When Elmira got her rune set up, the first thing Aaron tried was an [ Overclocked Haymaker ]. He had seen the rune in action, but wanted to get a feel for it firsthand as well. As expected, the rune completely destroyed the mana component of the attack, but it left the Stamina completely intact. That wasn’t what Aaron wanted with his own attack, but he wasn’t going to copy it perfectly anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

  Next, he tried using an ordinary spirit punch on the rune, just to see what would happen. Surprisingly, the rune blocked that too, dismantling the aether the same way it did mana.

  Interesting, thought Aaron.

  He had only been curious about what would happen, but he had unexpectedly discovered an excellent boon. Attacking Talia and Elmira’s own spirits would probably go beyond what they had in mind for this training sessions, but if he could get his spiral spirit punch working on the rune, even a little bit, it would serve as good practice and a good proof of concept.

  He charged up another spirit punch, this time, willing the aether to follow the rotation of his fist and continue. When it collided with the rune, the rune dismantled it once again, but unless he was mistaken, it was slower. Not quite as thorough. The spirit punch had made it ever-so-slightly further.

  He threw a few more punches, refining the technique with each try, and by the fifth, he could confirm that his idea was working. It wasn’t enough to overcome the rune, or even come close, really, but some of the almost microscopic waves of aether that the rune sent out collapsed under the force of his punch, letting it go just a bit further before it fell apart.

  Progress! he thought happily.

  It might not be enough to earn a better spirit punch Skill yet, but he had a starting point now. He had no doubt that he could refine it more, taking it closer to how the rune worked. Before that, though, as he looked at the rune and behind it, Elmira’s half-smug face, he wanted to try something else. The rune was strong, sure, but he was very curious about whether he could break through it anyway, like Talia had.

  “Hold on, I wanna try one more thing,” he said.

  Aaron raised a hand and got to eating, stuffing countless finger foods into his mouth as he grew in size, larger and larger with every bite.

  “Huh, so that’s why you have the scabbard without a sword,” Elmira mused as he took food from it.

  “Okay, are you ready?” Aaron said, now towering over the two girls in his bulbous ogre-like form.

  “He’s so big. I’m not sure I’ll be able to take it,” Elmira gulped, and Talia turned away, pretending not to hear.

  Aaron charged up a final spiritual punch, but this time, he added an [ Overclocked Haymaker ] as well. All the energy he had just eaten, he poured into his fist, mostly in mana in an attempt to break through the rune. That, combined with the spirit punch doing its best to weaken the rune, he managed to shatter it. Most of the energy of the attack had been eaten by the rune, but a small portion of it hit the shield that Elmira had hastily erected behind it.

  “Nice,” said Elmira. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” said Aaron. “I’ll want to mess around with the rune a bit more, though, whenever you’re ready.”

  “Good. But it’s our turn now. We finish training energy, and then we let Talia show us what she’s got, then we can get back to that."

  He couldn’t deny her. She had been a great training partner and had been patient while he waited, and now it was only fair that he hold up his end of the bargain. Besides, her runes were incredible to train against, and it was worthwhile remaining in her good books. Who knew what other helpful runes she had to train against?

  And so, Aaron went on to continue his lessons regarding energy control.

  Elmira already had her Mana Anchors and Stamina Veins active, but she hadn’t achieved her Vitality Heart yet, and doing so would be a considerable boon to her power.

  Talia, on the other hand, had Vitality Heart and Mana Anchors, and so the three of them worked together.

  However, despite both girls possessing the missing pieces of each other’s puzzles, it was only Aaron who had such a natural understanding of energy and exuded such power that he could easily help others open new energy organs.

  It wasn’t just explaining to them what needed to be done, though. He cycled energy and reached out to them with his spirit all at once.

  The spirit gave him the ability to reach within and assist their gains in ways that normal words simply couldn’t do. Aaron could only imagine how much this ability would have been heightened with Spirit Negotiator. It likely wouldn’t have been worth investing in anyway, at least not for him. But it no doubt would have come in handy with training others, as he could subconsciously pass knowledge onto his students through their spirits. This was supremely useful for sharing things that were difficult to illustrate with words.

  Their progress was remarkably fast, and soon he detected both girls cycling energy in ways they hadn’t before.

  He could probably make a living from this, he realized, if he wanted to. His ability to pass down knowledge was extremely powerful, and he doubted many, even amongst the elite of the elite, could match it.

  Still, nothing came that easily in the multiverse, and their training season dragged on for several hours before he could feel them getting close. But close wasn’t quite there, and they still had mountains to climb. Aaron pushed all of his effort into cycling his own energies so that they would spill out of his body, and heighten the senses of his pupils.

  He realized he wasn’t just helping them, though. As he split his attention between his body and his spirit, and used his spirit to guide his pupils, he himself was growing more adept at controlling its power.

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  From his spirit form, he channeled more energy into them using raw aether to probe at their energy organs. It was a very different feeling looking down from his spirit compared to his normal form, and from here, it was very easy to sense how Elmira and Talia were cycling their power, which was further heightened when he raised his mana barrier.

  Still, for someone like Aaron, this was still taking too long. They had made incredible gains, but he had unlocked all three organs at lower levels when he had far less energy to draw on, and as such, it was far harder for him. So to him, this felt laborious and slow.

  There’s got to be a way to speed this up!

  Lowering his spirit form down to their eye level, he wondered what would happen if he reached into Elmira’s heart? Or Talia’s forming Stamina Veins?

  Just like a ghost, his hand passed straight through the two girls, joining all three of them into a circular rhythm of energy. And he pulsed aether directly into the forming energy cores.

  Elmira and Talia gasped as their Vitality Heart and Stamina Veins were both simultaneously sprung open, and energy flooded out.

  However, he immediately realized how reckless what he had done was. The chaotic nature of the energy flooding out was impossible to ignore. If he had gone just a little further, he could have easily caused permanent damage.

  That said, it had been a resounding success.

  Okay, I’ll be more careful next time. Swear it.

  More importantly, though. He had given Elmira what she wanted, and now she could hardly refuse his request for more training against her runes. And once he had refined his technique, he could go race toward level 35, and teach that ogre a thing or two.

  Aaron smiled as all of his consciousness returned to his body. It had been a fruitful day of training indeed. And he still hadn’t even seen what Talia had up her sleeves yet.

  The two girls took a minute to gather themselves and get used to their gains before they both stood to their feet. They took another minute to circulate their newly buffed energy, getting a feel for how it worked, and once they were ready, they both turned to Aaron.

  “Thank you,” said Elmira, bowing her head toward him.

  “Yes, thank you,” said Talia.

  “I don’t know what you did, but that was way faster than I thought it would be,” said Elmira.

  “Yeah,” said Talia. “I feel a little bad now…”

  “How come?” asked Aaron.

  “Well, you both showed off some pretty incredible things, but I don’t really have anything like that. What you see is what you get with me. I’ve got my mana avatar, and that’s about it.”

  “Well, your mana avatar is still plenty strong,” said Elmira. “Strong enough to earn you one of the top spots in the new universe. Even if it’s not as weird or complicated as ours, I’m sure we can still learn from taking a look at it.”

  “I guess,” said Talia. “Well, here it is.”

  As she spoke, she floated up into the air as her armored avatar formed around her. Aaron had tempered his expectations after her words, but even so, he found himself a little disappointed. Not in Talia, since the armor was truly incredible, as far as he could tell, but there just wasn’t much he could gain from it. The avatar was basically just very well-constructed mana. It had armor and held a huge great sword, and while he could learn a bit for his own barrier, he encountered a bit of the same problem he had with Elmira’s rune. The way that the avatar was built was just too complex for him to imitate.

  Rather than each piece being a single, solid chunk of mana, it was a lot more complicated than it initially looked. Layers and layers of interlocking mana plates formed each piece of the armor, and while he could maybe try layering his mana barrier, it would be a long time before he could do anything close to this without a Skill helping him.

  “All my Skills are focused around the armor and sword and supporting them,” explained Talia. “Storing the armor and sword so I don’t have to re-conjure them, repairing them, empowering attacks with the sword, and things like that. They’re part of a set, but I’m missing one piece, so they’re all still separate and taking up all my Skill slots. Once I get the last piece, I think it will be like Elmira’s, taking up one active and one passive slot, but for now, it’s a full six slots, and the other slots are taken up by some more basic Skills I haven’t been able to swap or upgrade yet.”

  “Ah, yeah,” said Elmira. “I’ve got a couple of those sitting around, too. The armor is really cool, though. I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything with it other than spar, but it’s cool.”

  “Yeah, it’s really interesting, but it’s a bit beyond me,” said Aaron.

  “Sorry,” said Talia, looking a little sad.

  “It’s totally fine,” said Aaron quickly. “I mean, it’s not useful for me right now, but it’s opened my eyes to the ways mana can be used. I kinda just use brute force and brute efficiency most of the time, so I’ve never really looked too closely at intricate stuff like this. I’ve definitely learned something.”

  Aaron gave her a thumbs up, but it didn’t seem to lift her spirits for some reason.

  “It’s fine,” said Elmira. “It’s just how these things work sometimes. It’s why Pentival usually had us do it with five or more. When it’s a three-way, there’s a good chance someone will be stuck feeling left out, or like they don’t have much to contribute. Maybe we can invite Mo’han next time. Or I could invite someone else from my group, if you two are alright with that.”

  Talia was looking away again, and Aaron was struggling to keep a straight face.

  “Yeah, sounds good,” said Aaron. “Though I dunno about training with Mo’han, with the duel and all.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot,” said Elmira.

  “It’s fine. I mean, we’re still friends and all. I just feel like spilling all our secrets to each other before the duel is… I dunno, wrong? At least, I wanna fight him without knowing everything he can do, and I don’t want him knowing everything I can do, y’know?”

  “Yeah, I get it,” said Elmira. “Makes sense. What about that cyclops? Voidrin, right?”

  “Maybe,” said Aaron. “He’s cool.”

  “Yeah…” said Elmira. “Well, we can think about it later. You wanted to test out more of that weird punch thing, right? I can set up my rune now.”

  “Right,” said Aaron. “Let’s do it.”

  Aaron worked on his spiral spirit punch a bit more, making decent progress on it. He doubted it was enough to defeat Oozagh yet, much less Mo’han, but he had a solid foundation. What he needed most of all now, though, was some living targets to test it on. He couldn’t really subject the girls to that, so when he finished with his spiral spirit punch, he declined their offers for spars, instead heading to the trials.

  Living targets were what he needed most, so there was really only one good option: the Trial of Dominance. While not always multiple enemies, it often was, and he didn’t want to be stuck in line repeatedly to try over and over against the Trial of the Challenger yet. He would rather face a group of something where he could potentially take his time, testing and developing his technique without needing a full reset.

  The line to get to the dial went even quicker than it had the last time. While there were plenty of new faces around, there were also some old faces hanging out in the hallway, calling out reminders to figure out your choice before getting in line, and someone had even set up a sign that listed each trial type with a brief description.

  I’m going to have to thank that person later, said Aaron as he reached the dial and slammed his hand down on Dominance.

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