With no strength left Clara collapsed on the ground raising a huge cloud of dust. All her muscles burned and she struggled to breathe, no matter how hard she tried she could not make a single move. She closed her eyes with resignation and tried to rest when suddenly something covered the only source of light in the room.

"Do you still think you are ready to go The Dungeon?"

For a whole day she had been training how to fight with different weapons and improving her footwork. They had very little time and a lot to work on meaning the training session was still far from ending. Arath to maximize the outcomes even rented a training hall from a mercenary group, it costed him one sixth of his remaining money but that was the only way to gain a reasonable place to exercise.

The girl sighed but no words escaped her mouth, she was too exhausted.

"Let's rest for a while, then we will work on your spearmanship and that will be enough for today. Tomorrow we will try to understand by which element you are blessed."

"M-hmm."

"Your profiency in using weapons needs at least few weeks to reach average level, but you are quite adept at running, hiding and everything survival-wise."

And so after taking a quick rest they resumed their training. The sweat had already formed a wide pool when Arath finally called it a day. Clara left the training hall covered in bruises and just getting home was a challenge, especially that they had sneak all the way to not be discovered by anybody. After finally reaching their apartment Arath took a quick bath and jumped in his pallet. When he accomodated the girls initially the two shared the bed together and Arath laid on few blankets spread on the floor. Even though half of the bed was free now just thinking of sleeping so closed to anybody freaked him out. The person closest to him for a long time was Ruby so he had spent most of his time completely on his own which resulted in his comfort zone being extraordinary wide. He never let anyone closer than half a meter and he already considered that being close to another person. Even though both of them rarely spoke a word the silence between them wasn't really awkward - they were both exhausted and weren't in the mood to gossip and chat about yesterday's bad weather. Well actually there wasn't really any weather at all because of the rather weird environment where the sky could be seen as often as honest politicians.

Next morning Arath had no intention to let Clara sleep for god knows how long and woke her up early in the morning. The path to understand one's element was a bumpy one and laziness was not the right way.

"Get up we have no time to waste, you have to be ready before we set off if you want to survive."

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"Do we really have to do it now? Would an hour change anything."

"Hoho, miss lazy ass, first you give me a talk about being not good enough and now you think that I will let you off?"

"Come on, without enough sleep how am I supposed to train? I have physical limits you know?"

"Luckily for you today you won't have to move a finger. The thing about elements is something you master with your mind. Of course to become good you must have experience in actual using them but for now we have to work on the basics."

"Alright, whatever, tell me what to do."

"First part is the hardest, you have to enter your soul."

"Sure, but what do I do? I mean I don't even know if I have one and now I need to enter it, sounds fun."

"For everyone it is a different process. In my case the eyes are the gates, I try to force my sight to lose focus on one thing and distribute it evenly among everything around me, this way I can feel some kind of energy pulsating in them. For simplicity let's call it "magical energy" or something. This is the first and most basic level of mage's advancement. Time, effort, experience and talent can let you learn how to spread this energy through more and more parts of your body, the more the better. Our current best mage has mastered it to such an extent that they say that all of his muscles resonate with magical energy. Of course different elements require different organs at first. I have only awakened my eyes and optical nerves so I am at the very bottom."

"Then how are heroes so much stronger than us?"

"According to what I know thanks to the seal granted to them during the summoning ritual their organs are much more absorptive. Thanks to that during the Awakening they start off with all organs around their gates already awakened and also it's easier for them to advance."

"Then where do you think my gate is?"

"I have no idea, that's the thing - nobody knows until you awaken it. Most of the time it is your strongest muscle, organ or anything like that. Just think for a while what in your opinion is your strong point and what you consider as the most imporant. Then try to focus on this place and experiment."

'My strong point? I don't think I have one. I'am to put it nicely average in everything. Maybe my feet? Running has saved me many times so maybe that?' BUt what should I do? Move my foot in every direction or what?'

"I don't get it. It's stupid."

"Yeah, kind of."

Clara tried to focus all her strengh and concentration in her feet but to no avail. She achieved only one thing and it was the feeling of dissapointment and frustration.

"No, that's not it. Don't force it, you must be relaxed."

"Humph, don't shit yourself. You and your hints."

She tried once again, this time she tried to follow Arath's advice but failed utterly once again. At this point all her muscles were aching from the tension.

"You should let some steam off, let's fight." Arath said all of a sudden and attacked Clara.

She instinctively jumped away and tried to defend herself but suddenly her knees refused to follow orders. She looked stupified, for the first time ever thinking of how important they were in her life. "That's it!" In the same moment she focused her attention on them and tried to feel the world through them. Huge amount of completely new sensations flooded her mind and after a second she started to feel some warmth in the joint.

"I think I've got it!" She exclaimed pushing the ground with all her strengh. The scene that unfolded next was so surprising even the walls shaked in disbelief. Or more accurately they shaked because Arath crashed into it with great strengh with a very discinctive trace of a knee on his belly.

"Ouch."