Tatsuki was a girl with a very direct style and a very strong personality.
After watching Lucas crush the dojo’s ace without effort, she had already been itching for a fight.
She knew perfectly well that even if he did not go all out, she could not possibly be his opponent.
She still wanted to spar with him, to feel firsthand exactly how strong he was.
“That’s not a problem. I’ll contact you when I’m free.”
Lucas was not particularly surprised.
This was exactly the sort of thing her personality would lead her to.
“All right. Then I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”
Tatsuki said it with a smile, and the two of them parted ways.
He did not think much about it either.
She had helped him out this time, so in the face of her challenge, he was hardly going to refuse.
Soon after, Lucas arrived at Uryū’s training ground and threw himself back into his work.
Time flew, and a week passed in the blink of an eye.
Today was Saturday, which meant the tournament was starting.
It would run over two days, with thirty-two participants in total.
Apart from the three who entered the main tournament directly, the other twenty-nine were champions from various regions.
Over that week, his strength had climbed another notch.
〔Name: Chad〕
〔Spiritual Pressure: Lieutenant (8%)〕
〔Abilities: Brazo Derecha de Gigante (Intermediate 24%), Brazo Izquierda del Diablo (Awakening 45%), Reishi Manipulation (Intermediate 2%)〕
His spiritual pressure had reached Lieutenant rank.
After hitting that rank, improvement through training slowed a little, though that unshakeable 1% a day was still there.
Before, his pressure rose 5% daily.
Now the same amount of work produced 3%.
Even so, the scale of it was terrifying.
At the current rate, by the time he entered the Soul Society, his pure spiritual pressure alone, never mind his actual combat ability, would likely sit at the top of the Captain class. Read this novel at novelping(.)com for the best experience.
Possibly even brushing Super Captain.
The Brazo Derecha de Gigante had already reached Intermediate, and it was improving very quickly.
Mainly because it grew alongside him whether he was building spiritual pressure or drilling his body.
And most importantly, when he fought Hollows, it was not only the absorbed power that accelerated the Brazo Izquierda del Diablo.
The fighting itself pushed the right arm’s rank up rapidly too.
After that first live combat session, he had run a second one over the past week.
He hunted down a dozen Hollows, and then was interrupted by that same stationed Shinigami again.
To avoid attracting too much attention, he planned to wait a few days before using the bait once more.
He had also discovered that once the Brazo Derecha de Gigante reached Intermediate, fighting small-fry Hollows stopped being useful.
He needed higher-level combat.
And in this world, he could not find opponents the way Saitama could.
There were only so many high-level fighters here.
In One Punch Man, a Demon-level or even Dragon-level threat surfaced every so often, so Saitama was never short of opponents.
Here it was different.
Advanced Hollows rarely came to the human world, and Lucas could not enter Hueco Mundo.
Even if he could, he was still far too weak for it right now.
For the time being, all he could do was raise his strength through training and natural growth.
As for the Brazo Izquierda del Diablo, between the dozen Hollows he had killed and the natural growth on top, its awakening progress was already close to halfway.
Reishi Manipulation had reached Intermediate as well.
And his most immediate impression after that was that Shunpo was close to finished.
He had been using the principles he understood to boost his speed before, but there was still a real distance between that and true Shunpo, so recreating it had been on his mind the whole time.
Because Reishi Manipulation improved every day, his speed kept climbing with it.
Once it hit Intermediate, the gains grew larger still, and he felt completing Shunpo was no longer far off.
Flying he had already managed back when Reishi Manipulation was only at Elementary.
Crooked and uneven.
After reaching Intermediate, the footholds he formed became far more solid.
On top of that, through his technique work over this period, he had discovered that he was brushing the threshold of a combat style entirely his own.
He was only short on experience.
Which made this tournament genuinely important to him.
At this moment, Tatsuki was walking him through the entrants, explaining each one’s fighting style and characteristics.
She was not the one competing, and there was no chance of him losing to any of these people, and she had still dug up most of their backgrounds anyway.
You could only say she had earned her reputation.
This was the same Tatsuki who took second place in a tournament while injured.
By now their relationship had improved a good deal, mainly because he had kept his promise during the week and sparred with her once.
After gauging her build, Lucas matched her strength exactly.
The outcome went without saying.
With his current technique, he could have suppressed her using half her strength, let alone the same amount.
Once the spar ended, he also helped her identify several of her weaknesses.
For most people, finding and patching those gaps is not easy.
Spotting someone else’s flaws is harder still, because builds and habits differ from person to person.
When the other party is a beginner, you can find plenty of defects.
At higher levels, digging them out becomes genuinely troublesome.
But Lucas was different.
He could reproduce another person’s techniques easily, and by now he could reproduce their combat patterns just as easily.
So a single sparring session was enough.
He understood her situation completely, and told her plainly what her problems were and how to correct them.
On that point, Tatsuki was entirely won over.
However strong her personality was, facing someone like this, she could not even bring herself to imagine surpassing him.
These days she had only one thought left.
To keep up with his pace as best she could.