Once again the hard end of a staff was shoved into Ben's delicate jaw.

“If you keep waking me like this I’m going to bruise.” He told Thera as he cracked open his eyes.

“Then find somewhere better to sleep than the shop floor. Uncle are you really okay letting him do this?”

Falk gave a shrug. “The boy cleans up well enough before he goes to sleep that I don’t have to do much in the morning so it's fine. How many staves did you manage to make then?”

“Just four, but I feel pretty good about the last two.”

“Alright, you two avoid the deep woods while you're testing them, don’t want a repeat of yesterday.”

“We’ll be careful uncle.”

“Actually before we leave I got a new skill I want to test out if you guys would give me a hand.”

That caught both of their attentions. While getting new skills was common enough it was still an exciting event.

“Now how did you manage to get a new skill working away all night? It’s not something like sleep resistance is it?”

“No, it was a gift skill from my god.”

“I didn’t expect you to be the pious type.” Thera chimed in.

“I’m definitely not, I just give a prayer or two a day to keep on his good side.” Also admittedly a few while he was limping and bleeding, but he wasn’t in the mood to bring that up again.

“Well then he must be fond of you brat, what's the skill?”

“It’s called connect. If I can take one of your hands it should let me link up with you and feel your emotions.”

“I’ll pass.” Thera had seemed interested up until she learned how it was used, but Falk for his part held out his hand.

“Alright brat let's give it a go. Always exciting to see a skill I haven’t heard of before.”

Ben grabbed his teacher's large hand and ran mana through his body, activating the skill. Immediately he was hit with two feelings, excitement and nervousness, and instantly knew they were coming from his teacher. They came at him so hard that it was a little overwhelming and apparently Falk felt the same way, breaking off the connection and taking a step back.

“Damn it lad you didn’t mention it was a two-way connection. Go eat something from the back if you're that hungry.”

“Oh sweet thanks.” Ben ran and grabbed a quick bar of jerky to chew on before coming back. “So I was never told you would be able to feel my emotions too, or that hunger would count as an emotion, but still that was a neater experience than I thought it would be. I can’t really see much use for it at the moment but I’ll train it up a bit to see how it grows.”

“It would be rude to neglect a skill your god saw fit to give you, just so long as you don’t ignore your work here, do what you want. Though I don’t think I’ll be helping you with that a second time. Felt too weird.”

“Fair enough, how should I train it then?”

“Worry about that later.” Thera cut in. “Let’s go try these staves already.”

Surprised but happy with her enthusiasm to try out his new works, they quickly went off to a field just outside of town that other adventurers and mages would go to train.

“Couldn’t we go somewhere with a bit more privacy?” She asked him.

“Why? This is a designated training ground for this type of thing.”

“It's just a bit embarrassing to have everyone see me fail at casting spells is all. Not to mention I know a few of the adventurers here…”

“Well if you aren’t comfortable I guess we could venture a bit deeper into the woods, there are a lot of bugs in this area anyway.” He told her, slapping something off the side of his neck.

She thought back to the events of the previous day and knew she had to make the responsible choice. “No, I told Falk we wouldn’t go into the woods. Let's just get this over with and leave.”

“Alright, in that case let's try the one you didn't end up using yesterday and then move on to the next two.”

She did as she was told, starting with the first staff and trying to make her earth bullets. For all three she was able to get it off the ground, and the first two even let her throw them a couple meters, while the last one shattered with the ball of dirt floating in front of her.

“Okay then, that went about as well as expected.” He said while Thera wiped away some dirt that blew all over her cloak and hood. “Now for the next two. I have a lot of confidence at least one of these will work out.”

She looked at the remaining two staves a bit dubiously. Unlike the others that looked mostly like traditional staves, if not a bit rough. These two were monsters. Just thick rods that would take at least two hands to wield with no way of being useful in an actual fight.

“Aren’t these a bit too big?”

“They’re just prototypes, as long as they work I should be able to scale the size down a bit. Come on try the first one.”

Still hesitating and with a bit more effort than she was used to for lifting a staff, Thera lifted the first one and prepared her spell. She felt her mana pass through it and started lifting up the earth. It was going surprisingly well at first and she was starting to feel confident, but as she lifted her staff above her head, preparing to swing it with her magic, it exploded, far more violently than any staff had before, as slivers of metal and dust flew all around her.

“Are you alright?” Ben yelled, reaching out to her, but she jerked away from his hand.

“I’m fine, that was just a little unexpected. What happened?”

“I was testing out a couple different ideas for the staves was all. The one you just used was made by layering different materials enchanted with varying levels of earth resistance. I put lower resistance in the center with a higher resistance on the outside so that must have caused a build-up of pressure while magic was passing through it. If you’re okay let's try the second one then.”

“It’s not going to blow up too is it?” She asked, eyeing the rod suspiciously.

“For this one I did the opposite, giving it a resistant core that has progressively less resistance the closer to the outside it is, so probably not. Of course, I didn’t expect the first one to blow up either so who’s to say?”

She was far from confident after hearing his answer but she would never get a working staff if she didn’t try them. She once again picked it up and started to pass her magic through it. It felt harder than before, like more of her mana was being lost compared to when she would usually use the spell, and she thought her ball of earth was slightly smaller than usual as well. Still she managed to get her earth bullet prepared in front of her. She gave her rod a swing, and it was looking good, being thrown farther than any of her previous attempts, a good twenty meters, before it fell apart.

She took a look at the staff in her hand. It was still intact, but only barely. Large cracks had formed throughout its surface, going down nearly to its core. But it hadn’t shattered. Just to try she ran more mana through it to see if she could manage another spell, but that was more than it could handle and it fell apart in her hands.