Rhea lay on her back in the dirt, her breathing still settling. The world above was that same unchanging bright, the heat pressing down like something physical. She blinked once, slowly, then turned her head toward David.

  "Why," she said. Not a question the way most people asked them. "Where are you going?"

  David crouched near the tree line, checking his pack for the third time. He didn't look at her yet. "I'm close. Few more levels and I hit the threshold. Could be the next fight. Could be the one after that. Anywhere between here and twenty-five." Like the Swift-footed Slayer.

  "You're leaving."

  "For a while, yeah." He pulled the strap tighter. "Not forever."

  Rhea pushed herself up on her elbows. Her shirt was dark with sweat. "Why alone?"

  That stopped him. He actually considered it—not because he was unsure, but because it was, objectively, a solid question. He turned to face her properly.

  "The ogre lost an entire group during their classing," he said. "Every single one of them. Dead in the process."

  Rhea's eyes widened slightly. Not fear. Understanding. "It couldn't help them."

  "Maybe. Or maybe whatever happens when you hit that threshold—whatever class trial or quest or whatever the system calls it—maybe you have to do it solo. No one else can be there to pull you out if it goes wrong." He stood, testing his weight. "Which means if I'm going to find out what my class is, I'm doing it without an audience."

  Rhea was quiet for a moment. Then: "Okay."

  That was it. No argument or drama, she just understood the neccesity and the risk. Rhea, as he'd hoped, was accepting, and David felt something in his chest relax that he hadn't realized was tight.

  "The warlock stays with you," he said. "Keeps watch. The demon—" He paused, glancing toward the chrysalis. It was still sealed, still changing, still completely opaque. "Cinder does whatever it does. When she wakes up I’ll tell her to watch your back. But you're not alone."

  "I know," Rhea said.

  David shifted his weight, reconsidering. "Actually, I'm not going right now. We have time."

  At least half a day. He still had some preparations to make before he took the plunge.

  Rhea was still on her back, but her eyes tracked him. She didn't move otherwise.

  "The new perk," he said. "How does it feel?"

  She took a moment before answering, like she was checking something inside herself. "Different. Heavier. Like the skill has weight now, but not—" She paused, searching for the word. "Not in a way that slows it down."

  David crouched and activated his vision—the one that stripped away the visible world and showed him what was underneath. Mana. Energy. The shape of things.

  The world inverted. Rhea's body became a network of flowing currents, and the skill poured out from her chest into the environment around her like something released from pressure. The aura spread outward in a fluctuating field, and that was when he saw it.

  Except it wasn't formless. It was structured.

  Complexity. The field wasn't empty space like his magic field was—his was just energy in constant rotation, a spinning wheel with no internal structure. Hers was full of it. Symbols moved through the space around her, formations interlocking with other formations, structures that reminded him of the ones he'd seen burned directly into her soul skill when the system had grafted the perk. All of it functioning together like moving parts in an engine, each piece doing something specific, all of it working in concert to create a singular autonomous effect.

  He watched the skill pour out from her chest into the environment in a fluctuating field, spreading outward in waves. Then he noticed it—a concentration of energy looping back into her skull, feeding back into her from the field she'd created. The density of that mana, the sheer intention of it, told him everything.

  He was looking at a machine. Something designed to do one thing, and do it perfectly.

  A few days ago, seeing something like that would have blown his mind. And to a degree, it still did—his jaw was slightly open, he realized, and he closed it.

  Almost like a living sigil, he thought, then immediately caught himself. No. Not living. Sigils weren't alive. And thanks to his prior grueling study of the impossible spatial mess of broken laws that were demonic eldritch sigil magic, he knew the difference intimately. Those things were incomprehensibly layered, dimensions folding into themselves in ways that made his head hurt if he looked too long, laws bending and breaking and reforming in patterns that shouldn't exist. This was far less complex. More two-dimensional. Simpler in a way that actually made sense.

  Still beyond him, sure. But at the very least, David knew he was staring at a machine. A device made of mana that did one specific thing very, very well.

  How did he know? Because he watched the flow. The way energy entered the field, the way it processed through those formations, the way it cycled back into her. It was more a guess than anything, but it was a good guess.

  He'd gotten better at compartmentalizing. At taking the impossible and breaking it into pieces of a system—just another variable to understand.

  He let the vision drop and looked at her properly.

  "It's elegant," he said. "The perk. The way it's structured."

  Rhea turned her head slightly. "You can see that?"

  "Some of it." He crouched down again, closer this time. The formations, the way the energy moves through them. It's like watching a machine work. Everything has a purpose. Nothing wasted. He paused, recognizing the slight satisfaction in that observation—appreciating efficiency in her work, and yeah, maybe appreciating that she'd gotten something that clean—and moved past it. "How much control do you have over it?"

  "I haven't tested it much yet," Rhea said. "It feels automatic. Like it's running on its own." She paused. "I think I might be able to shape it. Direct it. But I'm not sure."

  "What's it feel like when you use the skill?"

  Rhea paused. She bent and picked up a stone from the ground—warm blue, still holding heat from the permanent daylight. It rose into her palm without her hands moving.

  The humidity clung like a second skin. David watched Rhea’s hands, the way her fingers twitched slightly when she concentrated. The blue stone in her palm wasn’t floating so much as being cradled by her mana, and the air itself.

  “What’s the sensation?” he asked. “When you use the skill.”

  She tilted her head, considering. The stone spun once. “It doesn’t feel like anything new. It just feels… easier. Like there’s an extra set of hands doing half the work for me.”

  He watched her aura while she held the stone. It was alive in a way his wasn't. His field sat around him like a rotating circle of energy, orderly and fixed. Hers moved. It shifted and warped depending on what was happening in her head. When she was calm, curious about something, it contracted down to a simmer just a few inches off her skin, barely visible. The second she got interested in something, it expanded outward without any real shape to it, rippling and shaking like jello, no fixed form at all.

  David studied the moving parts obsessively. The way the mana flowed through her aura wasn't random or chaotic. There were structures in there, artificial ones, patterns that looked almost deliberate. He watched how the energy moved and reformed, how it responded to her thoughts before she even seemed aware she was thinking them. The flow had rhythm to it. Intention. Something was organizing it from the inside out.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Not semi-autonomous. That was wrong. It was expanding directly from her thoughts, from her subconscious. When she was calm, it settled into a thin, simmering layer. Now, with her focus on the stone, it swelled outward, wobbling at the edges like gelatin. He traced the current of mana flowing into her skull, wondering about the connection point. Cortex? Brainstem? Or some neurological pathway the System had caused her mana to tap into. The application was intricate.

  It was a fairly complex piece of mana manipulation, and he was suddenly very interested in taking it apart.

  She’s a great test subject—hack, cough—valued ally. The thought was a dry, internal rasp. The lie was so transparent it almost made him choke in the immediate, ridiculous cover-up.

  He pointed to a nearby tree. Its bark was the color of a bruise, streaked with black, and its leaves were a dull, bloody red. “Try to put that stone through the trunk.”

  “Which one?”

  “The ugly violet one. Red leaves. Seven feet out.”

  Rhea’s gaze followed his finger.

  Her aura, which had been idly pulsing, suddenly changed. David watched her aura stretch outward. It extended like a hand reaching, pulling at the sparse ambient mana around them and drawing it toward a single point. Thin filaments of blue energy and light only he could see, shot from her, pulling at the scant ambient mana in the air, forming a visible, rigid path to the tree. The aura seized the space around the trunk, and David saw the tree’s leaves stop dead. Not a single tremor.

  It's holding the target in place.

  The blue stone in her palm burst forward. It rocketed, a streak of azure following the channel her aura had frozen in place. It struck the violet bark with a sound like a gunshot. he impact sent bark exploding outward like the wood had forgotten how to hold itself together. Splinters scattered. The tree shuddered once and swayed. Wood splinters and fibrous pulp exploded outward, leaving a fist-sized crater oozing clear sap.

  Rhea blinked. Her aura snapped back to her body, shrinking and settling.

  Rhea lowered her arm slowly. She was staring at her own hand like it had done something without her permission. “Whoa,” she said, looking at her hand and then the damaged tree, "that was... different."

  The second rock Rhea had been holding in the air dropped. It hit the ground with a soft thud.

  David looked at the tree.

  He was shocked.

  The scar was punched into the trunk. The bark was splintered inward in a tight, deep crater. The force was focused. The speed was the thing. If that had been an enemy, the enemy would’ve been unable to dodge. Or at least greatly inhibited in its movement. It happened too fast to sidestep.

  David walked over to the tree. He ran a finger along the crater’s edge. The sap was cool and sticky. The attack had been faster, and the guidance was absolute. Her Distant Gaze had scouted the target, and her Telekinetic Tug had done more than pull; it had locked the thing in place to guarantee the hit.

  He looked from the tree to Rhea’s hand, then back. His brain connected two points. Her aim was off. The will behind the power wasn’t. A question formed. Does that mean she subconsciously didn’t want to miss? He wondered about that.

  “Walk me through it,” he said. “The feeling.”

  Rhea flexed her fingers slowly.

  She stared at her palm. “It’s like having an extra set of hands. They just kind of… do what they want. I can’t control them. It’s hard to even feel them. But I know they did something. To make the shot land harder.”

  David recalled the changes to her soul-skill. This was her subconscious reaching out and shoving the world’s energy. He immediately tried to mimic the aura with his own magic field. He pushed his awareness beyond his skin, trying to feel for that same ambient pressure.

  He shaped his energy to mimic the forms hed seen in her soul and in her aura. At first he felt his own breathing, the beat of his heart. Then a faint, staticky hum settled at the edge of his perception—the damp, heavy feel of the forest, the slow cold pulse deep in the ground. He could sense the sharp, lingering tear in the air where Rhea’s power had just passed through.

  Should i use mana? he thought. He was out of practice, mana was free, and came with no drawbacks, but the energy being far less volatile and holding far less power and benefits than his demonic energy. His Energy Affinity let him manipulate mana to a very limited degree after all, nowhere near as freely or as expertly as he could manipulate demonic energy, soul, or death—each having their own skills stacking with Energy Affinity and aiding their manipulation—but aside from Energy Affinity, every single one of his skills but one other had been corrupted, and were thus incompatible with his system granted mana.

  The only skill he had left that used mana was Calm Mind. A great skill for managing mental assaults. He wondered what would happen if he got that skill to level ten. What perk would I get? What options? Would it turn offensive? Or would get better mental defense? Or an Aura, like Rheas?

  He turned to face his companion.

  “It’s much more than an extra set of hands,” he said. “I think you’re directly controlling mana. Subconsciously. Not just your own, but you’re pulling a little from the environment, too. Which is a great way to turn someone’s ribcage into modern art without meaning to.” He nodded toward the tree. “You should probably learn how to do that on purpose before you accidentally fold someone’s head inside out thinking you’re passing the salt.”

  “Your aura formed a path, like a highway, and it locked the tree in place,” he said, his voice low and observational. “It used ambient mana to stabilize the flight path. Zero drift.” He glanced back at her. “The ‘extra hands’. They’re manipulating mana, doing multiple things. It manhandled the throw.”

  So. Aura-type fields are reactive to mental state and can manipulate ambient mana. Potential for external energy sources. The information was a clinical spark in his chest. A new variable-a tool to understand.

  “Weird,” Rhea repeated, more to herself this time. She flexed her hand, watching the faint shimmer around her fingers. “It didn’t feel like manhandling. It just felt like... i dunno-nothing.”

  “That’s the point,” David said. He wiped the sap on his pants. “The good tricks always feel effortless after the fact. Means you have to make it conscious.” Means I have more to observe, he thought, without the faux cough this time. The truth was plain enough. Her growth meant better odds for the both of them-mostly him, but her too. He could admire the machinery without lying about why it held his attention.

  He let the energy from his attempts at mimicking her aura drop. “What i'm saying is, learn how to control it. Level up Telekinetic Tug more. If you can already do that by accident, doing it on purpose might let you rip the arms off something tougher than a tank barehanded.”

  Rhea looked at her hand again, then at the tree. “And if I can’t control it?”

  David offered her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Then you’re a walking industrial accident. Try not to point it at anything you like.”

  David's mind was already running backward through what he'd just seen. The efficiency was wrong—she'd wasted mana on the initial propulsion when the javelin's speed alone would've done the job. Then again, the speed was the point. He'd asked her to shoot it. She'd done something else entirely instead. A thing she didn't really understand yet, but her body had figured out before her mind caught up.

  He needed to see it again.

  David watched Rhea stand in a clear patch of dirt, her posture stiff. "Try using your aura to fly," he said. "Just get your heels off the ground."

  She gave a short nod. For the next twenty minutes, nothing happened. She just stood there, her brow pinched in concentration. David leaned against a tree, tracking the tree line out of habit. His attention kept drifting back to her. She’d shift her weight, clench her fists, then go still again.

  She’s trying to shove the mana, he thought. Pushing it out like she’s starting a lawnmower. The energy around her wasn't flowing; it churned in place, a messy, invisible knot of potential going nowhere. It was the least efficient thing he’d seen all day, and today had featured a demonic boar.

  He bit back the first three comments that came to mind. It was her skill. Her process. But the process was visibly, agonizingly bad. It was like watching someone try to dig a trench with a spoon when there was a shovel lying next to them.

  Another ten minutes bled away. Rhea hadn’t moved an inch upward. A faint tremor of frustration—or maybe just wasted effort—ran through her shoulders.

  "Okay, stop," David said. His voice was flat. "You’re doing it wrong."

  Rhea relaxed her stance, a flicker of relief breaking through her focus. "It doesn’t want to listen."

  "It’s not a dog. You’re not giving it a command." He pushed off the tree and walked over. "You’re trying to brute-force a subconscious skill. That’s like trying to solve a puzzle by headbutting the table. The answer doesn’t live in the part of your brain you’re yelling at."

  "How do I yell at a different part?" she asked, her tone practical.

  "You don’t. You stop yelling." He pointed at the ground by her feet. "The aura’s already there. It’s an extension of you that reacts. You don’t make it lift you. You need to let it lift you. The intent has to be in the background. Like… wanting to blink. You don’t think about each individual eyelid muscle. You just want your eyes closed, and your body handles the how."

  She looked skeptical. "I just want to be off the ground."

  "Then stop focusing on the ‘how’ and focus on the ‘where.’ Where do you want to be? A millimeter up. Not how do I get there."

  Rhea closed her eyes. She took a slow breath. The chaotic churning of mana around her smoothed, just a little, into a gentle simmer.

  "Better," David said. "Now stop trying to steer it. You’re micromanaging. Delegate."

  "I’m delegating to my feet."

  "Your feet are terrible employees. Fire them. Trust the department you hired for this."

  A minute passed. Two. The simmer of energy held steady, directionless but calm.

  Then, her left heel twitched. It rose maybe half an inch, hovering. The right foot stayed planted. She wobbled, her eyes flying open, and the heel thumped back down.

  "That was something," David said.

  "I wasn’t sure how I did it," Rhea said. She stared at her foot. "I just felt lighter for a second."

  "Then that’s the feeling. Find it again. Don’t interrogate it."

  She tried. The heel lifted, dropped. Lifted, held for three seconds, dropped. On the fourth try, both heels left the dirt together. She hung there, suspended by an inch of empty space, her body tense as a wire. The aura around her feet glimmered with a faint, unstable light.

  For about five seconds, she hovered. Then the light stuttered, and she dropped, landing with a soft thud.

  "Good," David said. The word felt strange. He meant it. "You got the concept. Now it’s just repetition. Your body learned the skill in a crisis. You have to teach it the trigger without the adrenaline. It’s all familiarity."

  She nodded, wiping her hands on her pants. She looked at the spot where she’d been floating, then at him. "So I just keep doing that until it stops feeling like I’m about to fall on my face."

  "Basically."

  A quiet settled between them, less strained than before. The watch was almost over. David felt a small, sharp slice of pleasure.

  He kept his face neutral. "You know," he said. "I think meditation would help."

  Rhea looked at him. A very faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her mouth. It was there and gone. "Shut up, David.”