Jerk's friend took the two-step start he had room for to jump from one tree to the other in their makeshift course out in the woods, across the river from Jake's old hang out spot. The distance was close to the edge of what he was capable of, making it an inconsistent jump for him, unlike jerk. This attempt, he didn't give it enough force and he fell. Before he even scraped his shins on the landing pad, Luke telekinetically caught him and floated him down to the ground.
"Thanks for the catch, old man. You're a lot faster than a few months ago," he said.
"I'm going to have to be quick to survive the fraxions," Luke responded, not once letting the four rocks he rotated in a single circular path break their orbit around his head.
"Try thinking about something else for once," jerk said before making the jump his friend just failed.
"I have less than a year to prepare, I can't afford to spend time not thinking about some aspect of improving myself," Luke said. "Besides, my drive to improve myself has saved you a lot of broken skin, and probably a few broken bones."
Jerk shrugged as coordinator prepared to try the same jump, which he'd only failed a few times. "You ever think about bringing those other teens you spar with out here? More people could up the competition here and it could help them with their magic, maybe."
"I don't think they'd fit in, but I'll ask. You could also be a grounding force, maybe. Probably not capable of policing them yourselves unless you actually take up magic, but a more... moral compass, I guess. Lost the words I wanted to use there," Luke responded. "People who would potentially keep them from wrecking shops through being good people who are their friends."
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Luke winced as he snapped his forearm back into place before mending the snapped bones and torn flesh. Brendon had thrown a downed log at him, which he'd chosen to take on his arm rather than telekinetically stop just to get a bit of practice healing himself. Par for the course during these spars, nowadays. Basically everything but shots to the head were allowed nowadays, Luke having learned to mend everything but brains, which only the Saint has historically been able to properly heal.
If only he'd been able to heal his own.
Jessy pulled a chunk of rock from below the dirt, sending a spray of dirt up to block vision while he crushed it down into a spike, which he sent flying at Luke's left leg. As he did, Dalton came flying from out of behind the plume of dirt to try to block Luke's vision of the spike and distract him, maybe even land a punch to his stomach.
Luke was fast enough to react, and with the ambiguous target of Dalton's assault, he stopped the teen in his tracks. The teen succeeded in his main objective, though, as the spike sailed below him and pierced straight through Luke's leg and out the other side, sending blood spurting out the back as the 2 foot long rock spear was impaled into one of the many trees around the clearing.
Luke didn't drop his grip of Dalton as he grimaced, beginning to heal it alongside finishing healing his arm.
With the assistance of Jessy, Dalton escaped Luke's grip as Brendon flew toward Luke, using Dalton as cover, before sending a flying soccer kick toward Luke's shoulder, rotating himself mid-air so it would land from above.
As Luke telekinetically caught Brendon's leg, he crushed it, breaking the bone and causing the teen to scream out in pain as Luke instantly healed the wound he inflicted.
Dalton pulled him back and created a leaf wall between the teens and Luke, who preemptively flew upward to escape whatever attack they were preparing while out of view.
A large boulder flew through his old position from behind him as Dalton broke through the leaf shield, tackling Luke, his flight path having been predicted, though not perfectly. The tackle was a little high, letting Luke escape easier than he would have had the tackle been perfectly timed.
As he weaved between the tackler and the boulder below, Brendon sent a telekinetic slam into Luke's spine, breaking it, as Dalton used his proximity and speed relative to Luke to send a powerful knee directly into his chest.
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Brendon tapped out as Luke began healing his spine and attempting to throw Dalton away, but he found he was preemptively shielded against the force he used. He'd not experienced that before. It was something he would have to remember to avoid telekinetic blasts like the one that just broke his spine.
Jessy sent out a fireball toward Luke as Dalton backed up, out of the explosion range. Luke decided to take it full blast. This was, after all, primarily a way to train his healing magic in a real combat scenario, less than a way to train his combat abilities. He did protect his head, though, just so it wouldn't hurt his brain, should it be more powerful than it looked.
The explosion created on contact caused Luke's ribs to break, but the explosion supernaturally lost energy faster than a real explosion should as the kinetic force was transferred into fire, preventing the shock wave itself from doing much more than that. The fire ignites his clothes, which he instantly tamped out with his telekinesis, and charred his skin. He Screamed as the old, now-dead skin peeled off to make way for new skin under his regenerative magic.
Jessy and Dalton simultaneously tapped out at that.
In the few seconds it took for Luke to fully heal his skin, he said, "Your magic capacities are much batter than when we started."
"Don't really give us an alternative," Brendon said. "Would really appreciate you inflicting less damage on us, too."
Luke shrugged and said, "Roughly one every four you get on me. That was your idea."
"Specifically Jessy's," Dalton said.
"I didn't realize how much he'd start tanking hits on purpose. Really regret proposing that idea now," Jessy said.
"Whatever," Brendon said. "The deal was made, doesn't mean we can't complain. Still, suddenly having all defenses overpowered to have a rib or whatever broken is not fun."
"This isn't meant to be fun," Luke said. "It's meant to get us all more ready, to whatever degree it helps, for the time we will be forced into the arena. If you want fun, though, I know this group that does freerunning. They said they'd try having you guys around for activities, if you're up for it."
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Luke ran a spell through some figs, another through an apple, and a third one through the bark of some specific tree, imbuing them with some properties he wasn't sure anyone knew the specifics of. After thoroughly running the spell through the entirety of its ingredients, he threw them into a pot of water, putting yet another spell across the entire pot, and stirred them up. "Other than the amount of spells you need to learn, potioneering's surprisingly easy," he said.
"You were, honestly, a little slow to pick it up," Rhonda said. "Not by much, but the average time between first attempt and first success is a couple days lower than yours. It's probably because you don't really have a passion for it like the others attempting to learn it. You're also distracted with your exercises. I've never seen someone exercise while telekinetically stirring their potion. That average is also pushed down by Dixon making it seem hard, so only those with a real interest in potioneering even try, most of the time, so maybe you're above average. Only the future can tell, not that we'll be here to know."
As she made her own potion and he continued to exercise and create a potion at the same time, he said, "I'll make sure they get the time to find out. You sure you're ok with me using your ingredients like this?"
As she poured her potion into a cauldron for the potion she was working on, Rhonda responded, "Since you're putting in the work yourself, you only really would have needed to cover the price of ingredients, plus a bit to make me a profit, since I wouldn't be spending my own time on it. Since there's no time charge, you can make as many of your own magic capacity potions you want with the money you spent. I might lose a bit of money on it, overall, but I'll be gone before I feel that loss."
She started work on the finishing steps for another potion, dumping it out of its cauldron and into a pot, as she continued, "The time you save me for working on your potions is probably actually worth even more of a discount than that, honestly. If the potions weren't for you, yourself, I'd probably be paying you."
"You never did find any assistants like I suggested, now that I think of it," Luke said.
"You're the first person I've had meet my standards for potions," she responded plainly.
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Luke walked in to Laura's office, prepared for it to be the last time. Over the last few months, he had learned every healing spell he felt he would need. He didn't even try with the brain spells, plural, since he'd be dead before he could use them on himself. Beyond that, he felt he had everything he needed to at least waste a few weeks of the fraxions' time, he just needed better training and a larger magic capacity for his plan to fully come into effect. Maybe Laura could convince him to learn more offensive spells or had something more defensive in nature for him to learn. Something more effective than the telekinetic coat that the teens had taught him.
In the end, it was the latter.
As Laura was describing the spellform for an actual magical barrier, something significantly stronger per-unofficial-unit-of-magic spent than just stopping attacks with telekinesis, she disappeared. Mid-syllable, Luke found his ears no longer heard his teacher's voice before the visual blip of her disappearance properly registered.