Power Punch

"Um. Call me Letty, okay?" My girlfriend says a while after we log into VOW, wrinkling her nose.

"Sure, Letty. Is there any partular reason?" I glance at her from the corner of my eyes.

"Nah." She rubs her head on my shoulder. "I just prefer Letty."

We sit side by side in silence on the grassy Highlands for a while till she looks up into the sky. "So? How are we going back? Do we break through that barrier?"

I'm now in my usual form, though now that I have experienced True Demon form once, I feel that I am right now, in fact, suppressing my power and nature. It's in no way unpleasant though, unlike it is with my wings. I'm pretty sure that two of my three Desires are suppressed now, Wrath and Pride, though I'm not sure how it is when I'm in True Demon form in case of Love. I'll probably check that later.

About Levia's question... I look up into the sky, though I don't actually see the barrier above the island. Or actually, I see it with my magic sight, I think? Only a faint outline, but it's there. We are on the edge of the Highlands right now, on a mild, grassy ridge, and I think the barrier would be around two hundred meters above ground. Hm, if I'm here as an avatar, then it should be safe no matter what I do, right?

"We can try." I shrug and open my wings. "Gimme a moment, I'll see what I can do about it. Though I won't be using my True Demon form for now." I stand up, beat my wings strongly, and shot up into the sky.

I approach the barrier quickly and inspect the thing with my magic sense, but see nothing I didn't get to know earlier. It's a huge, thick, dense layer of mana twisting in specific patterns I can't really make sense of. When I stretch my arm and touch it lightly, the swirls of mana increase in both speed and number and converge to the place I touch. They disappear as they touch my hand and I feel them changing into kinetic force and repelling it. When I press harder, the mana merely accelarates and counters the force while my hand sinks... maybe a fraction of an inch inside.

Hm. It's not solid, but any attempt to break it by force will be rendered useless. The way I see it, this barrier works quite like the modern armor in the way that even if an attack converges to a single point, the force is absorbed by the surrounding material, or in this case mana. What is different from modern armor, at least that for humans, is that this is a reactive barrier, not passive. It's not tough by itself, but when something attempts to get through, it reacts with opposing force.

And the reason why I am saying that is because in this case there are only two ways to pass the barrier. One, to fool it into thinking there is nothing wrong when I stick my hand inside, is not really possible, the reason being I have no idea how exactly it works. I've no idea how mana works, for that matter, apart drom the basics. The second way is to break or pass the barrier in any way that isn't brute force approach. Teleportation being only one of them, though the problem is that I have no idea how thick the thing is. The range of my magic sense has increased to around twenty five meters with my recent growth, but I still don't see what's behind the barrier, and my eyes don't do much in this case.

Hm. I let myself fall down a bit, then beat my wings strongly with great assist from Energy affinity and punch upwards with my fist, willing it to be unstoppable. My hand sinks into the barrier till the thing stops at my... head. Not horns, but my head, and my horns sink in as well, and I immediately pull myself down with Primordial Energy when I see an incredible amount of mana building up and rushing down to me.

It's... monumental. If the amount of energy emitted when I pushed the barrier with my hand was equivalent to a granade, the sheer amount of mana rushing down at me would probably be equal to a modern antimatter bomb. The density of the wave is tens of times higher than it is in the air, and it only get higher and higher as it converges on the point I stuck my hand in.

At the edge of the barrier it spikes up to density tens of times higher than it was in Ave'A's body, which is good tens of thousands times what's in the air, and I distinctly see as it all discharges into kinetic force that is transfered directly into the air... oh holy fuck.

I immediately slow down my perception to a hundred times slower than normal, and I still barely have time to close my wings halfway and will the Primordial Energy redirect the particles approaching me to flow around my body. I'm still a bit too late though.

A massive shockwave slams into me and despite my efforts tears through my body, producing countless tiny internal wounds, and sends me straight towards the ground. I don't start spinning only thanks to luck and a bit of Primordial Energy that prevents my torque from changing without my will, something I often use when flying.

I notice that my eyes work kinda bad, but that's probably because I'm redirecting light from my eyes, and I flare my wings in an attempt to steady my fall as I try to heal my tattered body. I almost feel the muscles in my wings tearing, but I send Primordial energy to heal and reinforce them, plus to push away the air that hits them from downside, hoping to slow my fall even further. Or maybe I could grab the air directly, like I did with the ground?

I extend Primordial energy from my body into the air and towards the ground, filling the air and quickly approaching ground with it. When my feet start touching the ground, I fuse it all together so that my momentum is transferred directly into the ground, and I start sinking in. I would have screamed in shock, though it shouldn't have been such a surprise when I think about it, when I finally come to a stop half a foot lower... along with a hundred cube meters or so of the ground.

A moment later I notice the ground on the edges rising up, breaking into pieces and some of it spraying to the sides, and at the same time getting flattened by the shockwave that arrives a moment after I do. The tall grass is torn out of the ground and ejected away from the crater along with a mass of dirt, and I see it sprayed all over the ridge I am on.

Holy moly~, that's... something. Where is Letty? I didn't go straight up, and she isn't in my magic sense... and here she is, standing a hundred or so meters from me and making a huge black shield out of her nanobots. The shockwave at this distance is already too weak to uproot the grass and do any significant harm, mainly because it was primarily directed straight down, but it's still powerful.

I stop all the effects I turned on with my Primordial Energy and with shock notice I'm down to barely twenty percent of my reserves. The shockwave, now at normal speed, sweeps through the area and flattens the grass many kilometers around me. I look at Letty peeking from behind her shield with mouth gaping open in shock and incomprehension. The black tower shield flows back into her body and she rushes forward to me.

"What the hell happened!? That didn't look like checking out a barrier!" She shouts in alarm when she is halfway, and her eyes widen when she takes a good look at me. "Are you hurt? You're completely bloodied!" She jumps to me worringly and starts touching me all over, and I burst out laughing before I can stop myself.

"No, I'm already healed." I say reassuringly as she glares at me with a pout.

"Don't worry me like that, okay?" She grumbles, hugs me, and buries her face in the crane of my neck for a moment.

"No such plans, but no promises." I mutter into her ear and give her a kiss to the temple.

"Ahhaiht..." She grumbles and she pulls away a bit. "Huh?" She lets out and touches her face that... doesn't have my blood on. She blinks in confusion and touches my shoulder where a bit of blood remains, and now that I pay attention it is sucked into her skin and disappears in her Nihility.

"Whut?" She mumbles and scrathes her nose. "I'm getting energy from your blood. Quite a lot, to be honest." She says. And then she licks my breastplate. Huh?

Uuuh...

"Mhm~, nice~." She lets out something suspiciously close to a moan and licks my breastplate again, cleaning another drop of my shining golden blood.

Ummm... that's... that's... that's fucking hot! Ueeeh, shit, holy shit damn oh my gosh shit fuck oh my gosh! Why is it turning me on!?

Putting aside why in nine layers of hell is she licking my blood off my armor, this is honestly turning me on!

"Um, Helia?" I hear Letty's voice and I look up to her face gazing at me with curious eyes. "Your cheeks are glowing."

They are? Of course fukin they are, cause you just made my stupid body pump them full of blood! Why else do you think they would be glowing if not because you just made me embarrassed and turned on by licking my breastplate!?

"Oh." Letty says and looks down on my chest, then up at my face that is most likely twisted into some weird expression between accusation, embarrassment and horniness. "Oh." She repeats and her face becomes beet red in record time and she buries her head in my shouder with a squeak. Around five seconds she looks briefly up at me, but doesn't say anything and the silence stretches out.

"...Would you prefer if I took off my armor?" I ask in low voice and Levia's head shots up and she looks at me with eyes wide open.

"What!? Uh, n-." She closes her mouth and scrunches up her face. "Kinda?" She squeaks out quietly.

"Mhm." I smirk and lean forward to her ear. I bite it lightly, earning a surprised jolt from Letty, and ask in sultry voice. "Do you wanna clean me up? From my claws to my horns, all the way through?"

"Uh, I mean, I was only doing this to absorb the energy..." She squeaks out as she starts wriggling in my embrace.

"I know you were..." I begin and my voice trails off as I realize something and my excitement largely evaporates.

Absorbing the energy? Why does that sound useful? Probably because that could be hella useful with this barrier. I mean, if she absorbs the energy, then there are high chances she will be able to pass through the barrier unimpended, right?

"Letty, I think I have a job for you." I say seriously and she looks at me with interest, the embarrassment slowly fading from her face.

"What is it?" She asks.

"...It's a reactive barrier." I say after a moment to collect my thoughts, ignoring her mutter and gesturing to the sky. "It repels anything that enters it, the further you push, the higher the force. I had an idea to push into it with the assist of my Energy affinity, and I did, but the barrier retaliated with a huge amount of mana. I managed to get out of it in time, but for some reason the force that was supposed to push me out was transfered to the air. You saw the result."

"Oh, alright." Letty nods lightly. "What about it?"

"If you're absorbing the energy." I look at her with a suggestively raised eyebrow and bop her on her small nose, making her pull away with a cute pout. "There's a high chance you'll be able to pass that barrier easily, maybe even draw energy from it."

"Hm." She makes a thoughtful expression. "Maybe. I'm not sure. Actually, give me a moment, I'll check out my skill trees, maybe get some inspiration." Her face colours red again as she shrinks a bit and turns her head aside on my chest. "I didn't really have a chance to that earlier..." She brings out a few panels an starts tapping on them with a thoughtful expression.

Hm. I turn myself into True Demoness, feeling the same incredible power welling up inside me, and sit down while Letty lets out a cute, startled squeak. I pull her onto my lap and wrap my now huge arms around her body, settling my hands on her belly and securing her in place.

"Go on." I purr deeply, stretching out my wings and covering us both with them, making a cozy study for Letty. "Don't mind me."

She glances at me with beet red face and quickly turns back to her things. "I very much mind. And I love it." She mumbles and I giggle, letting out a series of deep, reverberating sounds. I feel Letty shaking a bit with that and she attempts to stiffle a laugh, but fails and starts laughing loudly whie pressing her head into my chest. Because that's as high as she reaches. Not even to my chin while she's sitting on my lap.

"What?" I mutter in mock anger while tightening my grip.

"N-nothing." Letty replies in strained voice in response, squirming, and looks up at me. "Just your voice. I felt it. Like, I felt it in my whole being." She says with a goofy grin and giggles, bringing a wide smile to my lips.

...

Let's check my own talent trees, for that matter. Frankly, I was fine with the abilities I had up to now, and I learned how to manipulate Primordial Energy directly, so I don't really need my talent trees, but I've been seriously neglecting them.

What do we have here... three talent trees, Demonic Star, Self-Enhancement, and Body as Weapon.

First, Demonic Star... Hm. Sticky Flame, Scorching Flame, Devouring Flame, Scalding Flame, Flames of Wrath, Flames of Fear... most of it is something I either know and used or have thought about. Or at least I can guess easily what it all does and how to achieve it.

There are a lot more types of the flames, but they are just variants of different properties. It gets more intersting when I get to a different part of the talent tree, in which I find quite different nodes. Matter to Energy conversion? Light Devourer? Heavy Flame? They all sound pretty interesting, though there is nothing I couldn't really guess and easily acheive by myself.

Matter to Energy conversion would be something exciting for me had I not been doing it in my stomach. Light Devourer is just consuming photons that fall into the flame, so it's nothing extraordinary, and Heavy Flame is finally something touching my Energy affinity in more tangible manner, because it makes the flame stop anything that flies into it by increasing the flames' effective mass to something actually perceivable.

I skim through the rest of the tree, which, now that I look at it properly, is absolutely enormous with at least a hundred nodes in each of three branches. There is branch for Stellar Flame, a branch for Energy, and the largest one for things using both aspects of my Primordial Energy. Sadly, there are few things that catch my attention, but that's probably because many things I theoretically could do are not included here as nodes.

The few that do catch my attention are for example Supernatural energy decomposition, which seems to reduce any energy touching my flames into its building blocks. Unfortunately I don't see anything that would allow me to manipulate those smaller elements, but it's likely that energy affinity will suffice to do that directly. I'll need to check later.

Another thing is Flame Bonding, which sounds vague, but in reality is very simple. It connects two chunks of flame with a sort of bond that makes anything happening to one of them be reflected in the other. It really reminds me of quantum bonding, and it's another thing I'll need to check out.

And one that isn't special in any way, but caught my attention, is Bondbreaker. What hides under this edgy name is breaking any bonds and connections in the matter that surrounds the flame. I assume that, if it works how I think it does, it would do as a fantastic cutting edge. You know, in essense, what makes solid materials solid and hard are the bonds between particles, and this would probably simply invalidate them.

And, frankly, there are surprisingly few nodes that affect space. Almost none, actually, with the only two being Flame Pocket and Gravity Amplification. Though both are really inflexible, so I'm at loss as to what I should do to be able to teleport without relying on such unreliable methods as last time. There is nothing on entering other dimensions or teleportation. There is also nothing on infusing Primordial Energy into materials like I've been doing when fighting with Elena or stopping myself from getting splattered on the ground.

Either way, having seen Demonic Star tree, I switch to Self-Enhancement. This tree is much smaller, there is barely a dozen nodes in it, but it's not a surprise considering that you only need to combine it with the first tree and you'll get different effects on the body.

There is... hardly anything interesting here. Constant boost to a body part, momentary boost, Limit Breaker, which is pretty much a supernatural equivalent of hysteric strength, Flexibility limit Breaker, which causes me to overcome my limits in flexibility by forcing my joints to shift shape dynamically, and other types of body improving and boosting nodes. Most of them are either things I'm already doing on daily basis or things I can't find any good use for.

Just about the only thing that interests me is something called Primordial Domain, which sounds like something very powerful, and pretty much is.

And it finally tells me what my horns are for and why they are a fantastic magic conductor. To put short, it fills my horns with energy, creating a sort of domain around them, which allows me to gain knowledge and exert greater influence over everything inside it. I'm not sure how it fits body enhancement, but that's not my concern.

I assume it was exactly what happens when I turn into my True Demon form. Let's look at my horns... yeah. I feel a large amount of Primordial Energy in my horns that exudes a feeling of wisdom and control and feels kinda... superior? I'm pretty sure that is the feeling of a domain. Speaking of it, that's probably the reason why it showed three question marks by Control in my character sheet a while back.

I didn't pay attention earlier, but now that I focus on it, I vaguely sense a... more or less sphere around my horns that feels... mine? Subservient to me? It's not really something I can put into words, but my perception is much sharper there and is more like knowledge I have directly inserted into my brain, not some sort of sense. I also feel like I have greater control over it, and I'll really need to try making use of it, though not now. I'd rather not fuck something up and kill Letty in the process, even if she would be reborn in six hours.

Anyway, back to my trees. Let's check the third one, Body as Weapon. I have high hopes for it, since it sounds like something that would contain techniques and more... active effects, unlike it is in the other two. They are practically only various kinds of properties, boosts and passive effects.

So, let's see... The whole tree isn't large as Demonic Star, but it has around three dozen nodes divided into three branches. Let's see the first one.

Force focus, basically transfering force to a point, Energy drain, seeping energy from the target, Momentum lock, keeping the momentum constant. Most of the nodes here are things that require contact with the body. I've been using many of them in one way or another and there are few that might be useful in the future, though there is one that interests me and I'm not really sure what to make of.

Forcebreak, which apparently... burns my Primordial Energy into force, weakening my body? The way I understand it, it uses the energy that's infused into my body to generate huge amount of force. I'm not into breaking my own body, so I won't be using it either way, but I'm pretty sure I could replicate the effect with Primordial Energy drawn out from my core. That would probably be safer, and I'll test it when I find a good opponent.

Going to the next branch... useless. It's a small branch with a few nodes all about controlling my body, which is borderline useless in any normal situation. I guess it could help in the void, as an example, but it's easy enough to create propulsion force by myself. Though... it might be useful to make some specific movements? But no, I'd rather just practice and do them by myself.

And the next tree is... interesting. First node in it is Flame edge, which already sounds promising, and it apparently creates an edge out of flame on my body. There are a few variations of this node type, including Semi-solid coating that was used to create one of my first abilities, and they might give me a few ideas as to the weapons I create from my flames.

For example, there is one called Flame crystallization that creates crystalline structures from my flame, which behave almost like solid materials. I've already made my flame more or less solid a few times, but I never tried shaping it into something specified, much less into specific structures.

Another thing that catches my attention is a node called Body extension, which, to put short, creates structures from my flame that are directly connected to my body, unlike, for example, the gaunlets I've been making, which are just a layer protecting it. It's a vague node, and I'm not particularly surprised that it has eight fucking connections required for it to work, but I don't need to use it. I'd rather try replicating the effect by myself. Maybe making myself large claws? Then replicate Flame edge on them? Hm hm~.

And... that's all. I mean, there's still the bank with all miscellanous nodes for skill creation, but I'm not going to check it since they are all nodes like body parts, energies, actions and things like that available for everyone.

So... alright. That's all pretty interesting information, and I'll need a while to think it all through. Let's do it while Letty is still in her trees. Not like I'll be done by the time she finishes, because I'll need practice to check everything properly. Hopefully I'll have something to fight when I have more free time.