"While skills and traits may not have rarities like classes or races, that does not mean that they are all equal. Even ignoring evolved skills, it is a known fact that higher rarity classes get stronger skills and traits than their lower rarity counterparts."

-Excerpt from 'The impact of class rarity', by Edwin Boyd

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By the time I ran out of mana, it was already time to head back, as none of us wanted to be away from the town after sunset. The walk back was filled with idle conversation, mostly about how all of us planned to train and how we could possibly help each other. I was mostly quiet, as each step aggravated the bruises that covered my body, and made me consider checking if there was anything softer I could use for my practice, maybe I could get Jackson's dad to make me some hide balls. We made it back to town with about an hour till sunset, and since I didn't have anything better to do, I decided to check out the notice board and see if there was anything interesting.

Approaching the board and reading the stone slates, I saw that most of them were either requests for crafters to make various miscellaneous items from weapons to furniture, or requests by crafters to gather certain materials from the forest or city. There were a few interesting requests, like one that was someone wanting to repeatedly use a non-harmful skill on someone else repeatedly to level it. I did see one that I was pretty sure was from Roxy asking people with two combat classes interested in delving into the forest to meet up with her. Unfortunately, there weren't any that I was specifically suited for, though there were a few crafting requests I could probably fulfill with permanent crystals, though considering how expensive they were mana-wise it wasn't really worth it.

Once I finished going through the available requests, I spent the remainder of time before dinner walking through the town to relax a bit before we all gathered to eat, telling our families about our various trainings, with me having to reassure my parents when they saw how bruised I was. As usual, I spent the time between eating and sleeping practicing my connections, using what little mana I had regained since training to practice the actual movement, able to now make connections up to two meters away and move them with the same force that I could when they were first created, but still unable to do any delicate control.

The next day, I got up earlier than Leo and Jason, so I went to the training area first, as there was no longer any need to meet up beforehand now that we had the location and targets set up. Once I arrived, I once again made a crystal bear, but this time he was the only construct I made, since I had planned to do my trainings in a rotation between multitasking, elemental manipulation, and skill testing each having a day dedicated to them, with dodge, stamina, and staff practice happening whenever I was out of mana, though skill testing might get dropped after a few days if I ran out of ideas. Despite being the day for elemental manipulation, I still made the bear because I wanted to practice my manipulation in a combat setting, and I wouldn't have to worry about holding back against the bear, so after walking to an open area I ordered the bear to attack me, though I did give it the order to stop before it actually hit me.

Receiving my order, the bear immediately charged at me, its large crystalline paws digging into the dirt below and leaving gashes as its claws tore into the ground to give it extra traction. With only a second or two before it arrives, and having purposefully not made any plans beforehand, I felt both of the energies within me readying themselves to be called upon. Urging Crystal to flow from my feet into the ground before me as I lifted both arms in a block, causing a wall to sprout in front of me, spending 50 mana to give it the size and strength it would need to withstand the charging bear.

*THUD*

Unable to stop its charge or change direction, the bear instead lowered its head and collided with the wall I had created, making cracks spiderweb out, but managing to halt its charge. Not wanting to let this opportunity pass, and still connected with the wall through my intent, I struck towards the bear with an open palm, using my will to shatter the wall and send the shards at the bear, using 80 mana to do so, but I was unable to launch them with enough force to pierce its crystalline skin, all the shards just skittering off. Since piercing its hide would be difficult, and lightning likely ineffective, I instead decided to launch a crystal pillar about three inches in diameter up from the ground into the bears left side, miming a left hook and using another fifty mana, striking the bear in the side. Still somewhat off-balance from its failed charge, and lacking the instincts of a true living creature, the bear was unable to react to my continuous offense, and the pillar made a satisfying crunch as it impacted the bear, taking a large chunk out of its reserves and making it lurch onto its back, when a rough crystal rock worth 40 mana collided with its head and caused it to dissipate, ending the fight with a decisive victory.

Going over the fight in my head, I was actually somewhat unhappy with it. While I did show a much better performance than my fight with the actual bear from the forest, I was never actually scared when fighting due to the lack of danger, so it wasn't a true showing of my skills, but I was confident that enough practice would make the muscle, or in this case energy, memory stick. Plus, it was a mistake to make the bear using Crystal, since it made it very resistant to both Lightning, and slashing attacks, which were what I used the most, and while it was important to practice against foes resistant to them, that wasn't what I had in mind today. It's also a fact that I spent 170 mana to beat the bear that only took 100 to make, and I blamed my initial wall for that disparity. While the wall did well by itself, it would've been much better if i had done something similar to the pillar attack to disrupt the charge for the same mana, as it had enough force to stop the bear and its lower surface area meant that it would do much more damage than a simple collison, plus my level of control over created crystals was still to inefficient to be reliable in a fight.

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Finishing my reflection, and noticing that the entire fight had taken exactly half of my mana, I resolved to repeat the fight and this time win with less resource loss. Making another bear, this time out of pure mana, I had both of us take a distance for each other before giving it the same order as the previous bear, causing it to charge at me with the same thundering steps as the previous fight. Once again sending Crystal into the ground ahead of me, though this time with for a different purpose, I stomped the ground in front of me and created a crystal spike for 50 mana to jut out of the ground and collide with the bear's head, though the movement of its charge caused me to miss and the spike instead hit its shoulder. Even without hitting my target, the attack was still extremely effective, the combined momentum from the bear's charge and the crystals' growth causing it to lodge itself in the bears shoulder and consuming over half of its energy in one go, and causing it to leak large amounts, I took advantage of the spike stopping it from being able to move to send a small 30 mana spike through the air and into its head with a flick of my wrist, causing it to dissipate into nothing and leaving the crystals that had injured it behind.

I was much more satisfied with this fight, as I had spent less than half of what I needed before, and I was confident that it would've been sufficient even against the previous crystal bear despite it's higher defences, though I likely would've needed to use more mana for the finishing attack. That said, I would need to start varying the animals that I fight against next time, as the bears had started the fight the exact same way both times, so more training against them would just turn into training how to stop a bears charge rather than pure combat training. Without enough mana to practice again, I instead used the remainder to practice my control over already created crystals, using the smaller spike that wasn't attached to the ground, making it orbit around me and pick up speed until I only had a little bit of mana left before launching it at a target, only sinking in an inch or two as I was unable to conserve most of the momentum during its orbit. Once I was completely out of mana, I went to my as of yet untouched training dummy to practice with my staff, changing my stance and how I held it with every strike to see what felt good.

Using up all of my mana only took about half an hour in total, so there was still a majority of the day left to train. The rest of the day was spent between mana free training, such as practicing with my staff or stamina exercises, before switching to practicing my control over the elements, sometimes creating delicate statues out of crystal, sometimes making arcs of lightning curve to write words in the air, and sometimes mentally controlling a crystal to fly through the sky and hit far away targets. Leo and Jason had come to the training area not long after I ran out of mana the first time, and I did spar with Leo a few times, both of us not using any skills and him using a similarly sized branch instead of his sword, but otherwise there was little that we could do to help each other so we mostly trained alone.

While my training was the most eye-catching, the other two were still working just as hard as I was, with Jason trying to throw as many cards at once as possible, occasionally using a skill to double the amount that were flying, while Leo volunteered to act as a target whenever me or Jason were practicing with just our weapons, all of us having to switch to regular training after less than an hour of intense skill training due to resource drain, though since Leo's skills mostly used stamina rather than mana he had to take more breaks than we did. During that day, I asked Jason about how he intended to practice with his [Card Creation] skill, since he hadn't asked me to donate any elemental energy, and apparently he had put out a request on the notice board and found someone with an active skill that wreathed their weapons in flame, which was apparently much easier to make a card out of according to his instincts, and he had been paying him some contribution points to practice trying to make it into a card, though he hadn't had any success yet.

I also found out that the skill he had gotten with his SP let him double the number of cards he threw in the air, but the doubles were only at half strength of the originals and it was hard to throw accurately when accounting for them, while Leo got the [Sword Proficiency] skill, which apparently only cost 5 SP, so he still had half of his left, unlike me and Jason who had gotten 10 SP skills. We also decided that we would go hunting every fourth day in order to get some contribution points, since while our parents would finish their workshops and start earning points themselves soon, we were all old enough that it was uncomfortable to not contribute anything, plus it was never a bad thing to have some extra money, and since contribution points were backed by the System itself via one of the mayors skills, it was actually a pretty reliable form of currency.

By the time the time came to head home, I was covered in sweat and lamenting the fact that I only had one pair of clothes, self-cleaning as they were. After washing away all of the sweat and grime from my mostly physical training, I resolved to get at least a new pair of underwear in the near future as despite the clothing itself looking spotless, it still felt gross to wear the same thing every day. Thankfully, I learned over dinner that there were actually a few people selling clothes, most who just knew how to sew before the System, but also one person with the [Tailor] class and one with the [Weaver] class, though it seemed that both of them had fairly high prices due to how hard it was to actually get fabric, or things that could be turned into fabric in the case of the [Weaver]. Nevertheless, I resolved myself to start saving, as the income one could get by hunting was actually pretty substantial, though I had been hearing that animals were becoming harder to find without going deeper into the forest, and hunters were coming back injured more often as a result.