Day four belonged to Akeno.
She met me at dawn in a clearing I hadn't seen before, a flat expanse of stone that bore scorch marks and cracks from what looked like decades of magical abuse. The air smelled like ozone and old burns.
"Today," she said, lightning dancing between her fingers, "we work on your tolerance for pain."
"I was afraid you'd say that."
"Ara ara." Her smile promised suffering. "You should be."
Lightning manipulation drills were exactly as unpleasant as they sounded.
The first bolt hit me before I finished asking what we were doing. My muscles locked, my teeth clenched, and every nerve in my body screamed in unison.
"Block it," Akeno said calmly. "Don't just take it. Redirect."
"You could have warned me."
"Warnings breed hesitation." Another bolt, stronger this time. "In battle, no one warns you. Again."
The session devolved into a pattern of suffering and marginal improvement. She threw lightning; I tried to redirect or resist. Most attempts failed. The ones that succeeded bought me maybe a second of reduced agony before the next strike came.
Her teaching style was brutal. No encouragement. No praise. Just observation and adjustment, delivered with that perpetual smile that never quite reached her eyes.
"You're tensing before impact," she noted after the twentieth bolt. "Your body anticipates the pain. Stop anticipating."
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one getting electrocuted."
"Ara ara. I could be, if you prefer." Her smile sharpened. "Some people enjoy it."
I didn't respond to that. Just braced for the next strike.
It came. I redirected, badly, but better than before. The lightning flowed through me and into the ground rather than cooking my insides.
"Better," Akeno said. "Again."
We continued.
The break came around midday.
I sat on a scorched rock, steam rising from my clothes, while Akeno prepared tea with an incongruent domesticity. She moved with practiced grace, every motion precise and controlled.
"You're doing well," she said, not looking at me. "Most people break by now."
"I don't have the option of breaking."
"Everyone has that option." She poured tea into two cups. "You're choosing not to take it. That's different."
The tea was perfect. The right temperature, the right balance. She handed me a cup and sat on a nearby stone, her posture relaxed for the first time all day.
"Your fallen angel heritage," I said, because the silence felt too heavy. "That's where the lightning comes from."
She went still. The relaxation vanished, replaced by something cold and guarded.
"You've done research."
"I pay attention." I sipped the tea. "You mentioned it at the bonfire. Devil and fallen. Two halves."
"I mentioned it. I didn't invite discussion." Her voice had lost its playful edge. Winter, not warmth.
"You don't have to talk about it. I just..."
"My mother was human." The words came out flat, controlled. "She died protecting me from people who wanted to kill us both. Her crime was loving a fallen angel. My crime was existing."
I stayed silent. This wasn't a conversation for interruption.
"My father abandoned us. Before the attack, before everything. Just... left." Lightning crackled around her fingers, unconscious and violent. "I have his power. His blood. For years, I hated that half of myself. Blamed it for everything."
"I have two sides," she continued. "Devil and fallen. I used to hate one. Used to wish I could cut it out of me like a tumor." Her eyes found mine. "Rias accepted both. All of me. The sadist and the priestess. The lightning and the shrine."
"That's why you follow her."
"That's why I'd die for her." The words carried absolute conviction. "She saw the parts of me I couldn't stand and loved me anyway. How do you repay something like that?"
I thought about Rias. About the girl who'd reincarnated me, trained me, trusted me. About debts that couldn't be measured.
"You fight," I said. "When it matters. You fight for her the way she fought for you."
Akeno studied me for a long moment. Something shifted in her expression, the ice thawing, just slightly.
"You understand." Not a question. "You have your own halves, don't you? Things you carry that you'd rather not?"
The Fragment stirred in my mind, listening.
"We're all carrying something," I said. "The question is whether we let it define us or just... coexist with it."
"Ara ara." Her smile returned, smaller but more genuine. "Philosophy from the Pawn. Unexpected."
"I have layers."
"So I'm learning." She set down her tea and stood. "Break's over. Let's see if you can survive the afternoon."
The afternoon was worse.
Akeno escalated. The lightning came faster, stronger, more complex. Single bolts became chains. Chains became storms. The air crackled with enough energy to power a city block.
But something had changed. Her attacks were no less brutal, but there was a rhythm to them now. A pattern I could read. She was teaching, not just torturing.
I adapted. Learned. My body began to remember the feeling of lightning, not fighting it, but flowing with it. Letting it pass through rather than against.
By the time the sun started its descent, I'd developed something approaching resistance. Not immunity. Not even close. But the ability to take a hit without locking up. To redirect without thought.
"Lightning Resistance," Akeno announced, watching me absorb a bolt that would have floored me that morning. "Passive. Not a Fragment ability, just adaptation. Your body has learned."
I felt the difference. The electricity still hurt, but it was manageable now. Survivable.
"Will this work against Riser?"
"His fire? No. But his Queen uses explosions, and some of his pawns favor energy attacks." Her eyes glinted. "Now you can survive long enough to counter."
It wasn't much. But in a Rating Game, survival was everything.
Evening brought something I hadn't expected: honesty.
We sat at the edge of the training ground, watching the sun sink below the mountain peaks. Akeno had dropped the sadist act entirely, her posture relaxed and open.
"You're strange," she said.
"Thanks?"
"Most men react to me in predictable ways." She didn't look at me. "Fear or desire. Sometimes both. They see the lightning or the body and decide what I am before I speak."
"And me?"
"You just... accept." She sounded almost confused. "You don't flinch when I hurt you. You don't leer when I tease. You treat me like a person, not a fantasy or a threat."
"You are a person."
"Ara ara. Obviously. But that's not how most people see it." She finally met my eyes. "You have your own darkness. I can tell. Whatever powers you, whatever that thing in your head is, it's not entirely benign."
The Fragment was listening. I felt its attention, sharp and analytical.
"No," I admitted. "It's not."
"But you don't let it define you." She smiled, soft and real. "That's why I don't mind training you. You understand the struggle of carrying something dangerous."
"You really should be more careful about whose influence you absorb," I blurted, and immediately regretted it.
Because it was a joke. A dark, slightly cruel joke about copying people's traits, exactly the kind of thing Akeno would say.
Her smile widened. "Ara ara. Was that a sadistic joke?"
"I... no. I mean, yes, but I didn't..."
"You're picking up my habits." Her laugh was bright and sharp. "The Echo, yes? Rias mentioned it once. Pieces of others bleeding into you."
I nodded, uncomfortable with how accurately she'd read the situation.
"Don't worry." She stood, lightning crackling playfully around her fingers. "A little darkness never hurt anyone. Much."
She left me with those words, walking back toward the compound with a sway in her step that was absolutely deliberate.
The Fragment waited until she was gone before commenting.
"The thunder-priestess has depths."
I noticed.
"Her duality is interesting. Devil and fallen. Sadist and shrine maiden. Power and pain." A pause. "Be careful what you copy from her."
I'm not planning to copy anything.
"Plans mean nothing. You know this." The Fragment's tone carried something like amusement. "Every interaction leaves traces. Every connection bleeds. The more time you spend with her, the more her edges become yours."
I thought about the joke I'd made. About how naturally it had come. How right it had felt in the moment.
Is that bad?
"It simply is. Echo accumulates. The question is whether you recognize the influences before they become you."
I didn't have an answer for that. Just the memory of lightning and understanding, and the unsettling sense that I was becoming something more than I'd started as.
Whether that was good or bad remained to be seen.
Later, as I walked back to the compound, I ran the numbers.
Power Level: 62. Up four from yesterday. Good progress.
Echo Level: 18%. Rising steadily. Still safe, but the threshold crept closer.
Days remaining: 6.
The gap to Riser was still 23 levels. But the training was working. I was getting stronger, faster, more capable. And I was learning things that couldn't be measured in power levels, like how to take a hit, how to work with a team, how to carry darkness without letting it consume me.
Akeno had taught me more than lightning resistance today. She'd taught me that duality wasn't weakness. That carrying something dangerous didn't make you dangerous.
Or maybe it did. But you could choose what to do with it.
"Ara ara," I muttered to myself, and caught the smile on my face.
The Fragment said nothing. But I felt its attention, watching, waiting, cataloguing.
Some things, I was learning, couldn't be taught. They had to be absorbed.