Jack woke up to blowing horn, signalizing morning shift change. He still remembered yesterday fight. He gained two levels, but he thought that there was something much more important he got – fighting experience. He could already point out a couple of his deficiencies. He sat up. Everyone was standing up.

“Hey, how are you after yesterday?” Stanley asked.

“Two levels,” Jack replied.

“Also two, but I was very close before,” Lillie said.

“I got only one. I was barely able to fight at the end,” Patrick said.

“I got only one. How about you, Aleena?” Stanley asked.

“I got only one.” She replied calmly. If it was true, that she was at level 12 three months ago, then it was way harder to level up with those rabbits for her. ‘She really must have killed a lot,’ Jack thought.

The day went as usual. Jack could see corpses being proceeded. Large amount was sent to the interior. ‘I hope mom and dad will get some.’ Jack was missing his family a bit.

Instructors were slowly changing the training. They started to teach the analyze skill, describing how to recognize monster’s tier. There were even some live examples, but they also practiced a bit on monster hunters and soldiers.

In the afternoon, Jack was eager to complete his fear spell rune. He nearly finished before the tide. The process was somehow complicated. First, Jack inscribed on the ground simpler spell, meant to harden and condensate soil into rock. After that, he polished the stone and started inscribing the fear spell, polishing down stone every time he made a mistake.

Jack nearly finished his work, and with a few more hits, the spell was completed, or at least, Jack thought so. He completed the spell while staying outside of it. Jack managed to acquire a live rabbit’s child from the tide. More specifically, he got it from the tower, when he requested it for the spell testing. It was a standard to test spells with some pitifully weak and without much meat monsters.

He tossed the rabbit into the rune. It shivered and curled up. Jack walked closer, and when the rabbit saw him, it jumped out of the rune. Jack cached the rabbit and checked him over. He didn’t know any magic useful for that, but the rabbit was alive and well. It also seemed, that the spell was working as intended.

Jack slowly walked into the rune space. He felt the fear. It was similar to what he had experienced during the test for the monster hunter job. He slowly sat down, he was trying to not damage the runes. He spent a lot of time to make this, and he wasn’t going to destroy the lines with some stumbling over.

He concentrated on the source of fear. It was hard to specify it. The intense feeling was not helping with rationale and analyzing thinking. He wanted to get out of the spell circle. However, he preserved.

Ding… Your Mental intrusion resistance skill has reached lv. 8

Ding… Your Mental intrusion resistance skill has reached lv. 9

Ding… Your Mental intrusion resistance skill has reached lv. 10

Ding… You have unlocked Masochist II profession.

Someone walking into the hut scared him. He looked up.

“Is it working?” Lillie asked.

“Umm, yes. It is,” he stammered out. The spell was making it hard for him to speak.

“Can I try it?” She asked.

“Sure. Just… Make sure… to not damage the runes”

She walked closer and slowly entered, immediately shivering. There were creeps on her skin.

“How it is?” Jack asked.

“Hard.” She was still shivering. Her fists were clenched.

“Hey.” Jack said and stretched out a hand. She took it in her own and sat beside him.

“I think I know the place.” Jack said.

“What… place?” She asked through clenched jaw.

“In which we will be able to do it, privately.”

“Ugrh. Don’t speak about it now. I am getting fears about it because of the spell.”

“OK.” They sat in silence, until Stanley, and after a while, Patrick went into their hut. They released hands, as it was a bit awkward now.

“Can we join too?” Stanley said, pointing at the spell.

“Sure, but please pay maximum attention to not damage anything.” Jack felt the spell was increasing his fears about the wellbeing of the mentioned spell. Jack really spent a lot of time drawing it, and was very protective about his work. He managed to level up his skill in the meantime.

Ding… Your Mental intrusion resistance skill has reached lv. 11

Ding… Your Mental intrusion resistance skill has reached lv. 12

Ding… Your Mental intrusion resistance skill has reached lv. 13

Jack was starting to understand the workings of the spell. He even left and entered it repeatedly.

‘First, it makes me feel afraid. I am starting to subconsciously seek the danger. The spell uses my thoughts and fears, and highlights them. The spell is using light energy. I suppose, it’s bringing attention to fears.’ He tested his theory by thinking about many things that could threaten him, including abstract things, like walls getting alive and eating him.

Aleena also came to the hut, and asked, if she could use the circle. Jack agreed. He wasn’t friendly with her, but also saw no reason to worsen their relationship over nothing.

“Hey, do you think, it is possible that the walls will start moving and eat us?” Jack joked. He knew now how the spell was working, and wanted to play with unreasonable fears. The team started looking fearfully at the walls.

“Can you control the spell?” Stanley asked hesitantly.

“No. It’s a way too complicated. I don’t even understand the spell workings, except for some minor runes and components. So, do you think it is possible, that your scar on the left hand is a parasite, trying to eat you from the inside?”

Stanley fearfully looked at his hand, checking it from all sides. Jack couldn’t help not to smile. He reassured himself, that a joke was also practical, as happiness helped in fighting fear.

“Aleena, do you really should train as much as you do? What if you over train and damage your body? It could be unhealable.” Jack teased.

Aleena’s face looked at first like she wanted to scoff him, and she had already opened her lips to say something, but she closed them and started looking pale. And then, even more pale.

‘This is fun,’ Jack thought.

“How are you doing this?” Lillie asked. “He must have some control over the spell,” Stanley said.

“This is not fair,” Lille pouted. Jack leaned towards her and whispered the secret into her ear. She made an enlighten face, and then thoughtful one.

“Stanley, when have you last checked on your penis? Maybe it disappeared.” Lille asked.

Stanley got pale and started touching his crotch, checking it out. Patrick soon also got pale and started doing the same.

‘Actually …’ Jack started to feel fear. He subconsciously checked his jewels.

“Damn. That was a bad joke,” Jack shouted, while Lille burst out laughing.

After a while, however, she stopped smiling and also got pale, her eyes on Jack’s crotch. “Yeah,” she said, “it really isn’t funny.”

Everyone got out of the rune, and everyone looked relived. Aleena seemed irritated a bit, but in the end, she just sighed and went to train.

Jack managed to reach level 16 in his mental intrusion resistance skill. He unlocked Masochist III profession, giving him more mental endurance. His training speed should raise now.

Masochist III

Requirements

Pain tolerance lv. 15

Mental intrusion resistance lv. 15

Boost

+20% to mental endurance

+10% to endurance

+2% per level to mental endurance

+1% per level to endurance

Jack would normally grind his intelligence and rune shaping skill in the afternoon, but he decided to analyze yesterday’s battle. Fighting in a live and death battle is completely different than sparring. Jack managed to learn many things about his deficiencies from the fight. He judged this even more important, than the two earned levels.

His parallel thinking skill level was too low. He had problems with keeping spells in the fight. He needed to think less about the fight to maintain the spell, that was unacceptable. It was fine with not an intelligent opponent like a rabbit, but against anything else…

He also needed more spells. Area of effect spells were rather out of the question. They required immense amount of essence. It was impossible for Jack to cast something like that on his own.

Jack hoped for a strong spell, capable of either assaulting his enemies on distance, and something to fight swarms. Jack was thinking about some kind of detection spell. Common detection spells were sending a flare of sparse elemental energy, sending back information to the caster. A response from a spell still needed to be delivered in a way to be understood by the caster, but Jack already knew the spell.

The major weak point of such spells were elemental compatibility. You could cast earth elemental detection spell in the air, but it will have significantly shortened distance, and precision of detection. Earth energy will also disperse in the air a way quicker, than in the soil. In the end, it was a matter of which affinities Jack wanted to acquire.

Fire had the greatest offensive power, and it could be used to detect temperature, quite useful for finding monsters.

Earth could be used to detect footprints and it had great defensive potential, but the offensive capabilities were lacking and it was nearly impossible to detect flying creatures.

Water affinity was primarily useful in the water and to manipulate gravity for stronger hits. Detection in the air was limited by the air humidity.

Air had great utility and detection abilities, but was rather weak both in defense and offense.

Life energy was good for warriors, but otherwise not great. It was hard to attack with it, and detection practically worked only for caster’s own body, which was good for healing and nothing else.

Light and shadow energies were very good at detection, but the problem was, they were too good. The amount of information was causing sensory overload, forcing users to filtrate and potentially miss a monster.

Electricity was just terrible at detection, but had strong offensive power.

Jack wanted to keep the life affinity, as it was very versatile and there weren’t any conflicts. He needed to choose two more not conflicting affinities.

His considerations were interrupted by Bob’s arrival.

“Hi, bro.” Jack’s brother came. “Can we talk?” Bob asked.

“Sure. What do you need?”

“Can you tell me how can you be so strong?” Bob asked with hopeful face.

Jack frowned. “You need to train more. The more you train, the stronger you are. It’s that simple.”

“Come on! You were killing rabbits yesterday like nobles’ children. Actually, you were even better. Shaan, a guy in my team killed less, and he is a baron’s son!” Bob was excited.

Jack sighed. “I told you. I can describe it more to you, but I don’t know if you will like it.” Jack said the last part with a smirk on his face.

“Say it.” Bob said it confidently.

“Ok. It’s your fault, that this Shaan, or whatever his name is, had worse results than me.”

“What?!” Bon asked shocked.

“I have managed to fight to the end, because my team had my back, and I had their. I am not as strong as the strongest here.” Jack explained patiently.

“And that was my fault?” Bob was agitated and started to raise his voice. “I was barely standing after ten minutes. Those rabbits bit me! I was all in the wounds!”

“That’s the problem.” Jack said calmly. “You are too weak to support your team. When are you going to learn the recovery spell?”

“I am training every day. Every day, I tried to cast the spell until my clarity depleted. It’s not my fault I am not talented!”

Jack sighed once again. “Okay, so… Did you train once again those days? Were you trying to cast during your physical training?”

“That…”

“You should always use all your stamina and clarity. Never let your bars get completely filled, unless before a real fight. You should also go to sleep only when completely spent.” Jack taught.

“Ugh…” Bob had a helpless face.

“Actually, let’s spar a bit. I want to see your skills.” Jack forced Bob to spar. Bob was barely able to fight against Jack with his skills. Bob was the most important person for Jack in the military, along Lillie and Stanley. Jack considered Patrick his friend, but the boy was secretive and wasn’t talking much.

“Come on! I was teaching you this the previous week!” Jack was advising. He wanted Bob to be successful, as much as he wanted to success himself.

“Give me a break! You must hate me to beat me up like this!”

“This is my brotherly love! Our parents told me to take care of you. What would they think when you die because of your poor skills? Get up and fight! Do you think I have an unlimited amount of time? I also need to train myself!”

The next day Jack asked Lillie to come with him to the library. She gained access some time ago. Jack was thinking for a long time where to find a private place. He knew that many soldiers were just having sex in their homes, not minding their neighbors, but he and Lillie were inexperienced and shy, they wanted a private place.

In the end, the library was both private and rarely visited. Jack had passionate sex with Lillie in there. The thrill of possibility of getting caught and banned was only increasing their experience. Jack even tried to learn by heart all important spells in case of being banned, but they were lucky.

Young lovers, after experiencing new sensations, made it a routine to use the library together, but not to read, though.