“Pentival had us do stuff like this a lot back in the Tutorial,” Elmira said as they limbered up in the arena.

  “Oh?” asked Aaron.

  “Yeah, though usually we had more. We’d do it five-way or six-way. Sometimes we had more, but when we got above eight, it was hard to get to everyone. But we’d basically all group together and share what we could, hoping the others would be able to take it in. It gave us all a lot of experience, and it was good for team bonding. We all got pretty close when we did that.”

  “Yeah, sounds helpful,” said Aaron.

  He glanced over at Talia, whose face was turning a little pink. Meanwhile, Elmira seemed completely unaware. Aaron was pretty sure she was doing it accidentally.

  “I was hoping I’d get to do it with you guys, too,” she continued. “I saw a lot of Aaron when we were doing Companionship, but I was hoping to see more. I was also pretty interested in you, Talia.”

  “Sorry, ‘doing Companionship’?” asked Talia hesitantly.

  “The Trial of Companionship, yeah,” said Elmira, nodding. “It was fun. I wasn’t sure Aaron would be able to keep up, but he’s full of surprises. I guess he’d have to be, though. After all, I doubt there’s a single person in here who could beat Voidrin at level 28, like you did, Aaron. And there’s few people that have a Skill powerful enough to blast through my defenses like you, Talia.”

  “Thank you,” said Talia, looking pleased at the compliment, but unsure about everything else.

  “I guess,” said Aaron, shrugging. “I dunno, I didn’t really do anything too special there though.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” said Elmira. “You were incredible.”

  Play dumb? He didn’t realize he was. Sure, he was pretty good at fighting, he supposed. He wasn’t denying that. But it wasn’t like he was that special, was it? Besides, he had missed the Tutorial and so much information. Was there really anything that was useful they could gain from him?

  Well, it turned out, there was. The System didn’t grant him Titles and declare him a prodigy of energy for shits and giggles. As it turned out, he really understood energy, and he had plenty to teach both of the girls that he just kind of took for granted.

  He hadn’t struck any specific deal with Talia, but he considered her an ally and was happy for her to listen in. Besides, he couldn’t control what happened after this, and it was better that the people he liked survived Superearth. If teaching could help with that, then he’d be foolish not to provide whatever aid he could.

  “You’re a surprisingly good teacher,” Elmira nodded as she went over his words.

  “Teacher? I don’t know about that. Anyway, that’s pretty much how it works. Now, let’s see that rune of yours.”

  Elmira narrowed her gaze as if she wasn’t done with his teaching, but then she sighed and let it go.

  “Fine. But we’re not done on that subject, okay? I’ll show you the rune, and then we'll get back to our training. Deal?”

  “Fine by me.”

  Unfortunately, Elmira wasn’t able to explain much about the rune’s power herself. She actually didn’t seem to have any clue whatsoever about aether, or that her rune had anything to do with it, which was actually a very interesting insight. Because he had been able to feel the aether for a long time, it was one of the first energies he had tapped into to give him an edge and beat trials that he had been far too weak to pass at the time.

  Previously, Aaron had assumed aether wasn’t relied upon because of its unrefined and inefficient nature. But it seemed most people didn’t even know it was there, at least at this stage.

  That said, their training session wasn’t a bust. Elmira was still able to activate the Skill and, by doing so, summon the rune, which was enough for him to get some gains.

  However, it wasn’t just the aether and the single rune that interested him. The more they talked, the more fascinating Elmira’s Class proved to be. Her Class and the Skills she got reminded him a lot of a card game. And more importantly, he learned what extra conditions were imposed on her.

  Aaron had long suspected that there would be some drawbacks to Elmira’s Class, as her power seemed too strong for someone so versatile.

  You couldn’t just do everything. Versatility usually required you to sacrifice power, but that hadn’t tracked with what he had seen in Elmira, and now he understood why.

  It was actually a combination of things. First, she had a Skill called [ Summon Resource ] that she had to activate before she could even use her runes. Not only that, but whenever it was used, it could provide one of four different resources. And to complicate things further, each rune had different resource requirements.

  It also wasn’t like she couldn’t just keep [ Summon Resource ] activated, either. To do so would come as a massive drain to her mana. So, when she engaged in a fight, she needed to quickly use [ Summon Resource ] and hope that she got what she wanted so that she could summon the correct runes. If not, she’d have to use the Skill again until she had what she needed, further draining her mana.

  Not only that, but even her most powerful defensive runes, like the one that had disrupted Talia’s mana, had conditions. In fact, they reminded him of trap cards. For example, when she used [ Rune: Mana Blast ], she summoned the rune, but it didn’t immediately do anything. It was beholden to a condition to be triggered. For that specific rune, the condition was that the rune would trigger against an enemy attack that was on target and unguarded.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  That meant that, unlike her shield rune, she couldn’t just send [ Rune: Mana Blast ] flying around to sap at her opponent's energy whenever she wanted.

  As Elmira explained this, Aaron realized how smart her strategy had been. By layering her defense with [ Rune: Defensive Shield ], she could save her trap rune—as Aaron was mentally calling it—for the stronger attacks. But that was no easy thing to do. She had called back the shield so that the trap rune would trigger, and then, when she realized that it wasn’t going to completely nullify Talia’s attack, she had quickly activated the other rune again.

  Learning how she had done it actually impressed him more than her curious Class. She had natural skill, and it sounded like it was needed for such a complicated set of Skills.

  But it wasn’t just complicated. For all of those conditions that she had to deal with, she was rewarded. Because she didn’t have a Skill for each of her runes, no, it was the opposite way around. She had a single Skill for her runes. [ Rune Deck ] was both a Passive and an Active Skill that gave her access to literally dozens of different runes. The deck was Passive, whilst the Runes were Active, and the single Skill took up two slots, which was fascinating, but seemed far considering how many different runes it provided.

  Like [ Summon Resource ], calling upon runes also costs mana, and she needed to use [ Summon Resource ] first before she could call for a deck of runes, which she needed to do before summoning them.

  Aaron’s head was spinning at all the different things she had to do whilst fighting, and it was quite amazing that she could do everything in literal seconds.

  It also explained how she had enough Skill slots for her melee combat, which made her deadly even just with her dual axes. And why she knew so little about a single rune’s power.

  With so many different runes at her fingertips, it made sense that she wasn’t going to have in-depth details about every one of them. At least not when she had only had them for a couple of months. Heck, she probably barely used some of her runes.

  He also realized that this was a strategic Class at its heart. If she could plan her strategy properly, he imagined that she could beat just about everyone with a little luck on her side.

  Her Skills could be a little mana costly if she had bad luck, but through their training, he saw that it took her less than a minute to cycle through several hands of runes and summon [ Rune: Mana Blast ] again.

  The mana waste was definitely a downside, but he could already see how she could work around the unpredictability of her Class.

  Once the rune was summoned, he asked Talia to attack Elmira, who was happy to let her do so that the rune could trigger.

  From afar, Aaron studied the rune and how it drew in aether to counter Talia’s attacks. It was unmistakable. Even though the rune itself was formed of mana, it was absolutely pulling in aether from around. More impressive, though, was the effect.

  He had seen it nullify Talia’s attack before, but now that he had a chance to get up close and observe it, with the help of his already well-developed sense for aether, he could sort of get an idea on what exactly it was doing. The mana-based rune seemed to detect the incoming mana and then activate something that Aaron didn’t understand to pull aether in and control it. The aether then went out and into Talia’s attacks, but rather than colliding with it, it passed through like a ghost and started working from within.

  All this happened in such a short period of time that Aaron couldn’t tell exactly what was happening, but it seemed that rather than deleting the attacks, it was deconstructing them. The aether went in and shredded the structure within the mana, turning it into directionless, impotent mana that soon dispersed into the air. The mana was all still there, but having lost its purpose, it no longer posed a threat.

  He asked them to repeat it a few more times, watching each time to try to figure out how the aether worked. After a dozen or so uses, he unfortunately reached his limit. While he could sort of see what was happening, the actual intricacies of the Skill were far, far beyond him, and it happened so quickly that he had no hope of replicating it. It was like trying to recreate Yendal’s million-layer cake after eating a few bites. It was just too complicated.

  However, like the million-layer cake, there were still lessons he could learn from it. Maybe he couldn’t replicate the exact, impossibly precise way it disassembled spells, but he could imitate it in his own way. At the moment, his spirit punch was more or less a blow of pure, forceful aether. It shook what it hit, but aether wasn’t solid. It didn’t have as much of an effect as it could have. But if he could control the aether in the punch in a different way, maybe it would be more effective.

  He wordlessly got up and started to practice. He felt a little stupid as he realized he was showing more of his spirit powers, and Oozagh had warned him against doing so. But with everything Elmira had shown him and told him about her own Class, it felt a little selfish to hold secrets back.

  Not only that, but if he was being completely honest, he trusted both of the girls. It was also an opportunity to develop a relationship with somebody in Pentival’s inner circle. After all, what good were his secrets if Pentival went telling everybody what he had seen when he dueled Voidrin?

  He fiddled with his aether for a bit, trying to do something similar to what the rune did. He tried a couple of different ways to move it and found that even the simplest of the ways he thought he could imitate the rune were beyond him, so instead, he settled for a simple spin. It was easy, since he could use the rotational motion of the punch to kickstart it, and if he was correct, it would hopefully work as a sort of blender for whatever it hit. Nowhere near as elegant as Elmira’s rune, or [ Equal and Opposite ], which he realized was actually quite similar, but he hoped it would be effective.

  “Hey, you reckon you could have a word with Pentival for me?” Aaron said as he threw a few slow-motion punches to help him visualize.

  “What do you want me to talk to Pentival about?” Elmira raised a brow.

  “My powers. In particular, my dying and spirit control. I’d rather it didn’t get out. The fewer people know, the better.”

  “I guess so,” Elmira shrugged. “But it’s probably better that you do. I can probably get you a meeting on good terms, though.”

  “Good enough,” Aaron said. “ Oh, and Talia.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you see Mal and his boys, can you tell him the same?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “There’s not a lot of gossip to go around in here, and the story of a guy who doesn’t die is bound to make the rounds. You might be too late,” Elmira added.

  “I figured I might be,” Aaron grimaced. “But I have to try. If you can help me out, that’d be great. If not, then whatever. It is what it is.”

  “Okay, I’ll try. But again, I’m sure Pentival will want to speak to you. That’s how he is.”

  “Thanks, that’s all I ask,” Aaron said. “Back to training. Elmira, mind lining that rune up for me? I want to test something.”

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