Divine Milking System

Chapter 265: 265 | This Is Not a Request

Tsukishima turned around when the door opened. The lollipop moved from one side of her mouth to the other. Her golden-brown eyes scanned the room with the practiced ease of someone who spent most of their time assessing threat levels and deciding how seriously to take them.

"You three are almost late," she said, without particular judgment.

"We had philosophical concerns about the nature of gates," Belle said.

Tsukishima considered this. "Was it productive?"

"Monroe thinks we might be living in a war zone."

"Mm." She looked at me with a brief evaluative pause. "That’s not the worst theory I’ve heard in this corridor." She walked to the center of the room. "Get your weapons."

The rack I’d been using for the past three weeks held my spear at its usual slot, the grip worn in the specific way that came from my particular hand placement.

Bronze-rank Wave Motion had made the weapon feel different in my hands lately, more like an extension than a tool. The stamina cost per shot had dropped enough that I could actually think tactically during a fight instead of rationing every move.

The jump from sitting outside the gym for an hour while Vale got lost to actually using improved capability in class was not lost on me.

Belle collected her crossbow with the reverence of someone picking up a beloved pet. Naomi unsheathed her staff from its case and telescoped it to full extension in one smooth movement, the blue-white energy that lived at the tip flickering briefly before she tamped it down for indoor use.

Ruby students filtered through the weapon racks on the other side of the room. I recognized a few faces from the inter-house training rotations.

One of them, a tall second-year with lightning-pattern scarring on his forearms that I was fairly sure came from Jin Park’s training regime rather than actual gates, was watching our side of the room with mild interest.

Tsukishima planted herself in the center of the space and looked at both groups.

"We’re doing partner sparring today," she said. "Real contact, controlled force. If you break something, medical is two buildings over and I’ll feel bad for approximately thirty seconds." She pulled the lollipop out and pointed it at the room generally. "House pairings. I want cross-house partners. This is not a request."

The expected shifting of weights and exchange of looks followed. Cross-house sparring happened in joint classes regularly enough that the resistance was mostly performative, Ruby students pretending to object while already identifying which Obsidian student they wanted to test themselves against.

Tsukishima walked through the room with the loose unhurried movement of someone who had spent enough years in combat spaces that the environment stopped registering as anything but a setting.

She stopped at various pairs to assess stances and grip adjustments, the lollipop back in her mouth, speaking in low precise corrections that I could catch fragments of as she moved.

My partner turned out to be a Ruby first-year who introduced himself as Riku, compact and quick-moving with a Bo staff and the kind of footwork that said someone had drilled him properly before he arrived at San Nicolas.

His ability was apparently some kind of localized kinetic enhancement that made his strikes hit harder than they looked like they should, which Tsukishima had mentioned to me in passing before assigning us together.

Translation: she paired me with someone whose whole thing was that hits were unexpectedly heavy. Inspiring.

Belle had been paired with someone half a head taller than her who looked at her crossbow with the uncertainty of a person who’d never fought against a ranged weapon in close quarters. A mistake he’d figure out within the first thirty seconds.

Naomi’s partner was a Ruby second-year girl who moved like she had fight training before she could walk, her footwork already establishing a comfortable territory that said she knew exactly how much space she needed to work effectively. freeweɓnovēl.coɱ

"Go," Tsukishima said.

Riku moved first. Not reckless, controlled, the kind of opening move that was actually a test, probing for response patterns. His staff swept low, and I stepped back and angled the spear to redirect rather than block, the way Tsukishima had been drilling for two weeks.

The impact came back up through my grip with more weight than his build suggested and I understood immediately why she’d paired us.

He grinned. "Nice redirect."

"Nice deceptive weight distribution," I said.

We reset.

The second exchange was faster. He went high with a feint and I read it, but he expected me to read it, which meant the real movement was already in progress by the time I’d committed to the block.

The staff clipped my shoulder and I let myself absorb it rather than overextend chasing a counter. Tsukishima had been emphatic about not chasing.

Chasing was how you died in gates because the monster had planned three moves past where you thought the fight was.

"You let that land," he said. freewebnovёl.ƈom

"I didn’t want to fall over chasing a counter that wasn’t there."

"Smart." He rotated the staff in his grip. "You’re better than the Amber first-years we trained against last week."

"We’ve had a rough few weeks. Good for the development."

Somewhere to my left, Belle’s partner made the specific sound of someone who had just realized that a crossbow bolt at three meters was not something you could read and dodge. It was a practice bolt, padded tip, zero actual injury, but the thwack of it connecting had a particular quality.

Belle said something I couldn’t quite hear that generated a laugh from two other nearby pairs.

Naomi and her partner were in a proper exchange now, the kind where both people were working. Wave Motion energy flickered at Naomi’s staff tip in the controlled way she used for sparring rather than actual combat output, small enough to create pressure without sending anyone through a wall.

The Ruby girl matched her for footwork, which was making the whole thing interesting to watch on the peripheral. Naomi moved differently when she was fully engaged. The self-consciousness that showed up in regular life mostly disappeared.

Tsukishima appeared at my side while Riku was resetting.

She was looking at my spear grip.

"Weight shift," she said, not breaking the lollipop from her mouth to say it. She adjusted my rear hand two finger-widths, and the difference was immediate in the way the balance distributed. "You’re holding tension here for no reason. It’s costing you reaction time."

"How much?"

"Enough."