Minutes after the mildly concerning exchange with his god, their target finally started to appear and Ben moved back to watch how the fight would go. He knew Sachel had life, water, and earth magic since her goal was to eventually awaken them to plant magic, which meant that she and Thera had a fair bit of overlap in skills at the moment so how they’d work together wasn’t clear, while Ralia’s role in the party was still a mystery to him. She didn’t have a weapon so perhaps she was also a mage?

He would learn soon enough. Eight frost bats came out of the woods, far larger than he’d expected with a wingspan of almost two meters, and both mages pulled out their staves to face them. Thera was their target after becoming victims of her charm, but she was well aware of that. Unfortunately, unlike what she’d usually do, fighting them with her earth magic wasn’t an option for fear of damaging not only any of the trees behind the bats but also the dense root system beneath them.

Dark also failed as an option. Since using it meant actively removing the charm from her mana before she could cast a spell it would take too long, and even then the ones she knew for it were limited. The chances of shadow fog or more intuitive ones like fear being able to defeat them being unlikely. The bats were already nocturnal, and fear would only counter the draw of charm, driving them back to the forest.

That left her with a single means of attack, the same one she’d used to deal with the bugs that filled the forest; overwhelming life mana. She didn’t just release it all around her as she’d done before though, instead directing it with her staff, sending a powerful wave of it towards the monsters that were flying towards her.

They visibly reacted to the assault, their momentum slowing for a moment and one briefly falling from the air before collecting itself, but it mostly served as a stun. While the biological systems that kept an organism alive within it were undoubtedly going haywire and the microbes that lived within them would be reaping the benefits of being flooded with life mana, none of the bats were killed.

It was more than possible that if left long enough they would expire from the effects of Thera’s mana, but when they’d tested it as a form of attack in their past hunts they never let it get that far, instead using that period of disorientation to strike, something Sachel took advantage of herself.

Before her appeared a floating ball of water, and if Ben didn’t know better he would have assumed she’d materialized it, creating it from pure mana, but there was no way she could achieve something like such a high-level spell. Instead, she had used a different, though still demanding technique, pulling water from the air itself. While it couldn’t be done if the climate were too dry, in a living forest where plants were in a constant state of taking in or releasing their water it was more than possible if someone had the necessary control and skill, both of which she continued to show with her attack.

That ball of water, about the size of a fist, changed its shape to match something he’d seen Thera use herself at a much larger scale in the past. The water thinned out into a round flat disk, akin to the blade of a circular saw, and began to rotate at dangerously high speeds before flying through the nearest enemy, cleanly bisecting it.

That wasn’t the end though as she continued to demonstrate the extent of her control, immediately changing the direction of the attack to slice through the next one, and the one following that, not ending until five of the eight were dead.

The three that remained had enough presence of mind to change their target after that. While they could tell that whatever Thera had done had been harmful to them, it wasn’t the instant death that Sachel inflicted and they rocketed towards her, a fog forming around them as the air began to freeze and they prepared their attack.

An attack that didn’t get through. Ralia threw herself between them, and in a move Ben would never have expected she began to change, as her more human-like top half shifted to match the snake-like tail she possessed in place of legs, turning her into a giant snake-creature almost seven meters in length.

Striking fast, she bit one out of the air with her powerful reptilian jaws before hitting the other two to the ground with her tail, finishing the fight.

Ralia turned back to her normal form, shivering and wrapping around Sachel for warmth. It was clear the combination of her reptilian nature clashing with the frost bats could prove to be a challenge if there were plenty more to deal with and Thera put her cloak back on to hopefully reduce the chances of any more being drawn in while the other woman recovered.

Ben though had a different priority as he ran up to Ralia, grabbing her hand as she tried to warm up.

“Please tell me everything about how you just did that!”

He knew it had to be a skill of some kind, he just didn’t know what one, nor why he hadn’t seen anything like it in the numerous skills Zandale possessed. He immediately wanted his hands on it to see just how it could be enchanted with.

Ralia seemed taken aback, but answered easily enough. “It’s a skill called beast form- blood snake I have because of my paternal heritage. I know it’s not exactly common, but I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

Meaning she isn’t a pure naga like I thought, interesting. “There’s a lot in the world I don’t know about unfortunately, but that was super cool and I want to learn.”

He had meant he wanted to learn more about it, but was misinterpreted as Ralia shook her head.

“Sorry, but you need to be directly related to a nagual to be able to use it, it’s something we have from birth. Well, unless you can somehow talk a soul mage into helping you.”

So it’s a racially linked skill huh? Doesn’t mean I won’t be able to enchant with it if I get it from her, but it raises more questions.

“Why would a soul mage be able to help?”

“It has to do with how my father’s race came to be. Long before they were invaded, his people faced a different threat, the existence of an evil god that suppressed the one the nagual worshiped and oppressed the people of the world. After centuries of suffering, eventually a life mage gained enough skill and power to ascend to the level of a soul mage, and using that strength gathered the souls of five of the most dangerous beasts the world had available to strengthen the five greatest warriors they could find. They succeeded in freeing their world, but as an unexpected side effect all descendants of those heroes continued to be born with two souls, the nagual soul always being able to make use of the animal soul to one extent or the other.”

“So if anyone wanted the skill, they’d have to ask a soul mage to merge a specific animal soul with their own?”

“That’s right.”

“Neat, alright then just one more question if you’ll indulge me, what’s a soul mage?”

He’d heard the term thrown around a few times now but never paid it much mind, assuming it was either a specialized magic like charm, or a combined one like plant magic, but from what he’d just been told it sounded more akin to an awaken magic, and judging by the shocked reaction everyone was giving him it seemed like it was the sort of thing he should have been aware of.

“How do you not know this!” Sachel yelled, shock clear on her face and tainting her voice.

“I did think it was a little weird you didn’t have any comments about it the few times it came up, but I thought you were just being respectful,” Thera joined in, adding her own take on it.

“Look, my situation is a little complicated, can we leave it at that?” He didn’t want to explain to the other two his status as an otherworlder and he figured Thera could easily guess that had to do with any ignorance he’d show about things from time to time.

They still seemed to question how someone couldn’t know about something that seemed like it would be so obvious, but Thera at least started giving him the explanation he’d wanted.

“Alright, well first Ben, are you at least aware of how magic is divided?”

“I think so? Earth, water, and air are lumped together as physical magics while light and dark are considered both energy and spiritual. There’s some debate about which of the two fire falls into but I doubt that matters much for this. Other than that life and death are considered linked while space and time are thought to have a connection, though it hasn’t been confirmed one way or the other.”

He’d at least read up a bit on the basic magics back at the church once he’d gotten over his regret from the fact that he’d never be able to use them himself, and he’d put a reasonable amount of time into learning just what spells he’d be able to enchant with using his rings at his current level, but he hadn’t gone beyond that into what was possible with an awakened magic.

Thera seemed pleased enough with his answer though so she continued with her little lesson. “Very good, then we’re going to focus in on life and death magic. Saying they’re closely linked is actually a bit of an understatement. They’re the only magics which, assuming no significant changes or skill fusions occur when they awaken, become the same magic at the third tier.”

Suddenly him not knowing about it made a lot of sense and he had nobody to blame but himself. When Lehie was educating him back during his time at the church, she lightly touched on how skills would awaken, and that it was possible for them to do so a second time should the person have enough skill and talent, but as the only person who was summoned without a single skill at the second tier, he hadn’t been in the sort of emotional place where he wanted to be reminded of just how much better everyone else was than him. Sensing that, she backed off on teaching those topics in particular, presumably thinking that it wouldn’t be overly relevant in his new life anyway.

Now that he looked back on it, it was a shame. The topic was interesting, even if a little disheartening, and it gave him a few questions to ask.

“But how does that work? Life and death mana are two different things, right? How do you get the same magic out of both of them?”

“Hmm, try and think of it like this,” She said as she drew a circle in the dirt with her staff, putting two dots at either end of it. “Imagine one dot is life magic and the other is death, while the entire circle is the spectrum they exist on. As a person's skill level in either grows it travels up and down the circle and more things become possible, eventually entering each other's domain, like how I use my life mana to cause harm instead of heal. At the first awakening of either magic, the domain of what can be done continues to grow, bleeding into each other until they are essentially the same regardless of which of the two mana’s is used. At that point if a second awakening happens you’ll get a soul mage, a being capable of creating their own path,” At that she drew a line going out from the circle, escaping the limits of both life and death to become something more.

Sachel cut in at the end. “Aside from that, soul mages are well known because they’re the only type of tier three skill user that the gods try to ensure the world always has at least one of.”

“What, why? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure anyone with a tier-three magic is powerful and important, but why does the world need one at all times?”

“Like the name says, it’s a magic that acts on the soul, same as the system in place on everyone, meaning that they can act to strengthen the people around them, making it easier for them to learn and level skills, as well as get massive buffs to the job experience they gain. From what I’ve heard, for thousands of years they’ve been working to help people gain third-tier skills to try and figure out which ones would be best to try and have people ascend to for the invasion.”

Interesting, so it’s like a magic that helps a person reach new heights even quicker. God, I wish I could try enchanting with it, but awakening both my enchanting and connect twice is probably slightly too big of a dream. Even worse, that means…

“So there’s no way for me to copy the beast form skill onto something so that other people could transform.”

“Not without attaching a soul to it,” Ralia confirmed. “Besides, usually it’s just a partial transformation unless the skill is almost awakened. Being half naga gave me an unusual compatibility with the skill. I was born with it at the fifth level, and since half of my body is already reptilian I can do it fairly easily.”

The fact that it would only be a partial transformation didn’t matter as the wheels in his head began to spin. “Maybe I can,” He muttered while giving it some thought.

“What?” Thera asked, long used to knowing his thinking face by this point and too cautious to doubt him when he thought something was possible.

The other two lacked the time with him to know what he was getting at though, so Sachel went and asked. “Maybe you can what?”

“Attach a soul to an item, I might be able to.”