Private Lesson
Other Awakened usually had their physical abilities awaken first, and only later did they gradually learn how to handle their energy.
But mages and healers were different. Before their bodies ever fully awakened, they first learned how to handle the energy of their primary attribute.
It was hard to say one side was simply better than the other, but the ability to shape energy into all manner of miracles was bound to stand out far more than merely getting faster and tougher. Besides, there were far fewer of them. That was why mages and healers were treated so well from the very beginning.
Lamia, in particular, had a gift for handling fire-aspected energy. The problem was that her power was still weak enough that it amounted to little more than a lighter flame on the tip of a finger.
"Was it this weak during the evaluation?"
"I think the duration got a little longer."
"I see."
Honestly, I had a hard time understanding the problems they were dealing with. All I had to do was match the motions and shout the technique name as the activation phrase, and I could unleash a finisher like Hōenbu with ease.
That still didn’t mean I could just flash my skills around and start tossing out lines like, See? Easy, right?
So what was I supposed to do?
Come to think of it, the reason I can use energy so easily is because I’ve already turned the whole process of activating a finisher into a pattern.
That was actually part of the basic training curriculum for Awakened. If you built a clear image in your mind and locked the process of manifesting it into a pattern like an incantation or a set of motions, you could reproduce the same level of energy much more reliably whenever you needed it. In a way, the process I used to activate my finisher wasn’t all that different; the wording was just a little different.
"As you know, the most important part of using energy is to conjure a definite image. You understand that part, right?"
"Yes."
"From what I can tell, the easiest and fastest image for you to grasp was probably the flame from a lighter. So let’s build a new image first. Is there a shape of flame you’d like to make, Lamia?"
"Um, well..."
Lamia thought for a moment, then answered in a tiny voice.
"Could it be a butterfly?"
Coincidentally, the image she chose was a butterfly. Fortunately for her, making butterfly shapes and images happened to be one of my specialties, too.
"A butterfly. Good. Then let’s take a look at what a butterfly made of fire actually looks like."
I summoned a lesser fire spirit, but this time I shaped it into a butterfly before calling it forth.
When I’d first learned the basics of spirit-summoning, I could never have dreamed of changing a spirit’s form like this. But after diligently grinding levels every day in dreams with her and Im Hana as my targets, I’d finally reached level 5 recently, which had made tricks like this possible.
Max level was 10, so it might have seemed like I’d already covered half the ground, but in reality I would have to work dozens of times harder than I had so far just to get anywhere near the level 9 mark that my original character had reached. Lamia hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said that even level 9 was the territory of heroes.
Anyway, when I summoned and showed her a blazing butterfly-shaped spirit, Lamia’s eyes went wide.
"W-wow... were you a mage too, Instructor?"
"Nope."
"You weren’t?"
"No. I’m a tank."
"A tank...? Then how..."
"Beats me. Why do you think that is?"
Smiling, I called the spirit over and set it on the tip of my finger.
"Doesn’t it burn?"
"If it were an ordinary flame, yes. But this is my energy taking shape, so as long as I’m not trying to harm myself, things like this are possible."
"Waaah..."
"Would you like to touch it?"
"Is that all right?"
"Why wouldn’t it be? Actually touching it and feeling it should help fix the image more firmly in your mind."
When I waved my hand, the butterfly-shaped fire spirit fluttered over and danced in front of Lamia’s eyes.
She stared at it with a dazed expression for a moment, then slowly reached out toward it.
But she still seemed afraid of the blaze, so she couldn’t quite bring herself to touch it.
I watched her for a moment, then stepped closer, took her hand, and made her touch the butterfly by force.
"Ah!"
"Nothing to be scared of. Surely you’re not thinking I’d ever let you get hurt, are you?"
"N-no, it’s not that..."
When I looked her straight in the eye and said that, Lamia’s face turned a little red and she averted her gaze. She might have been an idol, but at this distance my TS’d appearance wasn’t exactly easy to look in the face either.
"Come on. Feel it more clearly. Let the image sink in."
"Yes."
Once I let go of her hand, Lamia gave a small cough and began studying the butterfly perched on her finger with real concentration.
Whether this would actually work or not didn’t really matter. If it worked, great; if not, no harm done. What mattered was that I needed a natural way to make physical contact, and I’d carried it out beautifully.
After all, no matter how two women were both girls, you couldn’t just start touching each other out of nowhere the very first time you met.
While everyone else was waving practice weapons around or pounding on sandbags, two outrageously curvy women were sitting there with a blazing butterfly resting on their hands and goofing around with it, so of course I could feel eyes on us from all over.
We kept playing with the butterfly for a while, and once enough time had passed, I dismissed the spirit.
"Ah!"
When the butterfly that had been fluttering over her fingertip suddenly vanished, Lamia flinched in surprise.
"All right. Now, based on the image you just had, try making the flame yourself. Don’t worry about movement for now; just focus on the shape."
"Yes."
She was clearly a little disappointed, but Lamia quickly took a deep breath, held out her finger, and concentrated.
I simply watched her in silence. I hadn’t expected it to work on the first try anyway. I wasn’t even a proper instructor, just an intern who’d been brought down here to fill out the numbers. What was I supposed to expect?
Huh?
Wait, what?
And yet, it worked.
To my surprise, after a brief struggle, Lamia actually succeeded in making a butterfly-shaped flame above her finger.
What the hell?
Why was it working?
Was this really supposed to be this easy?
Besides, I’d summoned a spirit, and Lamia wasn’t even a spirit-user — she was a mage. And yet...
"I did it!"
"Looks like it. You really did."
"Huh?"
"No, ahem. Good job. You’ve got real talent."
"Thank you! It’s all thanks to your teaching, Instructor!"
"Don’t mention it."
I was a little flustered, but I did my best to keep a straight face and moved on to the next step.
"Now that you’ve succeeded in forming the shape, let’s improve the finish through movement. If this really gets fixed in your mind, the speed at which you can manifest energy will improve dramatically."
"Yes, Instructor!"
It sounded like I was saying something grand, but really I was just telling her to go beyond mimicking a butterfly shape and make it flutter through the air like an actual butterfly.
Once I called the spirit back out as a teaching aid, Lamia stared with her eyes wide open, carefully observing every movement as she struggled to imitate it with the butterfly-shaped flame resting above her palm.
And then, just as the afternoon practice session was nearly over...
"I did it! Instructor! I did it!"
"Oh. Yeah, you did. You really did."
Why was this working? Was it because she was an Elementalist rather than a standard mage? Did Elementalist actually mean spirit-user instead of elemental magician? No matter how I looked at it, that didn’t seem like a real spirit...
My understanding of the whole concept was turning into a mess, but whatever. If it was good, it was good. That was that.
Once practice was over, even the bald instructor praised me.
"Now that I see it, you’re quite skilled at teaching, too. People who learn quickly usually aren’t that good at teaching others."
"Seems that way, huh... haha..."
Honestly, I didn’t really know why either. All I could do was smile and go along with it.
"If you can reproduce shape and movement this clearly, raising the destructive power shouldn’t be all that difficult. I suspect Seha’s student will end up being the biggest prospect in this batch."
"Oh, come on. Student is too much. I just got lucky."
"Nonsense. Since this has turned out so well, please handle her personally from here on, Seha. I’m already looking forward to seeing how far she’ll have come by the time the training is over. Heh heh heh."
"Hahaha..."
It felt like the weight of those exaggerated expectations might crush my shoulders, but at any rate, this was a happy ending for everyone.
After finishing the day’s work and training in a state of odd mental exhaustion, I went home, washed up, and collapsed into bed.
And, as always, I dreamed.
Today, she was wearing a particularly shocking outfit.
A bunny girl costume — but not an ordinary bunny girl costume. A so-called reverse bunny girl. She’d even gone so far as to carefully add a womb tattoo across her stomach.
Wow.
She’d even let the twintails down and taken off her glasses, and with her face flushed and breathing out hot, restless breaths, it looked like she’d been pretty excited while getting ready.
"That’s incredible."
"I made a special effort today."
Then she drifted up to the side of the table, leaned against it lightly, and rested a hand on her hip.
"My heart’s pounding. This kind of indecent outfit is a first for me."
"Haha."
We’d already spent so many heated nights together, and yet just changing her outfit left her this shy, which only made my lower stomach tighten with a jolt of heat.
I stepped closer, wrapped my arms around her waist, and kissed the corner of her eye. Her already-hot breath grew even hotter.
As I kissed her face, which was flushed and glistening faintly with sweat, I peeled off the stickers covering her breasts and lower abdomen one by one.
"Hng."
As the adhesive finally gave way from skin that was already burning hot, she let out a tiny breathy sound against my lips.
I removed the two stickers covering her nipples, then the sticker covering her sex as well, and stepped back a pace to admire her again.
"I-I’m embarrassed."
She said that, then turned and fled into the room as if running away, lay down on the bed, and spread out her arms and legs.
"Come here."
Her tone had the strange feel of some traveler shouting out in front of a nobleman’s house, so I hurried over and answered in a deferential voice.
"Yes, ma'am. Right away."
Then I brought the key to the opening between her open legs and tapped at it as if knocking on a door.
"Hng."
And with that soft little sound of hers in my ears, I pushed the key in.
As the key slipped into the tight opening, she pressed her lips together and twitched helplessly for a moment before deciding she couldn’t take it anymore. She pulled me into her arms, flipped her body over, and then...
With all her strength, she drove her hips down.
"Hrk!"
If this had been reality, I would have been worried something might snap from the way she kept raising her hips high and slamming them down with such force.
"Haaah! Haaahng! Hng! Hahng! Hah! Uwaaah! Ahn!"
But there was nothing to worry about. This was a dream.
Right. It was a dream. It would be fine. Probably.