"Holy Palm!" Eko shouted as he pointed his open hand towards the group of C-ranked Kobolds that he was tasked with fighting.

A massive spiritual palm that was easily five times the size of Eko himself flew through the air at a rapid pace and obliterated the monsters in one clean motion.

Putting his hands together, Eko bowed slightly and lifted his prayer-bead necklace before he chanted a few words of passing.

Letmir, the short High Elven woman who was the external leader of Eko and Sophie's team, approached him after killing her own Kobolds and gave him a few words of praise. "That was great, Eko! Your casting time for that skill has been reduced by a lot, huh?"

"Well, even though I haven't broken the barrier to becoming an A-ranker yet, I've still been practising my skills every day. Holy Palm is almost at the point where I can use it against smarter enemies like Wyverns and Hydras, you know, larger and cumbersome creatures that still possess some intellect and agility." Eko was proud of his abilities.

"Regardless," Falin, who was previously leaning against a tree, spoke with a belittling tone. "You're a B-ranker and the weakest out of all of us."

Falin had cleaned up his share of the Kobolds long before Eko had, so he wasn't entirely wrong with his rather harsh words.

"Somebody remind me why he's the internal leader again, please? He's not even the most powerful person in our group," Eko fired back as he looked at Sophie who was blankly staring into space while she sat on one of her barrier blades.

Falin's face turned red and he could feel his anger rising. Naturally, the first one to finish out of everyone was, in fact, Sophie. All it took was a single barrier blade which she controlled in a way that allowed it to massacre her Kobolds in less than five seconds, far surpassing Falin's speed.

Tathaln, the final member of their team, noticed that Sophie seemed to be unfocused, so, ignoring his fellow High Elf's building rage, he called out to the girl sat on the floating barrier. "Sophie? Are you okay?"

"Ah," coming back to her senses, Sophie smiled a bit shyly. "Sorry, I was just thinking about something."

"My money's on Lone," Eko teased.

"Kind of." Sophie scratched her cheek bashfully. "I just ranked up."

Eko's face fell. "No! Will I really be the last one to become an A-ranker?! No, wait, there's still Swind... I can accept Breena, but at the very least, I'll beat Swind to A-rank!"

Sophie couldn't help but admire Eko's energetic nature even after he had worked hard to defeat the group of high-C-ranked Kobolds, a task that no ordinary B-ranker could accomplish by themselves.

Falin ground his teeth slightly and mumbled, "Again... The gap has grown even further again..."

Letmir and Tathaln offered Sophie words of congratulations and the group began heading back to the world tree.

During that journey home, Sophie decided to talk to Lone telepathically via The Summoning Room's ability.

'Lone? Are you busy?' Sophie asked with a sweet voice. She was excited to talk to Lone.

A few seconds passed without a response, and just as Sophie was getting anxious, a few exhausted pants filled her mind. 'Not particularly. I was just doing some training. What's up?'

'I reached A-rank, so I was just wondering if you broke the bottleneck... A-And I wanted to talk to you...' Sophie's bashfulness was hard to hide even during a telepathic conversation.

Sophie could almost sense Lone's lips forming into a sly grin. 'Miss me, huh?'

'Y-Yeah,' Sophie stuttered in response.

A short laugh rang through Sophie's mind before she heard Lone's voice once more. 'You're cute. I missed you too.'

'I-Idiot...' The poor Cosmos-ranked being was finding it hard to keep the silly smirk off of her face. She was quite clearly very weak to Lone's flirting.

'But, yeah, anyway,' noticing the overjoyed tone in Sophie's voice, Lone decided to bring the conversation back on track before the poor girl fainted from a happiness overload.  'I did rank up, and I was actually curious about what unique skill of yours unlocked this time. Was it immortality?'

'No... It was Armour Creation,' Sophie answered somewhat dejectedly.

Just like Lone, she too wished to regain her immortality, but at this rate, it was almost certainly going to be the last unique skill to be unsealed.

There was a chance that Sophie was just really unfortunate, but her incredibly high luck stat told a different story, so she and Lone had concluded that the gods who had brought them to this world had meddled with the order that her abilities would return in.

'Ah... Is it any good, or is it as useless as we thought it'd be?' Lone asked, not bringing up her immortality again since doing so would be pointless.

While he and Sophie had been under the impression that Armour Creation would be a far inferior version of Lone's Creation Magic, both of them would happily welcome the possibility of them being wrong.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Sophie's face scrunched up adorably as she floated along on her barrier with her arms crossed over her chest. 'Mmm... It's weird. I've never used it before, so I only thought it created armour, but... this skill's weird.'

'Weird how?' Lone asked with the hope in his voice clear for Sophie to hear.

'It's hard to explain. It can create armour for more than just people, and the armour doesn't have to be solid.' Sophie found it difficult to articulate exactly what Armour Creation did.

'What? Okay, you're right, that is weird,' Lone said as he privately thought to himself, 'It doesn't help that Soph is making me feel like I now know even less about the skill...' 

Deciding to not rely on Sophie's poor descriptive abilities, Lone gave her a simple instruction. 'Come and find me after you've finished your keeper work and I'll check it out myself, sound good?'

'Okay. We just finished our mission and we're already heading back home, so where will you be?' Sophie asked.

'So fast? Impressive.' Sophie blushed at Lone's pure and unfiltered praise. 'I'll be in the back courtyard. Oh, by the way, don't mind your levels.'

'Huh? Levels?' Sophie tilted her head adorably.

'I managed to get a lot of good quality spirit essence and I'm about to drink some of it to reach the S-rank bottleneck,' Lone vaguely explained.

'How did you get so much essence?' Sophie was puzzled. From what Lone had told her, it would take roughly five-hundred of the bottles of essence that King Ele'hunda had given to them just for Lone to reach the A-rank bottleneck when he had first become a B-ranker, so suddenly gaining enough of the liquid to go one rank further than that, confused Sophie.

'Well... It's a bit hard to explain. I'll tell you when you're back home, 'kay?' Lone said, diverting the subject for now.

Lone really didn't want to talk about how a naked little girl had given the bottles to him, especially not to Sophie, so he needed some more time to think of how to word it in a way that would cause her to have the smallest possible reaction.

'Mmm, well, for starters, let's leave out the part about Elestia being naked,' Lone decided in his thoughts.

'... Okay.' Sophie's intuition was telling her that Lone was hiding something, but her fluffy senses weren't tingling, so at the very least, Lone's tails were still safe and unsullied.

'I love you, Soph,' Lone casually said, though Sophie could naturally feel Lone's emotions in his seemingly nonchalant voice, and it made her smile.

'I love you too, Lone,' Sophie replied in kind before she ended the telepathic conversation.

The entire time during Lone and Sophie's exchange, Falin had been closely watching the girl.

'Is she insane? Why does she keep switching between grinning like a Fairy and wearing a worried expression? Regardless... she does look rather beautiful when smiling... even if she's a Human...' Whether this line of thinking would prove to be beneficial to Falin or not in the future, was hard to tell, but regardless, he now saw Sophie in a slightly brighter light.

----------------------------------------

Swind and Rachel were peacefully strolling around a park in the city at the world tree's trunk as they headed towards a specific direction, and many of the Wood Elves they passed greeting Swind warmly when they saw him.

"This is my first time down here since we first became keepers..." Rachel confessed as she held Swind's scaly palm and enjoyed the more relaxed and friendly attitude of the trunk when compared to the serious atmosphere of the tree's crown.

"I thought you might like a change of pace, Rachel." Swind waved back at some children who had spotted him. "Miss-ss Eolande did tell me that dates-ss were needed for a good romance to bloom, ss-so I thought that you might like to ss-see this-ss place."

"What's a date?" Rachel asked curiously.

"I'm not ss-sure. Miss-ss Eolande ss-simply ss-suggested that I ss-should prepare a fun event for the two of us-ss," Swind replied honestly.

"An event?" Rachel tilted her head to the side cutely. 'This place is nice, and I'm having fun because Swind is here, but does this really count as an event?'

"Ah, Swind! You're finally here! You're late," a young Wood Elven girl who was no older than thirteen, physically at least, called out to the Lemurian as he and Rachel approached a pavilion in the park's centre.

"Miss-ss Cera, I apologise. There was a lot of traffic at the teleportation enchantment today, ss-so we arrived later than expected," Swind apologised with a short bow of his head.

"It's fine! Father is waiting for you with everyone already." Once Cera had said that she turned around on her heels and walked back up to the pavilion.

Swind followed her and Rachel looked around curiously. "You know her?"

"Yes-ss. ss-She was a ss-slave before Mr-Immortus-ss rescued her along with Breena and a Dwarf girl whom I've never ss-seen before." Swind's response shocked Rachel.

"Breena used to be a slave?" she asked.

"Yes-ss." There was some sadness in Swind's tone. "I coincidentally met Cera through her father, a fellow green keeper, as-ss we were gathering herbs. Thankfully, ss-she has-ss managed to move past her trauma. While ss-she does-ss ss-still hate Humans-ss, ss-she tries-ss not to let it affect her day-to-day life."

"That's... brave," Rachel said. 'I wonder what kind of slave she was? I've never met a slave before...'

"Indeed." The pair had finally reached the centre of the wooden gazebo-shaped pavilion and once again, almost every Wood Elf who was seated on the wooden floor said hello to Swind warmly.

Rachel noticed this. 'Swind is really popular, huh? W-Well... he is amazing...' Her own thoughts inadvertently made the young woman blush.

Swind was oblivious to these thoughts and continued speaking after everyone had settled down. "It is-ss just a ss-shame that Breena cannot move past her time as a ss-slave. ss-She is-ss coping, but I find myself thinking about how long will it be before ss-she can cope no longer while ss-she pretends-ss to be Mr Immortus-ss ss-servant."

Swind shook his head lightly before he looked down at Rachel and squeezed her small and soft hand. "Regardless-ss, today is-ss not about them, it is-ss about us-ss."

At that moment, a tall and gentle-looking Wood Elf who had a few wrinkles around his eyes and mutilated ears stepped forward.

Cera ran behind him playfully. "I still can't thank Lone enough for saving my precious Cera," he said as he wrapped an arm around the girl. "I'd like to see him if possible..."

"You just need to ask me, and I'll tell him that you wish to meet, Mr Cecil," Swind offered as he sat down on the floor and prompted Rachel to do the same.

With a flushed face and awkward movements, Rachel wrapped both of her arms around Swind's bicep and she leaned against him.

"I can't," Smiling bitterly, Cecil continued, "We didn't leave Milindo on good terms." Cecil sighed softly before he laughed. "Anyway, as you said earlier, today is about you two, and nobody else."

He then clapped his hands and muttered several sentences in the ancient language of magic before five magic circles appeared on the ground between Cecil and the audience.

Five magical beasts emerged from these circles and Cecil smiled. "Now, let's begin the play requested and submitted by Swind, the good friend of the Wood Elves, named 'Romeo and Juliet'!"

The crowd clapped enthusiastically and the show began with the magical beasts performing as the actors.