"AHHHH!"

That was my reaction to being tossed a few feet in the air by Midori, who chuckled at me.

At the speed and trajectory I was falling to earth, you could say I felt like a meteorite.

I braced for impact by shielding my face with my arms. Midori sighed and said, "Pause."

Suddenly, I was suspended in midair, just mere inches from the ground.

Does she have the magical ability to stop time?

Midori then said, "Resume."

I hit the ground with a light thud. I got up and dusted myself off.

Aviorah shook her head in disappointment and said, "This is like the 8th time you lost to her."

Midori stroked her chin and corrected Aviorah, "No, I believe it's the 9th time. You forgot to add the one where he lost in a split second."

"Oh yeah, it was so quick that I didn't even realize what happened."

I exhaled. "I don't think you dog walking me in every spar is considered training or a learning experience."

Midori looked at Aviorah and asked, "What did you learn from that?"

Aviorah replied, "That you are leagues above us in strength and skill. Also, Ayato should probably kiss the ground you walk on because, based on his losing streak, he probably considers you his Goddess."

Midori clapped and gleefully said, "Excellent work and a gold star for you."

Sigh. What kind of mentor is this?

"Hey, where's your partner anyway?"

Midori looked at me, "I don't require one. I am a sorcerer-type investigator. A relic will just handicap my abilities."

Sorcerer, you say? Well, that explains everything so far, including why she could easily defeat us without a weapon.

Aviorah sat on the ground in the criss-cross apple sauce position and sighed.

"From what I've seen so far, I'm guessing your two magic types would be wind and time manipulation, which is a pain to deal with."

Midori gave a thumbs up and said, "Yeah, wind magic is self-explanatory. However, my time ability works by releasing my aura within a certain distance. Any person with an aura weaker than mine will immediately cease all bodily movement. Consider it an "instant paralyzer."

She continued, "For example, I can pull off things like this."

In a split second, I felt my body freeze up and then a strong gust of wind knock me flat on my back. Afterward, Midori just appeared next to me and lightly placed her boot on my chest.

"Resume."

I was able to move again instantly. I sat up and complained, "Why am I always the test dummy?"

Midori shrugged her shoulders and replied, "You just happened to be the one closest."

I know that's a lie because Aviorah was the closest of the two of us. I think she may have something against me.

Midori then pulled me up by my arm and said, "That's enough fun for me. "Now let's get down to the important details."

Yeah, I think she may have something against me if she considers this to be fun.

"Since you are a relic user..." You will be fighting predominately with Aviorah's knife form. As you are already aware, she has a time limit in the relic form, which is about 3 minutes give or take. So that means you'll have that amount of time to dispatch your enemy, which can be tricky depending on which type of familiar they can use. There is one way for Aviorah to maintain the relic form longer than that, besides absorbing Witch Essence. "

My ears perked up when I heard that because I may need to learn it in cases of drawn out battles.

"Which is?"

"You will have to pass your aura on to her while simultaneously absorbing the strain she feels while in this form."

Aviorah looked at me with a bit of concern, then shifted her focus back to Midori while saying, "Are you sure that's the only viable option?"

Midori folded her arms and said in a nonchalant tone, "Well, there's always option one, which is killing enough witches to strengthen yourself into an S-class Relic, but sadly that won't be an option right now considering you need to be able to fight for an extended period of time in order to do that, which brings me back to option two."

I supply her with my aura while simultaneously taking on her pain. It doesn't sound like a bad trade-off if I can dispatch the Witch without inflicting too much strain on myself.

I said, "That doesn't sound too bad. I'll gladly take the risk."

Aviorah asked, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, we don't really have much of a choice here."

Aviorah kept quiet after hearing that. In her current position, she probably feels more of a burden than an advantage.

"Oh yes, before I forget, there's something else I want to tell you about relics and relic users, but I am not so sure if I can properly explain it in detail."

Both Aviorah and I quickly paid greater attention to her.

"Ok, so from what I've learned from my co-workers, there are three ways a relic and its user can get a boost of power. The names are "user enhancement," where the relic shares their aura with the user, which will increase speed, endurance, and agility, but only for a limited time of 30 seconds with a cooldown effect of 5 minutes."

She paused to make sure that we were paying attention before continuing.

"The second one would be Weapon Enhancement. The user shares his/her aura with the relic, which boosts its damage output for a limited time. Some examples will be sharper blades, a longer range with more firepower, etc. The third one is something very hard to master. It's called "Complete Synch," by mastering both of your auras, you'll able to use a powerful attack or technique that is unique to the two of you."

Hmm, unique attacks? That sounds interesting enough.

Midori then patted me on the shoulder and said, "Well, that's it for the speed run of what you were going to learn from regular training. I'll be giving you the task to complete now courtesy of Mr. Morikawa."

Well, that was quite a speed run because I barely learned anything besides the different ways Midori can punish me.