Nathan watched as Katie meditated and attempted to access her magic. She was slower than the rest of his team, which bothered him a little, but he had to remind himself that not everyone was gifted. Katie herself was remarkably ungifted. She was beautiful, yes, but that was most of what was going for her.

She was easily pushed into doing thing, which is why her team during her Tutorial had been able to take advantage of her. That bothered him a lot more than her being slower than them. His interest in her was mostly to sleep with her, but he couldn't help but also care about her a little bit more than that.

He supposed it was Samantha's influence on him, and Keith's. Actually, when he thought over it, it was probably mostly Keith's attempts at helping him feel the 'proper' emotions, which meant Keith was more to blame than Samantha. It was strange to him, actually wanting to see someone improve. Someone other than Samantha, Keith, or Cyrus, that was.

What he felt was most important, when he thought about how Katie should improve, was that she stopped being a pushover. But first, she needed to awaken her magic and decide if she wanted to be a witch or just a warrior with a bit of extra mana at her disposal. After that, he would work on her not being a pushover.

It would make her more likely to survive.

When he noticed a slight shift in her magics, Nathan sighed. He had suggested before that she strip to her underwear while trying to awaken her magic, but she refused because of what had happened to her. It didn't matter that she let him wash her in the showers, she still wanted to be fully dressed outside of there. It was probably the only thing he had found her to not be a pushover on, and in his opinion, it was the wrong thing to be firm on.

Katie's magic awakened a moment after the shift that made her magic visible to Nathan, a slight, but steady trickle of mana flowing out of her. Her eyes remained closed as she focused on controlling her mana, pulling it back into her and cutting off the leak. When she finished, she fell over.

Keith pulled out a plastic bucket from a playing card and set it beside Katie.

"She's going to puke when she wakes up," Keith told Nathan when the demigod looked at him. "Since she wouldn't take off her clothes."

"I was trying to find that before we entered the game."

"Oh," Keith said. "Sorry, guess I didn't realize you were looking for it."

"I was."

"Sorry?" Keith offered. "She'll probably only be out for a few minutes. Want to play Go Fish?"

"Going to cheat again?"

"I wasn't cheating."

"You counted cards."

"I was not counting cards," Keith rolled his eyes. "I was playing normally, Nathan. Just like you."

"I'd rather play chess over Go Fish."

"Even though you'll lose?"

"Against Katie."

"You'll still lose."

Nathan grunted in annoyance. He'd lost to Katie two out of their three games so far. Playing against Keith was a nightmare, because the psychic was simply that much better than him. He had much better luck with Monopoly.

The pair of them watched as Katie went through her awakening sleep, waking after nearly an hour. She promptly began puking into the bucket, and when she finished, she gave Nathan an uneasy look.

"Now I now why you were insisted on that," she told him.

"So are you going to strip?" He asked.

She nodded, shuddering as she stripped. He tried to sympathize with her, but found it difficult. He knew she had it worse than he had when he awakened, due to how long he had been unconscious allowing his body to acclimate more, but being able to sympathize with her just didn't happen. Indifference was what he felt.

"Also," Katie whispered. "Do you think we can whisper?"

"Sorry," he whispered, though he was tempted to speak normally.

Katie finished stripping, then closed her eyes and rested, doing her best to handle how she felt with her enhanced senses.

Over the next week and a half, Katie did her best to adjust to her higher senses, and Nathan missed washing her, aware that his touch for that would overwhelm her in several ways. When she was finally ready for training again, she joined Nathan and Keith for their morning practice.

After the martial arts training finished, Nathan sat Katie down and stared at her.

"Yes?" She asked after several minutes of silence, Keith practicing off to the side.

"You received a six-times boost, right?" He asked.

"Yes," she answered.

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"Do you want to be a witch?" He asked. "Learning spells and spending your time focusing on that? Or do you want to be a warrior like Samantha?"

"How viable is fighting as a witch?" She asked. "I'd rather focus on the one that will help me best."

"You have over 500 Mana now," Nathan said. "Which means that using just a basic force push spell, you can do some damage. Your Magic is over your Strength, so that would probably be optimal. You'd need to train your magical stamina a bit, but that's part of what these extended Survival Challenges are for – training."

"We only have another week until this session ends," she says. "Will I be able to start combat next session, as we had planned?"

"Yes," Nathan answered. "You'll start off with your body and knife as you train your magic, then you'll move on to magic once you're able to use force push enough to kill the monsters. Our goal, by the time you leave these things this run of Challenges, is for you to be on-par with others in our group."

"Also," Keith said. "Do not put any Stat Points into Mana."

"Why not?" Katie asked.

"Familiars," Nathan said. "Cannot be contracted here, only outside. If you draw too close to 1,000 Mana, you'll need a familiar. If you train in magic every day here, you may draw close to needing a familiar before we leave, possibly even reach that threshold."

"Which means," Keith added. "That you'll need to stop training. We recommend that if you reach close to 80 Mana Stat, or 800 Mana Energy."

"Okay," she said. "So how do I perform a force push? You've both demonstrated it for me before."

"I'll teach," Nathan moved to sit beside Katie, and Keith shrugged. The demigod held out his right hand, palm facing away from him. "Hold out your hand like this. Feel for your mana, and draw upon it. Visualize a force of magic pushing out of your hand, and as you do, draw upon that power within you. When you succeed, you'll do this."

A small ripple of white energy flowed out of his hand, soaring several yards across the cafeteria before fading away.

"Yours probably won't go as far," he told her. "You're using what's essentially a new muscle to you. Once you grow used to the spell, it'll cost less mana, and you'll have more control over it and how much power you can put into it. Don't worry about altering it yet, just focus on generating it. Once you grow familiar with it, you can start to alter it, change its dimensions and strength."

"You can work on that in about a week," Keith said. "You don't have to be too familiar with it."

"Okay," Katie held out her hand, and Nathan watched as she concentrated.

Several minutes passed, and during that, Nathan created strings of magic between the related tips of fingers between his two hands. At first, they were white, then he began to change them between various colors. When Katie managed to create a small force push of blue magic, he congratulated her.

"Thanks," she said. "It only traveled a few inches, though."

"You'll be able to do more the more you practice," he said. "And remember, your regeneration isn't too high, so don't drop under half in the next session."

"Alright," she said, then looked at the strings between his fingers. "Is that some sort of training exercise?"

"Cut it," he held his hands up. "With your hand. Just chop it."

She did, and her hand passed through all five strings.

"They're made of light," he told her. "I'm working on getting familiar with the strings of light, to make it easier to summon them directly rather than strings of magic, then change them into strings of light."

"That's the first time his strings have actually been fully light," Keith snorted, and Nathan glared at him. "What? It's true. Normally, they're still partially force magic after your transition. You're getting better at that."

"Not good enough for a whip yet," Nathan muttered, then frowned at Katie's amused look. "What?"

"Just the thought of you using a whip is… an odd image," she told him. "I can't see you doing that."

"Keith has a whip," Nathan told her. "Which is made up of lightning. He also has another made up of swift-moving wind. Both are extremely damaging to that which they touch."

"Nathan just wants to be able to whip light around," Keith told Katie. "Ignore it. It's just something he wants to do, and nothing more."

"I know what you want to do," Nathan muttered.

"I want to finish today's training session so we can get back to working on that enchantment," Keith told Nathan. "That one's something we're working on simultaneously, which means I have to wait for you, too."

"Yeah, yeah," Nathan said. "I'll finish up in a bit. Try it again, Katie. This time, aim at-"

Keith raised an eyebrow.

"-the wall."

Katie snorted and moved her hand to aim at the wall, practicing the spell over and over until she had run down to half of her mana. When she finished, she looked at the two men with her. Keith was looking exasperated while Nathan had…

A figure of light above his palm, shaped into a woman's form. It was made up of yellow light, and was completely nude. Nathan himself was focusing on it, and when she looked at it, she realized that its form was changing a little at a time as Nathan reshaped the spell. He glanced at her, then back to the figure and made more adjustments. After the third time she saw him do that, she realized what he was doing.

"Is that supposed to be me?" She asked.

"Yes," he answered.

"Why am I naked?"

"I tried doing clothes," he told her. "But that got complicated, so I just started doing you naked. I'm fixing your hair right now."

"Why are you making a small figure of me out of light?"

"Keith suggested," Nathan told her. "That to entertain Cyrus, I should learn to make various shapes and figures. He said I should practice it now so that I can do a variety of them for him by the time we leave here."

"And so you're doing me?" She asked.

"It's easier to practice shaped light spells," Nathan said. "By using a model that's right here. I'm doing the nude form based off what I remember from the showers. I'll do some practice with my memories of the stuffed animals I got for Cyrus once I can do models of you and Keith easily, since you're both here and are a better visual aid than memories."

"Yeah," Keith said. "He was doing me first, but stopped when I shot it with a bit of force magic. Then he decided to do you instead."

"You shot it with magic?" Katie asked.

"He was having trouble with my clothes," Keith said. "So he was making it off his memories of me in the showers."

"And?" She asked.

"I was hard," Keith told her, face red.

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," she told him. "You have a very nice package."

"Thanks," Keith stood up. "Nathan, training session is over, and has been for awhile. Let's get to work on the project."

"I'm almost done," Nathan told him. "Give me a few more minutes."

"What is your project, anyway?" Katie asked. "You two suddenly started working on something new a week ago, but it seemed like you'd already worked on it before."

"We're making a bomb," Keith told her. "A magical bomb. We've been doing it the last few extended Survival Challenges, then setting it off in the gymnasium shortly before the Challenge ends. We can't make the really big ones we want to here, but we'll do that the next time we go into a Dungeon, since those are, well, not artificial."

"Why are you making bombs?" She asked.

"As a fail-safe," Nathan answered. "In case negotiations with Endariv goes wrong."