Once the two of them had finished their food, Damien took out the vial containing the magical herb that he’d won from the competition. He popped the cap off and tipped it over his mouth, dumping the powdery leaf onto his tongue.

Like the last one, it was dry and brittle. It had a strong minty flavor that made Damien’s upper lip curl in distaste, but the leaf quickly melted in his mouth. He swallowed and smacked his lips trying to get the flavor out of his mouth.

It was gross, but it still somehow tasted better than any of the food that the college served for free in the cafeteria.

“Have those been doing you any good?” Sylph asked.

“I’m not sure, but Henry seems to think so. You should avoid using them for now, though. One weird thing at a time might be best.”

“Good idea,” Sylph said, nodding. She collected the remains of her dinner and hopped out of bed, taking Damien’s as well and setting them down at the corner of the cave.

“Do you think you’ll be able to use your magic normally by the end of the week?” Damien asked.

Sylph chewed her bottom lip and shrugged. “I’m not sure. I hope so, but it’s hard to say for sure. I’m progressing much faster than I thought I would have, so there’s a chance. Ask me again in two days and we’ll know for sure. But… I have noticed something. My cultivation method doesn’t seem to be working the same way as it did before. Would you happen to know anything about that?”

Damien prodded Henry and relayed the information to him. The eldritch creature let out a dismissive snort. “Of course it’s different. Sylph is feeling what happens when your body is filled with Ether. That normally doesn’t happen until you’ve been cultivating for a very long time. At some point, your flesh can only hold so much energy. It naturally gets harder to push Ether into it, and I already shoved so much into her that I’m surprised her method works at all.”

So what should she do? Does that mean she’s just hit her limit?

“No - at least, not exactly. She might be closing in on her current limit, but it's not because of this. When your body has a high concentration of Ether, you can use it to temper your muscles. It’s a rigorous process that will make your physical form significantly stronger. However, Sylph shouldn’t even think about doing that until she’s got a much stronger core unless she wants to cripple herself. The first step to do that is evolution, but don't worry about that for now.”

Damien conveyed his companion’s words back to Sylph, who nodded thoughtfully.

“That makes sense. I’ll just focus on controlling the Ether I already have instead of trying to get stronger, then. Thanks, Damien. And Henry as well.”

The two of them lapsed into a comfortable silence as they started to get ready for bed. After cleaning up, Damien took of his coat and slipped into his bed – which he’d finally purchased a new set of sheets and a nice fluffy comforter for. He was asleep within minutes.

Wind tickled Damien where it should never have been. He grimaced, clothes appearing from thin air and enveloping him as he turned to look at Henry.

“Is everything okay?” Damien asked.

“Surprisingly, yes,” Henry replied. “I’ll head out and do a quick sweep of the area to make sure no more Corruption is present later tonight. The other Void creatures are all either preoccupied or still bound somewhere.”

“Well, that’s good,” Damien said, letting out a small sigh of relief. “Why’d you bring me here, then?”

“I had an idea. These nighttime chats don’t actually interfere with your brain’s sleep cycle, which means they’re essentially free time,” Henry said. “You can’t actually grow stronger here, since you aren’t physically here. However…”

“I can still practice!” Damien realized. “Does magic work here?”

“Exactly the same way your clothes do,” Henry replied. “Nothing is technically real, so you can practice the theory portions of your magic very easily without running out of energy.”

Damien tested his companion’s theory out, casting a net of mental energy out around him. To his delight, strands of golden Ether lit up all around them. Damien gathered it into himself and drew a rune in the air.

The Devour spell flickered to life in front of him, exactly like how it would have in the normal world.

“You’re brilliant!”

“I have had a little time to think about this sort of thing,” Henry said, but he couldn’t hide the smug tone in his voice.

Damien quickly drew another rune in the air, this time sending his mental energy out and keeping it frozen in place. He removed his hand and took several steps back. Three seconds later, the Ether pushed past his efforts and the spell went off.

Unperturbed, he gathered more Ether and repeated the process. Then he did it again. And again. There was no true night or day on the grassy hill, but whatever there was – Damien worked through it.

He cast the spell hundreds of times, slowly making more and more progress on extending the duration he could hold the spell at bay. Without having to worry about the Ether induced headache, there was nothing to stop him. He didn’t even get tired.

Henry watched on as Damien cast the magic over and over, observing the boy carefully. While the spell itself wasn’t getting any stronger, his technique was improving. After he’d cast Devour over a hundred times, Henry raised a hand to stop him.

“That’s enough for today,” Henry said. “We don’t have infinite time here – just infinite resources. I still need to scan the area, so you’re going back to normal sleep.”

“Come on,” Damien complained, letting out a groan. “I think I was going to break twenty seconds pretty soon.”

“Then you can do that tomorrow,” Henry said. “I like the enthusiasm, though. Especially from someone who didn’t want to become a combat mage.”

“Well, magic is magic,” Damien said, twisting his nose up. “And my mom always said you need to make the best out of your situation. It just took me a little while to remember that.”

“What happened to your father, anyways?” Henry asked. “You barely have any surface memories of him, but you have dozens of your mom.”

“He’s on the front lines, doing something for the Queen. He barely ever comes home, so I don’t know him too well,” Damien replied with a shrug. “He’s a strong mage, though. I don’t think mom ever really approved of fighting, so I’m not sure what she’d think if she saw me today.”

“She’d be proud,” Henry said. “You’re on the track to become quite powerful. Who wouldn’t want to see their child hold the power to bring the world to its knees?”

“Maybe not the exact reasons she’d be proud, but I appreciate the sentiment,” Damien said, cracking a grin.

Henry just let out a grunt. “Go to bed. And get ready to learn Expunge tomorrow. You can hold the rune in place for long enough that it will be beneficial to understand the entire spell.”

Before Damien could respond, Henry snapped his flickering fingers. The grass fell out from beneath him as darkness surged upwards, enveloping him in its clammy embrace.

Damien jerked awake. Sunlight trickled into the room from the cracks within the stone door. Sylph’s bed was empty, but he could hear her training in her room. He rubbed his eyes and climbed out of bed, pulling his clothes back on.

After stopping by the bathroom to brush his teeth, Damien wandered into the first training room. He fought off a yawn and mentally nudged Henry.

You here?

“Just finishing some work up,” Henry replied, sounding distant. A moment later, Damien’s shadow twitched as Henry took control of it. “Why don’t you cast the first part of Devour again? I’m curious to see if the training in my realm helped.”

Damien did as the companion suggested, drawing the Ether to his fingertips. He drew the rune in the air and fixed it in place. He took a step away from it. Seconds ticked by. The Ether started to press harder and harder against his mental energy until it finally broke through and the circle of darkness sprang to life.

“Seventeen seconds,” Henry said. “An improvement indeed.”

Damien pumped his arm but managed to keep himself from cheering. He flushed immediately afterwards, glancing around to make sure nobody had seen him.

“Stop messing around and watch me,” Henry said as Damien’s shadow pulled away from his feet and rose up to form Henry’s body. “I am going to demonstrate Expunge. For now, just cast it from the same spot as Devour to avoid working on too many things at once.”

Henry raised his hand, deliberately drawing out the rune for Devour in the air in front of him. The spell sprung to life in front of him and Henry paused to make sure Damien was paying attention before he continued.

“The way you cast Expunge is quite simple in concept. You need to cause the spell to collapse from the inside out. You can do that by increasing the gravity at the center of the Devour spell. When it tears itself apart, it will spit out anything stored within it first.”

The dark disk bulged outwards, pale cracks shooting out from its center and covering the entire disk. It bent forwards, forming a curved cone shape before shattering into hundreds of motes of darkness.

“When you understand the spell better, you’ll be able to limit how much you break the Devour spell,” Henry said. “Eventually, you’ll be able to find the sweet spot between ejecting the spells you’ve stored within it and shattering the entire spell. If you master it, you’ll be able to keep the spell going so long as you still have Ether left to use.”

Damien nodded his understanding. “Okay. That doesn’t sound too hard. I’m basically just casting Gravity Sphere inside the Devour spell?”

“In a way,” Henry said. “Don’t cast two different spells. You’re meshing Gravity Sphere with Devour. Do it the same way you inject Ether into the runes before stepping away from them.”

Damien ran back over Henry’s words in his head, then nodded. He easily cast Devour before him, keeping it powered with his palm. He then gathered two more motes of Ether and spun them together, pressing them into the dark disk.

The corners bent inwards like a misshapen bowl and it shattered instantly. A flash of heat washed out from where the spell had failed, nearly singing Damien’s eyebrows. He leapt back, cursing. “What was that?”

“Spells can release heat when they fail,” Henry said. “At the level of magic you’re working with, there isn’t really anything to be too worried about. At worst you’ll toast your eyebrows. That wasn’t a bad attempt, though. Try to tone down the gravity. You want to give the spell time to spit out anything it has stored in it before it breaks.”

Damien drew a breath. Then he gathered his magic and repeated the process. His second attempt at the spell didn’t fare much better, nor did his third. As it turned out, there was a very specific amount of force that Devour needed to properly turn into Expunge. Damien managed to get the spell to almost work correctly on his sixth attempt, but he had no further luck for the rest of the day.

His stomach groaned in protest and his pounding head joined in on the complaints. Damien sighed, letting his hand drop after yet another failed attempt at casting Expunge. “Why is this spell so damn hard?”

“Relax, Damien,” Henry said. “You’ve been moving at a very fast pace already. You can’t expect to master everything instantly, and you’re already showing improvement, even if it’s not easily noticeable. You can barely cast magic at this point. Go take a shower and get dinner. You’re done for today.”

“But…”

Henry splashed back to the ground, returning Damien’s shadow to him. The boy sighed again, rubbing the bridge of his nose and turning back to trudge into the shower. “At least I’m getting a lot of repetition in for my cultivation method.”

Damien remained in the shower several minutes after he’d washed himself off, just soaking in the soothing water. The skin on his fingers had wrinkled up by the time he turned the shower off.

He pushed the curtain to the side and wandered back out into the room, still feeling perturbed from his lack of success. Sylph glanced up at him from her spot on her bed.

“No luck with training?” she guessed.

“Not a ton. I made progress, but not as much as I was hoping to,” Damien said, sitting down on his bed across from her. “What about you?”

“Things went decent on my end,” Sylph said. “My magic still looks like barf, but it’s mostly following what I want it to. I’m not getting as many issues where it goes off on its own, so I dropped by the general store.”

She grabbed a small package from the bed beside her and handed it to Damien. His eyes lit up and he tore it open, revealing another packed lunch that he strongly suspected came from the general store. There were several carrots, a slice of what looked to be meatloaf, and a roll of bread.

“You got dinner!”

“And the clerk wasn’t particularly happy about it,” Sylph said, holding back a laugh. “We might have to start getting food the normal way soon.”

“Maybe we should make a kitchen,” Damien said, chomping down on a carrot. “Sean did say that hunting the animals in the forest was beneficial.”

“That sounds interesting,” Sylph said, nodding. “We’ve got some time until everyone else gets back anyways. I don’t think I’ll be ready to go on another quest this week, so unless you want to go solo…”

“I’ll stick with you,” Damien said. “You’d probably blow your core up again if I wasn’t here.”

Sylph curled her nose and they both burst into laughter. They finished the rest of the dinner and the day’s stress melted off Damien as he ate. Once they’d finished, he stacked the boxes on top of the ones that were still there from the previous day.

“We can to talk to the clerk at the general store to find out how much some kitchen supplies would cost tomorrow morning,” Sylph suggested. “If it’s not too expensive, I can buy them. I’ve only got this much extra money because of your strategy at the tournament.”

“I won’t stop you if you insist,” Damien said, grinning. “I guess I could probably use a break from training anyways. The best time to take it is before everyone else shows up.”

“Agreed.”

The two of them quickly brushed their teeth and headed to bed. It had been a long time since Damien had done anything that didn’t involve training or fighting. He was eager to see what the next day would bring.