CH375 To learn for others, 80 days remaining

As he cooked breakfast, the day ahead of him planned out in his mind, he stopped briefly with the feeling of both arms and tail wrapping around him, a face pressed into his back.

“Smells fantastic,” Thera spoke, sounding only a little groggy after just waking up. “This is one nice bit of motivation to get out of bed.”

“And I’m sure keeping your clinic head sane is another,” He laughed. “What would he do if you didn’t show up?”

“Drari would still have aunty, it would be fine. Let’s not talk about that right now anyway, I don’t want to have to think about all of the idiots I need to treat today.”

With the invasion drawing ever closer, people were growing more and more desperate to get whatever levels they could, and with the knowledge that the town had an awakened life mage, it was leaving far too many of them comfortable taking risks they otherwise wouldn’t with the knowledge that she could patch them up again after.

All of that led to even more stress for the clinic, with its only saving grace being that both Thera and Sonya could handle it without much trouble, giving the other workers enough leeway to relax a little without needing to worry about working themselves to death to accommodate the town, something that many other clinics in the surrounding towns and villages didn’t have the advantage of.

“Sure, instead let’s talk about tonight. Sonya’s staying out with Ceselee, right? Any idea when you’ll be getting home?”

“Probably late afternoon assuming nothing goes wrong at the clinic or with Aso after. Why, going to surprise me with something nice?” She asked as she spun him around, batting her eyes at him playfully.

“Ha, probably no more than any other romantic evening, but we’ll see,” He told her, having an idea in mind, even if the chances of accomplishing it felt slim.

“Well consider my hopes raised,” she said as she leaned up to kiss him, running many of the spells that had become the standard through him as she did before they heard her aunt get up and she moved to the table, happy to wait for breakfast.

Any advice for me? Ben asked as he moved some tables in the back of the shop around, trying to give himself a bit more space.

<Honestly, I don’t know how you haven’t gained the skill yet. You practice with Thera often enough and you have more than enough things going on in your head to keep track of how you’re moving. I’d say you’re just naturally bad at it.>

Gee, thanks. He thought sarcastically, before standing in the middle of all of the free space he now had, holding up his arms as he began to dance.

Saying it was dancing wasn’t really right. Beyond the fact that it looked awful, what he was really doing was just practicing one half of one of the few succubus dances that didn’t require a tail, trying to move correctly to finally gain the dancing skill in an effort to be slightly less terrible when he was doing it with his girlfriend.

He knew that Thera loved to dance, it was one thing she always asked to do whenever they were able to plan a night together, and aside from wanting to make her happy, he wanted to live up to her standard. It felt like she would move so gracefully as all he could do was flail about, barely able to manage any steps without walking on her feet or ending with his timing wrong, so today he was going to set out to fix that, fully intending on using every moment he didn’t need to work to squeeze out a little more practice, almost immediately falling over his own feet.

“Your timing is terrible,” Falk said from behind him, letting Ben know he was there. “You can move slower at first to get the rhythm right if you need to and then speed up from there once you have the steps.”

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“Wait, you dance Falk?”

“Not if I can help it, but I needed to get the zeroth level for Pelenia’s coronation. It does have its uses leaving me just a little more graceful on my feet though so it’s not a bad skill to have. Thera asking you to get it?”

“She hasn’t asked but we dance enough that I want to.”

“Well, from how it looks, maybe after a week or so of hard practice you’ll manage.”

“Ugh, and if I want to get the skill by tonight?”

His teacher just looked at him blankly before letting out a drawn-out sigh. “In that case, I guess you’re lucky there isn’t much to do here today. Practice away and you can hope for the best, I’ll at least give you whatever pointers I can.”