Ben cracked open his eyes to find himself in a familiar bed. He turned to the woman sitting in a chair to his side and spoke up. “We really should stop meeting like this.”

“I agree completely,” Sonya told him. “If only a certain patient would stop getting so injured all of the time.”

“So what’s wrong with me this time?” He actually felt fine now that he was awake, and figured she had already done whatever treatment he needed, but he got an unexpected answer.

“Nothing was really wrong, you were just suffering from mana exhaustion. We just needed to wait for your mana levels to fill up and eventually wake up.”

“Wait, how could I possibly be mana exhausted?”

“I would personally like to know the same thing. I’ve heard it was possible to happen to people with no magic skills if they happened to use multiple other skills at the same time, but I’ve never actually seen a case in person. Of course from what Thera told me and I’ve heard from everyone showing up, it shouldn’t be too surprising.” She gave him a stern look for a minute before softening up. “You don’t know how badly I want to be mad at you right now. You put yourself and my niece in extreme danger with that stunt. You both could have been killed.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” He didn’t personally consider himself to be someone who would rush into danger, he felt like he’d been swept up in the moment, not wanting anyone in his new home to have to die.

Sonya let out a long sigh. “You know, I was expecting you to fight me a little, not just immediately give up like that. With everything else how am I supposed to stay mad?”

“Everything else?”

“After the guildmaster identified you as being mana exhausted she carried you back to the house with Thera in tow before she had someone run to get me. Since you’ve been asleep a lot of the adventurers who had seen you both fight came to convey their respects, as well as apologise to Thera about how they’ve treated her. It wasn’t everyone of course, many people get stuck in their ways and opinions, but it looks like she has more people on her side now than when Roan started this whole situation to begin with.”

“That's fantastic!” He cheered before regaining his calm. “And what about Roan? Last I saw he was being dragged away?”

“That, I’m not sure. They’re going to send him off to try and get some mental help with a light mage but it’s hard to say how much of this was an effect of Theras magic and how much was just him. Even if he loses all of the lingering effects her magic had on him he may just be a naturally unbalanced individual. The proper authorities will be keeping an eye on him for a while. Anyway don’t worry too much on that, someone’s been rather worried about you for a while now.” Sonya turned to the door and pulled Ben's attention to it as well, making him see a pair of golden eyes peeking through the side. “I need to go prepare dinner. Why don’t you two chat till it’s ready.”

As she left she ushered Thera in, and it ended with the two of them alone. Thankfully Ben hadn’t needed to be undressed this time, so he still had the dignity that came with wearing pants when he sat up.

“How are you feeling?” She asked him.

“Well rested. Sonya mentioned things have been going well since I’ve been out.”

Her cheeks flushed a bit before Ben's eyes. “Well a lot of them were on top of the wall watching. Apparently they started throwing spells when all the monsters got too close but I didn’t notice since it was taking my all just to use that spell, but everyone who saw it was impressed and I guess it made some people re-evaluate me a bit.”

“That's great!”

“Well, I’m pretty sure plenty of people still consider me the cause of all this, but I should at least be able to go outside again.” She looked uncomfortable for a minute before speaking up again. “Ben I know you don’t think this is my fault…”

“It’s not.” He asserted as confidently as he could.

“I know you think that.” She said with a small smile. “I could feel your confidence in me when we connected. You didn’t doubt I could succeed.” Her smile quickly vanished. “Which makes it worse that this really was because of me.”

“Thera-”

“Ben, let me talk please. I want to explain myself to you.” She took a deep breath. “After Roan was kicked out of the guild, I intentionally used my charm on him.”

“Alright.” He didn’t see the issue.

“Is that really all you have to say?”

“I mean I’m sure you had a reason right?”

“Well after he was kicked out of the guild he approached me on an empty street. I was scared and I took off my hood, then specifically used my charm while yelling for him to go away. He immediately ran for his life. It had been so long since I’d seen him I was wondering if he never stopped, that maybe he died running, but it looks like all it did was push him completely over the edge.”

“Oh that's pretty neat, I knew dark magic had a lot of mental aspects to it but does charm include mind control?” He asked with more curiosity than anything else, which bothered Thera in itself but she still gave him a negative.

“Not exactly mind control but it will depend a lot on the target's resistance and personal willpower. Roan’s dark resistance seemed pretty terrible and he was already mentally weak from being exposed to my magic repeatedly. I did this.”

“Really? It sounds to me like a dangerous man approached you while you were alone and you defended yourself. I personally don’t see any problem with that.”

She looked away from him while he spoke. “Sometimes I wonder if you aren’t really under my magic's effect you know, why else would you keep defending me?”

“Because you’re my friend.” He told her with all the seriousness he could muster. “I don’t know what friendship means to you, but to me it means I’m in your corner and I’ll have your back. If you do something I really think is wrong I’ll tell you, hell I’ll give you a real earful if you need it, but otherwise I’m on your side.”

As he spoke she started to blush again, but she turned back to him, not quite sure what to say. How was this boy so comfortable being upfront about his feelings so often anyway? “Well, thanks. I guess I’ve never really had a friend who cared before.”

“No problem. Now before we get up, mind if I try something?”

“I guess not, what?”

“I want to try connecting again.”

She seemed to hesitate a little but decided to give in and reached out her hand. “Okay, but I don’t know how you can be so comfortable with this, I feel so exposed.”

He could only shrug. “I’ve done it a lot I guess.”

“With a houseplant.”

“A very nice houseplant. Now anyway let's just try this quick.” He grabbed her hand and connected, using his focus to its new and improved full potential while also enjoying the growth of the connect skill. When they were connected before a couple potential ideas had occurred to him, and as excited as he was to test the first two, the third one was the most immediately important. He could instantly feel the extent of her mana again, but it wasn’t as violent as it was before, his skill leveling up seemed to make it easier to bear. He also thought he could hear a small muttering coming from her and realized it must be the main purpose of the skill starting to show itself. Well what should have been the main. As interesting as mind-reading could be, it wasn’t super useful to him at the moment, even less so if the other party could hear his thoughts as well, so he pushed it to the side for the time being, another thing to look into later.

No, instead what he did was activate his enchantment. He didn’t have anything he could apply it to, but Thera was wearing a plain shirt instead of her cloak at the time so he just started to apply it to that, first trying to lay the entire enchantment down as he regularly did, but finding it wouldn’t work, the size needed to be too big which made the enchantment flimsy, so instead he stretched it out, forming a string with it as he went. And it was working. He felt it behaving as he wanted it to, felt the mana bending to his will, before his eyes widened and he pulled his hand away, leaving the enchantment unfinished and connection broken.

“Hmm? What's wrong? You seemed so interested in whatever you were doing?” She asked in surprise after having the connection cut off so abruptly.

“Um Thera, this is a little awkward to say, but I need you to change shirts and bring this one back here.”

She put her arms over herself and gave him the sternest, least impressed look he’d yet seen from her. “And why exactly is that?”

“I need a little time before I explain exactly why, but I was applying an enchantment to it. The thing is the enchantment ended up being huge, and your shirt definitely isn’t a material that can handle it, so I’ll need to remove it before it breaks.”

She quickly looked down at herself before letting out a sigh of relief. “Well at least you stopped before anything unfortunate happened. But I like this shirt. Since you went and used your skills on it without even asking you better make sure it’s fine when you take it off.”

“Yeah, sorry Thera, my bad.”

“Well as long as you understand. Anyway, I’ll go change. You can worry about taking off the enchantment after we eat. Come on and get ready.” She told him with a smile, brushing away the minor unhappiness she just felt, and he smiled back.

“Good food and company sound great right about now.”