Chương 70: 68 - Two Shieldbreakers!

During his run, Jonny came up with three possibilities for what Igrette might have been thinking for his shieldbreakers. The first came to him quickly. The hint she gave him about it being based on his own idea was good. There was really only one thing that he could do that was truly an original idea on his part. His drain punch. That's what he called it at least. The punch where he did his best to pull his target's mana out as he struck them.

And once he remembered that, it didn't take long for him to figure out what he thought Igrette was getting at. The drain punch currently did not work very well. If he was able to get a hold of his target and grapple them, it worked better, but there wasn't enough time in a punch to get much out of it. If he reversed it, though, and instead of pulling the opponent's mana out, he pushed his in…

He didn't know if it would work, but that sounded like the exact kind of thing that would give him some extra power against something with tough skin. Assuming he could actually hit their skin, of course. He didn't know what he'd do against armor, though, or a shield. As for shieldbreakers that would work on actual barriers, he was stumped. He decided to bring back the same idea he had thought of the night before, using gravity to enhance a downward traveling attack would certainly make it stronger.

Maybe Igrette would have a way to protect his body while he performed it. His other idea was picking up a really big rock and throwing it at the target. It sounded kind of stupid, but he also thought that maybe it could work. He could definitely pick up some pretty big rocks now. He explained all three ideas to Igrette, who kept an impassive expression until the final one, where she let out a puff of air from her nostrils in amusement.

"I guess that's wrong, then?"

"I guess maybe if you got a big enough rock, it might work," said Igrette.

"But good luck finding one in the middle of a fight."

"Yeah… I didn't think that one was right."

"It's not a terrible idea, though," said Igrette.

"It might be useful one day. But it's not a reliable method."

"What about the others."

"Your first is mostly correct," said Igrette.

"Just injecting your mana won't do much on its own, though. Unlike you, other people can just kick the mana right out once it's in. You need to either make sure it does enough damage before then to be worth it, or to make sure that they can't get rid of it easily. We'll go over ways to do both of those things later.

"Your second guess was incorrect, for the very same reasons that you thought it was incomplete, but you were on the right track. It is related to your gravity elemental shift. More specifically the elemental shift part. You can combine it with gravity if you want, but…" She trailed off as Emily returned to the mana well, panting and collapsing to her knees. She had not paced herself well.

After seeing Jonny run twice the distance in less than half the time, she got competitive, and tried to keep up with him, and now she was suffering for it.

"But we'll be shifting to a different element for this," finished Igrette before turning to Emily.

"How are you doing, Emily?"

"I'm– good," panted Emily. Igrette waved her arm and siphoned water out of the air, forming some of it into a glass made of ice and using the rest to fill it before handing it to Emily. Emily took it gratefully and started chugging, spilling half of it on herself. Igrette filled it up twice before Emily had recovered enough to drink a little more slowly.

"I'm helping Jonny with something right now, so you just catch your breath for a bit, and we'll start when you're ready. Okay?" Emily nodded, and Igrette turned back to Jonny.

"Not all elemental shifts are safe. Under no circumstances should you ever use a full fire shift within your body, and lightning is very dangerous unless you know exactly what you're doing. I am not sure when you will reach the level to even begin experimenting with that, if ever. Usually, you would train with it outside your body first before trying to internalize it.

"Some, though, are not only safe, but highly beneficial. As you've discovered, gravity is practically a requirement to being a melee combatant beyond first or second layer. Water has its uses for mana circulation and recovery, and wind as well, to a lesser extent. What we will be working with is steel."

"To make my body stronger?"

"Exactly."

"…Why weren't we doing that already?"

"It has its downsides, and I didn't think it was necessary. But now that we have time and nothing else to do, I see no reason to wait."

"Okay, so I'm gonna, like, have fists as hard as steel and then I can punch harder without hurting myself?"

"More or less. It's not quite as simple as it sounds, though. Here, feel my arm." She held out her arm for him, sliding the sleeve to expose the bare skin. Jonny reached out and touched it, and it felt weird. It felt like skin, but it didn't squish when he touched it. There was no give at all. It was like someone had taken solid metal and then given it a rough skin texture… Which made sense.

"I wanna feel too!" said Emily, leaping to her feet and running over to join. While she was fascinated by the elemental shift, Igrette continued her lecture.

"A steel elemental shift will help strengthen your body, and make it more difficult to damage. This is most often used for defense, but can theoretically be used for offense. It is not traditionally done beyond the skin, though. Can you guess why?" Jonny pressed hard on Igrette's arm, trying to see if he could make the skin bend a bit.

"Is it because it makes it so you can't bend your arm?"

"Exactly. Imagine if I did this same thing I am doing to my skin to my bicep. My arm would be frozen in place. And if I then tried to extend my arm anyway… it would not be good. Something would break wherever the elemental shift ends."

"So I'd need to flash it like with gravity?"

"That's one solution, but if you do that, it only reduces impact strain, but not the strain on your body from throwing around that kind of force. Ideally, we would want to apply this very precisely while you are in motion, allowing you to push beyond your limits, and then flash on impact to protect your body. And maybe a water elemental shift to help absorb the impact in the rest of your body…" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

She looked off into the distance thoughtfully.

"Whatever the case, I will need to experiment. You will not be experimenting. You will be practicing only on your skin. It will be good for defense, even at a low level. I can heal myself, so I will try to figure out how it can be used without causing more issues than it solves."

"Wait, so you don't even know if it will work?"

"I know it has been done in the past," said Igrette.

"There are certain schools of combat that teach this type of thing. But I've never learned it, so we'll have to figure it out as we go. I don't think it should be too difficult, though." She undid the shift on her arm and raised it to scratch her chin, then shrugged.

"We'll see. We may have to reach out for assistance. It should work out, though. For now, though, it looks like you're feeling better, Emily. Are you ready to start?" They spent the next hour or so doing a fairly casual training session, with most of that time spent teaching Emily. After so long of it just being him and Igrette, it felt weird to have someone else join them for their training, but Jonny didn't hate it.

Emily wasn't the quickest student, but she was an enthusiastic one, and helping teach her was oddly satisfying. She wasn't a tireless student, though, and her attention began wavering before too long, so they ended up playing around some games. That felt even weirder. Jonny hadn't played with any other kids since leaving the orphanage. It almost felt wrong. After nearly five years of always having something he needed to be doing. He suddenly had nothing pressing, and had free time. It didn't feel bad, though.

Playing with the kids at the orphanage had been annoying, but Emily wasn't as annoying. Or maybe he had just been missing the company. Being in a place where he could just relax and play felt good, and once the initial sense of wrongness wore off, he started to enjoy himself so much he barely noticed the time passing by. Lunch time soon arrived, and Olivia came hiking through the field, a wicker basket in one hand, and the hem of her dress in the other to make sure she didn't step in anything.

Alden and the twins joined them for a lunch of sandwiches and fresh lemonade, the twins looking exhausted, but also in a better mood than before. During the meal, they chatted animatedly about their plans for the pit they were digging, talking about various features they wanted to add. After that, Jonny went back to training. Igrette taught him the basics of the steel elemental shift, and Emily listened in, clearly not quite understanding everything.

Jonny tried messing with that while Igrette had some one on one time with Emily, and when Emily started getting restless, they went back to playing. Emily got tired after an hour of running around, and dragged Jonny and Igrette over to the creek to cool off. After that, they went to check out the pit the twins were digging, and Jonny somehow got roped into helping. The pit was fifty feet or so from the creek, and was placed right in the center of a large clearing.

The woods were nowhere near as dense as the ones around the orphanage had been, which was a boon, in this case. If the twins were going to be throwing fireballs around, it was better for there to be less flammable stuff around. The ground had already been completely cleared, not only of fallen branches and leaves, but also of every single stray piece of grass both over the pit, and for thirty feet all around.

On top of that, the first layer of the pit had already been dug out, a near-perfect circle thirty or forty feet across. It was a foot deep already, with dirt and loose rocks piled up in a ring around the edge. Jonny almost thought that it was too much progress for barely half a day of work, until he watched as one of the twin stuck his shovel in the ground, and scooped up far more dirt than the shovel should have been able to hold. Right. Magic.

The thing they needed his help with was a particularly large stone that they had just uncovered that neither of them could properly lift with their magic yet. It was both a request and a challenge, since they said they still didn't believe Jonny was second layer. Jonny was never one to turn down a challenge, and the next thing he knew, two hours had passed, he was caked in sweat and dirt, and the rock was finally out of the pit and lined up on the side.

"Are you really a Null?" asked Joshua, narrowing his eyes at Jonny.

"What else would I be?" asked Jonny, panting slightly as he leaned on the rock he had just moved. The rock was the size of him, and even with his current strength, he wasn't quite able to lift it. Maybe he could have handled the weight, but it was just far too unwieldy, so he had to roll it to the edge, flipping it end over end until it was out. He had done it, though, and had evidently proven his point.

"Well, alright," said Joshua, not entirely convinced.

"It doesn't really matter, anyway," said Jacob dismissively.

"Now that that's out of the way, we can move on. Josh, you take that side, I'll take this one, and Jonny, you can go over there."

"Boys," said Alden, who had been leaning against a tree and supervising the entire time.

"This is your work, not his. Let him get back to what he was doing." The twins were reluctant, but they let Jonny go, and he returned to find Igrette chatting with Haley while Emily munched on some honey cookies. Jonny had some cookies as well while the adults finished talking, and then they spent the rest of the day until sunset training and playing. It was pleasantly uneventful, and while Jonny didn't make any progress, he didn't feel like the time was wasted either.

When Alden brought the twins back to the mana well, the six of them set off for the house. The twins were bickering over something they wanted to add to the pit, but their conversation got entirely derailed when Emily joined in and started telling them about what she had learned with Jonny and Igrette. Jonny smiled to himself, then speed up slightly to join Igrette. He had a question to ask her about the steel shift, since he hadn't managed to figure it out yet.

Before he got the question out, though, A shadow fell over their heads, and he heard a scream of terror from Emily behind him. He immediately tensed ready for a fight, only to relax a second later when he saw what had happened.

"Chuck!" he said in an exasperated tone.

"Wait, don't hurt him!" He rushed forward to stand between the hawk and Alden, who was readying some kind of spell. Alden stayed his hand, but he didn't look particularly happy about Chuck's presence.

"I am so sorry," said Igrette stepping over to join us.

"I completely forgot to mention him. This is Charles, a cloud hawk. He's harmless to humans, and he's spent his entire life with us. He won't hurt anyone, or anything… Charles, drop that right now!" She glanced back, having finally noticed the thing dangling from the hawk's beak. It was a rat, dangling from its tail, and it seemed to still be alive. Charles obliged, and the rat fell, bouncing off the ground before landing on its feet. For a few seconds it, just stood there, staring.

It looked at everyone in turn, spending a bit of extra time on Jonny, and only ran away when Jonny stepped forward and kicked his leg at it to scare it off. It scurried away, disappearing into the grass.

"He doesn't usually–" Igrette started.

"Ow!" exclaimed Jonny.

"What the–? Chuck, what was that for?" Chuck had pecked him on the arm right after the rat ran off.

"Charles," said Igrette, turning around and bending down to look the hawk in the eyes.

"I am trying to convince them that you are safe, and you are not helping. Behave yourself." The bird shrank back slightly, but seemed to calm down. It still shot Jonny an angry glare, though. If you wanted the rat, you should have eaten it instead of bringing it here, thought Jonny, sticking his tongue out at him. Alden wasn't impressed with Chuck's domestication, but he ultimately relented, especially after Emily calmed back down, and got close enough to pet the hawk's beak.

Chuck liked getting pet on the beak, and when he leaned into her hand, he immediately won her over, and by extension, won Alden over.

"If he gets any cats, he's going to have to go," said Alden as Chuck finally flew off.

"I'll make sure he doesn't," said Igrette. Dinner that night was similar to the previous night, only this time, it happened without Oliver. He had been up all night, and most of the day, and fell asleep at his desk not long after lunch. This was not the first time he had done this, and apparently the Smiths all agreed that it was best to just leave him be instead of trying to wake him up.

That night, Jonny and Igrette talked privately, going deeper into the theory behind the both of the shieldbreakers that Igrette had come up with, only stopping when Jonny was yawning too much to finish a sentence. He took a quick shower, and stumbled back to his bed, falling asleep the moment his head hit the pillow. It had been a good day.