The line moved faster than he had expected, and before he knew it, he was in the trial. It still kind of annoyed him, though.

  Appearing before Oozagh, his vision was blurry and distorted. If he thought additional gravity made fighting harder, then the vicious, slime-like atmosphere of the 8th stage trial was something else altogether.

  Honestly, if he hadn’t gained as much strength as he had and increased his constitution, then this run would likely already be over. Besides the fact that it was incredibly hard to move, he was pretty sure he would have drowned.

  “This is… yuck. So slimy!”

  Aaron waved his arms around as he sludged forward. It would have been easier if it were an underwater level. Worst of all, Oozagh looked entirely unfazed by it.

  Unfortunately, inspect didn’t work on gods or their avatars. That said, he was fairly certain that the avatar was at least high, or even peak E-grade. Maybe it was even low D-grade, although on second thought, he doubted it. If the avatar were low D grade, then the task of beating it would likely be completely unassailable. After all, Oozagh was a generational talent himself. Even at the bottom of D grade, his avatar would likely be well and truly beyond what even Mo’han would have a chance of beating.

  Even so, a peak E-grade version of someone who was capable of reaching the highest stages of godhood was nothing to underestimate, especially since Aaron himself wasn’t even mid-E grade.

  But in his usual fashion, Aaron only took the unimaginable challenge before him as fire for the bubbling cauldron that was his ambition to get stronger.

  However, all those dreams came crashing down as he shot into range, pulling on the power of all his Skills, and throwing stupid amounts of energy into a punch that was both physical and spiritual. Because when that punch landed, he knew something was wrong.

  His physical fist reverberated against the stone wall that was Oozagh’s belly, but his spiritual one seemed to pass straight through the ogre to little effect. Sure, there was some degree of energy fluctuation, but the attack was a failure. He was unable to damage the ogre’s energy as he had before.

  But how was that possible? He had an improved version of the dish that had allowed him to beat him only a single trial back? If anything, the results should be more profound. And yet, he looked up at the thick lips of the ogre as they creased into a mocking smile.

  “Bahaha! My puny follower! That was impressive, but you’ll need more than that to beat the great Oozagh! Points for improvement, though!”

  “Huh?” Aaron raised a confused brow.

  “What’s wrong? You’re not the only one who gets stronger, puny human! My avatar is a historical record of my ascent. Between the time you last fought it and now, I have evolved my race. And as strong as that punch is with your new and your new… dish, it won’t be enough. Also! I hate to even call it that! What finicky food you’re making! You need to get back to your ogre roots! What even is sashimi?!”

  Aaron wasn’t entirely sure how Oozagh knew what dish he had created, since he had eaten it before entering. But that was the least of his concerns.

  “Wait,” Aaron said, ignoring the complaints about his cooking. “I won’t be able to hurt your energy anymore? Are you serious?”

  “Bahah, is that all you heard? Yes, twig boy! You’re correct! You won’t be able to do much with such an unrefined ability! You’ll need to get considerably stronger to attack my energy directly now!”

  “I see—”

  Aaron couldn’t finish the thought, as Oozagh’s double axe came stupidly fast, lobbing his head off.

  Damn, ogre, interrupting my thoughts!

  Aaron reanimated and defiantly charged back into the melee. However, no amount of willpower could overcome this challenge. Without being able to do real damage, it was just a matter of time before the ogre hit him again.

  That said, he wasn’t one to just roll over. And Oozagh was forced to cut him down several times before finally killing him for good.

  Reappearing in the hallway, Aaron sighed. If he couldn’t even use his spirit punch effectively against this version of Oozagh, it almost certainly wasn’t ready for Mo’han, not that he expected it to be.

  A part of him just wanted to charge back in there and throw himself against the ogre god. But it was pointless, even Aaron could see that.

  He had thought he was onto something and just needed level-ups, but clearly, he was missing something. What was worse, he doubted he was getting any more cooking breakthroughs right now.

  He supposed he could focus on blasting through some trials and gaining some levels so that he could get new ingredients, and hopefully create an even better version of his spirit-strengthening dish. But he put that thought on hold.

  Levels were good; they would make him stronger. But ultimately, he was always going to be behind on raw power. If he was going to beat Mo’han, it required skill and finesse. It required him to figure out what was missing with his attack, which would also no doubt aid him when he hit level 35.

  The last thing he would risk happening was getting another dud of a Skill unlock.

  The truth was, if he became too reliant on cooking buffs, he might just fall short again, especially if he was missing a crucial detail. Buffs were meant to be just that, a buff, not a crutch.

  Climbing back to his feet, Aaron decided he wanted to think on this a moment before charging back into another trial. He didn’t plan to waste any unnecessary time, but if he jumped straight back into the trials without a plan, he could screw his next Skill selection up.

  It was far more important to get what he wanted than to get it a little quicker. After all, it was getting harder and harder to level in the trials. And even though higher-level trials provided more experience, the increased requirements of higher levels more than countered it.

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  Level 35 that might be possible, but level 40? That would be a serious stretch, especially considering how hard the trials were becoming. The trials weren’t linear. They had started to feel easier because Aaron had entered at way, way earlier than he was supposed to. But the recent attempt at defeating Oozagh made it obvious that even he would struggle with the increasing difficulty, and he wasn’t sure the lower-leveled trials he still had available would provide enough experience.

  With that thought in mind, he decided that perhaps it was a good idea to test his spirit powers in a controlled environment for a short while. If he could get a better feel for them in the training room, perhaps he could make better use of his powers in the trials.

  However, when he reached the training room, he had two options to pick from. Either join a private room or accept an invitation that was waiting for him. And interestingly, it was an invitation into someone else’s private room.

  Huh? Ookay… I didn’t expect that.

  Curious, he decided to accept the offer and walked inside. Only to find Elmira and Talia duking it out.

  He didn’t even know these two got along, let alone had decided to duel each other in private. But that thought didn’t linger long, because it was one hell of an entertaining fight.

  He hadn’t seen Talia fight in person before, and her knightly avatar was quite the spectacle to witness. Its massive sword sent shockwaves flooding out whenever it struck. And on the other hand, Elmira had a rune to seemingly counter everything sent her way.

  One powerful strike was countered by a rune that flew out to meet it and blocked it with a magical shield, whilst another rune shot lightning bolts that forced Talia to dodge.

  It was quite impressive. Elmira barely moved whilst her runes flew around, blasting all kinds of spells. She was almost a caster, but Aaron had seen her in action with her twin axes and knew she was well and truly equipped to fight in melee as well.

  He wasn’t sure if Elmira was winning, but she was definitely making a good show of it, as Talia could barely stand still a fraction of a second to avoid being blasted away.

  But then he saw something. It was Talia’s special attack. He had seen her use it before from the viewing room. Blinding light shot out from her avatar’s sword, and she brought the weapon down with crackling power shining out of the huge blade.

  Two hadn’t even clashed yet, but just from the sheer amount of mana flooding out from the avatar’s weapon, he could tell that the shield rune wouldn’t stand a chance at defending against this attack.

  It’s over.

  And then… another rune shot out. But it didn’t defend, nor did it directly attack Talia. No, it sent out invisible waves of energy rippling through the arena, and Aaron had to turn to his spirit eyes to see what was happening.

  The rune’s power didn’t appear to be aether, though. It was as if the mana-powered rune was calling on the aether around them without actually controlling it. And then once all the aether around them was shimmering with power, it struck. A chain reaction happened, and it exploded like it was a mana EMP, blasting away a huge chunk of the mana that Talia had thrown into her special. And thanks to that, her shield rune flew up and managed to absorb most of that attack’s remaining power.

  Still, the blinding attack from the avatar was incredibly powerful, and much of its energy passed the rune’s defenses and pummeled into Elmira, sending her hurtling away.

  She bounced and rolled a few times before finding her feet and wiping blood from her lip.

  “Wow, that was strong,” she muttered as she panted.

  “How?” Talia blinked. “You… you cancelled over half of my attack’s power.”

  “And lucky I did. I was totally dead if that didn’t work,” Elmira straightened. “You’re seriously strong. Thanks for the spar, but you want to call it at that?”

  Talia nodded, and the two shook hands. Not everyone wanted to feel death sickness, and most friendly duels likely ended like this. Not everyone could be Aaron Dober.

  “Hey!” Aaron waved as they walked. He was very interested in Elmira’s rune and was desperate to learn more about how it worked.

  “Oh, hey!” Talia waved back.

  “Come to sneak a peek at our Skills, have you?” Elmira crossed her arms and bent her brows.

  “Err, you guys let me in?”

  “She’s joking,” Talia nudged Elmira. “She’s a lot more laid back than you think.”

  His conversations with Elmira during their trial had been fairly serious, but her attitude had also been pretty casual, as far as he could tell.

  “Good to hear.”

  “You look like you have a question,” Elmira said as she grabbed a towel and wiped herself down. It wasn’t just sweat from a workout. Her wounds were already healing, but it was obvious that she didn’t particularly want to walk around with blood stains.

  “Ah, yeah. It’s that rune of yours.”

  “It was impressive, wasn’t it?” Talia added.

  By looks alone, Talia appeared to have gotten the better of the encounter. But the way she talked about Elmira’s Skills sounded like she had come up second.

  “Oh, come on. It’s handy, but I barely managed to survive that attack. If we kept going…”

  “If we kept going, you might have just sent me flying,” Talia countered. “That attack is powerful, but it uses a lot of mana.”

  “Excuse me, but the rune, does it just use mana?” Aaron said, interrupting the mutual glazefest.

  “Yeah? What else would it use?” Elmira replied.

  Okay, so it is a pure mana-based Skill. If that’s so, then whatever interaction it’s having with aether, Elmira is unaware of. Aaron had expected just that, but it was nice to confirm his theory.

  It sounded weird at first that the user didn’t know their Skill was interacting with aether, but not completely unbelievable. Why couldn’t Skills affect other energy sources? After all, he was sure there were plenty of Skills that could attack an opponent's energy in one way or another. Or drain it for that matter. And if it was possible to do it to an opponent, then why wouldn’t certain Skills be able to take advantage of neutral energy sources?

  But it wasn’t Skill theory that intrigued Aaron about the runes. It was because this was the first example of a Skill designed to disrupt energy by tapping into aether he had seen in action.

  There was a big difference between manipulating untamed power into something and a real Skill. One was far more refined than the other, and if he could observe how exactly it worked, he might be able to figure out the missing pieces of his own puzzle.

  “Do you reckon I could study that Skill, or rune, or whatever it is?”

  “Huh?” Elmira blinked. “You want me to let you analyze one of my trump cards?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I’m not completely against it, but I won’t do it for free. You’ve got some trump cards of your own. Let me see yours, and I’ll show you mine.”

  “Uhhhhh…” said Aaron.

  “Problem?” she asked, tilting her head in confusion.

  Get your head out of the gutter, Aaron scolded himself.

  “Sorry. Yeah, that sounds good.”

  “Mutual training session, then,” she extended a hand. “Secrets for secrets.”

  “Mutual training session,” Aaron grasped it and shook.

  “...Can I join?” asked Talia.

  While Aaron wasn’t sure exactly what he would learn from her, he wasn’t entirely against the idea. He glanced up at Elmira to see what she thought, and found her looking at him too. They shared a quick nod, then turned back to Talia.

  “Sure,” said Elmira. “Let’s make it a three-way.”

  Aaron winced.

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