Pax jumped back in surprise, only to notice all the others were watching for his reaction with smiles of anticipation. Amil himself had a huge grin that was just visible through the flames. Once it was obvious no one was in any danger, Pax narrowed his eyes and took in the details of exactly what his friend was doing.

A thin layer of flames had formed over the entire surface of Amil's body except the front of his face, yet somehow, nothing was burning, not even smoking. His hair, his armor, and the cloth of his clothing underneath all seemed impervious. It was suddenly obvious that he had a new spell.

Amil nodded when he saw understanding on Pax's face. “It's called Blaze Mantle and currently protects me from weak incoming attacks and burns anyone within melee range. As it levels, I'm hoping it might help against arrows or status effects like Horrid uses.”

Pax was nodding along with the explanation, already imagining how much it would help their front line, as long as Amil could keep it from hurting Bryn and Tasar, who usually fought next to him.

Then the implication of the new flame spell hit Pax, and his eyes widened. “You leveled up? When did that happen? Why didn't you say something?”

Amil's grin widened at the barrage of excited questions from Pax. But instead of answering, he took a step back and motioned toward Rin. This time, Pax didn't flinch when one of Tyrodon's training balls came shooting over her shoulder. Rin crouched, a light mist suddenly blurring her outline.

The moment the ball moved past her, she burst up and, with movements that were almost too fast to see, she landed two punches into the back of the ball. Pax frowned for a moment, wondering if she'd developed an unarmed skill or spell. Then the training ball fell to the ground with what looked like two knife holes in the back.

She straightened with a grin. When she saw his confusion, her smile widened. Then she took a step closer to him, holding out both hands with her fists closed. He looked down, wondering exactly what she was showing him. The faintest of glimmers caught his attention, looking similar to the effect her Mist Veil had just sent over her entire body.

When he leaned closer, he could make out the form of two long and narrow blades that came to deadly points. His eyes shot back up to hers in surprise and question.

She let out a delighted laugh. “These are my new Mistblades. They’re very difficult to see and give extra damage to attacks from stealth, especially if the target stays unaware until impact.” She held the knives higher for him to examine.

The blades were beautiful, a flickering surface of dark blue mana occasionally made it through the disguising mist that enveloped them. He shook his head and let out an admiring breath. “These will be amazing, especially any time you don't have a weapon out or want to appear unarmed.”

“Exactly,” Rin nodded before her expression turned somber. “And while they won’t be so useful against beasts, I expect that they'll come in very handy fighting people.”

The others around her nodded in agreement. It was on all of their minds as they trained with allies who might turn into future enemies.

“So—” Pax looked between his two friends. “Both of you leveled up and waited to tell me until tonight?”

Dahni cleared his throat and stepped forward. With no more warning than Amil had given him, he shot both hands out, brown mana flaring in his wrist tattoos. The ground beneath Pax rumbled and shook with a suddenness that made him stagger and almost fall.

“Seismic Pulse,” Dahni said proudly with a tip of his head. “It isn't very wide or strong yet, and it doesn't reach very far. But those will all improve with leveling. I chose it as an emergency defense should enemies get too close to me, or I'm caught out on my own. It should disrupt what they're doing enough to give me a chance to escape.”

“Excellent,” Pax said with a grin. “I can't believe all three of you leveled up and kept it a secret. I would’ve expected Amil to let something slip.”

“Actually—” Tyrodon stepped forward and held up a tentative hand.

Pax sucked in a surprised breath and looked at the other members of the crew. “All of you leveled up? Bryn? Tasar?”

The proud smiles that greeted him told him the answer.

“This is amazing.” Pax let out a stunned laugh. “Not only that all of you leveled up, but that you kept me from finding out. It never crossed my mind to use Identify on any of you, since I already know all about your builds.”

“Well, you're always unlocking a ton of new things,” Rin said. “So, we figured if all six of us shared our new level at the same time, we might impress you.”

“Oh, I'm definitely impressed. This is amazing.” He gave them all a slow nod of acknowledgment. “Now I want to see what kind of new crafting and warrior abilities our crew has.”

Tyrodon only flinched a little when all the attention returned to him. Then he pulled out one of his small clay handbombs, and his excitement overrode his shyness. “Here, Pax. Infuse this air rune and tell me what you think.”

Pax took the palm-sized ball in his hand and examined the simple rune that Tyrodon had carefully carved into the surface and already impregnated with bone dust from an air beast. He looked back up at Tyrodon. “This is a shatter rune, right? It'll send the pieces flying everywhere when it breaks?”

“Yes.” Tyrodon made an impatient gesture. “Just put some air mana in it. Start from the top and keep the infusion even until you get to the end. You know how to do it.”

Still unsure of how this would show Tyrodon's new ability, Pax humored him. Now that the surprises didn't consist of being frozen into an icy block, he was enjoying himself. He drew up a small amount of his air mana, threading just a touch of light into it to improve his control. He touched his finger to the start of the small rune and carefully injected his mana.

Expecting the usual resistance, Pax felt like he'd slipped on a patch of ice. His mana slid into the rune with half the resistance he was used to, and raced through the pattern, almost slipping out of his control. With a wrench, he forced it to move at a uniform speed, but one that was about twice as fast as he'd expect for a rune this size in hardened clay.

Only a few seconds later, he finished and looked up to see Tyrodon grinning expectantly at him.

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“That was amazing! How did you do that?”

“My new ability is called Resonance Forging. I can add a resonance for a specific element to any of my projects. Right now, it's too mana-intensive for me to add it to everything I build. But that will get better as I level it. I'm hoping I can study some of the power systems at the headquarters ruin, too. My theory is that I might be able to evolve this ability into something that allows devices to either absorb mana from the environment or store it for future use.”

Pax wasn't the only one who gawked at what Tyrodon had just so casually said. Everyone knew that the only reasonable way to store and use mana was with beast cores. Sure, there were occasional artifacts or enchanted gems that could do it, but they were extremely rare, expensive, and generally had a small capacity.

Shaking his head, Pax said, “If you can figure out how to do that, it would change everything. Especially if only the rebels had the capability. Devices like that could close the gap between the rebels and all the advantages the empire has.”

Tyrodon's smile widened, and he pointed his finger at Pax. “Exactly!”

Amil laughed and clapped Tyrodon on his shoulder. “Maybe Pax won't be the only one changing the world around here.”

Tyrodon gave Amil a smile. But now that he wasn't explaining things, he ducked his head and took a step back.

Pax let him retreat from the limelight and glanced expectantly at Bryn and Tasar.

Bryn went first. “Mine isn't easy to demonstrate down here, so I'll just explain. It's called Tactical Insight. It allows me to see more of the battlefield and exactly what is happening at once. At higher levels, it should also allow me to predict enemy movements and attacks.”

“Nice,” Pax said while he imagined how well Bryn's ability would mesh with his Battle Strategist. Mages weren’t the only ones to gain powerful abilities.

“I now have Warrior's Resolve,” Tasar said before falling silent again.

“You have the most resolve of anyone I know,” Dahni said. “So, what exactly does your ability do for you?”

Tasar paused before answering. “It allows me to resist crowd control effects and status ailments for a short time. It is currently limited to attacks at my own level, but will strengthen the more I use it.” He glanced over toward where the pets were resting before looking back at the others. The barest edge of one side of his mouth turned up. “Horrid's abilities will no longer affect me.”

Amil laughed and let out a groan of disappointment at the same time. “But surely, you'll join in the next time we do Horrid resistance training to support the rest of the crew?”

Tasar's expression didn't change. “Absolutely not.”

Now everyone laughed.

Tasar’s mention of Horrid reminded Pax about their pets. He waved a hand their way and asked, “Do any of them have a surprise for me, too? I know Talpa is close to leveling again, so your guys should be too, especially the new babies.”

“Of course. We saved the best for last.” Rin held out her arm, and Eris dove down from her perch above. “The older ones, like Eris here, evolved their favorite ability when they hit level 3.”

Eris let out a joyful cry as she landed on Rin's arm and quickly made her way up to her padded shoulder.

“She evolved her Aerial Rend to Aerial Vortex. Basically, it adds a small set of spinning air blades to her attack when she lands, instead of just enhancing the damage of her claws.” Rin's smile turned predatory. “Wait until the next time you see her take on a beast with it. Tyrodon doesn't like letting her practice because she's doing too much damage to his trainers.” She looked over at Dahni. “Want to go next?”

He nodded with a fond look over to where Neptid was curled up asleep on a cushion. “We went with something that isn't as exciting as all the other new stuff. But Neptid decided he wanted to take some of the healing burden from me, so I wouldn't keep running out of mana. He evolved his Gentle Current up to Ocean's Embrace, which is a faster and more powerful area of healing.”

“I don't think anyone is going to say no to more healing,” Pax said. “I know I'm pretty happy that you picked something that keeps all of us alive.”

The others murmured their agreement, while Bryn gave Dahni a pat on the back.

“I was going to save Horrid for last, but I think the new pets should have that honor.” Amil didn’t bother to disturb his sleeping Horrid. “Well, we're doing our best to uncover secrets here in the capital and then heading out into the Wilds and eventually to the ruins. So, she upgraded her Scent Savant. It was a hard choice between that or adding poison to her Odor Traps, but this should be more useful. Instead of just helping her find valuables that are nearby, she can find things that others have tried to hide, like secret passages, hidden stash boxes, maybe even the entrance to a beast nest they’ve camouflaged. We've already been practicing with it during our message deliveries.”

“Oh, really?” Rin asked. “Did you find anything?”

Amil let out an exasperated chuckle. “Finding something isn't the problem. It's not leveled high enough for Horrid to know exactly what she's found yet. And usually, we are in a place where snooping is very much frowned upon. It'll be a lot easier to use it out in the Wilds or while exploring the ruins. But it's good training using it here. Still, that's enough about our older guys. Let's hear how the babies have done.”

Pax felt like a parent whose children had grown and changed without them noticing. Now that someone had brought his attention to it, it was obvious the three babies were bigger. The two stonepaws were currently wrestling among the rockier areas of the cave, pouncing on each other like predator and prey.

Noticing where he was looking, Bryn spoke next. “As you can see, Onyx is bigger and stronger at level 1 now. We found a surprise between the abilities a warrior-Tamed beast gets versus one Tamed by a mage.”

“They’re different?” Pax’s eyes widened again as he shook his head, wondering how many times he could be surprised in the same evening.

Bryn smiled at his reaction. “It’s not a tremendous difference. They still get two abilities, and one is an active one. But the second is a targeted improvement for themselves. For her first active ability, Onyx chose her own version of Standfast, called Earthen Anchor. That lets her hold her position against an incoming attack. It's pretty low-leveled right now and won't do much, but as she gets better at it, she'll be able to withstand more. The personal improvement she chose is called Vitality Catalyst. It's just a fancy title for allowing her to grow stronger, faster.” Bryn glanced over at where the two were still wrestling with a smile. “She is excited to grow bigger than the older companions, as soon as possible. Her main motivation is to keep all of us, specifically me, from ever getting hurt again.”

“Aww,” Dahni said with a soft voice of appreciation. “Our companions really are amazing, aren't they?”

The others murmured their agreement before turning to look at Tasar and Tyrodon. For a moment, it was a competition between who would go last.

Tasar took pity on Tyrodon and spoke first. “Warden chose a slightly more offensive ability, called Earthen Stomp. It's similar to Dahni's Seismic Pulse. But instead of affecting a narrow path, Warden chooses a small circle of ground to disrupt. This will make sure he only targets attackers, and it doesn't knock any of us off our feet. And he also chose Vitality Catalyst. He doesn’t want to be left behind while Onyx grows.” As soon as he finished speaking, Tasar turned to indicate it was Tyrodon's turn.

“As you can likely see, Scorch didn't grow very much and will probably stay much smaller than the rest of our pets.” Tyrodon quickly warmed up to sharing Scorch's new improvements, his eyes glinting with the excitement he usually reserved for explaining complicated devices. “His new ability is called Flame Spectrum, which will eventually allow him to manifest various types of flame from his different heads. I did some reading and found mention of wild cinder chimeras doing something similar. It’s probably impossible for a beast to infuse mana into a device, but if Scorch can become a welding torch and manipulate flame of various temperatures, he’ll be amazing. And to help with that, for his physical improvement, he chose Flame Amplification, which just means he’ll get better at absorbing flame mana and infusing his body with it.”

“That's my kind of beast,” Amil grinned. “Let me know if my flame can help with the infusing. I would use the tiniest amount, so I don’t hurt Scorch.” He shot a quick frown toward Pax. “And by tiny, I mean a lot less than the lightning Pax used on me.”

Pax laughed, brushing off the dig. "I just have to say thanks, guys. This has to be the best surprise I've ever had. I wasn't expecting it at all, and now we're even more prepared to take on whatever the future hits us with."

Then he stopped and let out a groan. At the curious looks from the others, he shrugged and motioned toward their table. "Now I've got to write it all down. And even though this gives us a lot more options against anyone who comes after us, it's going to be a headache to figure out new team tactics." He paused, his tone turning sarcastic. "Thanks a lot."