The earth opens, and a few dozen air elemental emerge from beneath our feet. Those living cyclones get into formation, surrounding us from all sides, cutting all routes of escape--quite literally, even the air above us is not safe, there's no way out from them. Cayden's eyes shine bright as he tries his best to cut a hole in the intangible mass, but he has nothing to cut at, and he is swept away as the elementals slowly close in on us.

The truth is I'm useless here, I have been for a while. My stats are always behind everyone, I can't cook and eat food fast enough to keep up with the others. I just end up hitting the enemies once or twice, so it counts as me "slaying" it and getting the buff from their cooked remains--although I don't think I can cook air elementals, air isn't particularly nutritious.

Lexia goes back to the center of the battlefield. "There's a lot of them, should I...?"

Eda shakes her head. "Hold on, I have a plan." Eda clasps her hand together in prayer, mumbling something that no one but her can hear. Her hands are enveloped with an eerie dark green light, and she unclasps her hand before balling them into fists. "Uncontrolled growth."

Eda rushes to one of the elemental walls and punches a green hole straight through them. She's violently pushed away, and Cayden catches her right before she hits the ground. She stutters something that I can't hear to him, and Cayden turns to the green hole that Eda made. At first it doesn't seem to be doing anything, but soon the wind gets stronger and stronger. Everyone grabs everything they can to make sure they aren't swept away, for a moment I feel like we're going to be crushed by this artificial storm, but soon the wind goes outwards instead of inwards. The elementals then all congregate above us, forming a big, swirling ball of somehow visible air--the ball gets smaller and smaller, condensing all the elementals into a single point.

"LEXIA!" Eda shouts. "MISERY! NOW!"

Lexia nods and the pain is felt instantly. It's not as much as I thought it would be, it feels like the type of pain I feel when she only has one target--it still hurts a lot, the pain scales with the damage she makes, and she's been levelling up like crazy recently, but my endurance has also improved, so I can tolerate it.

We all look above us uneasily, unsure of what we should do as the wind sphere stops moving. Not a sound can be heard and then-

BOOM.

The ethereal scream is enough to send all of us reeling, a massive shockwave too loud for us to hear blows out our eardrums. I feel the pain of Lexia's spell disappear, only for it to be replaced by a new, much more real type of pain. I think I hear a few bones breaking as I am crushed by the peer pressure pushing me against the floor.

And then it stops.

I gasp, my lungs filling with air I didn't know was missing. I can feel my heart beating out of my chest, I can't move, I don't know if I don't have the energy to move at all or if my body just lost the ability to move in general. I feel like I should be in a lot more pain if it was the latter, but I think my heightened pain tolerance is making it harder to assess the severity of my wounds.

Eda runs to check up on me, she frowns as she casts something and instead of the familiar, comforting healing she usually uses, I can feel something cracks inside me as she hugs me tight. Even though it hurts, being in her arms makes me feel a lot better, I nestle my head against her shoulders and close my eyes, losing myself in the moment. "Thanks," I whisper.

"Don't mention it, you help me and I help you. That's what friends are for, right?" She lifts me upright. "Think you can walk on your own?" I nod, and she lets me go.

I wanted to stay in her arms for a little longer, but I can walk now, so there's no need for it. I've been feeling those strange desires and feelings more and more recently, I think it's been increasing with my stats, but I'm not sure. I think and feel a lot more than I used to, and I understand things that felt completely alien to me--I'm not sure if I like it though, thinking more just makes things more complicated to me, or maybe I'm only understanding now how complicated things truly are.

Lexia runs up to us, with Cayden following closely behind. "GUYS!" Lexia shouts excitedly. "I GOT TO LEVEL ONE HUNDRED! I...WE DID IT!" Lexia puts her hand up and Cayden gives her a high five

Eda rolls her eyes. "Great. At least working with you won't be as painful; it doesn't change the fact that you'll still be taking most of our experience."

"Ha... about that. I've been thinking of leaving temporarily."

"Huh?" Eda's face turns into a slight smirk that she immediately suppress. "Why's that?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"It's just... my experience drain isn't natural, it's a curse I start with--and I can only turn it off at level two hundred," Lexia explains. "The issue is in order to reach that level, I'll need to put all of you through more and more dangerous stuff just to level up properly, and you'll just end up getting hurt."

Cayden contrasts Eda by trying his best to not show how bothered he is by this--and failing miserably, even I can pick up on it. "Is that really necessary?" he asks. "We can keep up with you until you reach that level, it's no problem."

Lexia sighs. "Listen, I know what you're saying but it would be irresponsible of me to bring all of you here. Once I get there I'll be back alright? From what I've heard most adventurers get to that level in five years, but since I'll be doing it alone I should be back in one to two years, how does that sound?"

Cayden lets out a small squeak. "I...I understand. If that's what you think is best for you then-"

Lexia flicks Cayden's forehead. "Come on, don't be so dramatic. I'll be back soon enough, you're a big boy, you'll manage without me." She turns to me. "You better still exist when I'm back, alright? A world without your cooking sounds like it'd kinda suck."

Eda raises an eyebrow. "What do you mean by 'still exist'?"

"Ho, Eda? I may not like you that much, but I trust you can take care of him too, alright? If anything happens to him, I'll kill you."

"That's rich coming from the girl that used him as a pain battery for so long. Besides, taking care of each other is what friends do, I didn't need you to tell me that."

Lexia smiles. "Yeah, as I said--I may not like you, but you're a good person at heart. That's why I trust you to make sure everything's alright by the time I come back."

Eda looks like she wants to say something back, her mouth slightly open as nothing but air escape her lips. "That's not true at all..." She answers quietly.

*****

Lexia's gone, it didn't take her very long to pack her bags and leave. Admittedly, I'm already starting to miss her, but she did say she was going to come back. And even if she didn't, I still have other friends here, so I'm not truly alone anyway.

I move past the bonfire and serve the elemental soup to Cayden--turns out I can actually cook air elementals, they are magical enough that my cooking skill can transform them into something eatable. Cayden still looks sad, I hope he's not going to stop smiling entirely too, that'd be a shame. I notice Eda isn't here, when she wants to talk to me, she doesn't stay for dinner; she knows I'll bring the food to her tent directly. I don't know why she doesn't just ask me, but maybe she just doesn't want Cayden to know, even if he has no way of knowing what we're talking about.

She told me I didn't have to warn her every time I entered the tent, but I don't think it hurts. I can't knock on a tent though so I just clear my throat loudly enough for her to know I'm here.

"Yeah, yeah come in." She ushers me inside. "I can't believe we're eating AIR tonight, is that even nutritious?" Eda takes a spoonful of the soup. "Huh, tastes okay, actually. Like a salty marshmallow," she pauses, staring at the soup as she stirs it with her spoon. "I thought that when Lexia left, I'd be a lot happier."

"You aren't? I thought the issue was that you were jealous of her."

"Yeah, I thought that too. But then I saw that Cayden was willing to let her go, and she was willing to do her own thing alone, and that she considered me a 'good person' and..." she chuckles to herself. "I'm a kid, aren't I?"

"I thought you were twenty-seven years old."

"I meant mentally. Lexia has her own goals and Cayden is willing to let go of someone he loves if he thinks that's for the best. If Cayden left me I'd just be a sobbing mess begging for him to stay. It's making me realize how shallow I am as a person, if Cayden is no longer here, then why do I exist? Why I would I do anything?"

"That's stupid."

"Huh?"

"You don't exist for someone else. You'll keep existing after that person is gone, and that person will keep existing after you're gone." Her memory goes back to me, she's always on my mind. But even then, I existed before I met her, and I kept existing after she was long gone. There's no reason to believe Eda is any different.

"But...what am I then? I just..."

"You're a priestess of growth, you're the person that healed me when you didn't have to. You're the person that keeps our money in check and the one that always tries to do the right thing even when your emotions are telling you to do the opposite." The words are almost spilling out of my mouth. I don't know what I'm saying, just listing random facts I've learned about her over time, but they are objective facts, ones that I can justify and reason through.

She blushes, scratching her legs anxiously. "Ha...a lot of those things I do are... No, you're right. I'm more than that, I was someone before I met him, so there's no reason I can't be someone after that." Her eyes shine brighter, but most importantly: a smile. Not a forced one, but the honest, warm smile I always wanted to see. "I'll make sure that when Lexia comes back, I'll be everything you guys think of me and then some. I'll be a person worth loving- No! I'll love myself and I won't need anyone else to love me to be happy!"

She grabs my hands, warm, too warm. No, that's not warmness anymore, it's hot, the heat envelops my heart, it gets faster and faster, this isn't the same as before. It's an emotion strong enough to make me do things I wouldn't normally do, but I don't know what those things are, I rip my hands out of her grasps, I feel dizzy. This isn't normal at all, it's fear mixed with excitement, it's joy mixed with anxiety, it's... is it?

No, the heat recedes, my heart goes back to normal, steady breaths. It can't be what I think it is, but I've never felt that way before, so I have no way of knowing for sure. People can't describe emotions to someone that has never felt them before, it's like describing colors to a blind man, a music to someone that can't hear them. You can approximate, use metaphors and compare it to other things that person may know, but it'll never be accurate to what it's really like.

But now I'm a blind man who can't figure out if something is red or green, so I have to ask someone who has seen red for much longer than I have.

"Eda, when did you realize you were in love with Cayden?"