I waited for Maria at the peak of the hill, ready to work on the next set of swords I would give Eleanor, just another little thing to keep her mood up. Eleanor could see me thanks to the bosses we had hunted, but Maria could not.

A little perfunctory, maybe, but doing my best was a good idea when facing a mercurial woman who could literally kill me with her gaze.

When they arrived at the bottom of the hill, Eleanor presented her arm. Maria grabbed, and then with a jump, Eleanor cleared the whole hill. "Hey, boss. Long time no see," I said, trying to sound casual. From the way Eleanor winced, I guessed that I wasn't particularly successful.

She looked at me, her gaze tightening. Then, she looked at Eleanor. "I'm guessing that you have skipped a few details in your story," Maria said.

"Well, not exactly," Eleanor answered. Maria's expression tightened."But, I might have neglected to mention just how close we came to losing if it wasn't for the surprise Devon was keeping."

"You almost died!" Maria gasped.

The shift was incredible, and scary. Up until now, Maria had always been the cheerful boss. Yes, she was arrogant, but it had been the spoiled kind of arrogance that I had gotten used to from my old job, falling somewhere between annoying and charming depending on the day. That hadn't truly changed even when she helped me level up.

But, the moment Eleanor admitted how close she got to dying, she lost that cheeriness. Her presence shifted … changed, a pressure radiating from her. It wasn't like Thomas, using Charisma. That was an unnatural, insidious feeling.

It was different for Maria. The pressure felt like the sudden turn of the weather right before a record-breaking storm, only this time, the pressure was truly suffocating. It was already intimidating before air started churning around her, surrounded by a faint shimmer of heat.

I was glad that she was looking at Eleanor. Eleanor avoided her gaze, shuffling on her feet. "Well, I didn't expect them to somehow bring six ballistas without alerting us. They set up an ambush. But, nothing happened. Devon made sure of it."

"Six ballistas?" she said, her voice tightening. "And, you didn't mention them before."

"I didn't want to talk about that in public," Eleanor said. Behind Maria, I nodded at her in appreciation. She was doing her best to present my secret as an absolute boon, which I appreciated. She could have easily twisted the situation badly just by shifting a few words around.

That sword was a well-deserved reward.

Maria looked like she wanted to continue, but after glancing at me, she decided against it. "We will talk about it later," she declared. Then, she turned at me, her gaze sharp, assessing, reminding me that, for all her frivolity, she still had a sharp mind unrelated to her stat distribution. "It must be an interesting secret to play a decisive role in a battle with six ballistas."

I thought about mentioning that I managed to hunt one of the gargantuan insects and expanded my range of vision, which was the method I had discovered the ambush. It would be the correct answer to her question, but I doubted trying to hide behind the technicalities would have helped.

Instead, I raised my hand.

[-20 Mana]

The sense of tension around her dissipated, but only because she was truly shocked. "How?" she gasped, looking surprised. Then, her gaze tightened, and she started to look actually angry. The shift surprised me, and then she spoke. "Who bribed you you bribe with that skill stone?" she growled, and the pressure returned, this time with revenge.

She didn't need to mention her thought process for me to guess what happened. Immediately after an ambush to Eleanor, she must have been thinking that I had been bribed to ambush Eleanor, only to change sides at the last second. A reasonable conclusion. Utterly wrong. But reasonable.

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"Calm down and listen," Eleanor interrupted, probably coming to the same conclusion.

"I'm not in the mood to listen to a traitor," she started, and the opening we were in actually started to get hot.

"Do you remember the time you helped me to experiment on how to forge mana alloys," I commented.

The comment was random enough to distract her from her anger. "Yes, but —" she started.

"And, did you ever wonder why I didn't ask your help for the same experiment again?" I continued, careful to keep my hands out in the open.

"I assumed because you learned all you needed from it," she said.

"In a way," I said, which didn't help her confusion at all. "And, I'm sure you know once a class skill is pushed to the maximum, it evolves automatically."

"Not automatically, there are quite a few conditions, but yes," Maria said, which surprised me. I had assumed it to be automatic. That statement alone triggered dozens of questions, but I had a feeling that it wasn't the best time to ask them.

"And, did you know that class skills can also transform when you achieve something out of context," I added. "Something like actually managing to forge mana alloy without having any Mana?"

That made her pause. "You can't be serious," she said. "Experimenting with mana, without having Essence, is a fool's errand. It's impossible."

"Not exactly," I said. "I managed to use my vitality as a catalyst to somehow link with mana, which helped me to create a mana alloy. A garbage one, I have to admit, but it was enough to trigger my skill."

She frowned. "Impossible. The interference alone —" she started, but I cut her off.

"Which is not exactly a problem in a mana-dead location," I corrected. Technically, my experiments showed that it was merely mana-sparse rather than mana-dead, but it was not the time to fix that particular misconception.

"It's not possible," she said, dazed and confused.

"Which part?" I asked, feeling better. A confused Maria was a much better alternative than a murderous one who was under the mistaken impression that I had sold her best friend to her enemies for an extremely rare skill stone. "The part where I have managed to jump two rarity levels with one experiment, or the part where I managed to manipulate mana without Essence."

"Well…" she said, looking dazed.

I grabbed one of the swords I created for Eleanor and walked to her, which was also a small test. She didn't even flinch as I approached her with a bladed weapon, which was good news in terms of her trust. I flipped the sword and passed it to her. "Try it," I said.

"Why?" she asked.

"Just push your mana through it. You'll see."

She did so, and a glow covered the sword. It wasn't a particularly stable glow, the edges of it were fraying. But, it was still a mana attack. "Impossible," Maria gasped as she examined the way her mana reacted.

"Well, yes," I said, and couldn't help but feel smug. At least, for the first few seconds. As she continued to examine the sword, the frayed, fragile glow around the sword straightened into a perfect edge, which then lengthened, its brightness not something I could match even if I put all the mana I could store behind it.

Then, she turned that into a ranged attack, flying away. A trick that took me days to perfect, and she learned it in seconds, without even trying.

No, I wasn't jealous … much.

"And, this happened before you reached level twenty-five, so you got a new class," she said.

I nodded. "Yes, a class called Mana Blacksmith. It gives one essence for every two levels," I said.

"That's not much, is it?" she said, looking a bit surprised.

This time, it was Eleanor that spoke. "Not everyone is as perfect as you, Miss Legendary," Eleanor teased, making Maria blush. "I will be happy to get one point every four levels."

I chuckled alongside them, realizing that the biggest threat had passed. I had a feeling that being mistaken for a traitor helped quite a bit, channeling the worst of the betrayal Maria might have felt for keeping secrets.

After all, what was a small secret compared to such a heinous crime?

Maria nodded for a moment, then her eyes widened. "Wait, what? What do you mean?"

Eleanor nodded eagerly. "Exactly what you're thinking. We're trying to copy his method to see if I can somehow get the mana variant as well. We weren't able to make much progress yet, but we were only trying for a few hours."

Maria cut her off with a raised hand, her gaze locking on me. "You're helping her with mana?" she asked. Her voice was calm, but I could catch an undercurrent of excitement. "Is it possible?"

"Frankly, I don't know," I said. "But, there's no reason for it to be impossible. I already have several paths in mind, from forcefully melding her vitality attacks with mana, to meditation."

Maria's eyes widened as she turned to Eleanor. "You … meditating?" she said, followed by a chuckle. "That I need to see."

"Oh, it's just as amusing as you think it is," I commented, joining her in laughter. It would have been an excellent, calculated moment to join her, and use humor to deflect any remaining frustration she might have been feeling toward me.

Luckily, it was not necessary, as Eleanor trying to meditate was one of the funniest things I had been dealing with for a long time — not that there was much competition considering most of my time was spent locked in the dungeon, hunting monsters.

"Shut up," Eleanor grumbled as she crossed her arms, turning away from us. Maria caught my gaze, and we started to laugh even louder. And, soon, despite her grumblings, Eleanor joined as well.

It felt good…