The rest of the day was spent on the outskirts of the city, watching Samantha as she practiced with her new element. Asher couldn’t stop grinning at the sheer exuberance on her face as she shot up and down in the sky, pulling in her new wings to drop like a stone only to flare them out again seconds before hitting the ground and rocketing forward with incredible speed. Samantha never seemed to grow tired of flying, and Asher didn’t blame her. He hadn’t exactly enjoyed his experience riding on the back of a pegasus as they blasted across the kingdom, but he had a feeling being able to control his flight with his own wings would have made for a remarkably different experience.

  While Samantha practiced, Brian worked on his arrows, happily sitting back against a tree as he fletched one arrow after another. Despite the fact that they’d picked up a truly massive quantity of arrows back in Dormaul, Brian saw fletching his own arrows as almost meditative, and he was remarkably good at it. While he did that, occasionally stopping to watch his older sister shooting through the sky with an excited yell, Asher focused on his own skills.

  Particularly, yanking certain portions of the world around him into the astral all at once.

  Dragging whole chunks of the world into the astral realm was no easy feat, and he quickly confirmed that the more he tried to bring, the more energy it cost him. He’d gotten lucky against the greater demon that his skill had even worked in the first place, but only now did he truly understand what had happened. The greater demon already existed in the material realm, the astral realm, and the realm of ages all at the same time. When he’d yanked the area within his Spatial Lock into the astral, he hadn’t so much as dragged the demon over with him as he had simply shut the door, sealing off those two other realms to it at that moment. Now that he’d actively fought someone he had dragged into the astral realm with him, he’d come to realize how much of his own energy it cost just to keep them there.

  It was a weird feeling, as they burned their own energy when moving around or doing anything, but their simple existence within the astral realm was all on him. To try and get used to the sensation, he had actually enlisted Brian's help, and was repeatedly dragging the boy and his equipment in and out of the astral realm, experimenting with the sensation. The main thing Asher discovered from all the practice was that anything Brian was directly touching had to be brought with him or left behind with him. He wasn’t able to simply pull Brian into the astral realm and leave the knife he was holding behind, which was a shame. Being able to disarm opponents in such a way would have been a fantastic addition to his skill.

  The other thing Asher was both glad to see and somewhat disappointed to discover was the confirmation that people he dragged into the astral still couldn’t phase through solid objects like he could. Or it was more appropriate to say that they could if they knew about that aspect of his skill and focused hard enough, but while they were overlapping with the material, Asher didn’t seem to be able to drop his skill. He didn’t know what would happen if there was an overlap and he ran out of energy, and that wasn’t exactly something he was willing to test out. It was nice that Brian wasn’t at risk of accidentally erasing a hand by shoving it into a tree that was left behind on the material realm, but a shame that he wouldn’t be able to use that effect of the astral realm on his enemies.

  For his part, Brian had thought being yanked in and out of the astral realm was the coolest thing ever at first, but now that they’d been at it for a few hours, he’d finally reached the level of an indifferent glance whenever he was dragged along with Asher into the astral.

  Finally, Samantha flapped back down for another one of her many breaks. Having her wings manifested didn’t actually consume energy, or if it did, it was a small enough amount that it was offset by her natural regeneration. But actively using them to fly certainly did. Currently, she was able to keep it up for about ten or fifteen minutes, depending on how hard she went, before needing to come down for a break.

  “Okay, I’m finally confident I know how to fly!” she declared, landing beside him and throwing her arms around him for what had to be the tenth time that day. “I can’t thank you enough, Asher! Thank you!”

  “In fact, you can, and you have!” Asher said, laughing as he returned her hug yet again. “Don’t forget, this wasn’t all me! You killed plenty of those demons yourself, you know! Hell, if anyone, you should be thanking Brian! He’s the one who actually thought to collect the shards from the fallen instructors!”

  “I know, but it feels weird thanking him for having the idea to loot a bunch of corpses,” she whispered, glancing at Brian as he continued his fletching off to the side, none the wiser to their conversation. “I feel like that would be encouraging bad habits.”

  “I mean, it’s not like he was riffling through their pockets,” Asher said, shrugging as he failed to see the connection. “The orbs float right over their bodies. All it takes is one tap, I’d hardly call that looting corpses. Not like they were going to do anything with them anymore. Donvath even confirmed that their families would be well taken care of and not to worry about the grave robbing.”

  “Asher!” Samantha scolded, lightly smacking his chest despite the grin on her face. “Though that is nice to hear about their families. Anyway, I’m finally ready to start unlocking some of my skills. I wanted to make sure I knew how the base sensation of flying worked before I did though, just in case any of the skills alter it.”

  “Finally!” he said, excited to see what she’d get from her new element. He’d tried to get her to unlock all the skills immediately, but she’d asked for some time to play around first. “Do you need any shards?”

  “No, I have enough from taking out that assassin that tried to hide in a tree back near Dormaul,” she said, her eyes unfocusing as she pulled up her interface. “Here we go…”

  After a moment, she grunted, her eyes focusing on him once more. “The second skill is called Razor Wing. Looks like I can turn the edge of my wings razor-sharp now.”

  “I mean, that sounds fantastic for combat,” he pointed out, noting the slight frown on her face. Despite how combat-focused he was, and knowing that she wanted to fight beside him, he understood that she was more interested in utility than combat skills. “Don’t worry, elements rarely give more than one or two offensive skills. You’ll get some good ones!”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “I know,” she said, giving him a warm smile before unlocking her third skill. This time, she beamed as she read over the skill, this one clearly more in line with what she was hoping for. “Flight Burst! A rapid acceleration skill!”

  “That’s just what we need, a way for you to slam into the ground even harder,” he joked, laughing as she rolled her eyes before leaning forward to give him a quick kiss.

  “I’d say I’m getting the hang of this pretty quickly,” she argued, looking away as she unlocked her fourth skill. “Huh… this is a weird one.”

  “What, something that lets your wings explode upon contact with an enemy?” he asked, trying to come up with the worst wing-related skill he could think of.

  “No, it’s called Winged Savior. It looks like as long as I have my wings manifested, if I were to take some sort of particularly lethal blow, the damage would transfer to my wings instead, destroying them for a while but saving me from injury.”

  “Seeing as you don’t have the ability to come back from the dead like I do, that sounds like a pretty amazing skill,” Asher admitted. “Though I’m pretty curious what that one is going to evolve into.”

  “Forget what it’s going to evolve into, I don’t even understand how I’m supposed to level it,” she said, frowning as she read back over it. “At the very least it’s a passive skill, so hopefully it will just level up over time so long as I have my wings manifested, even if I don’t do anything. I’d really prefer not having to ask you to practice stabbing me in order to train the skill.”

  “And here I thought you liked getting stabbed by me,” Asher teased, bouncing his eyebrows suggestively.

  “Asher!” Samantha gasped, laughing even as her face turned a bright red. Brian was far enough away that he couldn’t have heard them, even if he wasn’t fully invested in his fletching, but that didn’t stop Samantha from trying to control her laughter long enough to give him a stern glare. “Save that talk for when we’re alone!”

  “Fine,” he drawled, motioning for her to keep going. “Come on, you’ve got one more skill to unlock! Out with it!”

  “Alright, alright, I’m going,” she said, giggling as she burned forty thousand shards to unlock her fifth and final skill for her new element. Reading over it, she let out a sigh of relief. “Long Flight. It’s a passive skill, and nothing flashy, but it’s exactly what I wanted! It reduces the energy cost of flight, which will allow me to stay in the air for longer periods of time!”

  “That’s fantastic! I’m so happy for you,” he said, pulling her into a hug and squeezing her tight. A person’s element and skills were a part of them, just as much as any one of their limbs were, and hearing that she’d managed to get skills she was pleased with filled his chest with warmth. Asher jumped slightly as Samantha not only hugged him back with her arms, but with her wings as well, folding them around the two of them like a glowing cocoon of green feathers.

  He supposed he was going to have to get used to the fact that his girlfriend had wings now she could control just as easily as her own arms.

  “So that’s all five of your Wing skills, and you told me ages ago you had all five of your skills unlocked for your Forest element… What about Water? Any skills left there you still need?”

  “Yeah, I still need one more,” she admitted, pulling back and counting off on her fingers. “I’ve got Fountain, Soothing Spring, Wet Warrior, and Water Walker. I almost went and used the shards from the tree-assassin to pick up my last skill, but I decided to save them… just in case.”

  “It’s alright, I know spending forty thousand shards all in a single instant can’t be easy for you,” Asher said, giving her an understanding smile. “But now, we’re rich! So take these shards and unlock that final skill!”

  Samantha rolled her eyes, but she still took the forty thousand shards he manifested and held out to her. He wasn’t sure if it was just her excitement at the idea of actually having all fifteen of her base skills unlocked, or the fact that having allowed them to spend over one and a half million shards on her truly broke something within her, but either way, she still went and spent the shards before she could change her mind.

  “Oh, Mags has this skill!” she exclaimed, jumping a little as she read over it. “It’s called Natural Fins, it makes you swim way faster in the water!”

  “Man, you are getting some lucky unlocks,” Asher said, unable to stop himself from laughing at her excitement. Mags was a noblewoman from Poltar who had taken Samantha and Brian under her wing in order to teach them how to swim. She had also helped Samantha train with her Water skills as well, and he knew the hunter looked up to her. “We’ll have to let her know the next time we’re in Poltar that you took after her!”

  “Could we swing by again sometime? I would actually love to see her again,” Samantha said before freezing, all the excitement leaving her in an instant as she almost winced.

  “What’s wrong?” Asher asked, quickly looking around to make sure there weren’t any enemies nearby. They’d picked a spot far enough from the city and with no cover surrounding them to ensure they’d be able to see anyone coming from a mile away, but in a world filled with magic and a near-infinite number of skills, there was no telling what might come their way. “Some sort of enemy?”

  “No… Sorry, I was caught off guard,” she said, laying a reassuring hand on his arm. “It was some sensation I’ve never experienced before. Like I’d been missing a limb all this time, and only now did I realize it. For the first time in my life, I feel… complete?”

  “Ah,” he said, relaxing as he turned to give her a congratulatory grin. “That’s perfectly normal, it just means you’ve officially wrapped up the Stage of Discovery by unlocking all fifteen of your base skills. Welcome to the Stage of Honing!”

  “Never in a million years would I have ever thought I’d have all fifteen of my skills unlocked,” she admitted, shaking her head. “Let alone that I’d have three elements to my name. I’m just some random girl from a village on the outskirts of the kingdom! I’m not a three-element kind of person!”

  “I don’t know how to break it to you, but you are now,” he said, chuckling at her expression. “And while I have no doubt there are plenty of people with three elements happy to leisurely live their lives in comfort and at the expense of others, in my world, we have a saying. With great power comes great responsibility. Rather than do whatever we want, I’m planning to do whatever I can to continue helping the innocent people of this world by taking out dangerous threats that would cause them harm.”

  “That’s a lot of big talk from someone who just wants to find more dangerous things to try and stab,” she said, raising an eyebrow at him as she crossed both her arms and her wings in front of her.

  “I can do both!” he argued. The two of them managed to keep straight faces for a few more seconds, before they cracked up and started laughing.

  “Some of us are trying to work here, you know!” Brian called out to them as he paused his fletching, causing them to just start laughing all the harder. Throwing up his hands in exasperation, he shouted at them.

  “Would you two just go kiss somewhere already?!”

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