Chapter 31: Clash
The leader blood axe arrived on board the ship first followed by his men and kept a distance.
In one hand he had a long wooden axe and in the other he had a pistol like the typical swashbuckler stereotype but instead of a sword he had a axe.
As he appeared in range, Alyssia closed her eyes briefly as her crew members approached the intruding pirates and she scanned through their skills and began to quickly tell the system to purchase anything related to blade, staff and axe type of weapon mastery and anything additional body skills.
After a long time of using her staff and reaper blade attachments, she found that she was still lacking a proper foundation in that area so she needed to gain more from her opponents who had more varied weapon skills outside of Zou who seemed to focus on a specific type of swordsmanship that did not suit her.
One of the skills that caught her eye was the Acrobat skill that focussed on balance, flexibility, agility, strength and stage presence.
Although the skills weren't high in this area among the pirates they did have the basic experience of fighting on board a ship while on the water which gave them a better control of their bodies and balance.
As someone who had been living on an island all her life she had not come into contact with the Acrobat skill but her climbing and jumping skills were constantly being improved so when confronted with the pirates she was still not at much of a disadvantage even if they had more experience with combat on board a ship.
While she opened her eyes the system began to purchase everything specified even if it had already been bought from someone else, the small amounts of experiences one person had that filled in the systems skill page was being reconstructed with the parts of the others that were purchased with a minuscule amount of points.
Nica climbed up high on the ship and began to fire from a distance at anyone with a gun to provide some support.
She adjusted the small top hat on her head that was about to fall off after firing a shot and then reloaded her gun once again.
Just as she did that, a pirate was shot through the arm and dropped his pistol on the ground while wailing in pain.
Tristan went hand to hand with several of the weaker pirates that had sticks or bats of some kind or fought unarmed and made use of her boxing focussed fighting style while using her footwork and flexibility to manoeuvre through her opponents attacks while throwing out a punch
One second she would avoid a weapon strike and then move to block a fist with her guard up and then respond with a knockout punch before moving around again to avoid another attack.
Carrot who had a more free and wild style of fighting jumped into a crowd and began to kick an opponent which she used to vault herself towards another or to avoid an attack.
Archie who had a tougher physique but did not have much of an enjoyment for combat entered the battle by using his large body to break their formation with a slap from his palm towards the nearest person which would either knock them out or over.
After completing his job of breaking them up he picked up a nearby pistol and began to fire it towards a nearby pirate.
Clifford held his two new swords as his tongue was hung down the side of his mouth when he opened it to yell. "Get them! Let me test these sword out on you guys."
Suddenly he clashed against the first person that he met and parried with one weapon while striking with the other.
The pirate was put on the defensive very quickly and grit his teeth as he continued to get pushed back by Clifford's quick swordsmanship.
It did not take long before his concentration wavered and he was cut which made him drop his weapon, he was then kicked to the ground and Clifford continued to meet another opponent as he was focussed on either defending himself or disarming his enemies,
Meanwhile Alyssia was in the middle of the battle as the pirates numbers continued to increase.
She vaulted herself into the air with the staff and appeared above the captain who raised his pistol to aim at her.
Her instincts screamed danger but after many experiences and using her knowledge she had gathered she carefully examined the pistol and where it was pointed towards.
Suddenly she lifted the metallic staff in front of herself after predicting the path of the bullet and thrust it forward to meet the oncoming bullet before it reached her.
This knocked her off her original position while the bullet was either stopped or changed the direction where it was supposed to go.
It was a risky decision but it had saved her life and saved her from injury but now she landed away from her intended place of landing.
Several pirates surrounded her but instead of waiting for them to come and get trapped by them she moved forward with her staff and waved it downward towards the first person that she came to hitting them in the face after breaking through their wooden weapon upon contact.
Someone appeared behind her but her senses were sharp, even without experiencing a lot of combat where she was outnumbered on Zou her beast instinct allowed her to stay vigilant and sharp.
She changed the grip on her staff and turned it so that it was thrust backward toward the chest of her attacker which broke through to hit his ribs knocking him off his feet.
As she pulled back the staff she sighed with many enemies around her. "It is too thick and heavy… Hey Archie! Throw me another staff and get a new one if I need it."
Choosing a weapon is a difficult task and needs careful consideration so that it suits the individual.
Alyssia was taking these steps while testing the shape, length, thickness and weight to find out what best suited her.
Even with her meagre staff skills that she had picked up and learned recently she still knew how to feel if she was comfortable using a certain weapon.
After entering the weapon store she picked a couple of cheap or medium quality staffs of different designs so that she could find out what best suited her.
Once she knew the specifics then she could make additional plans on how her own staff should be changed or modified to fit her better.
Just as another round of gunshots went off the captain was disarmed and Alyssia rotated as she swung the staff around to hit the approaching pirates near her and made them back off but some of them were damaged by the heavy swing and the power that was behind it.