The next few minutes were strange, to say the least. The entire time I’d known him Finch had been gruff and looked like he was in a constant state of mild annoyance, but the Finch in front of me now was grinning like a madman and couldn’t stop cheering about his new Path.

Speaking of which, after I struggled to figure out how to ask him to let me go, he actually told me about the new Path he chose.

“It’s called Pure Beast Crafter, I’m bettin’ it has somethin’ to do with the Pure Craftsman Feat I got when it worked. I ain’t got any new Skills yet, but one o’ my General Skills got pulled up so that’s opened up a new slot fer me,” He stared wistfully at his creations, falling silent for a few seconds, before speaking up again, “I can’t thank ye enough fer what ye’ve done fer me. Ye’re free to stay at the inn fer as long as ye want, though I might be turning it into a workshop soon.”

“It was no problem, really. I actually got a title as well for some reason, Affinity Scorcher, which is reward enough for a few minutes of work.”

Finch only nodded and told me that I could leave now if I wanted to, whilst he worked on getting his first Skill. I felt like that would probably take a while, since he must have been at least level 40 or something, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t get started on it already. I nodded as well, saying my goodbyes and climbing back out of the basement.

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After all that had happened in the last few minutes I was left feeling restless so, with nothing else to vent my energy on, I headed to the Job Hall to look for some work. And besides, I wanted to test Scorch Affinity out on something, and I didn’t find it likely that the practice dummies would be the best target for something like this.

I opted to stick with the third board, since I wasn’t confident in going for anything more difficult yet, and after a while of searching found what looked like the perfect Job.

Water Elemental terrorising our river.

5 silver to whoever manages to either kill it or drive it off.

Don’t bother coming if you don’t actually have some way to deal with them

I wasn’t certain that my Lightning would actually have any effect on them, but if Scorch Affinity does what I think it does then it should be able to handle them relatively easily. Elementals must rely pretty heavily on their Affinity, and I couldn’t imagine scorching it would be particularly good for them.

The river I had to go to was the same one that ran through the north half of Ironhold, although I’d never actually been on that side of the city, even for a Job, so this would probably be my first time actually seeing the river.

Didn’t it have a name? I don’t quite remember, but it would probably be something stupid like Iron River anyway, so I guess I don’t care either.

I walked to the north side of the city, soon coming across the river in question. It was roughly 5 metres across and had several bridges that I could see if I looked up and down its length. I felt like I could probably jump with Lightning Steps but decided not to when someone looked at me with concern as I began to line up my jump, instead walking to one of the mentioned bridges in order to cross normally.

The gate was actually right next to the river on this side of the city and, as I was walking up towards it, I actually found out why. One of the guards was awkwardly trying to balance on top of a thin plane of water that looked to have been held up by some kind of Water mage, by the time I arrived at the gate he’d spoken to each of the 4 people on the plane individually then gotten off to allow them to enter the city.

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I wish I could do something like that, it looks really cool.

Unfortunately, I highly doubted that Lightning Adept would ever offer me any skills like that, so I just had to be satisfied with Lightning Steps. Although I did wonder if it was possible to evolve it again, and if so what it would actually evolve into. It might even actually be better than that, if I get lucky.

Putting those thoughts to the side, I activated Lightning Steps and broke out into an all out sprint. Normally I would just jog whilst doing this, but that wasn’t getting me many levels so I needed to change my strategy. From what I’d seen with Meditation Skill levels were based on the greatest things you’d done with a Skill, but it probably benefited a lot less from doing the same thing over and over no matter how much better you get at it.

Running at this speed, even whilst making sure to take deep and long Breaths, meant that I had to take a break after just 15 minutes. After the fourth or fifth such break I considered changing strategies and just going back to the job, but when I checked my Skills I found that I’d actually gained two levels already, bringing it up to Level 7.

Is there even anything else that I could do to make it level up faster? I guess maybe different speeds, or jumping.

Ordinarily it would have probably only taken me a day to reach the Water Elemental, but the rest of the journey was spent using the Skill in increasingly strange ways. At first I was just changing my speed erratically, then I started jumping from place to place, then I tried to see how high I could jump with then, and eventually it all culminated in my jumping from tree to tree whilst using Lightning Cloak with Breath Of Mana to protect myself from all the times I ended up falling.

Around halfway through the journey the road curved away from the river, or it could have been the other way around, but I paid it no mind since I wasn’t trying to get to a particular village. I’d asked the receptionist since I couldn’t figure out where I was supposed to be going, and found out that apparently the person who sent out the Job lived in a cabin away from pretty much any civilization.

I guess it wasn’t my place to judge, but I couldn’t see why someone would choose to live outside of a city when it made life so much easier. It’s not like they’re out there because they can’t afford to live anywhere else, since the reward for the Job was actually quite substantial, so there must be some other kind of reason that I was missing.

Well, none of my business. It’s not like they're hurting anyone.

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After spending the night camping by the river, I decided to push Lightning Steps as far as I could. At this point, what with being far off the beaten path, the fastest way to continue forward was actually by jumping through the trees. Well, it might have still been faster to stay on the ground if it weren’t for the fact that I’d gained a point in agility and a heck of a lot of practice in figuring out where I should actually jump to and from.

Something I eventually realised was that Lightning Steps always used the same amount of Mana, or rather, I never tried to vary the amount that I used for different situations. For example if I used a lot less Mana I could probably get a smaller boost that I would be able to keep up perpetually, which would greatly reduce the amount of breaks that I’d need to take.

But what I was really interested in was the idea of using more Mana for greater bursts of speed. It probably wouldn’t be actually effective for long distance travel, but running past that Lobster would have been a lot less scary if I could have gotten by without it even having time to move.

For the first 10 minutes or so of the journey I stuck to using the Skill normally, just trying to get in a rhythm so that I wouldn’t fall too easily, but as soon as I felt comfortable doing so I kicked it up a notch.

I wasn’t quite sure how to do it effectively, but I was able to figure out pretty quickly that I could simply create a Channel directly from my Mana Pool to the general area of the Skill’s effect, which meant that I needed to focus a lot less to power it up. Once I’d figured it out, the difference was immediately noticeable. The Lightning, where once it was sparse, now covered maybe a third of the uncovered space, and that was with just a small increase.

Of course, there was also the more useful increase in speed. It was a lot harder to control, and I couldn’t figure out how much faster I was going, but the difference was distinctly noticeable.

I almost felt like I was flying, and I wondered if that would be powerful with a higher level Breath Of Mana. Not that I had much spare focus to think about that, since most of my mind was occupied with the feeling of the wind rushing past my face and the weightlessness from the buffs of my Breath.

It was a challenge, but I was able to keep myself from cheering for the entire rest of the journey. I felt my Mana reach around the halfway point as I finally saw signs of a path. Admittedly, it was very clearly frequented by just a few people so there wasn’t much of a path to speak of, but a lot of the underbrush and the trees had been cleared out in roughly a straight line right next to the river.

And there, at the end of the line I saw… nothing.

I guess it probably looks like water then, huh?