Fighting powerful bruisers was the worst. If I was up against a high level paladin I could at least expect to do some damage through their likely enchanted armor. Sir Kalman's power was split between offense and defense, while a certain class of bruisers just tended to be maximized in both. They didn't really get tired either. But they all had a weakness.

Probably. I sure didn't know what Captain Punch's weakness was, and he didn't seem concerned about me finding out. It didn't seem to be any element or mental spells. Teleportation clearly wasn't a weakness of his, nor willpower. I couldn't force him to teleport when he didn't want to, and I couldn't teleport myself if he didn't want me to. Though apparently, he thought I should be able to overcome that. I thought so too, but with less confidence than Captain Punch had.

"You do well under pressure, right?" he asked. His hand was tightly gripped around my throat. Obviously he wasn't trying to crush me, because he would have already done that. I wondered if there was anything I could do about that except not get caught to begin with. Stoneskin would probably help against most people, though.

I really didn't want to pass out. I was pretty sure Captain Punch wouldn't kill me for a training exercise, but Castle might. Kill me, that was. Thinking was getting harder. I just needed to be somewhere else, but power interference made it difficult. I should just be teleporting myself but it felt like I was always trying to drag Captain Punch along with me.

Dimension Door wasn't really supposed to do that, but it didn't really work when restrained, powers or not- though we had at least tested that I could do that independently. I really needed to stop thinking about things and do something.

Just because I had upgrades didn't mean I understood every aspect of Spatial Magic equally well. I was good at portals and Storage. I couldn't just put myself in Storage though. I needed to put myself over there. How was that done?

I didn't know. But I didn't know it needed mana, so I started there. And then… I was 'over there'.

"Finally!" Captain Punch said as I coughed and hacked and tried to catch my breath. "Now then, can you do that while you weigh two tons?"

"No chance," I said at first. But… I could probably transport a 12 foot Great Girl, which was pretty close. "Though… maybe. Why?"

"Because you're supposed to be training to fight Castle. And she could do that to you."

"Couldn't I just deck her in the face if she does?" I asked. "With that extra density."

"She doesn't have to be nice," Captain Punch said. "She- well, I shouldn't say anything not in our official manifest."

It sure would have been easier if he would. He could tell me her weakness and all that. As for the other thing… I could guess. Increased density without increased power. That would just take more control. I wondered if she could make people fall apart by neglecting durability. That would be… not very heroic. I had to consider the possibility, though. If she was really mad about me beating up Tower, she might do something crazy.

Then again, she hadn't come to seek me out so she probably wasn't that mad. I couldn't say what would happen if we ran into each other again, or if her apprentice was dumb around me again. I wasn't going to stop his heart a second time because I would know to protect myself against Parrot's abilities, but I would still be willing to beat him up and toss him in a dumpster.

-----

I was previously aware that there were special heavy materials that were used for strength training by certain people. I didn't touch that section of the gym, though. Even when I used Enhance my level of strength was more or less within human limits so there wasn't really much reason for me to interact with those things. But now, I got to experience the materials firsthand.

"Uuuugh," I lay on the floor. "I can't move anywhere like this."

"Come on, you baby!" Great Girl was involved with my training today… mostly because she was one of the people that could transport the stuff. Captain Punch could too, but executives were more important. Also, maybe Great Girl requested being here for this particular thing. "Stand up!"

"Can you lift ten times your bodyweight?" I asked her. "I don't think you can."

"I can lift that much stuff," she said confidently.

"Without your powers?"

"You're supposed to be using your powers!" she declared.

"That still doesn't help me here," I grumbled. "If I use Enlarge you'll just throw more weights on." I knew that because she had.

Technically, I didn't have all of the weight pressing down on me- unless I tried to get up. It was slung onto particularly sturdy ropes, because they knew I couldn't pick this stuff up. I didn't have to be standing to teleport, but it sure felt like it would help.

I could probably store some of the pieces. I could also just break the ropes but neither would resolve the problem. I was supposed to be overcoming the weight. Maybe it would have been easier if I didn't know how much it weighed.

9 mana wasn't that much anymore, but I still couldn't just throw it around everywhere. I had to be efficient with my attempts. I needed enough power to teleport with this stuff, just to be certain that I could teleport when particularly massive. The Power Brigade didn't have anyone with appropriate powers that we were admitting existed, so I couldn't really test that.

I released the spell, trying to teleport somewhere around twenty feet to my left, where I knew there was a large open space. It didn't work.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

"Come on!" said a second heckler. "It's easy. Just do it!"

"Your weights are literally nothing," I retorted Midnight's taunt. Based on our training, it appeared that Castle was probably limited on how much she could modify density. Midnight only had to deal with an extra hundred pounds or so, instead of two thousand. And this wasn't even the limit I would have to deal with just yet.

"I'm sure you can do it," he said. "I believe in you! Haven't we moved way more stuff through Gate?"

"That's different," I said. I could use more mana, obviously. But that wasn't the point. The point was being better. "It's a higher tier spell and-"

A very different application. What was the point of having a mastery if I couldn't do something like this? Of course, Gate wasn't included in this… but Alter Portal was.

I thought about opening a portal very briefly. Just long enough to fall through. Yes, that should work and… it was a terrible idea. Assuming it actually formed, I would need to be certain that I would be all the way through before it stopped existing. Otherwise, parts of me wouldn't be next to other parts of me. Specifically, ones that were supposed to be adjacent.

But I still had to be able to manage. Portals couldn't be the only way to ignore mass, right? I didn't want to just use extra mana, but maybe I could trade some of the extra precision for capacity. At the tier of Dimension Door I was already giving up range, so lowering that further wasn't a great option.

I was pretty sure the ceiling shifted above me, but what I felt most was Midnight's direction change.

"You did it!" Great Girl said. "Now do a hundred more reps, cadet!"

"I don't have the mana for that," I said. Though… maybe I would need to use it that many times to get the technique down. "I do need help with more testing though."

It hadn't been clear if my accuracy was off. I wanted to go twenty feet to my left, and I'd gone to my left… but we didn't have accurate measurements before or after.

There were extremely fancy features that some training rooms had. Computer systems that could create and measure three dimensional environments. What we used was a measuring stick and some tape on the floor.

By the end of that session we determined my accuracy did drop. I always went the right direction, but I often ended up scattered somewhere around my intended destination. Not just short or long, but somewhere near it. About a quarter at short distance- five feet for every twenty.

"We should test longer distances," Great Girl said. "But… we can't do that here. And getting the weights anywhere with a wide enough area would be troublesome."

"Agreed," I said. "At maximum, I think we can try fifty feet? If I'm all the way on one side of the room and aiming a bit beyond the center."

"Test something in between first," Midnight suggested. "Just in case the inaccuracy scales up. We really don't want you to be stuck inside something."

Having experienced that once, I fully agreed. Not that I had been stuck, but the resulting recovery to avoid that had been both physically damaging and magically exhausting. I could probably leave behind the extra weights and stuff, but I wasn't sure how conscious I would be of what I was doing.

Since the direction had stayed quite consistent, after a short meditation break I was ready to make another attempt. I had enough mana for a couple more, but keeping some spare mana above negatives was safest.

Getting into position more or less involved Great Girl picking up all the weights and placing them at the destination. We had already determined that they didn't have to hold me down for me to bring them along, as long as I was conscious of it. If I didn't want them to come, they probably wouldn't.

After another short hop and some measurements, my position seemed fine.

"Now just do it another thousand times for statistics," Midnight said.

"Fair point," I said. We really only had ten or so data points, including the shorter jumps. One data point at a further distance was pretty much nothing.

I wondered if fighting weight counted for Aspect of the Barbarian. If it did, though, actual Barbarians would be able to gain experience from 'normal training', so I suspected not.

-----

"Stargirl escaped," Midnight said.

"What?" I started, my head snapping towards him. Then I frowned. "Wait, didn't she already escape like, months ago?"

"The mouse," Midnight clarified. "That's why I called her- ah, whatever. I was talking about the mouse."

I was still surprised. Just not quite as much. "I thought the lab was able to contain the ones we were catching?"

"Supervillains escape captivity with alarming frequency," Midnight said. "Mice isn't surprising."

"But mice are so… small and weak."

"Superpowered mice," Midnight said. "Also, regular ones escape their enclosures all the time."

"Are we being paid to catch Stargirl?" I knew that the other one was Darkstargirl but the name seemed like a problem. "Mini-Stargirl?"

"Starmouse?"

"That would make the one that got away Evermouse, because it had the same power as Everlady."

Midnight nodded. "I think that's a totally fine naming convention." He radiated a strange amusement as he often did. "Anyway, I do believe that it's not our job to search out these mice, but knowing more about how Dark Star's powers work might be valuable for us personally, right?"

"Eh. We've fought her. If we just use Energy Ward well, we can kind of negate her. The only problem is when she's paired with Gloom."

"And Spot. Because he could probably dispel any effects we throw."

"Ugh, yeah. That is a problem. Isn't he busy doing Bunvorixian stuff though?"

"Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to stop him from coming to Earth quite frequently. Though they try to suppress the news because of optics, Dark Star and Gloom have been pretty active. Spot is often there… with or without Bunvorixians."

"We should ban the bad dogs from our planet," I said.

"I think Extra is trying."

"Do you think Celmothian tech could stop them from teleporting nearby? Do you think I could stop them?"

"What?"

"I'm just saying, someone made it really hard to get to my old world, so things like that are possible."

"Hmm. About the Celmothian thing… I do not know if we could, both because of costs and Extra's restrictions. We already have enough trouble with one planet."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.