As had become all too common, Thera awoke from the sounds above her, cracking open her eyes to see the numerous spirits filling her room as a cheer went up amongst them when they noticed her eyes flutter open.
“Princess!”
“The princess is up!”
“Hello again princess!”
Dozens of them, all speaking up at once to her left Thera wanting nothing more than to close her eyes again, even if she resisted the impulse as she held out her hand.
“Alright, I’m sure you all know this by now so one by one.”
The massive boost to her total mana and regeneration rate with awakening two skills meant she could use her spirit empowering more often without worry so she had no problem with doing it for them all, but the greeting was taking a mental toll. Gaining the title had been bad enough, but when the first group of them showed up afterwards, only to immediately call her that, she thought she was going to have a heart attack.
“Also, can you all please, please call me anything else?” She tried for what must have been the dozenth time, only to be greeted with the same confusion they displayed each time she asked.
“But what else would we call you?”
“Thera, earthkin, anything really?”“Mmh, no.” They said with finality. “Princess is princess.”
I must be being punished for something.
Still, for as much as hearing it so much was eating at her psyche she wasn’t going to stop helping them when it was so easy for her, so like any other time they’d come she just did her best to push her skill, finishing up as fast as she could before moving on to the next mentally exhausting part of her day.
Ever since Sonya had been forced to drink those potions, the amount her aunt had been able to do at the clinic had skyrocketed with her increased mana, meaning that between the two of them, things had gotten significantly easier for the clinic as a whole.
Because of that, she didn’t need to go in as much as she’d originally been expecting to once she got back, and the days she did she was able to handle almost everything quickly so long as it was something she knew how to treat. She had the technical skill now, but there were still holes in her knowledge that occasionally meant she needed the guidance of others.
Still, all of the town healers had gotten significantly more free time as a result, meaning she had the leeway to wait at the guild to go out hunting again with Aso, even if the atmosphere made her regret not meeting the girl somewhere else.
Of all the other adventurers around, not many would meet her eyes, the majority of them looking away or else leaving the building altogether when she showed up. It was different from how things had used to be, back when her magic was so much worse and whatever fear she received was mixed with hate. She’d been steadily improving her image in town ever since then with the work she did, but now it seemed there was more fear of her than ever, only for a completely different reason. Everyone was aware of her current rank.
When she had first understood what was happening, she couldn’t deny that she’d enjoyed it a bit, though she expected it to fade sooner than it had. There were plenty among the adventurers in town who had either treated her antagonistically in the past or else been silent as others had, and the fact that it was widely known that she had two awakened skills had left those same adventurers shaken. It was already known that she had a ridiculous amount of mana, but now that the fact that she had a ridiculous amount of skill to go with it had been revealed, every one of them was walking on eggshells around her, fearing some retribution that she had no intention of dishing out.
Still, it didn’t hurt the way it might have in the past for the simple fact that she wasn’t alone anymore. She had her family like she always did, but she was getting along well with her coworkers at the clinic, she’d been starting to exchange letters with Steph, Amy, and Yuzu, she had a friend in Aso and even arguably Sachel, and she had Ben. Even if others wanted to fear her it was fine, she would just keep living her life.
“Sorry, did you wait long?” Aso called out as she ran up to her.
“No, let’s start heading out,” Thera told her, smiling brightly. “We’ve gotta make a great adventurer out of you yet.”
Despite what she’d initially expected, Aso hadn’t joined up with anyone else to form a party yet. She was starting to mingle with others at the guild, but unlike Thera, her work at the clinic was coming first for the time being, meaning it would be inconvenient for anyone she joined to have to work around her schedule.
Because of that, when Thera couldn’t go with her she was doing safer quests by herself, only venturing deeper into the woods when she wasn’t alone to get whatever practice she could.
Of course, there were issues with that as well. Thera was no teacher, she didn’t know how to guide Aso to greater heights, especially since they didn’t share any magics. Instead, their time together out in the woods was more geared towards Aso figuring out what worked best for herself as Thera worked to ensure the other girl didn’t fall into any danger she couldn’t deal with while offering what few pointers she could.
It might not have been the most efficient way of doing things, but they both felt like it worked for them, and it gave them each some company in their practice as they went.
As they walked, every now and then Thera would stop to touch one of the trees they passed, working to practice both of her awakened skills by using the same spell that had pushed them over that edge to begin with, though in a completely different way then she had the first time.
When she cast her petrification, she was trying to be so much more selective of it than she had been before, and luckily for the forest, she was succeeding. Instead of each tree she touched turning to stone, it was only a few leaves and branches changing as she pushed the limits of her control. It still wasn’t the fastest and she doubted she’d be able to use it from too much of a distance, at least without the risk of getting other things caught up in the effect as well, but being able to see her improvement so clearly was thrilling in ways she found hard to properly express.
And it wasn’t just that spell she was getting comfortable using. As Aso began searching the area for the herbs that her quest required, Thera activated another to be on the safe side. Earth healing. A spell that imbued a given area with a basic life spell that would improve the healing rate of anything in it for a length of time varying depending on how much mana went into it. Ordinarily, it was far from effective, with the spell really only having any worth to the few people in the world that had either an awakened earth or life magic, but by having both along with her huge mana pool, Thera could cast the spell over a field and have it run for over an hour with relative ease. It was something she’d started practicing when she’d begun hunting with Aso as an extra precaution for the girl's safety, and with all of that done she let herself relax just a little.
Let’s see, so what should I do to pass the time now? She wondered, not sure how she should be training her magics. Working on improving her control was always a big thing, but the question usually came down to how. A question that was answered by a feeling above her, compelling her to look up just as a stone ape threw itself from a treetop, aiming for exactly where she would have been if she hadn’t detected it and moved.
To its poor luck though, she had sensed it, and in seconds it wasn’t just a creature with a stone skin, but solid stone as it was petrified.
When she figured out what the skill was for after gaining it from awakening her earth magic, Thera had to admit that she wasn’t impressed. It gave her a natural understanding of where stone and earth was around her, but the answer was usually a simple ‘down’. That quick exchange however had managed to show her that there was some utility to the skill that she hadn’t been seeing.
As Aso ran up to her to check if everything was alright, Thera waved her off, telling her to get back to her quest as she looked at what was now a statue in front of her. Undoing petrification was supposedly significantly harder than it was to petrify something in the first place, something she was sure to fail at, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t make for some good practice in the meantime.
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