"Hyah!" Sairaorg swung wide at me, only to be deflected with ease. A backhand here, a sidestep there. It was nothing.
I was overflowing with touki. My aura flared a silvery white, a cascading raiment floating ethereally across my body, twisting, wrapping, slithering like a snake and yet light as a cloud, swaying ever so gently in the wind.
Sairaorg on the other hand?
After an hour and thirty minutes of exchanging blows- his personal best by the way- Sairaorg was running on fumes, panting like a dog in heat.
Dulio wasn't much better. He had a few more hits in him, but I doubted that would make much of a difference. Over the past month, I had caught up to, and surpassed Dulio in sheer touki output and outmatched Sairaorg and his overflowing touki reserves with technique.
Nothing to brag about of course. They barely lasted an hour and half, before needing to rest, meaning they could train at most twice a day, maybe thrice. No more than five hours either way.
Me, on the other hand? I could go all day. With my unending trickle of aura- well, now that I had matched Dulio, it wasn't really appropriate to call it a trickle anymore, though, was it?- enabled me to train nearly three times as much. Adding onto that my freakish, almost slavish determination to train and the nigh negligible need for sleep, courtesy of again, my infinite touki, I had advanced by leaps and bounds.
It was no miracle that I had outmatched the two combined.
Then there were the new touki control techniques I had developed. They weren't anything original. I had simply copied them from Hunter X Hunter. Touki was quite similar to Nen, if not vastly simpler. And that vastly is an understatement.
So, similar to the Nen of the Flame and it's advanced techniques, I had copied and transliterated them onto touki to create my own touki control exercises, including the touki version of Ken I was using right now.
Ryu, the Flow, was an advanced Nen technique that allowed for a flowing distribution of aura all around oneself for complete defense and enhancement, while still being flexible enough that like Ken, I could concentrate a portion of my touki into anywhere I'd like to reinforce for extra protection, like say, my arms or legs, when defending from an oncoming blow, without compromising the safety of my other body parts.
Having three times the time to train gave me the chance to get in enough training to R&D the entire Nen spectrum of techniques for touki and not only master them but also begin teaching them to the other two.
Even Magari bought a copy of them off of me, in exchange for a favour she would owe me, one that I was glad to have, because soon enough I would need it.
Dulio swept low at me now, only to get kneed right in the shins.
Oof, that's gotta be painfu-
He swivelled on the ground, avoiding my counter attack, and tried to use my own weight as counterweight as he roundhouse kicked me right in the face.
Clever!
Unfortunately, he was a bit too constrained for it.
Touki rushed to my arms, crackling like white lightning as I raised my arm to defend when-
SMACK!
I got sucker punched. Right in the noggin'. Like one of Garp's Fists of Love.
BWOUGH!
I gasped, choking out a raspy little wheeze as the air left my lungs, pushed out by Sairaorg's Touki Ripple thundering down through my body, shaking my guts like a maraca.
A double feint.
I didn't think they had it in them after an hour and half of constant battle, at the end of their lines, all but emptied of touki, but they sure have a way of surprising me.
My ears rang, my eyes swam and I puked my guts out on the ground, all shattered earth and heaved dirt that sizzled acridly as my blood and bile hit it.
Ptuuey!
I spat out the last of the blood and snorted out the phlegm from my nose, wiping my face with my sleeve, as I got back up to a laughing Magari.
"Munya-Hahahahaha!" She rolled on the ground, "They got you good, didn't they chicken boya?"
"They're learning." I didn't want to admit it.
Call me a sore loser but that last sucker punch really soured me of any sportsmanship.
Still, I can't lie- they are improving rapidly. Too rapidly.
I can understand Dulio. He's a born genius, but Sairaorg too?
I guess it's true what they say.
You are the sum of your five closest friends, and Sairaorg had only two of us. In trying to catch up to us, he had not only unlocked his Touki earlier than canon, but also grown in its use faster.
That internal wave attack, with that last sucker punch… that was an advanced touki technique, the kind people like Magari and the nekomata elders used. Even Dulio hadn't gotten it yet. But Sairaorg somehow used it, out of pure instinct?
Then again, he didn't have to train in both Touki and a Longinus' use, so he had had more time to learn.
"That'll teach ya not to underestimate your opponent, even at the end." Magari advised jumping onto my shoulders, "Especially at the last moment. Even cornered rat will bite back."
"Nom nom!" Sairaorg chomped in the air, with a mischievous grin and Dulio laughed.
"I'll break its teeth next time." I shook my fist playfully at them, before spotting a familiar monkly figure drinking like a fish on the porch.
Magari followed my eyes too and smirked.
"Boss'un's here already? How punctual nya~! Feeling genki today?" Magari teased and Nurarihyon glared at her with a dirty side-eye and subtly flipped her off.
I smiled.
Like cats and dogs, these two. But that was their nature, the East Youkai faction. All of them were complete rednecks and hillbillies. This was actually rather mild of them.
"Break?" I asked, though I knew their answer either way.
"Yeah." Sairaorg choked out, chugging his water bottle while Dulio simply collapsed on the ground, nursing his bruised foot.
Taking a seat beside Nurarihyon on the porch, I leaned against a pillar, a little winded from that last punch. Sairaorg really shook me with that last move. Right down to my core. Cost me a good chunk of change in terms of demonic power to recover from it.
We sat in silence for a moment. Him drinking his sake, me resting against the pillar, feeling the gentle mountain breeze upon my face.
"The Youkai… they're moving to Urakyoto." He finally spoke, if vaguely.
Though I knew the youkai of whom he spoke. The Kuoh mansion I had bought last month. The one infested with ghosts and youkai. I had offered Nurarihyon first bidding on recruitment, if he helped me clear them out and transport them to Urakyoto within the month.
He did manage to recruit a handful of them, but most chose to simply leave.
As to why I didn't recruit them as servants? It was simple.
I was planning on sheltering Vali there. I cannot afford to have eyewitnesses to his presence there when that happens. No one can know. Secrecy was paramount.
So, I simply decided to kick them out.
Except, of course-
"The poltergeist isn't leaving." Nurarihyon added as if on cue, "You know that right?"
"Well, I didn't expect him to, in the first place. He's bound to the land, and at this point, I'd have to exorcise him to get rid of him." I shrugged, unbothered "I guess I could use a ghost butler. He is rather well mannered for an evil spirit."
"That'll happen when you've been dead so long you forget why you became earthbound. He's forgotten his grudges, his life, his purpose. I'm surprised he hasn't faded already." Nurarihyon chuckled, "I have never seen an evil spirit so ridiculous."
I smiled.
"I like that about him. That and he's pretty powerful."
Almost High Class. That's a big thing, for a mere dementia riddled ghost to achieve.
But, of course, that wasn't why I had called him here. I cast silence and non-detection wards around us and he got the clue.
"It's time, isn't it? For the Lucifer brat?" He asked, downing his last glass of sake.
I nodded and passed him a note I conjured then and there.
He looked down at the note, giving it a once over and raised a queer eyebrow at me.
"A year?" He asked, curious.
"Would you rather he escaped minutes after you deliver my message?" I asked, "Or are you suggesting rescuing him yourself? How very generous of you, Nura-san!"
"Fine, fine. I get it, you brat." He stopped me, exasperated, "But why today? If all I had to do was deliver a letter, and you're still going to delay this by a year, what's the point of going at it today? Why not last month, or yesterday, or anytime else. A year from now perhaps?"
I grinned.
"Do you think the house of Lucifer doesn't have a master diviner or investigator on their payroll? Razevan Lucifer is one paranoid bastard. He probably has three."
"You insult my skill, boy. The Divine Investigator himself couldn't track me down in my prime. The Jade Emperor threw a fit for days. The house of Lucifer is nothing." Nurarihyon gloated.
"And yet Lord Indra caught you without a sweat." I pointed out.
"Indra is the greatest diviner in the world. The house of Lucifer doesn't have anyone even remotely close."
That was true.
But if I can come up with a way to bypass wards with my Flame Divination, and detect Nurarihyon in full hidey mode, I'm not arrogant enough to believe there aren't others who can do the same, especially people who specialize in tracking and investigation.
The house of Lucifer is close to the Asmodeus clan, whose trait, Starsend Moment makes for especially good diviners. If anyone besides Indra can track him and through him me, it's them.
And given his previous fuck-up when dealing with Glenda…
Yeah, I'm not taking any chances.
"They don't have to. You just need to mess up again, don't you Nura-san? One mistake and it all goes kaput!"
"You'll never let that go, will you?" He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, his kasaya swishing dramatically, "It was one time."
"I don't intend to let there be a second." I replied coldly.
"And how will you do that?" He asked cockily.
"Besides wards? There is another way to interfere with both divination and tracking spells. Sticking close to someone powerful enough to rival the divine." I explained, "And I'm going to my fiancé's birthday party today."
"Sirzech's Lucifer." Nurarihyon understood my intentions.
"Exactly." I patted his shoulder smugly, "So, if you mess up again, it's all on you. Nothing will ever lead back to me, not only because their spells won't be able to track me, but also because even if they do, will they really have the balls to question Sirzech's Lucifer on my alibi? No, they'll simply scapegoat you and the East Youkai faction."
"I hate you sometimes, you stupid clever brat." He snarled.
"Aww~ Only sometimes?" I teased and he smacked my hand away, annoyed.
"Don't push your luck."
I snickered like a goblin and got up to leave.
"Alright." I grunted, cracking my joints with a satisfying pop, something no ten year old should have to do, but here we are. I could feel body strain under the pressure of my training, "Gotta get going. I have a party to attend."
Maybe I shouldn't overwork myself. This past month of nonstop training has helped me catch up to Dulio and Sai already. Maybe I can tone it down a little, to only 14 hours a day.
Yeah, that'll let my body rest a little. I'll consider it after I see exactly how strong Sirzechs is today. He was the first milestone I had to overcome on my journey. In seven years' time, I plan to be as strong, if not stronger than Sirzechs, and today will help me get a measure of exactly how big that gap is between us.
Because if I remember it correctly, it takes four of him to match Indra in a fight, and it takes Indra and a dozen Longinus users on Sirzechs level to match Shiva.
The two dragon gods and Shiva are about equal in power, and Regalzava pawned one of them on easy mode… that tells me exactly how far I have left to go.
The gap between each Class is about four times. That means I have to be at least 64 times as powerful as I am now, if not more to match the ExE mech gods. In just twelve years.
I shudder to think of the brutality of the training I will have to undergo if I plan to keep pace.
But, it's either that or certain death, so it's not like I have a choice.
Still, as long as I can get to Sirzech's level in seven years and then Indra's level in twelve, all I'll need is three Boosts from Draig to get on even footing. That's not too hard to achieve at my current rate of growth, not to mention how much easier it'll be once we get that potential boost from the internet.
That's not even considering all the other plans I have in motion. If all goes well, I'll get there with room to spare.
I smiled.
Looking at it that way, the future does seem bright.
More so, when I imagine Lord Zeoticus' face when he sees my present for Rias tonight.
Ah, his pain really does warm the heart~