135 – Bonegulch

After completing their daily hunting and training session, Vivi dropped Isabella off at the Institute and brought Saffra back to the manor.

“Well done today,” she told her apprentice. “Two levels. You’re making good progress. And I can see that your runework is getting cleaner.”

Strictly speaking, that might be a lie. Vivi had a phenomenally difficult time telling the difference between even weaker and stronger Titled, much less seeing marginal improvements in a silver-rank teenager. But she could imagine that her statements were true, and more importantly, a teacher was supposed to encourage her student.

As they usually did, though, her words only made Saffra shift in place. She fortunately didn’t insist otherwise and mumble something about how she could’ve done better—a habit Vivi was trying to discourage.

“Thank you, Lady Vivi,” the girl said instead. She reached down to her belt and unhooked the Chalice of Withered Plenty. “Should’ve gotten a level for you too, I think.” She lifted the cup and peered inside, studying the liquid for a second before holding the artifact out.

Vivi took the object and looked in it herself. More liquid pooled at the bottom than they had so far gathered at once. “Maybe two levels, honestly,” she said.

Her stomach turned at what she needed to do. Most people do a lot worse to get stronger, Vivi, she thought chidingly to herself. Stop being a baby. It’s not even actual blood.

Well. It probably isn’t.

Not lingering on that disquieting idea, she tipped the cup back and drank. Like each time before, she couldn’t suppress the shiver that seized her as thick, iron liquid slid down into her stomach. It wasn’t even the uncomfortable taste, her squeamishness fully at fault, but the sheer power held within the small amount of fluid, suffusing every inch of her body.

She might not have a concrete idea how leveling worked, but boosting a level twenty-one-hundred’s capabilities even a fraction had to require energy to boggle the mind.

***

Level Up!

You are now a level 2114 [Archmage].

***

She dismissed the screen and waited with anticipation. No skill acquisition appeared, though, and neither did a second level-up to follow the first. Skills did tend to come in intervals of five, ten, twenty-five, and so on, so she couldn’t be surprised.

Saffra watched with plain interest, obviously suppressing the question dangling on her lips. She likely found it too rude to ask Vivi outright.

“One level, no skill,” Vivi answered.

Saffra’s expression sank in disappointment, though she shook her head a second later. “For you, even a level is amazing.”

Vivi offered the item back to Saffra—

—and a crack split the air, startling them both. Saffra jerked backward, though Vivi only twitched.

She rotated the Chalice an inch to confirm that it was as she feared: a thin fracture ran down the side.

Saffra’s face twisted in horror, and her eyes flicked rapidly between Vivi and the cup of bone.

“Hm,” Vivi said. “Actually, that makes a lot of sense.”

“W-what? What does? What was that?”

The question was probably rhetorical, seeing how the evidence displayed itself readily, but Vivi turned the cup around and showed the crack to Saffra.

“How?” Saffra asked. “And what does that mean?”

“It means it’s not as world-breaking an artifact as I thought,” Vivi said, conflicted. Part of her must have subconsciously expected this, because she felt little surprise and only mildly more disappointment. She tipped the artifact side to side, considering. “There’s a limited number of uses before it’ll fall apart.”

Saffra gawked. “And you don’t care?”

“Even by the standard of the Codex, the Chalice seemed rather absurd.” Vivi held the cup out, and Saffra hesitantly took it. “If we get twenty levels out of it, let alone fifty, it’s still arguably the better of the two.”

Vivi mulled that claim over. Twenty extra levels, versus the Codex? The book was astoundingly useful. Case in point: her current plans to speak with the Archbishop. Even two hundred more levels wouldn’t have somehow lent her the ability to perform healing magic to cure an entire city.

“Twenty? Fifty?” Saffra scrutinized the tiny crack sinking from the cup’s rim with an almost baleful suspicion. For whatever reason, she clearly cared more about the item’s apparent weakness than Vivi did. “That’s it?”

“You probably won’t even hit the halfway point to mithril before it breaks,” Vivi said. “Though it’s impossible to tell. It only just cracked. Who knows how fast it’ll go?”

Vivi would’ve thought she had delivered good news—that the detriment to Saffra’s own progress wouldn’t last forever—but Saffra glared harder at the cup. Her cat tail swished in plain annoyance.

“Huh,” the girl said.

Vivi might not be the most socially insightful person, but she could recognize a discrepancy this obvious. I know she was happy to be ‘useful,’ but something doesn’t line up.

If not for how Isabella had joined them for the leveling session today, Vivi probably wouldn’t have made the connection. But understanding hit her so abruptly her eyebrows nearly shot up.

She doesn’t want to outpace her friend.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Vivi had no doubt that Saffra’s initial reaction—her happiness when she’d learned what the Chalice did, at personal cost—was because she could pay Vivi back. But there were other reasons the girl wanted to slow down her leveling pace too, weren’t there?

Saffra sniffed and affixed the item back to her belt. “That’s lame,” she said. “I thought it was cooler than it was.”

Vivi didn’t respond. She wasn’t sure what to do with the revelation. It was tricky… she still thought Saffra’s best path forward was quick progress, a rapid ascent. But the girl didn’t want that herself, apparently, and not just because she felt like she would be too inexperienced for her level.

The Chalice would prevent quick growth for a while yet, so Vivi didn’t have to decide anything now. She did make a mental note to bring Isabella along on their hunts more often. Assuming Aeris didn’t mind.

“So,” Saffra said. “What else do we have today?”

Vivi set aside her previous thoughts. “Meeting the Princess.”

Saffra tried and failed to hide her dubious expression. “Is that going to end well… like… however it goes?”

“If I play my cards right.”