>>6046024>>6045870>>6045781>>6045779>>6045777>>6045776Okay, new plan. ACD makes people learn from fighting a lot faster, but trying to make as many agents as possible would just make overseeing their training much harder. No, you'll take a leaf out of justice's book and make sure one singular individual gets as strong as possible, and the way you'll do that is by making him fight weaker skinless beasts until he gets strong enough to face either Hatred or Justice.
That's a plan, you can't put Hazel in danger, so she'll have to stay home while you order him remotely. You tell Hazel to inscribe more marking on him for that purpose, along with more protective stuff to make sure he doesn't get sliced to bits in an instant.
As for weapons, guns won't work, so a kitchen knife will have to do. A spear would be ideal, but a sword wouldn't be bad either. You send him out and get a view of the outside world for the first time in forever. It's not as bloody as you expected, but you do see a few corpses here and there, and you suspect a lot of the carnage is happening indoors as most people start hiding in their home. There's one beast feasting on a police officer, it's like a red dog with fly-like eyes and serrated teeth. You can also hear a strange distorted 8-bit like music coming from it, the moment it notices your puppet, the music changes to what you assume is a battle theme.
Right now, you order your puppet to stay on the defensive and focus on dodging. Even if you could theoretically kill it in only a few well placed strikes, the main thing you want here is experience. Not game-like experience, but actual combat experience. You really wish you got more time to test out the ACD, if that doesn't work out, you'll have to stay put until Justice is done winning.
Thankfully, it doesn't come to that. The beast is still very game-like in the way it acts, it might be a limitation of its owner's prison. Its attacks are telegraphed with big red circles and loud sound effects. This might be the best first opponent you could ask for, and you make sure that your puppet learns as much as he can before hitting the beast in the eyes.
If you had to guess, that beast would be much stronger in an enclosed area, but it's not smart enough to know when not to pick a fight, that's good, you can use this.
You pick fights with a few of them, and then you start moving up from there. Fighting more than one of them at once is still very troublesome, and even with very good combat experience, your marking doesn't make someone's body stronger, only their mind and senses. Better reflexes still won't save you from something as fast as a gunshot, something you're happy neither Hatred nor Justice like to use.
The enemies get only more problematic the closer you get to the arcade. Explosive ticks, Slithering meat spiders, there's a lot of variety here, and you wish you got more informed on Hatred's game. That's fine though, you'll learn as you go.
