3500 words. That's a big chappy. Y'all better appreciate it, cuz we are on a roll today, baby. Maybe two chapters tomorrow.
For those who read yesterday's chapter before it was changed.
I postponed MC vs Nurarihyon to two chapters from now where it made more sense. Four Phoenix Tears for learning a new power system was a fair price.
Again, thanks to KInggluttony for the advice and letting me avoid needless drama in the book. You the bomb, man!
Wait another two chapters when the touki training ends, there MC will fight Nurarihyon.
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We moved further inwards through the mountains following the old cat Magari, till surprisingly we came out to a pocket of valleys in the middle, inhabited by a small town and even a few dying villages on their last legs in the distance, rice fields stretching as far as the eye could see, a lone highway branching out into small roads and dirt trails.
Up the mountain, down one of those very dirt trails, in one corner of those misty, scenic mountain valleys, sat a simple, if rather large, ryokan, built on top of a natural hot spring and surrounding it, a tiny village with one shop and about 15 small houses and shacks.
Nyan-kan, as the sign read, the home of the Nekomata clan of youkai.
Myeeeaarw!
Magari yelled out and almost instantly, all the doors and windows slammed opened in the sizeable structure, the residents scrambling to appear in view, many were even sandwiched in their only openings, while some others climbed out onto the roof overhang, sitting up high and observing us curiously.
The residents were mainly split in two, I observed. Most were regular anime catgirls and catboys- catpeople? -, probably the younger ones, with two tails or less- though there were some I noticed who had up to four tails and were humanoid, but these were more on the furry side of things- and those with five tails and above, the minority of them, could be counted on my fingers, who were cats.
In total there were no more than 200 of them altogether, a lot fewer than the kitsune of the West Youkai Faction, though, there could be other clans out there. Not to mention, the kitsune were divinely favoured by a literal fertility goddess, which certainly helped their numbers.
"Listen up, boys and girls. We have guests. These three bats will be staying with us to learn Senjutsu for the next however long it takes them. Treat nice with them." Magari turned to two young catgirls by the door.
"Ni, Li, you two take care of their needs. Get them a room on the other end of the 'kan." She said before beckoning us to follow them.
I remember these two. They were a part of Riser's original peerage, the twin cats that made his pawns.
Seeing as this was a resort for the supernatural world, Riser must have visited the place with Yubelluna for a couple's retreat and gotten hung up on them. He did have an obsession with getting every 'type' of girl in his peerage, after all.
They were rather cute too. I can understand where he was coming from.
However, every piece in my peerage is reserved for an individual with Satan Class potential, even the pawns.
Once we got settled, Magari met us in a barren plot outside the village as our training began.
"To learn Senjutsu, you must first learn Touki. Touki is simple, even young'uns like you will get it in a snap. Like chicken boya here said, Touki is the external manifestation of your life force. It comes easy to us because we, youkai are creatures whose life is tied to the world itself. We are born with a natural talent for Touki, the way you devils are born with demonic power."
Sairaorg clenched his fist at that. The trauma will take time to get rid of, it seems.
"For other creatures, like the humans of the five principal clans, who are born inheriting a certain closeness to the world or those sage warriors in India who are trained in the divine arts of mantra and yoga, they must achieve it by touching upon the base source of their life, their ki. The breath of life that keeps 'em chugging!"
"For you, little bats…" She pointed at us, "You were made as imitations of life, apart from the natural order. Although, over generations the world has accommodated you, your inherent connection to hell, where life ends, makes it even harder for you lot to learn it. The base source of your life is born from the afterlife."
She scratched her face with her paw, grooming herself as she spoke, "Still, you are alive. Life finds a way. So will you." She looked at me, "Tell me chicken boya, when are you closest to life?"
"When you feel alive?" I answered. I had theorized it based on the accounts I had studied, but hearing it first hand was certainly useful. It was a perspective I had not considered.
"Yes." She stamped a paw on the rock she was sitting on, "And when do you feel most alive?"
"Thrill seeking? In pain? With existential horror?" I guessed, "Usually, when you are close to death."
"Nyahaha, yes. All of those have the same thing in common. The easiest way to feel alive is to feel the burden of your life upon you. To know viscerally that you are alive. To push yourself beyond your limit's and then some more, till living becomes hard and dying even harder. Till you can feel every bit of your energy drained and vanished from effort and pain assaults your every sense. Till everything else you are is stripped away and all you have to rely on is your very breath, your ki, because that is all that is left of you." She laughed as she continued to explain.
"Then and only then can you feel it. It is the last thing left of you because it was the first thing you were made of. The spark of life that birthed you, your origin source of ki. When you can sense it, you can grab it, and fan it's flames till it consumes you, and bursts out from inside you like a tide."
"That tide has a name. Touki. It is the first and final instinct of all things living. The last stand of struggle against the inevitable force of death."
She gave us a once over before jumping off the rock and landing on Sairaorg's shoulder, making little biscuits on his back.
"But before you can do any of that, you need to train your body. A body that is not trained cannot be pushed beyond the brink without collapse and death. First, you will not learn Touki, you will learn to shape your body to bring it to the peak of its ability."
She raised a paw and pulled out three set of weighted vests that glowed with arcane symbols.
"Starting today, all three of you will spend the day running around the mountain from top to bottom and bottom to top. Once you are able to finish that round trip in two hours, without using your wings or demonic power to help you, we will start with practical training, spars and my favourite part, thorough beatdowns."
"Wait. I want to skip that part." I said, "Physical fitness increases when the body adapts and heals from the micro injuries formed through exercise. But I'm a Phenex. I regenerate, fast. Training my body this way, even if I don't use demonic power, my regeneration automatically does. Given my vast reserves, I will regenerate before my body can adapt fully. At this rate, it will take me years to learn Touki."
"Then what do you suggest, chickie-boya?" She asked even though she knew.
"If small injuries heal faster than I can adapt, we just have to make bigger ones." I grinned as I pointed it out. My original plan.
"You were serious about that?!" She asked, a little surprised, but more concerned, her voice softer now, "You're young, boya, why go through the pain of staking your life on it? You can take a few years off for this."
"Yeah, Riser, you don't have to do this. We can train together." Sairaorg tried convincing me. Dulio, however, supported me with an approving nod.
I shook my head.
"I don't have the time. I need to become stronger, faster. I want to become the strongest. I have work to do, spells to master…" I looked at Dulio and Sairaorg, warmth and resolve in my eyes, "…promises to keep." I could see the look in Dulio's eyes soften and warm up, and Sairaorg sucked in a breath, remembering his promise.
"Peerage members to train, including these two chuckleheads." I thumbed at them, "I want to do all of that before my marriage. My fiancé's brother, he is the strongest devil to ever live. By the time I get married, if I'm not strong enough to face him, what's going to stop me from being bullied? As it is, I'm going to be a househusband. No one respects househusbands." I huffed, my tone light, "A man has his pride. Besides, if you can't stake your life for power, is that life even worth living?"
She looked at me queer before she laughed out loud.
"Munyahahaha! You're a funny chicken boya." She laughed.
"Don't tell me you wouldn't enjoy beating the piss out of me, you hag." I goaded her.
She opened her mouth for a moment before closing it, her eyes sharpening. Her claws came out as a flood of aura exploded out of her, washing over us like a prickly gale.
"Don't start crying when I serve you pain boya, because I won't stop." She warned.
"Oh, I will cry alright, and scream and even piss myself. But I won't stop coming back for seconds." I took of my jacket and stored it away, rolling back my sleeves as I got ready for a spar.
"You two sad-boyas…make yourselves useful and start running. This isn't going to be pretty." She ordered the two. I'm not surprised she can see the sadness in their hearts. She is a master of Senjutsu. They looked at me one last time and nodded before taking off.
As the two left, she began to bulk up, her muscles wriggling beneath her fur, her bones cracking as she shifted into her true form. A ten foot tall cat youkai, with claws like swords and teeth like daggers. Her threatening golden yellow eyes rounded out before splitting into two as if by mitosis and her seven fuzzy tails ballooned to the size of anchor ropes, each flick of whom caused the air to sound out like a whip had been cracked.
"You're strong boya, so I'll use my full power. Try not to die." She stretched her claws and cracked her joints, smiling, "Any last words?"
I silently took out a pair of Phoenix Tears and threw them to her.
The instruction for their use did not need to be said and I saw her nod.
"So, what I don't get is…how come you guys started an onsen resort? Aren't cats supposed to hate getting wet?" I asked.
She smiled.
"It's warm around here. Getting a little wet is good trade-off for that."
Then she pounced.
----------x----------
Bwah!
I woke with a start, dusty and bloody. Again.
It had been three months now, and Dulio had already, somehow, touched on his ki.
Three months. From human to devil to ki user.
What bullshit talent is that?!
I could only cry in response to that.
Three months and I still haven't gotten to my own ki.
Fuck!
I gotta do something.
I know she's been going a little easy on me, stopping before killing blows, when my demonic power is low, and healing me with bouchujutsu when she can't- no, not like that. It was more back massages than anything. And while I am into older women, I am no furry.
Still, it's not like I haven't gained anything from being turned into a hamburger patty on the daily.
The drastic measures my regeneration has had to take to keep up and adapt to my new and improving fighting style has brought my body to peak condition and even a little beyond that.
Just in physical power, I can now match a High Class devil using all their strength. And that's without even trying.
I think I can take a tank round to the face with just my physical power and bullets don't even dent my skin anymore. I know, I tried.
Even the 50 cal that I special ordered only drew a few drops of blood, and that was two months ago.
Sure, I could tank it before as well, if I reinforced myself with demonic power, but there is something just so satisfying knowing that even if I run out, I can't be pawned by some no name idiot with a 9mm.
Devil Physiology combined with Phenex regeneration is such a fucking cheat. Even my demonic power has grown. Combining both my physical power and demonic power, I am now squarely in Ultimate Class.
And yet somehow, I'm still falling behind Dulio, that cheating, uber talented bastard.
Sure, physically he isn't as strong as me yet, and his demonic power is only just getting into High Class, but dammit. I wanna use Touki too!
At least Sairaorg is still here at this level with me. Magari thinks he will get there in a month or so too. That's…fast.
Seeing us working hard must have been motivation for him too, to catch up, to not be left behind like he has been his whole life, and there is nothing a motivated devil cannot achieve. It's our specialty.
Especially when it comes to our sins, something I found out earlier in life when I was practicing magic.
I noticed that more greedily I consumed knowledge, the less I cared about the pain of others in my pursuit of ever greater magic, the faster I grew, by a rather suspicious margin. My concentration improved, understanding deepened, and creativity burst forth from a dam yet unseen.
That was when the budding seeds of this theory were planted in my mind.
While unlike fanfics, we don't have to satisfy any sins, indulging in them, or inducing the sins in others, can be an immense boost to training.
While sure, it doesn't grant any actual boosts in power by itself, like contracts do, it does increase the quality of training and the results achieved theretofore, by almost one to three percent. That three percent growth, compounded by diligent training, can lead to a bountiful harvest when the time comes.
As Albert Einstein once said, "The most powerful force in the Universe is compound interest."
Of course, the sin has to correspond to the desired end goal for there to be results and each devil is predisposed to a certain sin a little more than others based on their personality, and if you don't train specifically for it, it doesn't work.
For example, the sin of wrath improves the quality of training if your end goal is revenge. The rage burns and hatred fuels your growth as a devil.
The same goes for humiliation. To avenge oneself from it, to show them all, so no one can trample on you again, the sin of pride is the corresponding motivator.
The sin of lust on the other hand, not so much.
If, however, you want to be, say, a harem king and realize that if you are powerful, you will get the girl or girls you want… well, lustfully chasing after that power to get girls is a valid strat, something that became the plot armor of Issei in the main series, or so I theorize.
The right sin for the right job.
Which is what makes the sin of sloth particularly potent.
Because when you have procrastinated your time away and the deadline is near, devils predisposed to the sin of sloth burst out with insane amounts of potential, where even a little, high intensity last minute work grants them immense qualitative growth.
Like Dulio. He hates having to train to become stronger and he loathes violence with all his heart. He is a soft and kind soul. It's not in his nature. But combine that with his insane amount of raw talent, and the fact that his deep longing for his parents is the deadline- it couldn't come sooner- he has propelled himself ahead at breakneck speeds.
I theorize that the same way contracts work by taking a miniscule amount of power from the contractor to give to the devil contracted, thus increasing their power, if negligibly- unless the contract you make has a significant impact on the world, in which case the power gained scales because it is also added on from the world's own power, something to do with how devils were created-, the sin either indulged by yourself, stimulating your own potential as a devil, or induced in others, stealing a tiny shred of potential from every individual made to fall into sin or affected by it, corresponds to the potential they wasted through said indulgence. An equivalent exchange on a deeper, metaphysical layer of reality.
It is how Mephistopheles, a regular lowborn devil, rose to become one of the Extra Demons. No power, no clan trait, no backing, no prestige, just pure sigma grindset.
I had read the history books and frankly, it was his rise to power that really sealed the deal on this theory of mine.
His one big contract, that pushed him to the ungodly heights he sits at today, the one he made with Johann Georg Faust, didn't just destroy faith in the church by pushing science and corresponding scientific magic, but by also then inducing paranoia in the puritans of the church and turning them against the witches and wizards, starting the witch hunts.
After all, the progenitor of human magic, Merlin Ambrosius, was a close ally of the Pendragon family- even having raised the legendary King Arthur himself- and they were in turn allies of the church.
The Magic Council he set up was a crucial factor in the church's early victories in the olden times.
So by turning them away from the church, introducing science as counter to faith, and making the church itself averse to using magic, a gamechanger in terms of both convenience and power, he gutted them like a fish, reducing the church's forces and influence by over half, and singlehandedly turned the tide of the War for Humanity in the Devil Faction's favour.
I can only imagine what a massive boost to his power that contract must have gotten him. He not only caused great damage to the church's power, greatly increasing his own directly, but he also literally stole the future potential of half of the entire church forces. I'm sure it's paying him dividends even today, with every new witch and wizard that is born out of the church's fold and opposed to it. All that potential stolen, all those contracts made via his magic association, Grauzauberer.
If there is one person I fear, who can see through and unravel my plans before they come to fruition and still stand to challenge and undermine my power afterwards, it is him. This genius bastard undermined Big G while the old Pidgeon Daddy was still alive and well. Truly, he is an inspiration. Mephistopheles is literally Him, because real Gs move in silence, like lasagna.
Now of course, if you don't train afterwards and squander said potential, well, the same logic applies.
Of course this is all just conjecture right now. It's just a theory, a game theo- nope.
Actually no, it is a game theory because it studies how people and power systems act and react to each other and aims to discover ways to manipulate it in my favour. It is literally a game theory.
Now, I will need to run more tests to see if that's actually true or if desire as a general rule causes devils to grow faster. But if my theory turns out to be true then my plans for Heaven might go over a little easier too.
But that's for the future.
For now, Touki.
Alright. I have decided.
I'm asking her to go all the way today, no lube.
No more physical training, the gains from it had nearly diminished to nothing already. At this point I was just refining my martial arts. No more stopping at the last moment.
I got up, and found Dulio and Sai still sleeping. The sun was just rising outside, the first rays of dawn twinkling like starlight as it peaked over the mountains, the refreshing chill of morning air reinvigorating me for a brand-new day.
I am awakening my Touki today.
...
Massive 3500 words chapter. Enjoy.
Tell me what you thought about that sin theory?
Does it fit? Or not? Please tell me if I should keep it or not.
Thanks for reading.
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