Natasha the Halve

“Power and strength are different when it comes to combat,” Yolin explained while sitting on a small hill outside the temple. “What you want is power to deliver more kinetic energy. Lifting weights will give you strength instead, while also making you bigger. Being bigger, however, does not necessarily make you stronger or more powerful. On that note, being bigger will make you heavier, thus require more energy to move and strike... but that doesn't really matter past level 100. What matter is density over everything else since what you want is power in short bursts like punching, kicking, stabbing, swiping, and more. You achieve this with mechanical tension, metabolic stress, and muscle damage. There are many ways to go about them, and each help tremendously when incorporated to the leveling process because, while you get stronger, you might want to get bigger as well, or might want to avoid growing too big. Knowing what you want and how to achieve it is super important so you can be comfortable with how you look and feel.”

I, who was lying on the ground looking at the clouds high in the sky, nodded. “Hmm...”

“Tendon strength is perhaps the most important thing to consider before gaining muscular power,” the Oni continued. “You should make absolutely sure your body can sustain the stress you will put it through, otherwise you'll hurt yourself every time you exert any amount of force. Tendon strength also helps you avoid getting too big while also gaining considerable strength. Grip strength is super important, too. The point that connects your body to your weapon is your grip, and therefore needs to be extremely secure while also being flexible to avoid injury if the strike meets unexpected resistance. Your hand-stand push-ups are good for that, especially the ones where you support your body weight on your fingertips.”

That cloud looks like a penguin... I noticed, looking at a fat cloud in the distance. “I see...”

“Balance is as important as tendon strength when it comes to movement in the battlefield and the handling of your weapon. Your spear weighs around a thousand kilograms, but you don't get thrown off when you swing it... which goes to show how important balance is.”

“If we want to calculate limits, we first need to learn the formal definition of a limit,” Lapia explained while we sat on a table inside the temple's many rooms. “Let f(x) be a function defined on the interval that contains...”

I stared into the Elf's eyes, trying my best to understand the words that came out of her mouth for a good five minutes.

“If you look at this,” the Wizard produced a sheet of paper.

It had a moderately complex equation on it.

“You'll know how to solve this with these easy steps,” she continued, writing on the paper. “If the limit is x approaching infinity of 1999 times the cosinis of 2012 over x. You'll see that as x approaches infinity, 2012 over x approaches zero. Now, 1999 times the cosinis of zero, since we already established that just now...” she made a gesture for me to finish.

“I have no idea,” I replied, looking her dead in the eye and doing my best not to snap.

“That's okay,” she chuckled. “Remember that the cosinis of zero equals one, therefore 1999 times one is...” she did the gesture again, opening her palm and waving her hand.

“1999,” I sighed.

“Perfect,” Lapia praised with a big smile, then mercilessly uttered, “Now let's do it with rational functions over rational functions.”

I bit my lips and nodded. “Yay...” I deadpanned.

“Today we'll review Healing,” Alyssa revealed, sitting where Lapia did.

I nodded, ready to get my eyes opened once again.

“There are four main types of healing people. Codal, Chronal, Bondal, and Natural. Codal refers to healing that takes the coding of the person as a basis and objective, meaning that the patient will be healed back to how they are supposed to be according to the data inside the cells. This type of healing is used when helping the patient recover lost limbs, organs, and things they cannot recover naturally. The skill requires a formula that reads and reacts to the code of the individual, making it one of the most complex forms of healing. After Codal healing, it is imperative to follow up with Chronal healing, which means returning the individual to the state they were at before the injury. A person stores this information in three different ways: the mind, the soul, and the body. The three do the same job and how the healer approaches it will depend on their preferred way of dealing with Chronal healing.”

“Huh,” I uttered, intrigued by the subject.

“Chronal healing after Codal healing is important because our bodies change in the course of our lives, meaning they're not exactly the way the code expects them to. For example, if Yolin is split in half and I heal her with just Codal healing, her lower half will be slimmer since she exercises to gain mass.”

“Ahh... I see,” I whispered with a nod.

“Now, Bondal healing is, as the name implies, healing an individual's idea generated through the Bond. This means that I can heal Yolin through this idea I have formed of her in my mind thanks to the Bond, which cuts both time and resources when compared to Codal and Chronal. The nature of this form of healing is very intimate and requires...” she went quiet and her face turned a deep shade of purple.

“Cuddles?” I probed. “Like what Lapia said back in Riverfield?”

“Yes, cuddles,” Alyssa agreed with a smile. “Just like that. I would need to be close to the person I am healing in order to form this idea. Bondal healing takes the best of Codal and Chronal, but has the drawback of needing to really know the person. That is what I used on us, while I use Codal and Chronal on everyone else.”

I nodded in understanding. “I'm amazed by that brain of yours,” I chuckled. “I'm struggling with infinite limits or whatever the name is.”

“I spent three decades studying this,” the Luzo pointed out with a smile. “I would be beyond shocked if you could do this in less than a year. Like, out of my literal mind.”

I smiled and asked, “What about natural?”

“Yolin uses Natural healing, which is aiding the body's natural regeneration. She can't heal lost limbs or organs, like when I had to heal her eye back in Mountroad. She's able to heal surface wounds and things that would take time but in a short span, like a few minutes.”

“I see...” I muttered. “So why do you need to study people's anatomies if you can just read their code and heal them?” I inquried.

“Well, you need to learn how to apply the reading portion of a healing skill on each species. Elves are different from Oni, and they are different from Luzo, and they from Tigea, so on and so forth. Every species has their unique sequence of data that requires a specialized form of reading them.”

I smiled. “So you're galaxy brain?”

My girlfriend laughed.

Days passed like that. If we weren't training with the Gods, my girlfriends were teaching me different things.

There was no rest other than sleep.

I grew smarter by the day, which is always a good thing... so that's that.