Now that everyone from the Portal Squad had proper monikers, I had to memorize them. For the sake of team spirit. Everyone had grown through the early levels quite quickly, though with the slight issue that we had to test what level people were instead of knowing. Since they only had the ‘growing’ side of things and not the status window and points side. Personally, that was the one I would prefer to have first since that meant all this training was extra effective. They could get and spend points later. When we found a good excuse to get them to my former world.
We absolutely would do that eventually. This recent job for Extra- the New Bay branch- was probably meant to give us some leeway. And Calculator seemed to have lots of ideas for how it would make sense. Though he didn’t share them so I couldn’t ‘give them away’. Which was probably reasonable.
Boom was unfortunately named. Sure, his first spell was a loud one, but the pretty boy had a lot of other sound based things he could do. Some of the noises he made were quite pleasant. He was a bard, after all.
Honey Badger was small and angry. That only changed when his sister- now called Bolster- made him big. Which she could do, making him not-small and angry. Though being ten feet tall after Enlarge wasn’t exactly big. His natural height was… actually pretty close to Great Girl’s. Not that she would let anyone know that if she could help it.
Twirl did exactly as his name implied, lots of spinning movements with various weapons. His favorite weapons were a pair of curved blades- though usually with sheaths on for training or nonlethal missions. Second came various chains with things on the end. It was really difficult to tell when he was using mana, since it was a continuous flow instead of injecting it into any sort of burst- though maybe that would change.
I still thought Punk Monk was better than Iron Hawk, and she didn’t seem to care which I called her. She had actually grown quite comfortable fighting with a ‘stick’ after a number of training sessions, though she preferred to make use of metal knuckles and combat boots. Having a flexible style would be good for her, in case she came up against a wood or metal controller. Though it was even better if she could resist control, nobody had enough mana to do anything like that for long.
Finally there was Bandage. She was not particularly pleased about the name, and indeed it was more effective for her to use defensive spells rather than try to fix people. Then again, she said healing people was cool if it wasn’t the only thing she ever had to do.
The lack of mana was an issue for everyone. All of them had risen pretty rapidly through the early levels. Level 5 would give them double starting mana, and all of them had reached at least that far. Reaching level 8 from level 0 would take about the same amount of experience as one more level for me. Since they were low level, they would actually get more experience for the same intensity but on the other hand, they couldn’t contribute as much to a real battle so it would probably balance back the other way.
Relevantly, they could get experience from things other than fighting. Just training alone would work. Using any of their abilities or doing something related helped. The Barbarian was the odd one out in that regard where it was mostly still just fighting related.
We weren’t quite sure, but we thought Boom might get experience just for talking. Singing definitely counted, even if he was doing it non-magically.
Studying magic would definitely work for Bolster, my fellow mage, so I gave her access to the few books I had. Maybe I should try to pick up more from my old world at some point. That said, I was pretty sure Bolster could study anything and gain similar benefits so it wasn’t a rush.
We also had two more participants in our training group. Discounting Midnight, of course, who wasn’t new. It was, of course, Zeb and Fluffy.
“This is so fun!” she said, as Fluffy wrestled with Barbro and she tried to bite at Flexy Guy’s ankles. She’d been a bit hesitant at first since she didn’t like pain, but we had all sorts of ways to accelerate recovery of bruises and the like. Protecting people against punctures like her teeth was fairly easy, and she wasn’t particularly super herself. Though that might change.
Beastmasters were… like druids without magic. So basically only tenuously connected by their ability to get combat functional animal buddies. Some people- by which I meant Calculator mostly- were really interested in whether or not she could become a Familiar while having an animal companion. Unfortunately, we were missing a piece of the puzzle. Bunvorixians weren’t quite like Celmothians, and they didn’t create the same sort of bonds. Without that, Zeb didn’t really fit as an animal. It didn’t seem to be an issue of Zeb not liking Bolster or anything.
Then again, Zeb liked everyone who was at least a little bit nice to her. In turn, I was pretty sure everyone liked Zeb. The adorable black and white canine just ran everywhere excitedly and made people feel good about existing.
But back to her class, she might eventually take on aspects of her bound companion. Or maybe she would focus entirely on Fluffy. That was something she could figure out herself with Calculator’s help, because she had a full list of abilities. Names, at least, were a good place to start.
After finishing a round of training, everyone settled down and began mana improvement training. When doing it with a group, even I joined in despite it doing nothing for me. I already had more than the standard amount of mana from crystal overcharging, but everyone else including Midnight only trained Mana Starvation. It was… fine. If I’d known about it first I might have settled for it, but other things were already so far ahead that there was no point in swapping.
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The point of the training was to get as close to no mana as possible without passing out, and remain there. That meant expending very small amounts of mana repeatedly. For that, we needed to know how much mana people would naturally regenerate. It was creeping up ever so slowly towards double ‘standard’. It didn’t seem like it would pass it, or at least not by much. Not without some larger change, which could always happen.
There was only so much Mana Starvation training people could handle, for multiple reasons. First, it was strenuous. If they passed out, even if they woke up a moment later they were much more susceptible to failure in continued attempts. The main downside, of course, was that however long you did it you would have no mana and would have effectively negated your recovery. I wouldn’t have practiced at all, but with Midnight sharing the skill it was good for him. Besides, solidarity with the team was good.
“Uuuuu,” Zeb burrowed her face into Fluffy. “It’s so hard! I always just fall asleep!”
Fortunately, her speaking shouldn’t interrupt people too much. Unless they were expending more mana, people were fairly stable. People tended to chat quietly about nothing much. Deeper thoughts were more difficult, so that was all that happened.
Midnight was the one who actually had advice for Zeb. “Think of yourself like a battery,” he said. She looked over at him with interest. “When recharged improperly, sometimes capacity is lost. But careful work can slowly recover lost capacity. On in this case, capacity you never had access to.”
“Am I a battery?” Zeb pondered. “Or should I be a battery repair supercharger?”
“I suppose you’re both?” Midnight shrugged. He’d gotten pretty used to having a Bunvorixian around. It probably helped to have grown used to actual dogs. Then when faced with a Bunvorixian who was reasonable he managed to get used to the idea. He still freaked out if she ran at him too enthusiastically, but that wasn’t crazy for facing something larger than himself.
I wondered if we could introduce Ceira and Zeb soon. That would be fun. Zeb would also probably like to go outside, which she wasn’t allowed to do right now given her status. She had more freedom than being locked in a standard prison cell, but she couldn’t just do whatever she felt like. Hopefully resolving things with the operation would help.
“Hey! Hey Turlough!” she bounced over to me.
“You should call him Mage when he has the mask on,” Midnight corrected her.
“Hey Mage!” she said excitedly. “Did you know this room can transform?”
“I did,” I nodded to her.
“Apparently it works without using any freeflow modulators! How cool is that? It just runs on magic!”
I had no idea what a freeflow modulator was, but Translation decided that was the best way to say it. “It’s actually super tech,” I emphasized. “Can you feel it working?”
“It’s like ------ energy flow but more tingly!” That time a word didn’t Translate. I’d spoken with Zeb enough that it was probably a pure jargon term, but I wasn’t a tech guy so I didn’t need to learn it.
“I bet our techs would like to talk to you.”
“Oh can I? I want to look at the mechanisms!”
That… probably wasn’t allowed given her status. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to happen. Tech supers got real passionate about stuff sometimes. That wasn’t my problem either way.
-----
The next day I was ‘supervising’ Zeb as she spoke with Francois and Old Shock, as two of the most accessible tech supers. Rather than worrying about protecting them from Zeb, I was more there as a babysitter, just in case.
Francois was reviewing videos of a few Bunvorixians in action. They didn’t have super advanced suits like the Celmothians- but unfortunately for him Midnight wasn’t allowed to exchange that information freely. He probably wasn’t supposed to learn advanced tech from Zeb either, but it was a zone where they could sort of get away with it. Especially since she didn’t know everything.
“I see that they adjust slightly. How does it work?” he asked.
“Nanites!” Zeb declared.
“I see, what kind?”
“The, uh, armor kind?” She shook her head. “I don’t know, I never got to wear armor and I wasn’t involved in repairing it. I did ship stuff!” she turned to Old Shock and wagged her tail. “Did you bring any ship stuff?”
“Unfortunately I did not,” said the white haired tech. “I would like to get my hand on one of those guns, though.”
“I know how those work! You squeeze them with your mouth and they go bzzzap!”
“Can you talk about these battle videos?”
“Oh yeah, sure!” Zeb said, watching some things. “Ooh, how did the ship freeze? That like, really bad!”
“Indeed,” Old Shock smiled. “And why is that?”
“Because the shielding is supposed to protect against thermal shock! If temperature is applied directly to the vessel all sorts of things break down. The hull first, obviously, but the emplacement weapons aren’t tuned to handle that stuff either. Usually if the shields go down we’re about to explode and should be flying away, but if stuff skips it…”
When they actually got to talking about things, she got so far into details I couldn’t understand that I almost wondered if Translation was broken. Fortunately, it seemed the tech supers understood to some extent. Francois was quite interested in various materials that they made seats, blankets, and beds out of- not that Bunvorixian furniture was at all similar to humanoid ones.
I hadn’t realized Francois did furniture, but rather than a clothing super him being a ‘cloth’ guy kind of made sense. Or maybe he was trying to expand.
Old Shock wrote down a lot. “Too bad we can’t get our hands on any of this stuff. Extra’s a bit oversensitive about tech shock, in my opinion. It’s not like villains aren’t going to get their hand on some of this stuff anyway.”
My comms beeped. Ooh, mission time. Something about the Mod Squad again. It wasn’t an emergency, but rather we’d be reviewing some tapes. Interesting.