Chương 22: Time Passes

The following days were unfortunately quite a bit more boring than his first lesson with Igrette. After that mock spar, she never had him train in combat like that anymore. She said that she had never intended to teach him anything more than basic stances and striking form, and since he already had those down, there was nothing for him to learn. Not until he had at least a working understanding of his own anatomy.

Luckily, that did not mean that their lessons outside were ending, and as much as Jonny hated to admit it, he had Tommy to thank for that. Jonny might not have had much left to learn, but Tommy did, so they still held brief combat lessons outside. Jonny mostly tuned Igrette out and focused on punching and kicking the straw dummy she had brought, but he occasionally checked in to see how Tommy was doing. The answer was… not great.

Tommy wasn't unathletic, and he was fairly active, but it seemed to Jonny like he had no talent for this. Maybe it was just because he was young, but Tommy did not seem to understand the application of bodily force. He didn't understand how to rotate through his hips, or drive with his legs, and he was terrible at keeping his arms properly aligned. He was improving steadily with Igrette's instruction, but his natural understanding of how his body worked seemed severely lacking.

Jonny took great pleasure in that, and it was not entirely shadenfreude. The other half of their combat lessons, the anatomy half, was a place where Tommy excelled and Jonny struggled. Jonny had a good intuitive understanding of his body, but trying to memorize the diagrams Igrette showed, and knowing how each muscle, tendon, and ligament connected, and how many bones were in each limb and things like that had his head swimming.

Meanwhile, after just three days of study, Tommy was able to rattle off the names of almost every bone in the human body, and half the muscles. At first, it annoyed Jonny to no end. Igrette would sometimes do "quiz games" where she would show an unlabeled diagram, point to a random muscle or bone, and ask them to identify it. The first to name it correctly won, and of course, that was almost always Tommy.

With the verdict being a given most of the time, Jonny wondered why even do the games, until he realized that he was actually studying much harder for the sole purpose of beating Tommy. It was still annoying to constantly lose, though, especially with how smug Tommy always acted. As the weeks went on, however, Jonny's annoyance lessened, and Tommy's smug cheerfulness began to fade.

This was because they had finally started doing some rudimentary internal mana techniques, and ironically, Tommy's ability to accurately identify any body part in an instant did not seem to help him much at all. The techniques they practiced were simple to the point of tedium, and they were not practical in the slightest, but Jonny actually had a lot of fun with them, mostly because of how much better he was at them than Tommy.

Sure, he might not have known the name of the tendon that connected his bicep to his elbow, but he could send mana there quite easily. Tommy, on the other hand knew its name, but it always took him a few seconds to get the mana there. The back and forth competitive nature of the lessons managed to keep what would have been fairly boring content interesting, and as the days grew shorter and nights grew colder, Jonny and Tommy both steadily progressed.

And internal mana techniques were not the only things that Jonny was learning. While that took up the majority of his mornings, he actually spent much more time on something entirely different: his mana. He was still making his usual progress in terms of condensing it. His capacity was significantly higher than it had been, and when he cycled and condensed his mana, he could get it almost a third of the way toward the density that made up Tommy's core.

That should have been enough to form a core, since having mana that dense throughout his body would imply he could make it much more dense in a smaller area, but it still refused to coalesce. Jonny had idly wondered if perhaps he could force a core layer formation if he forced his mana inward. It would cause a mana surge, which was dangerous, and at these levels, would make him literally explode, but what if he could harness it? What if that mana surge was exactly what he needed to form his core?

What if the intensity of the surge was exactly what he needed to condense his mana into that layer in his stomach? He had gone as far as to tentatively push his mana toward his core, seeing if there might be any natural process that could help him, but all he got was an overwhelming sense of wrongness, and a bit of shaking in his hands as his body instinctively recognized what he was trying to do. He never tried that again.

Igrette's words still rang in his ears, telling him to trust his instincts, and his instincts were telling him that doing that was a very bad idea. One thing his instincts were telling him was good was the breathing he had done out in the woods when Tommy formed his core. He had no idea why it was good, but it felt good to breathe like that, so he did it. When he was sitting down to eat, when he was laying down to sleep, when he was listening to Igrette talk about how the body worked…

He had even recently started doing it while during his workouts. So far, the breathing was doing nothing noteworthy for him. He felt like he was maybe getting a little better at controlling his mana as a whole, just from the constant ebb and flow, but that was about it. For now. He had a feeling he was on to something, and was just on the verge of some kind of breakthrough. One thing that he had already theorized was potentially using this in the future during actual fighting.

Just like Tommy had used it to compress his mana and pull it in, Jonny could also use his breathing technique to compress his mana, and the compressed mana on his inhalation was denser than anything he could do normally. If he could use that to strengthen his body, he was sure he could get a much greater boost than usual. Sadly, testing that would have to wait.

Currently, even his ordinary compressed mana was too much for his body to handle, so until his body got strong enough, or he mastered the internal mana techniques Igrette was teaching him, that would have to remain a theory. Or perhaps a last resort in case of danger. While Jonny studied his breathing and continued training his body, he found himself increasingly without Tommy around.

While they spent their mornings together, both Abbess Helen and Sister Igrette thought it was a waste of Tommy's talent for him to only train in internal mana techniques. Especially when he was so visibly not talented in it. So in the afternoons, he was taught external mana techniques, and his repertoire of spells had more than doubled since he reached the first layer, and they were much stronger too. Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

His favorite new spell was a powerful wind gust that he could use to send smaller objects, such as children, flying. Jonny thought this was quite fun, but the nuns said they weren't allowed to use it again after they somehow got caught using it the first time. Jonny understood not letting Tommy use it on the other kids, but thought it was unfair not to let Tommy target him. Not only was he a willing subject, but they were very careful with the spell, and he was more than capable of taking a little tumble.

Especially since the snow had already begun to fall, and the powder was soft and broke his falls. Among the spells he was actually allowed to use without strict supervision, there was also a barrier spell that he could use as a sled, a minor illusion spell that he could use to make simple holograms, and a small fire spell that let him conjure a miniature fireball in his hand.

He could also throw the miniature fireball if he wanted, and it would cause a small explosion wherever it landed, but he wasn't allowed to use that part of the spell. Seeing Tommy advancing so much made Jonny jealous, but it also spurred him forward. He had gotten to the point where his original exercises did almost nothing for him. He could do literally thousands without tiring, and that just wasn't an efficient use of his times. Even the most extreme variations were getting too easy.

So, he swapped his workout routine around a bit. He had never been a big calisthenics guy back on Earth. He didn't really have the time or patience to train them. But here, he had nothing but time, and needed other things to work on, so he started doing whatever he could remember. Handstands, handstand push ups, one-armed handstand pushups, flags, pull-up variations, planches and more.

His body was trained to the point that it didn't take too long to master any one thing, and so he started getting a little creative, even involving the other children sometimes, allowing them to dangle from his limbs as he tried to balance on one hand. December passed quickly, and his progress was steady, but as it neared the end of the month, he got a bit nostalgic. There was no Christmas in this world.

There was another holiday with gift giving in February, but it just wasn't quite the same, and when December 24 rolled around, he decided to take a slightly lazy day. He had no reason to, but he had always taken Christmas off back on Earth, and even here, it just felt weird not to. When he went to bed, he dreamt of the Christmas when he was twelve, when his grandmother had bought him his first pair of boxing gloves, and a membership at the local gym.

At the time, she had only wanted him to be able to defend himself from bullies, and could never have guessed how it would change the course of life. And she never found out either, as that had been the last Christmas gift he ever got from her. She was old, and had never been in the greatest health, and her health deteriorated rapidly after a stroke in February. It was a happy dream, but when he woke up, he had a tightness in his chest. He sighed, then began to sit up, only to realize that it was not yet morning.

Huh? He began to wonder why he had woken up so early, but the thought barely passed through his mind when he noticed a shadow looming over his bed. He flinched, and his heart skipped a beat, but he calmed down immediately when he saw who it was.

"Wha–?" he started, but Igrette put a finger to her lips, and he stopped.

"Get dressed," she said in a barely audible whisper.

"Warm clothes, but something you can still move in."

"Why?" Jonny whispered back.

"I'll tell you outside." Igrette turned and walked out of the room. Her footsteps were eerily silent, and even her robes didn't make any rustling sounds. Jonny watched he leave, then immediately scrambled out of bed in search of clothes. This had never happened before, but he was excited. Warm clothes meant they were going outside, and something he could move in meant it would be something active. If this wasn't special, early morning training, he didn't know what else it could have been.

Five minutes later, he was downstairs, where Igrette was standing by the backdoor. She put a finger to her lips, stopping his questions before they could come, then led him outside into the yard. They went through the usually locked gate in the side of the yard, and started walking through the forest, their footsteps crunching through the snow. Only when Jonny was absolutely certain they were too far away from the orphanage to be heard did he finally try to speak again.

"Where are we going?"

"The ritual circle," she replied.

"Anna will be doing her layer formation later this week, but it is now winter, so some magic beasts have decided to make the circle their nest. We need to exterminate them." Being an inquisitor was not what Frederick thought it would be, and even after four years, the job had a way of reminding him of that in the most unpleasant ways. Even lesser demons weren't like ordinary magic beasts. They were intelligent, and could learn and adapt and worst of all, hide.

When they took over a host, it often took months, or even years before they were discovered. Eventually, their baser tendencies always won out over caution, and their mortal forms could not hide their natures any longer, but by the time that happened it was often too late. When a lesser demon lost control, dozens died before they could be stopped. And when a greater demon did it… The job of the inquisitors was to find the demons before they could reach that stage.

Find the fools who summoned them, find the demon hosts, and stop it all before it got out of hand. If they arrived soon enough, they would be able to exorcise the demon alone and the host would survive. In Frederick's experience, though, that rarely happened. This time, he really wished it had. Now, he was standing over two headless corpses. One was a young woman whose expression was one of fear and pain. The other was the demon that had once been her daughter.

When Frederick arrived, the daughter was holding her mother's head in her lap, switching between sobbing and laughing hysterically. She had not been fully erased, but one look was all it took for Frederick to know that it was too late. Despite the frigid temperature, the girl wore nothing but a thin shift, and he could see scales creeping up her shoulders and arms beneath it. Two small horns jutted from her hair, small enough they could be hidden by a hat, but large enough to be obvious.

The girl was not completely gone, but Frederick could sense the demonic mana emanating from her. The possession had gone too far. An exorcism would just kill her. The demon girl tried to attack, and Frederick had been forced to kill her. He tried to make it painless. The demon did not deserve such mercy, but the poor girl had already suffered enough. He stood like that for a long time before tearing his gaze away. It wasn't wise to dwell on such things.

Ivan had told him that many times, but whenever he came across a scene like this, Frederick ended up in a strange mood. It almost made him wish he had never become an inquisitor, but whenever he felt like that, he quickly brushed the thought aside. He had taken a vow, and he was doing good. If the possession had gone further, more would have died. He only did what he had to. He had saved lives. I want to talk to Ivan again. How has he held himself together after all these years?

He deliberately avoided looking down at the deceased family as he walked back out the door. It was the middle of the day, but the sun was nowhere to be seen. The entire sky was covered in a blanket of gray, and snowflakes lazily drifted down all around. He enjoyed the cool, fresh air for a moment before sighing and stepping down And now, on to the next one.