Cosmic Traction. The signature ability of the Breach Hawk. It was something like having an extra set of Qi Pores, and when Sage fed his Qi into them, the world around him seemed to thicken. Sort of like the humidity was rapidly rising until he felt like the whole world was covered in water. It felt like walking in a pool of water. If he threw a punch he felt great resistance and not much happened, but if he used a palm strike it was like he was splashing water. Space would ripple and crash against objects in front of him.

More amazingly was that such actions didn’t actually cause much damage. It reminded him of looking at the reflection of something in a pool of water. If the water was disturbed the image would be distorted, but after some time it would return to stillness. He also thought of it like a painting. You could roll it up, fold it, and crumple it into a ball, but once you smoothed it back out the image in the painting would still be intact. At least mostly. Just like you could harm the paint by violently crumbling or handling the canvas, you could also do the same by altering space.

Just like with King’s wing blade technique, the damage wasn’t actually caused by space. What did the harm was actually a gust of wind. He used a very precise amount of Qi to treat space in a similar manner to a fog. The more Qi was used the more solid space felt, and the more could be done to it. As a bird, most of King’s techniques manipulated space as if it were air, it just came naturally to them. He used his wings to do the real work. The blue, leading edge, pushed against space to create a ripple. Then he twisted his wing and used the feathers to create a narrow gust of wind like a blade.

The wind blade on its own was not very powerful, creating mere papercuts. On the other hand, following in the wake of the ripple of space it could ignore the physical world. With a perfect delivery the wind blade could be inside the target’s body and slicing directly against the soft inner organs right as space returned to normal. That said, it was extremely difficult to make the two attacks move at the exact same speed with the ideal interval between them. If they were too close together, the wind blade would do nothing, passing harmlessly through the rippling space. If it was too far apart, space would calm down before it struck and it would only have its original paper cutting power.

The talon attack worked in a similar, but simpler manner. Pushing against space created a ripple, and by timing it correctly the ripple can dissipate right as the talons, or fingers, were inside the target. With two objects vying for the same space, the weaker material gave way. You activate Cosmic Traction with the whole hand, strike, and then deactivate it on just the talons. Sharp talons were far stronger than soft internals and so massive damage could be caused. It also came with great risks. If the talon was in a bone, both it and the bone would shatter. If the technique was not controlled perfectly and more of the hand or leg was exposed they could turn into a mangled mess.

In short, colliding two objects together, even inside a space ripple, was not safe.

In fact, the real strength of Cosmic Traction was exhibited by its name. It is not meant to be used offensively, that is only a useful adaptation. It was far more powerful for mobility. The more energy was supplied the more solid space felt. Sage found that very precise application of it could drastically increase agility. He was sure it looked extremely strange to an observer, but it was very powerful. At any time he could treat the air like it was water. A wave of the hand could thrust him to the side. A push with the palm could slow him down. He could control the rate of his fall by cushioning it with space. As long as he had enough Qi remaining he could slow down a fall from extreme heights, just so long as he gradually ‘hardened’ space and slowed his descent soon enough. Just like hitting the water from hundreds of feet up could feel like concrete, he just had to first slow his fall along the way.

The three of them practiced this strange art of theirs, performing swimming motions in mid-air and having them somehow work. He actually spent extra time making sure their motions were more efficient and the time they were pushing against the ‘water’ was as minimized as possible. Thankfully, they stopped looking like mimes in a swimming pool and more like they were just using a very unusual martial art, slapping and chopping the empty air to maneuver themselves around. Even so, the most exciting discovery was the ability to double jump. It took a huge expenditure of Qi and both legs pressing down at the same time, but he could just barely get it to respond like an inflatable ball or floating raft. It was very shaky and hard to balance, but he could get a very weak jump against mid-air.

Sage was pretty sure if there was enough Qi he could swim through the air as if it was water. If he had even more he could walk on it like solid ground. As it was, he could only sustain brief moments of contact, enough for a couple steps or a strike. The actual consumption of Qi wasn’t the problem, the issue was output. Just like the Qi Pores in the body had to be trained, strengthening and widening them, to unleash more powerful techniques, so too did the special pores for Cosmic Traction. It strained his ability to merely create water like density for a few moments, and the double jump made his feet hurt for a while because of the overuse.

Thankfully, he found that the more he used the ability the better it became. That meant it could also be trained and so he incorporated it into his training routine. Straining to push as much Qi as possible into the ability as rapidly as possible. He used it as his daily technique training, expending all of his Qi each day with Cosmic Traction before he sealed his normal Qi Pores. He also told King and Ruanfu about the training technique to see if it might also work for them. King was far too lazy for such an extreme method, but Ruanfu was eager to try it out. She didn’t quite follow it as harshly as Sage did, but she still made rapid progress.

What was most amazing was actually the usage of Cosmic Traction in his true form. The slithering of a snake was nearly as effective in the water as it was on land. The unique motion giving them great propulsion by using nearly the full surface area of their body to get traction. In this regard it was a true confirmation that the Breach Hawk was descendant of some form of Dragon. It was almost possible for him to truly swim through the air with his serpentine body. Unfortunately, he had to output Qi to the maximum with his ability along the length of his whole body. He could swim through the sky, but for less than a minute before he was completely drained of energy. The first time he tried it, King had to rescue him. He fell too suddenly and even King couldn’t slow him down enough before he sustained a few broken bones.

The experimentation and training led him to an idea.

It was for this reason that he had King and Ruanfu standing beside him outside the waterfall cave. Normally they stayed in the Universe Ring, but today he wanted to have some backup in case something went wrong.

In front of him, the lump of clay was tied to the top of a single post at chest height. He wanted to minimize the number of obstructions, but he also wanted to hold the clay still so he couldn’t just hang it from a tree branch. He looked over his shoulder to King and Ruanfu a few dozen yards away, “Are you ready?”