It is the fate of fools to perish. It is not our place to protect the bird from the crosswind if it does not know to land. If some fool noble would seek to fly, they must know the hazards in the sky. Any danger they encounter they have brought upon themself. If they fly into the storm, the storm shall dash them upon the ground. – Letter from the Voice Altocumulus

“Nice to meet you all. Uh, could I get the pleasure of learning your names by any chance? Kind of rude to go demanding mine and not giving one in turn you know…” Li was rambling, he knew he was, but he just wasn’t good at these kinds of things. Being around new people left him feeling awkward and unsure of himself. He never knew what to do with himself. Like where was he supposed to put his hands? Cross them across his chest? Or would that be too confrontational. Oh god, I’m screwing this up. They probably think I’m insane. Fuck, fuck. fuck…

Thankfully the man who seemed to be in charge, the one that had demanded Li’s name when he first came through the doorway, spoke up. “I am Kai Son of Ahiga and leader of Wandering Horizons. You would do well to avoid insulting me after intruding upon my party unexpectedly like you did. Some would believe you a thief or worse, playing the fool to avoid ire.”

Now that the man was talking and Li was no longer spiraling, he had a moment to really observe the man. Kai was big. Towering over Li himself, who was by no means short. Seven and half feet tall if Li had to guess. Kai wore his black hair long and unbound and his skin was closer to copper than Li’s pale complexion. Something was off about the color of his skin though, a soft glow like veins of dying embers along his arms and legs. His pupils had the same glow, offsetting the rich amber of the iris.

Looking closer, Li began to notice more oddities to the man. His ears were just a little pointed at the peak. Nothing immediately obvious, but noticeable on closer examination. His canines were huge. Not so big as to give him tusks, but they pushed out his lip slightly and were obviously oversized. And the entire man smelled like a smoker. Not a cigarette smoker, the cooking kind. Like fragrant woodsmoke and cooking meats.

Kai was decked out in a full set of leather armor, including a kilt-like skirt that ended at his knees. The armor was sleeveless, but he wore a strange metal glove that ballooned outward to about twice the width of Kai’s forearm and terminated at his elbow. His other arm was bedecked with a number of beautifully carved wooden bracelets. A solid metal breastplate covered the upper half of his chest. A large sword with an extended handle just big enough to fit both his massive hands was held at the ready. The long blade was adorned with a large red gemstone on the pommel and strange ruins along the fuller that glowed brightly with an internal fire.

Brought back to the conversation by the angry glow in the man’s sword and eyes, he winced slightly. He was taking too long to respond, “No insult intended, promise! Just a little nervous. I wasn’t expecting to be flung over here either and a bunch of angry people pointing weapons at me doesn’t help me feel better if I’m being totally honest.”

The woman behind Kai’s right shoulder, almost as tall as he was, placed a calming hand on the man’s shoulder. A calming webbed hand. “Ease up a bit Kai, you’re going to make the guy pass out with how much he’s hyperventilating. And maybe put down the sword.”

Looking closer he noticed that the woman in the green, no turqoise - it was too...blue…to be green, robes had a slight bluish tinge to her skin and gills on either side of her neck. He almost swore she had scales on her knuckles too. As she was talking, she gave Li what he was assuming she imagined was a calming smile. It certainly might have been if she didn’t have so many very, very sharp teeth filling her mouth.

“I’ve got a feeling about this one Kai. I say we listen to what he has to say.”

Li watched Kai’s internal debate at her words, eye’s shifting between the two of them, before he finally slammed the sword into the sheath on his back. Throwing his hands in the air he let out a loud snort, “You always have feelings about the people we run into Norah! Are you sure this is a good feeling and not a ‘we are about to be robbed blind’ feeling?”

The man’s tone was significantly less formal now that the situation had calmed down a little, but there was still a certain rigidity to how he talked. Like he was accustomed to formal conversations, but comfortable enough with these people that he could let those pretentions go. For the most part.

Laughing in a light tone far more girlish than her large frame would suggest, Norah responded with, “It’s a feeling that sticking around this one will be interesting!”

The other members of their team groaned at that, but it was a resigned sound. An acknowledgement that there was little they could do about what came next. Kai, especially, seemed reconciled to his fate.

“Those are the worst ones, Norah! They always end with us nearly dying or accused of crimes against the crown, or banished from the city!”

As Norah gave Kai a little poke in response, the team seemed to have completely forgotten about him, “You love those adventures and you know it! Sure we can never go back to Shesh’kanath, but how many people can claim they stole the ancestral family jewels of a fallen royal house to pay their hotel bill?”

“Gods damn it, that is exactly the sort of mess I am talking about. Next thing we know, we will be hearing this man’s sob story about the stolen fortune of his bloodline lost to a vampire flock. Or how he was left here to die by his stepfather. Or some other ridiculous story that sends us off on some grand quest for justice!” Kai sounded angry, but he was smiling as he yelled at her.

Turning back to Li, Kai returned his early line of inquiry, “Norah may wish to give you a chance, but I demand answers to my questions before that. What, exactly, did you mean when you stated that showing up here was unexpected?”

The more formal, rigid tone was back now that he was talking to Li again. Like the man’s words were made of iron and there was no weaseling around them.

“I found a weird spot in the dungeon where the magic was behaving differently. When I went to check it out, something activated and I found myself here. Looking back, it was kind of dumb of me, but nothing’s been an issue so far.”

The woman in the kimono laughed at that. Li couldn’t help but think she had a beautiful laugh, it matched well with her elegant appearance. She wore a black kimono with a red floral pattern that looked almost like climbing flames and carried a staff made of some sort of dark, nearly black, wood. The tip of the staff formed a charred cage of roots around a small ball of fire that almost seemed like a small sun. Her black hair was pulled up into a bun, but the ends of each one seemed to be almost burning. Like Kai, she seemed to have veins of embers burning in her arms and eyes. She held herself aloofly, like a princess debating the secrets of the kingdom. Then she spoke and ruined her carefully cultivated aura, “A little dumb? First thing any adventurer learns is don’t fuck with things you don’t recognize.”

He had to admit the woman probably had a point. It was pretty obvious not to screw with something you didn’t understand, he’d just gotten a little overconfident after the confrontation with the Warlord. Ok a lot overconfident. Mana Sense had been making him way too confident that he was seeing everything that was a threat.

“Yeah, I, uh, might have been making a few bad decisions at the time. I’m not exactly used to this sort of thing, you know?” Li smiled sheepishly as the five other people stared at him.

“What do you mean you are ‘not used to this’?” The woman that spoke this time had a slight accent, and spoke with a slight emphasis on her s-es.

The woman wore an emerald green dress that split in the front to reveal pants of the same color. The hem of the dress was decorated with a beautiful gold patterning. The runes almost seemed like calligraphy in a foreign language he could not comprehend, elegant but expressing a clear purpose. As he looked closer, he realized that what he had originally taken for eyeliner was actually small emerald scales with golden patterning and they could be seen in small, elegant patches under her cheeks and running down the back of each arm. Her eyes were a golden serpentine slit, lending her an air of danger and focus.

She held herself at the ready and when she continued it was with clear suspicion, “If you are untrained, you have made a foolish decision to enter this place. I will not allow you to endanger Wandering Horizon in your stupidity. I vote we leave him here. His story doesn’t matter, he is a danger whether he is untrained, a fool, or outright malicious. And he is certainly at least one of those things.”

“Oh lay off him a bit Ananya,” the woman in the kimono said. “We were all incompetent once. It’s our job as adventurers to keep people safe. Even from their own dumb decisions.”

“I most certainly will not Emiko. It is my job to keep us safe and this man is a threat. Our job is to keep people safe to the best of our ability, not to get ourselves killed protecting people from themselves.” Ananya’s voice was harsh, but Li could sense the worry underneath her confrontational attitude.

“If I might interrupt,” Li said. “I never actually asked for you to save me, you know?” Quickly backpedaling, he corrected himself, “That’s not to say I wouldn’t take any help you can give me of course. I’m just saying I will take what you are willing to give and do my best from there.”

Kai snorted at that, “Yes. Whatever we can spare. I suppose this is where the scamming begins. Still, I cannot simply discount your entire story. Still, I must know, why did you even enter this dungeon?”

“I, uh, I just kind of woke up here. The System told me I had an opportunity in this place, and I didn’t have any obvious way out, so I decided to go for it.” He shrunk a little at the end of that, adding defensively, “Not like I had much choice anyway.”

“See Kai, told you he was going to be interesting!” Norah shoved her way forward and pulled Li into a large bear hug. “I say we take this little stray in! At least for a bit.”

Finally, the last member of the party made himself known. He was dressed head to toe in a deep, dark grey cloak. Sewn into the cloth in black and light grey thread was a hypnotic pattern of swirls. The bottom of his face was concealed with a part of the cloak, but the upper half revealed a handsome man in his early thirties with dark skin and a pair of pearly horns coming out from either temple. His black hair was buzzed into a neat fade, the curls of his hair just barely there. His golden eyes were calm and surrounded by laugh lines, though they currently had a suspicious cast to them.

“I can keep an eye on him if you want Kai. You and I both know we aren’t talking Norah out of this and it would be cruel to simply leave him here if his story is true. Maybe I can teach him to stop touching everything he comes across while I’m at it.”

With a long-suffering sigh, Kai turned to Li for a moment. “It is the duty of every adventurer to save citizens in need from monster attacks. We even get a reward for it if we bring you back to a Guildhall. I do not just do it for the reward of course. I also agree with Djimon that refusing you aid would be cruel, should your story be the truth. Still, I believe that we should vote on this matter. All in favor of bringing this man with us?”

Still holding Li like he was a child, Norah raised her hand, “You know my vote Kai. The more I hear the more I know that this one is going to be fun. And I’ll help Djimon with keeping tabs on him. Promise.”

“Like you ‘kept an eye’ on Jen as she stole my sword?”

“Hey, I followed her back. Even stopped her from killing her daddy with it.”

“I am not defending her father. He deserved the beating you gave him, bruising his own child like that all those years. I am more concerned you will happily watch our things wander off to a ‘good cause.’”

“Only if he asks nicely first!”

Clearly done with the conversation, Kai turned to Emiko, “What about you? Do you agree we should bring him with us?”

Giving him a long look, she eventually snorted and said, “Idiot won’t live another week without us. He’ll be running around touching everything that glows until something smooshes him.

He deserved that. He really did. It was still hard to swallow. His offense must have been visible on his face, because Emiko stuck her tongue out at him and gave him a look that dared him to disagree.

“If he’s a good boy, maybe I will teach him how to read magic flows enough that he can at least avoid the dangerous stuff.” She finished with a grin.

“You and Norah will be the death of me Emiko, I swear. Djimon, you already said you are for this. I suppose that just leaves you Ananya. Are you still voting no?”

Sighing, Ananya made her opinion known, “I would make this decision unanimous. I do not believe this to be the best decision, but it is more important to me to preserve our cohesion. I will support this endeavor, foolish though it may be.”

Smiling at her response, Norah called to her, “Reasonable as ever dear. Thank you for putting up with me!”

Ananya could not suppress her own smile at that, obviously overjoyed to receive Norah’s praise. “Someone must be the voice of reason amongst us, but that does not mean I have to rain on your parade Norah.”

“I thank you for that Ananya. If I was the only one dealing with these three’s whims with any semblance of reason, I imagine I would quickly go insane.” Turning back to Li, Kai continued. “Li, you are officially under the protection of Wandering Horizons. We look forward to working with you for as long as your intentions remain benign.”

#

Some hours later, Norah found herself sitting alone and thinking as Kai prepared dinner. Their leader was insistent that no one else be allowed near the food as they “could make boiled water indigestible”. The Team had been working their way deeper into the dungeon throughout the day and Li had been far less of a burden than Kai had feared. He was surprisingly capable for an untrained landwalker. Her family would have called him a pupsoft, a child freshly exposed to the world and too weak to defend themselves. He acquitted himself well, though, and he had a solid set of spells.

Only at the Beginner level unfortunately.

Or maybe fortunately. So many younglings tried to get too fancy when creating their first Intermediate spells. Very few individuals had the knack for knowing which unaffiliated spells would combine well. Norah herself had it. She was even considered something of a prodigy at it. Kai on the other hand, he had to research each and every spell combination. See what records said would happen. He was too structured and formulaic, while the fusion process required instinct and ingenuity. You had to feel the spells and how they wanted to interact.

Still, until he was ready to make the fusion, he would be severely underpowered compared to the rest of the party. He had found ways around that. Layering and combining spells in impressive ways. The training to do that wouldn’t be entirely worthless either. Having to focus on many spells at once was good training regardless of ability. It would give him a solid foundation and major lead when he began training for Advanced level spells as well.

And he would get there eventually. He just needed a little push in the right direction. Fortunately for him, he had stumbled upon some of the best trainers in the entire region. Few in the Central Elderwoods Mountain Region had as much experience teaching young adventurers as Kai and herself. On top of that, Kai had a family with literal generations of adventuring knowledge to pass on and the exact type of stick in the mud, overly cautious personality to have memorized the vast majority of it. She herself came from a family of Deep Hunters in the Emerald Depths Ocean. It meant she had been drilled from birth in combat and situational awareness. They were a trove of knowledge, Li just needed to know to ask for it.

The pale young man was currently deep in conversation with Djimon, learning more about how their rogue discovered the dungeons numerous traps while they waited for Kai to finish cooking. Djimon seemed to be enjoying the conversation almost as much as Kai. He always had regretted that Anaya and Emiko didn’t share his interest in secret hunting. He liked to say there was no point in exploring an ancient ruin if you weren’t sure you had found every secret. As the two spoke, she found herself giving the stray a once over.

She was not great with baseline humans, the Cetros gave very different signs of unhealthiness when compared with most purely terrestrial species, but she thought Li was unhealthily palid. Like she would be able to see his bones with a strong enough light source. That was strange given how clear the dungeon liked to keep the sky. As far as she was aware normal humans would tan just like herself.

His skin wasn’t the only pale part of him. He had light blonde hair that she could tell had once been kept short and business-like, though had apparently had more than enough time to grow out. He had grown a rough beard maybe a shade darker that desperately needed to be groomed, giving him a slightly ragged look.

The look was not helped by the torn-up shirt and pants. Or his leather armor, which practically fell off his thin frame. The man was nothing but skin and bones, another cause for her worry over his health. Add on his tall, for a human, sixish-foot frame and narrow shoulders, and the man looked more skeleton than alive. He had piercing gray eyes though, as if daring the world to underestimate him.

If he really was sick, or had been sick, he was a fighter. He wasn’t going to just let the world beat him into submission. It was one of the things she liked about him. It would have been so easy to shrink in on himself with his appearance, but he stuck his chest out and walked like he owned the world around him. The bearing of a real adventurer.

As she walked over to them, she heard the tail end of the Li and Djimon’s conversation. Djimon was usually the person Wandering Horizons put in charge of talking to people. Kai found most individuals disappointing, and they found him pompous. Ananya didn’t particularly like people and Emiko could be a bleeding heart or cold as stone depending on whether she liked you or not. As for herself, Norah got bored. Why talk to someone if they weren’t interesting?

“…I said before, there isn’t one ability you can pick up to just detect everything. There is always a way to mask a trap from any kind of detection ability. You have to put in the time to pick up the right signs if you want to find a trap before it goes off. And that means studying. Follow me around tomorrow. I’ll point out how I am finding everything.” Djimon was telling the truth, but a solid set of sensory abilities would help most people find nine in ten traps without issue. Any more than that was really only important if you were moving alone or you were the team’s scout.

“Sorry to interrupt boys, but I want to borrow Li for a second. Djimon, why don’t you go help Emiko with securing our campsite.” Li didn’t seem entirely surprised to find her there, though the bit of his talk with Djimon she had overheard basically confirmed her suspicion that he had a pretty decent perception spell or ability.

Giving her a grin, Djimon lept up from his seat, “Sure Norah, shouldn’t be too big of an issue.” Running off, he quickly met up with Emiko who was scowling as she used her magic to place flaming runes around their campsite.

“Hi Norah. Um, what can I do for you?” He was still nervous around them, which was understandable.

“Well, the first thing you can do is stop looking like I am going to eat you!” She gave him a wide smile and caught him flinch. Right, teeth. Guess he’s never met a Cetros before.

Attempting to avoid any awkwardness while Li got himself under control, she kept talking, “Why don’t you get up and join me for a bit. I want to see what you can really do.”

Li obviously had no idea what to make of that, “Aren’t you the healer? Wouldn’t it be, I don’t know, mean of me to hit you?”

“Hah!” It took every ounce of control not to flash her teeth in another grin, “Come on you. No hard feelings if you give me a smack or two. In fact, if you do I think Kai might pull that stick out of his ass long enough to laugh for a bit.”

From over by the fire, Kai rolled his eyes and shouted over “Don’t go too crazy. We still have to sleep here!”

#

Li wasn’t sure what to make of Norah. The tall, muscular woman looked the threatening fighter, but wore a robe and had only used healing magic in his experience so far. A spell called Sap of the Tree of Life which produce a golden orb of glowing, syrupy liquid that dissolved into the target and caused wounds to heal with incredible speed. She wore a set of light leather armor under her robe, but it was crisscrossed with bandoliers carrying various wands and potions.

Still, when he looked at her his motion sense told him nothing. Not a whisper of what she was going to do next. No tensing muscles, not slight movements. Not a hint of what she was planning. All of the Wandering Horizons were the exact same. It wasn’t until they were actually in motion that he could get a hint of what they were aiming for. Even when they did move, it didn’t tell him anything. They could easily leave his projected directory without a single sign something was going to change. You’d think the healer would be the worst at that, but as far as Li could tell Norah was a step above the others at concealing her movements.

Then there was the fact that when she apparently wanted to fight him barehanded! And not in a hand-to-hand combat way. She had specifically told him to bring his knives. The healer wanted to fight him barehanded while he was fully equipped in a one-on-one fight. The woman was standing maybe fifteen feet from him, cloak and bandoliers missing.

When Norah saw his apprehension just laughed and cracked her knuckles, “Don’t worry, you can go all out against me! I may be a decade and a half your senior, but I’m solid as a rock. Promise!”

Getting more serious she pulled her fists up in a boxer’s stance and continued, “Don’t hold back on me. I need to see what you can do! You hold back on me and we’re just going to have to do this all over again. You can start whenever.”

Grimacing, Li began walking forward. She wanted to see what he could do, fine. He’d show her what he could do. He just wouldn’t hit too hard. Use Titan’s Leap to slip around behind her and go for a punch. Simple, effective, and most importantly not dangerous. These people were good, he knew that, but he wasn’t going to beat up a support mage.

Using Titan’s Leap was difficult, but impressive. A rush of speed so incredible he couldn’t really control himself once he was in motion. The speed left him feeling slightly shaken purely from the gravities it subjected his body to. Nothing he had run into so far could deal with the speed the spell granted him, and he planned to use that to his advantage now. In a blink he was behind and to the left of Norah, already spinning for a punch on her unprotected flank.

Except it wasn’t unprotected. Norah had made just enough of a partial turn to slap his fist out of the way. Then she was punching back at him. He threw up a Force Shield across his upraised arms, blocking the incoming blow much as he had the Warlord’s sword. And then the world flickered as he felt the blow. Because of her greater height, Norah’s blow came at him from above. The Shield had held, but Li’s stance had not and he had been slammed into the ground.

Standing above his prone form Norah let out a laugh, “Come on now, I know you can do better than that. Let’s give it another go, yeah?”

Off toward the camp, Li distinctly heard the sounds of three other voices laughing as well. Their voices were, perhaps, a bit more mocking than Norah’s own and he could only shake his head in chagrin. He deserved that; he’d taken her far too lightly. But still, how had she done that? Was it just a difference in their stats?

“How do you hit so hard? I didn’t sense you activating any spells…”

“Of course not! I wasn’t using any. My race is already far stronger than your own at a base level and combining that with my Ki is more than enough to give me the physical strength to overpower you. I’m assuming you haven’t opened any of your own? I can’t sense any.”

Completely confused by the question Li asked, “What’s a Ki channel?”

That answer seemed to surprise Norah, reacting as if she’d been slapped, “You really are pupsoft. Cetros won’t let their young leave the bay without at least one Ki channel open.”

She paused as she seemed to give the issue some thought, “Suffice to say that Ki is the internal application of mana to reinforce the body. Different than spells, it is a permanent increase in your body’s abilities in exchange for a permanent decrease in your total mana pool. You also gain access to a Ki pool that can be used to empower the body further or power certain abilities.”

Raising her fists in the air once more, she flashed her sharklike teeth at him and asked, “We can get into the details of that later though. Ready to try again?”

#

Each of the following rounds ended just as quickly as the first. The second round he had tried a head first charge, hoping to knock her to the ground by slamming into her with the full force of Titan’s Leap. It had been like smacking into a brick wall. All that he had accomplished was knocking the wind out of himself. The resulting opening had been enough for her to smack him on the head and declare victory.

On the third and fourth he had attempted a slower offensive, opting for the control that his Reinforcement Armor provided. No longer worried about her durability, in the third round he had gotten in close and used Giant’s Punch with a jab toward her face. She had pushed his arm to the side so the fist missed her by only an inch and countered with a punch to the chest that left him gasping on the ground. The fourth round, he had attempted to kick her legs out from under her only for her to leap over the kick and knee him in the face.

By the fifth round he had fully attracted the attention of everyone else in the camp but Kai, who never looked up from his cooking as far as Li could tell. He was also, at this point, finally ready to admit he needed to use his knives. He couldn’t win up close, so he’d need to maintain his distance. It didn’t seem like Norah planned to use any magic, so that would be a major advantage. He’d fly the knives around a bit and go for some light knicks. She was a healer, so that should be easy enough to fix up afterward.

The knives had been a mistake. The moment one got within arm’s reach, she had snatched it out of the air and thrown it back at him with such force that he didn’t have time to react. He only realized what had happened after he felt the burning pain of something cutting deep into his thigh and what he swore was something scraping on the bone underneath. Then, once the shock had passed, he dropped to the ground, screaming in agony while the audience “ooo”-ed in sympathetic pain.

Hardly a moment passed before he felt a cool, numbing liquid slowly seep across his skin. “You’re fine, I’ll have that healed up the moment you pull the knife out. Adventurers have to get used to pain. No matter how good you are, sooner or later you are going to get stabbed.”

From off to the side, he heard Djimon speak, “She’s right man. You want to continue in this dungeon, you’re going to have to get used to this stuff. Also, I’d pull that knife out sooner rather than later. Norah’s nice, but she won’t go easy on you. So it’s staying in your leg until you pull it out yourself. Course, you could always just say you don’t want to be an adventurer. Then you’d just be a protection detail.”

There it was again. The decision. Continue on, grow stronger, and make something of himself in this life after sickness had denied him the chance in his last life. Or take the easy route. It wasn’t a decision he could only make once and everything would be great after that. It was one he would have to make over and over and over. With ever increasing stakes.

But his answer hadn’t changed.

Slowly, hands shaking, he reached toward the knife that was embedded in his leg. He wrapped his fingers around the handle and immediately regretted it when the shaking caused that awful scrapping feeling to return in force. For a second the dulled sense of pain returned and he felt every motion of the short blade.

With a shout, he ripped the knife from his leg. He was expecting a giant splurt of blood, but there was nothing. Norah was as good as her word and the flesh had literally healed as the knife left the wound. That had been far more difficult than he had ever imagined. But they were right, he was lucky to have gone this long with only bruises. He would need to get used to the idea of getting hurt.

Straightening up, he was surprised by a bear hug from Norah as she lifted him off the ground, “Good job pup! You’ve got spine.”

Behind her he heard the rest of the team approaching. Kai, who he had previously been sure hadn’t been paying attention spoke up next. “Norah is right. You are obviously green, but being able to accomplish this is a good sign for your future. I will not say you do not deserve to be an adventurer.”

“Nerves of steel this one!” Laughing happily, Djimon grabbed him in a one-armed hug as soon as Norah put him down, “Don’t let Kai undersell it. Most newbies leave screaming about how Norah is a monster or scared to death of being hurt again. Only the ones serious about getting better manage to pull the knife out.”

“Wait, she’s done this before?” Li was flabbergasted by Djimon’s implication, “Wait, was she planning this from the beginning?”

Laughing a bit, Emiko chimed in, “Done it before? It’s practically a rite of passage with our group. She’s done that to every one of us but Kai. Not to say she hasn’t stuck a pointy object or two in Kai as well…”

“It is true. Norah is well known for her, shall we say, aggressive training methods. But nobody has been able to argue with her results.” Apparently even Ananya, with all her distrust of him, felt some amount of comradery after watching his actions.

#

That hadn’t been the end of his fights with Norah. She had insisted he continue to fight her until he began repeating his strategies, entirely out of new ideas for fighting her. It had been a lesson in humility, knowing that this woman could dismantle him with ease. Of course, according to Emiko and Djimon she was every bit the fighter that Kai was.

Apparently, she did not believe in the idea that a healer should be kept safe by the rest of the team. She preferred a more active role in their more difficult encounters.

Standing over him as he sat panting on the ground, Norah began listing what she saw as his ‘problematic habits’. “You rely too much on your sensory ability. Based off the nature of your other magics, I am guessing it senses motion. It’s impressive that you are able to anticipate your opponents’ actions based on that, but any fighter can do the same. They base their observations on stance, balance, and line of sight, but it’s all the same. Any competent fighter has learned how to use those senses to fake and confound their opponent.

“Speaking of competent fighters. You aren’t one. You can fake it very well, I’ll admit, but you aren’t. None of your actions are truly natural to perform. You need to work on making a set of moves second nature. Something that takes no thought to use. And stop leaning on the crutch of your magic for a while, it will help you a lot in the long run.

“Your magic itself is lacking, you need to create some Intermediate spells. That will help you a lot. I bet you’d have a pretty major increase in power once you accomplish that. Still, your spells are pretty effective and generally seem to be low cost. They also work well with your fighting repertoire. I like the hit and run style you have going on. I’m going to ask you to train with all of us to figure out what style fits you best, but I would suggest talking to Djimon for that particular aspect.

“Overall, you’ve skipped the basics. You have an impressive spell set and I believe you will be quite capable given time, but you need to address some major flaws. If you don’t go back and correct your foundation, I doubt you will ever make it out of the lower half of D rank. We can help you with that. If you want.”

Li couldn’t help but smile at her offer. He wasn’t so proud as to believe he had stumbled upon some secret method all his own of becoming the most powerful being in the world. What they were offering him was everything he could have asked for.

“I think I’d like that quite a bit, if you’re offering.”