Musutafu City (III)

Boom! Crash!

"Hahaha," Katsumi laughed psychotically as she kept herself suspended nearly fifty meters over the ground with a stream of carefully consistent explosions. She traced the path Izuku had taken after finally taking one of her hits directly; he had blown a massive hole through a building and ended up in an impact crater that was nearly three meters wide.

Despite all that, he defended himself almost entirely from the attack with just a partial draconification along the arm he'd used to block Katsumi's attack; whatever force penetrated through that was completely nullified by his Aura Shield.

"You know, if I were almost anyone else, that probably would have killed me," Izuku sighed as he appeared about five meters away from Katsumi in the air.

With his current Magic Reserves and control, as well as his proficiency in using Limitless Light, he used a negligible amount of energy to manifest and sustain a pair of "Light Wings" that allowed him to fly. He didn't necessarily need the light to form into wings, but it seemed thematically in line given his Quirk.

"Is that supposed to make me feel bad?" Katsumi snorted, as memories of their last couple dozen engagements flashed in her mind's eye; all of them resulting in her barely being able to so much as graze him even as she got stronger.

"No… I'm just saying, it's not going to help anyone if you get used to fighting so destructively. I mean, look at all of the collateral!" Izuku said as he gestured at the miracle of a building that had a massive hole on its side and was still standing; behind it, the crater impact from his crash landing somehow looked even worse.

"How the hell else am I supposed to spar with you?" Katsumi's eyes narrowed, "You're probably not even fighting at half your total capacity!"

"Well, I guess you have a point… But only for sparring within my illusionary world. Let's try to not destroy the city when in we're in the real world, please?" Izuku begged.

"Then get ready for round two!" Katsumi said.

Izuku only had a fraction of a second to recognize the madness that bled through her crimson eyes and prepare himself for another restricted battle. It wouldn't help anyone if he didn't limit himself to near Katsumi's overall threat level, so for now he stuck to just partial draconification and Aura Abilities; his Light Wings being the only extension of Magic he allotted himself if only to retain the same amount of mobility as his opponent.

Thus, Katsumi made the first move by propelling herself towards him with two massive explosions from her hands. What she lacked in baseline Agility, she more than made up for with follow-up explosions accelerating her faster and faster, until she nearly drop-kicked Izuku through another building.

Naturally, with Izuku watching her like a hawk from the moment she declared another spar, he dodged her attack by a wide margin. What he couldn't dodge, however, was the explosion she used to both attack him and maneuver away from crashing after it became obvious that her kick would miss.

Boom!

Izuku laughed even as he killed off the momentum of being blown away yet again with his Light Wings. By the time he completely stopped, Katsumi was upon him again, kicking, punching, elbowing, and kneeing him ruthlessly whilst also occasionally dumping even more explosions against him; all with hardly any success.

She'd come so far since they started training together. Everything from the potency of her explosions to the masterful control she had over them had skyrocketed to the level where Izuku wasn't sure whether he'd be able to win or not with just his Base Stats. For as insanely strong and fast as he was, the totality of Katsumi's Abilities was just as impressive.

Flash!

…And then there were those new techniques of hers, Izuku lamented as he had his sight taken away by a flashbang-like attack. The only reason he wasn't out of the fight just yet was because Katsumi didn't understand how Cognizant worked. So long as she remained within twenty meters of him, he'd be able to manage long enough until the blindness wore off.

'…Has she been holding out on me?' Izuku asked as the ferocity of her attacks redoubled after he'd been blinded.

Despite having welcomed her to train with him, the two didn't exactly stick together all the time and sparring sessions were few and far between. Usually, this was to facilitate a period where Katsumi could work out the deficiencies she found she still had against Izuku. But, it was surprising for Izuku to see she had grown as quickly as she was currently proving she had.

Every second, her physical attacks were getting faster. She was using her explosions as if she had an endless amount of them in reserve. Before Izuku's white vision even started to blur back down to normal levels, Katsumi was actually managing to land direct hits on his body. And, even as Izuku sought to mitigate her increasing power by steadily Draconifying further, she grew faster just slightly ahead of what he was capable of managing.

Then, just as the world started to blur back into focus, Katsumi roared out the top of her lungs as she shoved Izuku with hands scalding a menacingly red glow just before she fired off the largest explosion she'd managed to date.

C-Cr-Cr-Crash!

Izuku's body shot through four buildings this time while Katsumi panted in exhaustion as she weakly let her body down before her explosions fully dried up. In a radius of two-hundred-fity kilometers, not a single window survived the shockwave of her final attack.

"You know, you can be really scary when you want to be," Izuku said as he casually walked towards her while inspecting the damage done to his Draconified body. His entire torso felt like it was a giant bruise and there were even a few dozen scales that had been blown off, leaving him mildly bleeding.

"We've only been at this for a few weeks and already I'm going to add Aura Reinforcement just to keep up with you? Unbelievable," he snickered.

"Great…" Katsumi weakly said, "I'm glad… to know… It only took… Everything I had… To knock you… Down… Again…"

Alarmed by how fragile she sounded, Izuku looked up and averted his eyes even as he approached. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that while Katsumi herself was resilient enough to handle the horrifying explosions she'd dished out, the same could not be said for her civilian clothes.

He quickly got close enough to hold her up and frowned as his pragmatical concern for her well-being led him to ignore the state of her undress and survey the damage she had done to herself.

His first observation was that she was so clearly dehydrated that it was unsettling how withered and strained her body had become. What followed were the most debilitating injuries Izuku had seen; not on himself.

Katsumi's legs, going down all the way to the soles of her feet became progressively purple to black, showing the extent to which she'd gone over her natural resistance against explosions. Her arms and hands shared a similar trend, only… The palms of her hands were shredded of their skin; she literally had exposed muscle tissue, probably causing unimaginable pain at even the slightest grazing wind.

Taking all of this in, Izuku Draconified again to cast Healing Dragons Breath. He held her gently the entire time as the potency of his magic restored her condition at a rate that was visible to the naked eye.

Unfortunately, due to Izuku's relatively poor Talent for Healing, even with his ridiculous reserves and mastery of Dragon's Breath, he ran out of unrestricted magic — the amount that remained after taking away a constant, negligible amount to perpetually hold up his Presence Concealment — before the treatment of Katsumi's worst wounds could clear back down to a healthy ruddy color; her Health had climbed from 67% to 98%.

"T-thanks…" Katsumi said, not knowing what else to say or do in the compromising position she had found herself in.

"Is there a reason you felt the need to hurt yourself this bad, just to spar with me?" Izuku asked as stared intently into Katsumi's eyes. He knew she was as competitive as a person could be, but she'd never gone this far before now.

"...I want to catch up to you," Katsumi whispered as she turned to hide her face from him. "And… I know you'll be there to heal me up afterward, so…"

Izuku sighed, "That's a very selfish thing to do, you know? You have a lot of people who can't stand to see yourself hurt yourself like that; me included."

As she turned, her expression already morphed to convey exactly how hurt his words made her feel, she stopped once she saw his melancholic smile.

"Unfortunately, I'd be too much of a hypocrite to not understand where you're coming from. So, don't worry… We can continue these all-out spars; just, not often…"

Overjoyed, she couldn't help but pull him in for a hug. She promptly realized that her clothes had all but been blown off as her naked breasts stiffened against Izuku's cold, hard dragon scales.

Feeling her squeeze him even tighter against her body and start to tremble, Izuku asked, "Uh… Why are you—"

"M-my clothes… They're w-wasted," she stammered.

"Oh… Right," Izuku remembered. He did his best to ignore that fact as he said, "I can lend you one of the spare outfits I carry everywhere with me. But… You're going to have to let go."

"Fine…" She could have died from the embarrassment of it all. But she sure as hell wasn't about to react like some cliche school girl; well, any more so. Her and Izuku were less than half a year away from graduating high school, after all.

Izuku tried to ease her struggle as he kept his eyes closed and turned around as she let go of him. He undid his Draconification and left for one of the abandoned buildings within the illusionary world and swapped his outfit for one of the spare casual clothes he kept on the Backup Slots he gained from entering the Ninja World; he was now up the maximum Backup Slots he'd ever get; five, from all the worlds he'd entered after getting the Inventory System.

Unfortunately, despite the convenience of his Inventory System's equipping features, Izuku had to manually take off the clothes he swapped for before re-equipping the set he had beforehand. He then called out to Katsumi and told her she could enter the building and swap out her blown-up rags for his "mostly" freshly new clothes.

"Thanks," Katsumi said as he left the building with Izuku's spare clothes. "I wasn't expecting these to be so loose on me…" She took a closer look at Izuku and raised an eyebrow, "But I guess it makes sense. When did you get so fucking tall?"

"I'm pretty sure I stopped growing during our third year at Aldera High," Izuku said as he shattered the illusion of his ID.

"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I would have noticed…" Katsumi said, rather confidently at the start. As she got close to the end of her train of thought, it died in a whisper. Now that she had embarrassed herself in front of him for the second time in the last hour, she lamented the fact that these kinds of situations were getting more and more common.

"Mhmm," Izuku smirked at her helpless expression. The fact that it spurred her embarrassment even further just added to his delight.

This left Katsumi unwilling to open her traitorous mouth as they headed walked back for as long as possible before they would need to separate to go to their respective homes.

'It was worth it,' Izuku thought as he left her still lightly blushing.

…

A full seven months passed after Izuku returned to his Original World when he made his first major breakthrough with regard to training his various Abilities. With his constant use of Presence Concealment and his superior Stats — relative to most of the others, that is— in Intelligence and Wisdom, his Open Mind was the first to Max out.

It didn't take long after to bring up his Argent Core and Unbound Soul to the same level in that order. After that, he worked on bringing up his Control over the three Energy Systems, where he'd managed to get his Aura Control Maxed out last as well.

[New Abilities!

Godspark (Level 1): Mastery of systems of power sourced from the body, spirit, and mind, have synergized to the point of transcendence. This Ability Grants you access to a new Energy System, Essence, +5 Intelligence and Charisma every Level, +10 Wisdom and Will every 3 Levels.

Essential Core (Level 1): Created through the synergy of Essence and Argent Energy. This Ability marks the progression of your Argent Core into that of a Divine Core. It only progresses as you fuse Argent Energy with Essence. This Ability Grants you +5 Strength and Constitution every Level, +10 Agility and Dexterity every 3 Levels.

Essential Mind (Level 1): Created through the synergy of Essence and Magic. This Ability marks the progression of your Open Mind into that of a Divine Sea. It only progresses as you fuse Magic with Essence. This Ability Grants you +5 Intelligence and Will every Level, +10 Charisma and Wisdom every 3 Levels.

Essential Soul (Level 1): Created through the synergy of Essence and Aura. This Ability marks the progression of your Unbound Soul into that of an Eternal Soul. It only progresses as you fuse Aura with Essence. This Ability Grants you +5 Intelligence and Will every Level.]

Almost as quickly as Izuku grew excited by the tremendous potential of his new Abilities, he found out how terribly hard they were to improve. Even after completely dumping out the entirety of his new Essence Energy into fusing with the slightest sliver of Argent Energy within his Argent Core, he barely even detected a change; never mind feeling anything.

He sighed as he realized it would take years, if not decades, of constant practice to make any significant difference to his Status with his new Essential Abilities. In understanding that, he moved on to focus on improving everything else he could conceivably manage in the short term.

He'd already maxed out most of his existing techniques, either through manual practice or with the Excelia that had racked by the millions, and now billions, on average from how hard he trained each day.

Fortunately, after maxing out his various Energy Control Abilities, it became child's play to create just about anything that was possible with each respective Energy System; excluding Magical Abilities, which had to come from his still-pending Adventurer Abilities, Grimoires, or similar artifacts.

Upon reviewing his Status, he decided to work on developing physical techniques to bring up his lacking Constitution, Agility, Dexterity, and Strength in that order. With his University Academics similarly maxed after five months after his return, he also took up various new "hobbies" — professions — to bring up his Will and Charisma scores as well; his Intelligence and Wisdom, still remained leagues ahead of everything else.

In total he'd picked up six new Abilities and three new techniques: Acting, Painting, Engineering, Building, Devil Bones, Evil Body, Aura Sense, Space Magic: Blink, and Sabotage Magic: Talent Tribute.

Ignoring the Abilities that were self-explanatory, Devil Bones came as a result of Maxing out Demon Blood and further demonifying Izuku's normal body. Evil Body started the full process of incorporating Magic into his body — the term "Evil" coming from the way the process went against the very nature of magic, or nature by proxy.

The Spatial Spell allowed Izuku to almost instantly teleport to anywhere he could see. However, given his Talent for Space Magic was just as bad as his talent with Weapons, he supplemented the ability as well as some of the relatively useless variants of Elemental Breath with his new Sabotage Spell. Basically, he'd make a sacrifice — the bigger, the better — and as a result, he'd temporarily see a chosen Talent increase in Grade.

Was it worth it?

Izuku liked to think so as he currently went about improving both spells by flickering across hundreds of meters at the cost of 1% of his Total Magic Reserves with every use; 99% of the cost making up the tribute to boost his talent for Space. The cost would only go down as his proficiency increased and even as it was, Blink had a ridiculous amount of utility when it came to movement.

More importantly, it gave him the excuse to start seeking out the location of his third Perk System Fragment. Yes… Already he had easily enough found the second one after combing through the entirety of Musutafu Prefecture and approaching the Public Hero Safety Commission's Headquarters.

With his Intelligence, Eidetic memory, and more than enough time to research the place as thoroughly as was humanly possible, Izuku had a few ideas as to why there could be a Fragment there; a cursory look back at his Progression for the current world was almost good enough for him to confirm his suspicions.

Alas, he wouldn't be able to do anything until he became licensed as a hero and gained the accreditation required to dig into the PHSC rabbit hole. Unlike most other worlds, where strength and personal power pretty much superseded the law, in his Original World, no amount of power could trump political power. It wouldn't serve anyone for him to just strong-arm his way into doing whatever he wanted, for that was the quickest way to be labeled a supervillain and be exiled by the public.

Thus, Izuku moved on to search for another Fragment; one that lied with a World Class Supervillain, perchance.

"Everybody, on the motherfucking floor!" His active Aura Sense registered several dozen meters away as he came out of another instance of teleportation. Given how prevalent villany was even with deterrents like All Might and Stars & Stripes around, Izuku wasn't surprised when he started encountering several similar situations as he trained his new Abilities.

He sighed as he slipped into his Ethereal Dragon Form; his go-to disguise for when he went about enacting vigilante justice. He Blinked into the store that was being robbed, knocked out the group of three villains that were involved, annihilate their weapons, and left before anyone could so much as register more than an emerald-tinted blur.

Returning to his training after undoing his transformation, it only took half an hour for him to find a thief trying to rob a jewelry store. Rolling his eyes, he went through the vigilante routine again, before continuing without looking back.

It was a pain, having to undo and transform over and over again, but at least it was good practice for mastering the Ability.