“Do you have any other secrets you want to share about classes or skills?” Tybalt asked.

  They walked slowly along the furrow, the golden glow of the setting sun lighting their way.

  “There’s one more thing that I know. It’s just not something I can give any specific advice about.”

  I was mostly joking! Tybalt thought. I didn’t think the way magic works could get any more complicated…

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “With special training, you can expand the limits of what your mana can do. It’s more about making your base stronger rather than unlocking new abilities, as I understand it. You know how the military already tries to teach the average soldier how to enhance their bodies or weapons temporarily with a short term investment of mana?”

  Tybalt nodded. I was decent at it. Not everyone is.

  “Well, there are other forms of training to focus one’s power. Only the elite of class-holders practice them. The method I’ve seen up close is the self-imposed restriction. You could also call it a sacrifice. You give up the use of a limb or a faculty, something along those lines, and you meditate to carve that loss into the way you use your mana. I’m sorry if I’m not explaining it well, but it’s not something I understand deeply. I’m not sure if anyone does. But by giving something up, you enhance your overall power.”

  “You mentioned you’ve seen this up close?”

  “Yes. I met a man once who had a rare class and enhanced it with a restriction. The way one of his party members explained his ability was that his words could alter reality, creating invisible structures around him.”

  “The way his party member explained it?”

  “The man couldn’t explain it himself. He had sewn his mouth shut. That was his restriction. The skill that gave his words that effect was flexible about letting him speak them in his head or out loud. By permanently cutting off his own ability to speak, he unlocked some limiter inside himself.”

  “That seems extreme.”

  How would he communicate to other people?

  “I think that’s part of what made him so strong. Actually, everyone in the party—” she shuddered slightly at the memory—“all of them were monstrously strong. They demonstrated for the officers in training.”

  “This restriction thing sounds pretty powerful,” Tybalt said. He wondered if he would ever run into that group of people. Hopefully not.

  “The reason I brought it up was because you might end up wanting to do something similar to this yourself. It would be individual to your class. Maybe your restriction would be that you have to use your own bones for maximum effect or something. Turning the bones in one of your hands into a weapon…” She winced at the idea. “Though hopefully not something that extreme.”

  Tybalt frowned. He intuitively knew what sacrifice, what restriction, he could place on himself to grow more powerful. The image of the lich he had fought to acquire his class came to mind.

  Give up your flesh, give up your life, become an undead, and your mana will skyrocket, an inner voice told him. It spoke in the lich’s tone, which Tybalt realized he had remembered better than he would have expected. Your control, your skill, the quality of your undead, everything will be better. Your mortal flesh is weak…

  No, Tybalt thought. Maybe someday, but… for right now, I’m a flesh and blood human, and that’s how I’d prefer to stay.

  He had a feeling he would lose more than just skin and blood if he became a lich.

  “What kind of restriction have you placed on yourself?” he asked after a moment.

  “Me?” Mariella reacted with surprise.

  “No, the other mage talking to me,” Tybalt replied with a laugh.

  “I… I don’t have something like that.” Her face took on a pensive expression. “These were the geniuses of the Kingdom, I knew as soon as I met those people. Everyone around treated them like they were important. By comparison, my class just isn’t all that special. I’m not that talented. I’m not even especially smart. There was no point in doing that for me. There’s just not that much hidden potential to bring out. I haven’t even hit the wall that hard yet.”

  “Don’t say that about yourself,” Tybalt said. “Let someone else decide you don’t have potential if you respect their judgment and want to listen to them, but don’t do that to yourself. Don’t cut off your own future…”

  “You don’t get it, Tybalt,” Mariella said with a bittersweet smile. “I’m not even the most talented mage of my generation within my own family. The oldest of my little brothers has progressed much more quickly than me since he got his class. Mom sent him to learn from our grandfather. She said he would master the ‘true flame,’ something she had never even mentioned to me before…”

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

  Is that a little flash of resentment?

  “It’s all relative,” Tybalt replied. “You’re special to me.”

  The line sounded corny to him even as he spoke it, but Mariella blushed and looked away, so it seemed to have had the intended effect.

  He knew vaguely what the “wall” she had mentioned was. Class-holders as well as classless humans reached a point where it became increasingly difficult to acquire experience and level without doing something outside of their usual activities. The place where one hit the wall was different for everyone, and it had something to do with natural talent. He’d heard it said that if you broke through one wall, there were other walls after that. But he didn’t know anyone who had overcome one wall. It was mostly academic to him.

  Tybalt had begun to run up against the wall, at least in his own opinion, before he became a necromancer. But he had a feeling that new wells of talent had been discovered within him with the acquisition of his class.

  How high-level is Mariella to feel like she’s hitting the wall already? And how would she know? She hasn’t trained that hard, or for that long, by her own admission. Maybe she could discover that ‘true flame’ thing on her own. Is she the type who gives up easily?

  That wasn’t the impression he’d had of her.

  There’s no way I can ask, ‘have you given up that easily?’ without insulting her, is there? How would I rephrase that?

  “I hear it!” Mariella exclaimed suddenly.

  An instant later, Tybalt knew what she was talking about. The sound of running water could be heard distantly overhead. Somewhere on the mountain to their left, a stream was flowing. That was the source of water they’d been looking for.

  “Good sign,” Tybalt said. They shared a smile. “We’re definitely closer to finding where it leads to down here.”

  “Couldn’t we just…?” Mariella gestured at the cliff face.

  Tybalt understood. They could climb it.

  “In the dark?” he said. “I think the sun is going down soon.”

  Plus my stamina is only recovering right now because we’re walking slowly at ground level. If I have to start climbing up a sheer cliff, I’d probably faint halfway through. And I am not having you carry me the whole way to the top.

  He would take almost any excuse to get closer to her right now, since almost any consensual physical contact would advance the seduction further. But an excuse that would make him look like a helpless dead weight was not a step forward.

  “You’re right,” she said. “That would make the climb more dangerous. I guess, if we don’t find water, we can wait for the morning to get it.”

  He nodded. They weren’t dying. There was still water in their bodies, and some liquid sloshed around in the hip flask she carried, though that was distinct from the waterskin he’d seen her drinking from before. It might not be water in the flask.

  I wonder if I can store water in my ring, Tybalt thought. That would be handy at times like this, especially considering that once we leave this valley and the mountains, we’re in the desert. There’s no rule against it that I can think of, although it would be a problem if the water can touch my books inside the storage space. How exactly does that work? I need to run some experiments…

  They kept walking, and after a few more minutes, Tybalt noticed that slowly, the sound of running water grew louder.

  “We’re almost there,” he muttered excitedly.

  Then, in the distance, he saw it. A glimmer that stood out in the stillness. Water.

  “There!” he exclaimed. “Finally!”

  Mariella grinned and took his hand. They started running.

  The water source was the better part of a mile away, a pool only visible at the distance they had started out from thanks to the golden hour light glittering off the surface.

  Somehow, Tybalt managed to keep running, even as he felt his stamina slowly losing the ground it had recovered, little by little. He resisted the urge to open his status to check where the number sat. He needed his eyes on the ground in front of him. If he tripped and had to get up and build up to this pace again, it would take him even longer to recover.

  They ran until he couldn’t feel anything except how dry his lips were—and Mariella’s fingers intertwined with his.

  Finally, as they drew within sight of the blessed water, by a silent agreement, Tybalt and Mariella slowed to an elderly person’s jogging pace. They were so close, there was no more need to rush. Never mind that the water hadn’t been going anywhere anyway.

  In another ten seconds, they were there. They both dropped to the ground. Tybalt began drinking from the source immediately, without checking for any sign of contaminants. He had Minor Pestilence Resistance now, and it was unlikely that the water was actually poisoned.

  The pond they had stopped at was fed by a slowly flowing waterfall a hundred feet above them, and Tybalt didn’t believe the beastfolk would poison their own river just on the off chance that they might catch a couple of soldiers drinking from it.

  He filled his canteen next. Then he paused to consider the logistics of trying to store water inside his magic ring.

  “I’m going first,” Mariella said, breaking his chain of thought.

  “What?” Tybalt asked, slightly confused.

  “I’m bathing first.”

  “Oh. Right. Wait, why are you going first?”

  “Because I’m a lady, and you are a gentleman. Because I brought soap, and if you’re nice, I’ll let you use it.”

  “What, so I can smell like a pretty girl?” Tybalt asked.

  Mariella smiled despite herself. “Better than smelling like a beast of burden. And my last reason was going to be because I refuse to smell worse than you for even five minutes of this little adventure we’re on.”

  “Oh, yeah, that would be intolerable,” Tybalt said. He turned his back on the pool of water. “Go ahead and strip, then. I’ll keep watch.”

  “Get further away!” she ordered.

  He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. “How am I supposed to keep watch, then?”

  “Please,” she said, smiling a little nervously. “Seriously.”

  “All right, fine,” Tybalt said. “I’ll stay within shouting distance. Enjoy having this nice fresh water all to yourself.”

  He got up and started walking.

  “Thank you!” she called after him.

  He just waved back without looking. She might already be topless. Gods forbid that he see that…

  He decided he needed to think about something else.

  Right, I still have my level ten skill selection to take care of…

  Next chapter on Patreon.