In Another World With JUST MONIKA 64 Behold My True Power!

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Linze raised her hand. "Wait… isn't Mister Zah…?"

I opened my eyes and brought my consciousness all the way back into the real world. "I AM A CHAR!"

/"Welcome back, Player. How was your trip?"/

"SENSATIONAL." And then in a much more subdued tone "What happened? I had to really focus on sensing things via air pressure."

"Aaah! So that's how that works!" Yae screamed suddenly. "Your defense before you decided to stand still…! The stronger and faster someone tries to strike at you, the greater the air pressure in front of the blade." Well technically it was not the blade but mostly the arm, there really was no way to avoid having the grip disturb the air ahead of it.

"I am a leaf in the wind!" I shouted back with a careless grin.

Look, I had Monika and a cellphone screen as my window to the world outside. It was trivial to place a HUD display showing distance markers. I was constantly practicing [Air Sense]. While it might seem like I could trivially invent any new spells, that was only because I kept doing one spell until it was mastered enough to figure out whatever variations could be done to it.

Even [Blood Maker] worked like that. It was only possible due to [Resuscitation] which I originally created for high-alt.i.tude breathing and then coming to the realization that oh s.h.i.+te accidentally making air bubbles in my blood could be fatal. (Monika gave me a lot of heck for being so stupid like that.)

Monika beamed and clapped her hands. /"And now that we're all on the same page, let's continue!"/

"Let's continue with the whHEY!"

I deflected Yae's newest round of attacks. At first I struggled, and then it became easier once I decided it was better to just ignore my eyes.

She drew back and nodded approvingly. "Good. I see that with your eyes open your defense retains its new fluidity, Player-dono. Strange… Your posture is open so much again… but the feeling in your sword has not changed, it is dark as ever, it is."

"I am a river in Egypt!"

Monika's [Omnidirectional Speaker] let out an amused snort.

And then it was my turn. At a cymbal clash I exploded into action.

I started off with the usual Errol Flynning smas.h.i.+ng my sword onto her sword, but this time Yae noticed that I was using the recoil to move myself to the left.

Yae blinked as I ducked under her slash and then brought her knee up to meet my chin. But I was not there either.

Some instinct made her dive and roll forward, and my sword just barely touched her trailing ponytail instead of bisecting her spine.

She stopped on one knee, once again facing me with her sword cautiously outstretched.

"Flas.h.!.+ Like the speed of lightning…!" Yae grit her teeth and hissed. "This… is only making it worse. I thought that being able to hear the pattern would make it easier. Now I expect you to attack when the music grows louder and faster. And when you do not, it feels like you are storing energy, so I think."

I grinned. Turns out theme music could have a purpose behind the directly motivational.

"The greatest danger for me as a mage is NOT another specialist mage, because there is a word for a person who tries to outmatch me in magic reserves in long-distance bombardment– and that word is UNCONSCIOUS. But like any and all mages, my problem is anyone who ever gets into melee range. Wizards may be quadratic but they are also squishy as heck!"

Yae frowned. "Would this not mean you should be encouraging Linze-dono to practice martial arts as well?"

"It is everybody else's job in this team to stand in front of her! A mobile warrior strikes with righteous blows, Linze needs to be clear of any tactical distractions so she can place Ice s.h.i.+elds as necessary and separate the enemy into clumps that we can more easily overwhelm in sections."

The music hit a triumphant phase. We had been fighting for about six minutes already, and the music had already looped twice.

"This is the point in time where melee is clearly not a solution and where I'd have to break out all the big magic attacks just to give everyone else breathing room."

At this point I'd better just be a Gundam and shoot them up. Shoot them up. Shoot them up.

The music faded away. As long as I could keep music going in my head, I could keep moving. I think, therefore I am.

Yae stood up and looked not just a little bit frustrated. "I understand. Acting completely on instinct, you have no plan that might tip off your enemy ahead of time. And by using music as a focus for your attention, you may ignore the shadow sword's attempt to deceive your senses. You do not act against what the enemy will do, only moving faster to meet their action as it happens."

Then she pointed at me. "I happy to have helped refine your tactics, Playdono! But now I ask you to help develop my abilities in turn! I wish to face you as a pure magician! Show me all your power, this I ask!"

I winced. "Are… are you sure about that?"

"This is the whole point of this exercise, I am certain!"

"Aaahahaa… Elze, back me up here, please."

"Yeah, Playa is super annoying when the only thing he's allowed to use is magic. I really think we should forbid him from just flying and wrecking everything below with magic bombardment. Or restricting movement spells. Or anything that's meant to be used against crowds instead of one person."

"Elze, you're really crippling me here, but I agree."

"W-whatever!" Yae squeaked. "Please! Fight me!"

"… uh. All right. Attack as you wish, please."

"Thank you. Here I go! Playdonoooo!"

Yae rushed forth. I stepped back and pointed an open palm at her face. "Come forth, Water!"

"Blargh!" She s.h.i.+elded her face and began to spit and sneeze out the water that went up her nose.

Yae wiped at her face and stared at me, completely unamused. I shrugged.

Then she attacked once more, much more cautiously and skipping from side to side.

"Water!" Blargh!

Yae tried again.

"Water!" Blargh!

And again.

"Water!" Blargh!

And again. "This Kokonoe will not-!"

"Water!" Blargh!

"SUPER annoying," Elze had to say again.

Yae let out a yell of incoherent rage and threw her practice sword at me. That was the highest disrespect a swordswoman could do to her own craft.

I ducked and saw Yae barreling towards me, ready to rip me apart with her own bare hands.

"Water."

"Gurble furble!" Yae snarled. She tried to push through the water spray on her face anyway, but lacking the ability to see she just followed the sweep of my arm and rushed past me like a bull distracted by a matador's cape.

She continued for a few more steps then dropped to her knees.

"I understand PERFECTLY now why you must be prepared to face melee combat, that I do," Yae sputtered out as she got back up to her feet. The front of her kimono was all muddy now. She had returned to a zen-like equanimity, though her chest still heaved with suppressed emotion. "Any foe you face that may get through your range advantage… will be SUPER MOTIVATED to destroy you, Playdono."

"Ahahaha… yeah." I sighed and looked down at the ground. And muttered "[Air s.h.i.+eld]" as Yae threw a glob of mud at me.

"THIS ONE SHALL TRAIN HARD TO DESTROY YOU PLAYDONO!" Yae roared out with her fist held up to swear it to the heavens. "MONIKSAMA WILLING-"

/"And I do, perfectly well. You're not just allowed to do so, you are ORDERED to do so, Little Yae. He needs to get his ego knocked down a few pegs now and then."/

"Yeah, what she said!" Elze agreed, suddenly appearing behind Yae. "Let's smash him into paste together!"

Yae grabbed and her hands and gushed at her all starry-eyed. "T-thank you, Elze-dono! I understand you now. Let us become truly strong together, we shall!"

Great, Fistpunch and Swordtail are now Super Battle Buddies. And Monika, come on, it's not my fault, blame the Isekai protagonist tropes.

/"You sure have a good way of motivating girls to become strong, Player!"/ Monika mused. She raised a thumb and made a very Elze-like grin. /"I approve!"/

I sighed again.

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I decided to exercise my veto over this plot development and just told the two girls to fight each other. Unsurprisingly they took to the idea with only slightly less enthusiasm. They were too different in the choice of weapons but eerily similar in their burst movement tactics, there was a lot to learn from sparring. By Monika's calculations, we still had an hour or two and traveling back at the same pace would still have us arrive at about mid-afternoon.

I went off to sit down beside Linze, who handed me a bronze cup filled with ice water. She was after all a Water mage. I nodded in thanks and drank deep.

"Um… Mister Zah…?"

"Yes?"

"I was really impressed with how you were fighting. You were… amazing out there."

I nodded again. "Thank you. I'm not going to do any false modesty or anything, I'm impressed with myself too. Yae is strong as heck and if I didn't do my very best I'd be eating dirt about now. I'm not sure it's going to turn out the same way next time, she'll be prepared for it."

"Um… about that… ah… [Air Sense]?" Linze asked while twiddling her fingers. "And… because… you have all affinities too...?"

"Ah. You mean… is there a way to make that work with [Fire] or [Water]?" And for Linze's last affinity, [Light], well isn't that just [Sight]?*

"If it's at all possible…"

I laughed. "Linze, air has pressure, sure. But know what else it always contains? Moisture. Temperature. Heck, even [Ground Sense] will allow you to map things more accurately with vibrations. There's too many already obsessed with firepower, but the best of things requires only calmness and precision."

But it would take some time to figure it out. The reason I could develop [Air Sense] at all was from how Monika could make it so easy to edit my sight and hearing inputs for sensory deprivation.

Somehow the thought of needing to put Linze in blindfolds and cover her ears completely and leave her unable to move for hours felt too… exciting.

I turned away, faintly blus.h.i.+ng, from her eagerly trusting face to look at how the spar between Yae and Elze was progressing. As expected Elze was having trouble dealing with Yae's superior range, but because Elze had double armored gauntlets she could deflect and just threaten to grab Yae's sword to keep her careful.

Until Elze went off and decided to punch a tree with a skinny enough trunk. She picked up that tree as a weapon. Instead of a spear, because it still had all its leaves and branches, Elze fought with it like it was some oversized brush.

Yae was confused as all heck. She couldn't even just jump over to land and run down the trunk to bonk Elze on the head because Elze was [Boosted] enough to wave the whole thing around to shake her off. So she tried to flank, but a whole tree just offered such an absurd range advantage and the biggest flaw was that the leaves obscured Elze's vision just as much as it kept Yae from looking in.

And from behind it Elze's voice triumphantly proclaimed "I AM BECOME TREEMAGE, DESTROYER OF FOLIAGE!"

"Kuh! Foul magic! You vile despoiler of nature!" Yae retorted hotly, brandis.h.i.+ng her sword like an epic hero. "Face me like an honest woman, not some purveyor of fruits and lumber!"

Once again, I could only just sigh.

With four people in this party, one healer/tank, healer/mage, tank/DPS, and speed/DPS, we were supposed to be nicely balanced. But apparently not mentally.

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AN:

*Actually in theory some sort of magic [Light Sense] without sight would be possible because skin has photoreceptors too. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seeing-without-eyes1/)

But Linze might have to go around mostly naked in order to perceive minute light values while [Blind Fighting]. ;)

Actually since Playa is using prioperception and detecting air pressure through his /skin/ and hairs, shucking his clothes off in the middle of combat could also improve the range and resolution of his [Air Sense]. As well as confusing the enemy.