Lesson II.

Gaius continued his lecture.

“Now there is just one thing left before we begin the practical part of the lesson. I want to clear a misunderstanding present in this association. Touki isn't JUST upgraded ki, it has four traits ki doesn't. First, it improves the body, it's why I can lift 150 kg with one arm, until it brings it to levels where you would have gotten Touki naturally. So congratulations, Kotone, Terumi, you are going to be able to wrestle with dragons without enhancements. After a while, even with training it may take years.

Second. You will develop special techniques. The three with special non-kitsune ancestry will gain your non-human races ancestors abilities. Kitsunes aren't regarded for their Touki so I'm not sure about you, Kotone. We'll have to see. You and I will develop abilities that suit us, Kishi.

Third. Your children will inherit part of your upgraded bodies' strength, and maybe even some of your natural Touki abilities, if they have enough to get Touki naturally.

And finally it can be transformed into other forms of energy. But you can't form complex phenomena, only simple ones. So, no magic replication for you. It's done like this.”

He immediately burst in fire, and kept speaking while burning.

“Since the other traits of Touki are either trained as ki, or not trained at all, this will be what I'm teaching you. There are three techniques that I'll be teaching you soon. To control the ki of your enemies, though unless your Touki control is massively superior to your opponents it won't work on Touki users, unless they let you. Touki-waveform ki-stripping, needs a better name but this one describes it well. It's what I used in my spar against you Akechi. And the very impressive Touki-elemental energy transformation. So let's begin with the third one.”

Prior to beginning to teach his techniques to the others he made them show their prowess with Touki control. They all showed enough skill to learn to transform their energy, except Terumi, who had first learned of ki when he acquired Touki. Which was recently since he was unaware of the Hidden World until then. As such he made him do ki control training exercises of his own making.

“The first thing you need to learn is input control. You will also train ki emission at the same time with this exercise. You need to pass the Touki through two apples, and only burst the second. For that you will need to concentrate your ki in fibres that will pass through the first apple, before unleashing the energy in the second. Practice for a while before I evaluate and correct your technique.”

After assigning Terumi his workload, he turned to the two adults, still burning, and Kishi.

“Kishi, you have the honour to choose the first kind of energy you will learn. I give you three options, the easiest ones, fire, electricity, healing energy.”

Kisha, thought for a short moment, before making his decision.

“Healing.”

“May I ask why?”

“It seems the most useful right now, and the safest. I would not like to burn myself without knowing how to heal.”

“Good, good. That’s what I chose myself. When my teacher offered to use magic on me so I would know the feel of the energy, my first time transforming energy caused me to burn my hair, I chose the same for the same reasons. However I didn't think at the time I could harm myself with my own energy. That was stupid of me.

But it happens, fire burns you, electricity burns and paralyses you, water causes inflammation. And it's worse when it happens within your body. Until you master the transformation never train without medical support nearby. I once stopped my own heart.”

Akechi looked around, confused.

“Water isn't energy.”

Jian countered. “Actually, it is. E= m*c^2, remember. Matter is just a state of energy.”

“Yes, but it would require such massive amounts of energy that it would be impractical.” Was Akechi’s rebuttal.

Gaius cleared his threat. Having caught their attention he began to speak. He still burned.

“It shows you aren't well versed in magic. Have you never thought how a mage could create water at high speeds or great mass, with the same ease as a flame? The answer is a unstable half-spiritual half-material construct, that behaves just as matter would, but has mystic properties. And is far less energy intensive than actually creating matter. However such a construct is only temporary and dissipates back into magical energy soon after.

To explain what water does it serves as a thermal and electrical isolator, it's distilled water after all. It also serves to cushion blows or you can send it at high speeds for ranged attacks. Water is not soft after all.”

After finishing the discussion he made them concentrate inwards, and they chose to meditate for it.

“What I'm going to do is better than hitting you with energy like my master did. I'm going to use a mixture of Touki and Senjutsu to take control of your Touki and transform it. I want you to concentrate on the feeling and replicate it.”

He then put his hands on their backs one by one and did as he said he’d do. He was still burning.

Finally he turned to Kotone and began instructing her.

“Since this was supposed to be your first Senjutsu class, we will train that. It is also imperative to teach you to ignore and resist spiritual presences and remnants. Since it has been distracting you knowing the feelings of people around you, and corruption needs to be dealt with.

Kotone was startled. “How did you know that?!”

“I was told you had become distracted. You had gained spiritual awareness. There were two options, the circumstances of how you gained it and the spiritual presences distracting you. I discarded the first when I saw that it caused you sadness, which your teachers would have noticed. Simple.”

“Ah, I see. Alright.”

Gaius smiled at her.

“Let's begin. Now in order to shut down your spiritual awareness you must link it to a thought that will serve as a switch. For me it's focus. Try something familiar to you. It needs not be verbal.”

After several tries Kotone managed to succeed in shutting her awareness down.

“Good job.” Encouraged Gaius, proud of her ease, though he didn't know if this was natural for a learned practitioner. “May I ask what is you trigger?”

“I imagine a gong ringing.” Answered Kotone, brimming with happiness at having removed the nuisance from her head.

Gaius closed his eyes before sighing.

“I will not enjoy this.” He straightened himself and steeled his heart. “Time to teach you how to purge corruption. There is not much to explain, it will have to be something you are comfortable with. I exhale it along my breath. For this exercise I will manipulate my presence to emulate different emotions, so you will have practice recognising and purging them. After you have gained some experience I will keep my presence, but I will go check on the others and return to see how you handle it. Remember, first identify the corruption, then sever it from you, and finally expel it.”

Kotone was excited. She was finally going to learn Senjutsu! Only three, well with Gaius four now, in the city could do it, and all of them were faction leaders! Except Gaius.

She wondered how tough could it really be to purge the corruption. Teacher Gaius should be exaggerating love but he was someone she loved, and he surely wouldn't lie to her. He was so dreamy, with broad shoulders, wait love , a manly rugged face, and he was very kind, even if he was a bit rough. But that just made him cuter.

“Teacher Gaius. It truly is hot today.” She said, approaching him and flapping her shirt. “Should we not-”

“Stop.” Ordered Gaius, before approaching her and putting his hand on her head and then taking it away.

Why had he stopped? She thought. She was perfectly-. Oh kami, what the fuck had she been thinking. Kotone had never been so embarrassed before. But still, so that was what being in love felt like, wondered a part of her.

“Begin.”

It was sooo embarrassing. Like depression nothing is worth it, why should we even bother. Everything we achieve will end up in dust. Life makes no sense, why should we-! She fell to the ground.

“Stop!”

“What the fuck was that!” Exclaimed Kotone, scared for her life.

“Depression. Begin.”

That was how being depressed was? It really sucked, she had never- excitement, she wanted to jump and shout. She was learning the legendary art! She was going to be the strongest woman ever, and Mother would love her, and Daddy would congratulate her like always and pet her and buy her gifts and-

“Stop.”

FUUUUUUUUUUUCK IT ALLLLLLL. WHY IS IT SO FREAKING HARD!

“Begin.”

Was she actually bad at- hatred . Or maybe it was this douche making things harder than they should be for his sick amusement!

“Hey, asshole-!” Kotone grabbed Gaius by the collar.

“Stop.”

What had she done. He didn't seem mad but-

“Begin.”

No! She wasn't- hope . She was ready, she could take the world! She could even fly. Indeed she would fly upwards right now!

“Stop.”

So her childhood dream of flying hadn't disappeared, good to know.

“Begin.”

Please no, make it stop- anger.

“Stop right now! I'm going to kill you for this!” She proceeded to punch him in the face. He wasn't perturbed, keeping his stony face.

“Stop.”

What was she doing!?

Please make it stop. Please?

“Alright. We'll take a short break. But force of will is needed for this so next time we will keep going.”

Thankyouthankyouthankyou!

An hour later Gaius smiled. It had been tough but Kotone was improving. She could now recognise when he was influencing her and shut down her Senjutsu to avoid it.

“It's time for the next step. I will go to the others like planned. Try to avoid shutting down, remember sever and expel, sever and expel."

He went to Jian first. He had already managed to master healing, so he taught him fire. Akane was right next, but something odd had happened.

“Let me get it straight. You did what I did.”

“Yep.”

“But instead of healing energies you made fire appear. In your lungs. And weren't harmed.”

“Yep.” She answered with a shit eating grin.

“Fucking dragons. So let me ignore the incredible unfairness of your heritage. You have failed.” He scolded, feeling pleased for some odd reason. Oh, he recognised why, fuck dragons and their unfair unfairness.

“What?!”

“You wanted healing. You failed to get it. Thus you failed. Let me show again how it's really done.”

After finishing with Akechi Gaius went to Kishi, feeling smug at having put down a dragon. There wasn't anything of interest with him, he was improving, but not yet there. He corrected a few mistakes and moved on.

Terumi on the other hand had more problems.

“Terumi, right now you are sending spikes through the apple, of course it will be damaged. They should be more like flows of air. Less aggressive, more wind like.”

He finally finished his round and returned to Kotone. He was pleased to see that she had managed to learn severing. But he then frowned.

“Kotone stop!” He ran to her and made her expel the corruption.

“Wha- What did I do wrong.” Kotone was trembling and sweating.

“You weren't expelling but suppressing. You were making a ball of concentrated corruption. It was nearly a ball of curses! It wouldn't surprise me if it birthed an Evil Spirit that could take over you if you didn't control it tightly! You could have been permanently corrupted! Or killed!”

At these words Kotone paled, and then turned green. She proceeded to puke, collapsed and began to cry in shock.

Gaius, for the first time in a while, felt like he knew what to say. He knelt at her side and began to rub her back.

“Don't worry. This is why I'm training you. If you have any doubts about your state you come to me, and I'll deal with it. Once I'm through with you? You won't have to worry about this. As long as you work hard there won't be a problem.”

He kept whispering reassuring words. She began to calm down, and said with a trembling voice.

“So, a ball of curses, huh?” The last word was an octave higher than the rest.

“Yes. You could throw that at someone and it'd be a pretty effective attack.” Joked Gaius, still speaking in a soft tone. “Wait. You could throw that at someone and it'd be a pretty effective attack!”

“What's wrong?” Asked Kotone, surprised at the change in tone.

“I just got an idea for a Senjutsu technique! I have to speak to the Head!” He began to move away, before turning back with a sheepish expression. “After class ends, that is.”

Another hour passed. Class ended and Gaius began to review and advice his students.

"First, Jian. I bow before your experience, you learned healing, fire, electricity and began to show results with Touki-waveform ki-stripping. I allow you to teach the first three, but you can't practice the latter without supervision of some kind.”

“I see I'm still as awesome as ever.”

“Akane. You live and breathe fire, literally in the latter case. Congratulations for getting the famed dragonbreath. But you need to practice a lot more since you still didn't get healing.”

“Alright, alright.”

“I see you are as bad with skilful things as always, my young padawan.”

“Shut up, fossil of an ancient era.”

“Kishi. Good progress, don't be discouraged by your lack of progress respect the other two. They have more experience and practice than you.”

“Understood Master.”

“Terumi!”

“Y-yes!”

“Good job for a beginner. You managed to do it in the end, normally it takes an average student about a week. And me five hours instead of two, though I lacked a teacher. But you are late to the scene! You need remedial lessons! Seek the ki control teacher. He can help you better than I.”

“Yes Master!” Terumi was overjoyed. He was good at something!

“And finally, my disciple! Good job! You have learned severing and expelling of weak corruption well. Your homework is to reduce the activation time of Senjutsu to less than a second instead of you current five.”

“Yes, Master!”

Gaius sent them off, and cleaned up the material. Finally finished with his obligations he set off with a purpose.

“Time to visit the Head.”