Truthful Transmigration

Earth cultivators were known for many things. Power and endurance were chief among those, and John had experienced those truths many times. What he least associated with earth were speed and flexibility.

Fortunately for his dignity, he had prepared seriously for his spar with Ursel, and his reaction to her sudden acceleration was swift enough to avoid her assault. The instant the battle began, she stomped downward pushing off of the surface as she hardened it. For most cultivators it would have been more efficient to use the spiritual energy to directly accelerate herself but her method hid her intentions and came with at least as much speed, her trained muscles springing forward with great force.

John knew how heavy her weapon and armor were, but she moved almost as if she were entirely unencumbered. When he tried to deflect her stone club, he had to force himself to move away from the weapon rather than deflecting it.

Her follow up attacks were not sluggish either, her weapon naturally reflecting off of the ground. She wasn’t even limited to set trajectories for her attacks, though it was clear that redirecting her own assaults did take some effort.

John didn’t try anything foolish like heating her up slowly. He knew her body would be able to withstand it at any reasonable level, so he would just be wasting his effort.

Despite her relative speed compared to where she should have been, John was still faster. He still intended to further bolster his movements with air related body tempering, but it was a slow process for him.

Ultimately, despite Ursel’s bodily advantage John was still half a Phase higher than her and he was able to avoid all of her attacks as long as he remained focused. Meanwhile, he still had a bit of leeway to counterattack, striking with lightning and concentrated flames meant to strike through her armor. Actually damaging said armor would be a more difficult task, and the difficulty of repairs made John not want to try such a method anyway. Even though he managed to land solid blows, Ursel seemed to shrug everything off.

John stepped close to Ursel, so that she could not swing her weapon properly. Her reaction was swift and decisive, dropping her grip with one hand and reaching out for him. If she got a hold of John, it would be difficult for him to get away- but he still found dodging her grip preferable to facing the arc of her weapon.

Having refamiliarized himself with her fighting style he came up with a counter. Fire element flowed around him, focused primarily on his sword. Of course, John was never channeling just one element and that moment was no exception. He boosted his speed until he managed to step behind her, away from the reach of her weapon and grasping arm. His sword cut across Ursel’s shoulder, burning away her defensive energy. His weapon clashed against her armor, causing no real damage to her.

Then his hand, filled with fire and water, touched atop her shoulder. Water flowed into the gaps of her armor then changed form- half to steam, and half to ice. Ursel’s arm that was swinging back towards him froze in its tracks as her shoulder joint stopped moving, her arm parallel with her body.

John danced aside as she ducked forward, kicking towards him while swinging her body and especially her club single handed. The earth shifted beneath him, but that move he was well prepared for, and he took advantage of the motion rather than letting it hamper him.

Knowing that it would take Ursel only a few moments to divest herself of the ice surrounding her shoulder, John didn’t slow his assault. She wanted a battle, and doing anything less than his best would be rude.

Darkness filled the area around them, hampering her sight and her sense of other elements. John moved with the wind, silent in his approach. Ursel began to swing wildly while trying to free her shoulder. The fact that she could swing her club of extremely dense stone with one arm once more impressed John. However, her actions being restricted for even a few moments provided an advantage that John cascaded to his victory.

He ducked beneath her club, next freezing her waist. Her armor was well made, allowing her for a great range of motion, but it also provided surfaces to which he could anchor more ice. John continued to split the heat away into steam, causing burns that would heal with time but would cause some consternation for Ursel in the moment.

Bit by bit John took away her mobility, and just a moment after the ice cracked around her first shoulder he froze that elbow to her side. At some point he had sheathed his sword, the weapon too large to be of much use. Instead he took one of his daggers, sliding it between the body and neck of her armor.

Ursel had one last bout of defiance, catching the dagger with her chin and snapping it against the top of her sternum. However, even she knew that she was only able to do that because John had held back with his spiritual energy, intending only to lightly pierce her skin. He didn’t underestimate Diamond Defense, of course, he’d simply limited his motion enough to stop himself if he did more damage than intended.

“Alright, I give up,” Ursel said.

“I’d very much hope so,” John said. “Most people would have had their muscles frozen by that. I didn’t get much deeper than your skin.”

“About that… can you remove all this?”

She might have gestured, if she could move any of her limbs.

John unfroze the ice made of dense spiritual energy, letting it drop away into puddles.

Ursel immediately spun around, grabbing John around the waist. “Ha! Got you!”

It was obvious that they had shifted from sparring mode to playful, as she used none of her spiritual energy in her following attempt to suplex him. John didn’t resist the motion of his body, but around the time he might have met the ground, Ursel realized there was nothing there. Instead, they floated a meter or so in the air.

“Hey, no fair!” Ursel complained, even as she intentionally spun them over and over. “Flying is cheating!”

“You’re only saying that because you can’t fly,” John grinned.

He dropped the two of them back to the ground a short time later, partially because Ursel was done and partially because it was rather difficult to lift her into the air even though she wasn’t resisting. If she wanted to anchor herself to the ground, he wasn’t sure he could do anything about it.

“Now I want to fight master Renato!” Ursel declared.

-----

The ‘fight’ between Ursel and Renato was short and brutal, ending up with her buried neck deep in the ground with a broken wrist. That broken wrist came about with the sort of blow that would have shattered most people’s arms, and according to Ursel it would recover within a few days.

“Do you have a regenerative technique?” John asked.

She shook her head. “Not particularly. It’s just that my body is so infused with earth element, all it takes to fix it is more of that. Healing is way more difficult than breaking things though. The burns will also go away quickly,” she explained, holding out her arm for him to watch.

Obviously he couldn’t see it happening with her armor in the way, but he could feel the earth energy infusing into her arm, and how her skin began to regrow, shedding the dead layers into dust as new skin regrew at a measurable pace. It clearly took more spiritual energy than Ursel could use in combat, but she should be able to complete the healing of her skin in just a few hours with only the energy she took in from her surroundings.

Of course, the Order of the Amber Heart was one of the denser locations of earth energy, even within the wider Stone Conglomerate, but the point remained.

“You’ve advanced your body tempering quite a bit,” John admitted. “When healing myself, I can only promote growth and let it happen, instead of advancing it directly.”

“You probably could with a bit of practice,” Ursel said. “You just need to convince your body it’s okay to work that hard. Oh, and don’t forget to feed it. Like, actual food.” Her stomach growled. “Speaking of which, we should eat something.”

“Absolutely,” John said. Sparring was still intense exercise, and even if most of his spiritual energy usage was replaced externally his body still needed food.

Ursel had been picky about her food when she was a little girl. She had been a proper woman for quite some time now, and ate everything ravenously. “All sorts of food have different things your body needs,” she explained.

“I’m pretty sure I’m the one who told you that,” John pointed out. She shrugged. “So, speaking of the body… I’ve been working on techniques of different elements to improve my own. It’s been some time since we covered the subject, and I wondered if you had any new advice.”

“Hmm… listen to your body,” Ursel said. “Usually, it’s whining about pain because you’re in the middle of something to make it better, but the way it hurts can tell you if you’re doing something really wrong.”

“A difficult balance,” John admitted. “It can lead to very unfortunate consequences.”

John shared the story of Musa and his nephew, and how failed body tempering led to a separation between two brothers.

“Listen,” Ursel said. “Young people are way too reckless with body tempering. And I say that as someone who stole the materials for Diamond Defense from you quite young. It’s a good thing that technique was well thought out to not be able to cause any damage that seemed impossible to undo. On that note, unless you’re dead or destroy your dantian… you can probably undo pretty much any changes. You just need to have a good idea of how the body is supposed to work to begin with. And it’s not always easy.”

“That sounds like the words of someone who screwed up a lot of things.”

“The secret is to call it experimentation and testing,” Ursel nodded. “Turns out, eyes are squishy for a reason. Which is why I instead focused my efforts on active skin hardening.” Ursel closed her eyes. “Go ahead and touch the lids.”

“It’s like stone,” John admitted. Yet as he lifted his fingers it softened- back to what he expected from Diamond Defense. It would still be tough, but not hard. “Perhaps I should learn that too. Also, did I feel a bit of spiritual energy there?”

Ursel nodded. “Any active shifts require spiritual energy. But you can set your body up to shift more easily. Well, that’s the only one I’ve seen any promise with. Usually you want your skin to act like skin, as it turns out. Likewise, you never want hard internal organs. And no, I didn’t actually try that.”

“Good,” John said. “Currently, I’ve used darkness to bolster my eyes- more than the initial blessing from Ciaritzal, I mean. Then earth is basically just Diamond Defense. Air I used to improve my reactions.”

“I noticed that,” Ursel said. “Often, people’s bodies react slower than their spiritual energy.”

“Next is my blood, using water. So far, I’ve been using it to purify myself but perhaps I should also add something like providing nutrients.” Ursel’s comments had made him think of that. Maybe he could store extra energy in his blood? Not spiritual energy, but sugars and the like. Though that would likely be more complicated than simply saying it. “I’ve considered a few things for fire, but I haven’t started yet. That seems like the element most likely to cause outsized damage to myself.”

Ursel grinned. “Yeah, I’d probably avoid turning yourself into a pile of ash. But we could talk about possibilities.”