Greg might have come from another world, but he had come to care for his family in this world as his own. Whether this was as a result of vestigial feelings from Roka or not, he didn't know... or care really. After seeing that both his teacher and familiar were fine, Greg had naturally wanted to go see his mother and sister. After being away from them for so long, they were probably worried about him, not to mention missing him. Olivia, however, stopped him when he tried to leave. "You can't go see them before we spar," she had said. At first, Greg had chuckled, thinking that she was joking. The deadpan look she gave him, however, caused his amusement to morph into confusion as he realized that she was completely serious. "Just trust me on this, Master, it's for your family's safety," she had said.
Despite all his misgivings about her, so far, Olivia had never acted against him. Greg had thus been willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. The two of them had stepped out of his room and walked in the opposite direction from where Olivia's clone was playing a game with his mother, and sister. Lothar was a short distance away from them meditating according to what Olivia reported. It didn't take them that long to find what they were looking for. A building that offered training rooms where people could go all out depending on their tier. Naturally, the higher one's tier, the more expensive the arena they'd need to hire. His teacher, who had tagged along, hired an arena for third-tier mages before following them to the arena they'd hired. Each arena was a closed room the size of a large hall that was powerfully warded against damage both of the physical and the magical kind. While his teacher stood off to the side, he followed his familiar to the center of the arena. Once they stood facing each other, all Greg got from Olivia was a single nod before she turned into a blur.
Barely ten seconds into the fight, Greg found himself feeling profoundly grateful that his familiar hadn't allowed him to go straight to his family. Before the procedure with his teacher, Greg wouldn't have been able to visually keep up with his familiar's speed, let alone react to it. Reacting on instinct, Greg took a step backward and pivoted to the right just as Olivia reached him with a powerful punch already flying at his head. In that split-second glimpse of his familiar, Greg's mind went through all the body language signals that his familiar had taught him to look for to see if it was a real attack or a feint meant to misguide him. Rather than try to evade the punch, Greg simply raised his hand to push it off course.
Despite the intimidating approach, there was no power behind the punch as it had only been a feint. The real attack came as a knee aimed at his midriff. Before, this attack would have been enough to blindside and fold him like a cheap rag. In that moment, however, Greg simply stepped to the side easily evading what before would have been an unavoidable attack. There was no thought to it as he sent a punch of his own at his familiar. He'd immediately been subsumed into the flow of combat and acted on instinct. At the back of his mind, Greg had been expecting Olivia to either block or evade his punch. After all, before the procedure with his teacher, he'd always had to work really hard to land a punch on her. One could thus understand his surprise when his knuckles connected with her sternum. That surprise, however, quickly turned to shock and horror, when Olivia flew off like a ragdoll and slammed into the arena's wall about fifteen feet away!
In retrospect, he probably should have immediately run to her aid to see if she was injured and what help she might have needed. At the time, however, Greg had stood frozen like a statue, blankly staring at Olivia's fallen form as she coughed and gasped for the air that had just been knocked out of her. His gaze had dropped to his fist as if he'd find there some sort of explanation as to what had just happened. Greg didn't know if it was because her body was made out of mana or if she was just that tough, but Olivia didn't seem to have any broken bones. A shocking fact considering the force of impact Greg felt when his knuckles connected to her sternum. The shock, however, didn't just stop there. Greg felt like he'd entered the Twilight Zone when he realized that barely three seconds had passed between Olivia nodding to him and her ramming into the wall.
Greg had trained hard over the months with Olivia to up his speed of action and reaction. His goal in that training, however, had been to at least be able to evade the most deadly of Olivia's blows, the rest he could just tank. Never in his wildest dreams, had he thought that he'd be able to not only match her speed, evade one of her attacks, and counter, all in the space of a single breath. More time had passed with him standing there shocked compared to the brief fight that had just taken place. He wasn't proud of it, but by the time Greg managed to get over the shock of what had just happened, Olivia was already back on her feet and looking at him with a predatory gleam in her eyes. "It would seem that I can finally get serious with you," she muttered with chilling glee.
Twelve hours. For twelve straight hours, Greg engaged in the most brutal fight he had ever been part of in both his lives. In those twelve hours, Greg got to see just how much Olivia had been holding back when she'd been training him before. When she ceased to hold back, Olivia stopped being just a fighter and morphed into a force of nature. Cold, unrelenting, unforgiving, and utterly merciless. Short of breaking his bones, or poking his eyes out, there was nothing that was off limits to the familiar. She came at him like an avalanche forcing Greg to pull out every last stop just to keep from being swallowed up. It would be a lie for Greg to say that it was an entirely pleasant experience for him. By the end of it, however, Greg was glad that Olivia had forced him to do it. He never would have understood just how much his body had changed without engaging in that fight.
It wasn't just that he was stronger or faster, everything about him had somehow been improved upon. His strength and speed were immediately obvious even from the first exchange. What one wouldn't notice was that even his thoughts came faster. It wasn't until after that he realized it, but even in the middle of the attack, Greg had been able to analyze her attack and plan a counter-strategy while it happened. Previously, Greg could only use preplanned responses to deal with Olivia whenever she was moving that fast. Either protect his vitals from attack or go for a sacrificial play where he hoped to cause as much damage to her as she did to him. Those were the only two preprogrammed responses he had as he didn't have the speed to evade her attacks, let alone consciously react to them. That had changed. While he hadn't managed to achieve parity with his familiar in terms of speed, she was no longer a blur when she moved that fast. He could exchange blows with her at speeds that would have been little more than a blur to him before. The changes, however, didn't stop there.
Greg's body was far tougher than he'd been before, his threshold for pain had risen to a ridiculous degree. In that fight, Greg had taken blows that, previously, would have shattered his bones to a fine paste. But not only did his bones not break, Greg was able to shrug the blows off and keep on fighting. The only reason Greg had been willing to try sacrificial counters before his upgrade was because Olivia had made it a point to punish him whenever Greg fell into a predictable pattern. "If your enemies know that you are going to turtle up anytime they make a serious attack, you are going to be easy pickings for them!" That had been her admonition during one of their sessions after Greg had tried to protect his vitals for the tenth time in a row, unsuccessfully at that! Greg had thus incorporated exchanging damage for damage into his fighting style. Not because it worked all that much, but because it kept him from being a one-trick pony.
In this fight, Greg found that his sacrificial plays were actually effective. Before, only one out of ten of his attempts at this strategy would succeed. That number had gone up to about half of them succeeding. A fact that led to another shocking discovery. He could hit harder than she did. Greg might not have the speed or skill in combat to match his familiar, but when his blows did manage to land, they carried a devastating force that even her strongest punches couldn't match. Greg had almost gotten himself knocked out when he figured this out. To him, Olivia had always been stronger and faster. The thought that he might have surpassed her in one of these areas felt so unreal to him that, for a second, he froze up in shock. Unsurprisingly, Olivia wasn't one to forgive such stupidity in the middle of combat. If Greg hadn't managed to get his head out of the way at the very last second, Olivia would probably have flipped him over with a full-force punch to the temple.
It was six hours into the fight that Greg realized that he wasn't growing tired. Yes, he was breathing hard. Yes, he was sweating. Yes, his muscles had that pleasant burn that one gets from a good workout, but he was nowhere near done. On top of everything else that had changed with him, he had also become a tireless engine. He was hitting just as hard in the sixth hour as he'd been in the first. Even at the twelve-hour mark, if not for Olivia calling for an end to the match, Greg was certain that he would have still been able to go on. The two of them had collapsed into a sweaty heap right where they stood, both panting from the exertion of the grueling fight. The whole arena was covered in splotches of his blood. This wasn't because the fight was one-sided but rather because Olivia's body was made out of mana. She looked and felt every bit as human as he did, she just didn't bleed like one.
