"Nope, not that. Nope, I made that so I won't learn anything new. Nope. Nope. Maybe?"

  Soph smiled to herself. Lone was a real goofball when he wanted to be, getting so enamoured by learning, testing, and levelling skills. Some people would see it as a problem but not Soph or Sophie.

  They both agreed that they - both her and Lone - needed to be much, much stronger. Soph had two goals to that end while Sophie had one.

  Soph's first goal was to unlock some sort of subskill for her Body Manipulation. She wanted to be able to freely control her body's shape. Lone was right. It being able to change between a child, teen, and an adult, was laughably pathetic for a unique skill. There had to be more to it and she trusted Lone's firm belief in that.

  Her other goal was to make smaller barriers. So small that they couldn't be seen. Soph knew she had been lucky in saving Lone from having his head separated from his body yesterday. The only reason she was able to shatter that red sword with her barriers was because it was made entirely out of fire magic.

  Her ability to ignore certain restrictions when it came to magic like overcharging skills and creating barriers inside of people seemed to extend to inserting her magic into other people's magic but not into physical objects.

  Sophie had brought this concern up to Lone just before they had gone to sleep yesterday after Soph was done... enjoying him. Recalling the brief conversation between her other self and her lover made her sigh.

  "What if that sword was real?"

  "What?"

  "The sword. The one we stopped from decapitating you. We would not have been able to do that were it real and not a magical construct."

  "Huh. Just make super small barriers? Atom sized barriers. Then expand 'em. That would make anything explode."

  "What is an atom?"

  "Ah, fuck. Uh, everything? We're all made of itty bitty pieces of stuff called atoms. Everything is. Fuck. I was a history teacher, not a science teacher, but basically, if you can make your barriers small enough, you could make them in anything since there are gaps between atoms. I think?"

  "How helpful. And how would we expand these 'atom sized barriers'?"

  "A subskill?"

  "Ah, yes, one of those. Those things that even you struggle to earn. We shall just create one right now."

  "Look, I'm just offering options! I bet there are a million and one ways for your barriers to shatter that sword in a theoretical situation where it was physical. This is the first one that came to mind. Can we sleep now or need me for any more theory crafting?"

  "No, that was quite enough. Goodnight Lone."

  "Love you."

  "... We love you too."

  "If only I could see an atom to get an idea for how small one is..." Soph mumbled in frustration. "And I haven't even made any progress in developing Body Manipulation in almost two years... This must be how Breena feels..."

  Lone heard Soph's muttering but didn't comment while he pulled items out of his Dimensional Storage. It wasn't his place to help her here. She would appreciate any words of wisdom he offered but they wouldn't be of any actual help if given to her. His perspective was of someone with little to no roadblocks in learning skills.

  It was hard for a poor person to take advice on getting wealthy from someone with billionaire parents, even if they offered sound advice. Not that such a perspective was wrong, really. Still, if Soph wanted to hear his advice again, he'd happily offer it up. Until then, she was on her own.

  "This should do. Not as big of a spread as I would have liked, honestly," Lone sighed as he finalised his decision.

  He had withdrawn the massive axe that the Blue Orc Chieftain had almost killed him with, the black invitation card the dwarven X-ranked assassin had gifted him, three random steamforged artefacts that he had pillaged during his militaristic enlistment, and the magical rolling communication orb that Matriarch Lossa had given him to help him find his way to the clan.

  Lone started with the axe.

  "Nice! Didn't expect two levels when I already know a decent amount about it. Still, what kind of mastery would I earn for using this? Colossal Axe Mastery, maybe?" Lone asked himself as he stored the gargantuan weapon back in his Dimensional Storage.

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  "Wow, that's informative. Additional unknown enchantments? Tracking. I bet there's tracking on it for sure. Soph, can you memorise the magic in this thing in case we run into similar looking magic in the future?" Lone asked.

  Soph diverted her focus from her barriers and nodded. "Sure. I don't know which magic on that is tracking it, uh, if one is, but I can keep a mental note of all of its magical colours and feelings. I'll let you know if I ever detect an exact match in the future?"

  "Thanks, you're a star," Lone replied to which he received a sunny smile.

  He looked at the card and noticed that it had received over a dozen one-way messages so far. That made sense. He had stuffed it in his Dimensional Storage and never paid any attention to it after that. It was still kind of amazing that the messages didn't get lost in the ether but somehow were able to wait until it was available again to receive the messages.

  Some of the messages looked interesting but the events tied to them had long since passed. Two recent messages, however, were for upcoming events. An auction and an open market specialising in questionably sourced steamforged artefacts.

  He made a note of the locations and dates for both, and planned to attend if he could. Lone then shoved the card back into his time-frozen unique skill to block the tracking magic on it, assuming his theory about the unknown enchantments was correct.

  With that sorted, he quickly moved on to examining the three dwarven artefacts he'd selected. One was was a cat-sized box, one looked like a key of some sort, and the last was a ring.

  No level up came from the first artefact. That made sense to Lone. He had no idea what this box could be used for, and at his current mastery, Item Examination could only uncover so much for him. He'd have to take it apart with Wilbur's mini-steamforge to even try to figure out what it was capable of. Of course, he could always push the obvious 'on' button but where was the fun in that?

  "Oh, that's cool. Way less mysterious than the box. Guess it's because it looks like a key so I know what the function is. I wonder if I have the other key and the safe tucked away in my Dimensional Storage?" He rifled through his Puzzle Locked Mind's memory banks and got his answer. "I have the safe but not the other key. Cool. Well, I know what my first steamforging project will be once we've got our own real place to live here in the clan."

  "Boring," Lone sighed, tossing the ring and the interesting key back into storage.

  He had a lot more steamforged artefacts to examine at a later date which he was looking forward to, but for now, he wrapped up this session with the rolling orb. He didn't have infinite MP, after all, and he had other skills to train today.

  "Nice. Well, I can play about with the difference 'a decent amount' and 'very' give as opposed to 'some' and 'heavily' another day. It's time to get a bunch of skills to intermediate rank. I'm feeling motivated," Lone decided.

  Soph looked at him and said, "Are you okay? Your, uh, channels? They don't hurt anymore?"

  Lone shook his head. "Pain's still there. It is lessening ever so slightly, but the resistance to it being at advanced-level-ten makes it almost entirely ignorable. Maybe it'll hit expert tonight? That would be nice."

  Soph shot him a dazzling smile. "It really would be. Need my help for your training? And what skills are you gonna work on?"

  "Well... I don't feel like leaving our room unless we get called for the war leader bullshit, or unless Breena needs us, so no weapon masteries. I was thinking about using Water Gaol to drown myself in an attempt to level it, Water Magic, Drowning, Insanity, Fear, and Torture Resistance. I dunno if it'll work for Torture Resistance since it's self-inflicted, and Insanity Resistance might be a long shot too. Might need to fuck with air magic and the oxygen supply to my brain for that one... Thoughts?"

  Soph's expression fell, her smile being replaced for a frightening scowl. "I hate you."

  "I hate me too, but better me levellin' those skills than circumstances out of our control doing it for me," Lone countered.

  "I hate you because you're right," Soph sighed. "Well, if you don't mind... as much as I and Sophie don't like it, it would be smart to, uh, practice my barrier magic on you at the same time?"

  "Oh, for sure! Basic Regen'll keep me from death via drowning, so it won't even take any MP or SP. It can easily fix up whatever you need to do too. Might level my Oaken Flesh as a bonus if ya go for the skin. Right, let's do this!" Lone exclaimed.

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