He left and met up with the others, but it was clear something had snapped within Briana.


    It was horrifyingly obvious to Tom, but he doubted any outside observers could notice. They still played in the same room, sat together at the dinner table, but joy and trust had left her. The playful, overly competitive girl was gone, replaced by a shadow of her former self. They were existing in parallel with each other; they were no longer a team, and it was dangerous.


    It was tension that was going to eventually bubble over and create a scene.


    “You have to stop.” Tom said quietly.


    Kang looked at him like he had grown horns and then, significantly, at the obstacle courses around them. His look seemed to scream at Tom, ‘We’re not in an isolation room! What are you thinking?’


    Tom chose to ignore the inherent warning in the other man’s reaction. After all, this had to be said, and dragging Kang individually into a protected area was just as much of a risk. “You’re being a meanie to her.”


    “She started it,” Kang said, playing up the childish expression for any audience that might be out there, but the attempt was only half-hearted. Underneath his acting, he was clearly feeling despondent as well. “But I’ll try to be nicer.”


    “Good.”


    Conversation done, Tom launched himself into the course and hoped it would be enough.


    It wasn’t.


    Briana did not respond to their more friendly overtones.


    Tom couldn’t help it at dinner. He went and sat next to Eloise. She glared at him suspiciously, then kept eating the vegetables as if they had personally insulted her. She was not a reincarnator as he had checked, but she certainly acted like it at times. “Eloise?”


    “What do you want?”


    He tried to ask her if she liked Briana, but Social Silence triggered to stop him. That threw him for a loop momentarily, as it was the first time it had activated around children, and he wondered why. He checked Danger Sense, but there wasn’t even an inkling of a threat.


    “Well?” she asked through a mouthful of food while glaring at him. He saw mashed carrots and chewed up pees.


    “You should play with Bri… um… I mean us more.”


    “I do.”


    He was completely flabbergasted by that response. It was nonsensical, but she didn’t care, and the conversation was clearly over. She kept shovelling the food into her mouth and ignoring him.


    She finished, and he had eaten only about a quarter of his own plate. She had technically started before him, but not by much. It wasn’t a surprise – Eloise, out of all of them, spent the least time eating. He had assumed that it was to avoid Joseph, but maybe there was more to it. “We’re doing the dodge pits after dinner.” He said hurriedly as she was about to get up.


    “I know. I saw you doing obstacles earlier.”


    Tom shut up. Eloise was very much a free spirit and was going to do whatever she wanted. Any more pushing would be counterproductive. She left, and he finished his food in silence, then linked up with the other two.


    The three of them were there once more, but they were not together. Tom, as usual, trained three levels down from the other two, who were taking turns alternating in the same pit. The typical mock battles they would carry out between themselves while laughing uproariously were missing.


    He was in the ring once more, and Danger Sense was blaring at him. He knew the combat dummy was coming from his front by the shape of his skill. Dampen Senses was running so he couldn’t actually see, which made the training so effective. His skill had improved against the combat dummies, and it worked most of the time now. While the threat component was functioning perfectly, the directionality he was trying to train into it did not. It had an error rate of about one in forty, which, unless he got unprecedented luck, was not enough to last a full round. Yet, every day was better and within a month his ability would improve sufficiently to make fighting these dummies while blind trivial. Then he was going to challenge a harder pit, and the skill would fail again.


    Tom leapt to the side.


    Force smashed into his chest.


    It felt like the living daylights had been punched out of him, even with the enchantments reducing the impact. The blows of the dummies were designed to be partially blocked and not leapt into. Tom had not only not done one of the damage mitigation techniques - he had actually effectively thrown himself into the strike. The combined outcome, he knew, was going to leave him firmly in the internal burst and broken organ territory. The thoughts flittered through his head while he was airborne, then he crashed hard onto the ground and got dirt in his mouth. Tom considered leaping to his feet, but Danger Sense had stopped blaring its alarm. That meant he wasn’t about to get hit; therefore, the impact must have knocked him clear of the pit, so he knew he had lost.


    He cancelled the gravity effect and his reduced senses, then groaned as his body finally started transmitting the pain signals. Kang, at some point, had come over and offered a hand, which he gratefully accepted. It hurt a lot, and, with his new trait, there was no need to suffer. Touch Heal activated for free and removed most of the discomfort he was feeling. He deliberately left some of it, because the pain was there for a reason; besides, while the free mana could have been better spent directly healing him, he had to keep appearances, especially in the context of everything else they had done recently. Any observers had to see him being hurt and watch him limp over to the healing crystal.


    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    “Good job.” Kang said quietly while indicating to his right with a slight jerk of his head.


    Tom looked over there he saw that Eloise had joined Briana and they were currently wrestling.


    “Let’s go.” Kang said. “I think there’s an unarmed class that I’m interested in trying out. I feel like I need more of a challenge than this place offers.”


    They left the room via the healing crystal, and Tom felt his heart warm at the high-pitched squeals and laughter that they were leaving behind.


    He accompanied Kang all the way to the gym before making up his mind. Right at the entrance, he pulled away. “You go. I have something else to do.” Once more, he got an annoyed glare, but there was nothing the boy could do.


    Kang went into the class, and Tom entered the nearest isolation room. He understood how risky what he was doing was, and if he didn’t have his ridiculous precognition affinity and his Danger Sense skill, he would have never risked it. But with those defences active, and himself having missed his usual session due to the interview with Dimitri, he decided that, on the balance of probabilities, the danger was worth it. All those factors, plus the fact that everyone knew that the three of them were fighting, so any weird behaviour would be overlooked, supported his decision.


    Today, he could get away with this, even if a long-term pattern of extra isolation room sessions was likely to cause problems.


    The moment the privacy wards locked in place, he retrieved both the healing and lightning domain folders. At the end of the conversation with the others, he had a very specific idea, and it was time to put that into action.


    For a moment, he considered his approach. Did he want to get all the precursors, or just the critical ones that had fed directly into Spark and Touch Heal, respectively?


    Getting the really weak spells, he decided after some thought, didn’t make much sense, even if they were free. He was only going to reacquire the ones that could be used regularly in battle. Blood Restore, for example, was useful to have available whenever he got cut up in a fight. It was two steps under Touch Heal, but in its niche role, it was almost as good.


    That was a definite yes.


    The path forward slowly crystallised in his mind. The hierarchy sheets were in front of him, and he identified each of the abilities he wanted to relearn. With the spells selected, all that was left was to decide on the order, and, given how fast he died in the duels, it was obvious that focusing on offense was the superior choice. Being able to heal better didn’t matter if you never got the opportunity to start healing.


    He flipped open the lightning domain folder and went straight to the most immediately useful of Spark’s precursors.


    The complicated wire frame diagrams of Electricity Explosion were spread out in front of him. There were two pages for this particular spell, and, after consulting his fate reserves, he spent only one point. Then he painstakingly recreated the manual mana lines. He had already done a perfect cast of this once, and at one point had held the system spell for it, so, in theory, it should be easy. The multiple dimensional structure felt familiar, and it came together easily.


    He focused the manually created spell on the combat dummy and released it with a single point of mana. The result was instant. There was a spurt of uncontrollable sparks, along with a simultaneous ding.


    Tom smiled and recast it. This time, rather than an uninspiring trickle, it was an explosion of sparks. Ten mana being invested into the spell instead of only one made a significant difference. Briefly, the combat dummy was covered with lines of visible electricity, before they faded.


    In the greater world, it was more showy than effective. If he hit a rat with it, he would kill it, but he doubted it had the power to eliminate anything more powerful.


    But, at the cost of a single point of fate, it was free to use in every battle from now on.


    He smiled and moved onto the next spell on the list, Physical Shock. This one had to be channelled through his body, so he walked up to the dummy. After creating the spell, he slapped his helpless opponent. His hands tingled and there was a crack as the energy discharged, but there was no ding.


    Mentally, he cursed, but he kept going. It was foolish to think he would get a perfect cast first time without fate support. But this was one of the simplest spell forms, so he knew that, eventually, it was going to come out perfect. And, at one mana per spell, he had hundreds of attempts available to get it right this evening.


    With his next effort, he channelled Precognition Mana into the mix instead of relying on unattributed personal mana. Every thirty seconds, he hit the dummy. With each strike, he tweaked the spell form and recast it with minuscule adjustments, which moved it closer to perfection.


    Ding.


    The noise echoed in his mind.


    Grinning, he smacked the dummy. This time, visible lightning crackled from the point of impact to briefly ensnare the entire construct with significantly more power than the Electricity Explosion had achieved.


    The attack had used his full allocation of ten free points of mana.


    This was great. He already had two of the seven upgrades he was aiming for.


    He knew he was grinning manically, but he didn’t care. The individual spells were nothing to write home about. Physical Shock would probably knock down a horse and permanently end anything smaller than a miniature pony, but that only applied to Earth animals. Its effect was not going to be so pronounced against most monsters, but it would have an impact. Hopefully, it would stun enemies for long enough for Tom to use a spear to finish them.


    Buoyed by his success, he kept going. Two points of fate, because the spell was important, got him Heal Organs. Purge Foreign Contaminant, Blood Restore, Ionised Air and Plasma Path were all obtained through hard work and repetition. That was the full set of precursor spells he had wanted, and it was almost bedtime.


    He stepped back ten paces from the dummy, and then smiled.


    Physical Shock, Ionised Air and Plasma Path were used in unison, and lightning snaked from his fingers to smash into the combat dummy across the room. There was a loud bang, as though a blast of thunder went off. Thirty mana invested, and the significant synergy between the skills, had produced a blast almost as powerful as what Spark, with all of the precognition pool, could have unleashed.


    That wasn’t only taking down an Earth animal. It had been strong enough to kill actual monsters. He was getting closer to becoming competitive in the duels.


    It was two hours well spent, and he decided that he needed to get more spells like these. First earth, but potentially even those from different affinities.


    He left the room, and his good mood evaporated almost immediately. The corridor was empty, but his mind leapt to Bri. He hoped she was okay and had enjoyed spending time with Eloise.