As her uncle dealt with the templars after their attack on Olop, she’d left him to handle the aftermath. She had more important things to do.

While watching the man slowly be broken down, it had managed to help her clear her mind. The panic and rage had subsided enough to make her realise there was something else she should have done before going to attack. She should have been helping Ben.

A part of her thought about running to a church first. She’d managed to complete her job as she wove spell after spell of her life magic to ensure he’d regret what he’d done for whatever remained of his life, so she’d have to do it eventually. Changing her job was important, but compared to everything else it could wait. Every second counted and she couldn’t waste more than she already had as she rushed back to the trial, only to be confronted by the sight of the tower's door being encased in stone, her father standing in front of it.

“How are you holding up sweetheart?” He asked, concern and sorrow filling his face as his question was completely ignored by her.

“Dad, take this down and get out of my way.”

“I was hoping your mother wouldn’t be right about this,” He said with a sigh, before addressing his daughter more firmly. “I’m not letting you go in there.”

“Dad, I can’t just leave him alone to die!”

“Almost no trials will let a person meet up with a group they didn’t go in with, and even if they did, I still wouldn’t let you. I’m sorry Thera, hate me for it if you want, but I’m not going to let you kill yourself over this. Loss is something you’re going to need to get used to eventually, whether you like it or not. Rely on the people in your life all you need to, but you have to do your best to handle it.”

“I don’t want to handle it, I want to be with him! Now get out of my way!”

She tried to fill the area with her mana, to rip apart the stone encasing the door and use more to knock her father aside, but nothing happened. Not a single stone so much as wiggled from her power as her father gave her a sad smile.

“Honey, this isn’t training, I’m not going to hold back. As much as you’ve improved, you’re not on my level.”

She didn’t want to admit it and kept struggling to do anything, but her father was right. She couldn’t use either her earth magic or telekinesis to do anything against him, and her life and dark magics would be all but useless as well. All she could do in the end was storm away, feeling powerless as she did.

Angry, upset, hopeless. She was feeling all of that and more as she walked through the streets in a daze, knowing there was nothing she could do. Even if she was aware that her father was probably right, that if she were to throw herself into the trial, there was no guarantee she’d be able to do anything to help Ben, let alone actually meet up with him, she’d have still rather taken her chances and tried than to be out there as her friend was in mortal danger.

What am I even supposed to do? If the gods can’t help then even praying is pointless. She thought bitterly as she looked up and realized she’d wandered to the city's craftsman guild without meaning to.

Knowing she’d need to do it sooner than later she walked in to make use of their job crystal. Ben always hated delaying it, finding waiting to be nothing but a waste of potential experience, and she couldn’t argue the point, even if she wasn’t remotely in the mood herself.

Going to where it was kept and finding no line she placed her hands on it, letting the options fill her mind as she did.

AVAILABLE JOBS

Queen of mana Musician Professional Dancer Bard Darkness mage -charm specialized Healer Telekinetic mage Dark mage Adventurer High spirit mage High life mage

As she listlessly looked them over she didn’t know which one to take. At that point she barely cared. Thinking about what she wanted to work on and how she wanted to grow meant thinking about the future, something she couldn’t stand at the moment. Thinking about it meant thinking about a potential future without Ben.

No! He’s not dead, I can still feel him so I’m not going to be so negative. He’s going to be okay like he always is. I’m sure he’ll figure something out and get out of there in a few days, maybe a week. I just need to sit tight and be patient so I need to actually think about what would be best for when I see him again.

Thinking that didn’t really make her feel better, nor did it leave her more hopeful, but it did help her narrow down her choices.

At her last job she hadn’t taken high spirit mage, despite how helpful the first one was to her, so she could take life mage instead. Given the amount of injured there were during their leviathan hunt she had wanted to help so that had seemed like the best choice. Now though there was a different reason not to take it. Her quest from Anailia.

She still really wanted to try to awaken her earth magic at the point where she would be able to awaken her life magic as well, but though it was exceedingly rare, there had been instances of a job awakening a skill in the past. Given her abnormally high affinity with earth magic, she didn’t want to risk it happening before she was ready, so she would leave that option for once she was at the levels she wanted.

She ignored her more performance-oriented jobs as she always did, as well as adventurer for the time being, with that one all but pointless without her hunting partner there to help take advantage of it, leaving her with the healer job and her other magic jobs.

Healer is just going to give me worse bonuses than high life mage so not much point considering it right now. As for telekinetic mage and the dark mage jobs… No, they don’t matter.

“I select high life mage.”

Name: Thera Oress

Race: Succubus/Spirit Hybrid

Titles: Spirit Child

Jobs: High life mage (lv5)

Previous Jobs: Beginner Dancer, Dancer, Apprentice mage, Earth mage, True mage, High earth mage, Spirit mage, Life mage

Attributes:

Vitality: 1070 Vitality recovery rate: 12/hr Mana: 261,329 Mana recovery rate: 57/min Strength: 128 Agility: 374 Stamina: 308 Intelligence: 315

Affinities:

Light: 4 Life: 22 Fire: 11 Water: 14 Air: 12 Earth: 103 Death: 3 Dark: 43 Space: 2 Time: 1

Resistances:

Light: 5 Life: 9 Fire: 11 Water: 16 Air: 12 Earth: 35 Death: 13 Dark: 42 Space: 7 Time: 8

Blessed skills:

Earth magic lv9 Charm magic lv2

Passive skills:

World speak+ Coordination lv3 Medical knowledge lv3 Bind

Active skills:

Calculate lv1 Dance lv4 String instrument lv3 Woodwind instrument lv2 Cleaning lv1 Staff wielder lv0 Meditation lv2 Speed reading lv2 Life magic lv8 Telekinesis lv2 Dark magic lv1 Spirit empowering lv2 Cooking lv0

Blessings:

Anailia's Blessing

Trials:

Trial of Anailia and Tolona

She would have been able to feel incredibly satisfied as she looked at her card if Ben was at her side. With the spirits coming to her, getting her to provide them with mana so frequently had forced her to use more than she ever normally would, and the results had been great for both her total quantity, as well as her regen rate. It looked like her agility and stamina were both beginning to hit a wall, but that was expected enough. She wasn’t doing much to train them recently, and for all the bonuses she had to them, it would be useless if they weren’t used.

Most important of all was the level to her life magic, something that had been wholly unexpected given how recently she’d just gotten the last, but that was something she could only be grateful for. The attack on Olop she and her uncle had done had not just been an excellent way to let out her rage and anger. It had also proven to be an excellent way to train. Something she decided she’d be putting into practice again immediately as she decided on her next move, going through the gate and walking into the untamed lands.

As she’d been doing when she’d helped Ben in the woods, she used her earth magic to carry herself on a slab of dirt far into its depths, to the point she felt she didn’t need to fear anyone else getting in her way as she got to work, tearing dirt and stone from the world and condensing it all into a thick dome that towered a few stories high.

It hadn’t been quick and it was plenty tiring, but it was important. For what she was going to do next, she needed to protect her back.

Raising herself up to a ledge within it, safe from the reach of anything other than those with wings, she carefully removed her cloak, followed by her brace while at the same time stripping the charm from the dark mana within her to prepare for anything that would come, and with no part of her charm being suppressed, it was like a call had gone out through those dense woods.

She waited only a few minutes before putting everything back on, but it had been enough. She could hear the sounds of footsteps pounding the dirt to rush to her, and as they drew closer she prepared her dark spell, firing it off as a stampede emerged.

The creatures she saw were a mix of species. Predators and prey, all desperate to get to her as she fired a dark spell she had no experience using before, all of her knowledge of it coming from the many books Ben owned. Bloodlust. A spell that drove creatures to madness, bringing them to fight and kill anything within their sight, and with the power she put behind it, all of them succumbed to an orgy of carnage as she watched from above.

The spell was brutal to the point that when she’d first read of it, she had been surprised that it wasn’t as difficult to find out about as any mental compulsion or mind control, but then given the nature of dark magic, it really just came down to where different societies and nations saw fit to draw the line. It was a magic that weakened opponents and played with their very thoughts. It wouldn’t surprise her if she learned there were places that banned its use altogether, but as with anything else it had its uses.

With animals tearing each other apart before her she put all of her knowledge into healing them all, keeping them in fighting shape as her mana went to knitting flesh back together, regenerating blood, reattaching limbs that were barely hanging on and bringing them back from the edge of death.

Given the amount of mana she had at her disposal, her biggest struggle as she normally trained her life magic wasn’t running out of mana, it was running out of patients. Or at the very least, patients who wouldn’t complain if her magic caused side effects in their bodies. She’d never been able to simply stop and let herself experiment with it as she did now, in ways she never could in the past for fear of how it might hurt someone, but for the creatures before her, that wasn’t a worry.

She’d never considered doing anything like this before, even now as she watched she couldn’t deny it felt needlessly cruel, but she couldn’t be picky. She wanted to raise her life magic again not just for her quest, but out of her worry for Ben. She was going to tell herself that he would be fine, that he would get out and live, but that didn’t mean he would escape without injuries, so being powerless to do anything else she would train as hard as she could, raising her skill and job level to prepare.

As she cast her spells, occasionally firing off another dark one to keep up the brutality and draw in any straggling creatures to the fight, she did her absolute best not to think of anything else to distract her from her misery.