Way of the Gentle Fist

Gentle Fist Art

An elven man wearing green robes comes face to face with a ravenous troll. As the troll sees him, his eyes go from a normal light-green color to being completely white and seem to glow a bit; his temples have visibly dilated blood vessels bulging out under his skin. The troll marches forward, claws at the ready. Before it can make a single swing, the elf dashes forward and delivers two quick palm strikes at the troll's torso, causing it to convulse. The troll stumbles back, feeling as if it just got the wind knocked out of it. The elf proceeds to then unleash four more palm strikes with quick succession. The troll is continuously getting attacked without fire or acid, and yet it seems as if its injuries aren't healing at all. Multiple strikes later and the troll only manages to land two shallow claw attacks at the elf. The elf ends his flurry of blows with a strong punch to the troll's heart, killing it and not allowing it to heal.  

Hit like a Pebble, Sting like a Dagger

  Some monks have the special ability to attack their opponents in specific places that allow them to maximize damage output while seemingly leaving nothing more than a slight bruise on the outside. These monks practice the martial arts known as the Way of the Gentle Fist. Gentle Fist practitioners learn to strike in specific places on the body and essentially "knocks out" the energy within that specific area. Getting hit this way, even lightly, can be just as painful as receiving a crushing blow from a professional boxer, yet the resulting area shows surprisingly low amounts of physical damage from an upfront view. The actual damage is much more skin-deep and can be seen in the blood vessels and muscles of the area.  

Sensory Boost

The Way of the Gentle Fist can't be done by just anyone though. In order to properly use such style, practitioners need to have a special optical ability known as Inner Sight. This ability's presence in someone is purely due to chance and/or hereditary reasons. Elves and those related to elves or the fey tend to have a higher chance of inheriting such ability. Once Inner Sight is unlocked, the individual's eyes may take on a new appearance, with their entire iris and pupils becoming white. When activated, the pupil within the iris becomes more pronounced and the blood vessels leading to the eye bulge out and dilate to also become more pronounced. Inner Sight allows the user to see specific areas within someone's body where their natural energy concentrates and flows. They in-turn use this ability to strike the areas where energy is concentrated in and promptly knock them out for a brief period of time.  

Cultivating the Gentle Fist

Training in the Gentle Fist art is quite a rigorous process. Precision and reflexes are key, as the areas where natural energy is concentrated in, known in Elvish as tenketsu, are smaller than a pinhead. When targeting these areas, there's usually less physical force being used in an attack, so missing a tenketsu would be equivalent to simply just poking your opponent. Use of Inner Sight makes this easier, but at the cost of using more resources. Because this ability is mainly hereditary, many practitioners tend to practice by themselves, simply due to its rarity.