Chapter 16

  Michael woke up to the sound of a notification. His first thought upon waking was an annoyed curse. Then, he idly mused that Old Dave’s day must begin quite early, if the man was texting him about another job at 6 in the morning. Then, he realized that he was indeed getting more patient with all his dungeon delves, because not too long ago, his temper had been bad enough that his phone would have landed in a hole in the wall.

  Trying to go back to sleep and failing—even after silencing the phone—Michael finally decided that it was probably for the best if he got up instead of struggling in bed, trying to win a battle that he could not win.

  “Did you go on the straight and narrow?” Old Dave said in the text, “Mustang here misses all the strange valuables you used to bring. To think that you only brought three and you already got him addicted to the kick of having them appraised. I can’t say I don’t approve, though. You make me miss some profit, but better than having you caught and mauled by somebody’s guard dog while you swipe their house clean.”

  There was a laughing emoji. Michael wondered what the hell Old Dave thought he was doing to get his hands on the valuables, before he realized that the pawn shop owner surely thought he was robbing houses by the trail. He shook his head, wondering whether he should clear up the misunderstanding or not.

  The text went on.

  “I have another job for you. More of the same, I’m afraid. There’s some important guests arriving at the airport tomorrow, of the same sort as Carmela. You don’t need me to tell you how to act. Don’t take your shit truck this time, come to the pawn shop first and I’ll give you a real car. These aren’t the sort of people who take it in good humor like Carmela did.”

  There were some more instructions, which, summed up, were: grab the people, be respectful, go to the drop zone, get back in the car, grab Carmela, take her to the drop zone as well—somewhere he had never been before. Once there, stand outside menacingly and without speaking, then after the meeting, ferry them to the pawn shop one at a time.

  The pay was nothing short of hazard pay, for some reason, which was slightly worrying. Carmela was not the good sort of people, of course, but Michael had not thought too much of it until now.

  “But then again,” he amended his risk assessment, “I do have superhuman abilities now. I wonder if the distortion field can handle a bullet.”

  He could test it. He wasn’t planning on delving the dungeon today, giving him an entire day off. But first, he dropped down to the floor and started doing one-handed push-ups. It was after he showered and ate a hearty meal that he started considering how he could go about training his skills against guns.

  Perhaps he didn’t need the ability to stop bullets. Perhaps he was overreacting and overpreparing.

  Perhaps not.

  If he was dealing with something like the mafia, or at least with people shady enough to be dangerous, then he needed to take the right precautions. Just like in the dungeon, one wrong step and it was all over. Perhaps two, with his ability to heal, but healing a bullet wound in front of a bunch of gangsters brought a whole other sort of problems which may end up outweighing simple death by gunshot.

  How was he going to train to handle bullets, though? It wasn’t like he could go to a random passer-by and ask them to shoot at him from a distance because he needed to train his reflexes.

  What a conundrum.

  In the end, he came up empty. Defeated, he forced his mind to relax and not overthink too much. Just like in the dungeon, he could take things one step at a time, figure out what to do.

  Slightly more relaxed, but still tense, he fired off a text to Sensei Stephan telling him he would skip tomorrow’s karate class, explaining that it was for work reasons.

  “No, that can’t do,” was the reply. “You need to be ready to impress Taiko when he comes here. Plus, I want to see your progress. Come to Abevill Park at 4PM. You’re free that time, right? I’ll train you personally—one on one.”

  “No gi?” Sensei Stephan asked.

  They were in a secluded corner of the park, and Michael had come wearing comfortable shoes and a shirt, trusting that he wouldn’t need to wear the actual gi in public. He would feel rather self-conscious about it if he had to.

  “Sorry Sensei, I thought I wouldn’t need it here.”

  “Whatever,” Stephan said, a touch disappointed. “But you need to think! If you’re training, you need to wear the clothes.”

  It was a good reminder that even though he was normally friendly, here he was still Michael’s sensei.

  They bowed to each other, and then they began with the warm-ups. Michael had to be very careful not to accidentally activate [Distortion Field] when Stephan attacked him, which, after so many battles in the dungeon, was like going against his own instincts.

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  “You’re faster and stronger, that’s good.” Stephan said. “You’re starting to get a sort of battle sense, I can see it, and your techniques are much smoother, even though they look rougher. More effective, but much less polished. Have you been picking fights with people? If so, just don’t. It’s not worth it.”

  “No, Sensei,” Michael said with a grunt, dodging a blow in a not very conventional way.

  The Sensei’s eyes narrowed as he shook his head. “Bullshit. That dodge right there, I never taught you that. You were always clumsy during spars, thinking too much and only applying the techniques as they were. Scholastic, you know? You lacked experience, improvisation, and intent. Now it’s all changed. You just go with the flow. That doesn’t happen overnight, not with you skipping half the classes. It took me years to get there, how did you do it so quickly?”

  “Well—”

  “That’s why I wanted to see you alone, you know.” Stephan said, increasing the speed and power of his blows. Michael struggled to keep up, even with his passive skill enhancing his reflexes. “I want to know.”

  “I swear I’m not picking fights with—”

  The speed of the blows increased again. Michael had never seen his Sensei at full power, and even now he doubted the man was really giving his all, but it was like battling against a machine. He was fast, and his punches and kicks came like hammer blows, putting Phillip’s sadistic strikes to shame. He was vicious, pressing Michael while still asking him questions, trapping his arms, sending him sprawling to the floor.

  “You shouldn’t be able to keep up with me,” he said.

  “I’m not,” Michael groaned as he pushed himself up from the floor, a quick burst of healing taking care of his budding bruises.

  “You’re not, but you shouldn’t be able to stand by now, let alone keep fighting.”

  After that, he took it up another notch. Michael’s focus slipped for a moment, and he saw a punch heading right for his nose. He flinched, a natural reaction to being well aware of the power behind the blow, and in his lapse of focus, he was unable to restrain himself.

  A distortion bubble sprang into being, and Sensei Stephan’s fist impacted it, before being redirected off-course with a force strong enough to snap his arm.

  What followed was a tense, interminable moment of silence as the two looked at each other. Stephan’s face was contorted in pain, his eyes wide in disbelief, his mind struggling to register what had happened. Then the real pain hit him through the numbing effect of shock, and his face went red, but he didn’t scream.

  In that moment, Michael knew he had fucked up. His Sensei would have never hit him, instead probably stopping mere inches away from his face, but his instinctual brain didn’t know that, and had acted in the best way possible to avoid a painful head injury.

  “Shit,” Stephan cursed, “what the hell was that, man? Call an ambulance, take me to the hospital!”

  Michael rushed to him, even though Stephan took a reflexive step back, and Michael noticed that there was a hint of fear in his Sensei’s eyes.

  “The fuck you doing! Grab the car!” howled the Sensei.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to look reassuring, putting his hands where Stephan could see them, “I didn’t mean to hurt you. But I can fix it, let me fix it.”

  “Fix it?” Stephan hissed, “how? What was that thing that appeared and snapped my arm?”

  “Promise you won’t say anything about this to anyone.” Michael said.

  “What? What do you—”

  “Promise.” He repeated, letting a bit of [Presence] slip into his voice.

  “What the hell?” Stephan said, shrinking back. In that moment, Michael realized that his Sensei had never really been in a fight outside of a dojo, or a gym, at least not in recent years. But why would he? He had a family and a job, why ruin it all by picking up fights and hanging with the wrong sorts of people? He was not somebody with nothing to lose, unlike Michael.

  Stephan looked at Michael strangely as [Presence] lost its grip on him. “Fine. Just how are you going to fix this, huh?” he pointed at his arm, bent at a wrong angle. “I can’t afford the hospital bill, and I doubt you can either.”

  Fortunately, the bone had not pierced the skin, and there was no blood, but Michael knew that his Sensei had to be in a lot of pain. He himself had been forced to fight with broken bones before; he knew the sort of pain they caused.

  “Here,” Michael stepped close to the man, until he was one meter away, and he designated him as an ally.

  Then he activated his healing skill.

  “What the—” Stephan said, the words seemingly all he could say on repeat as his arm bent itself back straight and the pain became a horrible itching sensation and then started to fade. There was some tingling, Michael knew from experience, but barely a minute later and it would be gone. Or it should have been, except that the bone was clearly still broken.

  “Wait there, we are not done,” he said to the stunned man.

  He went to his pack and fetched some coins to replenish his mana. In the end, it took 2 Copper plus his mana pool, which he now knew to be 12 Copper, to heal Stephan’s broken arm. A lot more compared to when Michael healed himself.

  “This…” Stephan began. “You know what? I don’t know if I want to know. I do want to know, but I don’t want to get involved in all the shit that comes with this sort of stuff.”

  He got up, woozy and barely standing.

  “Are you okay?” asked Michael.

  Stephan nodded, “Yeah, but I’m feeling so hungry I feel like I might faint. Is it normal?”

  “It is,” Michael nodded, “Even though it’s magic, the healing has to take the energy and materials from somewhere, right?”

  “Right…” Stephan said. “Magic, huh? Well, I guess you owe me dinner now. You have a shady job or some shit, no? A fight club perhaps? You can afford it. You owe it to me,” he said, strangely composed. “We are done here, let’s go.”

  They ate in silence for a while. Michael was not hungry, but more food meant more muscle, so he didn’t shy away from an extra meal. His Sensei studied him while he ate, watching him carefully.

  “You’re still you,” he said after he was done. “Nothing seems off, apart from the whole magic thing. Is that why you suddenly know how to fight? You were good before, but only as far as the techniques went. In a real fight…”

  “I know about real fights,” snapped Michael, then blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it. It’s not magic that made me good at fighting. Fighting made me good at fighting. Magic just helps a bit.”

  Stephan’s eyes narrowed.

  “It’s not what you think,” Michael said quickly, “I don’t go around picking fights with people. Listen, if you want to know what’s going on, you need to swear you won’t tell anyone about this. Not even your wife or your therapist. Can you do that?”

  He flexed a bit more [Presence], to make his point clear, enough that his Sensei could not shake it off as easily as last time, even though the mana cost was impressive.

  “Fine,” he said, clearly unhappy but willing to compromise. “As long as it’s nothing illegal. Is it illegal? I can’t promise I won’t tell anyone if it is. I like living a quiet life, away from troubles.”

  Michael shook his head. Sensei Stephan relaxed, “then I swear I won’t tell anyone. I’m curious now.”