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Even Saikyou Nene, the legendary Yaksha Princess, found herself momentarily stunned.
Good grief. After being away for a while, how had her little junior brother gotten this strong? She watched those long, powerful legs pumping away in a rhythmic sprint, his form so crisp and disciplined it was almost... thirst-inducing. No, admirable. Definitely admirable.
"Thirty times!" she chirped, a dangerous glint in her eyes.
Did he truly believe he could escape the palm of her hand?
She flicked her metal folding fan with a sharp clack. Invisible ripples of gravity radiated from her like a pulse. In the blink of an eye, Ryoji, who had managed to put nearly a hundred meters of distance between them, was engulfed by a crushing force.
His body buckled.
It felt as if his internal organs were being wrung out like a wet towel. His legs turned to molten lead, and his blood struggled to climb back to his heart against the localized pressure. A suffocating weight pressed against his lungs, and the world began to spin.
Resisting this was no longer a matter of willpower; it was a matter of physics.
"Stop! I yield! I surrender!"
He could hold out for a few more seconds at best, but if he pushed it, he'd suffer a total systems failure. And he knew Nene was nowhere near her limit yet. Ryoji sank his qi deep into his core and shouted his capitulation.
"Now, wouldn't it have been easier to just do that from the start?"
Nene drifted lazily to his side, easing the pressure just enough to let him breathe, keeping it at a steady twenty times gravity. Just enough to ensure he wouldn't try any more track-and-field heroics.
"Why did you bolt the second you saw me?"
"I didn't!"
"You didn't?"
"I clearly bolted before I even saw you!" Ryoji shouted back. Seeing her face darken instantly, he pivoted into a look of grave sincerity. "I'm kidding! I thought I saw a ghost in broad daylight and panicked! You know me, Senior Sister, I've always been a timid, sensitive soul."
'Bullshit.'
Nene knew that if Ryoji was considered "timid," then the rest of the world's population were absolute cowards.
"Then why haven't you come to see me? You've been back for two days," she pressed, clicking her tongue. "I was sitting there, happily waiting for you to report in. And what have you been doing? You haven't forgotten who's been shielding you from the higher-ups, have you?"
"No! Never! Impossible!"
Ryoji waved his hands frantically, his face a mask of 'don't talk nonsense.' "I was actually on my way to find you right now! I just didn't expect you to grace me with your presence first. When you think about it, we're practically in sync!"
"Who's in sync with you?!"
Nene pouted, though the corners of her mouth twitched upward. She quickly snapped her fan open to hide her face. "Hmph. You always have some silver-tongued way of brushing me off."
She cleared her throat, but a hint of genuine disappointment lingered in her eyes. She looked genuinely piqued. "I don't care. I've done a lot for you, you owe me some compensation."
"What did you have in mind?"
"Date me for a month!"
"Done. No problem!"
Nene blinked. Since when had this kid become so agreeable? She eyed him with heavy suspicion. "Really? Just like that?"
"Cross my heart. Truer than pure gold," Ryoji nodded firmly. "Forget a month, from here on out, I'll date you every single day!"
'Wait, is he serious?'
The fact that he agreed so easily made Nene trust him even less.
'Of course, in my head, 'practicing together' counts as a date', Ryoji plotted silently.
Loki wasn't around to update his Falna, but he couldn't afford to waste his time at Hagun Academy. With Nene, a literal, living gravity chamber, right here, it would be a waste not to use her for training. If he kept this up, by the time he returned to Orario, he might just skip straight to Level 5. Whether it was slaying monsters in the Dungeon or sparring with a World-Class Knight, as long as the effort was real, the Excelia would flow.
"I'll believe you... for now," Nene muttered, letting the matter drop. Then her eyes drifted downward. "What's that you're clutching?"
"Uh... nothing. Just some mail."
Ryoji stiffened, trying to shift the packages behind his back. But under twenty times gravity, his reflexes were sluggish. Even at full speed, he was no match for her sleight of hand.
Snap!
The bags were plucked from his grip before he could blink. Nene's gaze fell on the shipping labels, and her expression went rigid. By the time she reached the fifth package, her face was as black as a scorched pot.
"...Why did you buy these?"
"J-just in case! You never know when they might come in handy, right?" Ryoji tried to bluff, keeping his face as stone-cold as possible.
In the old days, facing Nene like this would have turned him into a shaking leaf. But things were different now. He had grown. He had traversed different worlds and faced gods. He was a refined man of the world now, or a "scum man," as some might say, and he could lie to a legendary knight without breaking a sweat.
"Just in case?" Nene's aura grew heavy. "Nothing has happened between you and Touka, has it?"
She had waited over a decade for this brat to grow up. She wanted the first move. If her junior sister had jumped the queue, she was liable to level the entire campus in a fit of pique.
Then again... she noticed he was handling twenty times gravity with relative ease. Is he finally 'edible'? she wondered. Maybe if I'm careful, I won't break him?
"Nothing! We're innocent! Senior Sister Touka and I are strictly professional!" Ryoji yelled, sensing the sudden, predatory shift in the air.
"Is that so? Good." Nene's expression smoothed out. As long as she still had the "first-come-first-served" rights, she could be patient. There was no point in rushing if his physical stats weren't up to par. If she "ate" him too early and had to be overly cautious, it wouldn't be any fun.
She looked at the packages again, a flicker of curiosity, and perhaps a hint of temptation, appearing in her eyes. "...Do these come in smaller sizes?"
Ryoji paused. A literal question mark could have been painted over his head. "Senior Sister... you want to wear those?"
"And if I do?"
"Pffft, ! Hahaha! Oh god, stop!" Ryoji doubled over, unable to contain himself. "Impossible! With your figure? You'd look like a kid playing dress-up! You need someone with Touka-senpai's... curve-to-surface-area ratio to pull that off! On you, they'd just slide right off. Who even makes 'temptation' gear for the petite-and-flat demographic? Hahaha! You can't wear them at all, "
"Fifty times! Face. Meet. Floor!"
BOOM.
Ryoji was slammed into the dirt with the force of a falling meteor. He couldn't move a finger; his limbs were pinned flat, and his face began to turn a worrying shade of purple.
"I'm... dying... mercy..."
"If I don't beat some manners into you today, I don't deserve the title of Yaksha Princess!"
Nene was vibrating with pure, unadulterated fury. She reached down and hoisted Ryoji off the ground, even while he was still under the crushing weight of fiftyfold gravity, as if he weighed no more than a pillow. Ignoring the laws of physics entirely, she began dragging him toward the forest where they used to conduct their "special" training sessions.
(End of Chapter)