Chapter 84: Kung Fu Human III
The following morning, Laïa, who had recovered all her hope thanks to the previous day’s words and above all thanks to the other girls’ support, came to find her master for the second stage of her training, already standing at attention with her headband tied around her forehead, when Freya handed her a simple plate.
"Right. You see this plate?"
Laïa nodded.
"You’re going to wash it a hundred times."
"...A hundred times? But how is that going to help me, sensei?"
"I’ve told you already, Laïa. Don’t be in too much of a hurry. Everything will come in its own time, and then you’ll understand at last."
"All right, sensei..."
So she settled in front of the basin and started scrubbing, except that Freya took the plate straight back out of her hands almost immediately, shaking her head from side to side.
"No. Not like that. Watch."
She braced the plate against her left palm, laid the cloth over it, then rotated her right wrist in wide even circles, shoulder low and elbow following the movement without ever leading it, the whole gesture starting from the lower body and traveling up to the hand.
"Like that. Round. Always round. A circle has neither beginning nor end, and that is why it never tires."
"...Ooooh."
She handed the plate back to her student, who immediately took over and imitated the movement as best she could, tongue slightly out with the effort of concentration, while Freya had already gone back to settle in with the others.
She spent a good part of the morning stuffing herself with food and laughing about all sorts of nothing with Naïa, Mei and Kaguya, while glancing over now and then toward the basin where her student kept turning, over and over, without complaining a single time.
"I did it! I finished!"
Laïa came running over, plate held above her head like a trophy, so Freya got up from the table, grabbed a broom leaning against the wall and handed it to her.
"Good. Now you’re going to wash the floor with this, until nightfall."
Laïa set to work immediately, except that Freya shook her head again and took it back out of her hands.
"No. Not like that."
"Again?"
"Like this."
She stepped to the side, her weight shifting from one leg to the other without her upper body moving at all, then swept the broom in front of her in a full rotation that traced a clean circle across the floor, before coming back to exactly her starting position.
"But why don’t you just show me how to do it properly the first time, every time?"
That’s a fair point, actually. Why? I suppose it’s part of the training, that’s how it works in the films, after all...
"A student—"
"Yes, I understand, sensei!"
And so Freya went back to her conversations with the girls, then to managing the dungeon and the rest of her affairs, time passing without her paying it much attention, while she took advantage of every trip through the corridors to glance discreetly at her apprentice, who was always there doing her step to the side and then her rotation, over and over, tracing even circles along the entire length of the hallway.
Then, toward the end of the day, she finally came to find her.
"But what’s the point of all this, sensei?" she asked, dragging the words a little, half complaining.
"My student, far too impatient you are. The battle will show you."
And so the girls all made their way once again, at sunset, toward the same place as the day before, where the young iron bear stood at the center of the clearing, exactly as though it had been waiting for them.
"I don’t get it, sensei... I’m just going to lose again..."
"Believe in yourself, Laïa!"
What Freya was now certain of was that Laïa was not merely a small mage with pink flames.
She was definitively a genius, and Freya could see it with her own eyes now that she had access to Quantimana, because the pink particles orbiting the girl were growing in number by the day, her favorability rising without pause, which in the language of ordinary people simply meant that the size of her mana reserve kept increasing. Her affinity, meanwhile, was rising at an absolutely staggering rate, which meant the precision and ease with which she handled mana were improving with every passing hour.
And it showed just as much in the way she learned, understood and absorbed everything Freya had given her over these past two days,.
Freya knew it perfectly well, Aria had said the girl had a bit of talent, except that what she should have heard from the mouth of her SSS-rank lover was that a bit of talent at Aria’s level meant quite simply a genius.
Anyway, all of this to say that today Freya believed in it a little more, knowing the child would eventually understand, or at the very least that her body would know how to react.
"Start with yesterday’s movement, but up close this time, Laïa!"
"Yes, sensei!"
And the girls, hanging back at the tree line, immediately began cheering her on.
Then silence settled between the young bear and the girl as they slowly closed the distance between them at the center of the clearing. The sun was dropping behind the treetops and casting long bands of orange light between the trunks, the tall grass swayed gently in a breeze coming up off the river, and the only things still moving were the evening insects crossing through the beams in spirals, along with the leaves detaching one by one to drift slowly toward the ground.
Then Laïa gave her salute, fist against palm, bowing her upper body.
And when a leaf drifted past in front of her, she threw her palm.
The strike hit the air just in front of the bear’s muzzle and the displacement was enough to push its iron fur back, the hairs flattening backward before returning to place, while the beast took half a step back and blinked.
Naïa, for her part, felt a sudden stab of fear, because she had understood perfectly well what was about to follow.
"Are you certain she’ll be all right, madam?"
Freya didn’t answer, because the bear had already risen onto its hind legs and was performing the exact same movement as the day before, the circular sweep of the paw, the weight shifting forward, and finally the open palm driven straight ahead.
Except that this time, Laïa didn’t stand there.
She made her step to the side, exactly the one from the broom, her weight shifting from one leg to the other without her upper body moving a centimeter, so that the iron paw passed a few centimeters from her shoulder without ever touching her.
Then she went into the rotation.
And it was at that precise moment that Freya saw it.
That pink mist made of thousands of Quantimana that had always drifted around the girl, that mist nobody else here could see, contracted all at once against her body before concentrating entirely in her arms, in her hips and then in her legs, until her whole silhouette was alight with a pink flame that followed the exact line of her muscles.
Then Laïa caught the bear’s paw in her rotation, and she carried the movement through.
The fire went with her.
It stretched out from her shoulders and hips in long pink trails that followed the exact curve of her motion, drawing a complete circle around her as she turned, a circle that closed on itself and hung in the evening air for a full second before scattering into particles that drifted slowly up toward the branches.
The mass of grey iron left the ground with a scraping of torn grass, dragged by the very force the bear itself had put into its own strike, and the girl carried her rotation through without ever stopping, her feet pivoting in the dirt and her hair whipping around a face lit up in pink, while the beast traced a full arc above her head, its four paws beating empty air and its iron fur catching both the last rays of the sun and the flames still turning around the two of them.
Then the arc came to its end, and the bear hit the ground on its back with a crash that shook the whole clearing and threw up a cloud of dirt and dead leaves all around them.
Absolute silence fell over the place.
Mei had both hands over her mouth, Naïa was left gaping at the sight, unable to finish the sentence she’d started, and Kaguya seemed entirely unbothered by any of it, because after all, Kaguya was still Kaguya.
But the most stunned of all was still Laïa, who remained standing in the middle of the clearing, arms raised in the final position of her rotation, staring at her own hands without moving a muscle.
"LAÏA! THE PLATE! FINISH IT WITH THE PLATE!"
"YES SENSEI!"
Except that before she could fully come back to her senses, the bear was already back on its feet and shoved her with a simple push of its head, sending her off the ground, rolling several meters through the grass before her flight ended against a tree trunk.
This time Naïa and the girls ran straight over to her, but to haul her up laughing and carry her at arm’s length.
"You were so close! Well done!"
"That was incredible, Laïa!"
And the girl, still thoroughly dazed, pulled free all at once to run straight to Freya and throw herself into her arms.
"MADAM! MADAM! I unlocked a new skill! Something warm went through my whole body and my head, and then it appeared right in front of my eyes!"
"And what’s it called?"
"Heavenly Roseflame Reversal!"
Freya burst out laughing.
"Hahahaha! Heavenly Roseflame Reversal?!"
She caught Laïa mid-leap and stroked her hair.
"You’re a genius, Laïa. A real genius."
And she meant it sincerely, because the girl, starting from a completely absurd training regimen and a simple rivalry with a bear, had pushed herself to surpass her own limits using her own Quantimana, going as far as creating an entirely new skill.
Then Freya set her back down and walked calmly over to the young bear to scratch it between the ears.
"Well done to you too, big guy."
The bear growled.
"Grooooaaaaaw."
"See! I was right, that’s how it goes!" Kaguya exclaimed, immediately going back to imitating it with both hands raised.
"No, it’s like this, watch! Groaaa!" Laïa shot back, planting herself in front of her.
And the girls started playing with the bear, all of them imitating it together, while the bear, understanding perfectly well what was going on, roared right back and played along with them, thoroughly delighted, since amusement was exactly what it had come looking for in the first place.
And so ended Freya’s second and final plan, once again in failure, but a happy failure, since the dungeon had nonetheless gained three things that evening.
A new friend, a new skill, and most important of all, Laïa’s smile.