It wasn’t enough to see the mana. Velik needed to be able to differentiate it. In some cases, that was very easy to do. A divine beast’s mana was so utterly different from anything else’s that he could easily pick out its trail. Velik had even gone back south and confirmed that, over a week later, he could still detect Tesir’s passing. It had barely faded at all, which was kind of suspicious. All things considered, he suspected Tesir had left a trail on purpose to entice Velik to chase after him.

But normal mana wasn’t like that, and while it was easy to smell the difference between Aria’s mana and Jensen’s, getting [Mana Scent] up to a higher rank required him to do better. Aria used different skills to show him how her mana twisted around itself to make the skills work. That was easy to see, but then they put up wooden panels for her to activate skills behind and he was left to try to smell the difference.

It took him a day to really solidify the skill, but he’d been rewarded with two rank ups now. He could reliably detect the subtle differences between ambient mana and moving mana with nothing but his nose now, though he wasn’t sure how much farther he could push [Mana Scent]. He was mostly successful because he’d figured out that some skills had stronger smells—that was to say that they used more mana, or that it decayed faster—than others.

His concern was that he was getting good at detecting Aria’s skills, but that the technique wouldn’t extend to anything he wasn’t already familiar with. She’d assured him that it was just a matter of practice, that no one could expect to master a skill in a day. But it was also true that [Mana Sight] and [Mana Scent] both had limitations. They helped compliment each other, though most people went for sound- or touch-based skills instead of scent.

Most people didn’t have Velik’s wolf shape that lent itself well to differentiating things by smell, so that was probably a smart decision on their part. As far as he was concerned, though, these were the two best senses to use. Hearing took a solid third place, and the less said about touching or tasting mana, the better.

Sildra arrived right on schedule, though that wasn’t a surprise. Aria had used her own abilities to track the [Druid of the Crescent Moon]. Sildra moved swiftly and with purpose, easily dispatching any monsters she encountered along the way, and arrived in Ashala right around noon. Jensen himself went out to greet her at the gate, a fact that neither Velik nor Aria missed.

“He doesn’t do that for anyone else,” she noted with a smirk.

“Certainly didn’t for me,” Velik agreed. He paused, then added, “To be fair, it’s not like he knew I was coming.”

“I doubt that would have made a difference. Anyway, back to work. You can take a break when they get here.”

The pair went through a dozen more drills, with Aria deliberately varying the amount of mana her abilities used to try to trip Velik up. He’d gotten the trick of it though, and she couldn’t fool him anymore. At least, that was what he thought until something completely new popped up.

“Some sort of magic item?” he guessed.

“Sure. What’s it do?”

“How should I know?”

But it did smell familiar. He knew that scent, but he couldn’t quite place where he’d encountered it before. Considering he hadn’t had the skill a few days ago, and that he hadn’t left Jensen’s home since then, it had to be something someone here had—

Oh. I’m an idiot.

A quick sniff confirmed his suspicions. The Traveler’s Bracelet on his wrist gave off only a faint whiff, whereas the spatial storage behind the screen was currently active and thus emitted a much stronger scent of mana. It smelled completely different than what Velik had gotten used to, which he immediately realized was because all of Aria’s skills were the same type, and were powered by her mana.

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Everyone had different mana, and different types of skills were also different. In retrospect, it was obvious. Aria had even told him that at the beginning of their lessons, but the skill simply hadn’t been powerful enough to tell mana types apart.

“Your necklace,” Velik said. “You’ve opened the spatial storage.”

It smelled… cold, but in a weird way, different from a snowy mountain or a chunk of ice. It was cold, but empty of anything else. Now that he knew what it was, he realized that spatial magic was quite distinctive. He didn’t think he’d ever smelled anything like it before.

Their session was interrupted a few minutes later by Sildra walking into the building. Aria didn’t notice at first, but Velik heard the door opening and recognized the scent. He could also hear her and Jensen talking, though he did his best to tune that out. Ignoring private conversations took practice, but he’d left his life of solitude behind over a year ago, and there had been plenty of opportunities.

“She’s here,” Velik said.

“And what does her mana smell like?” Aria asked.

Rolling his eyes, Velik let the scent play over his nose. “Like the air right before it rains. Pine trees. Flowers. A crackling campfire and a cold breeze filled with snow.”

“How poetic.”

Velik shrugged. “You asked.”

More surprising to Velik was that he got the sense that Sildra had grown in power so dramatically that she was the second strongest person in the building, not counting himself. He wouldn’t put mana on her over Aria in a one-on-one match, but for raw power, she was easily level 45. How the hell did that happen?

Admittedly, his own growth still outstripped hers, but he was out risking his life on a near daily basis and easily killing monsters ten or even twenty levels higher than him now. He supposed she’d been busy purging agents of corruption, but he was still shocked to see how rapidly she’s progressed in levels.

“Velik,” she said. “I heard you needed my help.”

The confidence is new, too.

He supposed being in charge of a whole bunch of new druids would do that. Adding in a sudden influx in personal power would just smooth the transition. Whatever the reason, she wore her new confidence well.

“Hello, Sildra,” Aria said.

Sildra’s mouth thinned into a line and she said frostily, “Aria.”

Did I miss something?

Velik shot a look at Jensen, who was just as confused. Fortunately, Aria wasn’t one to play games. She caught the tone, and rather than ignore it or say something catty, she just asked, “Is there a problem here?”

“I don’t know. I heard about Torwin’s death. Not from you. I heard you were hauling people all over for the funeral, and then for a memorial. Did you think I wouldn’t want to attend, that he wasn’t important to me, too?”

Aria snorted. “Get over yourself. You have no idea how exhausting that was. I couldn’t bring everyone who wanted to attend, so I prioritized the hunters he served with for decades over a girl he met a year ago and had no real attachment to. I ran myself ragged, and I’m sorry if you felt neglected, but I would make the same choices about who to expend my efforts on again.”

Even Velik knew that wasn’t a real apology. A vague memory floated up of his mother taking him aside as a child after a fight with Chalin and telling him that any apology that included the words, ‘I’m sorry if’ was a deflection of responsibility. It was one of the few clear memories he had left of her.

“Okay,” Jensen said, sliding into the conversation. “Torwin’s death hit us all hard. Let’s just agree that no one’s happy about it and move past it. We have far bigger issues to deal with.”

“By ‘we,’ you mean Velik and myself,” Sildra said. Her voice softened slightly and she added, “I’ll catch up more with you later, Jensen.”

“By all means,” Aria snapped. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

She brushed past them, sweeping out of the room and disappearing. Velik listened to her glide down the halls, smelled a flash of mana spark in the air, then vanished. She was far faster at those portals now than she’d been six months ago.

“Well. Uh. That was awkward,” Jensen said with a half-hearted chuckle.

Velik just stared at him.

“Could we have the room, please?” Sildra asked, breaking the brief silence. “I’m afraid this discussion is a private one.”

“Oh, right. Sure. Just… Come find me when you’re done and we’ll see about setting up a room for you to stay.”

“That will very much depend on the conversation,” she replied. “I may not be staying after it’s done.”

Velik ignored the disappointment in Jensen’s eyes. The [Vault Seeker] excused himself from the room, muttering something about having some work to see to, and Sildra waited until the door closed and he’d returned to his office before she moved.

Taking a seat at the table, she gestured for Velik to take the one opposite of her. He ignored the invitation and simply asked instead, “Was the dream real?”

“The simple answer is yes. But that’s not really what we’re going to talk about,” she said. “I’m here to prepare you to leave the Garden, go beyond the walls, and survive what’s on the other side.”

“You know all about that, huh?”

“I know a lot of things I didn’t know a year ago. Now, sit down, please. This is going to take some time to go through.”