Chapter 155: 145. Back to the Junkyard

Jay woke up sharply at the crack of dawn the next day. Kleo was already warming up on the wooden floor to their guest room. She didn’t stop even as he walked around her. While he got freshened up, Kleo accomplished a quick set of pushups, crunches, and air squats. She even started hanging from the bedframe, alternating between one set of arms and then the other while doing pull-ups. Just because Kleo was a cute little thing with four-arms and six gravity thruster wings didn’t mean she couldn’t follow her master’s example and put on a little [Faerie] muscle.

Once Jay finished up by tying his hair into a pony-lock with a Great Quality band, Jay and Kleo exited their guest room. The family offering their home to them were some of the earliest adopters of YoAnna’s incrementally growing Church of Challenge and Change. YoAnna hadn’t bothered setting the church up herself even though it was an important part of her divinity. Brit had mentioned she wanted to push YoAnna to focus on that aspect of herself more, but just like everyone else, the [Godling] was too busy trying to keep their ship from sinking to build an infrastructure for herself to be worshiped.

The family lived in the Daxi District of Taoyuan City, just south of the capital of Taiwan. They were nice enough folks. The dad worked at an electronic store, and the mom stayed home taking care of the kids while handling an online business of hers. They were both eager to be of service to someone of importance to YoAnna. They were also quite scared of the otherworldly nature and infamy of the gravity duo. Jay used his Talent for calming emotions, helping the family adjust. He monitored Kleo, so she didn’t cause too much mischief, even if it was the innocent kind. Kleo was too powerful to have innocent fun around the Systemless.

The breakfast was delicious– deep fried bread, eggs wrapped in crepes, bubble milk tea, and more. YoAnna had written a fat check for the family to ensure Jay was well-fed. It was a temporary arrangement until some of his favorite people arrived and they started hunting immortals together. Jay and Kleo were still going to be the blades, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some more trustworthy people looking out for the things the gravity duo could miss.

Jay ran out the front door. He waved at the neighbors as they gawked at him and his whipping tail. He followed the roads on a bright sunny morning, jogging past green plots of land and trees scattered among a few quiet neighborhoods and businesses. He rounded a corner, rounded another corner, and kept his feet beating on pavement.

Kleo ran alongside him. He was limiting himself to Systemless levels (which was outrageously hard) while Kleo ran with an edge that their profile afforded her. She was blazing a little trail with all six of her limbs pumping fast to keep up with his pounding sneakers.

They reached the salvage yard after passing by some more fields. Too bad it was October. YoAnna had remarked that Taiwan’s cherry blossom season was during the first quarter of the year, a beautiful sight to behold. Maybe Jay would come back to see it. For now, the smile on his face was spreading ear to ear as he greeted the salvage yard workers and found his spot that YoAnna had paid for.

There was some media buzz in the area. The moment Jay showed up and allowed himself to be seen and recorded in China’s territory, the media– and the government especially– whirled to action. The MPC presence here was weak and mostly clandestine, so they couldn’t help too much with that. Even then, China was still figuring out how to deal with someone like Jay, so the earliest reporters and officials were mainly Taiwanese who gathered at the salvage yard to watch the gravity duo. That would change as the mainlanders’ presence encroached on the Taiwanese in the next couple of hours.

Jay might not be here by then, so he didn’t sweat it as a concern.

Jay bounced around and eased off the limiters to his Attributes. He did it slowly while performing some shadowboxing and dynamic kicks. With each significant rise toward his natural Attribute power, Jay honed in on how much faster, harder, and greater his movements came out to be.

He noticed the speed of his mind increasing, the weight of his belief and determination growing heavier, and the spawning of new ideas on how to improve his training dialed up. His mind, body, and spirit expanded as he slowly released his Attribute limits.

By the time he reached his natural Attribute power, his punches sounded like shotgun blasts. His kicks whipped around the air pretty hard, sending big gusts that shook up some of the nearest piled junk around him. This was strictly with his Attributes, no gravity powers just yet.

The growing crowd of onlookers gasped and shouted in amazement as Jay moved as a monstrous and fantastic blur of a person. It became difficult for Systemless to watch him as he performed what should be impossible aerial kicks and some of the hardest and scariest sounding punches on Earth.

Jay was still warming up with his Attributes only raised by 85%, which was him and Kleo at their most natural. He had to fine-tune and limit certain aspects– his senses especially– but those were almost automatic now. Even if someone shot a mundane gun near his head (or even a magical one), his ears would instantly deafen themselves to save him from hearing impairment. The higher the Perception, the more Jay and Kleo could control theirs.

Performing a warm up like this was fun for Jay. It was also a serious attempt to set different bars of power, which was important to him as an Eldritch Monkey Scion. He wanted to know how hard he should go and what the consequences would be at different levels. 

What if he was fighting a weak assassin, and Jay wanted to capture the guy? It would be embarrassing if Jay let loose a punch that was meant to knock the assassin out but scattered his skull and brains instead. 

This was also important for when Jay would eventually get back to training with his Champions. He would not want to kill his own people by accident because he was ignorant of his own power. A commander must be in control of himself, especially with the added eldritch angle and new responsibilities.

He was dressed in the classic rocky training outfit, too, a magical trash bag suit to go with white socks and sneakers. And Kleo was dressed the same as she bounced around on the ground close to her master.

She was a slower blur, but she certainly cemented her fan club as people tried to record the little doll-sized [Faerie] punching and kicking around beside her master’s feet. This would be the extent to her warmup before she shifted into her more magical training aspects. Jay was going to focus on the more direct and physical aspects of their abilities once they finished warming up.

YoAnna, Kleo, and Jay had agreed that the gravity duo should start simplifying their power set rather than find the most convoluted outmaneuvers. That had been fine for the Jay and Kleo of the past when trying to outwit and outmaneuver certain challenges was the key to victory. They were far removed from this now.

Simplicity, good technique, correct forethought, snappy reactions, and irreproachable reliability. These were some aspects on the front of Jay and Kleo’s minds as they settled into being their own weapons of mass destruction. Nothing as large as High Divinity YoAnna, but definitely large enough to hurt an entire town or a district of neighborhoods in a tiny city.

“Okay, let’s start with you Kleo,” Jay said, feeling warmed up now.

Part of this training exercise was to establish a baseline of what they could do separately and together. Kleo needed to go first because they’d explored many of Jay’s baseline abilities already and his stance going forward would remain somewhat the same even if more straightforward and disciplined.

Jay was going to serve as their [Fighter]. Kleo, however, had a laundry list of powers she could use that made her more suitable as the gravity duo’s [Mage]. They both felt that they could be better [Mediums] together, and this was something that should stay in their back pocket and not get trained in public.

So, to set the stage for his [Faerie], Jay bounced up to the air, using only his physical Attributes, and landed on a pile of cubes twenty feet tall. He tried not to smile from the oh’s and ah’s of the growing onlookers. To his right were a line of wrecked cars. To his left were more cube piles stacked up.

“Fireball,” Kleo cast after spending a few scant seconds inscribing the 2nd circle spellcraft into the air. She was much faster now thanks to her evolutionary growth and four arms. She sent the fireball flying at Jay with no added gravity magic. 

Jay paid attention to the Mana costs and concluded that it was definitely an expense for Kleo to go outside of gravity. But that was just another tool in their back pocket.

While this practice session was focused on Kleo practicing spellcraft and being a ranged menace, Jay also used it to practice simplifying his powers. Overall, he had eleven skills to play with: [Grav Kick], [Sling Assist], [Horizondancer], [Martial Gravity Mastery], [Relativity Sovereignty], [Graviton Monster], [Gravity Grasp (F)], [Guillotine-G (F)], [Situational Gravity (F)], [Gravital Supremacy (F)], [Cosmic Showrunner (F)].

It was notable that all the Skills Jay couldn’t use before have been replaced for improved Skills, allowing him to use any of such that were applicable for the situation. But part of this training exercise was learning to become more fluid and simple with his Skills even if they were far from the simplest powers anyone could have. Jay was pretty sure he and Kleo had the most complex magic on Earth.

Jay focused more on the effect he wanted to have and letting his Skills empower him to achieve his goals. It would take less pressure off of him thinking on what Skills he needed for a particular situation and let the Skills work passively and actively like they were deeply ingrained instincts. And to be honest, he had a cheat for this. The inherent abilities of Gravity Affinity– graven voice, 4D headspace, meta-g, emotional-g, spatial-g, wormhole whisper– all existed as powers Jay could use instinctually. And tying all of that together was meta-g, an unsung workhorse, the glue to everything. If he leaned on meta-g, acting on an impulse and getting what he wanted without thinking smoothened further.

So when Jay shaped gravity magic and graviton particles into a super heavy purple cleaver around his hand, he didn’t think hard on what Skills were working together to achieve his whims. He simply acted as if he was both the mind, hand, and sword cutting at once.

He sliced apart Kleo’s fireball while flinging forward a fasting moving graviton crescent that faded the further it went. The distance between him and Kleo wasn’t much, so the graviton crescent could reach her and strike hard. Total impact would cut her, make her heavier, and make her more vulnerable for gravity manipulation.

“Gravity Barrier,” Kleo inscribed and cast. A shimmering purple sphere formed in front of Kleo. It didn’t stop the graviton crescent. The barrier pulled Jay’s counterattack into its orbit and spun it around, beefing up the barrier as it absorbed the energies of Jay’s magic and gravity. Then Kleo readapted the barrier by using Ball to gather it into one set of hands before sending it out with a Hit spellcraft almost instantly.

Wow, Jay was really seeing Kleo could be superb at this spellcraft stuff. The spellcraft she just sent at Jay was essentially Gravity Ball but with a few extra steps. Jay’s only response was to try slinging the projectile away before it reached him. 

It exploded as soon as he started to sling it, sending a wave of gravity magic that sucked everything toward the epicenter of the explosion. Unfortunately, Kleo might’ve packed a little too much magic into that and forced their nice little section in the salvage yard to crash together in a big heap.

The onlookers screamed from the noise and sudden catastrophic damage while Jay focused on beefing himself up with gravitons. His hardened body endured the collisions of wreckage falling on top of him.

Okay, dokie, Kleo was scary good at being her own [Mage]. And she had naturally amplified her power by usurping his graviton crescent maneuver. This was playing more and more into Kleo’s wheelhouse as the [Laevateinn Faerie], too. 

But as Jay rose from the pile, packing in as much graviton as he could inside of himself, he shifted aside heavy junk and stood as tall as fifteen feet. Trillions and trillions of graviton particles swirled away from his body while he and his clothes enjoyed the raised physicality of becoming a gravity giant.

“Huh, nice,” Jay said, his voice reverberating with a deeper bass at this size. He glanced at his Mana Status and winced. Oh, this was costly for a power.

Jay shrank down, pumping out a large vortex of fading gravitons. Kleo floated into the air and manipulated some of the passing gravitons into a ball before it all faded. Then she hurled it at Jay’s head and struck with a purple burst, making him heavier.

“Ha ha.” Kleo sneered.

Jay narrowed his eyes.

Their training session devolved into a little graviton ball fight. With each hit he took, Jay tried to negate the heaviness. Although that made him lighter and lighter until he was bouncing so high into the air he could fly up a hundred feet. He regulated his weight and came back down as the little menace of a [Faerie] snickered.

“This isn’t going how I thought it would,” Jay said.

“That’s because the salvage yard is too small for us,” Kleo said. “It’s a nice return to old, but we need more space.”

Jay looked at the crowd as he hovered in the air. Kleo orbited him casually.

They really had outgrown any sort of junkyard shenanigans, huh? They had just started, too, and the area designated for them was now a mess. Jay wondered if they should go find a larger and more impressive area. A place away from people so that Jay and Kleo could train fully without risking harm to others.

But wouldn’t that perpetuate the idea that they couldn’t control themselves while in public? They couldn’t always choose the battlegrounds. What if they had to act and keep the civilian populace in mind?

“This is another challenge, Kleo,” Jay said. “Let’s see if we can play this with a bit more discipline.”

“Hm, okay. I’ll try.”

They worked together to rearrange the section to the best of their memories– which was pretty good. The challenge was learning to use gravity magic and some telekinesis when the option to push and place accurately wasn’t available.

They could make things fall up, down, and side-to-side, or forward, even if slowly. They could pull things toward them, rotate them around, and sling it off with a change of speed. Jay could try using his arms (and his tail), but it seemed like good practice for fine-tuned gravity control to set things with his powers alone.

And the more Jay and Kleo worked on it together, the better they got at it. They also played around by positioning themselves away from each other to pass things from [Freak] to [Faerie] and back.

They had touched on this briefly during the school arc, but now this could be something they could expect from each other more, coordination between the gravity duo from a distance. Their Mana Status wasn’t doing too bad either. It recovered pretty quickly since they weren’t doing anything too hard. Being able to implant gravitons on things before manipulating them with gravity reduced the cost on top of having abilities that saved on Mana.

“I’m going to miss having you sing for me,” Jay said after they set everything back where things belonged. 

“We can sing for each other with [Cosmic Showrunner],” Kleo admitted.

Ah, this was true.

You are reading story The Gravity Freak of Dungeons and Monsters: System Portal Fantasy at novel35.com

“How about I pay you back for all the songs in the Yoroachian Battles?” Jay said.

“Sure!”

Jay flipped into the air and landed on a stack of busted cars. He performed his own rendition of Eye of the Tiger, directing his behind-the-scenes magic on Kleo. She became his story lead, a little [Faerie] trying to maximize her abilities. She was going to show her master what she could do as they prepared to hunt down immortals. With that in Jay’s mind, he felt Kleo’s magic power rise as she started raising salvaged scraps, whirling it around, tossing it at targets, and trying to keep her nature for mischief focused on wrecking her junk targets.

She hurled cubes like they were shot out of cannons and folded the targeted cars with each impact. The loud, sheet metal smacking noise was shocking for the onlookers as Kleo trained and Jay sang. If Kleo wasn’t using spellcraft, she could still attack from a distance and mess with people as fairies ought to do.

Jay switched to other training songs to keep empowering Kleo. He also leaned on one of their Talents of many. Some of Jay and Kleo’s Talents could only be used separately depending on who had them. However, they could feel each other using their individual powers and gain some benefits, too. This was intensified when Kleo entered Jay’s chest, allowing him to siphon more from her Talents and Titles. Here, while they were separated, Jay used his [Status Meditation] Talent to enter a trance-like state.

Using [Cosmic Showrunner] to empower Kleo wasn’t a strenuous activity, which allowed Jay to focus on meditating and recovering their lost Mana quickly. This enabled Kleo to train harder and longer, crushing all the bought-up cars that served as good-target practice. She kept at it as she rose into the air while surrounded by a vortex of junk cubes, gravitons, and purple gravity madness. Even while in a trance-like state, Jay could look outside of himself and see Kleo becoming the most absolutely scary creature anyone had ever seen.

To most Systemless, they would be hard-pressed to find her in that swirling calamity of gravity power. Even a Rank 2 would struggle to keep track of her. So when she picked up more junk ammo and sent them careening down like mini meteors, the onlookers got a little too scared and started retreating across the field. Kleo ignored them as she filled the area with the sound of her gravity bombardment that resonated so loudly it could be heard over yonder at the local temple and as far as the southern edge of the capital.

Jay eventually stopped singing and meditating, which was enough of a clue for Kleo to calm down. Then the two worked together to set their play station back in order, even though that was harder than before. The crushed cubes had gotten dented, malformed, and pummeled out of shape. Their targets– whatever junked cars YoAnna had purchased for them– were pretty trashed from getting pummeled by a destructive and mischievous [Faerie]. Jay would have to make do with what they had as he switched with Kleo.

“Worked out some anger there?” Jay asked.

“I hate the System Admins!” Kleo yelled.

There was no need for her to speak further. She had helped YoAnna when the System Admins attacked them with a seemingly endless volume of inquiries while the 6th Hell Circle Dungeon was up. 

It was the most overwhelming and tiring thing Kleo had faced, but it was the reason she became so powerful now. Jay gave her a brief hug to show that he cared even if she already knew that. Kleo appreciated it.

Now it was time for Jay to show off more of his warrior side. If Kleo was going to play as more of the ranged trickster, gravity nuke, and flying magical calamity, Jay was going to be in the bad guy’s faces and stick to them like glue. And that started with him staying on the ground, bouncing around with normal gravity as he got more comfortable with the new style he was settling on.

It was less flashy than Super Capoeira, but it brought together a bunch of things he’d been learning as a growing martial artist. Sometimes, the fancy spinning kicks took too long, and a swift and simple punch was all that was needed. And if a punch or a kick wasn’t enough, then Jay had grappling as an arsenal, which he was truly enjoying.

Kleo helped facilitate Jay’s training regiment by picking up and tossing crumpled car frames at him. These things ranged in weight from 500 pounds if they were gutted to over 2000 pounds if they were still complete. There were some trucks here and there that were heavier. An application of gravitons made the gravity manipulation easier and less costly as Kleo tossed cars at Jay. In response, her master became the action hero of his dreams and struck with a vengeance.

He skipped to the side of one dinged-up sedan, pivoted at the end of the step, and attacked with a graviton-coated hook that smashed the car aside and made it heavier. So when it hit the ground, it didn’t flip away and caused damage he didn’t account for. It laid crumpled against a barrier of cars lining the fence.

Just as he recovered from that punch, Kleo dropped a pickup truck directly from above. Jay went from boxing to capoeira, shifting gravity as he flipped into the air. One leg kicked up while covered with magic and gravitons ready to burst. A neon purple streak of light and particles followed behind his kick as it landed against the grill of the falling truck. The truck’s grill crumpled inward. The engine block shot up into the cabin. 

The sheer force of Jay’s whooping explosive gravity kick squashed the pickup and sent it careening off to the side. But Jay didn’t let the pickup get away from him since it was heavily coated in gravitons. He reached out mentally, grasped the horribly beaten vehicle, and yanked it toward him for another round.

Jay used the blow back of his first kick to spiral around and send another kick. But this one carved through the air like a cleaver. The frame, the engine block, the interior, the guts– none of these things could stop Jay’s bladed kick. He sliced through the pickup truck from the front to the back.

Kleo tossed another pickup truck at him almost instantly. She gave him no time to set up a decent punch or kick, especially while he was midair. This was the trickiest part of using gravity magic. It didn’t invite the idea of pinpoint aerial control unless Jay had wings like Kleo, Brit, or Frank. But what he had were more gravitons. He blasted a huge torrent out of his feet. That was enough to throw him into the pickup truck with momentum, tackling the vehicle rather than getting hit by it like a sucker.

Their midair collision eliminated both of their momentums. That was fine with Jay as his fingers dug into the metal frame, hooking on, before he made both himself and his latest victim heavier. Jay grew an extra three feet as he smashed the pickup truck into the ground with a gravity piledriver, a famous wrestling move Jay had seen a bunch of times when he was younger.

Before he allowed the truck to rest for good, Jay released it and jumped up. He grew even larger and came down with a mighty elbow slam that crumpled the poor thing even further. That might’ve been the most impractical move he committed yet. But he might as well get the practice in now in hopes of landing it on an immortal and squashing them.

The only sad part was how much Mana got burned away when absorbing, conjuring, and manipulating gravitons. Before he had to request a song, Kleo started singing some classic pump you up music.

He felt the power of being the story lead, intensifying his magical abilities and choreography. It was kind of funny and meta how their powers blended with actual tropes you would see in a story, driving the point home that while Jay couldn’t have everything go his way, he was still the hero of comedy, and he would win even if it meant he’d have to work his ass off day and night.

And that was more than enough motivation for Jay to ignore his Mana limits and push himself to box, kick, and slam every car Kleo sent his way. Sometimes she would sling a car around without letting it go, and Jay would flow with its movements and beat on it with rapid fire graviton punches like he was an in-your-face gravity Gatling cannon.

He used short and snappy punches to keep his vehicle victims from flying off from him, and if they did, he’d yank them back for more punishment. He was cycling through a majority of his Skills that didn’t have cooldowns, and he only used small portions of power from his Talents and Titles.

Yeah, the entire world was going to get a good look at Jay training. But this was Jay honing the basics and implanting a narrative where he was training to kick major butt.

Neither he nor Kleo would reveal the full extent of their tricks. Their [Eyes of the Abyssal Monk] were closed off right now, after all. And they had not gone near their upper limits.

By the time they’d finished up, the Chinese government presence increased heavily. A military unit arrived, although they didn’t outright try to threaten Jay and Kleo. They even had a few Systemized operatives among them. They must’ve sneaked people into areas affected by Devil Flakes to get them Systems and levels. Too bad they’d chosen some not-so-nice hombres to gain magic powers.

Jay sat on a pile of wreckage he and Kleo pummeled into misshapen and crushed things. It was as if someone beat their hatred out on a bunch of aluminum cans until they were flattened and unsalvageable scraps of metal. Jay was letting his Stamina and Mana recover gradually as he looked over the Skill level gains.

Grav Kick leveled up from 30 to 33!

Sling Assist leveled up from 31 to 35!

Martial Gravity Mastery leveled up from 30 to 35!

Relativity Sovereignty leveled up from 12 to 21!

Graviton Monster leveled up from 12 to 19!

Gravity Grasp leveled up from 32 to 34!

Guillotine-G leveled up from 30 to 33!

Situational Gravity leveled up from 32 to 34!

Gravital Supremacy leveled up from 17 to 24!

Cosmic Showrunner leveled up from 1 to 9!

Jay and Kleo smiled. It was nice to see the Skill levels go up from pure old fashion training. The Skills crossing into the 30s grew slower compared to the newer Skills. But those were still some major gains without having to fight monsters or do drastically hard things. Jay remembered how it took a long time to progress Skill levels back when he was Rank 1. The same happened while he was a Rank 2.

The lower Skills would level up quickly once Jay and Kleo started hunting down assassins and immortals. Getting all of his Skills to Level 60 before the gravity duo evolved to Rank 4 would be a little trickier. It would feel more complete to have all their Skills maxed before evolving again, and Jay enjoyed being a completionist now.

“Jay Luckrun,” called a Level 19 Martial-Soldier, a tall man with a square face and a serious glint in his eyes. He wore crisp Chinese army fatigues as he strode up with other Systemized personnel following behind him. The strongest of them was Level 25.

“There was a time where one of my Champions would be offended if you didn’t say Captain Jay Luckrun,” Jay replied. “That was a fun portal journey. You don’t seem so fun. But I’ll give you the time of day, anyway.”

“Tread carefully, little snack,” Kleo said, her voice sounding more monstrous and deep while she looked over from behind Jay’s neck.

The Systemized soldiers gulped. The Martial-Soldier kept his composure the best. He even had a baton in his hand that was Basic Quality. This was the work of a [Crafter] derivative turning mundane materials into Basic magical stuff.

“You must come with us to answer questions about your business in the People’s Republic of China,” the Martial-Soldier said dutifully.

“My business in Taiwan is to train,” Jay said when he felt a buzzing in his chest. Kleo phased inside of him and jostled some stuff around. Then Kleo sent a happy feeling to Jay through their link as master and familiar. He knew what that meant.

Mom and Amanda had arrived.

“Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic of China,” the Martial-Soldier yammered on. “Please do not resist and come with us. You will speak to an officer and answer their questions.”

Kleo crawled slowly out of Jay’s chest and clung to the front of his outfit. She shook with anger as she tried to keep herself in control. Her [Slayer of Tyranny] Title was raging right now, and she was probably thinking back to the time Commander Steele locked the Champions up right after succeeding their first crawl.

Jay would prefer to go without remembering those angst-filled times.

“Look, I gotta go,” Jay said. “Don’t stop us. You already know you’re no match. Don’t be a hero or–”

The Martial-Soldier shouted in Chinese. Jay’s meta-g fed him the context without having to translate the words directly. Someone up their chain of command didn’t give these guys much of a choice. They had to bring Jay and Kleo in or face some harsh consequences.

“No killing,” Jay told Kleo.

“Fine,” the [Faerie] grouched before the gravity duo gently whooped the soldiers around and incapacitated them. Jay and Kleo moved on quickly afterward, everything they needed was already stored inside Kleo’s home. They flew away from Taiwan and went straight toward Hong Kong to reunite with their family. This time, they used [Champion Cloaking] fully to go undetected.