The discussion petered out after plans were made. All three adventurers had the Sleep skill and Brivaria discovered they had a system of one person staying up to keep watch. When she told them that she didn’t need to sleep and could keep watch all night, they reconsidered the arrangement. Meia would get a full ten hours of sleep. Rake and Penry would take six hours of sleep on either side. That would, in turn, leave two hours in the middle where all three were asleep and Brivaria was the only person on watch.

She could tell the group was a bit wary of having someone they’d known for less than a day keep watch. The angel could understand their hesitation even if she didn’t share it. She knew that she was trustworthy, after all. In the end they decided that they needed Meia at full strength for the dungeon tomorrow if they were to have any hope of succeeding. As Penry and Meia went to sleep, Brivaria asked about that and Rake explained.

“Meia has skills to sense traps as well as tools to jam or disarm them. It’s traps, not monsters, that kill the most adventurers. You have to treat every single thing in a dungeon room or corridor as though it’s going to kill you. That includes the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the columns, and anything else in the room. Even the treasure is often cursed. Skills like Meia’s are in high demand. Every party wants a healer but potions and other curatives can do in a pinch. Every party needs a trap expert because there’s no substitute.” Brivaria nodded along as he spoke.

“The parties I’ve accompanied in the past called them sweepers. My people are often brought in for combat support after such things are dealt with. It’s rare that I get to see the sweepers at work.” There were a lot nuanced roles in high level adventuring parties. As the areas became more dangerous, the challenges a group could or would face grew as well. “How are Meia’s skills as a sweeper?”

“About average for her level. Not sure what things are like where you’re from but here in Flynnette there aren’t any schools for the discipline. You either get apprenticed to a trap expert or try to develop the skills on your own. Meia is the latter. She’s mostly leveled through skill practice and use but has hit a roadblock. That is, she’s not quite at the level where a dungeoneering team will pick her up but her leveling speed based on pure skill use is almost non-existent without field experience.”

“Yet she’s part of the Second Sword,” Brivaria pointed out. Rake shrugged.

“She is. Since she can’t level through delving, she’s developing some combat skills with us. She’ll never be on the level of someone who has focused entirely on delving but she can hold her own in a fight and gain levels that way. That works perfectly for us. We get her to her next class advancement and then we go treasure hunting properly once she advances.”

“And then what?” Brivaria asked, curious to know where the human’s ambitions ultimately lay. He cocked his head in confusion.

“And then we get rich? Or at least enough to buy a bed, a warm room, and a better bow. The more combat skills you get, the more likely you get combat classes for advancement. Once you go down that road, it’s really hard to do anything else. I’m not inclined to turn my bow or sword on another person so the mercenary life is out. Caravan or frontier guards sometimes have to fight people as well as monsters so that’s out too. Adventuring is the only occupation where I can put my skills to use without hurting another person.”

Brivaria wasn’t certain what to say. Angels were often trained for the path they would walk. One’s discipline and caste was determined at birth. Brivaria had been chosen for intervention, told what planet she would be assigned to, and then given detailed instructions on what skills to pick and what classes to choose. She was allowed some deviation but only in so far as it might allow for stronger skills or better classes which was rare. Her race had hundreds of years of dedicated skill and class optimization to find the best skill pairings and unions. The fact that the system allowed for near limitless combinations meant they were likely nowhere near perfect but would be far closer to it than humans who were simply muddling their way through sans guidance.

Yet, for all the guidance Brivaria was given, she’d never considered putting her skills toward any other pursuit except the one laid out before her. She had been born, taught the knowledge her people required her to have, trained to have the skills her people needed to her to wield, and then put all of that training and knowledge to use. She wholly agreed with Rake in that she’d never want to use her own skills upon her fellow angels. The idea that she could now choose what to do with her skills, what she wanted to do with her skills, was novel. Perhaps that was why she rejected the Unity skill earlier. It wasn’t what she wanted to do but the natural question then was… what did she want to do?

“Brivaria?” Rake asked cautiously. “Are you alright?”

“Oh! Yes. I’m fine. My role until recently has been something called ‘intervention.’ I assist people in distress, distribute food to those in need, and heal those who are injured.” Rake’s concerned expression blossomed into a smile.

“Well, you did two out of three today. We definitely needed an intervention, as you put it. Thank you again.” He smiled and she smiled and the night carried on.

They were just far enough from the stream that the running water provided soothing background noise in the distance. The campfire was kept smoldering giving Brivaria and Rake enough light to see with. After all, the whole point of being on watch was actually watching the woods around them for animals coming to raid their supplies or monsters trying to ambush them while they slept.

Eventually the little, enchanted hourglass that the group possessed glowed upon running out of sand indicating the passing of two hours. Rake flipped it and another pair of hours came and went. Their talk continued off and on but eventually devolved into just noting when the fire needed to be fed. That was fine with Brivaria. She needed some time to think.

The angel had already come to the conclusion that she would need to level skills that would help her in her newfound situation. She picked what was immediately useful because it was useful but she was currently without any sort of longterm plan for what she wanted to do. The more she considered it, the less certain she was about things in general. Balthazar told her to just be. It was easy to do what she knew how to do. It was what she was good at or, at least, what she had been good at. Her starting class was very different, she’d already taken different skills, and strangely enough even her attributes looked different. Now that she had hours to sit and consider her future, she started doing just that. It was odd to have to do that herself rather than letting her kin make those decisions for her.

The night had grown cold when the hourglass started blinking a second time. Brivaria had pulled her wings around herself to ward off the chill of the night. Rake got up and flipped the hourglass one more time.

“I’m going to sleep now. When this hourglass glows a third time, that means six hours will have passed. When that happens, go ahead and wake up Penry. He’ll take the next six hour shift then wake up Meia and myself when it’s done. If you see anything or anything happens, wake me up immediately.” Brivaria nodded at Rake’s serious words. The adventurer gave her his thanks once more and crawled into his bedroll. The angel was left alone in the cold night air.

Once alone, she began practicing with her new skills. Produce Light could take many forms. She could radiate light from any part of her body or all of it. She could emit light from just her hand or even a finger. Meanwhile Tailwind could be used whether Brivaria was flying or standing on solid ground. The strength of the wind could be as gentle as she liked or stronger, up to a point.

The thing both skills had in common was that there was flexibility in their use. Some skills were very narrow in their purpose. Rest had one function and very strict requirements for that function. Many skills were not so narrow. They could be used in a variety of ways with the wielder giving them more or less of the required mana or stamina as well as a bit of direction.

This was where Brivaria had an advantage. Having been over level 160, Brivaria had learned a great many ways channel mana through skills. Even if her attributes and stats were low, she’d spent a great many cycles training with nearly 100 different skills. Produce Light could be focused and fed mana to emit a narrow but blinding flash of light. It wasn’t nearly as effective as a skill designed to blind a foe but it was an option she had with only an hour of practice with the skill. Likewise she could change the color of the light and even cause objects she carried to emit light. If she wanted a glowing sword, she could have a glowing sword.

Not all uses of her new and, in some cases, old skills were useful but they did help her get used to her new body and its capabilities. Speaking of which, Lesser Shapeshifting was entirely new to the angel. She’d never had this skill in her previous body or was it life? She needed a name for the before and after of her affliction. Previously she’d had the Form Shift skill which let her swap between her native energy form and her material form. Lesser Shapeshift let her shift characteristics of her material form with some limits. Her body could only become so strong, so tall, so short, and so on.

The more Brivaria experimented with Lesser Shapeshift, the more she discovered she could change. Unfortunately the lack of a mirror or similar way to see what she was changing made her hesitant experiment too much. One thing she did notice while experimenting with hair growth and length was that her hair had changed color. She had vibrant, white hair. That had been true for every cycle since her first Form Shift to the material realm but no longer. Her hair had darkened to a blonde color. She was certain she hadn’t done that with Lesser Shapeshift so maybe it was a quirk of whatever Balthazar and the others did to put her down here. She briefly considered changing it back to her original color but decided it was not worth the effort of explaining to the group why her hair changed color overnight. That was if she even got the color right.

Her inner musings and skill practice were interrupted as the enchanted hourglass began glowing. The angel went over to Penry’s tent and woke the sleeping lizardman. She then politely excused herself to go work on flight. With Penry watching over the sleeping adventurers, Brivaria could leave the camp and test the limits of her skills properly. She couldn’t practice flying while sitting down and she didn’t want to test the limits of Produce Light while people were trying to sleep.

The angel soon discovered many things. The first of which was that the night sky was beautiful. Countless stars glowed and winked at her. Interventions were performed across the planet yet most of them were underground or inside enclosed spaces. Even the few that put her on the surface did not allow angels the time to bask in the soak in the sights of the world they were assisting. High in the sky, Brivaria let go of her worries for a time. She simply basked in the beauty of the night and the feel of the wind rushing by. It was relaxing in a way that even her Rest skill was not.

The cold night air only grew colder as Brivaria began experimenting with Tailwind. One of her racial traits mitigated the chill to an extent so she wasn’t going to turn into an ice cube and drop out of the sky. It didn’t eliminate the chill entirely, however. Luckily Tailwind proved to be a very straightforward skill which didn’t need that much practice. It produced wind from behind her and increased her flight speed. She could feed more mana into it for stronger wind and more speed but that wasn’t a good use of mana in most cases. The System wasn’t exactly penalizing the person but trying to get a strong effect from a weak skill was often cost prohibitive in stamina or mana. One could do it in a pinch but it was never advisable.

The training session came to an end as she landed back in camp. The angel hadn’t quite used the two hours she alloted herself for it but that was fine. What was important was that she had four hours for her Rest skill to fully restore all of her stats. She would be ready to go at the same time as the rest of the party.

The next four hours passed easily. Penry proved to be a good conversation partner although he was more inclined to talk about himself than his friends. Penry’s story was fairly straightforward, Brivaria found out. His family settled in Flynnette a couple generations back but he wanted to see the world rather than settle at home. Gaining a class and skills so he could defend himself while traveling was his primary motivation for becoming an adventurer. He had no strong ties to Rake or Meia. He’d been in need of a team to help him level up faster than mere training would allow and Rake had needed people.

Penry also clarified that he was Peshmari. Lizardman was technically correct and he didn’t care much about it one way or another. In fact, Penry was indifferent about many things. He didn’t have the same qualms Rake or Brivaria had about fighting other Peshmari. He reasoned that an enemy was an enemy no matter what they looked like. Surprisingly, the man didn’t care about dungeon diving either. He would be content to find the dungeon and sit at the entrance while killing anything that came out. While he wouldn’t say no to a heavier coin purse, using and improving his combat skills was ultimately what he was here for.

Brivaria liked the lizardman’s direct attitude. She had been on Zlithia for less than a day and was still figuring out what she wanted to do. He was laser-focused on a goal and taking steps to accomplish it. By the time morning came, she was asking him about the town of Keaton and surrounding area. He dutifully answered her questions up until the point where the sands of the enchanted hourglass were nearly gone. It was then that he started packing up.

Both sleeping adventurers were given a little bit of extra time after the sands ran out but then it was time to get to work.