Group Combat

Mike had the stats to defeat all the Gorillas in a moment, however, he intentionally limited himself to make things a bit more even.

He wanted to see everything they could offer, and to his surprise, despite their leader dying, they managed to shake off their in8tial fear and engage Mike properly.

As such, it wasn't long before he found himself struggling a bit.

His instincts helped a lot when it came to dodging attack, but they seemed to understand the concept of forcing a target into a position where they would be unable to dodge, as for the most part, their attacks dictated what direction Mike would dodge in, forcing him to tank a blow head-on. Though, with his gauntlets and raw durability, he wasn't at risk of taking damage.

Instead, he simply analyzed them.

Individually, they weren't all that. In fact, by default, their movements were quite rudimentary. Granted, he didn't know a lot about weapon styles, seeing as he fought with his fists, but he knew enough about combat to know that their knowledge on the weapons they wielded was average at the absolute best.

It was their coordination that truly surprised him. They knew how to cover each other's blindspots and always knew when to exploit an opening when one was made.

As the fight went on, Mike went from surprised to downright baffled.

Just as he was observing and learning how they fought, the Gorillas were also doing the same. They began to acclimate to they way he fought bit by bit as they began to get a feel for his timing and the speed.

It was a far cry from what he was capable of, and it was even worse when one considered that they while they were the same species, they were still individual creatures with different rates of comprehension, so it was far from balanced, but it was there.

'Maybe their claiming of such a large territory wasn't simply due yo the creature in the middle.' Mike thought as the fight went on for a while longer.

However, just as it looked like the fight was starting to shift in the favor of the Gorillas, Mike made his move.

Mike was holding back a LOT. He hadn't even activated Crimson Ladder, so while he wasn't fighting with his base stats since he'd activated his Partial Transformation, it was still an exaggeration to say that he was exerting himself.

Moreover, the combat style he was using was quite rudimental. Specifically, it was the simple but sharp movements he made when he allowed Crimson Ladder to guide him. He no longer needed to run the technique to achieve this, though, so he simply moved like that on his own.

It was an efficient combat style, but it was simple, so it didn't take a lot of effort to understand and counter it, as shown by the Gorillas' ability to counter him.

This is why, without increasing his power output, Mike changed his combat style.

He allowed one of the spear... Gorillas? To strike his gauntlets, the force throwing him back and creating some distance between him and the group, which was rapidly closing the distance.

Mike took a breath and leaned down until he was practically on all fours, and he brandished his claws.

The sudden change made the Gorillas hesitate for a moment, unsure of what he was about to do, and Mike capitalized on that.

He ran towards the closest Gorilla, which wielded a sword, and he lunged, both claws ready to rip it apart.

At the last moment, though, one of the shield-bearing Gorillas came between them and raised the shield to block him.

However, instead of swinging his claws, Mike grabbed the edge of the shield and shoved it into the ground, burying it. Before the Gorilla using the shield could pull away, Mike's head shot forward, and his claws clamped around its neck before he easily ripped out its throat, creating a fountain of blood.

The taste of blood was sweet on his tongue

He then wrenched the shield free from its grasp and kicked its weakening body into the sword-using Gorilla behind it, making it stumble back.

He blocked three arrows with the shield before throwing it like a Frisbee at one of the archers. It scrambled out of the way, barely avoiding the spinning object. However, as if waiting for it, an arrow lodged itself through its eye and into its brain.

Mike had plucked out of the arrows from the shield right before he threw it, and he threw the arrow with uncanny accuracy, anticipating where the Gorilla would dodge to, making it move into the path of its own arrow.

Without stopping, Mike ran on all fours again towards the next target, which happened to be the sword-using Gorilla from before, which still seemed a bit stunned as it held its bleeding comrade in its arms.

It saw him approaching and tried to raise its sword to block, and the surrounding Gorillas guessed that Mike would go for it as it was the most vulnerable at the moment.

Two of the spear Gorillas went forward, trying to keep him at a distance with their superior reach.

But that's when Miks suddenly changed direction and went for the closer spear Gorilla. Instead of going for its throat like the others, he lowered himself to the ground even more and sliced its ankles, cutting through the tendons like butter.

The Gorilla let out a pained cry and fell backward, something Mike used as he spun and used the momentum to smash his elbow into its spine, completely shattering it.

He then pulled its body and used it to block more arrows before once more, throwing it at the poor sword user.

He dropped to the ground and avoided a sword swing over his head before pivoting on his arms and swinging out his leg in a wide, devastating arc.

Manji Kick.

It crashed into the side of the Gorilla, shattering its ribs and collapsing the lung there as it swayed.

Its sword slipped from its grasp, and Mike caught it before driving it right through the Gorilla's heart. It was dead before it hit the ground.

By now, the previously cohesive patrol was now in shambles. One moment, they were keeping up with Mike and even suppressing him a bit, and now, he'd taken out several of them in less than ten seconds simply due to a change in fighting style.

There was a reason Mike chose this specific style, too.

Naturally, it was the one he'd based on his fight with Excellent_Render on Fighter's.Inc. He'd felt a sort of kinship when he saw the way his opponent fought on all fours and moved like an animal.

More than that, though, he realized that many creatures, specifically bipedal creatures, had problems fighting opponents that stayed close to the ground.

It couldn't be helped. Most bipedal creatures learned how to use their arms more than their legs. As such, defending attacks from below was more difficult to do since most weren't well-versed in fighting with their legs.

Mike noticed that the Gorillas relied a lot on their weapons, which they naturally wielded with their arms. In contrast, their footwork was sloppy. They could do the basics, but things like rapidly shifting your stance to change your center of mass or pivoting on the balls of your feet to quickly spin weren't among the things they knew how to do.

Mike exploited that.

What followed was Mike moving around like a whirlwind. Many of his attacks focused on dealing significant damage to the legs of the Gorillas, making them lose their balance and allowing him to end them swiftly.

It was a pretty gruesome sight, and the stench of blood was strong, but Mike only thrived in that environment.

There was something euphoric about that, reading his opponents and then coming up with a near-perfect countermeasure to how they fought. It was like a metaphorical way of saying,'I figured out your form of fighting. Now you can't resist me.'

Again, Mike could have used his superiority stats to overwhelm the Gorillas from the beginning. However, to him, there was more to the amount of power he could acquire from this event beyond just stats.

Stats were good, but what use was an overwhelming amount of stats if he couldn't use them properly during a specific situation?

Getting jumped was, in the end, a real issue that required a lot of skill to deal with, especially when it was from people around your level, or worse yet, when they had proper cohesion to back of their strength.

Theresa told Mike that a lot of the subordinates these young geniuses from the Apex Families had were specifically trained from birth to protect their young masters. In fact, their whole reason for coming to Eventide was to grow stronger so they could better protect the one entrusted to them.

As such, their natural coordination was on another level, and Mike was bound to engage with them at some point during the event. So he might as well train his ability to fight in situations like that.

A few minutes later, the entire patrol was dead, their bodies with varying degrees of lethal injuries.

Mike licked his lips, savoring the taste of blood on his tongue before he quickly moved away from the scene.

As tempting as devouring their corpses were, he had a more ambitious goal, and there was no doubt that their fight would have attracted some attention.

Hence, Mike wanted more Gorillas to come and see what happened to put the rest on higher alert.

And thus began his plan.

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