It was three days after the camp was attacked. Buckley had died only a few days ago, but it felt like years. She spent the entire day after the battle digging graves, the blacksmith apparently able to forge shovels as well as he had forged weapons.

Her increased strength and dexterity had helped make the task less physically taxing, but digging graves would never be easy. She wished that she hadn’t had to do the unpleasant task, but no one else had stepped up and the people who died deserved to be buried.

After that, she had been even busier. She had worked with Aaron to help people who were interested in going out into the forest to organize into groups. She was proud that over half of the remaining members of the camp had stepped up after the attack.

Even though she’d been working closely with Aaron, she still hadn’t told him the truth about Selena. Part of the reason was that she hadn’t told Thomas and Ada yet, and she wanted to tell her friends first. The main reason, though, was that she was almost certain that he wouldn’t believe her.

She’d prodded him a bit about how he felt about the healer, and he seemed to view her as the only other true partisan of the deceased Mr. Buckley. Given that Karolina had been vocal about her dislike of Buckley, she didn’t think that he’d believe her over one of Buckley’s most ardent supporters. She just had to hope that Selena wouldn’t be too big of a problem.

Beyond helping people with combat classes organize into groups with Aaron, she also helped to mentor them. She found instructing people to be surprisingly rewarding, and she was able to help much more than she had expected. She had spent the last two days going out with as many groups as possible.

She protected them when they needed it, helped groups learn to work together, and pointed out their mistakes. She hadn’t thought that she was very experienced in fighting, but compared to people who had stayed in camp the entire time, she was an expert. By this point, she was pretty confident that the new fighters could manage without her.

Whenever anyone got injured, she would send them to Selena, but she didn’t go with them. She was avoiding the healer, and she was pretty sure that the other woman was avoiding her, too. The one time she had seen Selena, she had been using some type of shielding skill on Aaron, and Karolina had left before the other woman could see her.

She wasn’t exactly afraid of Selena, but she wanted to give the other woman a chance to cool down. If there was one thing she knew for certain about Selena, it was that the woman had a volcanic temper. Right now, she was just refusing to heal them. She didn’t want to think about what else she could do. She also didn’t want to confront her until she told Ada and Thomas the truth.

In what little spare time she had, she had dedicated herself to practicing her skills, especially Combat Perception. She hadn’t made much progress with adjusting the mana formation that the skill created, but she needed to soon. She needed to get better. Today, she had decided to try to convert her mana into the purple mana that she saw around souls.

Using her mana perception, she had been able to analyze a passerby’s soul mana. She had been seeing soul mana since she had first learned how to perceive mana, but she had never looked close enough to capture its essence.

Soul mana seemed different from other types of mana because of how fleeting it was. Other mana seemed to flow through the air constantly, but soul mana evaporated once it got far enough away from a soul. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t powerful, though. If she had to put it into words, she would say that soul mana was ethereal, yet potent.

After all of that observation work, all she had to do was visualize her mana changing into the soul mana. She succeeded on the first try. Getting fire mana had been easy too, but something about soul mana seemed more intuitive for her. Converting her mana into soul mana just came more naturally to her.

She sat down at one of the chairs in the lodge, still staring at the mana floating above her hand, proof of her success. Now that she’d figured it out once, she could make soul mana any time she needed it.

She concentrated on the mana, making it move around a bit. Although her control was a bit sluggish, the mist eventually formed into a ball. She tried to shoot it off like one of Thomas’s mana bolts, but the mana only slowly traveled a few feet before dispersing. Thomas was right yet again; of course it couldn’t be that easy.

At least she had accomplished her goal: she had successfully converted her mana into soul mana. She wasn’t sure how helpful that was going to end up being, but her soulsight was her biggest strength; she needed to start leveraging it more so that she could get stronger. If she had been just a little stronger, then Buckley…

She stood up from the table and walked around the lodge, trying to clear her head. She wanted to be in the right headspace when she told her friends about her soulsight and Selena. They should be arriving soon.

She had wanted to tell them the day that Aaron had taken charge, but it hadn’t seemed like the right time. Everyone was already emotionally exhausted, so piling on more didn't seem right.

After that, it became impossible to talk to them both at the same time, especially because they had both moved into separate cabins that had actual beds. The attack had left a lot of empty cabins. She was the only one who’d stayed in the lodge, not comfortable sleeping in a dead person’s bed.

After a few days of unsuccessful attempts at getting the three of them together organically, she had finally just told them that she expected to see them both at the lodge around sunset. Needing to schedule a time to see her friends wasn’t something she was happy about, but she understood how busy they were.

Ada had thrown herself into scouting the area around the camp, running herself ragged to make sure no other enemies would catch the camp unawares. The woman obviously blamed herself for not catching the attack ahead of time, and was trying to make up for it by being extra vigilant now.

Karolina made sure that the other woman always carried a few healing potions when she went out, so she wouldn’t have to go to Selena, but she didn’t get injured even once. She had gotten much better at avoiding monsters. Karolina had also made sure to tell the other woman to keep herself safe, but there wasn’t much else she could do to help the strong-willed woman.

Thomas, on the other hand, had holed himself up with the books that he had found at the forward barracks. He had spent the last few days furiously studying, trying to learn all he could about how their world now functioned. When she had managed to pry him away from his books for a brief conversation, he had talked about how next time, he would be prepared.

None of them were handling the attack well, and she didn’t know how to help them. She didn’t know how to help herself. She knew the first step, at least; coming clean about what she had been hiding from them. She wasn’t looking forward to it.

After waiting for a few more minutes, the door slammed open loudly and Ada cheerfully sauntered into the room.

“Hey, what’s up? You needed me for something?” Ada asked with a smile.

“Yes, I wanted to tell you and Thomas something,” she replied.

“Okay? Not sure why you made such a big deal out of it, though,” Ada said.

“Because you’ve been so hard to get a hold of,” Karolina said, not able to keep all of her annoyance out of her voice.

Ada looked chagrined for a moment. “I’m sorry. You get it, though, right? I'm the Scout, you know? The way I was caught flat-footed by a surprise attack is just embarrassing. Not going to let that happen again," the woman said with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Karolina realized with a sense of horrified fascination that Ada was telling the truth. She could only sense irritation from her soul, not the grief at all of the deaths that she had expected. She had misread why Ada was working so hard entirely.

Before she had time to process that, Thomas hurried into the room, slightly out of breath.

"Sorry, am I late? I got caught up while reading an interesting passage in Basic Skill Classifications, and—"

"No, Thomas, you're right on time," Karolina interrupted. “Please, both of you, have a seat,” she said, gesturing at the table. Both of her friends seemed to sense how serious she was, as they didn’t say anything else before they were all seated.

“So, I wanted to tell you both something. I… I’ve been hiding some things from both of you. They’re starting to affect you, so I need to tell you about them. There’s two things that you deserve to know,” she said. She took a deep breath.

From a quick once-over, neither of them seemed all that surprised or angry that she was keeping secrets from them, which she supposed made sense. They had known each other for less than two weeks, after all, even if it felt like longer.

“The first is that I have a Natural Skill, named Soulsight. It lets me see the souls of people and monsters, and get a vague impression of their emotions,” Karolina said. She watched her friends carefully, unsure of how they would react.

“That’s it? From the way you were building it up, I thought it would be something terrible,” Ada said nonchalantly. She genuinely didn’t seem bothered at all.

“Wait, you’re telling me that souls are real and observable? That’s incredible! I have so many questions,” Thomas said excitedly.

Karolins couldn’t believe that their reactions were so tame. She had spent days worrying about how they were going to react, wondering if they were going to get angry or start avoiding her, and then they had just treated it like it was no big deal. She was almost disappointed.

“I'll answer any questions you have later, Thomas. There’s one other secret you need to know,” Karolina said. She gave both of them a serious look. "I should preface it with a warning. I kept my Soulsight a secret because I was worried about how you guys would react, but I kept the next thing secret because I was forced to," Karolina said.

She watched Ada's face gain an aggressive cast and Thomas become much more serious. She was glad that they were treating this with the respect it deserved.

“Selena isn’t who she appears to be. She's been pretending to be someone else so she can manipulate people," Karolina said.

“Selena? Really?" Ada snorted. "Stop messing around."

Ada obviously didn't believe her. Karolina supposed she couldn’t blame her; it had seemed unbelievable to her at first, too. Thomas, on the other hand, looked thoughtful.

"That actually explains some things," he said. "I've gone to Selena a few times to get a different perspective on magic fundamentals, and she was always surprisingly insightful. Plus, she asked me to show her how to perceive mana. I just thought she was some kind of idiot savant, but if she's hiding her true intelligence for some reason that would make more sense."

Karolina found herself happy that Selena's act wasn't as convincing as she’d thought it was. It was good to know that the woman could still slip up, and that people besides her suspected something was up with the seemingly ditzy healer.

“Huh, interesting,” Ada said, her tone implying the exact opposite. “And I should care about this because…?”

"You should care about this because she threatened to withhold healing from us if I didn't do exactly what she said. And I didn't do exactly what she said," Karolina said, starting to get a little frustrated with Ada.

"She what?" Ada exclaimed.

"You what?" Thomas said at the same time. They both turned to each other for a second in surprise, then turned back towards Karolina.

“Why didn’t you just do what she wanted, whatever it was? I can’t imagine whatever she wanted from you was so terrible it was worth us all dying because she wouldn’t heal us,” Thomas said, frustrated.

Karolina looked down, ashamed. Her reasons seemed so petty now. Putting her friends in danger just because she didn’t want to be under Selena’s thumb? She didn’t know how she could explain that, but she had to try; they deserved that much.

“I did what she wanted at first! Selena blackmailed me into giving her a skill crystal when we were looting the forward barracks, and I let her have it. I thought that was the end of it, but then she tried to pressure me into helping her become the new leader of the camp, and I realized that I couldn’t let her control me. When would it end? I have my own goals, I can’t spend the rest of my life being her minion.”

Ada looked like she agreed with her, but Thomas didn’t look convinced. She needed to let them know that despite Selena, they still had a hope of surviving the tutorial.

"Don't worry though, I have a plan,” Karolina said quickly. “There are nine other camps, and they should all have at least one healer, based on probability. We just need to find the closest camp and offer support there in exchange for healing. I mean, the other camps definitely need help just as much as ours does, and Aaron seems to have our camp well in hand now," Karolina said.

Ada looked contemplative. She was clearly carefully considering the idea. Thomas, on the other hand, looked gutted. Even before he opened his mouth, she knew that she wasn’t going to like what he was going to say.

“I can’t… I can’t go out there again,” he said. “I’m not as brave as you. Especially if Selena won’t heal me. I can still help you from inside the camp, I've learned a lot from my books that should help you, but I won’t leave. I’m sorry,” Thomas said.

“You’re gonna be sorry,” Ada said, taking an aggressive step towards Thomas.

“Ada!” Karolina yelled, stopping the woman in her tracks. Ada still glared fiercely at Thomas, looking like she wanted to hit him.

“Where’s your loyalty? I thought we were a team!” Ada demanded hotly.

“Ada, enough,” Karolina said, before taking a deep breath and turning to Thomas. “I'm disappointed, but I understand. There’s nothing that I can do or say to change your mind?”

The magician shook his head.

“Well, then I look forward to learning more about this new world from you,” Karolina said, trying to project a cheer she didn’t feel. Thomas was her first friend here. She had trusted him to have her back and relied on him more than anyone else. She couldn't help but think that this was her fault. If only she’d been stronger, she could have done something to make him less afraid.

On second thought, this was her fault. By not telling both of them the truth earlier, she had fractured her team. She just hoped that there was some way she could make it whole again.

Ada snorted disdainfully. “Well, I’m on board. I’ll start searching for one of the other camps tomorrow. I’m not going to abandon you.”

“I’m not abandoning—”

“Anyway, we have healing potions, right? We don’t have to worry about Selena’s healing for a while yet,” Ada interrupted. “If that’s everything, then I think I should get going. The stench of cowardice here is unbearable.”

Before Karolina could say anything more to the angry woman, she had already stormed out. She turned to Thomas, sighing at the stricken look on his face.

“I’m sorry about her. She can’t treat you like that. I’ll talk to her about it,” Karolina said. She hated to see her friends fighting like this.

“I’m not a coward. It’s just getting too dangerous out there, especially if we don’t have access to Selena’s healing anymore. You understand where I’m coming from, right?” Thomas asked. It almost seemed to her that he was trying to convince himself, more than her.

“Yeah, I get it,” Karolina said. She really did. Seeing all those people who had died, seeing Buckley die… if she was less determined, she might have decided to hide away in the camp as well. “I’m not angry at you.”

Thomas still looked unhappy despite her attempt at encouraging him. She tried to think of how she could cheer him up. He had said something earlier, before they were distracted by her revelation about Selena. That might work.

“So, you said that you had some questions about how my soulsight works?” she asked.

“Yes, I did,” Thomas said, getting more energetic as he thought through his questions. “What do souls look like? How do you actually see them? Does the appearance of souls vary between different people?” Thomas asked. His obvious excitement brought a smile to her face.

As she started to answer his questions, she allowed herself to feel relief. Even if the reveal hadn’t gone as well as she had hoped, neither of them had rejected her. She was finally no longer keeping important secrets from her closest friends. She had also figured out how to convert her mana into soul mana.

She still needed to talk with Ada about how she treated Thomas, and figure out how she wanted to handle Thomas’s change of heart, but those were issues for tomorrow. For now, she could just spend some time with her friend.