Tybalt called up the system alert for level ten skill selection with a thought.

  It appeared instantly, as if the system had just been waiting for him.

  Technically, I guess it’s always waiting.

  He focused on it, and the list appeared.

  He had five different skill choices. It seemed like a wealth of options, especially given what Mariella had said about the possibility of him being able to master some of the skills without taking them from the system itself.

  Is this the normal number of choices to be offered when you get to the second tier of skills? He wondered if he was already being rewarded with additional skill possibilities for having trained with her.

  He wished he could ask Mariella, but not only could he now hear her splashing quietly in the pond—meaning she was almost certainly naked, which would make any conversation a bit awkward—but it could also raise difficult questions in response.

  Like, What kinds of skills did the gods offer you?

  To which the answer was, Oh, you know, a bunch of necromancer shit.

  He sighed to himself. Lying to her was becoming tiring, mostly in the sense that he didn’t want to do it anymore. She was trying to help him in every way she knew how. That might change—if he was honest with himself, would probably change—if she knew the truth, but the fact was that she didn’t know it, and everything she had actually done made it feel wrong to keep deceiving her.

  Stop thinking about this. Let’s go through the options.

  Bonebreaker: Infuse your aura into an area or an object to strengthen or weaken bone in its vicinity. Consumes mana.

  Well, the name says it all, doesn’t it? Tybalt thought. This is one hundred percent a skill I’m being offered because I got my tenth level through training with Mariella. And I’m almost equally certain I’ll acquire the skill through the method she described, by practicing with it and being recognized by the system, without needing to use my level ten skill selection to get it. Under no circumstances am I about to pick this, unless the other options are absolute shit.

  He moved on.

  Fleshcraft: Manipulate flesh with your touch, willpower, and imagination. This power includes the capacity to pull flesh apart like clay, alter the qualities of the material to some degree based on one’s own imagination, fuse flesh together, and other applications. Results depend on the strength of your will, quantity of mana invested, difficulty of the targeted result, and resistance from the target material. Consumes mana.

  That’s very fucking powerful, Tybalt thought. If I’d had that earlier…

  Tybalt immediately pictured himself ripping Mariella’s throat out. There would be nothing to protect her. All he had to do was grab her neck while using Fleshcraft. There was no way to spar against a skill like this other than simply to avoid being touched directly on one’s skin.

  Just as quickly as he had the thought, he felt an intense sense of disgust with himself for even thinking about that. He tried to suppress the surge of self-loathing and look at the situation objectively.

  You’ve been swerving back and forth between romancing her and thinking about how best to beat her in a fight for a while now. It’s natural that you’d start to feel some cognitive dissonance. Maybe it’s time to pick a path and stick with it. This might be the moment to decide whether you’re going to trust her eventually or wait for a vulnerable moment to slit her throat.

  Mariella’s voice drifted over the rocks that separated them. She was singing some tune that sounded like it came from an opera, in a language Tybalt didn’t know. He wasn’t an expert in opera, far from it, but he had walked past the Great Opera House of Enh enough times to recognize the sound. And she sounded happy. Like a young woman in love, maybe.

  “This is so fucked,” he said to himself miserably.

  If things were different, I’d just be thinking how cute it is that she sings to herself in the bath. Or even about whether I could get away with sneaking a peek at her naked body. Honestly, she probably expects me to try… Instead, I’ll probably have to kill her eventually. And it feels extra fucked up, because I’ve never had to hurt someone I… cared about before. Or someone who cared about me. Who’s done nothing but support me ever since we’ve been on this little solo adventure together. Who’d probably be a really good long term partner… I need to stop.

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  Dwelling on it wasn’t going to make it any easier. This was something to think about later.

  Right. Choosing a skill. Next fucking option.

  Mystic Blast: Create balls of your condensed aura to damage targets. Properties of the attack depend on the nature of the caster’s aura and intent. Consumes mana.

  He chuckled for a moment—hadn’t Baldwin said something a few days back about Tybalt attacking the squad with “death balls” while the revenant picked off people from the edges? That had seemed impossible at the time, but now? Maybe he really could throw “death balls,” though it was very unclear exactly what Tybalt’s version of Mystic Blast would be capable of.

  This reminds me again of what Mariella told me about how flexible mana is. The skill description sounds like the perfect example of the kind of skill I could pick up on my own just by focused practice. Probably more easily than Bonebreaker, even. Isn’t it literally just throwing balls of mana? I can already focus and move my mana around. What’s so hard about making a ball of it and throwing that? Rejected. For now. Until and unless I discover this is actually much harder than it sounds.

  As much as he hated that he had thought of using Fleshcraft as an offensive tool against Mariella, that skill option seemed to be the winner so far. At least it had the obvious virtues of both offensive applications and being something that he wasn’t certain he could figure out on his own.

  Osteomancy: Divine information about past, present, or future through bones infused with your aura. The bones channel the spirits of the departed to obtain their hidden knowledge. Clarity and accuracy of information divined depends on how you select and prepare the bones used and the quality of spirits present. Consumes mana.

  Got it, so you’re offering me an inferior version of what Vidalia can do, literally in her sleep, Tybalt thought, raising an eyebrow. And I would have to figure out where there are really helpful, high quality spirits to consult. No, thank you… I don’t even want to learn this one, honestly. Waste of my damn time.

  He wondered if the reason the system was offering this skill was because of all the ways he’d been messing around with bone over the last few days, or maybe because of his contact with Vidalia. Either way, the gods were way off base if they thought he wanted to try his hand at predicting the future in a way that wasn’t at least guaranteed to be more accurate than his fox girlfriend’s methods. He imagined Vidalia would give him the same advice if she were here.

  I wonder if she knows anything about magic that I don’t. The fact that Mariella had possessed such a wealth of information he hadn’t even realized he was missing now had him questioning a lot of his assumptions about what other people might know or might be capable of.

  If Vidalia has a class passed down through her family, it stands to reason that she would have information about the way magic works that I don’t. Mariella had a ton of unexpected insights that I’m still not sure I fully understand. Vidalia might know things she doesn’t even realize are important.

  He made a mental note to ask her the next time he saw her in a dream.

  Next skill.

  Undead Repair: Infuse undead things with your unholy aura to improve their condition, fixing damage or defects and potentially replacing lost parts, among other applications. Consumes mana.

  That’s very useful.

  It was something Unholy Forces had mentioned he would be able to do at some point, but Tybalt had never actually tried repairing his undead. He had been fairly certain that would be an easy enough task when it came to patching up his shattered skeletons. Skeletons were already bound together by a sort of invisible thread of mana running through the entire frame. The idea of re-binding a skeleton was easy enough to understand.

  I guess I’ll practice when I see them again. No reason to select this skill right now when there are no damaged undead nearby to use it on… I wonder what that last part means. What “other applications” does this skill have?

  He remembered the lich in the Tower of Death, how it had used some sort of skill to combine and repair broken undead.

  Is that something I could do with a combination of Fleshcraft and Undead Repair? Too bad I only get to pick one skill right now… It was probably some kind of advanced skill that combines features from both anyway, though.

  Tybalt sat down on a rock that did not directly face the water where Mariella was bathing, just in case she suddenly stepped out of the pool in a place where he might be able to see her. He was fairly certain he would look in her direction at some point otherwise. Maybe even unintentionally.

  He began ranking his options.

  Bonebreaker is powerful, but I’ll probably get it on my own. The only reason to pick it is that it’s an obviously strong offensive skill, and I could use it now. But it’s clearly inferior to Fleshcraft in both respects. Pulling someone’s flesh apart is just deadlier than breaking their bones unless you target the spine, because bleeding to death is a very easy way to die. Osteomancy just feels useless. Do I really have the leisure to throw around some bones and try to predict the future? Maybe if there was some mystery I needed to solve. I don’t know whether the squad will survive tonight, and if they do, I’m not sure what exactly their next move will be. If I could figure that out…

  He shook his head.

  No, I’m ruling out the stupid fortunetelling skill unless Vidalia thinks it’s good. She’s the only seer I need.

  If he was just looking at what he needed short term, Mystic Blast was a much more useful offensive option than either Bonebreaker or Fleshcraft. Most importantly, it was ranged, and unlike Bonebreaker, he hadn’t made any inroads into learning how to do it without the skill. None of the enemies Tybalt and Mariella had faced in the Salt Waste had willingly come close enough for Tybalt to touch them with his bare hands, which Fleshcraft would seemingly require to be useful as an offensive skill. It specified manipulating flesh with his touch. Bonebreaker might be slightly more ranged, but only in the sense that Tybalt could channel it through a weapon. Nothing like throwing blasts of mana.

  So, Osteomancy was in last place, followed by Bonebreaker, then a much more difficult competition between Mystic Blast, Fleshcraft, and Undead Repair, which was competitive as a pure utility option.

  The real question is: do I need to pick a skill at all right now? Or should I try to learn each of these as best I can with just my intuition and my current level of ability at manipulating mana?

  He thought Mariella would encourage him to try that, but he needed to be practical.

  Maybe I could pick up Undead Repair or Mystic Blast on my own, but I don’t have the first clue about how Fleshcraft works. If we have to fight soon, Mystic Blast is clearly the most useful…

  He realized it was beginning to get dark.

  Uh oh. I need to bathe, and we need to find a place to hide for the night, before it gets really dark out here. If we’re being hunted by the beastfolk working for that Andric guy, they might have better night vision than us.

  Tybalt rose and turned to face in the direction of the water, still hidden from him by the placement of the rocks nearby. He realized he couldn’t hear Mariella splashing anymore. Maybe she had finished bathing while he was thinking.