The quest he had gotten randomly was pretty straightforward.

He wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to learn a punch and kick technique, he had the inkling that just getting a Skillbook wouldn’t work this time around, but if he just listened to his instructor, he was sure he would get it.

Too bad she was kind of bad at explaining things.

“So what ya gotta do is breathe in, and just spread your mana into your muscles,” Rave instructed and her aura, a sky blue, flared up around her. “Bada-bing-bada-boom, there ya go.”

“I have no fucking clue what the fuck you mean by that fucking shit,” Eliza called out to her, sitting with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap on the green plain that Magnus was providing for them.

This part of the lecture was actually not for him, since he could just use Aura as a toggleable skill. Instead, he was reading through a basic Abyssal guide on martial arts while Rave’s teaching efforts fell through. Whether the book wasn’t a Skillbook or it would have just given him access to Aura and a basic martial art style, both of which he already possessed, he didn’t know.

“I don’t even know why the fuck I am doing this,” Eliza growled. “I can fight.”

“Yeah, but you fight like an idiot,” Metra commented from the side lines. “Your whole strategy is ‘hit it ‘til it dies’, just because you basically can’t.”

“Never change a working fuck,” the blood mage giggled, then laughed way too loudly. “Sorry, found that extremely funny for some reason.”

“Thing is, it works until it doesn’t,” John muttered in that disembodied tone someone used when he was only half part of the conversation, being currently immersed in his lecture. It was a mere fifty page book, so he was about through after the twenty-five minutes he had already spent on it. “The reason why you can fight like that is because you winning is a foregone conclusion, so if you finally face someone you can’t beat like that, which grows increasingly likely as we go up against more high-profile people, then you’ll be in a bind.”

“I can’t even fight right now because of the fucking Thana-situation,” Eliza grumbled.

“Ja,” Rave chimed back in, putting out her aura. Little tongues of blue faded out like swirls of smoke around her. “But it might help ya with the Thana situation.”

“How the shit would it do that?”

“Cause martial arts teach ya discipline and stuff,” she nodded to herself. Then, when she noticed everyone looking at her as the only real martial arts user around and made the connection to her discipline, she stuck out her tongue. “Imagine how I would be like if I didn’t do martial arts then, ya meanies,” she pouted.

“Anyway, she might have a point,” John mumbled some more. “Either way, you lose nothing, Eliza.”

“Except my television time,” the blood mage complained but closed her eyes again. “Okay, so I breathe in, that was literally the only part I got.”

“Ya spread your meowana,” she stopped for a moment to bite her tongue and attempt to get her speech lined up again, then she continued, “mana through your whole body and then it does stuff… ah, lemme just touch ya and ya will get it,” Rave sat down behind Eliza. “Inhale deeeeeep,” she instructed, “into the chest, as little stomach bloating as possible. Yeah, like that, do that some more, gotta get ya used to the rhythm. Ya feel it yet?”

“Feel what yet?” an irritated Eliza asked; she was not used to sitting still this long. “You know there is a shitload of mana pulsating through me at any given moment, right? You are trying to make me find the needle in the shitmire.”

“Should be about here,” Rave stabbed at Eliza’s upper back with two fingers, right on top of her spine and between her shoulder blades.

A tirade of curses left the blood mage’s mouth as her spine straightened up in response. “…Cock-biscuit munching son of a whore!” she finally finished. “That HURT!”

“Ya like it, don’tcha?” Rave said with a grin.

“Not if I am not prepared for it, and that really hurt, what the fuck was that?” she wanted to know.

“Ya ever heard of pressure points?” she asked, and everyone in the world had, so Eliza had as well. “Then there ya go. I just jabbed one. Just a fluke tho, I am not one of those martial artists, I just know about where they are.”

“So that shit just hurts if someone randomly presses it?” Eliza complained.

“Nah, gotta be veryrecise anddoakistrikeatd,” Rave slurred.

Metra shook her head, “Nobody has a fucking clue what you just said.”

“You have to be very precise and do a ki strike at it,” John translated for the rest of them, having arrived at the final page.

“Meow boyfriend coming when I nya-eed him,” Rave spoke extra cattish for a moment because she knew that it turned John on somewhat. For literally no reason. Just like with the ears, it was sexy just because. “Anyway, that’s the central mana distribution point, or just ki-centre for us martial artists. If ya do the breathing right, ya should be able to feel something there.” Eliza went back to breathing, now with a strained face.

John felt a shiver, in the meanwhile, as he looked at the Ki-anatomy model in the book. It was true that the distribution point was at the upper spine, but further down, just above the hip bones, was the counterpart. ‘The shiver in your spine,’ he heard Thana’s voice in his ear again, ‘That is where I live!’

It was just a reaffirmation of what he already knew, that she was a goddess and as such lived off the Faith energy humans generated by existing. This was just the ‘scientific’ explanation for it. Nevertheless, it felt creepy to know that a part of his body was constantly drip feeding several entities on the planet to varying degrees.

At least the Apothecary he had recently went through assured him Thana was not infecting his soul, however, so this was only creepy, not worrisome.

“I think I got it,” Eliza mumbled, “What now?”

“Ya gotta start small: extract the energy from your ki-centre and pull it into your lungs. From there it will mix with your blood and spread to every part of your body,” Rave explained.

In essence, John understood, now that he had gone through the book, that martial arts in the Abyss were the ultimate equalizer. Not everyone had a particularly strong soul; actually, almost no one had. Most people had a very basic soul type, giving them a minimal advantage over others in one specific field of magic. If the magic of mind had been the only way to be powerful, people with Innate Abilities would have been even more oppressive than they already were.

Martial arts, however, allowed people to take advantage of something basically everyone had: flesh and blood. By using their ki (which still was just another term for mana), they could use magic of body to achieve immense feats. Of course, there were more or less talented individuals there as well, but it was something everyone could learn no matter what their soul type was.

So the two biggest differences between magic and martial arts where: 1. Magic formed mana outside, martial arts formed ki inside the body. 2. Magic had a width of specializations and a high bar for entry, martial arts had a low bar and were only useful for combat (barring some fringe schools where it could be used for healing).

“Why did you choose to pick up martial arts, Jane?” John asked as he put the book aside. “You have a strong Innate Ability.”

“Cause I liked Daddy more than Mother,” Rave gave a simple answer. “And ya know my dad doesn’t have an Innate Ability, he is a good martial artist and that’s it. Also, I have talent for it and I am more of a punchy person than throwing beams at someone from a distance. Lotsa reasons, all pretty simple.”

“Hey, the fact that you just do things is 80% of the reason why we got together,” John said.

“More like 98,” she joked and winked at him. When red flickers started exuding from Eliza’s skin, Rave retracted her hand. “There ya go!” she congratulated as those flickers became denser. “Gotta pump those muscles up with mana.”

There was one aura that everyone had and one only martial artists could manifest. The former was a manifestation of one’s mana once it had turned into Faith exiting through the ki-point at the lower spine. The latter was a miniscule amount of mana in the muscles unable to stay on the fibre and leaving the body through the pores.

The thick red cloud of ki around Eliza looked way less impressive now that John basically thought of it as mana sweat. “Huh, that’s unusual,” Rave commented. “I mean, there are several unusual things right there, like how she can do that after trying for half an hour where others take months, but the colour is one thing I didn’t expect.”

As the go-to colour of mana was blue, most auras shared that attribute. However, it wasn’t unusual for auras to change colour and neither was it for mana, albeit that was an expression of two different things. Ki that changed colour did so inside the body and thus acquired the reflection of the soul type, like it could be seen in Eliza right now or Rave when she went and used Copernicus’ unleashed power. Mana’s shift in colouring came about because of the technique used to shape it.

Momo had known all about that, having read a book. ‘If I remember correctly, it’s called the Voltaire-Arcane-Spectrum-Theory,’ the first time he had heard that had been all the way back in the very first game of the tournament. ‘Wonder if that is the same Voltaire… also I should get that book.’ It was probably still back in Rome in the room Momo had stayed in.

He explained all of that to Eliza, who did not know why it was unusual. The aura flared down and vanished again during the explanation. By the end, the blood mage looked at her hand. “So this is my power after all? This whole blood shit?”

“Did you doubt that?” John wondered.

“I wasn’t fucking sure, with all the other shit that comes along with HER,” Eliza gestured at herself. “Does this mean I always had the capacity to become a fucking monster of the Abyss?”

“Very likely,” Metra commented. “Don’t get me wrong, you got your potential boosted to absurd levels because of what is inside you, but I think you could have become about half as strong as you are right now naturally.” The berserker babe put her head on her knee and narrowed her eyes. “This age is very unusual, there shouldn’t be so many elites in so few generations.”

They looked expectantly to John as if to say ‘explain this shit, brainiac.’ As it so happened, he actually did have an explanation. “It’s because of the way the World Soul functions, I think,” he told them. “It gets stronger the more people there are. The stronger it is, the more magic gets channelled through people before they are born. The more magic, the more likely they are to awaken an Innate Ability. Basically, it’s Gaia’s long-term plan working better than she probably imagined.”

“Isn’t it Remus’ long-term plan?” Rave asked.

“Not sure if I should credit the advisor or the girl who built and maintains the structure,” John admitted. “Seems to me that she ditched him the moment he had nothing more of worth to add to the system. That’s just my impression though.”

Well, at least he had confirmation that he would get the other side of the story one day.

“Maintaining this shit is as hard as John’s cock in my ass,” Eliza growled as she tried to reignite her aura.

“Oy, you already skipped months of focus training,” Metra, who had seen more than a few warriors train in her time, scolded. “Be grateful for what you have. Probably took lightning hands over there years to get it just right.”

“Nah, I needed like… three weeks,” Rave stated and Metra turned to look at her. “Coulda done it faster, probably, but I was ten.”

“In the name of the saltwater skies, you weren’t kidding when you said you were actually good at something?” the berserker babe couldn’t keep the quip to herself.

“N-o-p-e,” Rave spelled out and left Metra sitting there to keep looking. “Anyway, Eliza, ya keep trying to do that. Should take ya a few days at worst before ya can meowntain it for an attack or two. John, we gonna try the other two parts of the quest, alright?”

“Sure,” John activated the terrible Aura skill, reducing his mana regeneration by 100% in return for a percentage bonus in his physical stats. “So, what do I have to do?” By video game logic, if he did it right once, he would get a skill for it. “I already read up on the different technique categories.”

There were five in total: hand, wrist, head, ankle and foot techniques. Each of them was especially named after the body part where mana was concentrated to achieve the intended effect. Each of the categories was also especially good at something, with only hand and foot techniques being somewhat alike and usually focused around dealing damage, to no surprise. Wrist techniques were good at redirecting energy flow and ankle techniques were all about movement.

Head was the odd one out, a wild mix of different things that had very niche uses. For example, shouting someone to death was better done as a sound mage so basically no one practiced that. Also biting someone to death wasn’t the usual strategy. More popular were things like disabling one’s pain receptors to go into a berserker rage, but even that was highly unusual in the grand scheme of things.

“Okay, so ya need a punch and a kick right?” Rave made it simple. “Well here are the two basic ones. First, Impact Punch, all it does is add a bit of a blast to your punch.” She kneeled down on one leg and slowly showed him what to do. “Gotta pull your arm aaaall the way back,” her elbow travelled up until she had to twist her torso to raise it even higher. “Aura on,” the blue flame-like energy burned around her, “concentrate it in the shoulder and palm of your clenched fist.” The process that would have taken place in less than a second in a fight left a visible change in her aura. The areas she had just named had less aura escaping, as she concentrated to keep as much in as was possible. “And then ya just gotta give it a straight jab!” she said and brought her arm down.

Her fist met the grass floor without any further effects. Only when she raised her hand again did John see that she had left a deeper imprint in the dirt than her fist should have punched into it. “Again, very basic,” she said, “but it does the job most of the time.”

“What’s that thing you use again?” John asked.

“the Dolphin Blow?” Rave returned with a non-serious lustre dancing pink through her blue eyes.

“Tell me that’s a reference to one of your abridged series and not the actual name,” John demanded; that would just have been too stupid.

“Ja, it is,” she confirmed. “Nah, it’s actually the Penetrative Blast, travels a few centimetres behind the punch depending on exact usage.”

“Why not teach me that?”

“Because your hand might explode,” she delivered it straight.

John blinked rapidly. “Seriously?”

“What, ya think pumping your muscles up with magic juice and having it leave ya in a destructive fashion isn’t a dangerous sport?” she bopped him on the nose. “I don’t sweat while meditating cause I like to be wet around ya or because ya have a strange fascination with licking salt off my midriff. I am actually tensing up everything inside me. Ya know, like when I regenerate mana while using it, but without anything actually ripping apart.”

“I don’t understand it either,” he commented the midriff thing while still coming to terms with the tearing. “It’s just hot.”

“Ey, I like to do it to ya too, so the feeling is mutual,” Rave smirked, tapping his abs with the back of her hand. “Anyway, point is, ya can’t do this yet. Ya gotta be able to do the basics before ya can do something like this.” She raised her left leg, foot hanging loosely down at the ankle. Then she suddenly brought it down, her whole sole meeting the ground at the same moment.

John lost his balance as the ground under him suddenly ruptured around his girlfriend’s foot. He tried to make a step to the side to regain his footing but got the tip of his foot into one of the cracks instead, causing him to get caught and fall completely.

“What the fuck was that?” Eliza asked as they looked at the earth. A whole metre around Rave’s foot was as if a hammer had hit a large piece of glass and damaged it without causing it to properly shatter and fall apart.

“Heh,” Rave gave him a show-off grin. “That’s the Seismic Step an- ouch.” She tried to walk towards him and help him up, but then they both noticed that the ground wasn’t the only thing damaged by that attack. Her jeans were torn up to her knee and by the way she took that step it looked like she had hurt herself as well. She popped down on her butt and took off her neon-pink shoe (her battle suit in base form). A bruise was quickly forming on her sole and her toes were swelling. “Well, this isn’t embarrassing right now or anything,” she mumbled to herself. “Can ya gimme an Undine?”

John most certainly could. “Does this happen to you often?” he asked.

“Ya would know if it did, think I can hide stuff like that from you when we bone every other hour?” she joked and let out a relieved sigh as the pain went away as quickly as it came. “Using martial arts through equipment is harder and I usually don’t even use a Seismic Step of that strength barefoot. Beginners are better off with Focus Stomp.””

“In other words,” Copernicus tapped around his summoner in a large circle, looking at her foot like he totally didn’t care (in typical cat fashion), “she wanted to show off to her boyfriend who is so seldomly impressed with her abilities.”

“Oy, Cappy,” Rave lightly chopped the suncat on the head. “I am ashamed enough as is.”

John just took her into his arms. “I am definitely impressed,” he assured her. “Must be a lot of hard work to learn all of that.”

“It is,” she agreed, “but I don’t need ya to be impressed with me all the time. Just wanted to show off the only time I definitely could.” She raised a hand to his face and kissed him. As a girlfriend, Rave was perfect thanks to all her little flaws.