Rain poured incessantly on Perseverance. We idled around in the castle because we couldn’t exactly go outside and enjoy our day off. Tina laid her head on my lap on my bed. Adam ate some peanuts and chatted with me and Tina, but Solina, who slouched on my ‘executive’ chair, was suspiciously quiet.

Eventually, she got tired and stood up. The beef jerky in Sam’s hand almost fell out because he jumped when she pushed the chair aside. She walked over and pointed to him with her kebab stick. “Alright, Mr. Healer, what the demon’s butt was that?!”

Ah, yes, the girl with no chill, the girl who couldn’t read the mood, the girl that loved chatting with the elephant in the room instead of avoiding it. Sure, I planned to ask him about it in private, but it wasn’t like I wanted personal details. I just wanted to learn more about skills and what made them different from spells, and since he could interchange between both of them, I thought he’d be the perfect person to teach me. But Solina couldn’t give a shit.

“How’d you do it? Hmm?” She got up in his face. “Hmm? What’s your secret? How can you use spells and skills like that?”

“Leave him alone, Lina,” Tina scoffed.

Solina spun around. “But aren’t you curio—”

A peanut bounced off her forehead. “Bullseye!” Adam snickered.

The crazy girl got a running start and jumped on him. He rolled over closer to me and Tina on the bed so he’d avoid her. “What? Do you want some? You could’ve just asked!”

“Those aren’t the nuts I wanna smash!” She grabbed him by the ankle, roughhoused with him, and eventually claimed his nuts – literally, in case you were wondering.

“Alright, it’s weird to tell another man this, but you’re way too far and way too silent, buddy. It’s awkward.” Adam patted a space on the bed. “Come on. We have snacks.”

Am I a vending machine?

“Yeah, come over here Mysterious Man,” Solina also patted the spot, “we’ve got a couple of questions we’d like to a—”

Another peanut hit her. “Give it a rest.”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh at their shenanigans.

I wished this moment could last forever. Times like this were what I had in mind when I decided to live without regrets; this was all I needed. Perhaps the circumstances I met them under weren’t the best, but I was glad I met them anyway.

“And what of you?” Sam asked me. “Are you curious about my past as well?”

Huh? I wasn’t paying too much attention to their conversation when he came over to the bed. Am I? You bet your fucking ass I am. What was that heroic shit before? No normal person could do that and live, I think. “Truthfully, yeah.”

“Well, it’s not much of a secret.” He shrugged. “Have you heard of the wyvern mountain in Skaljorn?” We nodded and he continued, “Some years back, the monsters there went into a frenzy. So, adventurers got sent to deal with it. In my country, there’s a hatred towards healers in the rural parts, and I was following in my brother’s footsteps as a healer, so the adventurers from my village picked me up and left me for dead in the wyvern mountains. Stuff happened, and I kind of lost my mind because of stuff that happened before, so them putting me there was something of a breaking point for me.”

He sighed. “Long story short, I had to kill my way out, and I had to eat. So, I ate the stuff I killed. During my escape from the mountains and the forest surrounding it, I realized I could use skills to attack and spells to heal and protect myself.”

Adam was heavily invested in the story. “I heard those forests are huge. How many days did you spend there?”

“Who knows?” The healer continued snacking on a kebab that Solina handed him. “Probably around a month.”

Adam laughed weakly. “That’s, unreal. Any survivalist would think that’s impossible if they didn’t see you in action.”

I found his story rather interesting. He had to kill high level monsters, so he levelled up fast. Tina had to kill demons, which were naturally high in level, and she became an expert wizard. I whipped out my grimoire and it opened up what information it had on whatever this world’s experience system was. Holy-moly, there actually is an XP system?! So, there’s such a thing as levels! But what does levelling up even give you? I read on, and realized one basically gained new skills and higher ranks of known skills. Levels also gave more HP and MP, as well as new spells depending on the type of spells were you casting before or what you were good at doing. No wonder they got better when I allowed them to just kill the undead summons. Do they even realize they gain XP like in a game or do they just think they get stronger from regular life-experience? We could do some serious power-levelling if that’s the case. I was having all sorts of ideas.

“Don’t worry,” Tina said, “she does this all the time. We can’t understand what the book’s saying either.”

That statement made me look up. Wait, so there was no need to hide the book’s pages? Interesting. Hmm, grimoire, can I invite them to my party and share XP? It flipped to another page, and there was a prompt asking me if I’d like to invite Tina Morgauss to my party.

I fucking LOL’d.