“Why am I so bad at this?” Ben yelled out after hammering his twentieth monster that day. They’d been hunting for demons for the last two days now without luck, and while everyone else would be busy fighting stronger creatures that Thera would draw to them by removing her cloak and resistance band, Ben was put in charge of handling the smaller beasts, making sure to call out for help if things got too bad, and he was hating every minute of it.

Aside from how unpleasant it felt when bones broke under each of his blows, the attacks left everything he killed practically unusable for materials, meaning not only could he not make use of the parts later, but he also couldn’t get any practice for his dismantling with the condition he left them in. Since he’d just finished taking apart everything he’d gotten with his knife training, that meant he would only be able to practice with whatever the others killed.

“It’s not good to be in such a rush,” Wedrow told him as he observed everyone fight from the side. “The zeroth level can sometimes take weeks or months to learn, instead be grateful you got the first one so fast.”

“I get what you’re saying, but the sooner I get it the sooner I can relax and focus on training the skills I really care about, I think it should be pretty clear I’m not a fighter.” He’d already had to have Steph heal him a couple of times today when something got too close or he got careless. It was nothing major, but he wouldn’t be able to survive the things the others had been fighting, especially the current one.

Calling it a dragon would be too generous, but it was some sort of lizard monster. About the size of a lion with six legs and dark green scales, it seemed to be able to use air magic, whipping the winds around its attackers and battering them with dust and debris, trying to push off both them and their attacks, though to no avail.

Against it, Will, Steph, and Thera stood strong. As mages, Steph and Thera stood to the back to avoid being swept up by the gale and fought with a strategy they’d worked out after the first day of fighting, with Steph opening gates between Theras attacks and the beast to reduce its ability to react to the small boulders flying towards it, while Will would run in between spells to attack head-on, and was doing surprisingly good as well.

With his combination of tough skin, enhanced strength, and unarmed master as his blessed skills he was well equipped to fight head to head against the beast, but he had two other things going for him as well. The first was that while Steph was setting up gates for Theras magic, she was also using time magic on Will to speed him up, making him move faster and react quicker. The second was all him though, something he’d apparently learned while he was training. Sometime in the last year, he’d managed to learn an augmentation skill.

Augmentation skills were fairly common among people with warrior or combat builds, but Ben had never actually seen one in person before, and it was another class of skill he’d never be able to get himself. The reason for that was simple, much like magic skills, they were dependent on the affinities a person already possessed, meaning there was no way he could learn any with the low ones he was stuck with.

It would wrap a person's body or weapons in the mana as a way to inflict extra damage compared to what the attacks would normally be able to achieve, and at a significantly lower mana cost than if one was to compare it against a mage trying to achieve the same result, making it far more suited to warriors that would typically have a lower mana capacity. Of course, given how high all of Will's attributes were when he got to the world, he could have just learned a magic instead and been able to use it in a complete form, but Ben felt this style suited his friend more.

As for the specific one Will learned, it looked like he’d gone with something even more surprising than just having the skill be tied to one specific affinity. Each augmentation skill had the same properties of the affinities they would be tied to, so supposedly fire, earth, and death ended up being the most popular choices when it came to fighting, but Will had managed something significantly more rare and managed to get a lightning augmentation.

Just as there were magic skills that required decent affinities for multiple types of magic and could rarely be achieved without awakening the skills, the same held true for augmentations, possible to an even greater degree. While it would be possible for a mage that had water, air, and light magic to weave together lightning spells at an increased difficulty and mana cost, a person couldn’t just use water, air, and light augmentations to produce a lightning one, meaning that Will had to train in those three augmentations at the same time, as well as got exceptionally lucky to actually get the combined skill, and from the looks of it, it was worth it.

Between each of the girls' spells, Will would rush in and deliver a barge of electrified punches, jolts of energy running up his arm as he did before jumping away as it tried to attack him and creating another opening for the next earth bullet.

Thera was sticking with that spell for now since the sacrificial enchantments on her staff could handle it, as well as the fact that even though it was still unreasonably large, she was able to make it smaller now than before her magics leveled up, and as a result could fire more off without putting more strain on the staff and enchantments on it, meaning she wouldn’t destroy it during the remaining few days they were out here.

The creature was surviving her attacks easier than most had in the past, but they were deep in the wild instead of towards towns, and since there wasn’t a large amount of hunters and adventurers out to train and cull dangerous creatures, the apex predators around were able to get the time to grow stronger and more deadly. Even combining her magic with Steph’s, the creature was able to react and attempt to dodge or lower the severity of the blow with a blast of air between the attack. While those attempts had few successes, it did keep them from landing a critical blow, instead just wearing down the beast's defenses.

Still it was enough. Scales cracked and a body that was battered and broken, once Will pulled away after his final round of punches Thera fired one more spell and brought the creature down.

Once its death was confirmed Ben quickly reapplied the enchantments to Thera’s staff and checked its condition before he got to dismantling it as the rest tried to lure in more monsters to train against.

As he was taking it apart he couldn’t help but think that Thera looked like she was enjoying herself. This was how she’d always wanted to hunt after all, head-on against powerful creatures, pushing herself and her magic to its potential, and with Will and Steph she could. Even if Ben finished this trip with the knife and hammer wielder skills, he wouldn’t be a fighter, he simply didn’t have the drive.

What that meant then was that she needed to find a real party to adventure with, a thought that left him feeling more complicated than he’d expected. Their hunting together was always supposed to be just until she found a new party, but he’d had fun doing it with her. Getting to test out his tool was exciting, and constantly trying to figure out how to improve her staves gave him a good challenge. Not to mention he just liked her company. Back when he’d go out hunting alone to gather supplies for his crafting it was a boring affair aside from when he’d actually get his catch, now he had someone he could talk to, to pass the time, and through that had grown their friendship. It wasn’t like they would lose that if they stopped hunting together, especially not while they lived under the same roof, but it was a change he wasn’t sure he’d like.

Still, I should probably talk to her about it at some point. Enough people in Stonewall seem open enough with her now that she could probably find a real party and grow her skills with them.