Rory needed a second to figure out how he had actually reached Cerulean I. When he checked his [Status], he found his Sigils of Weaving, Warding, and Stats were at Cerulean III, Argent X, and Argent IX respectively, while the Sigils of Knowledge and Mercantilism were both at Cerulean I. He had Woven the Anvil of Sigil Warding to get another Sigil of Warding, which he had subsequently combined with his existing one to raise its Tier.

He wasn’t as good as Viv at math, and as high as the combination of Sigils looked, he doubted the average ended up at Cerulean I. Rory started summing and dividing, and eventually found his suspicions to be true. The average still ended at Argent X, not Cerulean I.

But the average also led into decimal territory, not whole numbers. That was when he recalled that there were percentages attached to all Sigils’ Tiers to show how close they were to advancing. Maybe his personal Tier counted those percentages towards the next Tier, which had made him reach Cerulean I. That was an interesting boon he hadn’t counted on.

“Where do you want this thing, Rory?” Allen asked as he untied the monster from the car.

“Uh.” Rory was too distracted to think about anything other than the implications of his new Tier. “Why did you even bring it here?”

“Thought you could Weave it into something useful.”

That wasn’t wrong. He pointed vaguely to a corner. “Just leave it over there.”

As Allen pulled off the monster from the back of the vintage convertible, Rory hurried back inside. He didn’t even care about lunch anymore. There were more important matters to take care of.

It took a minute, but he was able to root through his backpack, but Rory eventually pulled out the Sigil of Wielding. The rapid thumping of his heart slowed down. He really should have kept the Sigil in a better pocket. Rory didn’t want to think about what he would have done if he had lost it.

Just as he was about to insert it into his new Sigil slot, there was a flicker of something he couldn’t understand. It was an internal sensation, like he was on the verge of some breakthrough in understanding but missing a key piece.

Rory frowned. His Sigil of Knowledge had just advanced Tiers. This could be something that was coming from it.

He looked through his [Status] and focused on the Sigil of Knowledge.

Sigil of Knowledge

[Cerulean I] grants passive deep information about the world, passive storage and retention, and systematic insight. Active allows greater depth and insight.

Stats

Type: Concept

Rarity: Exceptional

Tier: Cerulean I [0%]

Efficiency: Medium [30%]

Systematic insight. That had to be what was causing this strange sensation like there was more he could dig into. Rory gripped the Sigil of Wielding tightly, wondering how he could make his Sigil of Knowledge passively show this insight.

Well, it didn’t work the way he was hoping it would. There was no big burst of specific information that would help him find out more about the Sigil of Wielding.

But he did get a trickle of information from the Sigil of Knowledge—apparently, most of the base materials needed to Weave a Sigil of Wielding into being were Earthly stuff. Only one necessary component was an Otherworlder material. Of course, Rory wasn’t told what exactly that material was.

But this was good. This meant that there were other ways of creating Sigils apart from simply Weaving real-world, tangible things. He was just going to have find out what those exact ingredients were, somehow.

“You found something, didn’t you?” Viv’s eyes were shining like how Rory’s had to be. “Don’t tell me you’ve reached Cerulean?”

Rory grinned so widely, he was sure his face would split in two.

“You did!” Viv cheered, then wrapped him in a rapid hug. “Oh wow, congrats!”

Rory held her for a few seconds, laughing quickly, then pulled himself back, suddenly feeling bashful. “It’s just Cerulean. You’ll reach it soon too, and the others.”

She punched his shoulder lightly. “Stop selling yourself short, dear. You’re excited about this! That makes me excited! You’ve been working your butt off, and you’ve finally gotten it. That’s incredibly amazing.”

A liquid warmth flooded Rory’s chest. He wanted to cry a little bit. But the others nearby were already giving them very strange looks and he decided he’d hold his tear shedding for later. Right now, he had things to test.

“I need to see how the staff works,” he said. Rory started looking around. “Just need to remember where I placed it.”

“I’ve got you.” Viv went over to talk with Evelyn for a moment, who nodded at whatever she said, the newcomers watching on curiously. Then she circuited through the centre of the main hall before returning to him, the lich’s metal staff in her hand. “Here you go.”

Rory smiled. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Let’s go test it out.”

“Is this a date?”

Viv laughed, despite looking like she wanted to slap her forehead. “Yes, fine, it’s a date. A date to get you some practice defending yourself. And I know the perfect spot.”

Rory rose. “If you’re talking about the courtyard, it’s occupied unfortunately.”

“Nope. Follow me, dear.”

“Hold on. Let me take care of something first.”

Viv looked on curiously as Rory left her and found his way to Miles. He handed over the Sigil of Experience and told him to make good use of it. There was no time to answer Miles’s questions, though. Viv was waiting.

With a spring in his step, Rory returned to his wife and picked up his skull-topped staff, making sure he had some Mana as they started up the roundabout, twisting stairs. He was a little ashamed the climb left him out of breath and wheezing a little. Viv didn’t stop until they had reached the very top, and Rory was slapped in the face by a fierce wind when he finally halted.

“You know,” he said. “I didn’t even think this place had a roof.”

“It’s a building.” Viv grinned at him, her silvery hair fluttering in the breeze. “All buildings have roofs, silly.”

“Yes, yes. I just wasn’t expecting it to be a flat roof we can stand on.”

“Forget standing, we can fight on this one.”

Rory laughed nervously. “Fight?”

“Whip that staff up, dear. It’s time to show me what you’ve got.”

The springiness Rory had been filled with now bubbled higher as nervous energy. Viv took up her position on the other end of the roof. They were standing in a flat area the size of the gardens below, bounded on all sides by steep gables and valleys. Only the towers stood higher, and he wondered if Jerome or Mikey could see them.

That made him realize privacy wasn’t really going to be an option anymore. So much for some alone time with his wife.

Viv clapped loudly. “Let’s go. We don’t have all day.”

“What do you want me to do?” Rory asked, turning back to face her. “Shoot you with ice and freeze you to death?”

She snorted. “You actually think you can hit me?”

“Is that a challenge?”

“You bet your sagging butt it is.”

Rory grunted. He placed the end of his staff on the ground, trying to recall all the motions he had seen the lich do. It made him feel a little self-conscious, though Viv was the only one here.

“Ready?” he asked.

“I’ve been ready since we first met. Come on, already.”

Rory almost laughed again. It was sometimes ridiculous how competitive Viv could get.

Taking a deep breath, Rory focused on the Sigil of Rending Blizzard in his staff and stabbed it forward. A blistering blast of blue ice erupted out of the skull and shot towards Viv, charging at her like a crossbow bolt.

Somehow, she was fast enough to dodge it without using her powers. The bolt of ice sailed over the roof’s edge and fizzled out to nothing, a few sprinkles of ice floating down.

“Too slow,” she said. “Can you make it faster?”

Rory grunted. He hadn’t held anything back, yet his effort had been rather abysmal. Thankfully, the staff wasn’t that heavy despite being all metal, so he was able to swing it around without much difficulty. Viv managed to evade his attacks without trouble, no matter how he threw his icy bolts.

The combination of her Sigils made her a little too good at evading.

Rory tried a different tactic. He swung his staff in an arc, throwing out a crescent wave of cold rushing across the roof. It was even slower than the icy bolts, but he didn’t have to worry. One area it had the advantage in was that it covered the whole roof, leaving no space to dodge.

For the first time, Viv activated her Sigil of Omnipresent Sabre and slashed the red sword through the wave of cold, dissipating it to nothing.

“You caught me off-guard there,” she said with a little smile. “Good job. But it’s not strong enough.”

Rory nodded. “Not yet.”

They carried on. Part of the point of practicing was that the Sigil within the staff was still weak. He might not be making much progress towards actually hitting Viv, but every attempt made the Sigil of Rending Blizzard grow stronger.

Eventually, Rory’s proficiency at casting with his staff grew well enough that Viv was using her sword to escape more often than not. Frequent slashes carved through the air as she evaded Rory’s quick combination of attacks.

When she dodged his first blast of ice, Rory followed with an instant wave of cold. The frost on the floor made it harder for Viv to move, and he capitalized by immediately throwing another icy bolt. That’s when Viv was forced to use her Omnipresent Sabre to teleport away. Rory was slowly cornering her on the roof.

Of course, things would’ve been very different if Viv made an effort to fight back.

“You’re getting better at this,” she said. Her smile said she was enjoying the exercise.

Rory smiled back. “Thanks to you. This practice is going better than I thought it would. Though there’s more I’d like to try.”

“Oh?”

Rory stepped back and recalled another one of the lich’s manoeuvres. He twirled his staff over his head for a few swirls, then quickly pulled it down before stabbing it high into the sky again. At the apex of its rise, the skull glowed blue and blasted out an erupting blizzard.

Viv’s shout was lost in the chaos of wind, snow, and ice. Rory was overwhelmed too. He’d thought he would be a sea of calm in the maelstrom, but he was hammered by the storm as well. In seconds, he’d lost his footing and was lying on the ground, pummelled by the wintry gale and nearly frozen stuck. Thankfully, his loss of control shut down the blizzard in moments.

Rory didn’t wait for the ice keeping him trapped to melt. He activated his Weaving and let the little lines of light turn it all into a few whitish-blue Sigils of Ice, its image consisting of nothing but a glassy white cube.

New Sigil!

You’ve obtained a Sigil of Ice. Perfect for those blistering days when you need to chill.

[Cerulean III] allows creation, manipulation, and imbuing of element in a 28-meter radius.

Stats

Type: Element

Rarity: Ordinary

Tier: Cerulean III [0%]

Efficiency: Low [21%]

“What in the world, Rory?” Viv groaned from the other ends of the roof. She was getting up from where she had fallen against a gabled edge.

Rory shivered a little as he tried to stand. “I apparently need to get better at controlling blizzards.”

“You can summon a blizzard?”

He nodded.

They looked around. The roof was now covered with snow and ice, cracks running through the floor in several places. Rory swallowed. It was best not to repeat that here. He had forgotten it wasn’t just a blizzard. It was Rending Blizzard.

“Y’all really need to start warning us when you’re going to do something weird, old man,” Jerome shouted, poking his head out through the tower’s window. “That’s not how dates go, man.”

“Sorry about that,” Rory said. He found some of the others had gathered at the gardens, looking up in concern. He waved at them, raising his voice before he spoke again. “We’re alright up here. We were just practicing using Sigils. Don’t worry, we’ll be more careful from now on.”

Viv snorted a little. “I don’t blame them for thinking you were some kind of monster.”

Rory smiled and proceeded to use his Weaving to clean up the roof. There were a lot of Sigils of Ice to be had, so there was no point wasting it my letting it melt away. Viv stood still. The floor was slippery, so moving had become a chore. They couldn’t resume training till Rory was done.

“How are you finding your staff?” Viv asked.

“It’s not bad,” Rory said. He looked down at the gleaming skull, each of its empty sockets glowing with a faint, blue light. “I’m getting a better hang of it the more we keep practicing. Thanks for pulling me into this.”

She kissed him lightly. Then she pulled back, summoning her red energy sword again. “Well, we’re not done yet.”

“More?” Rory sighed. “You’re going to make my arthritis act up.”

She lowered the crimson sabre, brows furrowing in concern. “Serious?”

“Uh, no, sorry. Well, not yet.”

“Well, come on then.”

Viv cajoled Rory into resuming their training again. He didn’t really mind. Fatigue was still threatening to rush in and possess him like a malevolent ghost, but Rory was happy to keep progressing his staff’s Sigil.

But they didn’t go on for long before they needed a break. Well, Rory did at least. He didn’t have a Sigil reducing the effects of his age like Viv did.

“How are your Sigils?” Rory asked as they sat down to get some food and drink in. “You’re not far from Cerulean now, right?”

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes lost focus for a second before looking at him properly again. “A couple more Tiers for some of them, and I should be able to reach Cerulean I soon. The Worldly Release one had been rising really fast. It’s almost concerning.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mhm. It’s fine, mostly. I can run faster, jump higher, don’t get hurt as much when I fall or punch rocks. It’s good. It’s just progressing much faster than I thought it would.”

They talked some more before Viv finally relented, and they headed back down to get some lunch. Once food was taken care of, Viv had to go help the newcomers who were starting to look a little agitated. That left Rory free to resume practicing with the staff, but when he went outside, the first thing he noticed was Truck snooping in a corner.

That couldn’t have been good. The donkey had said he was leaving to find more entertainment elsewhere, so him returning was an ill omen. Bracing himself, Rory walked over to see what was going on.