Let’s say you knew a child.

She’s adorable, and cute, and you want to take her home.

However, as she’s grown up, you realize she’s become a little trouble maker, and it’s probably your fault somehow.

She bullies the other kids her age, and is surprisingly aggressive.

She’s taken on the habit of playing pranks, and likes to be a tease.

Worst of all is her tendency to punish the biggest kid, simply for being bigger than her.

This is Linna; the adorable oldest daughter of Ellen the seamstress.

At five years old, she has two younger twin siblings, a brother and sister, born just two years ago. Even though I’ve played with the twins plenty, I’ve played with Linna for much longer.

Her trying to imitate Yenna’s and my personality is fine.

It’s a bother to the other parents, but I don’t really mind it. She’s cute.

So Ellen has asked me if I could take care of her occasionally. I question her leaving Linna was such a bad influence, but it doesn’t seem she sees it like that.

That said, I’m glad that our relationship is casual enough that she doesn’t feel bad about having me babysit, just because I’m some kind of Divine Spirit or something.

Senilea is a country that especially looks highly on Fox Spirits, due to some long history with them. Saying that a Fox Spirit is no different from nobility or even royalty wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Me? I’m not royalty material.

I mean, I wouldn’t mind being pampered and all, but the attention and expectations are overbearing.

I’m content with just being a local guardian, I guess.

“Toya!” Linna shouted, as she jumped at me.

“Hey, little Lin, what’s up?” I asked her casually, as I pat her head.

“I’m not little!” She asserted with a pout as I rolled my eyes.

“There’s nothing wrong with being little, you know?” I said with my eyebrows raise. I wanted to say something along the lines of, I even like smaller girls, too, but I held my tongue.

I didn’t want her to go around beating on the girls that were smaller than her too.

So I merely picked her up, and pulled her onto my shoulders.

“If you weren’t little, I wouldn’t be able to hold you like this,” I told her, as she laughed. Of course, it took all my strength to maintain her on my shoulders.

It’s really sad, considering I use to do this all the time with my little brothers and cousins without a sweat, and now I can barely stand.

—Or so I thought.

A sharp screech resounded in my ears as I ended up falling down face-first into the dirt, and Linna’s butt roughly popped my back. She somehow managed to not hit her head, and instead was perfectly fine, sitting on my back.

Linna’s cry quickly turned into a laugh as she got off of my back, and urged me to get up.

“Again! Again!” She said with a smile.

As I pulled myself up, I began patting down the dirt off me, as I smiled down at Lin.

“How about later,” I said with a sigh. “For now, how about I take you to see something fun?”

Ellen likes for me to take care of this brat, so I thought taking her along my day was fine.

“Alright!” She cheered as she excitedly jumped in the air.

So I took her to watch the spar between Sentra and Yenna.

Lin sat on my lap, as the two of us looked down from the top of a large tree. My bare feet swung freely over the edge of the thick branch, while Lin excitedly watched on.

Sentra and Yenna had already began their sparring match before I arrived, and it was clear that Sentra had the overwhelming advantage.

Plants flew about, lashing at Yenna no matter how she tried to avoid, while white missiles of light attacked at her openings.

Yenna had developed quite a lot of strength in the last three years. She still can’t beat Uncle Jenn in a head-on fight, so I figured having her fight an opponent higher than even him, could be a good idea.

For several months after Sentra’s awakening, I had her train her mind back up, and retrain her powers.

Due to my assault on her mind, she had trouble using her powers, and needed to be rehabilitated. Seeing as she already “knew” how to fight and use her powers, it didn’t take too long for her to reach the level she was at before our fight.

It was just a matter of getting her back on her feet.

Yenna on the other hand never had any semblance of combat experience, so she has to be taught from scratch.

From Jenn she learns technique and skill, and with Sentra she’s learning application.

That was my plan.

However, perhaps Sentra is too high a bar?

Humans don’t have a reasonable way to fight against such powerful long-distance attacks.

That said, Yenna is fast. Inhumanely so.

In these three years she’s trained with Jenn Karmiish, she has learned to enhance her own body’s power with her own force of will—the magical ability which humans have come to call soul force, or ki.

She has little to no talent when it comes to expanding this force unto weapons, however she still manages to wield it so freely.

Thus, she’s been taught exclusively how to reinforce her durability, and amplify her strength by many times over.

With every explosive kick, she sends her body flying like a rocket.

Sentra’s Light Bolts barely have an effect on her solid defense, and capturing her is near impossible. Even if she catches her, Yenna easily breaks her bindings.

However, Yenna can’t advance.

As such, she can’t attack Sentra, who has a vast supply of magical power, against Yenna’s dwindling force.

With every tail, the capacity of magical power stored within a Kitsune’s body increases.

I doubt Yenna has even close to half of my own magic power, let alone Sentra’s.

So she has to fight more strategically, instead of trying to brute-force everything.

That’s what I want to teach her, but I’m not really a great teacher.

Perhaps if I got Uncle Jenn to observe these fights? He might carry some interesting insight.

I’ll consider it.

Lin excitedly watched, from my lap, as she tried to keep up with Yenna’s insane speed.

I’m worried about this brat trying to take up after her, but if I keep my eye on her, it should be fine.

Besides, Ellen is already teaching her tailoring and stuff, or whatever it is she teaches her. I hope she loses that bullying habit.

As I’m thinking that, Yenna ends up picking up a stone while dodging one of Sentra’s tree branches. As she lands on her feet, Yenna pulls back her hand, and an explosive shock wave passes through me as she launches the rock at Sentra.

However, a wall of wood is quickly erected before her, and the attack ends with an explosive rumble.

Wood is torn apart, splinters flying everywhere—but both sides seem mostly unharmed.

Three years ago, I don’t think Sentra would have been able to block that.

Her control over hard wood was always slow and clumsy, so I made her practice control over it. I taught her about cellular biology, and explained the general structure of plants, particularly wood.

I can’t know how it feels to use her powers, but it seems my knowledge has at least helped her refine the use of her abilities, and control thick trees with very fluid motions.

However, it looks like that attack took a lot out of Yenna.

If the rock itself was merely propelled to super-sonic speeds, that would be one thing.

However, Yenna can’t apply her Ki to other objects, and instead relies on enhancing her own body.

Thus, she forcefully swung her arm at super high speeds, which would carry a higher cost than just launching a small rock through directly applying the force to it.

Well, I guess the end result is close to the same.

But this sort of sparring is quite dangerous, isn’t it?

I suppose it’s fine, if it’s only Yenna being a bit brash, but it would be bad if Sentra got severely injured by that sort of attack.

Well, I decided I’d seen enough, so I let out a loud clap, catching both combatant’s attention.

The two hadn’t noticed mine and Linna’s arrival till just now, but it seems neither of them reacted too surprised. I’ve been popping in and out of their practice like this, for a while now, so they should have gotten accustomed to this.

“Ok, I think you two have done enough,” I say, as I grab hold of a loose branch, and drop from the high tree, gently bringing Lin down with me.

As I descended, I let my feet land on the sandals I left below, and set down Lin on the ground.

“I’m thinking next time, I could get Jenn Karmiish, the chief of Ohen Village, to spar you,” I said looking over at Sentra. “I figured it could give Yenna a reference to learn from,” I added.

“Understood,” Sentra acknowledged my words with a short bow.

“As for you. Try not to use such a dangerous move during a spar,” I said, looking over at Yenna, who avoided eye contact, hoping that it would somehow mean I wasn’t talking to her, if she didn’t see me looking right at her.

“Or better yet, don’t use it at all.”

“B-but I can’t fight her otherwise,” she complained.

“Then learn to fight her,” I scolded. “If you waste all your energy on hopeless attacks, what will you do when you’ve exhausted yourself?”

Even though I said that, I wondered if it was even possible for humans to overcome the distance between them and Greater Spirits.

Soul Force is a trait shared by most races. However, only humans and fae without combat-related magic really choose to refine their usage of this weapon, because it is the only one they have. Spirits rarely choose to practice its usage, opting for the more powerful magic they are born with.

Even Fox Spirits like myself have the ability called Soul Force, that I’ve termed “ki”. However, with the overwhelming power we gain from our tails, there’s little reason for us to practice it.

I personally am unable to conjure up very much force.

I’ve been told that it’s amazing I can conjure up even a bit of Ki without prior training, but it’s disappointing how little of it I can make.

At best, I think I can manage to irritate someone’s skin, if they’re close enough.

All that being said, I want Yenna to be prepared, and to understand the difference between what a normal human can do, and what a Spirit is capable of.

This overwhelming power is exactly why Fox Spirits are regarded as divinities in Senilea, and many other Kingdoms.

But I want to test the limits of humans in this world, by pushing Yenna to fight what is otherwise deemed an impossible fight.

Still, it’s quite amazing how durable she is. She received plenty of attacks that could break bones and shatter most well trained men, but she hardly has a scratch.

So this is the Reinforcement technique Uncle Jenn taught her, huh?

However, it seems I’ve depressed Yenna.

With a sigh, I pat her head, and smile at her.

“Come on, let’s go rest,” I said.

I can’t be too hard on my cute little sister. I’ll let her play with my tail a bit.

Just one though.

Author Notes:

And... I think I'm gonna be making quite a few calm chapters for a while, even though I've hinted at something big coming later on. On top of that, I have no clue if I'll even be writing consistently with how I am. I ended up pushing this chapter to today, instead of Sunday, because I wanted to push myself to write more. Well, I guess that's not working out.

Well, I never really had a consistent schedule, and it was amazing I could motivate myself to write as much as I already did. I think it might be a good idea to get an "editor" who'd get on my ass about writing, while also bouncing ideas off of them. Well, for not, I'll just start writing Chapter 28, and see when I post it.

Anyways, as always, Feedback and Suggestions are appreciated and encouraged.

Please leave a review, to either inflate my ego or pop it. I mean, you just have to click a rating, and click submit, so why not?