The sparring session only wound down when they were both out of MP — and thus out of ways to restore their HP and SP. That was after Jerome transformed into Krystyna halfway through, boosting many of the relevant skills and giving him a better shot in a straight-up fight.

Jerome had definitely fought dirtier, although that was more due to opportunity (and necessity) than anything else.

At one point he’d used Blast Off to get his hands on a low-hanging tree branch, pulled himself up, then used Portal Hand to throw punches from there. That ended when Krystyna grabbed his hand in a wrist lock. He yelled at her to let go before he lost his balance and fell, completely destroying his wrist (the wrist was at ground level, but the unusual physics of Portal Hand meant he would hang from the wrist eight feet off the ground). She made him promise not to use that trick again, which he quickly agreed to.

From then on it was just creative use of Portal Hands and Blast Off combined with all the basic skills. He didn’t have any other transformations in his queue, so he couldn’t afford using Crystal Overload or Magic Pulse, and using Hold… well, it would drain his MP fairly quickly, and there were limits to how unfair he would get in a sparring session.

Finally they both collapsed on the ground, twin bodies five feet apart, all of their bars completed exhausted.

“This was such a bad idea,” Krystyna said once she caught her breath. “If gnolls find us in the next five minutes we’re screwed.”

“Nah,” Jerome said. “The first gnoll comes in, I grab its form, then refill your SP. No problem.”

Krystyna considered, then nodded. “Then I’m glad we did this. It was fun, and it was good to see your current limits.”

“Good to see your current limits too,” he said. “They’re… I can’t believe I have all these powers and we’re still about equally matched.”

“I’ve been in the game a lot longer than you, and seen a lot more fighting… although I suspect that gap has narrowed significantly in the 48 hours since you left.”

Holy hell, it had only been 48 hours since she’d given him that mission? He did the math and it had, indeed, been less than 48 hours. He felt like an entirely different person, and it wasn’t just because of the stat gains.

She rolled over onto her side to face him. “I should teach you grappling while you’ve still got half of my skill.”

More fighting? Already? “Have you looked at our SP bars? I can’t fill us back up unless I get a new form.”

“I can show you the moves slowly, then we’ll practice once our SP is higher.”

“With the others I’ve just been able to start practicing and I get the moves…”

“That’s because most of the other skills just have a couple moves, and ones that are pretty obvious. How many ways can you dodge a blow? How many different ways can you throw a punch? Half a dozen of each, if you’re good, but you can get a lot of mileage out of the first one that comes naturally to you.

“Grappling is more complex. Your extra skill means you’ll pick up the natural flow of these moves much quicker than if you were at level 1, but you still have to either learn the moves or roll around until you discover them yourself.”

“Got it.” Now that he’d have a couple minutes to rest and was back above 10% SP the idea started to appeal to him more. Rolling around on the ground with Krystyna… well, two Krystynas, if he counted his current form. He didn’t even have to worry about getting a boner, so this really was the best time to have her pressed against him.

“Okay, stand up,” she commanded.

“Stand up? How are we going to wrestle standing up?”

“Most grappling starts standing up, and if you’re fighting multiple opponents — like we tend to do — then you’ll want to stay standing up. A full mount is a strong position against one opponent, but it does no good if a second baddie can just whack you on the back of the head.”

“A full mount?”

Krystyna sighed. “You really are starting from zero knowledge here, aren’t you? Well, I guess we can do ground grappling; we need to make sure you don’t get stuck in some hold. Get on the ground, on your back.”

Jerome hesitated, so she wrapped one arm around his waist, grabbed one of his arms with the other, stuck her butt into him, then used all of that leverage to flip him over her hip and onto the ground. A half second later she was sitting on his stomach, weight holding him down, hands positioned to do some serious damage via punching or choking.

“This,” she said, “is a full mount.”

“How…” he was still dizzy from the fall, and confused as to how it had happened so quickly.

“Leverage. That’s the secret of grappling. Through leverage you can take down someone three times your strength, hold them down, and then choose whether to kill them or not.”

“Why didn’t you use this in our sparring session? You could have won!”

“Two reasons,” she said while shifting her weight to get into an even more secure position. “First, as I said, this is a bad position against multiple opponents. If I move, you can get out. Second, if I used this against you, you could just Recoil Burst your way out of it.”

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“Oh. Right.” He moved his hands to press against her stomach, but she grabbed them at the wrist and pinned them down.

“If you were in the heat of battle you would’ve gotten that one off, no doubt. When you’re fighting your usual hesitancy goes away. In the meantime, think of this as a position to avoid, because your usual tricks won’t work here.”

She was right. Portal Hand didn’t work when the hand or wrist was being grabbed — either going through the portal or going back. His hand being stuck attached to his body was better than it being stuck farther away, but it still wasn’t great. “You could have gained an advantage by grappling in our match. Why not use it?”

“There are more dangerous positions for us, ones that if I had started doing ground grappling I would have no doubt gravitated towards. Don’t use Recoil Burst right now, okay?”

Jerome nodded.

As soon as he did so she leaned forward and wrapped his neck and right arm in some sort of messed up hug. There was a brief moment of freedom where there was less weight on him, but it didn’t last long. She ended up laying on him, chest to chest, with both her legs to his left and the hold around his head and right arm wrapped up tight, constricting.

Once again, he could barely move.

“This is a side mount. Very strong. Not as strong as a Full Mount, but a little easier to get into. And, for us, way more dangerous. What’s your first instinct here?”

He thought about it, then put his hands on her chest to push her off.

Right on her breasts.

She slapped him. Playfully, but strong enough that he knew to take his hands off. Then she tightened the hold so his hands couldn’t sneak in.

“Was that not…” He was deep enough into the grappling lesson that he hadn’t even been thinking sexually until she slapped him.

“Yes, that was the right instinct. It’s just…” she turned red. “In the heat of battle it would have been great. But not right now, when it’s distracting and… anyways, in battle you would have used Recoil Burst. And that would be bad for both of us.

“My body launches, starting from the chest, but my hands are wrapped around your neck. You would be doing Recoil Burst, indirectly, on your own neck. And that would… well, I don’t know how damage is calculated on sensitive areas like that, but it would be a lot. It probably wouldn’t kill you while we’re sparring, but we don’t know… and in an actual battle, where your health has already dropped significantly, it would be very very bad.”

It was always something with these skill combinations. “Okay, so no Recoil Burst while grappling on the ground. At least until I get more skill and HP.”

“You got it. Later on we’ll add it back in, in a controlled manner, by yelling ‘Burst’ and analyzing how it would work, but for now let’s focus on you getting out of these holds. You can’t always count on being able to Transform your way out of a bad situation, and if you’re in an especially powerful form you may not want to transform and lose those powers anyways.”

“You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?”

“I had two days while you were gone just for thinking about how to integrate your skillset. I didn’t know how long I’d have to be the one making all the decisions for us.”

They wrestled a couple hours more. The focus was on ground grappling, Krystyna showing him the Knee Mount, the Rear Mount, the Turtle, the guards, and various strategies to transfer between them (that is, escape). The Full Mount and the guards were the positions where Recoil Burst wouldn’t be dangerous to use, but they practiced without it just in case.

Jerome asked how she knew names for all the moves and Krystyna responded that she had done martial arts before being transferred to New Australia. Although she had to start at level 1 in each skill, she was able to level faster and proficiently execute advanced moves sooner due to her previous experience.

By the time they were finished Jerome had reached level 4 in his personal skill level of Grappling, and had escaped from each of the positions at least once (although repeating that trick was still difficult).

Krystyna, to her delight, also gained a level in Grappling. Jerome didn’t seem to benefit from that immediately, but he would the next time he used her form.

“Are you sure you don’t want to practice more?” she asked. “There’s so much more to ground grappling, and we haven’t even started on the standing techniques, and—”

Jerome cut her off. “There will be time later.”

He also wanted to continue, but that was the problem. The continual closeness of her body was making him desire that closeness even more than he desired training to rescue the humans. He was losing track of his mission.

Everything must come second to the mission.

Krystyna seemed disappointed.

He focused on Recoil Burst and Unarmed Strikes, since he could power-level those using Krystyna’s form, but his Healing got some practice from all the Refill SP he used. In general he worked himself to exhaustion. Krystyna offered some herbal concoctions (or… well, better to just think of them as herbal) that made his SP and MP refill faster so he could keep on training. MP was the real limit: he could use it to refill his SP, but the only way to refill his MP was to wait. Even with the potions that wait seemed interminable.

She would smile at him maddeningly, making him want to start wrestling again right then and there. Was that her goal? Did she want to raise her grappling skill that much?

Eventually darkness fell. He could keep on practicing for a while, but it seemed there was a hidden limit beyond MP and SP that made him need sleep just as much as he needed it in the real world.

He lay down about ten feet away from Krystyna.

“Why so far away?” she asked. “What if a gnoll attacks in the middle of the night?”

That didn’t make any sense. “Wouldn’t it be better if we weren’t both in one place? So we can’t both be attacked by the same gnoll?”

“But if we’re closer, we’re more likely to hear it if the other was attacked.”

She’d spent many nights alone here and didn’t seem to worry about this before. Hell, she’d spent several nights here with him and hadn’t worried about it until now. Was it because he was now able to protect her?

She moved closer, not waiting for his permission. About a foot away, close enough that he could smell her. She put her hand in his.

“If a gnoll tries to grab one of us in the night then we’ll feel the pull and wake up.” She squeezed three times in quick succession. “That’s the sign for being in any other sort of trouble.”

Jerome couldn’t understand the reasoning, but he chalked that up to the butterflies in his stomach and the electricity coursing through his veins. His reasoning ability was completely shot. If someone tried to explain addition and subtraction to him he might not understand it.

He’d grabbed her body in many ways today, pressed his flesh against hers, and even accidentally grabbed her boobs, but nothing felt half as exhilarating as simply holding her hand. Maybe it was that before there had always been a good reason, and for this the only reason he could think of was that… she wanted to.

She wanted to hold his hand, but didn’t want to admit it.

There was nothing he could do to train further right now, so he allowed himself this… pleasure? No, this was stronger than pleasure. Stronger even than lust.

“For safety,” he said with a nervous smile. “We’re safer together.”