CH21

“Alright let’s see how this goes,” He was feeling enthusiastic, with how promising the three-layered enchantment was, surely one of these would work and he was quick to hand over one of each staff he made.

“Hey I was thinking this for a while, but did we really need to bring all of them? Plenty are just duplicates of themselves aren’t they?” Thera asked as she looked on at the pile he still had in hand.

“It doesn’t hurt. They’re here just in case I want to see you use one again or try something different.”

“Alright then let’s get this over with,” She was still uncomfortable to be in an area with a few other people around practicing in the morning and was a little jealous of how calm Ben seemed about it, still working on shaping his stone while seemingly having his full attention on her.

The five-layer and seven-layer staves worked a bit better than the three-layered one but were still ultimately disappointing, after a successful first shot they tried for a second and the five-layer was able to at least create a ball of earth while the seven-layer one being able to throw it a few meters, but not enough to really consider it a second shot. All that was left were the two different nine layers.

Thera started to activate her magic, letting it flow through her into her staff and felt the same unfamiliar resistance she had experienced with all of his latest works, before firing her first earth bullet. As was expected the spell shot fine, at least Ben had gotten the hang of making staves she could get a single-use out of, what came next was what would matter.

The staff itself still appeared fine, no visible cracks or damage was present, and she felt Ben’s eyes glued to her, watching her every movement as she prepared to try a second spell. She concentrated, taking more care than she normally would to try and get it to work, and with a swing of her arm fired it.

As Ben watched he saw it was almost perfect. Almost. It fell a little short of the last one still but it was close enough that it could be called a success. But despite it all he wasn’t happy.

“What’s wrong?” Thera asked when she saw the unhappy look plastered on his face. “I thought that last one went pretty well.” It was at least far better than most times she tried a staff that wasn’t made by her uncle but instead a random shop.

“No this is great, it’s a real improvement and all, I was just hoping that three times the layers would work out to three times the spells, but of course that wouldn’t be the case. All I did was create a smoother gradient for your magic to work through. Maybe I could make it work by making a bigger staff but at that point it wouldn’t be usable. So in that case should I go back to the drawing board? But then who knows how long it will be before I can make something that can handle three shots.”

She was beginning to pick up on the fact that he would talk a lot when trying to work out a problem. “But isn’t this okay? If you’re making three staves at a time like this, that’s basically the same as firing six spells.”

“Yeah but the waste is actually insane. Honestly speaking I have no clue how Falk can afford this. The material costs can’t be insignificant.”

“Oh didn’t you know? Uncle has a few patents to his name as well as a few wealthy clients, he’s not rich but at the same time money isn’t really going to be an issue for him.”

“Wait really?” Ben asked in surprise. “Well I guess that’s fine if my failures aren’t going to leave him in the poor house. Is that what he’s working on now then?” Ben hadn’t bothered to ask Falk about what would be keeping him so busy for the next few months, but a big order from a wealthy client would make sense.

Thera only shrugged though. “Probably? He takes his confidentiality pretty seriously so he won’t talk about it though. So with this do you feel ready to try another hunt tomorrow?”

Ben gave it some thought. It was true that they should be fine if they had three of the nine-layer staves but they should still be cautious, plus after seeing her use her magic these last few days he wasn’t actually sure Thera could really use her spells in combat. He knew she had been adventuring before but he wasn’t sure about how well it went for her.

Still, if he wanted to know he had better at least ask. “Hey, when you were hunting solo how often would you fail a quest?”

“Guh, where did that come from?”

“I was just thinking about hunting. With me there you’ll still be basically hunting by yourself since I can’t fulfil any roles like fighter or tank and it seems like your magic takes at least a few seconds to activate.”

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She fidgeted about uncomfortably before answering. “I guess I would get about one or two successful quests a week.”

At this point it was about what Ben had been expecting so the comment didn’t really faze him. Actually, he had an idea for just what they could do about it.

“Alright if you’re willing to try something a little different I think we can make hunting work.”

She was about to ask what he was talking about when a group of three called out to them.

“Hey man if you don’t want to get yourself killed you should find a real adventurer to party with.”

Ben turned to look at who was talking and saw the speaker seemed to be a four-armed warrior, carrying two shields in his upper hands and two spears in his lower ones. Following behind him were a horned woman with forest green skin that looked like she was carrying some tools for a healer and a woman with the lower half of a snake that seemed to be Naga whose role wasn’t readily apparent.

He was about to ask what they wanted when Thera spoke up. “Mind your own business and leave us alone Skoe.”

The man, apparently Skoe, turned to her. “Thera since it doesn’t look like anyone else warned him someone needs to step in. You have no skill as an adventurer, you’re just going to get this poor guy killed.”

“I haven’t gotten any teams I’ve been with injured yet so just back off.”