Chapter 126: Variants

"Professor, thanks for waiting. I was...busy, I couldn’t show up on time," Tanya says with a somewhat discouraged tone. Yesterday, I gave them the time they needed to rest after fighting me, and today I also kept class pretty light, but Tanya said she wouldn’t be able to come at the usual time I normally take the students for private training tonight.

"It’s fine. You seem pretty discouraged. Shouldn’t you be happy? You really wanted this private training so you could learn how to use the variants of your power." I promised I would help her with that. Some of her variants are good, and they’re things I can help her with using my own powers.

Unfortunately, it has to be done outside the simulator, since the simulator doesn’t handle data that doesn’t exist very well. Tanya doesn’t know how to use any of these variants, and they’re rare enough that the simulator doesn’t know how to display them with the applications Tanya could actually use.

"Yeah...it’s just that it’s ending, right? We’ll be graduating soon..."

"Ah...I see. You’re nervous, is that it? Are you scared of the army? Or are you sad about being separated from your friends?" I say it with a slight tease, but she doesn’t seem very pleased with what I said.

"..."

"Let’s just go, Professor Zenith."

"If something is worrying you, you can tell me. I can’t teach you properly if you don’t pay attention." I look around at this empty training area where I arranged for us to meet.

"We’re far away from anyone. You can say whatever you want and no one will hear you, but if you don’t want to, then let’s get started. Just know I’ll punish poor performance."

"...I’d rather not talk about it. I’ll pay attention, don’t worry."

"Your choice. Now let’s go over the training schedule I came up with. Since you want to learn variants, I thought we’d start with the safest ones, the ones that allow for more practical uses in combat." I hand her a sheet of paper, and she gives it a quick glance.

"Light Emission? Why do you want me to practice controlling light sources? That power seems completely useless. It’s just generating light. It doesn’t have any attack at all." She seems somewhat offended.

"It’s for practical reasons. First, for calling for help, it’s a perfect power. You can create enormous sources of light to signal where you are, blind enemies, and send messages in code."

"Okay...that...sounds useful, but what about infrared? It’s just heat. I already know how to use heat to create attacks, so why learn to control this variant?"

"Because it introduces heat without needing explosive damage, and it has other uses besides heat. You can create physical reactions that are more like explosions. With infrared, you’ll be able to create a new type of attack."

"...Why is radiation last? I wanted to learn this one." She waves the paper in front of me, expressing her dissatisfaction.

"I’m not teaching you how to use radiation outside the simulator. Are you crazy? You’ll kill me, and the whole city along with me. It’s radiation. Do you even know what that is?" I speak offensively, as if she were a child.

"I know!"

"Then if you know, don’t ask me to teach you that. I’m not suicidal, and I don’t want to be affected by it either. I’m not going to teach you nuclear emissions near yourself, either." It would be insane to stay near her while she generates nuclear fission effects.

"Haa...you’re only teaching me the most boring powers..."

"It’s what’s best for the moment. Don’t forget that your power is dangerous to me, and to you as well. Even if your body can handle radiation because of your powers, I doubt you’re immune to it. Depending on the level, you’ll be slowly poisoning yourself."

"So only use that kind of power in emergencies. Do you think I like holding myself back? Do you think several Kairas like being unable to use their strongest powers? Not every power can be used. You’re lucky you have such a wide variety of powers and that all of them are stable."

"Okay, okay, I get it. I’ll only use nuclear attacks if it’s truly necessary...so how do I do it?" At least she isn’t trying to argue with me.

’Although during our first duel, she did try to use a nuclear reaction...I hope she really doesn’t try to use that near anyone.’

"The first step isn’t for you to learn how to control it. It’s actually learning how to use small points as conduits."

"What do you mean?" she asks confusedly as I take five old soda cans and place them apart from one another.

"It’s simple. If you generate a new attack every time you attack, you’ll wear yourself out, and I noticed in the simulator that your power is extremely exhausting when used continuously." I think Tanya is going to be very useful against Nêmesis. Even though her powers aren’t very useful for hurting Nêmesis because of her vector resistance, they’ll still be perfect for pressuring and disrupting Nêmesis.

’Tanya seems to have the same problem as Nadir. Excessive use doesn’t lead to death, but it’s extremely taxing on the body and wears you down quickly...although Tanya seems to have much more freedom when using her powers than Nadir, maybe because hers is a Core instead of a Chip.’

"I’ll give you a simple example. I have electrical and magnetic powers. I can only use them depending on whether it’s day or night. Since it’s night, I can use magnetism."

"Now look at those cans. If I wanted to attract two of them, I’d have to use my powers on both of them, right? But I can reduce that by being creative. Watch." I use my powers on only one of the cans, and all the others are attracted to it, colliding with it. They are violently crushed into a sphere. I move my fingers, making the sphere rise into the air, and then I throw it against an old car wreck, leaving a large hole in it.

"Instead of magnetizing all of them, attracting them one by one, and crushing them, I only made the magnetism of one of them stronger. They were all pulled in with so much force that they were crushed, and then I controlled only the can in the center to throw it. That way, I only used my powers on one can."

"This reduces how much power you need to use. The same can be done with heat or lightning. I can use electrical sources from the environment to enhance attacks."

"You can use lights that are already present in the environment. You only need to manipulate them, which is much easier than having to go through the entire physical process of generating light." She looks at me curiously.

"That sounds amazing. How do I do that?"

"All of our powers can influence normal physics. You just need to use something that already exists and alter its vectors."

"Several of your powers can use things from the environment itself—the sunlight, streetlights, devices. You can even use enemy attacks for this."

"It’ll take you a while to get the hang of doing this, but with enough practice, the entire environment can become your weapon. Even more so because you can generate so much heat, so things you melt can become reusable sources of power for you." My tail grabs another can and crushes it, throwing it hard against the car so she can see the difference in force between something physical and something controlled with vectors. The hole from the can thrown with magnetism is much larger, and it went much farther.

"Wasting nothing in combat is the path to the top, as you can see." Maya is the greatest example of that: zero waste and minimal power expenditure.

"All right!! Then I want to learn this!! You’ll see, someday I’ll be the Top 1 of this generation!" I don’t say anything about her arrogant remark, because she really does have the potential to do it.

In fact, she has even more potential than Maya in terms of range. Tanya in the future, with the right mindset, less arrogance, and more experience, would be capable of surpassing Maya in several aspects.

Of course, no one from this generation can match Maya’s speed when it comes to performing complex calculations for vector use. In that regard, she’s unsurpassable by anyone from any generation, but in overall power, she will lose to Tanya in the future.

"Just be careful, future Top 1. Don’t destroy the world."

"Hahaha, as if I could, Professor Zenith." She just laughs, but I’m serious about this. It’s not a joke, not when I’ve already studied how a nuclear bomb works to give Tanya better lessons.

The type of power she has, combined with the range she possesses, will allow her to generate nuclear explosions on a continental scale, of course at the cost of her own life. But an explosion of that magnitude would surpass any weapon of the present day, completely wiping out the surface of the Earth.

Obviously, the control, calculations required to accomplish this, and precision would be almost impossible for Tanya, so this is only a scenario of maximum potential. But that is the potential of her power.

It wouldn’t literally destroy the world, just completely destroy its surface and every form of life on it, followed by generating a nuclear winter lasting several millennia, according to data from the Nexus analysis.

Tanya literally has the greatest destructive potential of all the generations of Kairas that have ever existed throughout history. There haven’t been that many, but there have been a lot of powerful people.

’This makes me wonder...in a scenario where I reach maximum power, in theory, I could create a crack in space large enough to split a continent in two, because it would continue growing on its own after the initial point...’ I’d never reach that level. My brain would fry long before I even got close to creating an initial crack large enough to do that.

This kind of calculation is done using the Nexus, physics data, and the scale of our powers for it, ignoring the limits of our bodies.

"Now enough with this conversation. We have little time and a lot to learn, so get started, Tanya!! Start by trying to use the light from a lamp and increase its intensity!"