With mithril equipment, extra Skills, and qigong, we were going to turn her into a magic-powered machine, ’cause see, it was my job as her “owner” to never let her run out of magic again. Once I loaded her up with all the equipment and tricky tactics I possessed, she would be able to survive to protect this world long after I was dead and gone. And that also enabled her to be with Dancer Girl, no matter what dangerous stuff Dancer Girl decided to get herself into. She was a dungeon emperor, cursed with the gift of immortality, and this was but a brief blip in the timeline of her eternal life. She had only to suffer being chained to me, fated to die so young and so beautiful, for what was, from her perspective, little more than a blink of an eye.
“Which is why I think you don’t have to get so mad at me every morning. Like, it doesn’t matter? Yes, maybe I did my best a little too hard, but what is one’s best in the grand scheme of things?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Anyway, we were out of hippos.
“Nice job! You injured? Nope? Cool. But take this mushroom anyway. I know you’re a healer by job, but HP isn’t everything. You still need to be careful about fatigue. I should know—I wake up every morning freaking exhausted. My spiritual and virile energy, gone! Poof! There’s three of you for only one of me, so you could lighten up, you know.”
“Who, me? Whistle, whistle.”
“No, no—you don’t literally say it. It’s a sound effect.”
Wibble wibble.
“Well, that’s…close…but I didn’t ask you, Slimey. I’m just impressed you managed to ‘whistle’ without a mouth.”
Although, how does one wibble with their mouth… A question for the ages. Anyhoo, Slimey was happy as a clam after his hippo snack. He was all charged up! Literally! I bet he had just acquired some electricity Skills!
Pika pikac—
“Whoa, let me cut you off right there, buddy. And go back to your normal color. We don’t want to get in trouble for having an electric sparking mascot on this series.”
Wobble wobble?
That aside! Learning was my job as a high schooler, and I was doing a good job of it here. I had my basics down, and all that was left was practice, practice, practice. I realized that Qing Qigong functioned more or less like an aerial dogfight, which—for the time being—was a handful for me. Or a legful—’cause it was my legs that weren’t behaving like they ought to, y’know? That meant my next steps would be to restudy everything I’d learned and build back up to where I used to be. It was possible; I’d done it all before. So, back to square one for me. Now that I’d hit rock bottom, the only way to go was up. Right?
“Hff… Hiiiiyah!”
“Hff… Hi…? Ah?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Square one, here I was! The very first trick I’d ever learned: the instaspeed killer attack! I made speed itself into a weapon. I converted velocity into viciousness; I attacked so fast the enemy had no time to dodge or parry. This was the same trick I’d taught the orphans, which they now used against me in their dreadful children launcher attacks. This was how I’d managed to survive in the earliest days in the monster forest. That’s right. Boost your survival rate with this one simple trick! I call it…the B-dash!
“Four i’s, Sleeping Beauty. And a y. Can’t have a good hiiiiyah without a y.”
The B-dash walked so Life and Death could run. I accelerated myself to my maximum velocity within the blink of an eye and charged. I Entangled myself with everything I had, turned all my speed into attack power, and whammed. Needless to say, it did not mix well with Qing Qigong. I’d have to figure out some way to combo those two, ’cause reaching unholy speeds was my first step toward full recovery.
“Hiiii… Hiiii…yah?”
“Wait a second—are you doing the Lamaze method or the Haruka method? I’ll grant there’s a shocking number of similarities between the two, but I’d rather avoid the death stares won by a teenage boy teaching the former of those two techniques! I think it’s best we not conflate the two at all. Can you imagine OB/GYN’s yelling ‘HIIIIYAH!’ and karate chopping the baby out of the mom?”
Those poor babies, having their introduction to this world be a screaming Hiiiiyah!…
“A karate-chopping OB/GYN is bad enough, but what about a punch-out play-acting pregnant lady? That’s next-level scary! The dads would be too terrified to follow the moms to their appointments!”
The one thing faster than a cheetah was a cheater, and you had best believe I cheat-ran down the cheetahs on this floor. I kept a tight watch on my posture and footwork, and from there, it was all about putting on the speed!
“I say footwork, but this is the furthest thing from a ballroom dance… But still, let’s play ball, cheetah! You may be nowhere near as fearsome as a pretty teenage girl at a dance, but I’ll take you on anyway. ‘Level 40 wall-running panthers’… Oh, so you’re not cheetahs after all? You’re also running on the walls and ceiling, so this name is all kinds of confusing. But hey, you’re not special. We can all do that too!”
Huff, huff, puff!
“Sleeping Beauty? Can you get a move on and kill these things? And can you stop with the weird breathing?”
Quiver, quiver.
Sleeping Beauty timed each halberd strike with a breath. It lanced through the air with the ferocity of a raging bonfire, striking first one cat and then another. For a magic-based fighter like Sleeping Beauty, qigong was eye-opening. She was, if nothing else, a huge fan of the breathing techniques.
“You’re kidding me. You say the Lamaze method boosts your speed and attack? I think you just like huffing and puffing to knock me halfway across the room. And no. It’s not the same thing as a good ‘hiiiyah!’ It’s not even in the same genre!”
Well, if we ever need someone to Purify baby diapers, I guess we know who to call…