Silence filled the room as none of us spoke. Volan grunted loudly and banged his fist on the counter. "Warren! What does Cedric want this time?"

Warren's eyes flicked over to the red-skinned oni and had a brief look of confusion cross his face till he straightened his posture and addressed the blacksmith. "Captain Cedric is requesting five new training swords, two long swords, four daggers, and a new spear for Mason, sir." After reading off the request, he stepped past me and dropped a sack of coins on the counter.

Volan didn't even bother opening the sack and tucked it behind the counter. After asking a few questions about specific weapon measurements, he grunted and left for his forge. Before he exited the building, he shouted goodbye in my direction.

Now that Volan was gone, it was just the two of us as Warren kept giving me glances from the side. Honestly, the awkwardness felt so juvenile that I found myself chuckling at the absurdity of it all. When Warren started to look at me with concern, I motioned my chin to the door and started walking out.

"How are you doing, Warren? I saw you guys earlier, and I was hoping to invite you and the others to dinner," I asked as casually as I could sound.

"Oh, that sounds fine. I'm done for the day, but Marcus is helping Nadia finish some things. They can join us when they're done. You thinking Oleanders?" Warren replied.

I thought about saying yes, but another idea came to mind. "I got a better idea. Want to try hunting something in the forest? We can have dinner by the river."

He raised his eyebrow and gave me a surprised look. "Didn't you just get back? I'm surprised you want to head out already."

I flashed him a toothy grin. "I took a nap earlier, so I'm feeling restless. Besides, I have a brand new spear that needs to be tested. I trust Volan, but it'd be nice to get a feel for it in real combat."

Warren hesitated, and I watched him glance toward where the guard's building was before he shrugged. "You know what? Let's do it. I have something new I'd like to test out as well."

We walked to the village gate. Warren briefly stopped and left a message with the guards stationed at the entrance. When I asked him about it he said it was in case Marcus or Nadia wanted to know where he was.

We walked in companionable silence for nearly half an hour. It was refreshing not having to speak or talk to something. As good as it felt to know there were people who cared enough about me to be concerned, not having another person look at me with fear, worry, or pity felt good.

Finally, after nearly forty-five minutes of peaceful walking, sounds of echoing impacts came from just ahead of us. Warren took out his sword while I summoned my new spear. Silently we stalked closer till we reached the edge of a small clearing. Stamping their hooves into the forest loam were two of the largest emberboars I've ever seen. The one on the left looked slightly bigger and had a series of scars covering its snout. Smoke was rising from their nostrils between the two as they flared their flames in an intimidating display.

We crouched low and hid behind one of the larger trees as the two emberboars readied their charge. Almost in sync with each other, the beasts shot a jet of flames into the air with a deep squeal and charged. The smaller boar flared its flames higher as it rushed at the bigger one. The boar, which I assumed was the older of the two, met the challenge with a thundering crack as their heads smashed together. The younger boar flailed wildly in an attempt to knock the bigger one away, but the older beast almost calmly deflected every attempt.

When the younger boar tried to launch itself forward, the elder boar leaned to the side to let it rush past, but not before grazing the younger one's eye with its teeth. The younger boar raced to the other side of the clearing and turned around. The younger one roared jets of flames wildly as it raised its squeals into a long, drawn-out screech.

With the first blood drawn, the elder beast stood its ground and waited for the second round to begin. Since the battle was briefly paused, I leaned closer to Warren and nudged him with the butt of my spear.

"So what's the plan, captain? How do you want to engage?" I asked jokingly.

Warren looked surprised before he scowled at me. "Don't call me that. I'm not a captain; honestly, I never want to be. And if the other guards hear you say stuff like that, they might get angry." It was evident by the tone of his voice he was serious, but I didn't miss the small end of a smile appearing on his face before he banished behind another frown.

I chuckled and motioned at the emberboars. "I don't see any other guards around beside you. But fine, how do you want to handle this, Warren?"

He didn't respond at first as we watched the two beasts clash again. The younger boar managed to use its hooves to scratch a long gash on the other's snout, but again it was forced to retreat as a large chunk was torn out of its neck. He finally answered when the boars paused to prepare for their third standoff.

"I'll take the bigger one. You handle the other beast. Let's wait till they engage again. They'll be focusing on each other and won't see us coming," he replied. He started to stand up and turned to look at me. He flashed me a grin and held his chin out. "I got something interesting to show you. Marcus, Nadia, and I haven't been sitting on our asses while you've been gone."

I raised my eyebrow and exaggeratedly scoffed. "You sure you want the bigger one? If I remember correctly, you don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to emberboars. You do remember it was only because a certain adventurer came along that you're all healthy and walking, right?"

"And I remember laughing from the sidelines as you and Sam tried to bonk a snake. I'm pretty sure I can handle the beast better than you can," he said confidently. When he saw my face darken, his eyes widened in realization, and he tried to apologize.

Anger started to creep back into my veins, so I shook my head and moved past him. "Don't apologize. Just make sure whatever you want to show me is worth it. If I have to summon Áine to heal you, I'll let her punch your nose."

He didn't reply but nodded. I felt terrible for ruining the mood, but the thought of Sam was enough to fan the flames. Logically, I knew I was traumatized in some way by what happened, and it was fair for me to be touchy on certain subjects, but that didn't mean I should take it out on Warren.

Twenty seconds went by, and I started to feel my heartbeat drown out the sounds of squealing. I focused on the boar's stomping and watched as the blood dripped onto the forest floor, staining the ground in red. Another small jet of flames shot out of the boar's mouth, and a battle cry howled out of its mouth. As it rushed at the other beast, I launched myself forward with a kick.

I heard Warren's boots impact the ground behind me, but I ignored it. When the beast was halfway, I saw that the elder boar noticed us, but it was too late to stop its charge, and it was forced to commit to smashing its head against the other boar.

The younger boar thrashed around, but it, too, must have noticed the armed men charging at them because it quickly disengaged and tried to face the new threat.

I extended my arms and felt the tip of my spear enter the boar's shoulder. The blade was supposed to stab deep into its injured neck, but it managed to turn itself enough that the blade impacted its bone. The unexpected resistance of bone recoiled into the shaft of my spear, and I stumbled my step.

Not wanting to allow the beast the ability to capitalize on my fumble, I leveraged what momentum I had left to wrench the spear tip out of the bone and through the surrounding flesh. The squeal of anger turned into one of pain, and I found myself grinning. When it reared its head back, I tried to swipe a slash across its injured eye, but it lowered its head at the last second, and I only managed a shallow slice across its crown.

I was prepared to step in and stab again, but the boar opened its mouth and shot a small cone of orange fire my way. The blast caught me unexpectedly, and I had to jump back. The fire failed to damage me, but I smelt burnt hair and was afraid to see if my eyebrows were suddenly missing.

Fine, beastie! If you want to fight that way, then I'll play your game. Let's see who roasts who first! I thought. A tiny little bird gave me a resounding chirp of approval somewhere inside me.

I channeled my mana and tried to direct it through my channels to activate two skills at once. When I started to feel an alarm of pain inside my chest, I stopped and summoned Zharia first. She appeared with her own battle screech and then properly broke into motes of light as I activated Spirit Lord's Invocation.

If the boar was surprised by the sudden appearance of a pillar of fire, it didn't show it. Instead, it charged at me with its head down. I narrowed my stance and lowered my shoulder. As it neared, I braced my spear and let the blade sink until the wings started slicing into its chest. With force behind the boar's charge, I allowed it to push me back as I kept a steel-fisted grip on the shaft of my spear. I was knocked back several feet, but eventually, the boar slowed to a stop.

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With the spear embedded into it, I jumped near its eye and shoved my claw into its damaged eye socket. As I gripped the cheekbones of the eye, my other hand stabbed into the damaged part of his neck where a chunk of flesh was missing.

As it screeched in agony, the realization of the savagery I was committing caught up to me. The boar's blood covered my leather armour, and the sight drained away the adrenaline coursing through me. The final straw that broke me out of my battle frenzy was when it tried to bite into me and kept blowing little puffs of flames.

With a quick flush of mana, I sent it racing across my hand that was puncturing its eye socket and twisted. A small flash of golden fire exploded its other eyeball out, and it collapsed. The boar was heavy, so I made sure to pull my hands back as it lifelessly slid into the dirt.

The smell of cooked meat was starting to permeate the air, and I saw smoke wisping out of the beast's body. I briefly closed my eyes and thought back to when I tried to absorb the witch's fireball. I opened my mouth, inhaled, and drew in the remaining embers from the corpse. I felt it singe my throat, but the wisps of flames weren't strong enough to break past my passive resistance.

The echoing thunderclap of the elder boar striking wood made me remember I wasn't alone. When I looked up, I was worried I would see a bloody guardsman on the ground, but thankfully, I was wrong.

A scratch along his right arm, but relatively unharmed. He's handled himself surprisingly well for a man without skills. He does look cute with how serious he looks.

The elder emberboar was sporting three new cuts across its body. It looked like Warren had managed to deepen the cut on its leg while managing to puncture its stomach twice over.

I was ready to step in and help, but it looked like he didn't need my help, so I decided to wait and see how things played out. My heart, which was starting to regain normal rhythm, slowly began to beat faster as I detected mana coming from Warren's hand.

I wasn't an expert on mana types, but the subtle green glow surrounding his blade made me guess it was either nature or poison. Warren slowly circled the boar as the beast leaned back and low to the ground. The boar kicked at the ground when Warren stepped closer and raced at the guardsman. It was fast, faster than Warren's ability to dodge out of the way physically, but Warren then did something unexpected.

I couldn't feel it with my senses, but I saw a brief flash of light come off Warren's feet as he moved out of the way. It was like an invisible hand grabbed him and forced him out of the beast's path.

Before the boar rushed past him, he sliced his sword across the boar's flank. The cut wasn't life-threatening, but I detected the transfer of mana between the blade and the beast. His sword was no longer dimly glowing, and I felt no mana radiating off the blade.

Warren crouched low and waited for the boar to turn around. The beast seemed angry. It was stomping its feet twice as hard as before, creating a steady staccato sound as the crackle of flames started to flare up along the beast's spine.

Warren had a look of determination on his serious face, but I could see how hard he gripped the handle of his sword. His arm trembled, and his knuckles were white. If the boar was about to send out a blast of fire, I was ready to step in and absorb it. Interfering in his fight may have been rude, but there was no reason for letting him get torched to charcoal twice.

The beast let out a battle squeal and started racing across the ground. I took a step but stopped as a sudden flare of mana drew my attention to Warren's hand. He snapped his fingers, and I briefly felt the mana disappear before reappearing inside the boar's body. The boar became a porcupine as massive thorns pushed their way out of the beast's body. They didn't cover it entirely, but I could see the largest cluster of thorns originated from the wounds Warren had inflicted.

The boar slid across the ground, no longer able to hold itself up and continue the charge. While the beast was still alive, it wasn't in any condition to fight. The battle was completed when Warren plunged his sword into the beast's neck, finishing it off.

As he freed the sword, I approached the beasts and crouched to examine the thorns. Warren plopped to the ground and tried catching his breath. "I think... I think I... I might have put myself in mana fatigue. I don't have any left. T-the damn skill used all of it."

I ran my thumb across the tip of the largest thorn. The thorn wasn't sharp by any means, but it was ridged enough that it felt like sandpaper across my skin. I stood up and pulled out a flask of water from my inventory.

"As cool as your new skill is, it did hell on the meat. Are they poisonous?" I asked.

He took a swig from the flask, swished the water in his mouth, and spat it out. He took a deeper drink before handing the flask back to me and stared at the corpse. "They're not. We can cut it open and tear the thorns out. Sorry, I didn't think about how annoying it'd be to take them out," he replied.

I summoned my field dressing kit and got to work. There was no way in hell I was going to suffer through actually dressing the beast, but I did need to take the thorns out for Arlen. Knowing the grump, he might actually stare me out of his shop.

Warren sat next to me and started helping. It took us nearly a dozen minutes, but we pulled out every last thorn. The beast was poorly butchered, yet there was plenty of meat left untouched for Arlen to buy. Worst case scenario, I ask him to jerky most of it and buy it myself.

As we finished up, I hip-checked the guardsman and crossed my arms. "New skills, huh? I'm guessing this is that interesting thing you wanted to show me," I asked.

He blushed a little and scratched the back of his head. "Yeah, Captain gave the three of us skillstones. We got them around the time you went into the rift. We have been meditating like crazy to raise the rank of the skills. Even if our skill slots are incomplete, it feels good to take the first step finally."

"To the glory of becoming an ascendant. You guys aiming to become immortals, then?"

"Oh no! That's never happening. I uh... I only have six skill slots. I won't reveal how many Marcus and Nadia have, but safe to say we are not destined to break from our mortal chains."

"Shame. Hate to see that beard of yours go all white and aged," I commented playfully.

He blushed harder but didn't look away. "Talk about my skills later. What's up with the whole flaming feathers look? Gotta say, the ring of fire makes you look regal, but the horns and feathers burning with golden flames make you look pretty intimidating. I'd have guessed you were a spirit if I didn't know you. Is this your reward from the...rift?" He said the last words with some hesitation, but I smiled at him instead.

"Yep. You're not entirely wrong about the whole regal thing. The skill's name is called the Spirit Lord's Invocation. It lets me merge with my familiars. So far, I've only merged with Zharia, but I know I can use it with Áine. I just haven't found the proper time to test it."

"If you're willing, I'd love to see that. Not every day do you get to see such a high-tiered skill. Is your little bird resting while she is merged with you?"

"She's in a weird state where she becomes like my background thoughts. Zharia maintains awareness, and I can communicate with her while I'm like this, but it's kind of different. It's hard to explain it, but as I said, I'm still testing it out."

I undid the skill, and Zharia popped back into existence. She briefly landed on my shoulder and went on a mini rant about how bad the pigs were at using their fire. We laughed at her faux-rage, and she chirped goodbye before returning to my soulspace.

"Do you want to wash off and eat some food? We can head back to town and eat at Oleanders if you want to grab the others."

We both walked back the way we came and headed to where we saw the river run through the forest. "We can eat here and have a drink later at the inn. I'll admit it's been a while since I've bathed in the river. I think the last time I did it was with Marcus when we were kids," he replied.

"Let's hope it's not too cold. Now, while we have some time. Tell me about your new skills. I assume the thorns were nature-aspected, but I couldn't tell what your movement skill was."

He briefly described his skills as we made our way to the river. Apparently, he was equally split between nature and earth affinity. The thorns skill was a bomb-like skill where he set a building charge of mana that, when manually activated, would explode out in a wave of thorns. And the weird dodge he made was from using a new earth-aspected skill. The skill was a little janky and hard to use, but it was a decent skill if he needed to quickly move out of the way.

We got to the river as the sun started to go down, so we gathered some wood and started a fire before washing off. I wasn't one to be ashamed of my body or nudity in general, but skinny-dipping in a river was enough to make my cheeks pink. Thankfully, Warren was silent as he removed everything he was wearing and waded into the flowing water. I joined him and summoned a bar of soap and a brush.

"Someday, I'll have my own dimensional storage. Being able to carry everything around with you is so convenient. If I had one during our survival training exercises, I wouldn't have nearly died from exhaustion four times a day," he joked wistfully.

I respectfully kept my gaze to glancing blinks as he started lathering his body with the soap. "Ah, but I'm sure the whole point of the training was to build up your stamina and endurance. If you didn't spend a week nearly dying, how are you expected to carry all your gear while chasing down criminals?" I replied.

A large splash was sent my way, and I was forced to duck below the water to avoid it. The large drops splashed against the top of my head, and I emerged from the river, slightly disorientated as I wiped my hair out of my face.

I instinctively spun around with my fist aimed high when I heard Warren's voice only a foot away. His eyes were saucer plates as he reacted to my startled reaction. He caught my fist in his left hand, but the sudden stop made me slip on the smooth stones I was standing on, and I fell forward into him.

"Woah there! I'm so sorry, Cyrus. I didn't mean to scare you! Are you okay?" he asked in a concerned voice.

I blindly reached my hand out to steady myself, and I felt it press against his leg. I quickly jerked my hand back and stood up straight.

That was a close one. Fuck, that was embarrassing.

I gathered my willpower and regained my footing on the river bed. I caught sight of silver scales racing away, and I couldn't help but laugh. The poor fish probably had no idea why two giants were thrashing around near its home.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm good, I'm good. Sorry about the punch. You startled me."

He gave me a half-smirk and held up both hands in apology. "That's my fault. I should have thought twice about sneaking up on somebody who just got out of a rift. I heard some of what you went through. Anybody would be a little on edge after all that happened. Make it up to you with a drink?"

I narrowed my eyes, and I found myself smiling like a devil. "How about something else?"

He crossed his arms again. "Like what? Guards don't exactly have heavy coin purses."

I took a small step closer till my chest almost touched his arms. "Not really what I had in mind."

"Huh? Oh! Oooh."

I moved in closer, and when he didn't move away, I leaned in slowly and tilted my head up. Our lips met, and I felt him slowly reach around my waist and pull me closer. His tongue slid across my fangs, and he abruptly pulled away from the kiss.

"Arrgh! Damn, those are sharp," he called out.

I sighed, but his arms didn't move away from my waist. "Sorry about that. Not used to that being a problem."

He brought a cupped hand filled with water to his mouth and drank it. When he stuck out his tongue, I saw a tiny line where my fang had cut him. "Mmmhh. I guess you need more practice then," he replied cheekily.

By the time the moon started rising, we were ready for another dip into the river. Dinner was long forgotten, but neither of us seemed to care.