26

For my own training, I focused on ways to defeat the famous Phenex regeneration. I had several ideas to achieve that, but most were situational. The most consistent method I had thought of was to just keep hitting him until he ran out of demonic power. With the King essence and the Mage's reactor, I had him beat for endurance.

Warpfire was another option I looked at. The problem with it was that Warpfire burned everything. And everything meant that it would burn the regenerating flames, which was good, but it would also burn through Riser's soul, which was not good. I didn't particularly want to kill the pompous fool. He may have been an arrogant ass, but he didn't deserve to die for that.

I eventually decided that I would train my Warpfire control until I was confident I could burn Riser's flames, but not everything that made up his being. This meant I was constantly surrounded by fire powered by Chaos during my stay at the training camp. I kept a tight leash on the fire, allowing it to burn only what I let it. My desire to not harm any of my girls was actually really helpful, in that regard. I ended up training my Warpfire to the point that I could keep the flames going while I slept, and have them not burn my bed to ashes.

I could also just mentally dominate Riser with telepathic attacks. The problem then became not making him into a vegetable. I would have to walk a very thin line if I went this route. It was also one of my hardest disciplines to train, second only to biomancy. I had to use volunteers and only make small changes.

Speaking of biomancy, I finally got to play around with the flesh sculpting portion of my psyker powers. They obviously weren't at the same level as the Grail's power over life, but it was still a versatile field of magic. Regeneration was simple to figure out since I was able to observe both Asia and Valerie's Sacred Gears in action. It was a good thing I figured that out first though, because I ended up needing it for further experimentation.

"Fuck," I said, as flexing my bicep caused every muscle in the limb to snap. I easily ignored the mindrending pain while activating regeneration. Thankfully, I was smart enough to do this away from the rest of the group. I didn't want any of the girls freaking out when I destroyed my body in the name of progress.

"Test 23 was a failure. Enhancing my muscle fibers too much just causes them to snap from the strain. I need a better base material if I'm going to go that route. Maybe lace my muscle fibers with carbon nanotubes?"

I tried again, this time, instead of increasing the muscle's strength, I weaved the fibers together. Corded muscle fiber ropes stretched down my arm, and I flexed again. I winced. It certainly was stronger, but the trade off in flexibility wasn't worth it to me.

"Where's Captain America when you need him? What I wouldn't give to get a scan of his physiology."

I reset my body to the normal devil baseline, and moved on to enhancing my nervous system. I wasn't going to touch my brain yet, not without consulting with Bulma or someone else with Ajuka levels of intelligence. But that didn't mean I couldn't improve the signal transmission between neurons.

Increasing the amount and quality of my motor and sensory neurons would allow for faster reaction times and enhanced senses. I was basically just playing trial and error in an effort to become superhuman. Superdevil? Whatever, basically just more enhanced than I already was. The magic would take care of a lot of the details, but I still needed to know what to change to get an effect.

I was pulled from my experimentation by a pouting Lavinia stomping up to me. Uh oh. A subconscious connection allowed me to see that Toga had ratted me out. And that Lavinia was not happy with me treating my body like Play-Doh.

"Hey, Lav, honey-" I started, trying to make up an excuse for my predicament.

Lavinia held strong, shaking her head at me, "Don't you 'Lav-honey' me, mister. C'mon, you're going to stop torturing your body with magic and come bond with the girls. If you really must keep training, you can practice your telepathy. You know none of them mind having you in their heads."

I did. Everyone I tried it on said that my telepathy felt like my brain was hugging theirs. Probably because of the Bond and the connection we all already shared. I doubt it would feel that comfortable to any enemies I tried it on.

"Fine," I grumbled. In all honesty, enhancing myself wasn't really necessary for the Riser fight. The Warp had done enough enhancement on its own just by me channeling it so much, and I had other methods of body reinforcement. It's just, biomancy had so much potential! The only thing really holding me back from going full transhuman (transdevil?) was the lack of examples to base my work on.

Lavinia dragged me inside to where Rias and Asia were already chatting. I absently created a mental sphere of influence that allowed me to connect to the girls. I could feel Toga just at the edge of my senses, but she seemed content to just lurk and watch. Rias jumped when she felt my mind against hers, and Asia turned to me and beamed.

"Taylor! Come, sit down," Asia said, shifting a bit and patting the spot next to her. I took a seat, putting my arm over the back of the couch, as Lavinia got comfortable cuddling up to Rias. Asia blushed at my familiar proximity, but didn't move away.

"Lavinia, please?!" Rias whined, trying to keep up the illusion of her being a proper devil heiress. Lavinia made that effort futile when she snuggled closer and caused Rias to blush.

My connection to her mind showed me that Rias was especially conscious of Lavinia after what she witnessed us doing while she 'slept'. It wasn't a bad sort of consciousness though. She was getting quite flustered from the feel of Lavinia's breasts against her arm. A quick glance at Lavinia's mind showed me she was aware of how she made the devil princess feel.

"So, Rias," I said to give Rias something else to focus on, "watch any good anime recently?"

Rias' face lit up at the opportunity to talk about anime, "Oh! The latest episode of Your Hero Scholastica was so good!-"

I nodded along politely as Rias ranted about her shows. I would never get over the names of anime in this universe. Still, I genuinely enjoyed the vibes that she was projecting through over our connection. All in all, it was a relaxing way to spend an evening.