Who Needs Magic in a Fantasy World Anyway?

Chapter 11: Preperation

"Do you have to watch me?" Koko asked, slightly aggrieved as having someone sit behind her while she trained was distracting.

"You're going to have a lot of people watching you during the trial, so you may as well get used to it now." James sounded like he was shrugging behind her, though she didn't turn to conform it as she continued to furiously beat the training post in front of her while still using her techniques that involved using focus. However, she couldn't use them to often or her eyes would begin to blur after a while as her focus ran low. Her strikes would become in accurate and ineffective, so Koko knew that she wouldn't be able to repeatedly use Serpent's Sting like she wanted to. And using her new skill wouldn't work either because it simply used to much magic for her at the moment. However, even if she couldn't use her magic along with the Infusement she'd learned, that didn't stop her from attempting to use Focus instead.

Striking the training post with a storm of yellow blurs travelling in all directions, Koko couldn't even see her hands anymore as she used the skill, striking the areas on the training post faster and more accurately than she ever had before until she finally had to stop as her vision began to blur one more and stepped backwards for a small break, feeling somewhat satisfied at the small streams of smoke rising off of the cushions where she'd hit them.

"I have to admit, watching you discover new techniques and skills is really interesting!" James laughed as he looked at the smoke as well.

"Well, I'm glad that I'm so interesting, but don't you really have anything better to do?" Koko asked with a sigh. "You've been staring at me so long that I'm starting to think that you're a loli-con."

"Hm? L-loli-con?" James asked in complete confusion.

"Someone who's into little girls." Koko explained suddenly acted bashful. "They're called pedophiles in other places."

"A p-" James suddenly seemed concerned before standing abruptly from where he'd been sitting and beginning to walk away, though not without calling over his shoulder first. "I'm not a pedophile! I'm only a few years older than you are!"

"Uh-huh..." Koko replied with disbelief, making sure that the man had left before she when back to her training target and gazed at it longingly. Even if she was getting stronger and finally developing skills, it wasn't at a fast enough rate, and the trail would soon be upon her without her being able to make any special developments. Plus, as long as James had been there watching her, Koko couldn't attempt what she'd really wanted to seeing as she still didn't know if he was Ernie's ally or not. And so, Koko suddenly sat cross-legged on the ground, closing her eyes and concentrating on refilling her focus so that she could even attempt her planned experiment.

Breathing in and out deeply with her eyes closed, Koko meditated for a few seconds, attempting to recover her focus as fast as possible before her eyes shot open as she felt as if she was ready. And so, after standing and getting into stance, Koko took another long breath before thinking about what she had to do.

Infusion - Able to infuse magic and focus into weapons to attack. Effect depends on the amount of MP and FC used.

It was truly a wonderful ability to have, but what would happen if the two were combined? As Koko had these thoughts, she smirked to herself as her NEET soul flared with curiosity. After all, discovering new combinations and techniques on video games was one of her passions, and seeing as this world seemed to have a game-like system, that passion hadn't settled at all.

"Okay..." Koko said to herself as she looked at her training post, gathering her magic into her hand just like she had before when she'd hit James. And while channeling the fire in her blood to her hand was simple, gathering the focus on that point as well seemed to be easy too, so easy that she was wondering if she was doing it wrong. However, even if it was easy up until this point, she knew that the actually attack would be difficult as she would have to stick the target while using her focus before discharging her gathered magic so that it could do it's damage. And while she was having these thoughts, Koko suddenly lost her concentration entirely as her hand started glowing a strange color. Rather than being blue from magic or yellow from focus, the two had mixed and made a solid-green color. Though rather than taking time to appreciate the new development, Koko used this opportunity to try out her attack before her magic was depleted. And she did this immediately, stepping forward and throwing all of her weight into her punch.