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"I thought you would hold back... you know, let me kill you and try to make it look good," Hitome says while wiping at her face. "Did you know that I'm claustrophobic? Were you aware that the most terrifying thing in the world to me is being trapped in a hole to die when you were trying to bury me alive?"

"The only things i know about any of you is what you tell me, nothing more and nothing less," i reassure her quickly, feeling my own eyes start to get hot and wet as i realize just how horrible of a person i had been. "I don't have access to Doc's company records or even your full names to find you on social media after the beta, anything you keep private is assuredly private. If it makes you feel any better, i used to be scared of heights... not just in a building or up a tree, but even on a hill i couldn't climb and look around or do anything if i ever noticed i was more than ten feet up... until an older lady friend in college took me up on the auditorium's roof for the night. Now... i can fight on mountaintops."

"Not much of a fight," Hitome says as she finally joins me at the front edge of the busted up mountaintop overlooking the min and ruined fort below. "You just danced around making me look like an idiot and making fun of me until i broke down and started crying. But... i guess i can admit that i brought it on myself by fighting you. Everybody else was smart enough to leave well enough alone."

"If not for Particle, you would have won," i reassure her with a brief pat to her crowned head. "Would you like to glide down with me or should i leave you your space?"

Her answer was to jump up onto my back in a ferocious tackle that carried us over the edge of the mountain, diving us straight down to a nearby cleft in the mountain until i open my EMF wings through Hitome's body and steer us off to the side of the outcropping and then level out to a forward dive away from the mountain and down toward the crater below where the dust was once again clouding the air from Arielle's current match. Flapping once to break my falling momentum from several yards above the ground, i simply drop with Hitome's weight the rest of the way to the ground where i land in a rough crouch before she hops off of me and i can stand upright. Everybody quickly crowded around to try and find out how the fight had gone, but Hitome said nothing and hurried off to her shelter which left most of the others looking at me with angry suspicion that i simply shrugged at before wandering off to find Issa and my promised batch of pastries.

I went to Hitome's shelter after i finally found Issa on the opposite side of the fire from the other beta members hoarding a tray of over a dizen poastries, finding her playing with all of her young chitters who had all grown to the size of small cats. "Hey..." i say quietly from the entrance to her surprisingly large shelter with a second set of mattresses to accommodate her many familiars. "I was hoping to apologize... again... but this time i come with sweets! Can i come in?"

"Of course," Hitome replies almost casually, not turning around to look at me as she holds one chitter up by its middle arms on its back legs and pretends to dance with the plush animal. "I'm not... I'm not mad, but i am... not cool. We're not cool after that, that... wasn't cool. You're not the kind of person i thought you were."

Coming to sit down beside her, wafting the smell of the still hot pastries toward her, i ask, "And what kind of person did you think i was? Did you think i was a good guy? A nice guy? Do you think me a bad guy, now? I have always been whatever i am, you simply choose to see me as what you want me to be, not what i am. I don't think I'm a good guy, definitely not a nice guy, but I'm not the bad guy, either. I'm me, and you don't know who that is, so you're suddenly afraid of what you don't understand, and i don't blame you because i don't know how to help you understand what it is that makes me... me. I don't even know, but i do know i prefer to think of us as friends, so... I'm just going to leave these here and give you your space," i decide at last, getting up without any of the pastries at all and leaving Hitome's shelter before she can say anything.

Arielle was still fighting with Harold down in the crater when i rejoined the group, waving aside the rapier i had given him from the small silver mine's outlaw mage with either end of her staff as he fought to make an opening for his weapon to score another point. "He needs to evade, stop wasting his balance on defending and just sidestep one of her thrusts to score on her ribs," i remark offhandedly to myself, earning several looks of mixed expressions from the others. People did not seem to be happy with my fights against Arielle and Hitome, but i could not let myself be bothered by it as i said, "In a full-frontal attack, her strength makes her fast enough to be overwhelming, but she's actually lacking in combat experience. When i was scoring my combo from behind her, she attacked my legs after i attacked her legs, which was well within the guard-range of my attack so all i had to do was raise my swords a little for blocks before making the more fatal blows on her lower ribs, if she had more experience she would have gone high for my head while my swords were low and forced me to evade and end the combo."

"We don't have all that much combat experience, either," Billy points out in a surprisingly relaxed manner, having settled into his position as weakest member long ago and excelled under such a low standard. "Professor Harlen told me you were a giant nerd all your life, what the hell makes you so good at this?"

"I retired early so i could devote myself to preparing for the beta full-time, even sold my old security software company so my old employees would stop harassing me for help," i reply in the same relaxed manner, earning more looks from the others. "I still end up solving some of their problems, the company is my legacy so i can't just let it go to ruin, but with all that free time and money i was able to buy all sorts of equipment and hire all sorts of people to spar with. I once went two minutes against the world's current top-ranked Kendo champion, never scored any points but it wasn't until after the first minute that they scored their first point and then two points later the spar was over. Told me i train like samurai but fight like ninja, whatever that meant, but the entire point of it was to gauge my skills and tell me if i was shit or worth a damn so i guess being equated to both samurai and ninja is a good grade."

Laughing, Billy argues, "He probably meant that you train to fight honorably but you fight without honor, do you think you might have offended him while fighting?"

"I didn't have time to say anything and play head games," i say with a shrug, feeling like he was right about the samurai and ninja assessment that i had recieved, "but i told him not to worry about breaking any of my bones with his bokken- wooden sword- because i wasn't worried about breaking his so neither of us seemed to really hold back. The only attacks barred were the neck up and the groin, so i wasn't scared of dying by bludgeoning, but that guy's sword moved almost as fast as my displacements and it's part of how i am so good at evading. Oh, evading, that was probably the dishonorable part... i was scared and playing his range for the first half of the match. For the record, i never actually won any of my sparring matches, but i more or less passed them all, it's not until i started playing that i actually started winning my fights."

"I'm short and fat, i have been getting in fights all my life," Billy argues, laughing despite himself. "But, even I'm not full-time good, just kind of good. Must be that difference everyone keeps talking about," he adds, actually drawing out a few quiet laughs from the group around us.

Sighing tiredly at the reference to the genius joke one of Doc's interns was said to have started before i even existed in Hartech, i watch as Harold crouches and scores two points across Arielle's plated shins in time for her to snap the lower end of her staff up into his shoulder and rebound the top down between his shoulders which must have been her final points because Harold just lay there for a moment until she grabs his wrist and pulls him up to his feet. They had a short, quiet conversation then, probably discussing his strengths and weaknesses during the fight, and then it was Sasha's turn to climb down into the crater with the gold guy's behemoth bastard sword. "Block with your body holding your arms, not your arms holding the sword," i call after Sasha, hoping the advice would help her manage the English broadsword with the speed necessary to match Arielle's staff.

"Got any tips for the rest of us?" Angel asks with a smirk. "Harold only got like eight or nine points, i don't think we're going to be able to do even that well."

"Since you're all using the swords i made, just play her range and wait for her to switch grip to the butt end of her staff for a fully extended thrust," i reply with a sagely nod after a few seconds of careful consideration in which Sasha and Arielle get into position at the center of the crater. "Then, attack the staff. Her grip is strong enough that probably only somebody strong like Sasha or Harold or somebody that knows what they're doing like Hitome would actually disarm her without attacking her hands, but her staff is marble and will break easily if you attack the center so you'll force her to suddenly switch styles or make a new weapon and in that moment you should be able to score a point or two before giving her some distance to make a new staff. None of you want to face her and Doc's rogue dagger style, not only because you'll probably die by accident but because training against such a unique set of weapons and techniques would hinder as much as help you all in the future. Focus on your defense, measure your breathing, and work on building stamina by drawing out the fight as long as possible for yourselves and the next guy."

"Or girl," Emma cuts in quickly.

"Or girl," i agree with a chagrined smile. "I rattled her and riled her up so she would vent her fight with me on the next few opponents, making her tired in the long run as well as shook her confidence in herself by tripling her points. Don't go out there and try to kill her or anything, but don't hold back just because she's friendly or pretty because i was roughly two minutes from death by the end of our fight- that last slam of her staff ruptured my stomach through my abs and i swear that i can still feel my insides burning with septic digestive fluids."

"Shouldn't you be lying down or something?" Billy asks suddenly, surveying me up and down for any signs of damage from either of my fights. "Even after my leg was healed last night, all i wanted to do was curl up and sleep."

"Probably," is all i can think to say in response to his question. I probably should have been resting after having pushed myself in both fights, but i did not feel tired or hurt in any way that would require my resting, and i wanted to watch the others fight to learn a little more about their own methods of combat. "Either resting or training, and i don't have my gold gear yet to start training."

"Tree-s," a familiar hiss from nearby says, turning out to be Issa holding a tray of fresh pastries whose berry drizzles steamed where it thinned out down the sides. "Z-ai not s-ay new magic?" Issa asks when everybody just looks at her blankly while i waft a Freeze Breeze across the pastries to chill their toppings and help them cool enough for me to pick one up. "S-cale-sh sh-aman-s pract-ice nature magic, make plant grow fa-s-t and how want to bear what want or build what want. Home for my people grown, no build, are... an-c-e-s-tor tree-s."

"Essentially, Issa says our next step in magic training is to grow trees to rebuild the fort or build a fortress of trees," i clarify for the group who were actually looking excited about the magic training that did not come from me. At least, directly, anyway. "The practice will be useful for future strongholds here in the islands and anywhere else."

"My people out for s-eed-s, now," Issa informs us all before handing her tray off to the closest person, Angel, who had only been reaching for a pastry. "Will be ready s-oon, around time you all done fighting each other. Can get your Sh-aman-s to tea-ch how and have s-ome s-mall plant s-eed already, sh-ould begin... A-S-AP."

Turning away from the group to open-mouthed chew on the still internally scalding pastry like a dog to avoid burning myself too badly, i quickly swallow the bite before turning back and saying, "Since my fights are already out of the way, I'm going to go ahead with magic training until Arielle makes our gold gear for us. This exercise is an excellent capacity workout because the amount of magic used directly correlates to the growth of the plant, like the storing exercise I've been using but for more of an immediate affect."

Issa soon had me by the wrist to lead away back toward my shelter, clicking loudly in time with telepathic pulses in my head that felt like she was calling for people, but it was soon obvious she had been summoning the other shamans partnered with the rest of the beta from the collective group of Scalesh who left the few dozen Scalesh people working about the fire preparing a celebratory feast as well as preserved fruits and pickled vegetables and pressing salted meats to be dried out over the giant fire bed. Inside my shelter, i found Spot awake and being tended to by two young shamans with aura that barely reached out a few feet from their body as they fed and groomed the constantly growing creature. Not far from Spot's spa in a copper wash tub of vaguely steamy water in the cool air of my large shack shelter, i found the gold armor that i had been waiting for lying on my bed in the form of leather wraps for my shins and forearms woven around long gold bars marked for their weight within the weaving at five pounds per bar, a large vest covered in small one-pound plates, and a simple helmet capped and molded by a broad sheet of gold shaped to the top, sides, and back of my head.

Going through a large leather rucksack that i did not recognize, Issa pulls out several small hide pouches that she loosens the drawstrings on to peer inside before settling on three small chitter pelt pouches before coming over to forcibly adorn my helmet and shinguards while i was busy lacing up my bracers. Completing my gilded training gear with my vest after struggling to pull it down over my helmeted head, i honestly felt as though i was back at my original weight and mass which made me wonder if my EMF body's passive abilities would not hinder my strength training. Tying each pouch onto my belt as she names them before climbing onto my back to add her weight for the actual workout, Issa says, "Oak, plantain, ro-se... now, run to port where we begin. Need new everything and wall-s of oak protected by rose thorn, plantain along bea-ch ju-s-t for food."

With the extra hundred pounds of Issa's weight clinging tightly to my back, i was quickly reminded of my training in reality to prepare for the beta by running a few miles in weighted equipment by how quickly my legs became sore from the strain of running and the following aches of my ribs expanding and contracting in long, slow breaths as i carefully measured the use of my lungs. It took over twenty minutes of running to reach the beach and marina lake that was scattered with damaged ship parts, bits of piers, sandbars like shockwaves reaching out into the water from the dispersion of explosive energies after the previous night's battles, and, of course, the bodies. Most wree unrecognizeable parts scattered acrossed the pink-washed white sandy beach but anywhere there was a whole corpse or even torso it had been stripped of its gear and left naked to rot in the sun around the behemoth body parts of the demon-influenced undead abomination.

"We're here for work," Issa argues as i make my way over to the charred, hollow skull of of the abomination, remembering that we still had loot to acquire from the charred remains of the necromancer. "Who are those?" Issa asks in shock at the pile of brittle, blackened boned left in the wake of the large skull that i brushed aside with a magically charged shove.

Bending down to sort through the ashed organics inside the skull collected around the necromancer's bones, i start picking out bits of magical jewelry unaffected by the flames and say, "This was the necromancer i was fighting on the beach, he had a magical item or stone that gave him the power to nearly kill me just by proximity and i need to find it. We can split it up among the team and use it because it's an incredibly rare type of material that produces and energy which we cannot create. I could fuse materials to make an acid, but i cannot produce radiation without a sample of irradiated- oh man," i cut myself off, coming across what could only be some kind of wand about eleven inches in overall length made out of some kind of gold alloy topped with a hollow, pristine quartz prism containing some kind of flourescent green powder that had to be some form of radium.

"I-s that all you wanted?" Issa asks incredulously as i examine the residue within the two-inch thick shell of the quartz crystal, soon realizing that to use the catalyst one or some of the grains of isotop had to be broken down to created a gamma radiation contained and projected in the user's aura.

"This could have turned me into a puddle," i say, grinning as i holster the wand in a fold of her wrapping armor. "If you saw what they had done with it, you would be as impressed as i am. The projected radiation of this can break down organic matter, if not for regeneration i would probably be full of cancer right now, and we can use this to gain an edge on future raids."

"We to-ss-ed rock-s of that aside back at s-ilver mine," she replies with a very Zai-like shrug. "How mu-ch do you all need? Can s-end team to go find loo-s-e... radia-ti-on."

Of course there would be radioactive content at the silver mine, galena is lead and sulfur and lead is decayed uraniam and its all contained in a lithium rich quartzite granite. How could i be so oblivious? "Send a team out to the old iron mine to collect the geode i was developing, it should have been done by yesterday but... we've been busy," i say instead with a shrug as i collect the rest of the jewelry and store it in a pocket of my cargo pants. "We don't know how much it takes to do what, that crystal is about one-fourth empty and he was probably having it sourced by the mage at the island using the table to break down the ore for silver. I never really looked into radioactive materials for my studies, mostly just metallurgy and basic chemistries, but i know that this particular material in that particular mine would only make up about ten percent of the entire mountain, maybe a few hundred pounds overall, and the wand tells me that the necromancer used about an ounce of material overall last night in increments of over one hundred feet of aura for a reference point. To project gamma rays beyond our personal fields would probably be two parts material for one part of magic energy to compensate the range... making a concentrated beam of about three hundred feet tantamount to the ounce of missing radium- as costly as that sounds, a beam like that would have burnt a hole straight through my gear and my body in under a second.

"Spell class, Gamma," i go on more to myself than to Issa as she directs me by my ears up the beach toward where sand met rocky grass before she jumps down to start placing large black plantain seeds just a few feet beyond the grassline. "EMF of destroyed particles for AOE, Gamma Cloak. Magically concentrated and projected wavelength of destroyed particles, Gamma Ray. Magically condensed and thrown wavelengths of destroyed particles, Nuke. Crystalline objects containing Gamma energy, Radeode. Metallic objects alloyed or bonded with Gamma energies, 'Y' or 'G' denotations for Greek alphabet gamma and English simplification. I need a new weapon... i can remake my wakizashi as G-Zashi from Y-steel, which would allow from Gamma Scythes just as armor or jewerly would allow for Gamma Shielding with a nuclear buffer or just more sustainable if smaller Cloaking. None of these are really new except for Cloaking, though... just the same tricks i use with every other energy.

"Could i irradiate other matter for carrier exposure and long-term affects?" I ask myself now as Issa all but drags me over to where she had planted a long row over several dozen seeds in the entrance's line of sight of the fort so that i could distractedly throw the newly clarified life energy i has been using to speed up healing or for Magic Scalpel into the seeds to force them into rooting and sprouting in the wet, salty soil. "Would not my Gamma swords and gear cause exposure to others around me? The implementation of magical energies during crafting would probably contain all radiation as a charge for use in Shield or Cloak or Scythe, but the carrying of large quantities of radium and irradiated material would take a lot of energy either in crafting or the act of containment itself. Could Particle a giant shipping container out of quartz, was dense enough for containing the necromancer's raw materials and is plentiful enough at the mine. Plus, we need to restock on sulfur anyway which on its own would require the entire group... plausible justification is extreme magical training in breaking down materials and energy consumption while wearing training gear for physical exercise. Issa," i finish, actually startling my magical partner as she was watering the sprouting stalks of plantain trees that had already grown their first three layers- or years- in the last few moments until i hit critical with the disappearance of my EMF body.

"We don't have enough capable shamans, would you go among the ranks and find those willing to bond with us for greater power and sort them out? The others need all of the capacity increases that they can get as soon as they can get it to make our limited magical knowledge more effective, just like we need these radioactive materials to increase our repertoire. I personally don't want an army of familiars, as useful as they would probably be, because getting initial buffs from all of you feels like cheating in the long-run even though every other player and their cousin will be doing it so only pick out a couple of the strongest or oldest and most knowledgable. The groomers with Spot were just kids, but they had auras only about half of yours when we met so they seem like very likely candidates and maybe one other wisewoman to oversee all of our training. In Scalesh practices- your healing and nature magics are things the mages we have faced so far do not use so it's an advantage of sorts for use to learn it- like these trees," i add after my auric body and its excess aura had returned from the last of the effects of the ether i had drank before facing off with Hitome, returning to growing the plantain trees to an age where they can begin bearing large quantities of fruit.

"KtKa and KaKt," Issa clicks out the names of the young shamans- maybe priestesses at their and Issa's under-ages- while pruning unhealthy limbs as they grow with small Scythe attacks from her claws. "They are not ju-s-t from the s-ame clu-tch but s-ame egg, you call twin-s. Mu-ch potent in their power, and their mother, clu-tch-mate to my own, die s-o i pick for S-pot. They will be good for you, their bond unbroken over any di-s-tan-ce, and i know of s-ome... wi-se-women... that wi-sh to s-erve. Mother ha-s them gathering craft-s-men and working to build weapon-s out-s-ide fort... s-iege engine-s, but will return for lun-ch and can pick next bondmate then. Many here wish to grow s-tronger with you all, not only sh-aman-s but men wish to bond for magic as we sh-aman bond with... lifemate... to give them magic, are you s-ure you want s-o few? Would be wi-se to have... honor guard-s, warrior-s volunteering to die in your place in battle."

The shamans were so few and far between after the nearly complete domination of their species in the outer isles that i personally wanted as few as possible to avoid their deaths in the fights to come because i would be involved in the most dangerous aspects. Never had it occurred to me that i could bond with their male life forces in the same way i bond with the shamans' magical EMF sources, the greater portion of their species that would not suffer so heavily from following me into battle when they would already make up our front lines. "The males who cared for you at the silver mine," i decide on the numbers of my so-called honor guard. "They will be your guards after i have bonded them, they have already proven their reliability to you and us and then i can have six of my own guardsmen chosen from the most capable among our units here at the fort. They can all continue training in your war style under our combined tutelage and any of them that come out with magic or magical abilities we can uniquely train adapted to their powers."

Shaking her head as i sit back in the sand from my efforts while the first sprouting limbs that would eventually bear bunches of fruit were growing out from each of the trees, Issa says, "War s-tyle no good for honor guard, only sh-ield arm and... univer-s-al one-hand movement-s, guard-s need multiple s-kills-et and weapon-s for... ver-s-atility. Cro-s-s-bow and all range a mu-s-t, Runecraft a mu-s-t, dual weapon-s a mu-s-t, shield-arm weigh down an honor guard where infantry have numbers."

"Let's take about two steps back in all that where you said rune-what?" i ask suddenly, making sure i had heard her correctly because it seemed to me that i had just been handed a new magic. "Have you really been holding out on me again?"

"We ju-s-t la-s-t night found the-s-e book-s about it in the commander-'s floor of the barrack-s," she states defensively. "Can only do s-o mu-ch at one time, Zai. Commander wa-s making their own... library, lot-s of s-croll-s and book-s half or s-loppily written, even you s-truggle to make s-en-s-e of it all. Will sh-ow Runecraft when Runecraft ready, you grow tree until. Come, help me move rock and make room for oak," she adds quickly, ushering me further down the manmade beach where the grassline creeped out closer toward the water.

I spent a good ten minutes clearing large areas of the boulders and rocks that had been dug up in the marina during its construction, but when i was done draining my aura under Issa's guidance she took over the project by mounding and shaping the ground i had cleared into small hills some thirty yards apart before planting a single acorn into the bottom of the front sides of each hill of churned grassy soil and sand. Taking out a pure silver flask that she had probably made herself from the way it was shaped like my own canteen, she says, "Drink, i-s tea my people make for regaining magic, then grow tree-s out over the water to repla-ce dock-s. Grow tall with few limb-s, lot of s-pace for boat-s between limb-s."

The tea worked well to restore my energy, but it lacked the duration affect of ether or elixir so every sip i took simply restored a few feet at a time as though i were drinking a magic potion in any other video game until my aura was fully restored from half of the canteen's contents. "That would go great with a few drops of either in the entire batch of tea," i say after handing the canteen back to my partner. "Just something to make it restore more or have a duration affect, if we mass-produced your tea then every battle would deplete our stocks at that rate and i would have to carry around a gallon at a time."

"Next magic-s you learn will sh-ow you that tea ju-s-t tea," she replies cryptically. "Your ether low, other-s in camp not sh-are a-s mu-ch a-s need. Can make many powerful... tonic-s and tincture-s, s-tronger with ether, but beta too... re-s-erved."

"The geode i was making on iron island is being formed by high-pressure ether steam and heat," i inform her with a shrug. "Breaking the seal without magic is a death sentence for anybody on top of the slab, so its not impossible to think the vat can be milked of all of its condensed ether. I can talk to the others, tell them that I'm running dry and could use a couple flasks from everybody before the municipal vat arrives, but that would just be for my personal use. You guys ever find anything on the Perpetual Elixir? A couple drops of ether and a couple drops of elixir would last at least an hour. What's the next magic?"

"On-ce we have a home tree, we grow... ether vines?" She asks more than says, unsure of the translation. "I-s like ether, but one drop... heal, re-s-tore, cure... i-s a nectar from flower-s you u-s-e in your cream and tea, but with our magic it collect water and make... power. Raw, la-s-ting, power. Is why no home-s left in island-s, all burned for fear of flower-s becau-se only Scalesh can do... until we bond. Now we all do, and do better than before. Human... mortal... mage-s, they heal like Magic S-calpel, not know how use raw energy for s-low heal like you, s-o no can grow plant-s with magic and no can make... Life Nectar."

"Ah... so that's why tea is just tea," i concede at last, reach out toward the first acorn and fueling its growth so that its first sprouting signals Issa to start watering the mounds of earth down on the forming root systems to stabilize the sideways groing trees. I managed to age the oak by about at half of its maturit at a little over fifty feet out from its mound by the time my aura reached critical and faded out to leave me winded where i sat beside the inches thick trunk of the young tree. This was definitely a good workout for my magic.

"Need more tea," Issa remarks after i empty the contents of her canteen, looking off toward the fort and clicking impatiently. "Will put ether in ne-x-t canteen, you're too s-trong for thi-s drink. Will s-end raft out to iron island, too, try grow tree s-lowly... tiny by tiny by tiny bit, mea-s-ure time before empty."

"Yes, Master Issa," i reply with mock solemnity, reaching out with my magic toward the oak that was still at least thirty feet from reaching the water's edge. She took off, then, in swift, magically enhanced strides down the beach and then across the rocky sand until only her aura could be seen over the terrain, leaving me along to begin measuring out my aura into the tree an inch or so of spacial mass per carefully counted second which encourages the tree to grow its trunk girth or length or similar measurements in the tiny, sprig-like growths of stunted branches. My aura was only half of the way spent by the time Issa returned with more tea and some fish sandwhiches as well as the rest of the beta team who had already faced Arielle and their shamans, forcing the oak to grow beyond its natural limits to reach its spreading crown of branches out over the shoreline at eighty feet from its large planting mound.

Flooding the rest of my aura into the tree to that it stretched the last half of my aura's circumference in thirty-feet of outward growth over the water with massive, twenty-foot long limbs stretching out from the middle of the trunk some forty-odd feet behind the knotted crown of entwined branches without every sprouting leaves while fueled by my magic. The tree was already dying by the time my magic stopped coursing into it, starving of nutrients necessary to grow on its own without properly fertilized soil and leaves to filter sunlight, but the ether enriched tea i now drank only took a few swallows to recover multiple yards of my aura at a time while the others and their partners began setting up their own rows of plantain trees to start with just as i had. My first oak tree dock was finished at over eighty feet of trunk extending out over the water with two sets of limbs on either side of the trunk to mark giant, universal parking spaces for any kind of ship before i was empty and ready to refuel before moving on to the next tree after a brief refresher of tea.

It took little over an hour before the rest of the beta team and Ariella were assembled on the beach, Arielle making use of herself by setting up future planting sites for docks and piers as well as more rows of plantain trees while the rest of us were either moving onto our oak projects or finishing up to take a short break between exercises. Issa was already making introductions for the others and new shamans by the time i finished my second set of oak tree docks, taking off my gilded gear to array in the sand beside where I was lounging lazily underneath the early noon sun resting just under the peak of its daily journey across the sky. Some of the others were pairing up to move on to combat training, Harold taking on Billy and Luis and Julia to work with some of the team's weakest members as a group, but i was more than happy to just not do anything at all if only for a little while, which only lasted for about twenty minutes until Issa calling for my attention among a group of male Scalesh decked out in augmented armor with pairs of swords and daggers at either hip, their choice of englarged versions of my hatchets or picks across their backs underneath crossbows and quivers, and even the front belts of their baldrics were adorned by crystalline throwing stars.

Unlike the rest of the Scalesh armors, the warriors chosen for my honor guard wore masked helmets displaying thickly woven bronze faces snarling and laughing with crosshairs around their eyeholes, and i was more than a little impressed by the full dozen of warriors that Issa had brought together despite my only having requested ten guards. "Very few men of my people willing to u-s-e range," Issa sighs despite the present numbers, looking out over the smaller groups of Scalesh soldiers being introduced to my friends all around the beach. "Will find more a-s more freed, but thi-s do for now. You bond with their life, s-in-ce they have no magic of their own, but if work like mate bonding it will create... core... inside of them- if you bond with mind, make wi-z-ard, bond with heart make s-or-c-erer-s. I want my s-i-x be half-half."

Bonding with one of the males was nothing like bonding with Spot or Issa, both had helped the process by making themselves more accessible even though i had done even more of the work with Spot than i had with Issa. The first male just stoood there with their eyes closed as if half expecting whatever i was doing to blow up in our faces, but instead the spiral of combined source energy from my black and gold cores simply integrated into the male's few inches of life signature, feeding into their colorful glow the visual energy of light reflecting off of water in black and gold lines that sought out the male's heart before combining into a half-and-half source within the Scalesh warrior whose aura gre almost as tall as i was. Even though my own aura grew by as many feet as their own, i felt winded and drained after bonding with the male whose psionic impulses flooded my mind like echoes through my connection with Issa as if she were using her own mind as a buffer between us as the next goblin male stepped forward to be magically bonded with my core energies taking root in their brain this time.

The total circumference of my aura grew from over two-hundred-and-eighty feet around to over three hundred by the time the final male Scalesh was bonded, leaving me feeling just as drained as if i had thrown all of my magic up into the air at once to use as pointless fireworks. Bonding with something that was already magical like Spot or Issa had been easy, but it seemed like creating magic in another creature was even more taxing than using magic because the energy needed came directly from my own existence in this game which actually felt as though i was shaving years off of my life to create little magic generators. Since the mental connections with these new warriors seemed to exist through Issa's mind to mine instead of their own individually- probably an affect of Issa's natural psychic affinities because the males never had their own magic previously- it took a long time for my honor guard to start speaking in English, but i was able to spend the rest of the tim remaining until noon finally compiling a mental English to Scalesh and back again dictionary that she used to educate the males while I finally did my own studies.

Even though i was aware of Arielle's approach through my magical awareness while i meditated on the churning clicks and hisses that made up the Scalesh language flurrying about my mind, there was nothing i could do to avoid the swift kick to my gut while meditating even though my trance remained unbroken after the relatively soft blow. "You're slacking in your training, Zai," she says with only vague reprimand in her voice as i watched her stare down at my seated body in third person. "Everybody else is breaking right now, but once they're rested you're going to have to switch back to melee and work on fending off a group of opponents while they work on working together to take down a boss. You almost got your ass handed to you on the beach last session, so practicing at keeping track of multiple targets is something you actually need right now."

"I am training my mind to catch up with my body," i reply in subconscious Scalesh before consciously switching to English with, "Issa and i set up an honor guard system for just those reasons, and i feel like i need to focus on my magic because i revealed an ultimate move earlier while facing Hitome and need to find a way to compensate. These mental exercises around the language and lives of Scalesh should offer new angles of viewing the world to help me come up with some new spells."

"Don't forget that we have the necromancer's works to go through," Arielle reminds me with a shrug, reaching down to wave a hand in front of my face before she starts making faces and obscenese gestures at me as if she were using sign language. "I was planning on using his Communing Rite to teach you all the basics of darker Summoning magic as well as see how things are going with the demon that necromancer was bonded to. It'll be a group exercise, so be ready for lots of nasty threats and promises for a good time even though they literally have no power here without a willing vessel. Becoming a vessel comes with some benefits like a giant magic and physical boost and lasts until you die, but you lose the favor of the gods throughout this time, but the gods don't care if other types of deals are made such as getting their crosshairs off of you."

"I don't want to make a deal," i argue, waking up from my trance while she was in the middle of shooting birds in my face to ignore her gestures and stand up with a slight twitch of my wings for lift. "I want them to send their servants after me, i want to kill all of them and take all of their shiny toys and leave the weak, hapless demon without any vessels at all because, in this world, I'm an immortal being who will never stay dead and it's pointless to hold a grudge against something so infinitely more powerful than you are. Besides, just think of how much the gods will like me after i deal not only that demon but the game's dark side such a loss, i could end up with a whole new crusade storyline thanks to that necromancer and his benefactor being so stupid."

"Then what are we supposed to do as a group magic lesson, summon some entity at random?" Arielle asks with a tired sigh. "Stop being such a contrarian, this will be good experience for everybody's future gameplay because you never know when you come across a vessel and make an enemy that they might not be as willing to aponly antagonize the way you are. Like, seriously, what do you hope to accomplish by insulting a demon powerful enough to entice mortals from hell?"

"More bosses and boss loot," i reply honestly. "If this high ranking member of the Red Hand was tied to this demon, others among the outlaws-" i start to say until Arielle cuts me off with the worth thing humanly possible.

"Flow of information," she states simply, scanning my face with her eyes waiting for that moment when realization dawns and cold reality settles in. "Yeah, that think you have been yelling at everybody about is what you've probably screwed up. No, there hasn't been any alerts to the goings-ons of the fort to the outside world because the demon or his cohorts have yet to be contacted form the mortal realm because they are not powerful enough to do so themselves, but shut up or you might get the attention of somebody who is. Now, get in gear and go train with the others."

Sighing tiredly as i climb to my feet and start donning my training gear, i say, "Fine, you win, I'll go get my ass kicked so you can watch me get made a fool of for once. Maybe you could work with Issa in training the honor guards? Their muscle density allows them a similar strength-to-weight ratio as yours so yours and Doc's dual weapons style would be perfect for them, give them some body-weight training gear on top of their full regalia and they'll be more physically capable than either Hitome or I combined. Magic-wise... defensive training only, for now, they seem to be set like regular shamans so it will be a while before they can do more than one meaningful attack at a time in my battles. Their crossbopws would probably be the most effective means of capacity training, using the amount of average shots as a measurement for their level of power."

"I have other priorities," she argues with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I need to fill out status reports from everybody's fights and continued growths while you guys train, i just wanted to break some ground with you all by setting up the plantain plantation and some evergreen plots to grow piers for war ships around the edges of the new docks you guys have grown. You know abouty accumulation in the soil around certain plants, right? That some plants draw minerals and elementals of all sorts based on their own diets and the deeper their roots grow the more they can accumulate in themselves and their topsoil? Cane plants are good superficial plants for drawing out silicates, plantains are good for drawing out minerals like magnesium and other useful metals, some plants even accumulate radiation..." she trails off, walking away while giving me something that i would have to thoroughly study in reality.

Wandering off toward where the others were all gathered in a small group around Harold and Hitome under the watchful gaze of their shamans and guards, i just stand a little inside the ring of onlookers and watch as Hitome and Harold hold off the group back-to-back using the reach and either end of Hitome's yari sheathed in a vague sheen of energy to keep most of the group randomly at bay as they slowly circled each other and used Harold's combination of looted rapier and the sword i had cast for him to come in behind her to strike and disorganize the others while creating an opening that either of them lean in to cover and score more points on anyone foolish to rush in. It was not hard to see how i different the way i fought was from how everybody else maneuvered, even Harold and Hitome who were superior and winning against greater numbers were solely on the calculated defensive moving in careful tandem the entire time, but nobody was actually willing to throw themselves into it and commit. Nobody is willing to get hurt or die.

"Break," i call after Hitome butts Eric twice in the chest with the bottom of her yari and spins away in time for Harold to spin in and slap the flat of his rapier across the other man's midriff covered by several dozen one-pound sheets of gold. Half of the offensive team was already sitting off to the side near me being tended to by their shamans to heal their strained muscles and few bruises from the encounter, but everybody else who was still standing were either bows over to catch their breath or just getting to the point of needing to with the exceptions of Sasha and Hitome who looked cool and collected despite faces that were shiny with sweat. "So, apparently, I'm supposed to play boss with everyone, which means I'm the bad guy and everyone needs to smack me around for a while," I go on with no small amount of hesitation. "Do i have any volunteers for henchmen? Looking for about two people to help me deal with the other nine, i won't use any ranged magic but i will charge my body in Rush for the duration as well as heal myself and fight with my magic body. My henchmen may do as they please, I'm a lazy boss, and the same goes for everybody else. The winner is the first person to score three points of any kind off of me on their own and everybody else has a lifespan of five points- except my henchmen who have nine points like lives. Any complaints?"

"Henchman!" Billy and Hitome say in unison before either Harold or Angel could finish and even begin. There were no complaints.

"Billy and Hitome, first came and first served," i inform the group with a sigh, hoping Billy did not get me killed despite his previous exploits and willingness in combat. Drawing my wakizashi from either of my sides and using the motion to coat them in thirty-inches sheaths of potential and kinetic energies for length and protection against cutting the others, i say in rusty Scalesh, "Any who want watch and not die, board ships," which quickly encouraged all but the bonded Scalesh to leave the beach entirely while i blinked on my Sight and watched everybody in the beta begin charging their bodies in various sustained versions of my own Rush before i induced my own Rush in both my physical and psychic bodies and everybody took up whatever positions they wanted around me

Harold was the first to make a move, trying to close the distance from his position in the semi-circle backing my henchmen and I to the beach, but Billy of all people used a Rush sidestep to shoulder into him and send him tumbling yards away while Eric, Angel, and Sasha and leaped in from different angles. I did not even have to move from my spot at the edge of the cresting waves several yards behind my pair of henchment, Billy used his size and stature to back up toward me between the paths of Angel and Eric's lunges and wait for the last second before Rushing into a clothesline that overtakes their energy with his greater mass to flip them over his arms and straight down into the ground behind him. Hitome handled Sasha, clashing against her broadsword with the shaft of her yari in midair and turning with a burst of kinetic energy to redirect them both off to the side in a wild tumble, but this created yet another opening that Emma and Luis tried to take advantage of while Billy was spin-tossing Angle and Eric off toward where Harold was collecting himself.

Hitome was back in an instant, tackling Luis into Emma with the middle of her yari's shaft, but this only concentrated both of my henchmen in one area where Sasha could throw hundreds of pounds of beach up into the air on top of the entire group and keep them busy in the heavy shower while Julia and Brittany made their entrances in a pincer from either end of the broken formation and finally force me into taking action by leaping backward out over the water where i use my wings and cushions of potential energy under my feet to balance and walk on the water. Hitome ended up freeing them group from their sandy tomb with a massive burst of thermal energy that showered the beach in scalping sand, but i was already dancing about the water that Julia and Brittany were freezing in order to get to me while evading the their Rush lunges in alternate to continue pushing me further and further from my henchmen even though they would soon regret isolating themselves from the group.

Ducking under Brittany's widely swung sword after just landing from flipping out of reach of Julia's spear, i switch into attack mode by spinning in a low crouch across their own ice with either waki held out to score two points off of Brittina's shin's before Julia thrusts her spear down into the ice with a kinetic burst to separate us. Flipping backward over the length of her spear as she sends Brittany's large area of ice spinning away, i land lightly and swiftly on my feet behind Julia who was alread spinning around with the butt of her spear that i flick away with a Rushed sweep of my sword near her hand in the same motion that i shove her forward toward the edge of the ice with the blunt kinetic point of my left waki. Scoring points two and three by crossing and slashing my swords upward from a crouch across her back so that she would spin around in another high attack, i glean four and five even as Brittany was returning over a forming bridge of ice by thrusting upward into Julia's sides from under her arms wielding her staff up even higher than i had anticipated as if she had expected me to try and flip back over her.

Harold came crashing down onto the ice before Brittany's bridge was even finished forming, shattering the area and sending me tumbling wildly down toward the suddenly choppy water until my wings flap down on the water and send me flipping wildly upward for several dozen feet. Acting of its own accord to gather our falling kinetic energy like the echoing memory of my Falling Star attacks, my aura controls our ensuing dive at an angle right down on Harold with the energy gathered in its clawed hand held out ahead of us as i deceptively free-falled with my arms and legs splayed wildly. Harold had no idea what hit him when he actually jumped up toward me as my EMF body touched down on the ice before ahead of me and cratered the lake around us with a massive explosion of energy that send him flying head over heels into the air while Brittany and i were swallowed up in the filling vaccum of whirling water left in the wake of my aura's attack.

I had to save Brittany, forever ruining my reputation as a villain, when we met at the bottom of the giant whirlpool and the lake was rushing in around us by closing her up in my wings with me until we floated safely up to the surface and i could send her sliding over a new platform of ice back toward the shore. Harold recreated my aur's Falling Star on his return to the battlefield, opening up yet another whirlpool that my aura carried me up and away from back toward the beach where Hitome and Billy were staving off the others trading attacks and counters as they fought to score points off of one another or blasting one another side with a burst of some form of energy. Landing right on top of Eric with my feet planted on his shoulders like a bird of prey about to take off with its prize, i scythe my wakizashi across the sides of his helmed head before my aura clamps its feet around his shoulders and takes off independantly to carry Eric out over the water.

Scoring two out of four strikes on Sasha, the next closest person, around the broad of her sword by cycling my sword forward in a short series of thrusts, i drop into a low crouch to sweep her legs with a charged kick when she rolls one hand around the long hilt of her sword as though she were wielding staff to flip her sword upside down before flicking the other wrist in a charged strike that catches my shin in mid-kick and actually warps the plate of my shinguard while spinning my body back around the other way in the second point scored off of me in this match. She almost scored the second until my draconic aura returned with a dive that planted her on her back as i sent myself rolling with a small thermal-kinetic burst before stripping her own sword from her hands and scoring three swift but light thrusts with the weapon.

I was both amazed and horrified by the reflexive, almost conscious actions of my EMF body that focused on the people i myself was facing, taking Emma out of the fray in the middle of a combo that would have been four out of five points if not for its tail around her ankle dragging her away through the sand after the second slash in my combo. There was no effort or will of my own guiding its actions and even though it moved indepentantly of my body i never fueled it with any energy to supply its substance, but beating in its chest was the ghost of a transparent black core like my own. Harold's return from the bottom of the lake ended my unchecked reign of terror on the group as Hitome and Billy managed to dispose of their own targets and even the enemy numbers to one-on-one, using his magic to occupy my aura while physically attacking me so that Angel and Brittany could occupy Billy and Hitome.

Harold's fencing was incredible even without a proper rapier or offhand weapon, using his natural brute strength to manipulate the light magical sword with an ease and speed that was actually hard to follow in its short combos of thrusts and flicks while fending off the heavy, almost careless blows of the much larger weapon that i had designed for sustaining as much abuse as it could deliver. Forcing Harold into a stalemate while both of us were in sustained forms of Rush was nearly impossible, the kinetic buffers on our weapons allowing his smaller sword to be used as effectively as a shield to ward off any of my attacks with the support of the larger weapon for leverage to change the angles of my clashes until i began mimicking his fencing manuever of controlling the direction of energy and we were forced into an awkwardly wobbline stalemate of our bodies fighting to gain ground while our swords constantly shifted to compensate for the ever changing distributions of force. With Hitome on my team i had been careless in dealing with who i considered the opposing team's upper echelon while avoiding Harold's single-minded intensity to keep me contained, but never had i thought that Harold himself would be this good- especially while using the sheer size of his aura to keep my EMF body contained with bursts of kinetic energy

Angel took out Billy with a short three-strike combo on one leg, hip, and then across the back around the same time that Hitome finally managed to corner Brittany against the wall of magic attacking my aura nearby, cleanly scoring the rest of her points with thrusts of her yari carefully aimed at the plates of her training vest, but she was unaware of Angel's success as she used Wail to separate Harold's aura away from my own and lost two out of however many points she still had when he lunges in from behind with two quick slashes. Her purpose had been served, though, because my EMF body was finally able to return to its place around my own with a miniature Falling Star from teen feet overhead to send Harold sliding several yards away over the sand. As close as i was to losing the battle with two strikes against me and only three four, i now have my aura's anti-gravity affect back in play and could start using my passive gliding to assault Harold from all angles while bouncing off of and away from his attacks.

Feinting another bounce from upside down over his head, I instead force my aura to drop from my body and over Harold's so that my full weight is released down on his unprepared arms and causes him to fall into my aura as it rights itself around him. My aura held Harold stock still as i gained my last two points with a quick cross-slash across his midriff, and then it was as simple as pincering Angel and feinting a lung for Hitomer to sweep his legs and then slap her staff down the length of his body to end the fight. Billy on the sidelines started cheering as the 'good guys' team all convened around the most recently felled heroes to commend them on their efforts while Hitome goes off to begin complimenting Billy on his efforts and encourage his abilities.

I was stuck by myself for a moment, just looking around at the others who were reliving the fight with one another and enjoying the dregs of their adrenaline, but i felt something strange as i listened to all to friendly digs and boastful banter going on around me. Everybody had done surprisingly well, dealing damage all around and displaying new skills that they had picked up or developed throughout their efforts, and they were all discussing each other's aspects of the fight, but it was clear from the way that i was only ever mentioned in passing for somebody else's efforts against me that i had succeeded in all of my efforts of isolating myself from the rest of the group. Somehow, in light of this, i was feeling lonely.

Shaking my head tiredly as i sheathe my new wakizashi behind my sides and start walking away from the group to find Issa and all of the bonded males gathered up on the inland incline behind the grass and rocks of the marina beach setting up and taking down piles of small boulders and rocks with their crossbows and short spikes of psychic energies such as Plasma. Each of the guards could let off roughly ten shots of energy before reaching critical and changing positions with the next person in line for target practice as they glassed granite rubble into congealing masses of marble or blew them apart as glowing hot debris, but it was obvious from how easily their rubbly targets were taken down that each shot packed enough punch to at least take out a non-magical opponent even with anti-magical gear. It was still too soon to tell how much this exercise would help their magic to grow as the crtically spent Scalesh warriors turned to Issa and the others for tea to replenish themselves from, but we still had another two sessions before it was time to face the Red Hand's gold delivery crew which could be plenty of time to double or even triple their small auric capacities.

Deciding that i would be best for me to just stay busy by moving on to the far side of the marina from the others where Arielle had set up planting mounds for evergreen piers into which i easily reach my magic to find the planted pine nuts within and start fueling their growth with healing energies. I could only get either evergreen at this end of the marina to about fifty feet each before my EMF body began flickering past critical, but luck seemed to be on my side because Issa was already bounding along the beach toward where i rested between the trunks of the middle-aged pines to help me refuel. "You good?" Issa asks when she finally arrives with her canteen a few moments later. Tapping her head, she adds, "You did not feel good, earlier."

"I'm just more human than i thought," i reply with a shrug, trying to avoid the issue of my earlier loner pains. "I did it intentionally, kind of, i just didn't know i was that good. Or that it would matter. But i was and it does. It will pass, probably just residual issues from when things almost got emotional or romantic for me... people often make the mistake that they think they like me, but then they realize that their first impressions of me were missing a few key points. Such as... how few morals i actually have, how seriously i take video games, or even how my limited attachment to other people works. Usually."

"Fight wa-s more for them, anyway," Issa says with a shrug, understanding where i came from with her only actual attachments to other people consisting of her mother and I. "You s-tronge-s-t , all know, s-o all not worried becau-se you won. If had lo-s-t training match, all would have been... s-ympathetic. You like that less."

She had a point, if i had lost and everybody would have converged on me to console me for my failure, i would have probably been infuriated more than depressed and then nobody would be happy. Returning the canteen of magical tea with a grateful nod, i return to work on evergreen trees i was keeping from frowing outward limbs at all so except for along the underside to support the weight of the immensely broad, almost rectangular trunks of the pier pines. Issa left me with her canteen, the contents of which were only enough to finish growing these two trees planted some ninety feet apart from one another to reach almost fifty yards out over the water, so i was left on my own when it came to regaining more than my critical signature of an aura before i was able to move about without magical fatigue and make my way vack down the beach toward the others who were gathered among the rows of our impromptu plantation raising more trees up from the soil.

More of the Scalesh had arrived on the beach from their work in the fort, setting up another fire station for brewing tea as well as sending out work details on the barges to neighboring islands for firewood while my original galley was being prepared for a trip out to the silver mine. Unbeknownst to me who had been so focused on growing pine trees that i had no idea what was happening to me, the Scalesh had reorganized the boats and few ships we had gained in the last session by taking the island and were even in the process of using the wreckage of the fort walls to erect walls and obstacles along the marina beach facing the fort as if in preparation of siege. While we were, in fact, preparing to face an armed supply train of sorts coming to collect resources from the gold mine, i had imagined we would face the enemy from the beach of a neighboring island or out on the water or anywhere at all that was not at our newly constructed or half-built headquarters.

Everybody was soon finished in the growing plantation, in which male Scalesh were at work with their picks and hatchets destroying boulders and tilling the earth into rows for proper crops to be grown, but we were only given a few minutes to rest by our shamans before being ushered up onto the eight-foot wide trunk of a nearby oak dock. Some of the others started to complain about what they considered being an impromptu trip to the silver mine for supplies and radioactive material getting in the way of the training that they were actually enjoying, but then Issa informed us that we would all be setting the pace for the other rowers of the galley using oars whose broad heads were made from ten-pound sheets of gold at the end of long cane handles. Even with my anti-gravity buff, manipulating such oars not connected to my aura's body would be a decent workout that most of the others were not as satisfied with,

Half of the beta tapped out of rowing after only ten minutes of working the awkwardly heavy oars, being quickly replaced with members of their personal guards who came with their own eaven larger oars, but the newly freed warriors were all used to the grueling slave labor of working the ships or mines and were rather untroubled for their own ten minutes on the rowers' benches before being forcibly replaced with their human charges for yet another shift at the oars. Sasha, Hitome, Harold, and I were the only people to last an hour at the oars in our first sessions, but the pride for the achievement only lasted for twenty minutes while members of our guards replaced us at the benches and our shamans restored our bodies. By the time we actually reached the silver mine, everybody on the galley had been rowing for at least two hours without rest in the shadow of the volcano.

We were not allowed to rest one we beached the galley in safe shallow waters because of how late in the day we had arrived, but by now everybody was capable of degraded displacement leaps like my own so it did not take us long before we had carried our shamans- i had to carry some of Harold's because i only had Issa with me- all of the way around to the front of the pinkish granite mountain where the geater portion of the galena deposits remained untouched. Issa and her greater numbers of shamans were tasked with processing the granite mountain itself for munitions of sulfur and lithium concentrates, Harold and the other beta members spent their greater stores of energy working the silver and sulfur straight from the galena deposits, and i was tasked with using the immense size of my aura to seek out radiation like some kind of magical geiger counter and extract not only radium particles and rocks but radon gasses compressed and contained within crystals as well as brittle yellow crystale deposits of living uranium. By the time we returned to the ship with every pair of hands we had brought with us carrying or dragging munitions and minerals back to the ship, i had gathered enough nuclear material to take over the entire beta world contained within a massive cube of purified lead.

*

I logged out last among the beta after pushing myself passed everybody else's limits in search of my own while rowing home to the gold mine, waking up after another loss of consciousness on my bench to sit up groggily at my operating table while Ms. Arielle made me follow her finger back and forth before booping me on the forehead and giving me the all-clear. Despite being in an entirely different world, the others showed the same signs of mental fatigue that i suffered from after having spent a simulated day pushing themselves to the edges of their growing endurances, but i simply took it as a good omen that we were all becoming stronger now that the others were pushing themselves to same same suffering degree that Harold and I had already experienced. Maybe, for a little while after this, we'll be strong enough that we won't have to go through this for another day or two of sessions.

Despite the general air of mental exhaustion surrounding the group, most of the others were actually excited after our first training session by boasting about how large their auras had grown or how many moves that they had learned from Arielle and each other. I honestly had not watched them all fight enough before now to have an actuale gauge of their skills and abilities, but after the simulated boss batle in which i had faced off with at least half of the beta i was certain that everybody could hold their own in most any fight and would continue adapting to the constant changes of our enemies just as they were sure to continue adapting to all of my own fighting methods as we continued training against one another. For a moment i actually wondered if i would not be left behind by my companions after they tasted everything that i had to offer in combat, but then i remembered my aura's ability to act almost on its own and realized that i had become two entities entirely now that my aura had a functioning body.

Everybody talked constantly about their training bouts and our big mock battle on the beach, but nobody except Harold actually seemed to have noticed that my aura had been running amok on its own until he mentioned it to Emma who was still trying to figure out her she had been dragged away from the battle even while i was occupied with another person. I had actually wanted to avoid talking about it because the others would all want to know how to make their future Magewear bodies independant, but it quickly came out that i had no idea how to give my magic such independance and that it had just happened on its own. I was quickly accused of witholding information from the group by Maxine and Angel, even though it was a joke, but some of the others actually started to take it seriously until Arielle got involved and told everyone the truth.

"Only a magi can separate from their auras," she says loudly in the hallway, silencing the group that was actually starting to argue among ourselves. "Because they have two magical cores, one that they can continue drawing from and one to sustain their auric entity, magi have several branches of magic that other mages cannot use. Such as Creation, the ability to create their own living creature and imbue it with one of their sources to give it life. Zai has only just recently begun learning how to interact with his sources when he bonded with Issa, so it will still be a while before he can use Creation, but the fact that Duality- becoming two individual entities from the same source whether in replicating your body or animating your own aura- came into affect on its own is interesting. Aspects of Zai's aura have always been independent, such as his tail that works on its own to maintain his balance and even attack at random- even the head will look around and scope out surrounding enemies while he remains focused on an individual- but the lack of a connection between him and the independent aura is disconcerting... some of the magi in the company have to fight their Duality from time to time, such as a clone trying to become sentient or an animated aura turning on its master because it believes itself powerful enough. Things are definitely going to get interesting around here."