"Why am I wrapping my fists?" Katie asked.

"You aren't," Nathan held up the wrap. "I am, and you're going to watch so you know how to do it properly."

"Why are my fists being wrapped?" Katie decided to rephrase her question.

"To protect them," Nathan answered. "When you punch things, you risk damaging your knuckles, and-"

"Nathan," Keith spoke up from where he was applying his barrier runes. "She's asking why that's necessary when Endurance and Health means she won't really get damaged."

Nathan looked at the bandages, then at Katie, then at the bandages, then tossed the bandages onto a nearby table.

"It's the principle of the matter."

"By that," Keith told Katie. "He means that it's force of habit and he forgot about Endurance and Health."

"Got it," she said. "Are we going now?"

"Yes," Nathan led her out of the cafeteria and into the halls, which were already cleared of monsters. "Come on, Icthvar says he left a few this way."

They walked through the halls until reaching an H-3 demon, which stared at the two of them, then began to run towards them.

"Don't just defend, fight!" Nathan told Katie as she held up her hands.

Katie nodded, taking a few shaky breaths as the demon came towards them. As the demon struck at her, she did her best to defend herself, and Nathan groaned.

"Katie! Fight back, or it's going to keep hitting you!"

Katie nodded, then punched forward at the first opening she saw. Her fist struck it in the chest and the demon snarled in response, clawing at her. She blocked the attack with her right forearm, then punched again, before kicking up with her foot, connecting to the side of its head. A few more punches, and its Health was gone, then a few more, and it lay on the ground, dead and fading. Nathan groaned as he looked at her clothes.

"They're torn up," he pointed at her clothes. "Because you spent so much time just defending, and it managed to get you with its claws a lot. And that kick should have been a little higher up. You also hesitated on your strikes a lot. Were you not a part of the System, that demon would have killed you."

"Sorry, Nathan," she said.

"Don't say sorry," he snapped. "It's you who'd be dead, not me."

He paused for a few moments, thinking over stuff Keith had told him.

"That was your first serious time fighting," he told her. "Based on what you told us. Most of your Experience came from you tag-teaming things or being a decoy. It's natural you'd be hesitant, because you're used to getting hurt. That's part of why we're starting you off with things we know you can handle, especially as it will help build up your Experience and Levels a bit.

"Just remember," Nathan told her. "That it's better to strike first than to let the monsters strike first. In nearly all cases, this holds true. Think about what you did wrong in each fight, and use that to improve."

Katie narrowed her gaze at him.

"That's not like you," she said. "That mentorly talk isn't like you at all. That came from Keith, didn't it?"

"It came from me," Nathan said quickly, then paused for a moment. "Though maybe he did have some influence on it."

She snorted at that, and he grunted.

"Want to fight another?" He asked. "Or no?"

"Let me try another," she answered.

"Okay," Nathan responded. "Itchver said there's another around the corner."

Nathan helped Katie through three more fights, each one slightly better than the last, Katie doing her best to not flinch at attacks and do nothing but defend. During her fourth fight, one of her kicks connected with the side of the demon's head, and she yelped, falling backwards.

As the demon closed in on Katie, who was holding her right ankle in pain, Nathan jumped in front of her and punched the monster square in the chest. With his System-enhanced Strength, his strike punched through the demon's chest, his fist protruding out the other side. The difference in his Strength and Endurance was simply too high for its Health to handle.

Nathanpulled his arm back, then knelt by Katie.

"Let me see your ankle," he began gingerly poking at it with his left hand, rotating it slightly without removing her shoe. She winced. "It's probably strained from the impact, but not broken. I don't remember teaching you to kick like that."

"I've seen it a lot in shows."

"Yeah, that's your problem," he told her as he helped her up with his clean hand. "Lean on me. You want to kick with your heel, like I taught you. You can kick the way you were, but you're more likely to hurt yourself doing so. Come on, let's return to the cafeteria. Keith might be able to fix you up, and if not, I can bribe Icthvar with chocolate."

"Thanks," she leaned on him.

The pair made their way back to the cafeteria, where Keith gave them a curious look.

"She hurt her ankle," Nathan answered simply. "Can you fix it?"

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"I can mend cuts and bruises," Keith told him. "If that's what she has, then yes."

"I'll summon Ichtvar."

Nathan helped Katie onto a seat, then made his way to the kitchen as he stripped off his tie and shirt. He cleaned off his arm, then dried it and pulled on a new shirt and tie. When he returned to the cafeteria, Ichtvar was sitting on the table beside Katie, her ankle mended.

"I'm taking my-"

"Stuff to the laundry room," Katie finished for him. "I know. You're a bit of a clean freak when it comes to clothes. I'll be fine, Ichtvar already mended my ankle."

"Good," Nathan left, and Keith looked at her.

"So how did your first real fighting go?" Keith asked. "Other than the ankle, anyway?"

"It went well, I think," she answered. "I really don't like getting that close to monsters, though. How long do you think before I can use force magic as an attack?"

"In maybe a month," Keith answered. "Until then, you'll need to keep training this way. How much Mana are you at?"

"A little more than sixty percent," she answered.

"Practice your force pushes," he told her. "Get yourself down to none."

"Shouldn't I wait until our session tomorrow?" She asked. "And why go all the way down to zero? I only recover around a hundred and forty-four per day, and with our training-"

"New training," Keith told her. "We didn't factor in your low regeneration. You're still at one point every six hundred seconds. The best way to boost this, outside of the boosters you can buy when you meet the requirements to unlock them, is by burning up your Mana as much as possible. By keeping your Mana low or at none, it forces your magic to adapt, forces your mana pool to adjust. This will affect both how much you have and how quickly you regenerate it, so you'll need to be careful, but it will increase your regeneration much faster than how you're going now – which is vital."

"Okay," she said. "And I should just use the force push for that?"

"Yes," he answered. "Your basic spell. The more you use it, the more familiar with it you'll become, and the easier and cheaper it'll be to cast. Once you're ready for your next spell, which will be probably around the end of this session, we'll either work on a barrier or a different type of magic. Both spells will be an extension of what you're already casting."

Katie frowned as she tried to piece that together.

"How can using a different type of magic be an extension of the force push?" She asked. "I can see a barrier, as they're both force magics, but a different type altogether?"

"Force," Keith held up his right hand, a ball of raw, violet force magic forming above it. "Is the most basic of magics. It is nearly a pure form of magic itself, of your will and power. It sets the basis for all things.

"Now," he held up his left hand, a ball of fire forming above it. "I have a fireball. Do you notice a similarity between the two spells?"

"They're both balls," she said. "But beyond that-"

"Exactly," he said. "They're both balls. With force magic, the most basic of magics, I can learn to shape a ball easier. Once I have the feel for creating a ball down, I can then move on to drawing on the pool of power in the form of a flaming ball, rather than simply a ball of pure magic. Of a different type of magic.

"Now," he said, both spells disappearing. "I could have gone straight to learning the fireball spell at my first spell. However, magic is easier to learn when you already have a foundation for it. It takes most magicians four to six months to be able to competently cast a spell to the point where it's safe for them to start learning another spell branching off of it. If you want to cast a spell that doesn't have any similarities to one you already know or are familiar with, that timeframe extends because you must find a new feel to it. Meanwhile, force magic is the most basic and natural of magics. It is simply drawing upon your pool of power and pushing it out. That's why pretty much everyone starts with learning that."

"Okay," she said. "I can understand that, now."

"Also," he held up his right hand once more. "Even once you're learning other types of magic and aren't focusing on force magic anymore, you can still always move back to force magic for the first steps towards a new spell."

Above his palm, his violet force magic began to take shape, quickly forming up into a nude figure, a copy of Katie only six inches tall. The magical figure then began to perform a few martial arts moves over his palm, before returning to a neutral position. After that, the figure then changed from force magic into yellow light, and began performing several martial arts moves again, before returning to a neutral position.

"Nathan tries to brute-force his way on a few things," Keith told her as her miniature disappeared in an explosion of golden sparkles. "But if he went back to force magics with that figure spell, he'd be able to cast it much more fluidly, even if he'd still take him a few weeks to a month to acquire the familiarity with it that would be considered 'proficient'. Then he'd be able to do the light version of it more easily."

Katie pondered as she stared at where her miniature had been, before meeting Keith's gaze.

"How do you think Nathan will react," she said. "If he knows you made a naked me?"

"Probably by doing his best to make a naked me," Keith indicated Nathan, who had returned and was standing behind Katie. She turned and jumped, then stared at Nathan's attempt at making Keith out of light magic. "And that was my first time doing the spell, Katie."

"That was his first time," Nathan's imitation of Keith faded. "Doing you. He learned the spell to teach me how to perform finer details. He's done me and him a few times. And he tried doing Ichtvar yesterday.""

"Ichtvar," Keith explained when Katie gave him a confused look. "Has a lot more detail to him than a person, clothed or not. He has hundreds of feathers covering his entire body, and to do him means not skimping or cheating on those, like we can with the hair.""

"Ah," she said. "That makes sense. Wait, you've been doing naked Nathans?"

"He asked me to."

It was Nathan's turn to receive a confused look from Katie.

"I wanted to see what his visual image of me was," Nathan answered simply. "He's not a good artist, even if he's good at visualizing his spells and shaping them into the desired forms. It was the logical way to do it. And Keith, her boobs are a little bigger than the ones you made on her figure."

"Yeah, yeah," Keith said. "I wanted to make sure I wasn't making them too big. Guess I made them a bit small by accident."

"They were half as big as they really are," Nathan told him. "Get it right. You can get dicks right, why not boobs?"

"Nathan, I pay less attention to boobs than I do to dicks," Keith said. "Most of the time I've seen hers, she's wearing a bra or a shirt or gi top."

"You've seen her naked."

"I wasn't looking at her in the showers," Keith told Nathan. "I'm not interested in her, Nathan, so it's quite easy to not look."

Nathan frowned.

"You don't look when I'm washing her?"

"Are you upset by that?" Keith asked in shock.

Never, in a million years, would Keith have thought that Nathan would actually want him to watch while the demigod cleaned a lover – or future lover – because of how private Nathan was when it came to things. He might tolerate Keith's desires for him, but he didn't tolerate others watching or being around when something sensual or sexual was going on. Nathan barely tolerated Keith being in the showers with the two of them if he was washing Katie the few times the psychic was in there for that.

"No."

"I think he is," Katie said, then blushed when they both looked at her. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize," Keith said. "That was actually pretty good. Yeah, he's definitely upset that I don't watch when he washes you. Nathan, why does that bother you?"

"I lost a bet with Ichtvar," he muttered. "How do you even give a flaming bird a massage?"

"I won't be on fire for it," Ichtvar told him, reminding the trio of his presence.

"How do you even give a bird a massage?" Nathan asked.