CH416 Thera’s Perspective

Walking to the clinic, Thera watched her aunt, not seeing anything amiss. Despite how she’d acted while drunk, she seemed like her usual self, chatting with familiar faces on her way to work and exuding an overall positive atmosphere.

So maybe I’m just overthinking it then? I’m sure aunty’s fine.

At least that was what she told herself, but she was having trouble really believing it. For as long as she could remember, her aunt had clearly held interest in her uncle, to the point that as a child she’d even once asked if they were ever going to have kids when she was longing for a friend, getting what in hindsight seemed like a thoroughly uncomfortable explanation from her that they weren’t like that, along with a separate talk from her mother giving a few more details.

Could ignoring your feelings for decades really be considered fine?

She loved Sonya and she wanted her aunt to be happy, and she certainly put on a happy face enough that Thera never really considered otherwise, but if all she was really doing was suppressing her feelings…

I should probably talk to her, right? But how am I even supposed to talk about this?

She wasn’t well practiced with anything like that, but then she did have all day to try and figure it out. With Ben planning on being out late, they’d even have the perfect time for a bit of privacy in the evening, just the two of them.

Deep in the woods, Thera practiced her new magics with Aso after leaving the clinic for the day. Since her goal was raising her non-affinitied ones she couldn’t put off practicing, even with everything else she had to be working on, so she busied herself with it, expanding her senses out with her newfound empathy to take in the emotions of the creatures around her until she could sense anything large enough to be a challenge, crystalizing her mana to probe at them, not treating it like an attack, but instead an annoyance, and once it got their attention, luring them back and holding them off with her barrier while Aso went for the kills, letting the other girl get just a bit of practice with her own skills as the hours passed.

“I still can’t believe you came back with three new magics,” Aso sighed as she tapped at a floating spear of mana that Thera was keeping up. “Genuinely, how?”

“Ahem, I just got kind of lucky,” She told her weakly, knowing it wasn’t much of an explanation considering the rarity of any non-affinitied branch.

It’s not really like I’m lying. It was lucky for me that Ben thought I could use them, so since he got me the opportunity I need to make sure I put my all into it.

She understood what he’d said at the time, as well as his reason for wanting her to get the skills, but since doing so had lost him the chance to learn plenty of new skills of his own she needed to put her all into training it to meet his expectations, namely awakening the skills. She knew she was powerful so she understood how useful it would be for her to get something like that, but she wanted her results fast enough to prove it was worth it.

Even if it means using something like this.

On her head was the circlet Ben had made her before, helping her train her skills all at once despite the general discomfort it caused to her mind. Since they were all lower level she probably wouldn’t have too much trouble raising them for the first bit at least, but she couldn’t help but look forward to getting them all to the fifth level so she could just focus on her telekinesis from there.

And I need to work on my life magic to finish this job and now that I’m one level away from being free from it I need to work on my charm and dark magic, and I absolutely want to be working on my earth magic too…

There was so much to do and so little time to do it all before the next wave but she wanted to try to manage it all somehow, on top of every other thing there was to do in life. She wanted to make sure she was visiting other towns to practice her life magic and she still needed to figure out what she’d be saying to her aunt in a bit, and besides that…

She pursed her lips, as she activated her earth magic, trying to put a spell together and feeling it completely fail as thousands of points of mana left her without achieving anything, thick enough in the air that Aso sensed it and looked at her curiously.

Yep, I still can’t materialize my mana.

She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but the fact that she couldn’t but Ben could left her feeling jealous. Magic was her thing, seeing him reach the pinnacle of it before she did filled her with complicated emotions that she didn’t particularly like that she was feeling.

I’m being dumb, I just need to ask him for some advice on it. That’s another thing for the list.

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She knew that he’d be happy to help if she just asked so it was just something for when she saw him next. For the time being all she could do was focus on other things, so with that goal plain in mind she stretched out her empathy again, looking for her next target as she came head first against the bloodlust of a monster, freezing her in her tracks.

Empathy was a magic that let one feel the emotions of others or allowed the holder to force their own feelings on targets, and usually that was nothing. It was surprising to realize, but unless there was a certain stimulus to promote it, most living things felt very little at a given time, but not so for whatever she’d just brushed up against.

“I feel like I might regret this, but…”

She crystalized her mana and shot it off in the direction she sensed, hitting the beast that was flying above her before she could see it and luring it back, directing Aso to get ready to attack above as they saw just what was coming down on scarlet wings. A demon, its eyes full of bloodlust and madness as it locked onto them to attack.

Bigger than either of them, the edge of each wing was clawed, looking ready to tear into what it could, but unfortunately for it, there was only one, letting Thera easily act as she ripped stone from the ground and entombed all but its head, trapping it.

“Aso, take the kill, it will be good for you.”

Since Thera was on a job beyond the master path, the experience she would gain would be negligible, but that wasn’t true for her friend. Every bit of experience Aso could gain would be valuable to her, so she wanted her to get it.

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