Ch59. Improvement in physique.

"Are we going to meddle with the Wizarding World?" Natasha asked as she tried to punch Tom straight in the jaw.

Unfortunately for her, nowadays he was quite a lot faster than a few months ago so he managed to scramble out of the way of her punch.

Today when Tom woke up and felt Natasha's warm naked body trying to meld into his own, he wanted to blame the incredible sex they had the night prior but then he simply couldn't refuse her big emerald puppy dog eyes when she asked him for a sparring session.

So, here he was...

"I-" Tom started his reply but was interrupted when Natasha's follow-up punch forced him to sidestep to the right.

"-have-" He ducked under Natasha's right hook.

And jumped back to create distance between them, "-no-".

But Natasha was not having it and gave chase.

"-idea!" Tom hurriedly spoke as he used his superior speed to catch Natasha's wrist mid-punch.

A smug smile appeared on Tom's face... but it wasn't meant to last as his head snapped back a second later with a painful sting coming from his face when Natasha's other fist collided with his nose.

"Fuck!" He cursed, his right hand instinctively catching his nose...

But Natasha didn't stop and Tom started to be pushed back as he felt the blows rain on his abdomen one after another in quick succession. They barely hurt but it was annoying as heck to receive blows while being forced to retreat and unable to counterattack.

Growling to himself, Tom was starting to be fed up with this and when he finally shook off the debilitating blow to the face, he pushed the limits of his speed and managed to grab Natasha's wrist again.

This time he wasn't about to waste time smugly smiling at her and instead spun on his heel, using his hold on her to drag her along for a spin. The grip on her wrist was too strong and Natasha abruptly found her feet leaving the ground due to Tom's momentum. Her head spun for a second and before she could react, Tom had already done two whole circles with her body to gain even more momentum before he let go of her and Natasha found herself flying through the air while dizzily spinning at great speeds.

Natasha's body stopped when she suddenly and painfully smashed high into the wall, creating a small dent under her impact zone, massively cracking the surrounding area as she lost her breath.

Her body slid down, falling towards the ground, and Natasha, only thanks to the intense training she underwent previously, managed to regain her wits mid-air and power through the pain surging through her body as she slightly shifted it, allowing herself to fall on her feet.

Due to the gravity and pain, she instantly went down on one knee, panting and grimacing while trying to shake off her dizziness.

"You okay?" Tom asked in worry as he approached her and put his hand on her shoulder, stopping their spar mid-way.

Natasha gave him a wry and pained smile, "This is just unfair." She tried to say it playfully but wincing the second she finished her sentence probably didn't help. "You should really learn close-quarters-combat. With a body like that, you would have a massive advantage." She added, slowly regaining her breath.

This was something they talked about after literally every purely physical spar and Tom knew Natasha knew he was fed up with this topic. Yet, she always brought it up. That's why he simply couldn't find it in himself to give her a serious reply.

"Me magic caster. Me no time for warrior unga bunga." Tom snarkily replied and rolled his eyes.

His lover could be quite annoying when it came to this. She knew full well that learning proper fighting techniques could take months if not years. She also knew Tom was too busy doing his magic research to spend that kind of time on something like that.

This was not some ridiculous anime where one episode a character was utter trash and the next he could fight a cadre-class fallen angel with millennia of combat experience in melee combat, handling him like a misbehaving child due to some enlightenment of boobs.

Learning how to properly fight took freaking time!

"You better warrior unga bunga than hocus-pocus abracadabra. My knuckles owie-owie." Natasha deadpanned in childish response.

They both stared at each other for a second... before both shared a small laugh.

It wasn't as if Natasha expected Tom to listen to her. He didn't the previous seven times so she saw no reason for this time to be any different. But she wouldn't feel comfortable if she didn't at least try to make him see the error of his ways.

Damned magicians and their mad scientist experimental tendencies...

"Paw." Tom suddenly said and put his hand forward, asking for hers as if she was a dog.

Natasha mock-scowled but obeyed, putting her hand into Tom's palm as he kneeled in front of her, looking at her knuckles. "They are only bruised." He smiled in relief as a small magical circle appeared in front of his free hand and a bottle of red potion appeared from it.

This was not an alchemical circle of his but a bonafide spell magician's usually used. Tom put in the time to learn it because he could store a few objects with it. It was no 'Game Inventory' and the storage capacity was utter crap but despite all the shortcomings, it was still convenient as heck.

Tom poured half of the bottle of the healing potion of his own making over Natasha's knuckles, watching the bruises on them disappear, giving Natasha relief from the stinging pain. He kissed the upper side of Natasha's hand before releasing it and ordering her, "Next one."

Natasha rolled her eyes at him with a faint blush on her cheeks as she deposited her other hand into his, waiting for her bruised knuckles to be treated.

"Your endurance is just bullshit, you know that?" She idly spoke, no heat behind her words but Tom gave her a guilty smile nevertheless.

He knew this was a spar and such a thing was inevitable but he still felt bad for hurting her. Even though she mostly hurt herself by bashing her fists against his body.

"It's the high-rank physique, darling." Tom helplessly shrugged as he poured the other half of the potion over her hand.

Using an entire half was wasteful as heck since even one-tenth of the bottle would have been fully capable of curing something as trivial as bruised knuckles but... he was the creator so he didn't care. He could always make more of the potion anyway.

"We both know that's yet another bullshit." Natasha sighed. "Your body is the best for the warrior path. It's just frustrating to see you squander it."

Tom's physique was special. In gaming terms, all of his physical parameters were raised evenly due to the Life Energy Absorption Technique.

This was not the case for the people focusing on physical fighting who trained their bodies day and night to get better. They usually improve their strength, agility, or stamina... but their endurance almost always falls flat simply because of how hard it is to train it.

Even Tom had no idea how to train that. He assumed that by getting hurt and healing over and over again, the part that was getting hurt would eventually get stronger thanks to whatever supernatural energy one possessed but he had no proof and the whole assumption was ridiculously useless.

Even if somebody tried that way of improving it, how was that person supposed to strengthen internal organs? Heart? Brain?

It was simply unusable for the overall body.

The only known exception was getting higher energy reserves and this was why energy ranking actually worked even for physical fighters.

For example, Ultimate-rank physical fighters usually had high-rank endurance simply because the energy in their bodies was concentrated and dense enough to enhance their bodies to such a degree.

But even then they had to, firstly, put incredible effort into improving their physique, and secondly, reach Ultimate rank to get endurance a rank lower.

Magic-using Ultimate ranks did not have high-rank endurance or physique. Not without putting in the necessary effort to train their bodies. They still had strong bodies thanks to the energy coursing through them but it seldom reached the high-rank stage without any effort on their part.

Everybody was different and real life was not a game where strength could be quantified by numbers on a status sheet nor could the physical parameters be raised evenly via training. In fact, doing so was flat-out impossible.

That's why Tom was special. His body was comparable to a high-rank physical fighter right now but all of his physical aspects reached this milestone. The result was that Natasha could smash her fists into him as much as she wanted but she was mostly hurting herself. Tom had barely felt her punches.

Of course, if she used her Power of Destruction in their spar, the entire situation would have been massively different. Just because he had an extremely strong and durable body didn't mean he was invincible.

"This body was acquired through magic, dear. No magic, no body like this. It's that simple." Tom chuckled, letting go of her now healed hand and they both stood up.

"That doesn't mean you should completely disregard fighting techniques." Natasha argued back. "Look." She turned around, facing the wall as she took a stance.

Tom could briefly feel a small shift of energy in her hand but before he could pay it more attention, Natasha's hand whipped forward in a palm strike... abruptly stopping a few inches short of hitting the wall.

Yet, the second her palm stopped, despite not quite reaching the wall, massive spiderweb cracks appeared on the wall, big enough to cover an entire house from the place opposite Natasha's palm.

Tom wryly smiled. If she hit an actual house and not a magic-reinforced wall with a lot of wards supporting it, this strike of Natasha's would have easily destroyed it. Considering her physique was just mid-rank at the moment, that was already quite a ridiculous feat.

"See? Magic and technique put together." Natasha smugly turned towards Tom who was currently glad their previous spar was a no-magic one. "Isn't it cool?"

"You just wanted to show off." Tom chuckled, making Natasha giggle as he took her into his arms and nuzzled her hair.

"Let me see... you used a small discharge of your mana imbued with the Power of Destruction and sent it outward from your palm, causing a sort of rippling force to impact the wall, multiplying the damage from your strike." He slowly explained what he saw, whispering into her ear.

That was... original.

And efficient.

Unlike the Gremorys, Natasha didn't just try to flood her mana with torrents of destructive energy. She didn't have inborn reserves of high-rank being so she learned to be less wasteful with her mana.

She made use of her much better control over her mana to create an efficient but still destructive way of using her Power of Destruction. She barely used any mana in that blow and yet, the effect was comparable to an attack of a high-rank devil.

Tom was extremely proud. His girl was smart in her own way when it came to creating her own fighting techniques.

"It hurts my pride that you know what I did with just a single glance. It took me days to come up with the idea and then even more time to actually create it." Natasha sullenly said and buried her head into Tom's shoulder, not forgetting to bite him in the process.

The jerk deserved it... all that effort and he couldn't even pretend to be surprised!