A shake of her head and another sigh, “Almost got it. Almost. Was that really necessary? Not that I mind, but…”

“Figured you’d have an easier time learning Lover’s Breath, considering how I learned it,” Zelsys grinned, draping her arm around the cyclops and beginning to walk again. “Though on second thought, you’d probably make better use of the Fog-breathing method I’ve been using up until now.”

The markswoman’s face remained thoroughly flushed for a little while, until she stammered out, “H-how you learned it? Did last night…”

“Seems to be the case. I used it fighting the man-eater, it’s like you can just keep going for ages with a single breath,” she continued to really drive the point home, glad to have swerved the tone of their conversation away from horrific mutations and the aftershocks of the war.

It didn’t take them much longer to get back to the town gates, and though the guards gave them strange looks, they dared not accost them. The walk back to Riverside Remedies was almost uncannily uneventful, and they got back to their room without any further incident.

Zefaris sat down at the writing desk and took to cleaning Pentacle with the maintenance kit that it came with, while Zelsys shed her combat gear and laid back on the bed, swiping through the Tablet’s readouts in an attempt to discern what exactly it was that the DETAILS function did.

The first choice - a trait.

SURVIVOR’S INSTINCT Type: Sensory Enhancement Trigger: Situational Effects: Situational Awareness C+, Sense Motive C-, Danger Sense B-, Advancement: Survive Dangerous Events A gut feeling. A little voice in the back of your head. The feeling of being looked at. Your instincts will never lead you astray.

She didn’t know what she had expected. A numerical readout? Some sort of concrete quantifier for how much more accurate her instincts were compared to the average human? Of course this trait wouldn’t be good to show the details function, it was too esoteric.

Another one.

LESSER GREAT-CLEAVER EXPERTISE Type: Weapon Skill Trigger: Wield a Weapon (Great-cleaver) Effects: Great-cleaver Maneuvering C+, Great-cleaver Wound Severity B- Advancement: Improve with a Weapon (Great-cleaver)

The great-cleaver is a beastly tool of butchery and prodigal strength, yet belies a deceptive dexterity which requires an equally deceptive amount of skill to draw out. The difference between a novice of the great-cleaver and a Mountain-cutter is as wide as that between a novice swordsman and a Sword-saint.

This was far closer to what she had expected. Just for good measure, she checked one more trait.

FOG-BREATHING Type: Self-Empowerment, Cultivation Trigger: Breathe and Focus Effects: Dependent on Method Advancement: Develop a Unique Method

“To breathe is to live. To breathe the essence of Aer is to be most alive of all…”

Back to wishy-washy musings it was, then. “I already have a method that comes naturally, why’s it not showing up in the techniques list?” she wondered, frustrated by the Tablet’s apparent refusal to acknowledge the way in which she used Fog-breathing well before having developed a named method for doing so. She swiped to the techniques screen, and sure enough, it still only showed Lover’s Breath.

Perhaps it needed an attached memory and a specific method for the device to consider it legitimate? It couldn’t hurt to try.

The memory was easy - the moment when she readied herself to slay the Colossal Failure, back in the bunker.

The method, equally so - even though she had never written it down, she knew exactly how it went, she had done it many times even in just a couple days.

A deep, continuous breath to fill the lungs as far as they’ll go, then controlled, sharp exhalations, using up the lung capacity as if it were fuel in a tank.

Zelsys focused on her intention to codify this method of hers, fully confident that if something like Lover’s Breath could come about through coincidence, surely she could intentionally create a technique.

She was right.

Just below Lover’s Breath, there flickered into being another listing.

TECHNIQUES Lover’s Breath Unnamed Breathing Technique - Name Technique

Under the assumption that naming it would make calling out the technique’s name empower it or make it easier to trigger, Zelsys decided on something innocuous. Something she could weave into conversation, exactly unlike she had back at the roadside ambush when she used Lover’s Breath.

“A deep breath,” she thought, and so it was. Not bothering to check the details, she figured this would be enough to make the breathing method more likely to take.

“You want to try the other way I do Fog-breathing?” she asked Zef, sitting up on the bed and crossing her legs.

Her answer was just a simple, “Sure, why not.”

It started simply - they sat on the bed opposite one another, and Zelsys followed the train of logic that came naturally in trying to teach Zefaris the breathing method. A deep breath in, filling the lungs to their absolute capacity, and sharp breaths out whenever one needed to perform a physical endeavor, like rationing fuel within an engine.

The markswoman quickly grasped the mechanics of the breathing method, but even with the assistance of Zel’s puffing Fog into her face, she couldn’t seem to breathe more than a miniscule quantity of Fog with every breath.

Enraptured by his discovery, Makhus made a spontaneous decision. He decided he would try to distill an Azoth elixir from the blood sample, just to see if Zel’s blood really contained microscopic Azoth stones. The glassware setup was already present in the lab, all he had to do was dissolve all the blood into an Alkahest solution and run it through the setup.

Were everything to go to plan and were his hypothesis correct, he would be able to extract some fragmentary essence of what Zelsys was, thus proving his hypothesis. He took no notice of the distant sound of the doorbell, correctly assuming it was just Zel and Zef returning. Alchemist that he was, Makhus maintained his ironclad focus on getting everything set up just right, watching and waiting with unyielding attentiveness that could only be cultivated by days of standing guard in an active warzone.

Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. Half an hour turned to an hour, then to an hour and a half.

The doorbell rang again, a pair of heavy boots stomped up the stairs, and it was gone. Sigmund was back.

And still Makhus continued to watch the blood sample dissolve, ever so slowly.