The first thing we took care of the next morning was setting up the coop. And by we, I mean Kusano and I headed over to the garden and I kissed her so she could use her Norito to do all the work, planting another Oranut tree to grow into the coop, taking over one of the small fields to do so. She also used the original to finish building a fence, cutting the garden block off from the main block, leaving only an opening the size of a door, where we installed one.

Once it was ready I took the chickens out of the Pocket Space. They squawked for a bit at their apparently sudden change in environment, but once they calmed down we released them into the coop, which was far too large for just seven chickens but the plan was to raise more anyway.

Not that they paid any attention to the coop and instead started exploring the garden, pecking at the ground as they looked for bugs to eat. A fruitless endeavor, but Kusano put out some food for them and they happily ate that instead.

While they ate I gathered the others. "I've decided that yesterday wasn't exactly intensive enough to warrant spending today resting," I told them. "And with the worlds getting more dangerous soon, and the Credits I got yesterday, it's time to step up our training. You'll all be unlocking your Aura today and learning how to control it."

Matsu raised her hand. "Weren't you waiting for the talent sharing thing for that? We won't get the Credits for winging Tohru for another couple days, right?"

"I'm going to take a loan out to cover the purchases we need," I explained. " I'll pay it back when we do get the Credits. I just don't want to waste any time. You all will need to maintain Ten without thinking about it before we go to the next world."

"Oooh, okay," Matsu replied as she lowered her hand. "No more questions!"

"Anyone else?" I asked, looking around. No one said anything, a few of them shaking their heads. "Alright. Bisky, could you explain things to them while I make all the purchases?"

Bisky nodded and started on a lecture about the basics of Nen, one a bit more detailed than the one I gave when she awakened me. But I tuned her out and paid attention to my phone.

I had two credits to my name, but when the Dragon Maid world captures finished that would increase by 123 credits. Which gave me 125 Credits I could safely spend, and I already had a plan to use each and every one of them.

I took out a loan for 123 Credits and started buying upgrades. The first thing I bought was Rewards and Lobbying, which let me share my talents and other perks using the Demiplane Law system. The Skyblock is a Demiplane, which means I can set Laws, and those who break those Laws are automatically 'punished'. Quotes around punished because they were officially called Consequences, and they could be positive instead of just negative.

So I made a Law forbidding people within my Skyblock from being part of my Retinue, and thanks to Rewards and Lobbying, I was able to set the Consequence for that to be that they gain access to my Talents. Which was only Soul Talent, the important one, but we'd need more than that, so I picked up Athletic Talent so we could grow stronger and Martial Talent to help us learn to fight better.

All together that was 65 of my 125 credits, leaving me with just 60 left. I was saving ten for another Block to make a training area, so I spent the 50 remaining Credits on the second most important upgrade to our combat power. Laws of Magic.

Laws of Magic lets me make Laws about magic, as the name implies. But more importantly, it also let me assign Consequences related to anything that Soul Talent would apply to. Which included magic, as the name implied, but also encompassed any kind of internal energy, such as Aura.

I edited the Law against being in my Retinue to carry additional Consequences of having your magic capacity, magic regeneration rate, aura capacity, and aura regeneration rate to be increased. It had a limit, but that limit was a 500% increase, which was massive. It wouldn't happen all at once, it could only increase it by a small amount each time the Law was broken and it could only be broken once an hour.

But we'd reach the maximum before the end of the week, Bisky included. And Bisky was an experienced Nen user. Imagining her with five times the reserves and regeneration rate was equal parts terrifying, amazing, and arousing.

It also technically only worked within the Skyblock, my Demiplane, where I had control. The effects decayed while outside of it, but at the extremely slow rate of 1% a day. Which, for our situation, was nothing. There was little difference between 500% and 499%, and we wouldn't be able to stay in a world long enough for it to drop further.

I hit the button to confirm that I wanted to start enforcing the Law, and Bisky and Levy both stirred before looking at me. "Did you just do something?" Bisky asked.

"Did you feel your reserves grow a little bit?" I replied with a grin. "Yes, I did do something." I then explained Laws and the changes I made to them.

Uzume gaped at me. "Isn't that… just straight up cheating?"

"This is the power that the Company offers me," I explained. "This is why I signed up. We've been dealing with very few credits and having to purchase small things so far. No offense Bisky." She rolled her eyes. "But we finally got the Credits we needed to get the nice stuff, and this is it." I shook my head. "Besides, it's not so much a cheat as it is an equalizer. We're going to need every advantage we can get in the future."

"Well, Matsu certainly won't complain about OP buffs!" Matsu added as she gave me a thumbs up. "Good job Ashikabi-tan!"

"And that's a multiplier on our base?" Bisky asked, looking down at her hand where her aura swirled and formed different shapes. "If we increase our base reserves through training, will we get a proportional increase?"

"Yes," I confirmed, having checked that myself when I was setting up the Consequences. "As Matsu said, it's basically a buff, multiplying what we have."

"Good, all the more reason to devote time to practicing your Ren," Bisky concluded. "Do you have anything else to do before we get started awakening them?"

"Yes, actually." I turned to Kusano. "I'm going to need you to do some more growing and building."

"Okay!" Kusano eagerly agreed. "Where at?"

I tapped at my phone. "Right here," I said as I finalized my purchase. Another block of land appeared behind me, the sound of the wind changing being the only way I could tell that it was there. Well, that and the other's reactions as they jumped in surprise and gaped at it.

"This will be our training block," I announced. "Kusano will build tall and sturdy walls using multiple trees to prevent anyone from falling off, and hopefully prevent us from losing too much dirt. We can work out, train, and spar here. That won't be an issue, right Kusano?"

"I'll make them extra sturdy!" Kusano agreed.

"Go ahead and start Awakening them while Kusano and I set it up," I told Bisky. She nodded and started instructing the girls, getting them lined up as she prepared to force open their Aura nodes.

Kusano and I explored the new block. There was a small pond as usual near the center of it. "We'll have to empty that or something," I commented looking at it. "Or just treat it as a field hazard."

"It does feel like a waste to get rid of it, but we can always make another pond," Kusano added. "Oh, there's the sapling! It's a different color from the other two."

She was right. Not too far from the pond was a small sapling with ash gray bark. "Let's move it to one of the corners. I was thinking one tree in each corner should be enough, right?"

"I believe so," Kusano agreed. "Are we going to use blapple or oranut trees in the other corners?"

"No, we'll grow this one enough to get some fruit from it and then use those seeds for the other ones," I said. "With how different the coloration is on this one, I don't want to mix different kinds of trees. It would look weird."

"Hmm, that's true," Kusano agreed. "I wonder what kind of fruit it'll have!"

I grinned. "Let's find out."

We dug up the sapling and moved it to one of the corners of the block, which I had placed just east of the central block, meaning our skyblock now formed an L shape, with the main block at the corner.

Once it was there, Kusano did her thing and grew it to full maturity. Fruit grew from its branches at a record speed, like I was watching a timelapse.

"Bananas?" I said out loud as I observed them. But of course, they weren't normal. They were banana shaped, but they were green, and not an unripe banana green, but a dark green with no hint of yellow. And as I reached up to grab one I noticed the texture was wrong. It kind of felt like the surface of an orange.

I exchanged looks with Kusano, who just looked excited, before shrugging and opening it like I would a normal banana. The peel split easily, and inside was a fruit that definitely wasn't a banana. It was light pink in color, the same shade as pink lemonade. The smell was sweet of course, and it was vaguely familiar.

A single bite was all that it took to make the connection. "Melon!" I announced, offering the banana to Kusano. She tucked a strand of hair out of the way before leaning over and wrapping her lips around the fruit, distracting me for a moment before her teeth bit into it and the moment was ruined.

"It's not a watermelon though," she commented after she finished eating it. "Or a honeydew, or any other kind of melon I've had. But it definitely tastes and feels similar to all of those."

"Banana melon," I mused. "Bananelon? Banlon? No, those are hard to say. Hmm. Melnana?"

"I like that!" Kusano agreed as she reached for another one. She wasn't tall enough though, so I picked it for her and gave it to her. "Melnana is fun!"

"Melnana it is then," I said with a nod.

The seeds for them turned out to be at the bottom, a hardened chunk that that fruit was growing out of. The peels were tossed over the side, like the rest of the small amount of trash we produced.

Seeds obtained and stomachs full, we planted and grew the other three trees in preparation for making the walls.

"Can you, I don't know, grow the trunks sideways?" I asked Kusano. "That would be a bit more sturdy than branches and roots."

But she shook her head. "A trunk is circular. I can make it bigger and control the direction of it, but it will always be a cylinder. I can't make it flat like that."

I rubbed my chin. "Could you make it grow sideways then? At least provide a solid trunk as a central part of the wall?"

She shook her head again. "I could, but it wouldn't be a good idea. Trunks aren't designed to grow that way, and once my power leaves it, normal physics will apply to it. Bending like that will cause it to sag over time, eventually breaking as the weight of it proved too much."

I gave her a look. "That was a very confident reply. Have you tried that?"

She nodded. "I did lots of experimentation like that while MBI adjusted me. They made me try out all kinds of things."

"I see. Well, it was worth a shot. Just make them as sturdy as possible, take your time, and if we need to add more trees we will."

I kissed Kusano again, allowing her to use her Norito, and the trees started growing. Much like the house, branches grew across the block and the ground rumbled as roots pushed through the dirt, meeting each other halfway and supporting each other. But unlike the house, the branches and roots didn't just grow flush to each other. They twisted, wrapping around to create tight and sturdy bonds before growing thicker. That caused them to push against each other, competing for space between the trees and making a thick wall.

And did I mention how tall it was? Also unlike the house, these walls towered into the sky, at least twenty feet tall, if not higher. We'd outgrow them eventually, but not any time soon.

"Good job Kusano," I praised her as I patted her on the head. "We'll get Bisky to test them, but they look pretty good. Let's go join them so you can start working on your Nen as well.

"Okay Onii-chan," she dutifully replied.

We arrived back at the others to see all of the girls standing in a line. Levy, Matsu, and Uzume were all standing still, eyes closed as aura poured from their bodies. I watched silently as Bisky stood in front of Chiho, aura wrapping around the other girl and opening her nodes as well. I nudged Kusano, nodding my head in their direction to indicate she should stand in line.

Aura started pouring from Chiho as well. She gasped and looked around, her eyes latching on to the others and then looking at Bisky and I, noticing our auras.

"Now, just as I told the others, close your eyes and concentrate on keeping your aura contained," Bisky instructed. "You will have to find your own method of doing that, just explore what feels natural."

"Okay," she said with a nod as she closed her eyes and started to focus.

Bisky then moved on to Kusano and repeated the process. I looked over to Tinks and VV, who were both watching with interest. Tinks from her forge and VV from the roof of the house, where he was sunbathing next to the solar panels.

We decided to leave them out of this for now. Pokemon had aura, but it was different, and I didn't want to risk hurting them if it turned out they didn't have aura nodes. I'd have to try to get back to the Pokemon world somehow to track down more information on that. Or maybe catch a Lucario, since they had a natural mastery over aura.

I think. It wasn't exactly a part of Pokemon I had paid attention to before, so I only had passing knowledge of it. But a bit of research would clear that up.

Once Kusano's aura was flowing and she was also working on learning Ten, Bisky walked over to me. "There weren't any problems," she reported in a quiet voice so she wouldn't disturb the others.

I nodded. "Good. Kusano's walls look sturdy to me, but I want you to test them. Later, when doing so wouldn't disturb the focus of the others."

"Agreed. In the meantime, let's get started on your next training. You know of Gyo and In, correct?"

I nodded. "Gyo is focusing your aura around your eyes to let you see Aura better, which is a direct counter to In, which is a technique that lets you hide your aura from the senses of others."

"Seven out of ten points," she graded. "Gyo is most often used on the eyes, but it is technically the name of the technique where you concentrate a significant portion of your aura into one body part to enhance its abilities at the cost of reduced defense and strength elsewhere."

"The rest is correct though," she continued. "In hides your aura, making it imperceptible, but Gyo can counter that, allowing you to see it, even if you don't feel it. Though it's important to note that this isn't binary. Those more skilled at In can hide their aura from an amateur Gyo user, or even hide it so thoroughly that a skilled Gyo user would be forced to expend a lot of aura to see it."

I nodded as I mulled over her words. Some of the information about In was new to me, but I could see how it worked. "I don't know how to use In," I admitted. "The show I watched never explained it."

"It's an advanced technique, and not every Nen user is suited to it," Bisky replied. "Mastering Gyo so you can counter it is far more important, and is something every Nen user should learn."

"Even if we won't be fighting other Nen users?" I asked.

"What is the Danger Rating of my world?" Bisky countered.

I paused. "Four, if I remember right."

"Then you can't say we won't be fighting other Nen users, can you? Besides, while Nen was the only technique of this sort in our world, you've already confirmed that using life energy like this is present in many other worlds. Gyo might prove useful in multiple ways as it improves your ability to see aura. There's no telling what use you might get out of it."

"I can't argue against that," I gave in. "Not that I'm against learning Gyo, I just want to prioritize the things that will be the most useful for us."

"Hmm. I see your point," Bisky admitted. "But Gyo is a simple technique, and learning to concentrate your aura in one place is important for most of the rest of the other techniques, as they have to do with controlling the distribution of your aura. So we'll start there, but we won't spend too much time on it before moving on. Does that sound fair to you?"

"Yes Sensei," I replied, entering student mode.

"Good. Now show me your Ren."

I took a deep breath, chest expanding, and then let it all out as I pushed my Ren out. Having trained in it over a week now, aided by Soul Talent, Ren was easy to achieve. Aura shot from my skin, forming a raging storm around me that filled me with strength. And I could hold this state for over ten minutes so long as I wasn't doing anything else.

"Now I want you to take that aura and channel it all through your eyes," Bisky instructed. She lifted her hand, one finger extended and pointed to the sky. "Do it until you can see the shape I'm making with my In-hidden Aura."

I nodded as I set upon figuring out how to do that. Controlling my aura was still very difficult for me to do. But in this case, wasn't it more of a matter of controlling where it was released?

It took me a bit of thinking to figure it out, but eventually I settled on a mental image that helped. The cube that represented me in my mind had pipes installed in it. Those pipes were connected to a central pump.

My control over those two things were limited though. My pump had two speeds it ran at, the normal resting speed, and the Ren speed. That is to say, I could mentally flip a switch to increase the pressure, which sent aura through the 'pipes' that represented my aura nodes at a higher rate.

The 'pipes' themselves I could only control by opening them or closing them, which I could do en masse to enter Zetsu. That increased internal pressure, where the metaphor I was using fell apart a bit because that was actually a good thing.

But what I wanted for Gyo was to concentrate all of that aura in one place. Which meant keeping that 'pump' pushing out aura, but to close all of my nodes except for the ones around my eyes.

I took a deep breath and then flexed, closing my nodes. It wasn't easy, and in fact it was quite the strain. It was one thing to close the nodes when in a state of Ten, where the pressure was minimal. But to close nodes that actively had aura running through them? And then keep them closed as aura pushed at them?

I let out a grunt of exertion, forcefully holding back a louder yell that would distract the others. My eyes were open but my focus was entirely on the feeling of my aura traveling through my nodes. It flared up sporadically, the aura I was emitting shifting chaotically like the raging sea as I closed nodes only for them to be forcefully pushed open.

But slowly, ever so slowly, I started getting it under control. More and more of my nodes stayed closed even as the pressure inside of me increased. The aura that poured from random parts of my body gradually evened out. The more I got it under control, the easier I found it to stay in control, as the aura within my body flowed towards my eyes, rather than my closed nodes.

I was able to shift enough of my focus to make out a faint shimmer of air above Bisky's finger. More and more nodes closed, the aura around my eyes growing stronger with each one, and the image growing clearer.

I could make it out well enough to guess before I finished perfecting my Gyo, but I kept struggling until all of my aura nodes were closed except for the ones I wanted open, and I could clearly see the shape she was making.

"That's a penis," I said, recovering some of my mental energy as I stared at the crude shape she had formed her aura into.

"It's your penis," she specified. "But yes, good job. Of course, that took entirely too long. Now that you've figured out the trick of it, we'll be working on improving your speed. And you'll do it from Ren each time. I know it's harder, that's why we'll be doing it like that. Gyo is used in combat, and you will be using your aura quite heavily when in combat, so you have to learn it like this. You can drop it for now though."

She lowered her hand and I allowed myself to relax, entering Ten as I decreased the pressure and opened my aura nodes back up. They ached, just a little, like I had worked them out. "And when I run out of aura?" I asked.

"Physical conditioning," she said simply. "You purchased Athletic Talent, right? Just like the aura boost you gave us earlier, Aura acts as a multiplier for your base strength. You'll do some basic exercises while you recover your aura in Zetsu."

I nodded before looking back over to the others. All five of them were still standing there, aura leaking from them, just as I had seen them before.

"It will probably be a couple hours until we see any changes with them," Bisky commented. "We didn't do the pre-training of meditation like I had you do. Of course, some of them have experience with supernatural abilities already, so perhaps they'll figure it out faster. But you don't need to worry about them, I'm keeping an eye on it."

"Right," I said. "I'll try not to worry."

"Just focus on Gyo. Now, do it again, and if you're too slow I'll punish you."

I stiffened up, not sure I wanted to experience what Bisky would deem punishment, and immediately entered Ren as Bisky lifted her finger, directing the aura towards my eyes.

Just as she promised, we spent the next two hours repeating that, with breaks every so often to let my aura recover. I felt it when the Law kicked in and increased my aura reserves and how fast it recovered, the change small but noticeable.

It was as I was doing pushups in Zetsu, Bisky sitting cross legged on my back, that one of the others finally managed to achieve a state of Ten. Their auras had fluctuated over those two hours, but this was the first time the flow of aura stopped completely and stayed like that for more than a few seconds.

Bisky and I both looked to see who it was and saw Uzume opening her eyes, aura calmly wrapping around her like a shell.

She looked up at us and flashed us a grin. "I did it!"

The other girls opened their eyes and turned to look at her. Bisky got off my back and walked over, looking her up and down.

"Yes, you have," Bisky said eventually. "A bit earlier than I expected too, even taking the Talent into account."

"Well, once I started comparing it to my Sekirei power and imagined it like my cloth wrapped around me, minus the cloth and leaving only the power, it just clicked," she explained.

"Oh!" Kusano said, causing everyone to look at her. She closed her eyes again and concentrated for a moment, and then she too entered a state of Ten. She opened her eyes again and smiled. "That made a lot of sense, I just had to imagine plants instead! Thanks Uzume."

"Yeah, no, that doesn't really work for me," Matsu complained. "My power doesn't work like that."

"My magic doesn't either," Levy added.

Chiho didn't say anything, but she didn't really need to either.

"Nen is extremely personal, so what works for one person won't necessarily work for another. But those are good examples of the kinds of mental images that can be useful for getting the hang of it. Uzume and Kusano, your next goal is to keep it up while you do other things. Go do the work you'd normally be doing while maintaining Ten. The others, keep trying. Roland, more pushups."

"Yes Sensei," I said dutifully, getting back on the ground and starting my pushups again. My muscles burned in that pleasant but aching way that showed they were being pushed to their limits, despite the fact that I had long surpassed what I was able to do even with Body Tune Up without the aid of aura.

Thankfully, over the next couple hours, we all made great progress. Chiho was the next one to figure out Ten, finally reigning in control over her aura, and she went to where Uzume was, to help her with her tasks. Then Levy figured it out, followed shortly by Matsu.

The Skyblock suddenly felt much more alive to my senses, with the auras of six other people pulsing all around me, their control slipping momentarily before snapping back into place. Before they were candles, but now they were campfires, their life energy burning and on display to my sixth sense.

And they weren't the only ones to improve.

"What shape?" Bisky asked, holding her finger up once more. In an instant my aura flared and then was concentrated just around my eyes.

"A cylinder," I said, because she had moved on to 3D shapes.

"And now?" she asked as it shifted and became a little dimmer, more hidden with In.

"A skull."

"Now?"

"A cat."

"And this one?" she asked one final time, the shape disappearing almost entirely.

But I could still make out the shape. "My penis, again," I said with a sigh. She enjoyed doing that one, adding more detail each time.

"Hmm, interesting," she muttered to herself. "Congratulations, you've mastered Gyo."

I blinked at her as I shifted back into Ten. "I'm sorry, what?" I asked, confused.

"You've mastered Gyo, at least as far as using it to see is concerned," Bisky repeated. "Try doing it in your fist."

I hesitated for a moment, not prepared to be done so quickly, but did as she said, doing the same process as before but leaving the nodes around my right hand open instead of the ones around my eyes.

It was a struggle, almost as much as the first time I used Gyo on my eyes, but after a few moments I managed it. I couldn't see the result, but I could feel it with my sixth sense.

"Hmm. Okay, we'll train that next," she decided. "I'll call out a body part, and you'll focus your aura there. Every time I point, switch to using your eyes and see the shape I make. Got it?"

"Got it," I repeated. I was mentally flagging a bit at this point, not used to constant training. But I knew that this was just the start, and I'd need to get used to it, so I pushed my weariness aside.

Our training continues until dinner as I'm mentally and physically pushed into controlling my aura. Maybe it was the fatigue catching up to me, but I found using Gyo in any other part of my body except for my eyes a struggle. I faced Bisky's punishments several times when I was too slow, and the punishment turned out to be planking, holding the position with her on my back until she was satisfied.

By the time the others called us in for dinner, I was a sweaty and shaking mess, my entire body aching and my mind dull. Even now, having recovered enough to write this journal, I don't really remember dinner. It was a blur as I shoveled food into my mouth, hungry despite eating an entire melnana earlier, plus the bit of fruit we had for breakfast.

Tomorrow will be more training with Gyo since Bisky's not satisfied with my skill with that. But we'll also be doing combat training. Learning more Nen is good, but I need to be able to fight as well. There are going to be people who just need their ass kicked, and people who will fight me regardless of what I want.

But that's what training is for, and Martial Talent. I'm not sure how that's going to go, but I'll trust Bisky's teaching ability. It's why I got her after all, and she's been doing a fantastic job so far.

I'm tired and I ache all over, so I'll end it here.

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AN: Finally, Laws are here. The Skyblock was very much balanced and designed around the ability to pick up these Law perks and leverage them to control the Skyblock, they're just expensive enough that it took us a while to get to the point where we could start picking them up. They're the solution to several of the biggest problems introduced by the limitations of the Skyblock. I'll explore that more as they are able to purchase those perks.

The stuff about Gyo/In not being binary and being a matter of skill and resource investment isn't something mentioned in canon, but it makes sense to me based on what we see. I'll explain more on why when I have Roland or one of the others start learning In, something we never see trained in canon so I've had to come up with my own interpretations of a few specific mechanics.