*Smack!*
The boy got launched back toward his group by Iris' punch albeit not so strongly as the other boy who Bill dealt with. Everyone was surprised to see such strength to be released from such a small framed girl, but there was a reason behind Iris' strength.
Even though Iris didn't have any ability which was super good for offense, her natural strength attribute was her strongest attribute, and the reason for that was one that a person without any knowledge of abilities would think is bizarre.
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The reason for this amazing strength was the Healing ability. People who have the Healing ability have to learn how to manipulate and focus their aura and direct it to specific parts of their or others' body parts to repair damage and restore health.
This amount of concentration and focus puts a lot of strain on the body, especially the muscles which tend to stiffen up when a concentrated and controlled stream of aura travels through them to reach the area that needs to be healed.
This is why people with Healing ability have trained extensively to build a strong physique capable of maintaining all their normal body functions while they try to heal people. As their body goes stronger and learns to adapt to the feeling of flowing concentrated aura through their muscles, the stiffness completely goes away and from the outside, it feels as if a person is simply healing by placing their hands on a body part.
The byproduct of this training is that when these people are not using their Healing ability, their overtrained muscles now possess supernatural strength that they can use in their everyday life.
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When Iris and Erin were offered the sponsorship, they had to go through an intense physical and medical exam which the instructor had told them would determine the most suitable abilities according to their body.
Erin had scored average on everything and she basically was given the choice to pick any one of the 5 basic elemental abilities. Iris, on the other hand, had scored slightly worse than Erin in almost everything except in two categories which were quite high, Mana Reserve Capability and Muscle Fiber Strength.
The test concluded that if Iris were to awaken and obtain the ability to manipulate mana, her body had the capability to hold larger reserves of mana than what was considered normal, and her muscle fibers would also be a lot stronger than normal.
Seeing that these two were her only strong suits, the scientist decided to pick an ability that complimented it very well and that turned out to be the Healing ability.
However, the Healing ability was out of the calculations of the sponsor and if they wanted to produce a strong fighter, they would have to follow the test's recommendations and give Iris a Healing ability book.
The reason why the sponsor was being reluctant was that even a Level 1 Healing ability book was both expensive and rare. It would shorten their budget by a lot if they were to buy one of these ability books
Nevertheless, the sponsor gave in and reluctantly purchased a level 1 Healing ability book to give to Iris, but this came with a new set of conditions that Iris had to fulfill in order to use it.
The sponsor wanted to get the most out of purchasing the Healing ability book for Iris by conditioning her to extra training and lessons to make sure she could effectively use the ability and that she would become a valuable asset to their company.
Iris was just feeling so honored to be receiving such a high-level ability, that she blindly agreed to the sponsor's additional conditions and got her hands on the ability book.
However, Iris couldn't directly learn the Healing ability because it was quite a high-level one and with most of her test results being below average, there was a small chance that she wouldn't be able to maintain control over the aura which would run wild inside her body and ravage her from the inside out.
In order to work around this problem, the scientist first gave Iris a Water ability book and said that she would first have to learn the basics of being an ability user and practice with the Water ability.
The Water ability's aura resembled the healing aura greatly in that it was also quite condensed and the user had to understand how to channel the aura through their body and let flow out of them similar to water itself in order to manipulate the water.
Seeing that her best friend had been given the water ability as her first ability, Erin also choose the water ability so that they would both have matching abilities and so they could train together.
After a few months of training both girls, had managed to achieve a level 3 Water ability and were quite efficient in using them as well. They had also been provided with several Water Skill books which they had also mastered to some extent.
Water was considered the weakest out of the five elemental abilities, which was only partially true. If we are talking in terms of offense, then Water is for sure the weakest one, but for most other departments, Water is actually a good ability to have as it is versatile and resourceful.
It was at this point that Iris was called to the chief scientist's office for a meeting where she was told that she was ready to receive her healing ability.
As soon as Iris got her hands on the ability book, she quickly ripped the whitish-green crystal embedded into the book and crushed it. The crystal released a shocking amount of light green light; much more than when she had broken the Water ability crystal.
As soon as the light faded away, Iris could be seen falling to the ground with several muscles of her body spasming periodically, causing Iris intense pain and rendering her immobile.
She continued to lay on the ground and bear through the spasms. Out of desperation, she looked over to the chief scientist with eyes screaming for help, asking for a way to stop the pain but she watched with horror and pain in her eyes as the chief scientist did absolutely nothing to help her and just sat in his big leather chair watching as she continued to spasm.
About 30 minutes later, the spasming finally stopped, but Iris was in such a terrible state after experiencing all that pain that even after the spasming had stopped her brain continued to think that she was still spasming and hence she wouldn't move a muscle.
The chief scientist finally stood up from his seat and came closer to check up on Iris. Iris was extremely mad at him but right now she didn't even have the energy to put words out of her mouth and soon she passed out due to lack of energy.
When Iris woke up, she was in a hospital bed recovering. Iris had gone into a coma for 3 days during which time her body had changed greatly.
After fully recovering she was called to the main office of the company where the chief scientist and the sponsor were waiting for her. As soon as Iris entered the office and her eyes locked with the chief scientist, she began giving him a piece of her mind about leaving her to bear through that pain while he watched comfortably.
Both of them let Iris cool down a bit as they remained quiet as she continued to criticize the actions of the chief scientist.
However, after she had calmed down, the two of them explained that this was the cost of learning the Healing ability.
They explained to her that the Healing ability required a physically strong user to bear the stress of such an intense aura. They told her that she was lucky as a person is never perfectly ready for when they receive this ability and as a result, the body tries to massively improve itself at the exact moment that they learn the ability in order to accommodate the intense aura.
The process is intense and quite painful which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to six hours depending on the strength of the user beforehand and nothing can be done to stop or ease the pain as it would halt the process and thus waste the ability book as the ability won't be perfectly integrated into the user.
After listening to the explanation, Iris understood the reason behind the chief scientist's actions and she was extremely ashamed and embarrassed for her harsh words earlier and so she immediately apologized to the chief scientist for her actions.
However, both of them didn't mind Iris' earlier actions that much because it was to be expected considering she wasn't informed about this beforehand.
"I know you have been through a great deal of pain and I am happy to see that the healing ability has been successfully integrated into your body, but I am afraid that this is only the beginning." The chief scientist said to Iris.
