They had been travelling together for about a month in space now. Matt had to admit that even though he really liked the others, it was tiring to be in such close proximity for so long. There was something fundamentally annoying in constantly sharing space with others. The worst was that he felt that the others felt the same way and a strange phenomenon started to happen where it felt like they fed off each other's irritations in a mounting cycle. In short, shit was about to hit the fan, if not today, then soon.

The first week had been amazing and everyone had trained together, doing exercises, trying out different weapons for fun and other group activities. The second week had been much of the same albeit with a bit less enthusiasm from everyone as the novelty of it all faded. They had come to the conclusion that they were mentally suffocating, but knowing what was happening didn’t actually help that much because they didn’t have any way to fix it. Philip had become even more annoying after the first two weeks and that was saying a lot.

Matt sighed and laid down on his bed. There were 3 other beds in the room but he was alone right now, which was why he had come here in the first place. He sighed again as he thought about it all. He hadn’t realized the reality that space travel was so monotonous, at least for longer distances. Xar had told him they usually never did more than two or three week without a stop to take a day off on a station or something because of this. It was apparently a known and fairly common phenomenon. Especially on smaller ships.

Philip had told them again and again that they should have bought a larger ship. The answers had been gentle at first before the others started yelling back at him that it didn’t change anything now as it was too late. He still brought it up from time to time and last time he thought Kali was about to hit him before she stopped herself. Strangely he hadn’t brought it back up since.

Matt smirked at the thought before remembering how bad he was at interacting with Maya, the only member to seem rather immune to it all. They had talked a bit for sure, but it had been incredibly awkward after they had discovered her secret with Krovukk. The fact that she was basically a robot didn’t make any sense to Matt, because while she was awkward at times like he was, she was also so very human at other times.

He and Krovukk had actually talked about it a lot, in secret of course, they had promised her and Krovukk had agreed that it wouldn’t be a good idea to tell everyone as they were stuck on the ship anyway. It wasn’t like it would change things for the better if they told the others, on the contrary it would probably make things worse, so they had kept the secret for now.

Krovukk had explained to Matt that she wasn’t a robot or a golem per se. She was a golem but with a normal mind, or at least close enough that he could consider her like a person. And he had! It had just been… harder to not look for imperfections or signs that she was a golem, which she noticed, which made him flustered and embarrassed before fleeing the scene.

It had happened more than once and just remembering it made him want to run and hide somewhere, but there wasn’t really anywhere to go to be alone right now, so he stayed on his bed, legs dangling off the edge. He still thought she was very nice and all, but it was hard for him to look past what she was. Still, he was determined to stop being awkward around her. Krovukk was right, even if she was different, it was just like she was any other species, only she looked human.

He sat up, determined and got up. He was done wasting time and set to go to the training room. Once in the main hall connecting everything, he spotted Maya’s hair through the open door to the cockpit. She loved flying the ship and had trained to replace the team's original pilot.

She was even good at it too from his understanding. He didn’t really have a frame of reference so it was hard for him to tell. He opened the door to the training room and only Kali was actually there, still trying another weird weapon. It was a gunblade kind of thing. Part gun with the weapon extending along her arm into a blade. He thought it kind of suited her. She looked cool. To be fair Kali was naturally very cool in his eyes.

“Hey Matt.” She greeted him before trying some moves. She obviously wasn’t shooting. Ammo was both limited and precious now as they wouldn’t be stopping by a station in a long time.

“Hey.” He waved while going to a corner with burn marks. His corner. Kali clearly looked at him and his unhappy expression. He saw her almost say something but decided against it. He knew she wouldn’t have held back a month ago but didn’t blame her.

So he sat down and closed his eyes, it helped him visualize his flow of mana. He was careful not to actually let any of it out as he had already gone through too many crystals for the others' tastes. He understood why but it still was annoying that he couldn’t truly practice magic. His mana control however was improving fast as he didn’t have anything else to do. He had tried some weapons himself but he was so clumsy he had quickly given up.

Xar was also out on tips regarding magic as he didn’t have anything more to teach him. He only had his books now, but he couldn’t try even half of what they were speaking of because he couldn’t spend mana, which annoyed him and made him irritable, which made focusing and learning harder. In short, he wasn’t progressing much lately.

He took a calming breath and tried to focus on his mana once again. He looked at the flow, nudged it here and there. He had become quite good at it. He hadn’t really tried the next logical step as he didn’t want to waste mana, but he was tempted to right now. He felt ready. More than ready in fact.

He cracked an eye open, saw Kali still swinging her arms and legs in fluid motions, practicing different moves and decided he might as well try. He closed his eyes and took hold of some of the mana. He sent it to his right palm facing up. He focused on gathering mana there without it leaving his system. But instead of letting it flow back into his magical system, he concentrated on making it leave his hand and move outside of his body before reabsorbing it. To his disbelief, he lost almost all of the mana.

This was a lot harder than he had thought. Shit, that hadn’t been much, but he didn’t have that much to play with. He would have to check with Xar later how many crystals they could afford to use for his training. If they saved up a bit they could probably spare a few crystals for him, right?

Matt got up and made to leave but Kali called out to him.

“Got a minute? I want to try something.” Kali asked him and he almost refused before asking himself what else he was going to do. Nothing was the answer, so he obliged her.

“Sure, can’t hurt to train myself a bit too, actually.” He told her. She was ready in her stance and he sank into his own a few meters away from her. He saw her face grow serious but before they started she caught herself.

“Shit, wait, let me put the sheath on the blade just in case.” She said as she went to get them and put them on. Yeah, that was pretty smart.

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“Alright, I’m ready.” She stood there with a boxing kind of stance, only the guns were pointing towards him. He knew they weren’t loaded but it was intimidating nonetheless.

He got down into his own stance before he stopped. This wasn’t a fair fight at all. He went and took a practice blade himself to at least be able to block the blows. He was still rather shit with swords but it beat sparring with his damn fists. Plus, Kali was strong, he wasn’t confident in blocking her without a weapon of some kind.

Now he felt ready and she nodded to him. Charging him, she made awkward shooting sounds as she pointed at him which he completely ignored. That had been awkward as hell and she aborted the charge to scratch her head.

“Yeah, the gun part feels weird.” She said, embarrassed.

“Then take them off?” A voice from behind me told her. Xar stood there at the entrance, looking at her.

“How?” She asked, confused. Xar walked up to her and showed her that you could actually remove the gun part and use only the blade. He had to search for a part to replace where the gun had been. It now looked completely different and Kali seemed very happy about the change.

It now looked like reinforced fists of steel extending along her arms into blades that went almost up to her shoulders. He thought it really suited her, and it certainly made her look deadly. She was clearly happy about the weapon now.

“Guns really aren’t my thing I guess.” She told them. Matt nodded at that. Yeah, she always looked awkward holding one.

“You really are a brawler to the core.” Xar sighed as he stood off to the side.

“Of course.” She smiled and got ready in a proper boxing stance. She looked a lot more deadly with the blades, even if they were currently in a protective sheath.

“Ready when you are.” Matt told her as he got ready himself.

Kali charged at him and threw a punch from the get go. It was faster than Matt had anticipated and he barely dodged it. He felt something hit him anyways and saw that she had bent her arm to make the blade come out, hitting him square in the chest. He had already lost. She smirked at him as she took position once more.

“Again?” She asked in a teasing voice. Matt clearly didn’t want to look bad, so he nodded. This time he would be ready.

She charged at him again and he dodged out of the way, but kept his sword in the way, but the blade never came. Instead he felt a pointy thing in his back. She had charged past him and used the pointy bit to poke him in the back. Matt couldn’t help but glare at her.

“Again.” He told her and she smiled at him, clearly knowing he was frustrated. He was just too slow. He didn’t have any skills to make his body move faster or anything. Or did he? A crazy idea made its way to his annoyed brain and he couldn’t help but smile ruefully at her. Kali raised an eyebrow before getting down into her stance. He had noticed she was rather competitive.

“Ready whenever.” Matt told her.

She charged him once more and he saw the blow coming. His body reacted slower than his mind but he still managed to dodge again. He kept an eye on her to see what she would do this time, practice blade ready to block whatever. However he was only looking at her upper body. He saw a movement out of the corner of his eyes, too late to react as he understood what she was doing. A kick, and he would be too slow to dodge or block it.

Instinctually he moved mana through his body and willed himself to move faster. The mana responded and he moved far faster than he had anticipated, throwing himself straight at Kali. Her eyes widened as he had moved rather slowly until he had suddenly exploded with movement. It wasn’t controlled and he crashed into her and they both fell to the ground.

“What in the system’s name was that?” She asked as she grinned at him.

“He used mana to augment his body.” Xar answered, clearly surprised.

“You know it’s pretty rare for mages to be able to do that.” He looked at Matt who was now smiling even though he had hurt his shoulder quite a bit.

“Well, I thought, if I’m not supposed to let mana go outside of my body, why not still make use of it?” He grinned at them.

Xar facepalmed before looking back up at Matt.

“It still uses the mana kid, even if it doesn’t leave the body.” He explained with a small smile. Matt’s face fell at that but Xar continued.

“However! You can practice it in very small quantities compared to ‘regular’ magic, whatever that means.” He winked at the teenager.

Matt smiled before closing his eyes. Both Xar and Kali laughed at that but he tuned them out. He still heard Kali call him a magic junkie before they both let him have the room. He concentrated and felt the mana swirling around him. He took a very small part and tried to replicate what he had just done. It was surprisingly easy and he felt a movement not born only of muscles, but of something more added to it.

He opened his eyes and tried a punch, using mana to aid him, if only a small amount. He had been too excited and careless it seemed, as something snapped and he cried out in pain. He had done something wrong and he had to use a healing potion to fix it as he had snapped something in his arm.

So it was dangerous if he didn’t do it right. That clearly calmed him down a bit, but he was still giddy to learn everything about this new discovery. Matt sat down and meditated to really understand what was happening and how. He wanted to master this as it meant he could both be a mage and a good fighter if he really knew what he was doing.

—

There were only two people who didn’t train much on the ship. One of them was Philip because he had clearly claimed that he was going to learn how to use a sniper efficiently and that the ship was too small to train. It was clear half the crew thought it was an excuse not to train while the other half thought it actually might suit him.

The other one was Maya who had largely been spared the sparring sessions as the others mostly didn’t dare ask her, especially the first weeks. Either because they knew she was too strong for it to be useful or because they didn’t feel like they knew her enough to ask her. Plus she had been learning everything she could to become a good pilot so she had largely been left alone compared to the others.

Krovukk however had been surprised when she had walked in on him baking and even more surprised when she had asked to learn. Krovukk hadn’t been able to keep his secret hobby very secret, especially when he had asked Maya to buy a lot of baking supplies at the station.

Still it didn’t matter now. Maya was with him in the kitchen and they were making croissants. It clearly wasn’t the easiest thing to bake, but it was far from the hardest. It was a good mix in his opinion. Maya learned surprisingly fast too and it had been a pleasure for him to help her out, even if he had been unsure how to speak to her in the beginning.

He hadn’t told her secret to anyone, not even Xar. He really liked Maya. She was like a kid in some ways, completely innocent and clueless. On the other hand she could sound very cold or calculating sometimes, but he had learned that it wasn’t how she actually was, but how she believed she should think. Like it was the optimal thing to do.

He thought she was slowly warming up to him and he guessed he felt a bit like a big brother in some ways. He had many siblings so it wasn’t that strange for him.

He still remembered when they had learned her secret and how panicked she had been. Even later, when they had come into her room, the fear had been clear on her face, for she knew what the world thought of sentient golems. It had torn Krovukk to see her panicked and afraid for her life. She wasn’t usually very expressive, but it was clear she could be. And it was something he tried to encourage her to do as she slowly came out of her shell. They stood baking there together in comfortable silence and Krovukk couldn’t help but wonder about the future.

It was still a rather long way, but he was afraid of what would be in store for them at their destination. Chances were the Crystal Emporium would somehow track them there. And the system knew what else was in that crazy place. Only him and Xar had ever been there of the six of them, and it didn’t seem like the rest of the crew truly understood what was waiting for them.

He for one was happy that the trip was taking a rather long time as he did not want to arrive.