Chương 88: R&R2 Ch. 27 — Brief Lesson

Nicholas wasn't one to believe in luck, good or bad; it was all just patterns to him. But Jasmine's entire recovery period being marked by a period of ease for the team to do everything could only mean one thing to him. Things are calm before disaster strikes as the world inhales to prepare for whatever is to come. He didn't know what was coming or even if it would be a problem for him to deal with, but Nicholas was sure that it was going to be difficult. Three weeks with nothing going on?

That meant something big was coming. Nicholas was going to be ready for it. He flipped through the air on the flying sword, wondering if they would change what they used to fly next rank. They would be able to actually fly, but most people still used other methods to augment it. And he was partial to the flying swords at this point. He could mess with the flight he would gain to make it focus on the sword, but that might limit him further.

It would probably be fine; Jasmine would make him the swords, they were cool, and that was half of her reasoning. Nicholas twisted through the air as he dodged an attack. The flying rank-one Beyonders were barely worth his time, but he called Book anyway. Not to use any commands that would have been equally expensive. He had a substantially easier method to kill them without expending too much power. Book just flew into the Beyonders, crushing them.

It wasn't a pretty way to deal with them, and it wouldn't work on anything even at his own tier, but against enemies far beneath him? It worked well enough. There was something he really didn't want to think about. If he was right and Constellation was after them for some godforsaken reason, then he was going to need to talk to his mentor on how to deal with a spatial manipulator. The idea of asking Rend anything pissed Nicholas off, but it wasn't something that he could ignore.

Jasmine was now back to normal function, though that didn't mean she was healed. Her act was a lot better before they had gotten to know one another, or his soul being bound to her soul had tipped him off. She could fight, but that was as far as his assessment went." Ping" Nicholas's command cast his senses wide; the influx of information was overwhelming, but that was the point. He had bottomed himself out for that command so that he could get as much information as possible.

The mentalists on the train then interpreted that information for all of them. It wasn't something they did often, but with Nicholas's desire to push his power farther, they had provided it as an option. He wasn't a huge fan of letting people dig around in his head like this, but it was useful.

"Got everything?" Once they confirmed they got all the information out of him they could, Nicholas flew back to the train and went through the effort of manually changing back into civilian clothes. That was the hardest part of spending everything at the end of his shift. He wanted nothing more than to be instantly back in his regular clothes, but no, he had to do it the normal way. Even as he helped Jasmine with her armor, he said a silent prayer of thanks that he didn't have to go through the hassle she did.

At C-rank it would be better, but only just. At even higher ranks, she could just teleport the armor onto herself; at C she would just be able to fly it onto herself. The process would be equally time-consuming; she just wouldn't need him to do it for her. Not that she needed him now, he did it because he was trying to be helpful and it was the right thing to do; she had said from the start she could manage.

"How are you feeling today?" Nicholas asked, gauging their bond. He had a rough guess of the answer, but he wanted to ask.

"Oh, you know, same as usual. I'm not feeling too bad," Jasmine said, lying. He didn't press there were other people around and he wouldn't talk about how bad he was doing when strangers were around. With each city, more people changed, and now the three of them plus Constellation were all that was left of the F-Ranks that had joined the train with them. That they were all now E and there were a plethora of new F-Ranks running around didn't matter. It was strange.

They had been around the same supers for a while in the city. Rend had reportedly traveled around in his younger years as a hero, but had done it as a larger band so he didn't have any advice for them working alongside strangers constantly. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original. Not that he had done much work before that either. His team's always had to work around him; his ability was so potent it warped team dynamics like that.

Nicholas didn't blame Rend's team, but he had to wonder if the fact that his power was so hard to work with colored his views on teamwork. Even for all Nicholas or Jasmine could do, the best they could provide Rend, even if he was their tear, was getting him close to the enemy. If other people were equally incapable of helping Nicholas, he could have had that point of view as well.

Though that was clearly not the whole story, since no matter how much they searched, Rend had never been on another hero team before Renegades. Hell, he was practically a ghost, just barely existing. He must have used a different name before, even if they didn't know what it was. That wasn't all that uncommon; heroes changed names all the time just to get away from their identities or to rework themselves. Much to the shock of everyone, Rend was waiting for them when they returned to their rooms.

"Did someone die?" Nicholas asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I thought it was time for you all to get some training," Rend said, rubbing his hands together.

"You three have all more or less learned one of the three hallmark techniques of proper heroes: using Belief, Karma, or Will in combat." Nicholas and Jasmine exchanged a look. They hadn't heard about the will thing, so that had to mean Eva did it.

"Will imbuing sounds super useful, why didn't you give books for that to either of us?" Jasmine asked, gesturing to herself and Nicholas.

"Wouldn't work. You use weapons and armor, it's better for them to move how you move than how your brain wants to move. And Nicholas, the impact wouldn't be great since his words are so modular already." Rend explained.

"But for Twister it's perfect, so whoever taught you that was brilliant."

"I taught myself, if you mean the living tornado thing," Twister said, confused.

"But I thought you weren't going to teach me?"

"I'm not teaching you, but if you listen in on the lectures to these two, I'm sure you'll learn something."

"I thought you weren't going to teach us at all. What changed?" Nicholas asked, not willing to change course.

"Well, you're about to hit D, so I need you all to be at least prepared for that, but no, I am a firm believer that the best foundations have to be self-made. Until you're C-rank, I'm not going to teach you that much."

"Aren't you only C-rank? Once we're there, wouldn't we be equals?" Jasmine asked. It wasn't uncommon to have a more experienced person teach someone at the same rank, but it was equally common for teaching to stop at that point.

"That's only if I'm actually C-Rank or if that's just what you all believe? Or I could just progress. It's been a while," Rend said absentmindedly.

"So what do we need to do to prepare?" Eva asked the only one actually interested in the lesson. She had been used to a far more structured way of developing as a hero.

"To get to level one, you need to believe in yourself," Rend began as the three of them settled down.

"There's lots of ways to trick it, but fundamentally that's what all of them do. For the next rank, you need to be able to perceive yourself."

"And the Karma and Belief?" Nicholas asked.

"You don't do anything for that, you could just set up a social media campaign run by a robot and gain Karma and Belief," Rend said, waving a hand. That was actually a good idea. Nicholas wasn't good at that kind of stuff, but he could probably pay someone to do that for him. He would still do all the hero work, but it would mean the marketing was no longer his problem. Though he would still have to oversee everything.

"To reach level three that is marked by a few things, preparing your body, and changing how your power works, we generally call them processing techniques. Nicholas condenses his power, Jasmine works on quantity, and Eva does the responsiveness of her power. Though Eva and Nicholas use the same regeneration one in combat. And while it's not for future growth, most people start learning one of the imbuing techniques at this stage." Rend explained. Nicholas was following, but he wasn't sure why they were recapping.

He would have to brush up on his skill with using his Belief to fuel his workings, since the wave he hadn't had to do that, though it would have helped with the demons. It needed to be a habit. Which was counter to most of his training, but he would figure it out eventually.

"There's a lot of misinformation about four, and that's because it's not like the others; you often can't even realize what you did to prepare your mind for it. For most people, it develops as flight, but not everyone. And what you're really developing at this stage is movement."

"Movement?"

"Movement?"

"I'm pretty sure we can already move."

"Be quiet, you!" Rend admonished.

"For some it develops an entirely new ability, often flight; for myself and others it developed into an additional connection for our abilities. The advice my mentor gave me, and I'll give the same to you, is simple. Focus on your journey, not where you're going, but how you'll get there. That's the trick to moving to level four easily." The three of them sat in silence, thinking for a moment.

"Okay, I'm going to go kill monsters. Have fun," Rend said, and with a flick of his sword he was gone.

"I'm betting the tunnels he cuts through space is how he did that," Nicholas said absentmindedly. He might copy his mentor; it had taken him some time to remember, but he did have Gate which worked by folding two points in space. It wasn't teleportation, and that worked in Nicholas's head. It seemed lazy to use a level up to let him bypass his inability to conceive of a method to instantly be in another place, but it would be useful.

"I have no idea what I would want to move with," Jasmine admitted.

"I hope mine develops as even better flight; flying is amazing, and I know you guys love the flying swords but honestly when I am flying it's even better than that," Eva commented. Nicholas could see the appeal of flight and it would be useful, though he was guessing he could also use the level five improvement on flight. If it worked how he understood it of everyone gimping his own ability flying with that was easy. And he could make more collective words like Dragon or Playroom that let him fly.

"I wonder if there's anyone that used it for time travel," Jasmine asked quietly. Silence lapsed over all of them as that horrifying idea sank in. There were no known supers who could travel through time, but there were some that certainly had temporal abilities.