helpless victim from the desert.

Those golden eyes… dark skin… No way…

Had they saved a Gold Dragon?

****

Months ago, I had explained to Lilian and Solara the fundamental difference between a Fifth Ascension knight and a Fifth Ranked martial artist of Murim, a Martial Master. The distinction wasn't merely academic—it was written in flesh and bone.

"If a 5th Ascension Knight’s mana ran low or dried out totally, his body would be incredibly weak. Not as much as a normal person, but close." I had told them as we cultivated under Waybound's moonlight. "On the other hand, martial artists circulated their qi to advance to the next stage of immortality and, therefore, permanently raised their bodies to the next stage. On top of that, depending on what martial arts they learn, the benefits could be even more intense."

Of course, as a 6th Ascension, which directly translated to the Martial Grandmaster rank, my body was far from human. 

Looking at the ground where the fragments of the broken knife rested, I felt a grim satisfaction. My Qi pathways might be done for, my energy reserves at their lowest, but my body—my true weapon—remained.

The Heavenly Demon Body technique had altered me on a fundamental level. My skin, forged through grueling tempering methods stolen from ancient scrolls. My bones, strengthened through breaking and healing countless times. And my muscles, torn and rebuilt through rituals and training that would kill ordinary men.

These thugs, with their 2nd Ascension levels, might as well have been children attacking a dormant dragon. Even in my crippled state, they never stood a chance. The thought was almost comical—a pathetic reminder of how far I had fallen, yet how high I remained above most inhabitants of this world.

I was at the Dark Qi Fusion Stage, the 4th stage of the Heavenly Demon Body. Though my flames had dimmed, my steel endured. I might be able to rekindle my flames if I get to advance to the 5th stage, the Heavenly Demon Stage.

All these thoughts passed through me in a flash, and the father daughter duo’s constant stare pulled me out of them. “Guys?”

“Ah, y-yes?” Rafin stammered, clearly flustered.

"Let's talk about me later," I said simply, refocusing on the groaning men at my feet. "What should we do with them? Ideally, killing them would be wise since they'd return with greater numbers next time. I know these types. They don't learn."

The words fell casually from my lips, a tactical assessment born from years of combat experience. To me, these men were merely obstacles to be removed—chess pieces on a board that had grown far too complex.

Lailah's silver eyes widened, though not with the horror I expected. Instead, I saw calculation, rapid, practical consideration.

"No, no... killing them would only bring more investigation," she said, her voice steady. "The Warlo- err, the Baron would use their deaths as an excuse to confiscate our land or worse."

Rafin stared at his daughter, a strange mix of shock and dismay washing over his weathered features. "Lailah, I understand the stranger, but why are you talking about killing so casually?"

"Oh. Ahhh..." Her confidence faltered, suddenly remembering the persona she'd maintained before her father. The dutiful, innocent farmer's daughter.

That reaction told me the deaths of the two men last night might not have been a misjudged command from her. Initially I thought she told the wind, desert spirit or whatever, to just beat them up a little and the spirit went a notch high and killed them. Now, I was starting to think she ordered precisely that. 

I could be wrong though.

"Your daughter knows how to think, don't judge her for that," I interjected, meeting Rafin's troubled gaze. "What do you think we should do then, Rafin?"

The older man sighed, the weight of years pressing down on his shoulders. "I'll just go report to the city guards. They'll come pick them up. What they did today was a crime, after all, attacking someone's home." His eyes traveled over the broken men, wincing slightly at their injuries. "The captain of the guard owes me a favor. He might be able to smooth things over."

I nodded, though I knew better. Men like these didn't operate without protection from above. Their badges weren't merely symbols—they were licenses granted by power. But this wasn't my battle to fight.

"Very well," I conceded. "We'll do it your way."

Rafin patted his daughter's shoulder, then hurried down the path toward Scorpion's Kiss, his lean frame soon swallowed by the shimmering heat waves rising from the desert floor.

Lailah and I watched him go, standing amid the wreckage of violence like islands in a crimson sea.

****

Half an hour later, we sat in the dim coolness of the hut. 

The city guards had come with surprising efficiency, collecting the broken thugs with minimal questions. Whether Rafin's supposed favor or simple corruption had smoothed their arrival, I couldn't say. He'd remained behind to give his official statement, leaving Lailah and me alone.

She moved around the small space with practiced grace, gathering supplies to tend to the few superficial marks I'd acquired during the fight. A torn tunic, a slight scrape where a blade had glanced off my forearm but failed to penetrate skin.

"Hold still," she murmured, kneeling before me with a dampened cloth. Her fingers trembled slightly as they approached my exposed skin.

The hesitation was new. Before, she'd handled me with clinical efficiency, the practical touch of a caretaker for an invalid. Now there was something reverent in her movements, tinged with the cautious respect one might show when approaching a sleeping predator.

"Now I feel stupid," she said softly, carefully dabbing at the thin scrape on my arm. "Asking what you'd know of power."

I laughed, the sound warm in the cool shadows of the hut. "Don't. Knowledge and experience are different beasts entirely. I've known scholars who could recite the exact temperature of dragon flame but would faint at the mere sight of smoke."

"Is that why you let me spoon-feed you?" she asked, a teasing glint returning to her silver eyes. "Playing helpless to spare my pride?"

"Perhaps I just enjoyed the attention of a beautiful woman," I replied with a raised eyebrow.

She scoffed, though a faint blush touched her cheeks. "Be a little careful of that mouth. Who knows if you have some lover you ‘can't remember’ back home?"

The question struck closer than she could know. 

Faces flashed through my mind—Nebula's cool reserve hiding volcanic passion, Lilian's fierce loyalty and sharp wit, Solara's fiery determination. I smiled awkwardly, masking the sudden hollow feeling in my chest.

"But seriously," Lailah continued, setting aside the cloth, "how did you do it? Those men weren't weak. Malek once killed a man with a single punch, yet you treated him like... like he was made of paper."

I flexed my fingers, watching the play of tendons beneath the skin. "There are many kinds of strength, Lailah. Some are loud and flashy, like a sorcerer's fireball. Others are quiet, forged in discipline and pain, residing in the very fiber of one's being." I looked at my hand, turning it in the thin shaft of sunlight that pierced the window. "Even a dragon with clipped wings still possesses its scales and teeth."

Her breath caught. "...So my guess was right."

"Hm?"

"You… you're a Gold Dragon, right?" Her eyes sparkled with wonder.

I blinked, momentarily thrown by the unexpected conclusion. "Ummmm..."

"It's okay!" She leaned forward eagerly. "You don't have to admit it. It must be a secret if you were so injured you had to flee in your human form."

I stared at her, caught between amusement and bewilderment. Of all the conclusions she might have drawn, this was... oddly flattering, if completely wrong.

"Is that why your skin was so hard? Dragon scales?" she whispered, eyes wide with fascination. “Can you transform into a dragon?!”

"I'm not a dragon, Lailah," I said, trying to keep my face serious despite the absurdity.

She tapped her nose conspiratorially. "Of course you'd say that. But it makes sense! You appeared near the Saharan border, gravely injured. Everyone knows the Saharan Desert is home to the Gold Dragon Clan. Why else would you be so close unless you were returning home?"

I struggled not to laugh. "Has anyone ever told you that you have an impressive imagination?"

"It's not imagination if it's true," she countered stubbornly. "I saw how those men's weapons shattered against your skin. How you lifted Malek with one hand like he weighed nothing. How your eyes glowed golden when you fought."

That made me pause. Had my eyes truly shined? A flicker of my power manifesting despite my condition? Interesting.

She mistook my silence for confirmation, her smile widening. "I won't tell anyone, I promise. Father and I know how to keep secrets."

"Like your own?" I asked quietly.

Her smile faltered. "My own?"

"The wind that comes when you call," I said, watching her expression closely. "The spirits you speak to in the night."

Her silver eyes widened, fear flickering briefly before she masked it. "I don't know what you mean."

"Just as I don't know what you mean about being a dragon," I replied with a gentle smile. "Perhaps we both have secrets worth keeping, and mine isn’t being a dragon."

For a long moment, we simply looked at each other, the air between us charged with unspoken truths. Then, slowly, her lips curved upward.

"Very well... not-a-dragon," she said, emphasizing the words with mock solemnity. "Your secret is safe with me, just as mine is apparently safe with you."

"I’m not a dragon."

“Yeah, keep talking.”

I laughed as she returned to cleaning the last of the dust from my arm, her touch lingering longer than necessary. "You know, dragons are said to be incredibly long-lived. Some believe they're practically immortal."

"Is that so?" I smirked at her persistence.

"Mmm," she nodded. "In the oldest stories, they're also quite irresistible to women. Something about their aura of power and mystery."

"Careful," I warned, surprising myself with the ease of our banter. "Flattery might make my head too big to fit through the door."

"A dragon with your powers could simply make the door bigger, no?" she quipped, finally setting aside her cloth. Her fingers trailed briefly across my forearm as she withdrew. "Or burn it down entirely."

I caught her wrist gently, the contact sending a visible shiver through her. "Some doors," I said softly, "are worth preserving."

Her pulse fluttered beneath my fingertips, quick as a desert bird's. This type of situation, the one between us, was like that of a story. Saved by a stranger, and falling in love. It was similar to her parents’ story. For a moment, I saw a different future—one where I stayed in this simple hut, where my great purpose was protecting a silver-eyed farm girl and her father from petty thugs. A life unburdened by empires and gods and the weight of a dying world.

These weren’t my own thoughts, I realized as Vyrn’s energy shimmered from within the pendant in my neck. It was her power, whatever it was, reacting with mine. I don’t think she meant to show me this illusion, it just formed on its own like a mirage. Or perhaps a spirit showed it to me?

It was a beautiful mirage, shimmering like water on the horizon.

And like all mirages, utterly false. 

"You're thinking something sad," she observed, her free hand daringly touching my cheek. "Your eyes changed just now."

"Just remembering something I thought I'd forgotten," I said, releasing her wrist. "Nothing important."

She didn't believe me, I could see it in the tilt of her head, but she didn't press. Instead, she stood, moving to put away her healing supplies.

"Well, when you're ready to admit you're a dragon in disguise," she called over her shoulder, "I have a whole list of questions about breathing fire and hoarding treasure."

I laughed despite myself. "And if I'm truly just a man?"

She turned, silver eyes gleaming with mischief and something warmer. "Then you're the most interesting man I've ever met, Alexander. Dragon or not."

The desert wind whispered through the open window, carrying the scent of sun-baked earth and distant spice, as I watched her walk out of the hut, my eyes enjoying the sight. 

I laughed to myself for some reason. In that moment, I felt something I hadn't experienced in what seemed like lifetimes—a simple joy, unconnected to power or purpose or the grand game of gods.

I hadn’t felt such simplicity in a long time, having been caught in my quest of “saving the world” which now hated me.

**

**

**