He had finally done it. He looked at his status unblinkingly.

  *Will Magic: 2*

  It was something. He'd almost given up at the end, there. Something about pushing the hulking demon aside had been enough to help him advance his skill. Using it felt like walking in the sense that he could do it, but it also felt like pissing, in that he could only do so much of it at once. Whatever he had done had been enough to get him to keep the skill he had swapped.

  His Spear skill had helped greatly in that regard, though leaving the Senator to die in the vision? That didn't sit well with him. He understood the necessity of doing it. In his mind, it was nothing more than a transaction. Any of these visions could become the real thing if he was right. To survive, he was going to need to get more than just his way.

  The Prefereti that stood over him was staring.

  "Pardon. Were you saying something?"

  "No, nothing."

  "Ah. Fifteen Dinarii on the oiled up one with the net, was it? Okay, no problem. He is going to lose, of course."

  The Prefereti blinked at him. "Excuse me. What?"

  "Your safe bet is going to lose. Apologies. Just thought you would like to know."

  The man hmph-ed and turned around, then strode off.

  "Ludere! What are you on about?" Erebus said.

  "My brother, have you ever thought about what you could do if you were, shall we say, nearly limitless in what you could do?"

  Erebus scrunched his nose up over the bench they worked at. It was a clear sign of distaste.

  "My friend, whatever you are smoking, did you get enough for both of us? Because you're not making sense."

  "I am unfortunately not smoking anything."

  There was one Dinarii on their table. Ludere considered the shape and size of it. He thought about how many coins he had handled in his time. He pulled on it with his Will Magic, and it floated up off the table.

  It felt like he was picking up a whole person. He closed his eyes from the exertion. He could feel it in the air, lifting up above the counter.

  "Whoa. Ludo, what… how? Your eyes are purple!"

  Ludere abruptly stopped what he was doing. He didn't have a mirror anywhere to inspect himself, but he had seen it before. That it was so noticeable, so quickly, could be a problem if he let it be one.

  "I've been going through something."

  "Clearly you have. Where did you get the skill gem for that? That must have cost a fortune! Unless you…" His voice dropped to a whisper. "Did you steal it?"

  The lucre made a noise as it bounced off the wooden table. No one would know that it had been held aloft by magic. No one but the two of them. It could have fallen by accident, for what anyone else knew.

  "No, I didn't steal it! Are you crazy? I borrowed it!"

  "Dead gods, Ludere. No one borrows skills."

  Ludere shrugged.

  "How did you… How do you?"

  "It's always fun to see this dawn on your face, but yes. Look, here are the broad strokes. This is my sixth time talking to that man. In roughly an hour's time, a gate to Fractis Campis opens, and a horde of demons will walk out and massacre this arena and all inside of it."

  "And during festival season?"

  "Take this seriously. I've watched you die several times."

  Erebus nodded. "Say I believe you. What then? Do we raise the alarm?"

  "I haven't tried that, but there's a good reason I haven't."

  "The guards would throw us out," Erebus said.

  Gia walked up. "Who would the guards throw out? Not the poor clerks here. My gosh, look at them… Tallying up numbers! Whatever will we do?"

  Confusion warred with anger across Erebus's face. He held up a hand, paused, and then returned. "And she's done this same thing each time as well?"

  "Similar, but not exactly."

  "Dead gods, Ludere. Has she also?"

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

  Gia was silent, her eyes locked on Ludere's.

  "She has also. Did you know she has a skill called Glam?"

  Suddenly there was a hand at his throat. Gia's cold voice rang out. "Who told you that…"

  "You did."

  That was enough to make her stop whatever rant she was about to get on. He could see it forming. She was good at it. He had learned to appreciate her tearing down the other employees of the arena, so long as they deserved it, and for the most part this was true.

  Erebus smoothed his tunic. "Our friend here has a most interesting story that I think that you would love to hear. Apparently we're about to get hit with a demonic attack of some sort."

  "You've been having visions?"

  Ludere nodded. "Multiple visions, about the same thing happening. I think I might still be in a vision. I'm not sure. I haven't finished it."

  "And how did you find out about my Glam skill?"

  Ludere briefly explained what was going on. He had gotten good at covering the basics.

  "You've been through this all and… Each time you die. Huh. What happens if you die for real?"

  Gia had a point. He didn't want to think about it.

  "We'll cross that bridge when it's time to burn it."

  "I'm just saying. If you think that this is a vision, and you've been stealing skills during it, what's stopping you from just acting like… you know what, never mind. So you're now trying to find the right skill combination to defeat the demons?"

  Ludere nodded. "That's the best I can do."

  "You need some good skills, huh. Hmmmm. Athletics will get you pretty fast. I feel like there are some speedsters out here that I can ask. If we can identify some of those then it will be a lot easier to do a swap in a future vision." Gia looked out at the arena.

  They were setting up for the third match. Roughly half of his time had gone. There were five matches between when his vision started and when the demons began their invasion.

  "You know what? I think I know someone. Do you want to come with me?"

  The entire time, Ludere had been juggling a single coin with his mind, pretending that it was actually his hands that were tossing it up. The coin followed the normal path if otherwise would have. Just doing that took nearly all of his concentration, and would have almost no effect in combat.

  "I'm trying to understand this magic. I don't think that I'll be able to ask the man I borrowed it from how it works, but the skill is telling me enough about how to get started."

  The coin stopped its motion in mid-air, then revested it, falling the wrong way.

  "Can you tell me who has some skills that I should take a look at?" He was clearly trying to master the skill that he had just acquired. This felt like it would take a long time to advance, just like his Scan skill. He didn't want to tell her off, but he never worked on the magic skill before, just because his Spear Proficiency felt like magic in the way it helped him visualize the battlefields, didn't mean that was actual magic. Will magic was a well-studied field and course of study for Prefereti. It wasn't exactly clear what he could do with it, but he knew what he'd seen.

  He knew enough to be dangerous to himself.

  If he wanted to be dangerous to others he would have to put more work in.

  His first idea was to spend the entirety of this Vision training this one skill. That might be enough to get him to where he needed to be. He wasn't sure if that would be the end of it, either.

  There was more than one type of magic. He read enough scrolls to understand that at least.

  He was very thankful that the senator's highest leveled skill was Will magic. That made his choice a little faster, and he needed all the space and time he could get. Especially if the man had kept so many demons at bay at once.

  He tried to think of a way to utilize it in combat with the amount of strength he had with it. Two skill levels weren't nothing, but in the long scheme of things, he couldn't do much with his skill level two. He was going to have to level it up in a safe environment, or at least as controlled of an environment as he could create.

  "Erebus, do you trust me?"

  "You need to just tell me that you saw me die several times. You sent Gia on a fetch quest to find some people with rare skills to swap with you. So I don't know what you're going to ask me to do, but I am very curious."

  "I'm going to ask you to stand still, and I'm just going to try to push you. Not like from the back, though. Straight out push as hard as I can, and I just wanted you to understand that this is not a personal thing. The skill wants me to push objects as much as it wants me to push people, and I need to level it as fast as I can so I can get to these higher-level things that I saw the Senator do the last time."

  "So you just want to push me around? Is that what's happening? All you had to do was ask."

  "People get weird when you ask them these kinds of questions. Especially because I just explained to you that I think we're all going to die very shortly."

  Erebus grumbled. Ludere calmed his mind. All he wanted to do was move Erebus from one place to another. He envisioned walking over and touching the man.

  Raw Will crossed out of him. As it did, he tried to shape it into something usable. He wanted to will it into a pair of hands. They may or may not show up in someone's vision, but they could be felt. And he could could pretend to place hands on his friend.

  Erebus was making this as easy as possible for him, but it still felt like he was pushing an overloaded food cart. It was physically possible, but for all intents and purposes, he was only able to do enough to move him around a little bit.

  Moving a human felt impossible. Or rather, it felt like it was going to take every single thing he had. He felt drained after moving all the coins around. Imagine was eating something. He couldn't really put his finger on when it was, but it had taken something out of him. He found that he couldn't even stand—his legs felt wobbly. Erebus sat down next to him, and they shared a moment of understanding.

  "It's difficult, huh."

  Ludere nodded. "Why was I able to move the demon, but you felt… impossible?"

  His Will magic had already gone up to level three. He knew it was going to take a lot more work. Based on how difficult that was, either there was some limit to the amount of effort you put in, or he just didn't have the focus to do it. He didn't know where the power for Will came from, but all of a sudden, things felt far more difficult than it had ever felt. He wasn't ready to take on the world. In fact, all he wanted to do was curl up and cry. He hadn't really faced it, but he died six times or so.

  Was he going to lose count at some point in time? Would he forget everything he'd gone through?

  It seemed likely. If he was going to spend an entire vision just working on things, at least he could have Erebus or Gia try to find somebody with a good skill. Especially if it sounded like he was going to be working on this magic for several of these visions. So long as he was topped up before the next fight, he could use whatever was available. Because as much as he wanted to help himself out and move faster and break things, if he didn't have the control that he apparently lacked, it was all for nothing. He was nothing if not stubborn, but if he was going to defeat this demon horde by himself, he was going to need a little more than Will magic.