Arthur ran through the grasslands, ten tiny orbs of water floating behind him like a line of ducklings following their mother. It made for a strange sight, especially when he constantly stopped and changed direction, seemingly at random. The bizarre movements went on for a while longer until suddenly, Arthur lost balance and sprawled onto the ground, his conjured water bullets harmlessly falling onto the grass beside him.

“Fuck, how long did I last this time?” He cursed, spitting out a mouthful of dirt.

“You actually did pretty well,” Alyssia said, suddenly materialising into existence beside him and taking a seat on the ground. Any ordinary person would probably think she’d been using magic to make herself invisible with how she spontaneously popped into existence. Arthur, however, knew better and the sound of a sonic boom echoed throughout the grasslands, startling Alyssia’s lazy pet Stormwalker into consciousness. The Alverin woman had just arrived at the scene of Arthur’s face-planting absurdly fast, thus creating the illusion that she’d been present all along.

“Twenty-seven minutes. Six more and you would have beaten your personnel record.”

Arthur groaned as he turned around, his chest heaving in exhaustion and his face covered in a sheen of sweat. Five-hundred-and-fifty-five endurance, it turned out, was not enough to keep up with Alyssia’s hellish training regimen.

“And how was my aura control?” he asked.

“Practically perfect, actually. You only let it slip twice but your recovery was near instantaneous, considering you had your ether in use constantly, I can confidently say you’ll be able to keep your aura in check even whilst fighting.”

“For only a few days of work, it’s nothing short of a miracle. Especially when taking into account how terrible you were when we started. Just what sort of skill did you create?” She asked curiously.

Arthur chuckled. “Please don’t ask. I’ve told you already I have no idea how it works. The skill doesn’t even utilize any ether at all like my other abilities, it just gives me a headache when I’m using it. Mental acuity? Is that a thing skills can run on?”

Alyssia shook her head. “I have no idea how the system does things. The only thing that matters is that it works I guess. It’s pretty damn neat. Your aura literally becomes a mess of soup when you use the skill making it practically impossible to read anything from it. To be honest, it might actually be better than the more traditional methods of hiding your aura.”

She smiled wryly.

“Then again, I guess it’s your unique aura that makes it possible. Shrinking my aura may make it denser and harder to read, but it lacks the quality of chaos yours possesses.”

Because I decided to eat a bunch of monster cores without knowing what they’d do to my body or soul. Arthur decided not to voice his thoughts. Complaining about things got you nowhere.

“So, do you think I’ve progressed enough to finally move on to the next layer?” Arthur instead asked, “I know we’ve got two days left before our self-imposed week limit comes to its end, but I don’t think there’s any point staying on floor one any longer.”

“My aura skills stopped levelling no matter what I do and my other abilities are growing so slowly that the two days won’t make a difference. Unless you have some amazing trick left to teach me, we might as well get finished with this place. Perhaps a change in environment will help me get the spark of progress back.”

“I’m not sure if it’s a placebo effect or not, but I’ve started to get headaches randomly. We might want to speed up a little bit.”

Alyssia didn’t say anything for a long while, seemingly taking time to ponder over what he’d said. “Well, I didn’t know my teaching was so terrible,” she eventually said. “But your right. Maybe it’s because this locus of power is so new, but my initial estimations might be a little off.”

“If you're already experiencing headaches, we have less time than I thought left in here before suffering some lasting harm. Another week. Maybe two if we want to push things.”

Arthur nodded his head. Alyssia had never told him what this harm was exactly, but he’d inferred that it had something to do with a reduction in one mental attributes for a while. With how his own were already not doing so well, Arthur wasn’t too keen to find out what a prolonged stay in this place would do to him.

“Your teaching’s not bad, by the way.” Arthur did not make a convincing liar.

Alyssia laughed, raising her hand to stop him from talking. “Spare me the sweet talk. I was only joking before but even I know my educational methods leave a lot to be desired.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I basically used you as a guinea pig to test how effective they'll be for when I finally get around to teaching Artemo. Speaking off, he should be waking up soon. It’ll probably take him a few hours before he grows enough balls to start looking for me, so yep, a week and a half here it is. Any longer and the idiot might actually get himself in trouble.”

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Arthur sighed in exasperation. He really couldn’t understand Alyssia, despite spending over a week in her company. At times she appeared calm and collected, a cool and caring older sister that would give the world for her sibling, and at others, she well- didn’t give a shit. Perhaps it’s a unique trait of the Alverin that causes such drastic changes in their personality, like a mild case of bipolar.

Or Alyssia’s just really weird.

He couldn’t help but think it was the latter. “So, do you know how to complete this layer or what? You’ve spent so much time with the horses whilst I’ve been training that you should at least know a little.”

Alyssia waved her hand dismissively. “I’m way ahead of you on that front. I’ve practically completed the layer already. There was just a weird sort of rodent infection at this stable that needed to be dealt with. Once that was done, the Stormwalkers were happy to return to their homes.”

Arthur listened attentively, knowing that there was a ’but’ coming along very soon. He wasn’t mistaken.

“But we have one problem,” Alyssia said, pointing at the Stormwalker that had grown so attached to her over the past few days. The lazy beast, as always, was snoring away on the grass, somehow managing to already fall asleep after its rude awakening a few minutes earlier.

“All the Stormwalkers are around Rank F on the evolution spectrum according to the system, which is standard enough for a locus with a level 200 restriction. To be honest, it’s actually on the weaker side.”

“The problem is, Bambam’s girlfriend, or should I say, mate,” Alyssia said, once again indicating to the resting horse who she'd named Bambam. “She’s evolved to the next rank.” Alyssia let the words sink in for a while as she stared at him silently.

“A beast’s evolution is a little different to a sapient. They have little to no control over it, meaning that it will usually only enhance their greatest strengths,” Alyssia explained, “ And the Stormwalkers are fast, very, very fast. It’s their way only redeeming trait, to the extent that with a single extra evolution, Bambam’s mate is faster than me. At least at a dead sprint.”

“Not by a lot, but enough that I can’t reasonably catch her without harming her.”

“Is she really that fast?” Arthur asked sceptically. He couldn’t help it. For an animal that probably hadn’t reached level 200 to surpass Alyssia in speed, even after she used ether to enhance herself was simply absurd. To accept that meant that the creature travelled upwards of 600 m/s and as far as Arthur knew, that was impossible without the necessary investments in constitution and strength that would allow the body to keep up without failing.

Alyssia herself always kept complaining about how her lack of constitution limited her, and that was despite the fact that most of her ether-based skills were geared to support the incredible speeds she could move at.

“I know it doesn’t make any sense,” Alyssia said, a hint of annoyance creeping into her voice. “How the fuck does the bitch run so fast without disintegrating.”

She took a deep calming breath, “But this is a locus of power, I guess. It doesn’t have to make sense or even follow the lore it’s supposed to be based on. I doubt this Hercules of yours managed to catch a beast that can run circles around even me.”

Arthur smiled wryly, “Just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean no one can,” he teased, “I’m pretty sure the guy was half-god and all too.”

“Hah, your world’s too young to have gods, useless bastards that they are,” Alyssia retorted. “And I never said I can’t catch the bitch, only that it’ll be difficult.” It took her a moment to realise that Arthur was only teasing her, and her skin flushed a darker shade of green.

What the hell did she mean, your planets too young for gods. Lower case g as in powerful beings that rule the planet or capital G God, the creator of everything, an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being. Context suggests she meant the former.

Arthur filed away the thought for later analysis as he narrowly dodged the hairbrush Alyssia threw his way. When it landed in a massive pile of horse dung, the thrower followed her projectile in attacking Arthur, who couldn’t control his laughter, which probably wasn’t the wisest decision as it only incensed Alyssia further.

An aching scalp from where she’d pulled his hair, however, was a minor price to pay to see the woman make a fool of herself and Arthur didn’t regret it. Not when his regeneration made the pain disappear in seconds.

“Arthur, clean this,” she demanded, thrusting the shit-coated hairbrush at his face. Arthur eventually relented, but only after extracting a promise of a month's free cooking from her. Alyssia made the stupidest of deals at times and it was a wonder that she hadn’t been extorted into slavery or something equally horrible yet.

Using the tiniest amounts of ether possible, Arthur generated a few water bullets and adeptly manoeuvred them to clean the horse shit away without damaging the hairbrush, a feat that would have been impossible for him a few days ago. It was only after he realised that Alyssia was looking at him like he was a fool that Arthur remembered he had an ability called purify in his arsenal now.

A quick blast of the aura spell completed what would have otherwise taken him minutes with his previous method. He handed the now clean brush back to a sullen-looking Alyssia who was glowering at him.

“I’m sorry, okay,” he eventually relented and apologised. “But it was your fault for throwing the brush at me.”

Alyssia snorted and turned away, no doubt to go and inspect if he’d done a proper job of cleaning it. Really, is she actually older than me or what? Do Alverin just mature slower than humans?

Arthur smiled and whistled a tune he couldn’t remember the name of as he channelled some ether into the shadows beneath him. Out of all his affinities, excluding soul, of course, it was the one he had the most difficulty with, though he had improved leaps and bounds with it over the past few days. Enough that he could now do the approximation of a shadow act with ether alone, even if his horses looked like some sort of camel-elephant crossbreed. Snakes came a lot easier to him, no thanks to their simple form.

An epic tale unfolded between the serpent empire and the earth-shakers, massive monstrous horse-hybrids, as they battled for dominance within the shadowlands. There was only space enough for one nation to survive. The great war came to a climax when the serpents gave birth to a great warrior, whose length spanned the heavens and whose jaws were large enough to eat an earth shaker whole.

In the end, the serpent empire won, mainly because Arthur could manipulate them far easier, and also because he’d developed an intense dislike for horses after the fourth time stepping in their shit.

“Are you done playing?” Alyssia asked coldly.

Arthur sighed and got to his feet. "Don’t act like you weren’t staring at my Shadow act all this time." He stretched upwards, rubbing at the patch of hair Alyssia had pulled.

It was time to find Bambam’s girlfriend.