As Flavius himself had said, he had only been utterly relaxed and uncaring toward the world when he had been drunk. So, the solution to his cultivation problems was now pretty evident, wasn’t it?

He banged on a door.

“What the—Flavius?”

A man Flavius had known through Jacob opened the door. It was the same man who had had to heal Flavius’s wounds after Jacob had beaten him within as inch of his life.

“Andrew, man, I need the booze,” Flavius said unceremoniously. He was not yet drunk, but he was experiencing the high of a person who had just solved a very complex problem.

“What? The booze? It’s still early morning, Flavius.”

Andrew had at least ten years on him, but Flavius was getting none of his impromptu paternalist act.

“I need for training. Give me a bottle of something very strong. Rum, vodka, gin, whatever. Just give me one bottle right now.”

Andrew looked at him suspiciously.

“Training?”

“For God’s sake, man, come on! One bottle. Don’t let me go get Jacob from the Alchemical Garden just because you had to act like an ass!”

Flavius was losing his patience.

“Well, I’m going to check with Jacob after he comes back. And I’m telling you, if you develop any drinking problem…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Flavius let himself inside the man’s house. He had enjoyed the chat with him after the battle and they had shared a few drinks at his place. In fact, Jacob had given Andrew most of the alcohol stockpile to keep safe.

“It’s in the basement,” Andrew sighed.

“I hope Geneva’s fine,” Flavius changed topic to distract the man from the pillaging that was about to happen.

“The usual, she’s now getting into sparring matches with the Vermillion Tyrant’s men. She pretty much beat up almost all the Mantis Realm ones. She even sparred against an Oriole Realm and managed to hurt him. But I had to heal more than a few broken bones in her body after that.”

“Sucks,” Flavius wasn’t that much interested, to be honest. He was still drunk on his own idea, and soon he would be drunk for real.

He got to the basement and took an entire box of rum bottles.

Gotta go the pirate route.

“If you take all that booze, Jacob is going to whip you.”

“Sure, thank you. See you later!”

Flavius started running out of the house, ready to enact his genius plan.

…

Juliet was meditating right outside the walls of St. Peter, at the edge of the Black Forest. She needed some quiet because she had reached the 9th level of the Mantis Realm. She was still a bit too far from the Peak, but she felt that the Oriole Realm would soon get very close to her.

Another thing that got close to her was the stench of alcohol that assaulted her nose, and someone screaming.

“Yo, pretty,” she heard a slurring voice, “spar with me!”

“Flavius,” she said with narrowed eyes. “Are you… drunk?”

“OH YEAH BABY!” he screamed and pumped a fist in the air. “As drunk as they make it! Gotta power up to kick your cute ass, you know? Eheh.”

He giggled at what he seemed to consider a funny joke.

“Wow, you truly are trash,” Juliet said while getting up with flaring eyes. “I’m going to punch your face in, this time. Then, I’ll speak to Jacob about you being a creep on top of a incompetent.”

“Yo, bring it on, momma.”

Flavius got into a sloppy fighting position on the balls of his feet.

“I’ll make you swallow your own teeth,” she said with a furious stare.

“Oh, yeah? And what if I like that, huh?”

Flavius started jumping up and down on his feet, feeling the Qi course through his body in a manner he had never felt before.

Even though he had to be a creep and a bit of pervert too, this was what he needed. All his inhibitions were finally down and he could behave as much as an idiot as he wanted to. He could crack cringe jokes, talk to everyone with not even the slightest crumble of shame on him.

He knew, on a rational level at least, that he would really regret everything he was saying once he got sober. But for the moment, drunk Flavius gave no fucks about that.

“Imma show you the cringiest fighting style, you ready, cutie?” Flavius even added a burp at the end of the sentence.

As expected, Juliet was in front of him in half a second, ready to put him to sleep.

What was not expected was Flavius dodging the blow with the same fluid movements a fish used to move through water.

“Woah! You miss, you kiss! Care to give me a peck on cheek?” he teased the younger girl.

Juliet sped up a bit, caring now less about seriously hurting the guy. She was now using enough strength to kill an Early Stage Mantis Realm monster.

She threw a few punches that didn’t even come close to connecting and then she tried a whip kick. They all missed.

Flavius had become more slippery than a goddamn eel.

And the worst thing was him making all kinds of sounds while dodging.

“WOAH! CLOSE!”

“Did you see that?! How awesome am I?”

“Man, dude, I would seriously marry me if I were you. Look at this hot bod’ dodging left and right, left and right,” he punctuated his words by undulating left and right while avoiding more punches and kicks.

“What the hell is happening?” Juliet was equally angry and surprised. “You couldn’t dodge stupid fucking slow punches before and now you are pulling some Kung-fu bullshit on me?”

“Well, this is my ultimate fighting form,” Flavius said while assuming a truly ridiculous and unbalanced stance. “Balanced my stupid life with some alcohol and now I’m invincible! This is my ultimate fighting form, the Cringe Martial Style!”

He howled like a wolf and winked to Juliet.

Sadly, for him, although impressed, Juliet was not having as much fun as him.

“Sure, let’s try something different, then,” Juliet said while exploding with Golden Flames. “Let’s see how cringe your charred corpse can be.”