To say the spar was one-sided was an understatement. Ali couldn’t move freely as he wanted with the ice on the ground and Qeday couldn’t aid him much. To add insult to injury, most of his "injuries" came from him falling on the ice. Glacier had control the entire time, leaving the two of them with little chance to mount any retaliation. The spar did give the teenager more insight on how to utilize this terrain change, though it was mostly how he would avoid the ice to not be hindered like his foes. During the heat of the battle, he couldn't tell if the ice would aid or hinder him.
Following the spar, the three of them headed to Qeday’s temple, curious to see what was inside. They entered to find a bigger altar than the one in Glacier’s. Yet, there were only two choices. Qeday seemed hesitant to approach it so Ali gave her a little push, quite literally, towards the altar. The three of them studied the text to see what was available to the whelp.
“Nothing gets past a dragon’s eyes.”
“My MP is your MP.”
The whelp cursed.
“Darn! Not a single offensive ability. Both are supporting abilities for sure!”
“Both of these can still be useful,” reassured Ali. “We don’t have a detection ability in our group. And a way to share MP sounds amazing!”
The small party discussed the two abilities, deciding on the detection one. The second ability, while useful, might not have a big enough impact given Qeday’s small MP pool. Even if the ability did a one to one transfer which was really good at level one, her four MP was too small of a pool to pull from. Maybe Ali or someone else got one extra spell off now and then due to it which wouldn't do much in changing the tide of battle. Meanwhile, detection spells were useful for the unexpected. Should they encounter foes that were accustomed to sneak attacks, then the detection ability could be a lifesaver.
“Alright,” said Qeday, with a slightly defeated expression. She was clearly looking for something that could make her useful in more cases. A detection ability was still fairly situational, all things considered. “I look forward to the day when I get my first offensive ability!”
As soon as the trio exited the temple, they tested the whelp’s ability. After a number of tests, they narrowed the radius of the detection distance to five meters in all directions with Qeday at the center. The whelp didn’t need line of sight to detect anyone. Even if a wall stood between her and the target, she could sense the said target. The limitation seemed to be what she could determine when she lacked the line of sight. Her guesses were still unreliable, therefore showing a limitation of the ability.
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“The ability will alert us of anyone sneaking up on us,” said Glacier. “Makes it easier to ambush our foes or get out of an ambush, assuming that we are very close.”
With Qeday’s ability out of the way, the teenager suggested that they resumed their spar. However, Glacier couldn’t use his flash freeze ability this time. Ali wanted to see how the ice monkey fared without the terrain working in his favor. Given that they could be facing all kinds of foes, it wasn’t unlikely for an opponent to have a way to cancel Glacier’s ability or was more adept at using the icy terrain, making the ability disadvantageous for them.
For the rest of Ali’s sleep, the trio sparred. As expected, Glacier was far more vulnerable without a way to easily close the gap with his foes. If it was just Ali and Glacier, then this could pose an issue. Luckily for the group, they also had Tian and Mika which made it much harder for their foes to focus down Glacier unless the ice monkey was deemed the biggest threat. Even if Glacier was eliminated quickly, he served his role of distracting the foes.
“I need more combat to level up,” said Glacier as the group neared the end of their training session. “I need more abilities before I can be useful.”
“We’ll get there,” said Ali who also gave Qeday a word of encouragement. The whelp managed to make small projectiles which the teenager succeeded in launching at Glacier. Originally, he thought they needed larger projectiles to inflict any hurt on foes. Even small projectiles had surprising amounts of damage as his ability propelled the projectile at a rapid speed. If it weren’t for the long cooldown, he would have wanted to try out sending multiple projectiles as suppressive fire. As the ice monkey could vouch, the projectiles hurt a lot.
“What will happen now?” asked Qeday as Ali was nearing the time to wake up.
The teenager admitted that he was kept in the dark. Aok had a plan but the man hadn’t let any of them in on it. He only revealed what they needed to know to ensure that, should any of them get captured, the rest of them would be safe. Ali had a firsthand experience of getting kidnapped and knew that rescue, if possible, was slow, long and oftentimes dangerous. The best course of action was to stay alert while avoiding such a scenario. Yet, there was always a chance that they might be sought out due to them originating from the slums. Their safety was at risk if anyone discovered that they fled the slums.
“Maybe we will go with Miniya’s plan,” replied Ali after some thought. “Getting some allies can make things go smoother for us. We just don’t know these factions that well.”
“Let me know if you need help tracking someone who is hunting you down,” said the whelp, trying to offer her assistance for the first time since she joined Ali's group.
Ali nodded his head and, moments later, he woke up in his sleeping bag. He spent the next few minutes getting readjusted to their new base before walking over to Belen to assist her with breakfast. The teenager wondered what the new norm would be at their new temporary home.