"No!" Kiel and Melissa yelled at once. Of course, Kiel's yell was a short and to the point meow.

If Cassandra was disappointed at that, she didn't show it. She smiled and went to check the monster's corpse. "By the way, I'm silver ranked now!" She said, "You really did a number on it, we could have salvaged its fur for quite the price."

Melissa screamed, "Forget about the fur, you got to silver?!" She ran up to her friend and hugged her in excitement.

"Of course I did, you thought I was going to let you be all alone in silver? I know how lonely you get when I leave home for five minutes, I'm not going to let you leave me behind." She laughed, her face cheerful as it could be, "We were going to explore the world, weren't we? Can't do that as bronze."

From that conversation Kiel only got a few words, so he had to ask Melissa to translate the rest. For how small an amount of time he'd been exposed to the language, however, he felt like he was doing pretty well.

They left the dungeon, with Melissa trying to suss out Cassandra's enhanced skill to no success.

They were in high spirits for the remainder of the day. Melissa cooked for the four of them and they just about threw a party. Unfortunately, the guards came and knocked on their door, asking them to keep quiet, talking mainly about Edel whose howls could be heard from kilometers away.

As they were getting ready to go to sleep, Melissa followed Kiel as they sat on his bed, with Edel resting a bit further away on top of some heavy blankets in lieu of a bed.

"Do you think we're doing alright?" Melissa asked Kiel out of nowhere in his room. "I mean, today was a pretty chaotic fight. If we're going to tackle silver-ranked dungeons eventually, we are going to need more people in our party."

"We demolished the bunnies though." He couldn't help but reply.

Melissa took a few seconds before answering, "We did... but-" she shook her head, "it wasn't the same as the goblin dungeon." She picked him up, holding him in her embrace.

"You risking your life, teleporting with fractions of a second to spare." her body trembled, "I don't want to see you getting hurt." She tried to hold back her tears as best she could, holding him tighter against her chest.

He remained silent, resting in her arms.

After that, her mood improved somewhat, and they went to sleep each in their own rooms.

The next day, he woke up early, finding Melissa in the kitchen preparing breakfast with Cassandra helping her out here and there. Cassandra said something and Melissa burst out laughing, which was also the moment they noticed him entering the room.

He was glad to see her doing better. He didn't like seeing her sad.

On the other hand, he was definitely finding it increasingly annoying not being able to understand what everyone else was saying. He wanted to know what Cassandra said to make her laugh, and he couldn't be constantly bothering Melissa for a translation.

When Melissa heard that, she smiled, "You know, I don't mind spending the day teaching you about the language. It might be a nice change of pace."

He thought about it for a moment and nodded. Melissa said something to Cassandra who was starting to finish up on their breakfast.

She put down the bowl of fresh vegetables she was preparing and sat on a chair next to him. "So, in the country of Elias the language of the commoners is called Saph and the language of the nobles is called Sapher. I won't bother with Sapher because we probably wouldn't find anyone who speaks it outside the capital anyway."

Having two languages for different classes of the same people seemed a bit pretentious. For Melissa to be mentioning the noble's language...

Don't tell me Melissa is a Noble-

"Also, there is the fact I don't really know Sapher."

He couldn't help but facepalm, burying his head in his paws. Melissa saw that and started laughing.

After an hour of going over basic words and their pronunciation, he was greeted by an unexpected system message, and his attention wavered.

In his status screen was now a new skill by the name Language Mastery.

At first he felt excited for finally learning a new skill, then his mood soured when he realized that this was another slot wasted. Melissa was quick to realize something was wrong, "What happened?" she asked him, drawing the attention of Cassandra who just finished eating.

"Gained another useless skill," he told her honestly.

Melissa thought for a moment before answering. "Well, we will remove it then." She said, her hands moving sneakily to pet him. He teleported on top of her head for that and behind her back when she tried to catch him again.

"We can?" He asked after Melissa gave up on trying to pet him.

He looked hopeful after remembering he had more than one skill he needed to get rid of. He hadn't used his climbing skill in forever, and being able to fill two of his slots with something useful would be a great help in future fights or his life in general. He got lost in thought when Melissa's next words woke him up.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Well, it will be a little expensive, but we have the money," she said nonchalantly, and he couldn't help but wonder how much she was underplaying the cost.

Cassandra found that moment to speak, "I don't object, but we're going to have to take up some missions after if we don't want to be living on the street."

Now he was really scared about how expensive it was. He tried to convince her that he didn't really need it, but she wouldn't listen and after Edel woke up and ate the bowl of meat she'd prepared for her, they headed out.

They moved through the busy roads of the city, gathering as much attention as always before reaching what looked like an enormous church. A young man was waiting by the doors and Melissa confirmed it was a church.

"Welcome young adventurers! Which God are you here to pray to?" the man asked, his friendly expression and demeanor making Kiel's fur stand on end.

Cassandra answered for the rest of them, "None, we're here because our friend wants a skill removed," she said, keeping the next part under her breath, "Because unfortunately there's no one else with that skillset in this city."

The man smiled even wider and led them inside. The interior of the building was as grand as the exterior with an arching ceiling that seemed to reach the sky.

The man opened a door on the far left side of the building, and they went inside. This room resembled more that of an office than a church, and an older man sat behind a desk.

"How may I assist you, priest Jahn?" the man asked.

"The young adventurers need your assistance actually. They need a skill removed, so I shall leave them to your capable hands," the young priest said curtly before bowing out.

The older man sighed and motioned them to sit. "The young priests always have too much energy. Now, where were we?" he said, stroking his beard, "Which one of you wants to remove a skill?" he asked and Melissa looked at Kiel.

If the old priest was surprised at the person requiring his services, he didn't show it. "Alright, do you know the exact name of the skill the cat wishes to remove? Also, do note that the whole procedure will be more expensive the higher leveled the skill, and I cannot do anything about Maxed skills."

Also, it was his first time hearing that he couldn't remove maxed skills. Well, they could start out with the language skill since it was lower leveled then.

Melissa nodded and went to sit in one of the chairs in front of the desk, but Kiel was faster. She glared at him because there were only two chairs, and he pretended not to see her. The older man couldn't help but laugh at their antics.

Melissa sat in the other chair, with Cassandra and Edel standing behind them, "The skill he wants to get rid of, is Language Mastery. He gained it just this morning, so it should still be level one."

The man nodded and started to explain the process, "I'm going to insert my ether inside its body. I just need it to not resist me, and we will be finished in less than a minute."

The man got up from his desk and approached Kiel. He knelt at eye level in front of him and slowly extended his arm, touching Kiel's forehead. The moment his hand connected with Kiel's body, it felt like he was being doused with cold water. Foreign ether snaked through his veins and deeper inside his body, in what he could only describe as worms boring inside his body.

He instinctively tried to use his ether to get rid of them, when he remembered what Melissa translated to him. Instead he kept his ether at bay, letting the man's ether flow deeper inside of him. That was harder to do than he thought when the man's ether started getting close enough to his own that they were almost touching.

The effort from this exercise resulted in a system notification, one that surprised the older man only for a moment before he continued working on his body. He really wanted to see what the notification was, but focusing on the system while foreign ether was invading his body was harder than he thought.

A few seconds later the man's ether reached a level inside of him that he didn't even know existed. It felt like it disappeared from his body, yet he could still feel it somewhere deep inside his very being.

That was when his whole body froze as the man's ether started growing hotter and hotter; feeling and burning something inside his very being. His paws started to sweat as the feeling intensified before disappearing the next moment.

The system had a few more words to say after that, but it seemed like the man was finished.

"Alright, Language Mastery skill is gone. It will be 50 gold coins, 40 for you because this was the most well-behaved monster I've seen in recent years and it wasn't half bad in its ether control," the man said, winking at Kiel.

Melissa still felt actual physical pain at the amount, even with the discount.

"Remember, the cat has to avoid fighting for the next few days. Removing a skill is hard on the soul and it needs to rest for now, he should be fine in a few days."

Cassandra threw a small pouch of coins over, and the man weighted the bag in his hands, nodding in response.

Before they left, Melissa couldn't help but ask, "In case someone wanted to remove a level 9 skill, how much would that cost by the way?"

The man laughed, "Well, I've never attempted to remove such a high leveled skill, and it could have complications. The highest I've done was level 7 and I charged about a platinum coin for it."

Melissa thanked him for the information and they went to hang out in the park nearby where Kiel finally checked out his notifications.

You have maxed out your skill, Ether Manipulation! You have gained +3 in the Mind attribute, your connection with the Ether of the World has grown stronger.

That must have been what surprised the old man in the middle of the procedure. He felt nice finally having his last viable skill maxed, and he couldn't wait to see how it translated to his abilities with Ether. Then again, two of his old skills had been enhanced, so he had a long way to go before he maxed out everything, and he still wanted to remove the Climbing skill in the future.

The next system message was about the procedure and it brightened his day. This time he would be more careful about what skills he practiced with an empty skill slot.

Language Mastery skill has been destroyed!

He felt weird losing a skill that could have cut his learning time by weeks, or even months, but for something he felt like he could accomplish with ease, it wasn't worth devoting an entire skill to it.

He would just have to work harder to make up for the lack of skill.

Checking his status screen, he was greeted by a familiar warning message... well, if that wasn't annoying.

Name - Kiel

Level - 16*

Titles - Traveler, Unyielding, Ritualist, Scholar

Body - 25

Mind - 27

Spirit - 34

Skills - Unbound Adaptation (Lvl 15), Climbing (Lvl 7), Ether Sense (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Sense (Lvl 4), Spatial Manipulation (Lvl 10) [Max], Spatial Rend (Lvl 3), Spatial Shift (Lvl 10) [Max], Ether Manipulation (Lvl 10) [Max]

Thankfully the old man said it wouldn't last for more than a few days, otherwise he would be plotting his murder right around this minute.

It also explained a few things about how skill erasure worked and what skills were.

The man had been able to identify and burn the skills off the outer layer of his soul. The higher the level of a skill, the more integrated to one's soul it was, which explained why the man said maxed skills were impossible to remove. Admittedly a lot of it was conjecture.

He was pretty sure, however, that the system was something akin to an extremely high level of soul magic.

His mind spun as he wondered what kind of being could have even designed this kind of system, and for what reason.

Melissa didn't know and he didn't know who to ask. Maybe the Gods of this world could have created the system, but none claimed as such, and he doubted common history books would be of any help.

He still wanted to find out.

They say that curiosity killed the cat, but I know that satisfaction brought it back.