"You look... the same," Paolo observed as she passed by.

"Because I am." She retorted, "Hello, and thanks for the food and blanket by the way. I did not get anything for my trouble yet. What did you expect?"

"Patrons..." He hesitated to finish his sentence, "They like to mark their warlock as their possessions, to tell the others to fuck off. Although the cruel ones might wait a tiny bit, just to pass it as some sort of punishment for failure."

"Oh. You meant a witch mark" Sophia exclaimed, having her own epiphany. "I was prepared for it. But it did not come to pass. My patron wants me to keep a low profile to protect her secret identity. I don't think any celestial features or any stamp of ownership is going to help with that."

"Celestial features? You got to sign in with a Celestial?" He exclaimed astonished.

"It was the purpose of your summoning circle all along, why the fuss?" She asked.

"More like the unlikely lottery prize in an ocean of mediocre morally grey baddies!" He exclaimed, still disbelieving.

"Well, sorry to break your fantasy, but it turned out the overly good Celestial can be morally grey too." She explained with a shrug, "At least, my patron seems to have skeletons in her closet behind her pristine facade of 'projected virtues', as my newly appointed familiar like to say."

"Even real-life angels cannot be trusted?" Paolo faked agonizing from stabbing himself through the heart. "What's next? Dogs aren't actually men's best friends?"

"I think that last one is absolutely true." She played along. "Although don't mention it in front of our new companion: He is of the feline variety."

And Paolo sat down to digest that new information.

"Okay. Please tell me everything." He asked, his curiosity getting the best of him.

"I will," She conceded. "But shower first."

★☆★

And Sophia did tell Paolo everything, minus her patrons' name and her plan to nurture her into her contracted assassin.

That much felt like it was falling under her obligated discretion clause and she planned to keep to the spirit of it.

She did however warn him about the winged cat who would be spying on them and retell in great detail to her enthralled and horrified audience about her patron deception and her future monthly performance duties.

"Is she planning to make you tour the Nine Hells to make you sing her good name?" He asked, indignant.

"More like praising the virtues of love, peace, and harmony to a warmongering audience." Sophia corrected with a chuckle.

"It did not end well for the hippies." He observed grimly "And they had numbers and popular opinions on their sides."

"The price of divine weapons in the palm of my hands, literally." She shrugged in return. "I knew patrons' demand should be unreasonable at best. And she almost got me."

"She did get you." Paolo pointed out, playing with his food as he started stress eating. "That Tressym must be some sort of Saint among his kind for telling you."

Your contract has been registered. The system had been entrusted with enforcing your contract obligations. As per your contract, you will be informed of any pending obligations three days in advance. Failure to comply will be immediately reported to your patron for discipline.

You have no pending obligations.

You have earned the new boon [Weavesinging] from your patron. It is currently disabled and can be enabled at any time.

You have been gifted the following equipment from your patron: [Sworddancer's blade of Protection] and [Sworddancer's blade of Retribution]. They have been added to your respawn safe.

You are now contracted to a [Tressym] familiar. Your familiar has been summoned and is awaiting you in your respawn safe.

"They had trapped a winged cat into a sealed box?" She exclaimed, thinking out loud. " Does the system have no sort of common sense?"

And indeed, she heard the indignant Meowing of her familiar from two rooms away.

"Be right back!" She shouted at Paolo while rushing for her safe to open it.

"Thanks." The Tressym said, hopping out of the box before hissing at it.

"You are welcome. I do not condone animal cruelty."

"I'm a sapient just like you." The Tressym corrected her. "But I appreciate the sentiment."

"I won't repeat the same mistake." She promised. "By the way, I did not ask your name."

"And I did not provide any." The tressym turned her down. "It's not against you. Tressym are paranoid about their Tressymspeech names being used against them. Besides, they do not appeal to the human tongue. Picky Eater is the closest translation of mine and I hold my name as a badge of honor. But you are not to call me that or any approximation, ever. If you earn my trust, I will reveal my tressymspeech name to you and its correct pronunciation. Until then, call me whatever you wish."

"What Lady Silverhair had been calling you?" She asked, not wanting to get emotionally attached by giving the winged cat a name.

"Prince." The Tressym replied, reluctantly.

"Prince?" She repeated, honestly surprised.

"Technically, true. Accident of birth." The Tressym explained dismissively.

"Tressyms have royalty?" She asked, genuinely curious.

"Not in the bipeds sense of the term. Tressym are solitary by nature. Father is the uncontested King of the largest Pride ever assembled in our all-out war against the enemies of all Tressyms."

"So he is more like a warlord of sorts?" She reformulated.

"Also true" Prince confirmed with a cat smile. "But King has a nicer ring to it, don't you think?"

"Prince it is then." She concluded."I will be in your care for our time in the tutorial."

"Likewise." The winged cat replied, licking his right paw. "How should I call you, mistress?"

"Don't call me that again." She ordered before replying in a more even tone. "My name is Sophia."

"Like the goddess?" The cat exclaimed, startled, jumping backward, and turning into a furball. "I can't call you that. That's blasphemous. Have your people no common sense?"

Sophia sighed. Of course, that world would take even her name from her. What did she expect?

"Cultural subjectivism. So I don't have a proper name, to respect the local customs. What would you call me instead?" Sophia turned the table, trying to alleviate the burden of her growing headache.

"That's a first." Prince pondered the question. "Well, as far as I am concerned, you are a warlock using song to cast magic. That much would be enough to make up a Tressym name. But you want something more palatable to the common tongue, right?"

She nodded, not sure what to expect.

"How about Miirik? That's High Draconic for Songbird. If anything, it would make for a good stage name."

"How many languages are you speaking?" She asked, intrigued.

"Only one. Or all of them?" He responded, unsure "That's the first Divine Boon I earned. Helped a lot in my line of work."

That was sure one overpowered boon.

"You may call me Miirik for now. Don't make a scene every time a human calls me by that other name, however. We don't go by the same common sense as your world."

"I will reign myself to the best of my abilities." The Tressym promised.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

And so she collected the shortswords and went back to the kitchen with her familiar by her side.

★☆★

Introductions had been funny. It was one thing to hear about a winged talking cat and another one to meet them in person. Paolo had not been on his best behavior. But Prince had been extremely understanding and patient. And after establishing boundaries and chatting some more, she excused herself for a nap.

Truth be told, she had new weapons to inspect, a boon to enable, and some lack of sleep to catch up on.

Sworddancer's Blade of Protection Sworddancer's Blade of Retribution

Legendary Shortsword

Wards Absorption: this sword absorbs the ambient magic of hostile area-of-effect spells over time, reducing their duration by 10%. Wards Absorption is twice as effective while welding this blade Twin.

Spell Battery: Magic absorbed from the ambient can be stored up to the capacity of one spell, upcasted to your current maximum. Once recharged, it can be expended at any moment.

Legendary Shortsword

Silent Spellstrike: You can silently expend one of your spells to imbue its magical effect on this sword, for a variable duration inherent to the spell expended. Duration of effect is double while using this blade Twin Wards Absorbtion or Spell Battery.

Divine Retribution: Magical effects imbued on this blade cannot be resisted the first time they hit any target, bypassing any resistance or immunity.

Lady Silverhair seriously wanted to give her every incentive to dual wield those blades all the time and forgo archery, Sophia thought with a chuckle as she read their ridiculously overpowered properties.

One blade basically gave her a free spell each time it recharged while also reducing the duration of the most powerful spells in every enemy blaster's repertoire. The other allowed her to deliver spells through her blade, doing it ignoring resistances and immunities, and cherry on top: allowing her to cast spells while silenced, trivialising her main spellcasting weakness.

She understood perfectly her patron fighting style esthetic and though she did not subscribe to it, she understood the appeal. Dancing through the enemy lines, wreaking havoc with her blades while spamming magic missiles with her songs? It would have been a Fighter wet dream. Heck, even Paolo could probably benefit more from those blades than she could. But her patron would not appreciate it.

At least, she could instead lend her daggers to Paolo permanently from now on.

But she had been stalling and now was the time to enable the boon she had bargained for. Comfortably lying on her bed she made her will known to the system.

And everything went black.

Weavesinging

Performance: You are now a proficient singer and can learn to play instruments twice as fast.

Song of the Weave: You can now hear the song of the Weave and sing along. [Rogue Archetype] You can sing with the Weave to blend in with your environment. [Weavesinger Archetype] You can sing with the Weave to captivate your audience, empowering your natural performance.

Weavesinger Spellcasting: You can sing to the Weave to cast any spell you know. The spell components are altered, replacing any material component with your song. The more valuable the component it replaces, the longer the song.

Weavesinger Erudition: When you find an arcane spell, you can learn its song and add it to your song repertoire.

Weavesinger Repertoire: Singing isn't easy. Adding a song to your repertoire will grant you system assistance to help you remember it correctly. You can however place a limited number of songs in your active repertoire. You can sing songs out of your active repertoire, but if you are spellcasting at the same time, you might incur increased risks of magical backslash if you get it wrong.

Your Feywild Bloodline had been awakened and merged into your Weavesinging.

Your powers come from ancient forces of chaos. They churn within you - waiting to burst at any time. Each time you cast a spell, there is a possibility of triggering a Surge of Wild Magic adding up to the spell's intended effect. This unpredictable outcome can be either beneficial, harmful, or both, depending on the specific effect and the context in which it takes place.

[Weavesinger Archetype] While singing to the Weave, you are in control of the chaotic forces within your body. When a surge is happening, you can choose to unleash it or suppress it. While suppressed, albeit uncomfortably so, the surge energies will be contained, until they are finally unleashed or gradually put to rest over time. However, if you are silenced while singing to the Weave, you lose all control over the forces within you, triggering a surge and unleashing all the chaotic energies you might have been suppressing at the moment all at once.

Weavesinging was everything she was told it would be, with the surprising synergy with her Rogue Archetype thrown in as a bonus. However, the harness put on her wild magic was far less fantastic than she had been led to believe.

That the system mentioned that suppressing her wild energies would be 'uncomfortable' was probably an understatement of the year and at least, she would have liked to know about it in advance. She was not eager to discover it on her own exactly how 'uncomfortable' it would be.

And she now understood better why she had been warned that being silenced might trigger a catastrophic surge: it would trigger a new one on top of unleashing any she might be suppressing at the time! If she had a particular streak of bad luck and got silenced on that very day, she might ironically die from all the cumulated effects.

It didn't defuse her ticking bomb. It just delayed its explosion.

If anything, she was better off unleashing all those bad energies at the most opportune moment rather than bottling them up until they exploded in her face. She sighed. At least, she got to choose when to deal with her bad surge, most of the time, unless someone barged in and silenced her.

'Lady Silverhair, you bastard!' She could not help but think before reigning herself.

'It's okay. It's only slightly worse than expected. You got something good you did not ask for while undelivering a tiny bit on what you asked for. You got something slightly better and more versatile than Sorcerer would have been. And it empowered your Rogue Archetype with some sort of singing stealth option. And you got about three different things with a single boon, which all things considered were extremely generous.'

She dismissed the system and slowly came back to her senses.

Only to be assaulted by the Weave fanfare welcoming her and the uncomfortable feeling of wild magic, like mad bees crawling and buzzing under her skin. It would take time to get used to.

Breath in. Breath out.

In the end, it took her half an hour to calm herself and tune down her discomfort just enough to fall asleep.

★☆★

"So, what do we do now?" Paolo asked on the next day, as they took their breakfast together.

"I know you've been waiting for me. I'm done with this place. All we need to do now is prepare." She responded.

"Wasn't it what we have been all along?" He asked, disbelieving.

"I speak of the most short-term, materialistic preparation this time." She explained, rolling her eyes, "You know, for camping outside, surrounded by hostile and deprived of all the luxuries of the resting room. We need to prepare our bags, with all the essentials, whatever non-perishable we have left and nothing else."

"Okay." He responded, uncertain, before tentatively asking: "What's on top of your list?"

"Compacted toilet paper. Insulated bottles. Ground sheets. Pots and pans. And a week's worth of non-perishable. That's about it for the essentials nonnegotiable. Then, waterproof blankets, a cooler worth of fruits for vitamin C, paper to start a fire, and if we can afford, anything else that would make our lives even slightly less crappy and more comfortable, like say... comfort food?"

"Why ground sheets are over blankets on the priority list?" He asked, suddenly looking at his breakfast with renewed reverence.

"You did not do much camping, did you?" Sophia smirked at his cluelessness. "The ground is going to be cold, like freezing cold, compared to the ambient temperature, that is."

"Won't make much difference for me." Prince barged into the conversation uninvited.

"If you don't want to become our poisons taster, please shut up." She stared at him, disapproving.

"It's okay. I would volunteer anyway. I'm immune to poison."

The two teenagers looked at the winged cat as if he had grown a second head.

"What sort of help did you think I would provide? Not much space to stretch my wings in a cave, you know?"

He had a solid point on both counts. Although Sophia could not outright admit they were not expecting anything from him anyway:

"Well, you can scout ahead in place squishy humans like us would struggle to crouch through."

"You are absolutely right," Prince replied proudly.

"I would take any suggestions you might have into consideration." Sophia diplomatically dismissed the feline before getting back on track with all the planning they had to do.

★☆★

It was their last training session before going out.

Truth be told, they could have gone out rightaway. But It was a good habit, a good practice, and the perfect opportunity to let Prince know of their skills, as well as assess his own.

And so far, his reaction to their friendly sparring had been a bit 'meh'.

The Tressym looked utterly bored even before he started grooming himself.

And so Sophia had decided to confront him: "What's your fucking problem?"

"Honesty?" He retorted with a sarcastic tone. "He is a wizard trying to be a fighter. And you are a Rogue doing shit. Even his form is better than yours."

'Ouch. That's hurt.'

"Carry on." She said, trying to understand his point of view instead of losing her cool.

"What were you doing before the tutorial?" Prince asked in return.

"I was a high-school student preparing for the university."

"I mean your physical training." The winged cat reformulated impatiently "I can tell you had one."

"I used to be a junior Olympic in gymnastics."

"Seriously?" Paolo reacted, completely taken aback.

"Translation please." The Tressym asked.

"She was a professional in what you call acrobatics" Paolo explained to the cat.

"That explains things." Prince pondered out loud.

"How so?" Sophia asked, "My career was already done for before it even started. I got injured and never recovered 100%."

"You were already at the pinnacle of human capabilities before your accident. And the Rogue starter boon took care of your injuries, right?" She nodded and he went on. "That boon improved your body by a percentage of your maximum individual capability. Percentage increase of 'average' makes 'decently good.' Percentage increase of 'exceptional' makes 'singularity.' You haven't been challenged a single time since you've been here, I'm right?"

"He knocked me out a couple of times" She gestured at the culprit.

"With shocking grasp empowered blades" The traitor immediately pointed out.

"I see." The tressym said neutrally before looking back right at her and concluding: "This training isn't doing you any good. You need a professional Rogue trainer. Someone with the physical capability to punish you hard for your every mistake.

"No point crying about what you cannot have." Sophia argued back to square one before changing the subject: "What about archery?"

"The thing you refused Magic Missile over?" The winged cat started hopping up and down flapping his wings excitedly. "Hell yeah. Show me what you've got!"