“Hey…”

  What is this now?

  “Elias, wake up…”

  I’m awake; just give me a second…

  “Elias, you asked me to get up at dawn to depart soon; come on, it’s already two hours that I’ve been awake. Wake up!”

  I groaned; usually I didn’t have this trouble getting up, but today I was groggy.

  “I’m awake.” I said in a rough, sleepy voice; even in this state, I could recognise that it wasn’t much inspiring. It had the same tone as somebody who was going to fall back asleep in the next three seconds, top.

  So it didn’t really surprise me when I heard the flap of the tent open up. Light blinded me, making my eyes water, and a head of messy black hair peeked inside.

  “Don’t you dare fall back aslee—” A shrill scream finished that phrase as Rhea hastily retreated from the tent.

  “Why are you NAKED?!”

  I sighed, “Because it’s more comfortable for sleeping, and because I’m in my tent, and there is still a thing called ‘privacy’ between civilised people...” I really would like to see the reaction of everybody if the role were inverted… Some of the people already awake were snickering. I finished wearing my pants and exited the tent. Rhea was waiting outside, facing away from me.

  “You can look now,” I said while wearing my shirt. She turned around; her usual pale skin was flushed crimson. Is she for real?

  “Did you never see a naked man before?” I asked her with a grin, “You’re red as a tomato.”

  She turned around again, extending her arm towards me. “I-I… of course! I was just caught off guard! And take your cloak back. Alya got her things fixed; she asked me to give it to you…”

  I see… “Thanks.” I took the cloak and put it on me, then I wore my boots and finished with equipping the armour pieces and strapping everything on my belt: mace, cursed figurines, knife, my waterskin full of health potion… I felt like those characters in the old movies, preparing time with all the gadgets and weapons to bring to the final stand. Only that this is not a movie, and there won’t be any final stand, just another day in paradise.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  Rhea now got back her composure; she was dressed in her usual goth ensemble. She just had her leather jacket closed up; it was probably chilly, but I wasn’t bothered thanks to my stats, another reason why I allowed myself to sleep naked tonight.

  She sighed, “Yes, it’s already some time that I’ve been ready; I even had time to prepare something for our excursion.”

  “What is it?” I was genuinely curious.

  She smiled; she was teasing me just to get revenge from before. “You’ll see…”

  “In that case, let’s just go. I would like to cover some ground today.”

  “Mmm… yeah, me too…”

  I nodded to Tom briefly in passing; he was already aware of what we wanted to do. Many others saw us, but nobody asked to join, and nobody wanted to talk, so we went forward to prepare. We got another waterskin; we both had ours full of potion, so we needed something else to drink. Then we got some jerky that somebody managed to make the night before; it wasn’t really jerky, but it was good enough for breakfast. We were all in for a hard keto diet for the near future; at least we had food.

  Passing by, I saw that the crafters were already at work; that at least gave me some hope that they could get all our loot by noon. In the meantime, we will do our own thing.

  My curse flared up a bit; I had to go and help them build the cart, or cook, or do anything – just go and make them my fucking priority instead of going on with my plan. I gritted my teeth as I was feeling the usual pit in my chest open up, ready to devour me.

  “Hey Rhea, what are you trying to accomplish with this excursion?” I asked her, Please tell me it is something I can help with…

  “Eh? I mean… I-I want to try some of my theories about my skills, and I could maybe get an achievement?” She sounded quite uncertain.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Beggars couldn’t be choosers, so I trudged on. “Well, in that case I can help you with getting an achievement; we just need to find a baron or something for your skills. Maybe tell me about it. Two minds are better than one, right? We can share our experiences and maybe find a better way of using them.”

  “Yes! I mean… yes, that would be great!”

  Good, I could feel the curse still simmering in the background, but for the moment I was relatively safe from the worst of it; the resistances I developed were paying off already. If it was a week ago, I could have never done what I did right now.

  We tracked our steps and found the path we walked the day before after just five minutes; moving without the cart was incredibly faster, and after the massive boost I got yesterday I felt like running and using my body, but with Rhea with me I should avoid letting her be defenceless. Well, she wasn’t really defenceless, but I didn’t know how powerful she was for real.

  We walked a bit more until we finished the path traced by the scouts; I couldn’t see any more marks on the trees. But it wasn’t hard to see the way forward; we were flanked by mountains on both sides, and the beacon was on our left, visible at times when the canopy opened between the oldest trees. So we had to proceed forward until we found the end of the valley and proceed left – easy peasy.

  While I was marking the trees, I heard Rhea opening the zip of her jacket. I turned around and saw that she was still wearing that black corset of hers. Wasn’t it uncomfortable?

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Nothing, I was just wondering why you didn’t change your clothes into something more fit for the tutorial; that thing must be terrible to move in.”

  She looked at me with a strange expression on her face, and then I felt a presence on the side; without thinking too much, I sent a dart its way. And a notification told me I killed an eldir, we were still in their territory. I was fucking sick of these things.

  “It’s much more comfortable than you think, and it sustains my… chest. You know, I am who I am; I like my style even if people judge me for it, but it feels like me, and I don’t care about what others think they can understand by just taking a look.” She said.

  I lost my train of thoughts for a moment; I was still scanning my surroundings, but she was going on with my observation.

  “You don’t judge people by their look; I noticed it. You just see what they do; it’s… rare, refreshing really.” She finished.

  “If you do my job long enough, you notice that you can’t believe anything about appearances, words even less; only action speaks the truth,” I said to her. “Most of the time…”

  She looked at me for a second, opened her mouth, then stopped at the same time as me. We both turned left; something was coming.

  “Can you leave this to me?” She asked.

  I nodded while preparing to deploy a barrier to protect her if needed.

  She moved in front of me and started scribbling a ritual circle in the air with a finger; it was nearly three feet in diameter, but her movements were quick and precise, symbols and lines connecting, then spinning until they locked into place like pieces of a puzzle. The red light coming from the ritual dimmed until it vanished into nothing. She took a step back and repeated the process one, two times, all different rituals, all set in a line. Then she created two more on the sides for good measure. As we stepped back, a giant spider came into view. She locked up; I could see from behind her the tension in her posture. She said that she was arachnophobic, and now there was a spider as thick as a washing machine coming towards her.

  I stood ready. “You can do it; it’s not worse than what we faced already. Breathe. In any case I got your back.”

  She just nodded; I couldn’t see her expression, but for sure it wasn’t easy to face her fears so directly.

  As the spider skittered closer at high speed, it passed the place where she put her first ritual; the monster shined particularly, a strange shimmer enveloping it but not stopping it in the slightest. Rhea started hyperventilating; I could hear her breath and see her shoulders rise and fall quickly. The spider launched itself in the air, its prey unmoving before it. I had a barrier ready to be deployed if things got for the worse.

  But as the monster impacted the place where Rhea put the second ritual, it caught on fire. Completely and utterly, all of its body was on fire. Now there was a flaming giant spider flying directly in her face. As the monster reached the last ritual in front of her, she screamed and slammed her hand forward; the ritual became visible for a second, and I felt a flow of mana enhancing it, the lines shining a deep red glow as the spider impacted it.

  As soon as it happened, the monster, instead of proceeding forward to impact her, got catapulted backwards; a crunch of chitin followed by a thump as it impacted a tree. It twisted and started to move about, but its broken body couldn’t do what it was needed to put out the flames, and it died a few seconds after; then it continued to burn until it became a carbonised husk.

  Rhea was breathing heavily, hands on her knees.

  “That was something, more than something…” I said as I came in front of her.

  She was sweating a bit, not from lack of mana, she didn’t use that much – but from the fear of the experience.

  “I did it… I really did it.” She said between breaths.

  “Yes, you did; it was impressive. You should be proud of yourself.”

  She regarded me with a smile, then suddenly hugged me while laughing hysterically. Ok, this was getting a bit too much… I held her until she calmed down a little.

  After a minute she straightened up and said, ‘Thanks, I’m fine now. Whooo, that was freaking scary, but it was good, you know?’ I didn’t know I had it in me! I think I can face them a little… Let’s go! I want to try more combinations; maybe I can put all the effects in the same circle… ”

  I grabbed her on the shoulder to stop her; she turned around looking right at me. Her green eyes looked even bigger now; her pupils were extremely dilated. “It’s fine by me,” I said to her, “but we need to go that way.” She looked at my pointed arm and then back at me, nodded once, and started walking forward.

  I shook my head; maybe it was a mistake to let anybody come with me…