Novel Full Chapter 591: Practices
Chapter 591: Practices
"...Big sis, I have a question," I murmur to Azraelith, who’s lying on her bed while I sit cross-legged on her stomach, my hands held close together.
Between my palms floats a soft sphere of light, literally a cluster of photons I created by absorbing most of the ambient light into one spot.
"What?"
"The adaptation gives us resistance, and I think you must have it too, but every time I take a hit, that same type of attack becomes weaker. So if someone hits me with fire magic, any normal fire magic of the same type gets weaker." That’s one of the reasons I survived certain blows.
"Yeah, that’s natural. The more we adapt to an attack, the weaker it gets. Unfortunately, it still causes some damage, but the reduction is pretty useful," she murmurs.
"But attacks of the same category but different types bypass that resistance." I noticed this mostly with Mikael—his white flames burned more than any fire magic I’d been hit with before.
"That happens because it’s not the same thing. We adapt to one type of magic, so a different type, even if similar, requires a new adaptation," she replies, giving me exactly what I wanted to know.
"Big sis, are you resistant to light magic?"
"Yeah."
"And darkness magic?"
"Also resistant. I’m resistant to just about every basic magic out there. You’d need some different type of magic if you want it to have its full effect on me." I look at my sister, shifting on her stomach.
"...Hhmmmm..." I gaze at the cluster of photons between my hands. Billions of them stacked together. Firing this would shred an enemy’s body, like sandpaper scraping off every atom of the target.
’Weird...’ If I hit Azraelith with this, she’d tank it because of her resistance to light magic. But this isn’t magic. I’m just manipulating the photons of the universe itself.
’Matter never disappears—it only transforms...’ Azraelith stares at me as I keep my eyes fixed on the photons.
"Big sis, can you see the photons? They’re really small." My eyes can see them despite their size thanks to my vision, which changed a lot when I went to space in the past and my body adapted.
"Of course I can."
"..." Considering that matter only changes form without ever vanishing, I try to reverse it. I slowly press my hands together, compressing the photons while using what I know about the fundamentals of creation and universal laws to alter what light represents.
"Hey, hey, hey—what the hell?!" Azraelith watches in shock as the light turns into darkness. The darkness gathers into a smooth, heavy sphere floating near my hands.
"What was that? How’d you do that?" My sister’s eyes gleam with interest as I sit there confused.
’Why did light turn into darkness?’ Photons shouldn’t undergo any change that releases darkness, right? A reversed photon shouldn’t produce an effect different from a normal one—the main difference would be that instead of being released, it would be reabsorbed by the atoms.
’Did I invert the photon’s energy state?’ If so, then these photons aren’t emitting light anymore—they’re absorbing all light, turning into some kind of anti-light. Or the other option is that I created a sort of miniature black hole.
But it doesn’t really look like an active black hole, since it’s not actively absorbing anything.
"I’m not sure, sis? But anyway—can this hurt you?" She stares at the dark sphere for a few seconds.
"Yeah? Weird. It doesn’t feel like light magic or darkness magic anymore." When she gives me the answer I wanted, I feel even more confused. It really has changed—now it deals full damage to someone already adapted to light and darkness.
"..." Still lying down, Azraelith raises her hands and mimics what I did, only this time with flames. The orange flames begin shifting to a deep red, their edges turning a dark cyan, and the room starts cooling rapidly.
As Azraelith’s hands blister and blacken, I stare at the copy she made—she replicated what I did without fully understanding it.
"You reversed it too..." The flames still give off heat, not generating ice or cold on their own, but the room cooled down, and I feel my own body growing colder.
’It’s been a month since I locked myself in this room. Looks like I was bored enough to do this.’ I release the light and try reversing something else—this time with an ice cube.
The ice cube in my hands turns a deep, dark blue before going completely black, obsidian-like in color, and it starts making my eyes sting painfully. I crush it with a squeeze.
"Pandora, look?! I reversed healing—look!" Azraelith, healing the burns the flames caused, should’ve recovered normally. But her fingers turn black instead.
As if the wound regenerated using dead cells as armor. That’s abnormal—healing magic and our regeneration discard what’s useless. Literally.
If one of us gets wounded with shrapnel inside, regeneration expels the shrapnel. If the shrapnel is part of our own body, like bone dust, it only uses it for regeneration if it’s useful.
Dead cells are useless. So the burn shouldn’t have had anything left to use.
"That’s weird. Reversed healing shouldn’t cause damage—why did you regenerate?" Azraelith sits up, keeping me on her lap.
"Hahaha—did you just invent something new?" She laughs in amusement. Looks like she liked it.
"Yeah... I guess so... You liked it, big sis?" We’ve been provoking each other all the time, but we set up a ’ceasefire period’—three hours where I don’t try to seduce her. It gives her a break.
We’re in that ceasefire period right now, which is why I was practicing ways to bypass resistances. But out of nowhere, I got this idea to try reversing things. Except the effect isn’t what I expected.
I thought if I reversed something, I’d get the opposite effect—like reversing fire would make ice, reversing light would make real darkness, reversing ice would make fire, etc.
But no. Reversing fire made it weird. Reversing light turned it into some strange kind of anti-light. And reversing ice made it dark and hurt my eyes.
"It’s interesting. And it’s not hard to do. I actually like it... we could use this in combat if we figure out what effect it gives." When she says that, I just shrug.
"You can keep and perfect this technique. I’m not using it—it’s too unpredictable. And that unpredictability is bad." The ice hurt my eyes just by looking at it, so other effects are probably harmful to the user too.
"Of course, you little coward. I’ll show you I can use this way better than you can." She gets competitive, and I roll my eyes. If I wanted to perfect this, I would! But I don’t. I have better things to train.
"Anyway, Pandora—I think I get it. This is probably some kind of state reversal. For example, fire emits heat—the reversed fire started absorbing heat."
"Healing has the biological function of repair—it removes damage and discards the useless. Reversed healing didn’t discard the useless and didn’t properly remove the damage. So it’s probably inverting some specific principle."
"Could be heat? Transfer? Emission? Stability? Interaction? Hard to tell. Like you said, it’s pretty unpredictable. But it does seem genuinely interesting." Azraelith figured it out before me.
’She’s right... the fire was absorbing heat from its surroundings while still burning... and the ice probably emitted some kind of aggressive reaction through light radiation or energy...’ That sounds really dangerous to mess with.
"Big sis, I don’t think it’s safe to try using—"
"Don’t worry about it! This is perfect for my fighting style! Imagine if I land a punch where the kinetic energy doesn’t send them flying—or if I make the energy from enemy attacks rebound instead of dispersing?"
’That... is actually an interesting use...’ My sister focuses on brute force, endurance, and straightforward attacks—she could make great use of this principle reversal I accidentally created.
"Sure, do whatever you want with it, big sis... wait... this... you miserable little cheat!! This is why you don’t care about trying to use this unstable thing!!" I quickly figure out why she seems so interested.
The reason this didn’t catch my attention, despite its usefulness, is that it’s easy for the user to get hurt using it. And I don’t like using attacks that give me way more damage than positive return.
Take Doom Element, for example—I might have to sacrifice things, but at least I get a concrete effect worth the cost.
But then I remember. Azraelith has that absurdly broken passive where her power temporarily increases exponentially with each instance of damage. The first hit gives a 1x increase, the second gives 2x, the third 4x, the fourth 8x, the fifth 16x—and it keeps climbing infinitely.
And it doesn’t just work on enemy damage. Any damage triggers the increase—so self-inflicted damage activates it. Even though the increase is small at first, after about twenty hits, her strength gets ridiculous. After fifty hits, it’s absurd. After a hundred, it’s so monstrous it’s questionable if anyone could even fight her.
That’s the only reason my sister survived fighting several goddesses—and even killed some. She told me how it went. Because of the sheer number of attacks she took, her power just kept growing.
The goddesses probably already know about her passive by now, so they’ll likely avoid hitting her too many times. They’ll go for powerful single strikes instead. But with this, Azraelith won’t have to rely on enemy hits anymore.
"Looks like you noticed!!" She says all smug, until I hear a sort of ping sound. Looks like the ceasefire is over. I go back to my usual act.
"Big sis, you’re so smart." I hug her, speaking in a sweet tone and giving her a kiss on the cheek. She practically melts in my arms.