During the following day, the group was still talking about the spar between Blue and Alex. The assassin ended up winning most of their duels, to everyone's surprise. Blue was too focused on using her legacy to fight properly against her friend. Only when she went back to her typical fighting style that she won once.

Hera was feeling better, but when the subject lingered too much on Stormcloud, she would try to change it or just leave the conversation. Helena and Silah were the only ones that noticed her annoyance, but they didn't say anything while around the group.

Before lunch, Hera, Helena, and Bonnie went to the doorway to meet with Shane. It took some time before she arrived. At first, Helena received a text telling her to be in the doorway by 10. Then, Shane wrote another one, letting them know that there was a delay and they would arrive at 11. The last one was the odd one.

'Drive is bitch - 12:30.'

"Is she saying that the drive is a bitch or is driving a bitch?" Hera asked.

"I have no idea. Should we head back home?" Bonnie gestured to the tunnel.

"Yeah, I don't want to wait for hours here," Helena put one hand on her neck, "Man, my neck is killing me."

"Bad night?" Hera asked as they began to walk.

"Yeah. I was working on that spell and fell asleep on my desk. I took some meds earlier, but I'm still stiff."

"Do you want me to try a healing spell? It won't be anything special, but it might help," Hera's healing spells worked much better when used during fights, but they could still do something outside of combat.

"Sure, but It's just my body complaining about what I'm doing. I got used to not sleeping when you were… you know."

Hera walked over and cast a minor healing spell to help Lena's neck, "Yeah, I do, but I'm here now, and you have to sleep more."

"I know, I know," Helena replied.

"I don't want to ruin that cute moment, but I think I have a better spell for that," Bonnie chimed in.

"Really?" Hera turned around.

"Yeah. Who do you think kept her alive during all those months?" Bonnie walked over and used a different spell. One that helped with muscle spasms and general stiffness from staying long hours sitting down, "It won't help during a battle, but for these kinds of things, the spell is great."

"Oh, right. I completely forgot about that," Helena moved her neck, feeling much better.

"I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot most of what happened during those months," Bonnie rolled her eyes.

Helena just looked away. There was still some tension between them from the time that Hera was gone. To make things worse, Hera didn't know what to say. The few times she tried to intervene seemed to only make things worse. As they walked by the guild, Hera remembered that there was a reward she had yet to receive. The S tier skill.

"Do you guys mind if I stop by the guild? I want to check something."

"What is it?" Helena was stretching her neck and arms.

"I got a tier S skill from the guild. I know it's just the compendium on how to get the skill, so I wanted to see if I can access the list here," Hera explained.

"Oh, that's a good idea. Any ideas what you want to get?" Bonnie finished healing Lena.

"Not really. I want to see what I can pick. Do either of you have any suggestions?"

"Sorry, even after all this time, I don't have any skill that can be considered S tier," Helena shrugged.

"Same, and information about those skills is hard to come by," Bonnie added.

They kept walking, and in a few minutes, arrived at the guild. The building was located near the guard to both keep an eye on the people coming and going and to let the guards of Boothudurn familiarize themselves with the differences in culture. When Hera and her friends arrived, Sevaris was there delivering some feathers for a quest.

"Hey, Hera! How is it going? It's been a while," the dwarf smiled.

"Hey. I'm doing well. Yeah, sorry for me and Blue just vanishing. I hope we didn't cause trouble," Hera smiled back.

"Not at all. We already had a good number of guards for the supply runs. Now with the guild, we can be even more laid back. As long as we buy the meat from them. The king and the captain set everything up so we can sell spare items to the guild."

They talked for a few more moments, just catching up until Sevaris left for his patrol. Since the number of dungeon runs had been reduced, some guards now would patrol the city before or after going to the Wooly Plains. This led to an increased number of guards walking around, probably just to watch out for any problems caused by this new situation.

After talking to the man, Hera asked around for her reward. The guild had her in the system, and one of the clerks led her to a private room that people could use when browsing the guild database. Before she was left alone, the clerk gave a quick explanation about how getting skills would work. She could buy the compendium for any skill available. After paying or redeeming her reward, she would receive the information on how to get the skill, increase its rank, and even some tips and tricks about its use directly on her tablet. However, there was one type that was a bit different. The New Dawn was in the process of developing training programs for each skill. There were new training rooms called Augmented Simulation Zones, or A-heart rooms as the people were calling them because of the shape created by the acronym ASZ that was painted on its walls.

By buying one of those training programs, these A-heart rooms could create a simulation to help you unlock the skills at a staggering speed. For basic skills like [Observe] or [Inspect], an average recruit took less than 10 minutes to learn the skill. More advanced skills could require more time, but even so, there wasn't a single skill so far that took more than a week to learn. Some S-tier skills already had the training programs, while others would be just regular compendiums.

Unfortunately, if Hera stopped to read the entire list of available skills, she would be there for days. If she opened the complete list, there were over 100 thousand pages each with 50 skills for her to pick from. It was a good thing that the search engine was very well made. If Hera looked up a term like 'ailments,' any skills that could have some relation to that would appear, and they all had tags like 'passive,' 'defensive,' 'stackable,' and many others that would give her a glimpse of what the skills would do. When she filtered by S tier skills, the prices almost made her fall out of her chair. The cheapest one was around 5 million gold, and the ones with the training program were at least 50 million.

On the one hand, the prices seemed ridiculous. On the other, for high-level explorers, this wouldn't be that expensive. It was very likely that people at deeper layers could simply stock up on S rank skills just to be safe.

Some time passed while she searched for something interesting, but it was hard to pick. There were too many options, and a lot of them seemed interesting. There was a 'Master of Poison' that could make her poisons several times stronger and more versatile. Some fighting styles that could fit well with her Subtle Strike. Yet, she didn't feel excited by any of that. She was going to explore, and she hoped that the skill she picked could help with that. As she browsed through the database, one skill finally stood out from the rest. She opened the skill, and the actual description that was given by the system was there.

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Shaper of Mana

Rank: 1

A skill that improves your control over the mana present on your spells. It allows you to better control how the mana acts inside your spells and even break away from the basic form of a complete spell without the need to create a new one.

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That one seemed very interesting. The explanation was simple, but with some creativity, it could be very powerful. Her first thought was that she might be able to move her mana reinforcement to avoid wasting so much mana while controlling her chakram. Another idea was to turn her poison needle into a string that could hit multiple targets at once. Those were just the first things that came to mind. This sounded like the type of skill that the more she practiced, the more powerful it would become. To make this even better, this was one of the skills that had a training program, and getting it already came with a reservation for using the A-heart room for a week or until she got the skill.

Knowing that the more she thought about it, the more she would start doubting her decision, Hera chose the skill and used her voucher to pay for it. The compendium went directly to her tablet, and another notification appeared letting her know that she had up to 168 hours available to use an ASZ room within a month. Hera got up to leave, but before meeting with Bonnie and Helena, she asked the clerk if she could see the skills outside the guild. There were some weaker and cheaper skills that could help her a lot. From some basic elemental resistances to controlling her breathing in a better way. She could, but only skills up to the A tier, and to get the compendium, she had to drop by a guild branch. The clerk couldn't explain why things were like that, but it was how it worked. Another thing he said was that this guild was equipped with a couple of A-heart rooms, courtesy of the New Dawn.

After that, Hera went back to her friends. Part of her wanted to go straight for the training room and start getting the skill, but Shane should be around soon.

"Hey, did you get something interesting?" Helena and Bonnie were hanging out in the guild lounge.

"Yeah. Let's head home. We can talk there," Hera said.

One thing about the skill compendiums was that there was no rule that forbade anyone from sharing the skills they got from the guild with their party. Of course, everyone had to figure out how to get the skill by themselves, but now that Hera had an S-tier skill, the whole party would know how to unlock it.

To learn it, they had to force themselves to change the spells midway. It wasn't simply about altering the formula or how the magic was created but making it change after it was already complete and active. Having a channeling spell seemed to help with that. However, the compendium also warned that it usually took months, if not years, to learn the skill even by following the steps that it laid out. Increasing the skill rank seemed slightly easier. Or at least more manageable. You were supposed to use the [Shaper of Mana] skill to turn one spell into another. The example given by the compendium was to use a fireball spell and shape it into a flaming barrier.

Blue had already gotten an S rank skill and shared the compendium with everyone. It was called Battle Trance, and it gave a buff to all her attributes the longer she kept fighting. The one she got didn't have a training program, so everyone would have to work hard to get the skill. The issue with unlocking it was that it required you to be completely focused on the fight for long periods of time.

After discussing with everyone for a while, it was finally time to meet Shane in the doorway. Once more, Hera, Bonnie, and Helena headed out to meet her and finally find out what the lead was that they would have to follow.