Chapter 53 The Next Stage

Meira pulled out her tablet and poked the screen for a few seconds, causing all the weighted balls to turn a pale gray from their usual dark gray. Curious, Evernya picked one up and found it feather-light.

“What did you do?” Evernya asked, tossing the weightless ball into the air with a flick of her wrist.

“I disconnected the balls from my tablet, allowing you to connect to them to your suit computer. As you have noticed, their true weight is light. They enchanted these balls to have a variable weight up to fifty kilograms. Now I want you to link them to your suit computer so you can control their weight. They should be in link mode so they will be visible on the linkable device menu on your computer.” Explained Meira watching with amusement as Evernya flicked the ball into the air, allowing it to bounce off her range limit, then back into her hand.

Evernya dropped the ball to the ground before focusing on navigating through her suit’s computer. A few seconds later, she found ten available devices. After selecting them, all a setup menu popped up. The setup menu had several settings to configure many aspects of the balls, including weight, color, and texture.

Meira answered her kitten’s unasked question. “For now, just choose default. You can go back and customize them anytime. I would set five balls at five kilograms while keeping the rest blank for now.”

Evernya followed her instructions, causing all the balls to return to their dark gray color with five displaying five kilograms, while the other five remain blank.

“OK, good, we will try various things with these balls at different weights, but for now, try to orbit those five,” Meira instructed from her spot on a patio chair.

Evernya levitated them one by one into orbit like she had done many times. She felt an immediate difference as she strained her mind to maintain the orbit. Her new orbit greedily sucked down her mana as she gritted her teeth, refusing to allow for any imperfections in her orbit.

“Wow, what a difference. Do you want me to work my way to ten like before?” asked Evernya with audible strain in her voice.

“Eventually, yes, I didn’t expect you to make this much progress so quickly. Instead of rushing to orbit ten five-kilogram balls, I want you to focus on performing more complex maneuvers to strain yourself. Orbiting is a good way to keep them on standby, minimizing stress. However, it isn’t good for active training. It is much harder to keep them still than orbiting. Plus, what you can do with them has limitations. For example, an orbit makes launching a single ball difficult without disrupting the orbit.” Meira responded while watching how her kitten’s mana system reacted with her tablet.

Curious, Evernya slowed her orbit to a stop, trying to keep them still. At first, it was easy, but the strain quickly multiplied as her mind and magic fought against gravity and the wind. Next, she shot one forward a few meters while trying to keep the others still. Her mind stretched like a rubber band, causing her headache to return with force. Panic set in when she realized she shot off the ball too fast for her to stop. Just before the ball made impact with her range limit, she cut the connection, saving her from nasty backlash. The ball slammed into the barrier at her range limit before sliding harmlessly to the ground.

“I would suggest starting with one ball at first fast maneuvers. You could have done it with two kilograms, but you need to work more with five kilograms,” suggested Meira, having expected this result.

Evernya returned her attention to the sitting elf while hovering the other four balls as still as possible. “Yeah, I need to practice more with this weight. Five kilogram balls don’t feel much heavier, but they build up much more momentum.”

Meira nodded in agreement. “Yup, it’s not the weight alone. I bet you could easily lift a ball at fifty kilograms, but I doubt you could maneuver it much.”

Evernya gently set her remaining balls on the ground before cutting her connection. After freeing herself from the mental strain, she trotted to the patio and plopped down on a chair opposite Meira at the table.

“It’s like you read my mind. I planned for you to take a break before we move on to the next exercise.” Meira teased.

Evernya’s upbeat demeanor darkened. “I don’t know how to use my telepathy yet,” Evernya grumbled.

Meira mirrored her kitten’s frustration as she said. “I wish I could help you, but the Sespina government heavily controls all information on telepathy, to prevent unlimited telepaths from learning too much. You will have to wait until college for telepathy. Fortunately, DIOM has one teacher certified to teach the basics to registered telepaths. However, the more complex instruction requires a tier 2 mages council to sign off.”

“Humans always make things extra difficult. I understand the regulations for some magic. It just sucks I am affected by it. Now, the regulations on shifters are ridiculous. Just because of a few crazy and power-hungry shifters, the rest of us have to suffer.” Evernya grumbled.

“Humans and shifters have always been at each other throats even before humans expanded six hundred years ago,” Meira commented.

“Well, I get it from both sides. So far, shifters have not treated me nicely either, so I won’t go out lobbying for less shifter regulation. If only it didn’t affect me too.” Evernya stated, making her neutral stance known.

Meira blew a warm breeze past her kitten as she said, “Like humans, not all shifters are bad. You are a magnet for the rotten apples of each race, as shifters like Alpha Wittke aren’t the norm, but the outlier. The catkin within his clan cannot disobey his orders, so they treated you poorly.”

At the mention of Alpha Wittke, Evernya’s temper flared “No matter what, I refuse to be his mate!” Evernya proclaimed with a hint of mana aura leaking out.

Unaffected by her kitten’s outburst, Meira reassured her. “Don’t worry. He can’t do much to you now, physically or legally.”

“Anyway, drink this before we move on.” Meira materialized, a green two smoothie liter, sliding it across the table.

After her kitten finished her smoothie, Meira explained the next training session. “Now that you have a decent grasp on controlling objects, will use your telekinesis as a weapon and shield.”

Evernya followed Meira out into the yard, brimming with excitement. However, upon stopping in the middle of the yard in silence for several seconds, her impatience grew.

Without saying a word, Meira began wandering around the yard, setting up targets from her storage ring.

Finally, after fifteen minutes, Meira returned to her impatient kitten. “This time, I want you to work on force blades. As I explained before, explosions are easy and very inefficient, so I want you to focus on precise cuts. Cutting someone or something in half is just as devastating as blowing them up but costs a fraction of the mana.” Meira explained while herding her kitten to stand in front of the targets ranging from one meter to five meters away.

“I will call out what target and how I want you to attack it,” instructed Meira while taking a few steps back.

“How do I do force blades?” Evernya asked.

“I’m not sure exactly how it works for you, but for me, I picture a thin but powerful application of Air. Try doing one on the closest target on the left.” Meira instructed from her observation point two meters back.

Evernya followed her instructions, picturing a thin blade of force launching it at the target. Upon impact, the target distorted and bent backward before snapping back. A thin red line appeared on the upper-right edge of the outer ring.

“Ok good, a little inaccurate, but I think you have the concept down,” Meira observed.

“Why wasn’t the target cut? Did I put enough power into it?” Evernya questioned after inspecting the unharmed target of similar material to her weighted balls.

Meira materialized her tablet to check the readings from the target before responding. “No, the force blade had a mana grade of 5.12 on impact, so more than enough to cut a sub grade three awakened stage human in half. These targets, like my other training equipment, can handle forces well into the arisen stage. If the target broke after every strike, it would be a colossal waste of money.” Reported Meira, to the astonishment of her kitten.

“The target would make amazing armor!” Evernya exclaimed.

“For structural defenses, yes, but as personal armor, it would be horrible. Didn’t you notice how it distorted and bent? If that were a person, they wouldn’t receive a cut, but the force would have caused major internal damage. Not to mention the violent bend could cause whiplash, maybe even a broken neck. This material doesn’t block an attack, it absorbs it. Also, you need at least thirty centimeters of it to absorb any impact over awakened grade five. The material’s properties make for amazing targets and structural defenses though. Your weighted balls also have a core made from the same material.” Meira explained.

Evernya nodded along, absorbing the new information like a sponge. “Cool, I keep learning new stuff every day. I’m guessing the line is from sensors reading where I hit the target?” Evernya inquired.

“Correct, similar to your weighted balls. The sensors read velocity, force applied, and force of impact, among other things. That is how I knew you used arisen stage mana to construct my new lawn ornament.” Meira explained to her cat girl-shaped sponge.

“Wow, everything you have is so fancy.” Evernya gushed.

“Well, a lot of my possessions I enchant myself, but these I had to buy. I use them to practice my Air manipulation. I may be an elf, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want cutting-edge equipment.” Justified Meira, having spent a ton of money on the targets and weighted balls.

“I’m not judging if I had the money I would buy them too. They are awesome!” Evernya exclaimed while ogling the targets.

“They are. I wish I could get my hands on the enchantment formula.” Meira agreed.

“You can’t reverse engineer it?” Evernya asked.

“Normally I could, but the enchantment has a seal on it. If I tried to peek into the enchantment, the seal would automatically destroy the enchantments and object. I used a similar technique myself, so I know how effective it is.” Replied Meira, flashing back to the time she attempted, causing her newly bought target to disintegrate.

A knowing smile formed as Evernya teased, “You tried, didn’t you? And here I thought I had poor impulse control.”

“Hey, at least I didn’t roll in a bush of catnip and dash around the yard high as a kite.” Meira fired back with a similar smile.

Evernya winced, thankful she didn’t remember like a drunken night out. “It’s not my fault. No one told me of my catnip allergy. I’m sure in your three centuries of living, many embarrassing things happened to you.” Evernya defended, refusing to back down.

Meira’s face reddened, flashing back to several unfortunate mishaps when caught in her elfy mode. She regained control of herself a split second later, but much too slow for her observant kitten.

“Spill,” Evernya demanded.

“Nope, you’re far too young,” Meira denied.

A cute pout sprouted on her kitten’s face. “But I’m an adult! I even have a card to prove it!”

“Not according to your body. You could be centuries away from full maturity for all we know.” Meira teased.

“What about humans? They are legally an adult after their mage’s test, no matter their age.” Evernya pointed out.

“Too bad you‘re not a human then.” Meira teased back.

“But I’m a legal adult shifter after the stress test,” Evernya argued, refusing to admit defeat.

“Damn, you‘re right, even if you’re tiny,” admitted Meira, sulking from her defeat.

Evernya did a happy dance, swaying her arms and hips in sync with her tail, circling the sulking elf.

Much to the dancing girl’s dismay, Meira recovered immediately, dodging her kitten’s unwanted curiosity. “Time to continue your training.”