Ignorant of the events they set in motion, Tormacc and Athra set off in the opposite direction from where Ravvik fled. Athra seemed utterly uninterested in the spoils of war, allowing Tormacc to take both the storage devices, one a ring, the other a bracelet. Neither contained much of value and they were both smaller than his own so he swapped their contents to his. Spatial storage devices couldn’t be stacked like nesting dolls, as that would enable someone to contain almost infinite space in a small storage device, so Tormacc was forced to carry the two spares on his person. But after some thought on the matter he realized having an extra spatial storage device might be an unexpected windfall.

Taking the Spatial Ring back out, he moved a few things over before wearing it on his finger. He had been unimpressed with the loot that he gained, but admiring his new ring, he knew he had underestimated its worth, the ring itself more valuable than the junk that had been inside it. The previous encounter with bandits had shown that robbing others was a common pastime, especially when brought about by necessity. With a spare spatial storage device he could use it as a decoy, potentially fooling others as to his wealth or offering it as a peace offering to avoid battle.

Against normal bandits, this would almost never work; at least, not unless he could successfully hide his other spatial storage items. And since he couldn’t do that, regular bandits were sure to search him to make sure he wasn’t hiding anything. Even killing him first wouldn’t be uncommon, as normally bandits had to be secure in their strength to have the guts to rob others so there was no reason to negotiate.

This Shard was different. Here, most bandits only wanted food. They weren’t trying to kill others, only make sure they themselves didn’t die. As long as he gave them a Spatial Ring with a decent amount of food in it they would be unlikely to attack him as, even if he had more on him, the bandits couldn’t be sure of victory if battle broke out.

What made him think of it was what Athra had said previously. A peace offering was a nicer way to put it, but to put it bluntly, it was only another of saying a bribe. Regardless of the circumstances, both involved gifting resources to another; it was only the context of the situation that differentiated the two actions. Athra was strong, but there were only two of them. No matter how strong they were, how many people could they actually fight off? They had successfully fought off three assailants, but could they do that again? What about four? Five? And even if they could win, the price was sure to be high. It was much better to avoid fighting if possible, even if they had to appease the other party with a bribe to do so.

The physical loot from the battle wasn’t the greatest gain though: far from it. While killing monsters was the most common way of gaining Essence, other people had Essence too, and as such, killing others would also grant you Essence. This was a draw for those with evil intents, as they would get paid off for their deeds, but the Essence gained was not worth the risk for the average person as you would only gain the unspent Essence that was left in someone’s Fate Wheel when you killed them, not any of the Essence they had invested to unlock abilities.

It was always an unknown amount of Essence, with the number usually ranging from the low three digits up to five or six, or even higher. But before you actually killed someone you had no clue how much Essence they had in their pool. Everyone kept some, either for emergencies or to pay for the Essence tax, but the greater the amount of Essence someone had the more likely it was they were an expert, as saving a large amount of Essence had a strong correlation with saving for high tier abilities. And the higher tier abilities someone had, the greater their strength.

What all that meant was if you wanted Essence from killing people, you had to get lucky: the Tower was a marathon, not a sprint. There was no time limit to earning Essence; death was the only thing that ended the competition. And based on hints Kaz Ehen dropped and things hinted at in the guidebook Stella gave him living for a few hundred years wasn’t a problem if you played your cards right.

When killing the bandits earlier, Tormacc and Athra had gotten lucky. He hadn’t been paying attention so he couldn’t be sure who gave most of the Essence, but between the two people they killed Tormacc had an extra 3,000 or so Essence to work with, and since he and Athra were currently splitting Essence, that meant between the two of them they had more than 6,000 Essence in their Fate Wheel.

Perhaps that wasn’t surprising, as it only meant at least one of the people they killed was saving up, but it was still a nice windfall. The question now was how to spend it, and that was what Tormacc was pondering over now as he followed Athra through the blasted plains. With a partner to help him kill the Stone Giants an immediate increase in combat strength was no longer as important, or at least the type of combat strength he needed to fight giants.

Even without Athra he was able to kill Stone Giants; he had proved that before. Their recent encounter had shown him that there were other things he needed to kill though, namely, people trying to kill him. He had been unlocking abilities in his Fate Wheel with the aim of fighting monsters, but if there was anything more monstrous than monsters themselves, it was other people. All his previous plans for spending his Essence needed to be reevaluated under that lens.

“Hey Athra,” Tormacc said. “Can I get your advice on something?”

“Of course. Wisdom is like rolling stone, only growing the longer it travels.”

Something about what Athra said didn’t quite make sense to him. Did stones really get bigger as they rolled downhill? He decided it was better to ignore it and ask his question.

“I wanted an outside opinion on my fighting style. The recent battle made me realize I have too few skills for dealing with other people, and fixing that is a priority. Do you have any insights you could offer?”

Athra paused, her body becoming a statue, creating a perfect stillness no Humen could replicate.

“Why this sudden interest?” She asked. “You won, yes?”

“Yes, I won, but the fight was close. Too close. If I had hesitated for even a brief moment longer the enemy’s skill would have gone off and I would have died.”

“Can you heal?”

“What?” Tormacc was rather confused at the non sequitur. What did healing have to do with improving his combat against other people?

“Can you heal?” Athra asked again.

“If you mean can I heal myself, then the answer is I can, although it takes some time. It’s more regeneration than healing.”

“Then we fight. You want wisdom, yes? We fight, then I know what you lack.”

Thinking about it, Athra’s suggestion made sense. She had only seen him fight monsters as she was preoccupied with her own battle when the fought before. It would be hard for her to offer advice if she didn’t know what his standards were.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s fight then.”

The two of them backed up an appropriate distance away before facing off. A second of stillness followed, then, as if some unheard signal gun went off, they both acted. Tormacc knew Athra had the advantage at range so he sprinted forward, muscles pumping and heart thumping to exert that little bit of extra speed to cross the distance between them.

A sharp spear of stone sprung from the ground in front of him and he twisted, deftly maneuvering around it, barely losing momentum as he spun around the obstacle. His senses were strained to the limit as an increasing number of stone spears hindered his path, their tips gleaming under the beating sun. He pumped more Essence into his tattoo, straining his senses so he could react to the quiver of earth, as if he waited until the spears were fully-formed it would be too late to dodge.

His quick flitting movements allowed him to close in on Athra, each step perfectly placed to avoid the array of spears popping up from the ground. But as he couldn’t avoid them forever, and soon he was forced to change tactics, the next spear smashed to pieces by his hammer as he moved past it with brute force.

He was forced to use every trick in the book to continue advancing, using skills like Speed Burst and Double Jump for mobility and Sudden Strike and Whirlwind to clear the stone spears with force. He was navigating a deadly obstacle course and one wrong step would leave him shish kebobbed, his body impaled and hanging helpless in the air.

As he ran, the debris from the spears he was crushing was washing over him, impinging on his vision and scraping at his skin as he ran through clouds of stone shards. But he made it through, his skillset varied enough that he could cycle through them, allowing him to either forcefully advance or skirt around the stone spears when the situation called for it. Soon he found himself only meters away from Athra, and he raised his hammer for the final assault. It never came. With a flick of her hand a huge wave of stone rose up in front of him and he found himself in shadow, looking up as the wave built to over ten meters in height.

Then it crashed into him and he was sent flying backwards, blood spurting from his mouth. He crashed into the ground, skidding along until a depression caught him and he slammed to a halt, waves of force diffusing into him and rattling his bones.

Silence spread out as Athra lowered her stone constructs and walked over. She was the same as before, but Tormacc couldn’t help but look at her differently. He had severely underestimated her. He thought she would have been in trouble had he not dealt with one of the bandits, but after their fight he knew that wasn’t the case. She was practically invincible on the ground. She was unable to defeat the flying mage, but against anyone who couldn’t fly she could surround herself with stone, launching continuous offensives until her foes were worn down and killed.

“Not bad, little Tormacc,” Athra said, coming to a stop next to him. “One day you will be big rock. But that day not today. Still need much work.”

Instead of reaching out a hand to help him up she manipulated the stone around him to form a chair, raising him up from the ground.

“You have good base,” she said. “Like stone with solid core. You can choose, I think. No need for me. But for Fate Wheel, it rewards power, yes? What you are good at, do that.”

It was simple advice, and similar to what Stella had told him before. If he could figure out where the variance in his Fate Wheel lay he could exploit that to unlock more powerful abilities. While the battle with Athra could have crushed his confidence, strangely, it didn’t. Something about her bearing told him he was currently unable to beat her. It was a stone cold fact, and nothing to worry over. Instead, the battle gave him a clear glimpse of his strengths and how he could chain skills together to overcome obstacles he normally would struggle before.

Perhaps he had been too focused on shoring up his weaknesses. The Fate Wheel rewarded specialization. He could never be good at everything, so why try? As an example, Athra was weak against opponents in the air, but while she may have trouble killing them she was still able to form a solid defense on the ground to prevent her from being killed from long range. She had as much proficiency as she needed to make sure her weaknesses couldn’t be exploited.

What about him? Casting his mind back, he went over all that he had been through during his stay in The Tower. It hadn’t been a long time, less than a year, but it felt like forever; it was all that he knew after all. Thinking about it, there was one clear theme throughout his stay. He should have realized it sooner. His path forward was obvious, just waiting there for him to reach out and grasp it. So that’s what he did.