Rylan and Tamina shared a glance, then rushed forward, already drawing their weapons.

  They found Soren with his rapier out, standing in front of some sort of overgrown lizard. The creature was ten feet long, covered in tiny scales, and its tail swept angrily as its slitted, yellow eyes glared at the young noble.

  And right between them, lay the fat fogfish Rylan had taken down.

  “That carrion lizard is trying to take our lunch!” Tamina hissed, brandishing her sword and shield. “Get it!”

  The lizard took a menacing step forward, bearing its razor-sharp teeth and letting out a low, rumbling growl.

  Soren stepped back. “Ehm, isn’t fighting this thing a bit of a needless risk? Perhaps we should let just it have the fogging fish...”

  Despite his growling stomach, Rylan was tempted to agree. Though he’d really like his knife back, at the very least...

  However, Tamina wasn’t having it. She leapt forward, and lashed out with her sword right as the carrion lizard tried to snatch their prey. It drew its head back just in time to avoid her slash, letting out another hiss.

  “Caution is by no means a sin,” Tamina spoke tersely. “But there are times when you have to make a stand, too. We may be lost down here, but we’re still Quinthar; have some pride.”

  Soren straightened as if stung, then dropped into a ready stance and started circling to the left. The lizard warily eyed him as it backed off a step, but didn’t turn around to leave.

  Rylan hefted his boning knife by the blade and started charging it with mana, creeping a bit closer. After all the practice from the past weeks, he barely had to wave his blade around to keep his Skill active while he waited for his companions to distract the creature and provide him a good opportunity.

  Tamina stepped in aggressively, holding out her shield as if trying to provoke an attack from the lizard. It didn’t take the bait, backing off a little instead, but seemed unwilling to truly move away from the fogfish.

  Soren approached from the other side, and struck out at its flank.

  Rylan noticed a bit of a glow around the tip of the rapier as it darted in. It didn’t appear to be enough, however, as the weapon’s tip still failed to pierce the lizard’s tough scales.

  The creature hissed, but refused to back off. It lashed out with its tail, swinging at Soren’s feet, but Rylan’s friend danced out of the way—literally, judging by the glow coming off his fancy footwork.

  As the lizard turned its head towards Soren, Rylan took a chance and whipped his arm forward.

  His glowing blade flew true and actually pierced the creature’s scales and sank into its neck, eliciting a gurgling hiss. He wasn’t sure if the blow would be fatal, and before he could find out, he picked up a slight rustle from behind him.

  Rylan instinctively jolted forward even while starting to turn around, but he wasn’t fast enough. A second, slightly smaller carrion lizard clamped its jaws down onto his left ankle, and he let out a cry as he went sprawling, though mostly out of shock.

  While the teeth clamped around his feet looked terribly sharp, they hadn’t pierced his skin, thanks to the shimmering layer of mana covering him. Not yet, anyway, as the glow surrounding his skin was rapidly growing dimmer.

  With his heart pounding in his chest, Rylan kicked at the creature’s head, but it didn’t budge in the slightest. Panicked, he grabbed mana from his pool and sent it surging towards his right foot.

  His control was shoddy, and most of it ended up spilling out along the way. The little mana that did make it to his foot didn’t seem to make an appreciable difference in the impact of his kicks, but at least the mana that spilled over seemed to slow down the dimming of his Mana Shell a little.

  It was a stay of execution at best, and he knew it.

  Swearing heartily, Rylan drew his paring knife, almost fumbling the handle, and tried to stab the lizard in the eye. Unfortunately, it closed its lid at the last second, and his knife failed to penetrate the thick, scaly wrinkles scrunched up over its weak parts.

  Desperate, he kept trying, but it was rapidly becoming clear he wouldn’t get anywhere without mana. Despite knowing better, he tried to activate his Skill. However, as expected, the mana around his blade fizzled out when he went to stab.

  Knife-Throwing clearly wasn’t made for this scenario.

  He could try to push mana into the blade manually, but he’d barely succeeded with his foot just now, and his Mana Shell was growing awfully dim.

  So instead, he drew back and activated his Skill again. Getting an accurate throw in from this close up would be difficult; he’d have to spin the blade really fast. Still, it was better than just letting the fogging thing gnaw off his—

  As he charged up his blade, Soren arrived.

  Rylan’s blue-haired friend dove onto the lizard, grabbing its bottom jaw with one hand, and using his other to wedge his rapier into the creature’s mouth and start trying to leverage it open.

  The pressure on Rylan’s ankle decreased a little, but still the lizard refused to let go.

  With Soren covering the thing, Rylan definitely couldn’t make a throw, and even kicking it was probably out. So instead, he focused on directing his mana down his trapped leg and dispersing it around his ankle, in an attempt to shore up the dangerously weak glow of his Mana Shell.

  “Do something!” he yelled at Soren, turning his head to see why Tamina wasn’t helping, only to find her facing off against a third carrion lizard.

  “I’m trying!” Soren replied, his face red as he wrestled with the lizard.

  Finally, he seemed to reconsider his method, and changed tacks. He let go of his rapier’s handle and grabbed it by the blade instead, proceeding to wield it like a miniature spear as he started wildly stabbing the lizard’s head with it.

  Unfortunately, the jabs left rather minor nicks on the creature’s scales, which only caused it to growl and bear down harder.

  “Soren!” Rylan called in alarm, bracing himself as he felt his Mana Shell start to crumble under the relentless pressure.

  In response, Soren lifted his rapier up high. A white glow burst to life around the blade before he brought it down with an angry cry. This time, the scales failed to ward off the blow, and the Soren managed to drive it through the carrion lizard’s eye, into its skull.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  The creature stiffened, then went limp.

  Rylan immediately kicked its maw off his left ankle and scrambled back, staring with some amazement at the light denture marks on his trousers, the only proof he’d just had a giant lizard try to chew his foot off.

  In fact, other than his knee being a little sore, he felt completely fine. If he’d still had any doubts about his decision to buy the second tier of Mana Shell, they were certainly gone now.

  Ethereon be praised!

  Soren sat up, still holding the rapier buried in the lizard’s skull by the blade, a dazed expression on his face.

  A grunt behind Rylan alerted him to the ongoing hostilities, and he turned around just in time to see Tamina pulling her sword out of the third lizard’s flank, a gush of blood following her steel.

  The lizard hissed weakly and started to crawl away on wobbly legs. Tamina started cleaning her blade, either uncaring that the creature was getting away, or confident that it wouldn’t get far anyway. Only when Soren cried ‘Yes!’ and started laughing uncontrollably, did she finally look over with a bemused expression.

  Rylan turned around as well, frowning. “What? What’s so funny?”

  “I... I just...” Soren started, seeming to give up on talking through his laughter with a shake of his head.

  Then, Rylan felt it. The by-now-familiar sensation of a warm breeze coming from some distant place. Except for once, it wasn’t heading for him.

  It flew into Soren, instead.

  Rylan’s eyes widened as the breeze tapered off. “Wait... did that get you a Skill?”

  Soren’s head wobbled up and down like a drunk gull as he continued laughing uncontrollably.

  “Then why are you... did it get you Fencing?!”

  Soren’s renewed burst of laughter confirmed as much.

  Rylan sputtered indignantly. “But... but you weren’t even holding it right!”

  “I know!”

  “We told you,” Tamina said calmly as she came walking over. “It’s all about mana. I guess Ethereon was already satisfied with his ability with the blade. He just needed to properly channel his mana through it in real combat.”

  Rylan was still flabbergasted as she helped him to his feet, easily lifting his full weight in the floaty fog. Soren got up himself, his laughter finally dying down as he drew his rapier from the lizard’s skull.

  “Congratulations,” Tamina said with a small smile. “Guess it’s better to stand and fight sometimes, huh?”

  “You know, I did still almost lose a foot there,” Rylan remarked in a deadpan voice.

  Her face quickly fell, and she glanced down at his legs.

  “I’m all right,” Rylan relented. “My Mana Shell held out. Barely.”

  Something like relief passed over her face, before she drew herself back up and nodded with an air of righteousness that Rylan had begun to recognise as playfully exaggerated. “In that case, I’d say it was just the push Soren needed.”

  Rylan narrowed his eyes at her, crossing his arms over his chest. “And is that really why you wanted us to ‘stand our ground,’ or did you just want to eat that fogfish?”

  She raised a brow at him, her face returned to its usual blank state, but then her stomach let out a rather loud growl.

  Soren immediately burst into laughter again. “Uh oh! Busted!”

  “Stop laughing,” she growled at him, her face growing flush. “We haven’t eaten in hours, it’s just a natural physiological response!”

  “Is fighting a ten-foot-long carrion lizard also a natural physiologic—oww!” Soren cried as Tamina punched his shoulder. “Ryles, she’s getting violent again! Quick, start cooking!”

  Rylan shook his head fondly as the blue-haired noble backed up, Tamina menacingly stalking after him. “Sounds like a plan... but let’s get out of here before the dead lizards attract more scavengers.”

  The flesh of the fogfish was rich and savoury in taste, and soft enough to practically melt in Rylan’s mouth. All in all, it was worth getting his foot nearly chewed off for.

  There was a lot of it, too, more than enough to not only provide them lunch, but dinner as well, later that day.

  Finding a place to rest for the night once again proved a challenge, but they eventually stumbled upon a low rocky cliff, and after following it for a while, found an overhang that formed a natural shelter.

  After dinner, it was once again time to train. However, with Soren having gotten his second Skill, their usual routine had to change.

  Before, Tamina and Soren had been on pretty equal footing while trading blows with their mana-charged reeds, but now that Soren could use his Fencing Skill with the thin red rod, the disparity was too big for either of them to really benefit from sparring.

  Moreover, Soren’s priority right now was to do what Rylan had been doing previously: get a first Rank-Up for his Skill through the Overcharge Augmentation.

  Thus, Tamina was out a training partner, and needed a new one.

  “That’s it,” she said encouragingly as Rylan’s much shorter length of reed started to glow a little. “Steady now, keep your focus on the mana.”

  Rylan tried to do exactly that as he started a slow slashing motion through the air, but it was like trying to hold a wet bar of soap with nothing but two thumbs. Before he even got halfway through the move, his control slipped and the glow flickered out, the mana dispersing.

  He straightened out of his stance with an annoyed sigh.

  Earlier, he’d found out that—with some effort—he could get his Knife-Throwing Skill to accept the short length of reed as a receptacle for his Skill. However, Tamina had made it very clear that Rylan couldn’t use his Skill during this training at all. Otherwise he would only be working towards an Augmentation of his existing Skill, rather than convincing Ethereon to provide him with Knife-Fighting.

  And trying to use his Knife-Throwing Skill for melee combat as well might be nice in the short term, but it would be a real waste in the long run.

  “You’re getting there,” Tamina promised, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll be trading blows in no time. And either way, I appreciate you splitting your focus for me.”

  Rylan smiled at her. “Trust me, you’re doing me a favour. I was going crazy just sitting there with my leg propped up. I definitely wouldn’t want to be Soren right now.”

  “You know I can hear you, right?” Soren replied from where he was sitting with his eyes closed, his rapier glowing in his lap.

  “You should still spend some time working towards Running, too,” Tamina advised, ignoring the young noble. “But having variety in exercises is probably not a bad thing either way, as it’s all working towards mana control.”

  “And it’ll help me stay sane, which is a plus,” Rylan joked.

  Tamina smiled at him, then seemed to hesitate. “Actually, I’ve been considering some new training for myself as well... would you mind taking a break to help me out with that?”

  “Sure! I’m getting kinda low on mana anyway. What are you trying to do?”

  Tamina gave him a blank stare.

  “She can’t tell you that,” Soren chimed in.

  “Right,” Rylan said. “Your Contract. Then, what do you want me to do?”

  “I need you to, ehm, lift me up.”

  It took some awkward fumbling for them to find a proper way to do so, but they eventually settled on Rylan standing behind her, and lifting her by the armpits. Or trying to, anyway. She was clearly making him wait with attempting to lift her until she’d activated Footwork every time, and it was significantly harder to get her off the ground than it should’ve been in the floaty fog.

  It wasn’t hard to guess what she was trying, especially after she said she’d gotten the idea for the training from their encounter with the Ruby-Grade shark Malequint. The interesting part, really, was that she was trying to anchor herself while standing on sand.

  “Again, please,” Tamina said, spreading her arms once more.

  Another tingle ran up Rylan’s spine, trying to pull his attention in a certain direction, but he ignored it, and placed his hands in the designated spots, trying not to focus on how smooth her skin on the right was, or how cold and hard the steel on the left.

  When he’d first realised it was a prosthetic, he’d been fascinated but afraid to stare. After Tamina had caught him sneaking one too many a glance, she’d rolled her eyes and asked if he’d like to help her oil it.

  He’d helped her out several times since, marvelling over the superb craftsmanship. But recently, she’d stopped asking, having returned to doing it herself. And he couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t been using the prosthetic as much, and couldn’t lift it quite as high as her arm...

  The conditions down here can’t be helping it... How much longer is it going to keep working without some proper maintenance?

  He decided not to ask and just silently kept assisting her training. Regardless of the answer, they had no choice but to keep going, and pray that the being that needed their help would help them in return.

  After she was done, he’d probably work on Running some more, and during his watch, he’d focus on working with the reed again.

  He could not recommend the experience of having a carrion lizard chew on one’s ankle, but at least it was an excellent motivator. Whatever was waiting for them at the end of the mysterious pull, he was going to be as ready for it as he could be.

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