A Worthy Opponent

" MAMA! ONII-CHAN! UPPIES~~! "

Today was Seekvaira's birthday.

This past year her hair had grown a bit, reaching her ears and needing to be tied most of the time. Her face shape had already changed quite a bit from newborn baby squishiness to a year old softness.

She could now stand while holding things and had taken her first steps, before falling back to her crawling immediately after.

Her new vocabulary was also growing, proving my theory that devil babies grew faster than human ones.

I mean I was 3 years old when I got here and no one seemed to question my extensive vocabulary, how well my body supported my weight, and how well I could move around.

Devils were just built differently where they would be mostly capable of feeding, talking, socializing, walking, running, potty and much more by the time they were two.

My little devil though, was now able to use words like 'uppies' 'kissesh' 'nomnom' 'dada' 'mama' 'onii-chan'(I thought her the -chan suffix, obviously), 'poopie' 'Vivi'(my mother) and 'Catt' (we all know who that is).

She was crawling around like a maniac all the time and even tried walking while holding the walls sometimes, making our lives that much more chaotic since she loved to disappear whenever Gianna was taking care of her.

Me and my mom could hear her though, and would come to the rescue whenever she hid somewhere.

I raised her from the floor and helped her blow into her single candle. Devils did the whole equal number of candles to age schtick till they reached a hundred.

Also don't fucking judge me for teaching her Onii-chan! I was born in a country where we also used suffixes, similar to Japanese.

I also had small baby cousins and the previous slave driver of a baby sister of mine, and they would all call me the same way.

It was eerie how similar my previous language was to Japanese in some ways.

The Underworld was a mixture of asian and european culture, and since we dealt a lot with the Youkai faction throughout history and even now, we had the best relations with them compared to other factions or pantheons;

It was nice. Not overbearingly weeb levels of shit, just the cool parts, like heated and cooled and directional water spraying toilets.

I enjoyed the laughter that my sister was loudly letting out, barely understanding birthdays and still having the time of her life.

Sairaorg better break records and find more than golden lions if he ever ends up hurting this one.

...

I stopped my internal monologue to enjoy my favorite person's birthday.

[}-o-{]

" Damn it to hell gremlin! You were supposed to take it easy today, your exam is tomorrow. "

" Hey, don't act like you didn't have as much fun as I did, woman. Also there is nobody in that class that could match up to me, worst case scenario I'll just stop my aging process and instead use Razors for the fight. "

" How strong are they? "

I chuckled.

" The kids or the Razors? " I saw consideration in her eyes.

" ... Give me both."

" Well, if those kids still haven't decided to pick up barrier magic;

let's just say after one Razor, there would be two of them. "

" Geez. This whole aging shit has made you even stronger then, last time I saw them they were a little bit better than regular elemental magic. " Well yeah, constantly draining energy grew my reserves exponantially.

" Of course, Cathy-chan, that was the goal after all."

We both sat on the ground of our training room, bottles of water in hands as we tried to catch our breath. It had been another month since Seek-chan's birthday and I already made the progress I was looking for.

We were just now done with my Paranza Corta training. And I felt like it was coming along nicely, it was really tiring though.

" How do you think I'm doing in Paranza Corta, Cathy-chan? You haven't really given me feedback on my current level. "

" Huh, did I forget to do that? We are almost done with it Impy. "

" Wait, wait, wait. In two and a half months? Isn't that too short for a martial art? "

" You have to consider that most people don't have the understanding you do. You calculate every little aspect of training and analyze them, angles of your feet, where your elbows point to, distance, range of motion, length of the blades, direction of potential bullet ways."

She thought for a second.

" It feels like I'm more so fighting with a choreographed dance than someone trying to kill me. "

" Isn't that a bad thing? Someone could figure out my attack patterns that way, no?"

" That's why we will do more than just one type of martial art. That type of fast learning means that you still don't have real life experience with the art yet. You have the fundamentals down, and you are coming along nicely in sparring even when I don't hold back as much.

But someone actively trying to kill you and how you navigate that situation can only be learnt in combat. "

" Could you come for me while actively trying to kill me? "

…

" … If you ever bring that up again, I will kill you… "

" Yea, that's about what I guessed. What about hand to hand? "

" You still need more training in jiu-jitsu. That specific style is actually just an umbrella term for more than 4 different actual styles of fighting. I'll have you learn each one before we move on to something else. "

" Why that one specifically Cathy? "

" Take a guess. "

Hmm, well...

She teaches me a sub-division created for the supernatural by the youkai.
It helps you redirect attacks and disarm enemies.
It would let me fight with the enemies force against-

Wait, Youkai? Flow? Supernatural? Fluid? Redirection?

" You fucker! You are just trying to activate my Touki faster?"

She gave an unimpressed look towards me with a half lidded stare.

" Why are you mad exactly? "

" BECAUSE I'M MAD AT MYSELF FOR ONLY FIGURING IT OUT NOW!"

She started giggling cutely, before it turned into full blown laughter.

... I was too red from too much embarrassment to even say anything else to her.

[}-o-{]

Other than Paranza Corta being done, my reserves getting better, and furthering my hand to hand; I also now had a better control of my Ki and senses.

I could utilize my Ki to slowly let it flow through my body while meditating to just slightly alter my regeneration rates.

I was now able to utilize a form of teleportation circles that just needed one drawing, my space talent levels were high, and it showed while using teleportation.

I would dive really deep into space magic on a later date.

My Illusion magic was also coming along. I now had a spell that let me cover small parts of my body like moles, freckles or scars. I could create or hide those according to my will.

I had also finally created my PsiWind barrier, and with the Circle barrier next to it, I could utilize way higher defense than what my tiny little body would tell you.

Gun training was coming along nicely, my stamina levels kept increasing day by day from doing weighted runs, T5 was now put on hold as it took way too much energy and took away from my T4 mastery + my growth speedrun.

I had gotten way more acrobatic compared to my past life too, and I was a gymnast during middle and highschool so that was also cool.

My reflex training was finished, and we utilized that time for sparring.

As Cathy slowly stopped holding back bit by bit, the sparring sessions became the highest form of Reflex training by themselves.

I was now fighting her while she was moving easily a few times faster than the highest caliber human martial artists I saw from beyond.

This year for my birthday, we did mostly the same shenanigans as the last one. In our little family party seperate to the public one, they also celebrated me passing my third exams.

It was overall a nice day but nothing major happened.

I got some cool ass gifts though.

A set of dual tanto's were given by my lovely maid, as she claimed our next training in daggers would be Tanto Jutsu. Fantastic gift numero uno.

I kinda hoped that Gianna would get me something Seek-related once again but, it was not to be. I got a watch from her. One that screamed expensiveness and luxury, all the while being from materials found in the Underworld so it wouldn't even compare to Earth prices like Presidential Rolexes. Fantastic gift numero dos.

My mother had gotten me a skintight suit that would go under regular clothes. It would help regulate body tempratures, so if I was stuck in a cold place I'd feel warm, or if I was training I would not overheat and lose extra energy. Fantastic gift numero tres.

Though she clearly started a pattern of gifts that would protect me.

Another great gift was by my father who had given me a fucking magical gun. A real one this time that could shoot enchanted bullets, silver bullets, elemental bullets and a whole bunch more.

It was based off of a Colt Python with a 4" barrel. It would take any and all shaped bullets and change its barrel narrowness according to it, while looking the same from outside.

It would only eat up small amounts of magic for that and you could just charge it up to use a bunch of times, letting it be a fall back option for me if I ever ran out of mana. I don't remember hugging him harder before.

It could even shoot out energy bullets when out of ammo and could always keep firing thanks to that. It converted whatever type of energy given to it directly which meant I could charge it up with my PsiWind energy to have smaller razors on the go, that didn't drain from my energy. Fantastic gift numero cuatro.

… And then, then came the best gift ever. One that would end up changing everything and reshaping my life. I would someday look back at this gift and thank fate itself that I stumbled on such luck…

…

Seek-chan had drawn me and her, using pencils and crayons.

In it, we were flying above our garden and there were a bunch of hearts drawn around me.

My heart.

I can't.

TOO CUTE.

[}-o-{]

" Baby, you need to let yourself relax more okay? Senjutsu is not the same as demonic energy where you just let it flow through you to wherever you wanna cast it from, and then force it out. "

I now stood with my mother in our garden where we had small flowers growing from the ground next to the weeds.

She had felt my Ki reserves grow steadily, but she claimed that today I had a spike in power, and she was certain I could do the first training in Senjutsu now.

Not the Touki kind, the kind where you affect the world around you instead of strengthening yourself.

You know, the one that lets you do everything crazy like completely hiding your own aura, changing the blood flow of your enemy, stopping their life force from functioning and canceling their abilities.

Or ones such as seeing through illusions and barriers, HEAL people, or just blast ki balls.

That Senjutsu.

...

It was hard as shit though.

" So I should just circulate it around more? When do I even choose to channel it then if it is not gonna stay in place for long, wouldn't it disappear the moment I let it flow away once again? "

" You have to channel it all the time, just change the locations a bit. You know how we breathe right?

Our diaphragm gets constricted, flattening itself and increasing the area of your chest creating a vacuum. That vacuum then helps suck in the air and fill the lungs. Then it relaxes itself to increase the pressure which causes air to blow out.

When the diaphragm constricts and pressurizes itself, the actual pressure in the chest lowers, when it relaxes itself, it creates a pressurized environment.

You need to be a diaphragm for your own Ki flow, relaxing your push when the Ki gets closer to your preferred channel, and constricting it while it escapes.

That will help create a constant output even though the Ki is constantly circulating and you are keeping an internal rhythm of reverse pressure. "

Damn. That shit was complicated.

I did understand what she was saying though. It was just a completely separate energy, so trying to activate it by the same principals wouldn't work.

The diaphragm analogy was glorious too mom, 10 points.

... How did I know I understood her?

Well, glad you asked,

The flower I was holding bloomed and grew double its size.

It started growing in size quite a bit, while getting all the more colorful.

It was a Lavender that had now fully blossomed even though they were newly planted.

I looked up to see my mother's shocked face as she probably expected to have to explain it more.

I picked the flower from the ground and gave it to her.

" Violet coloured flowers, for the world's best mom! Get it? You are the flower that is Viole-"

" Come here you cheeky imp, I'm so proud of you! "

Add Senjutsu to the list of things that I would bust my ass for, people. Cause I'm coming to KIck some ass. Get it? 'KI' -ck ass?

Fuck you too!

[}-o-{]

Fuck, FUCKFUCKFUCK!

I had messed up! I had messed up big time!

I hid behind a piece of giant rock that stood out. It was coming this way. It's blood filled gurgles that escaped his mouth were making me have goosebumps from fear.

Where was I?

Well, to start from the beginning, It had been about a month since I activated my first Senjutsu technique, and getting bored from my usual training;

I wanted the blood pumping ones. I was gonna enjoy a hunting session.

Using my bare hands and my daggers of course, the gun wouldn't really help with training.

... It was a fall back option.

I wanted to try hunting a Red Bear this time. The mutated version of a Demonic Bear. I heard someone in town talk about one that attacked recently, and wasn't killed as it escaped.

Sacrificing the two Demonic Bears that it came with, so it clearly had some intelligence. I was fairly stronger now and even if I didn't use my Razors, I was 2x as fast and could keep that up for hours. (Not the whole day yet but soon.)

I was fairly certain I could at least dodge it while slowly making it bleed piece by piece.

I went into the forest utilizing the trees once again, hiding all of my presence as best as I could while tracking for footprints potentially belonging to bears that were oversized.

Wasn't long before I found the gigantic fucker. Not really the quiet type, was he?

Same old story really, imagine a scary looking bear, give it metal looking spikes around its body, having really dark crimson fur, and also being three times the size of a brown bear.

My plan of attack was simple, challenge it directly to a fight since what I came here for was more combat experience against things that want to kill me or eat me, or both.

" Hello there, you overgrown pear eater, wanna dance? "

That captured its attention, and we started our dance immediately. The mutated bastards were way faster than what their size would suggest and could even use acrobatic movements.

I spent the first few minutes trying to analyze if it had an attack pattern. It mostly stuck to using his arms or front legs that had the same metal looking claws on them.

Each swipe could create enough force to easily cut down the trees around us, pulverize rocks and even make cracks on the floor.

... After figuring out a general sense of pattern, I went on the offensive as well.

I jumped over one of his attacks and used a reverse grip on one dagger while a regular grip on the other one. I used wind to flow back behind me, making me fall faster while spinning my torso.

The rotation of my 720 degree movement combined with my grip style created a blender effect on the poor bastard as I cut two deep gashes on the front left shoulder.

It let out a roar of pain, that held a promise on delivering that pain right back to me.

I saw its muscles twitching and growing, veins popping out where fur was on the shorter side and his eyes glowing red.

It could utilize demonic energy, fucking great…

Not trusting my luck with the bastard I increased my speed to 3x, just in case. The animal seemed the same speed though as it rushed to strike me down. It also had boosted itself for speed,

Though, his was more strength focused so he could probaby fuck shit up.

And I was definitely correct, as, when I dodged the strike and his arm landed back to the ground, there was a small crater where he had hit.

... Fuck me.

Some more dancing back and forth happened before I could find an opportunity to strike once again, and I did. This time directly to its ugly face (it was actually kind of cute, but I needed to motivate myself to kill it) and dug out its left eye with my blade.

I saw him reel back in pain and I didn't let him just recover itself. Capitalizing its mistake of turning to the side for a moment, I delivered another gash to its already injured arm.

After the strike though, he released a huge amount of energy from his body that pushed me back so hard, I broke the tree that I had hit myself against.

I saw it try to run away, limping as he walked.

My senses told me that it was almost completely out of energy so that explosion was a last resort for him.

I threw one of my daggers, stabbing it to his hind right leg, but he didn't particularly care about it. Which meant I had to chase him.

Small problem though, I couldn't really move my legs that well.

My arms were fine but the crash was directly above my pelvis right to my backside.

Probably some sort of spine damage.

I could stand up but the wobbliness of my legs showed me that I would not be running after the damn thing.

…

I'd be flying after it, of course.

I chased behind the trail of blood it left toward the entrance of a cave that I hadn't seen before.

Usually when I came here, I tried not to go too deep into the forest so as to have the chance to fall back if I got injured, so these parts were undiscovered territory for me.

Not this time though, apparently, my brain just decided that it wanted that bear dead.

I sat down at the entrance to the cave and sat on top of a tree, starting a small meditation session. I needed my energy reserves to be fuller and some light regeneration on my legs and nerves would do wonders.

I bandaged up small cuts and scratches that I had gotten as well, and just in case this time, I held a dagger in my hand and a gun in another this time around.

That bastard still had my other dagger, and I didn't know if it had another explosion ready since it had been about an hour since the last one. If that happened I would just shoot it from the back or Razor it to death.

The cave was mostly a straightforward tunnel that didn't have many forkroads. I knew where the bear was though, due to the disgusting smell of rotten flesh coming from a direction.

Signaling me that this was probably his lair, where he brought his hunts to eat. I also heard some small movement from there as well 'confirming' my theory.

'probably' his lair…

It fucking wasn't, let me tell you that.

Does anyone remember me questioning why this forest spawned so many demonic beasts? Well guess what, if I survive this, I was going to find that reason out immediately.

As soon as I had reached the room where I felt the smell from,

...

I saw a deformed hound-like beast that was two meters tall and stood on its hind legs, with a scary arch to its human looking back that you could see its spines from, and the face of a hyena. It had blood all over its body, and was looking at me like I was a delicious fucking snack.

... Kinda like what that bear was, since it was laying there almost cut in half with its guts falling out and half eaten.

What was this creature?

Oh, just a casual mutated Chupacabra.

Also known as the goat-sucker which was a way funnier name, the thing in front of me didn't look funny though.

Before I could even sweat, the malformed beast was almost on top of me, jumping while attacking.

I was so fast that my unboosted eyes couldn't see him move at all.

I activated my double-layered barrier immediately and barely survived the first attack it delivered.

I activated T4 4x immediately and already started feeling the drain on my reserves.

I wouldn't fight this monstrosity yet. I was half injured, tired, still not full mana, and still a kid.

This wasn't just an animal that was infused with Underworlds energy that mutated.

'It' was a mythological beast that had mutated. Just that simple fact told me enough about my chances in this fight, so I flew.

I flew as fast as I could. And it was still catching up to me.

I couldn't really look behind now but, when I heard it jump, making gurgling sounds that would haunt me for months, I did something smart for once this day.

I created a gust of wind from my hands, pushing me further, while pushing the bastard back, making it fall on its butt for a second.

I utilized this moment to blast Razor on the roof of the Cave in hope of creating distractions or blocked passageways.

Did I say smart? I'm sorry. I meant retarded.

How would I know where the weak points in a cave's structures are, do I look like a fucking geologist.

I'm a weeb doctor god damn it, was my thought as the ceiling started to collapse. The monster got back up and once again chased me around now, as I flew around dodging some falling rocks.

The distraction affected me more than the Cabra, as I was almost crushed by the ceiling in front of me completely closing on me. My hopeful anime protagonist moment was completely ruined.

And all of that,

... Meant that I had now officially cut out my escape route.

" Oh shit, here we go again…"

I turned back to see a skinless claw coming for my head, and barely dodged it flying down in a fast manner.

Three dimensional engagement was super effective against creatures that couldn't fly. Since they would have to jump to attack me which meant their direction would always stay the same until they landed again.

I shot two silver bullets at the bastard when it was still in the air, and landed both of them to its stomach. I used the distraction from those run back to the hallway that I just came from, and started preparing a teleportation circle in my hands.

The silver bullets had a paralyze-like poison effect for creatures of cursed nature. It was different from holy magic as it specifically targets abominations such as werewolves, true vampires, gorgons and similar 'abomination' type monsters.

Chupacabras were one of those so my hope was the poison effect would last enough for me to either find another exit, or finish my teleportation.

Guess what though, the bastard dug out the bullets planted deep within his stomach making itself bleed with each stab it gave itself. I saw him doing that from the corner of my eyes, as I made a sharp turn on a fork road that I came across.

I hid behind a giant rock I came across.

So here we are! With me reloading two more silver bullets into my gun, while changing the other bullets into silver ones as well.

Fun thing about revolvers, you can choose which bullet to fire by just spinning the, well the revolving part, but it was called a cylinder or a moon-clip if you were a total nerd.

So I had two silver bullets and three poisoned bullets. I kept an empty slot right behind my first shot, that way I could always just choose to fire my Razor bullets with a flick of my hand.

Now with all six slots filled with silver bullets and my gun hand still casting a teleportation circle, thank god I could multitask, I was prepared to keep up the chase a little longer.

So was he. Since we were standing face to face when I looked up.

Huh he had green eyes, surprising…

HOW DID HE BREACH MY SENSES?

Fuck

I barely dodged another claw, well I didn't since my back had three huge claw marks, but I was alive. For a little longer.

I stood my ground to bait into attacking and created a small barrier right where he targeted me. I didn't need it to be strong , I just needed it to give me a second.

Once his first claw connected with the barrier, I dodged the other one coming side, stepping it and then fired three shots to his legs.

I didn't trust this world's logic to throw random bullshit at my face, like him suddenly gaining the ability to dodge bullets that were coming to his face from desperation or fear of death.

I saw shit like that happen way too fucking often while hunting animals, also the anime, and found the best way to deal with threats was every form of immobilization and disability inflicted to them first.

The power of random power ups were absolute horseshit here.

The creature though, fell to one knee and started screaming in pain.

...

Good right?

...

Well, not for me as my ear drums were completely shattered.

" FUUUCCCKKKK! "

As I felt blood dripping from them and felt the hearing I trusted so often turning into static.

I kicked the bastard with all my anger at the back of his shitty head, breaking both my foot and his skull before he was sent 'flying' away a few meters away from me.

I also crouched down and held my head as the pain was too much. I could cancel my pain receptors, but, that worked in a whole body way and I needed to feel my internal injuries if they came up or I would bleed myself to death speeding up.

" YOU BASTARD! " I couldn't even hear myself.

I canceled the teleportation circle in rage and started blasting the bastard from one of the empty slots using my razor bullets, while flying backwards.

I would later learn that I had activated my sin of 'Wrath'. (Fucking great timing devil body, great goddamn timing.)

The monstrosity could not utilize his one leg that was shot, so doing the next best thing he could, he jumped at me using the other one. (It was more than strong enough to kick off the ground easily reaching where I was).

(If I was using my brain here, I could realize that since his destination was now fixed, I could just dodge and shoot him from behind, however this was the first time my 'Wrath' activated. So since no brain activity could be found. Guess what I did?)

I used my revolver hand to cast another barrier, meeting its claw middle way.

I flew further into him and decked his ugly face as hard as I could, easily breaking his jaw, as he clawed my outstretched hand in return.

I didn't feel any pain, which was weird. When I looked at my hand to see if I still had one,

I saw the silver glow coming from my arm, tanking the claw that came its way.

Smiling like a maniac I grabbed the arm that just attacked me and brought the bastard closer to me, grabbing it with my other hand, that dropped my Revolver, because why not, I threw the bastard over my shoulder into the ground.

When it landed, I also flew right into the ground on top of it further improving the small crated caused by the force,

And started punching the shit out its ugly face, both of my fists glowing in silver color as the creatures face slowly became more and more disfigured.

" UGLY! FUCKING! MUTT! NOT! KNOWING! ITS! PLACE! "

I felt blood pouring out from my stomach as I had been pierced by its claws from my back. Did I care?

" EAT! SHIT! AND! -"

I made both of my hands into a makeshift blunt weapon holding them together before attacking one last time,

" DIIEEEEEEEEEE!"

completely blowing his head up.

...

Its body went limp.

Fucking finally.

…

I couldn't enjoy my victory though, as I started losing consciousness, blood loss…

I landed on top of the corpse

The last thing I saw before the world turned black, was the teleportation circle that appeared in front of me.

[}-Chapter End-{]