I headed out to train with Gutran. As I journeyed to Ring Three, I channelled Gravity. I had been doing so on and off for the last several days now, so even if I hadn’t focused practicing with it while I was busy working on other things, I was sure I had to be close to a rank up.

The real thing that dominated my thought was my Fervour Augmentation. I hadn’t lied to Sreketh.

I was going with Enshrined Growth. It had come down to either that or Mana Rites, the one that gave me a buff on using any of the Aspects related to Path of the Apostle or just completing any faith-related tasks. While the buff was obviously going to be nice, and I could see strong applications, I was more concerned about my long-term growth.

If I could gain Enshrined Growth, then encouraging my fellow cultists to take part in everything the Weave had to offer would help me in turn. And that would lead me to getting an advantage over most other people trying to rank up.

It made me wonder if there was an Aspect of Growth or something like that. There had to be. The real question was how to acquire such an Aspect, and whether there was an Affix for it that allowed said Growth to be directed at one’s own prowess through the Weave. Something to keep in mind and ask Gutran.

Like always, I got a little lost on my way there. In Ring Four, not even in Ring Three. Somehow, I found myself walking in Earth Cult territory.

I decided to be a smidge more creative to solve the issue. Using Gravity’s Siphon Affix, I lowered my weight and floated straight up to get a better idea about the lay of the land. Normally, I couldn’t do this on Ring Three because they tended to have tall enough buildings to block my line of sight. It was also extremely awkward with how many people there were.

In contrast, the buildings on Ring Four were ramshackle and the people mostly nonexistent, especially at this time of day.

Soon enough, I had located the direction I was actually supposed to take and gotten over to the gate to Ring Three. Then it was just a matter of getting lost and finding myself at the Artificer’s Guild—no sign of Linak then, sadly—before finally reaching Gutran’s smithy.

The familiar clang of hammering and press of heat welcomed me in, followed not long after by the master smith himself.

“I thought you had forgotten me after your ascension to the head of the Sun Cult,” Gutran said.

Somewhere farther off, Aurier chuckled. Looked like even Gutran of all people could be teasing.

“Sorry,” I said. “Just been a bit busy trying to focus on all the new things. I haven’t forgotten my other training, though.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Gutran’s tone absolutely didn’t sound like he was teasing, and anyone who didn’t know him might think he was sincerely upset, but I did know him. He was messing around.

I explained what I had been doing the last few days, working on my new Aspects and trying to gain new Augmentations. Gutran was curious to hear about them, especially the directions I was intent on taking them.

“Heat is very good for fine control,” he said. “I knew a smith who loved it, made the heating costs of his forge simply disappear after he trained himself with it.”

I imagined that smith had to get the Permanence Augmentation or whatever it was called to allow Aspect uses to linger in the world beyond their Natural Limit of Existence. Gutran didn’t have the Aspect of Heat, though. He was happy with a regular old forge. “Sadly, I don’t have Heat.”

Gutran finally cracked a grin, teasing again. “I know. Flare’s good too. Just different. Good at lighting things up. I I knew a soldier with Flare. One of the deadliest fellows I knew back then.”

His bright mood fell then. A brief reminder why he never really talked about his military experiences.

I wondered if there was a subtle warning for me there too. Flare wasn’t Heat. Unlike the latter, the former didn’t naturally lend itself to being carefully controlled. Which meant I probably needed to be extra careful with it. Extra precise.

We moved on to actual training. Gutran wasn’t too busy, despite receiving more orders nowadays, thanks to my quiet advertisement of his creations at the Adventurer’s Guild via my guildmates.

“You want to focus on all your Attributes?” Gutran asked as we prepared to spar. “You remember that focusing on everything won’t amount to noticeable progress, right?”

“What I really want is to make sure I’m not getting rusty on combat,” I said.

Gutran grunted. “Fair enough.”

We sparred together for a good while, working up some nice sweat. Well, I was. As ever, Gutran wasn’t just unbothered by it, he hardly looked like he was putting in any real effort. Of course, snakes didn’t sweat, and Scalekin like Gutran, even when they were half-Scalekin, carried enough serpentine characteristics.

The thing that intrigued me more was that the difference between our strengths was still as great as ever. I was sure Gutran hadn’t grown stronger or advanced in his ranks as fast as I had in the time I had known him. He had been Gold-ranked when I had met him, and he was still Gold-ranked now.

Which meant that difference between a strong Gold and a weak Silver was the same as a strong Gold and any level of Iron.

I had a decent way to go still.

“Not bad,” Gutran said after warding off a mace blow with his shield. We were using practice equipment. “You’re still sharp enough.”

“Not sharp enough to beat you, though.”

“Ha. It’s going to be a long while before you’re sharp enough to beat me, but that’s not a bad thing. I’ve got loads of years on you, Ross.”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“True enough.”

“Though at the rate you’re growing…” He shook his head, but now, I couldn’t hold my mouth from stretching wide in pleasure.

We fought some more, going over my fundamentals and making sure I was aware of things like positioning and spacing, of noting the tells that foretold my opponent’s movements, of being aware of feints, of knowing when to block, dodge, and counter.

As we winded down our practice session, we got to talking about the one Augmentation I hadn’t discussed or pondered much yet. Agility.

“There are a lot of options,” Gutran said. “Manaboost, Distance Perception, Reflexive Mana, Temporal Mentality, and so on. I can explain what each of those do. There’s also one that can let you quite literally burn mana to shift a short distance, though I don’t think that’s easy to acquire for anyone, much less someone who’s only Silver.”

Teleporting short distances sounded absolutely broken, so I could understand why most people wouldn’t be able to acquire it easily.

Gutran went on to explain what each of those did. Their names were self-explanatory, and I was able to guess most of them correct. For instance, Manaboost obviously temporarily improved Agility by using up mana, while Temporal Mentality increased mental processing capabilities with the same magical energy.

Distance Perception was a strange one, because as the name suggested, it allowed what I understood to be mentally mapping distances with a good degree of accuracy with mana. I couldn’t quite see how it was useful, but I supposed people with more ranged-combat inclinations might find uses for it.

“Spellcasters…” Gutran bared some of his fangs. “Proper mages find it quite useful.”

I snorted. “Well, that explains why I thought it was useless.”

The last I learned about was the one I went with. Reflexive Mana was interesting in the sense that it essentially created new external reflex pathways using mana. My basic biology lessons reminded me that reflexes worked by bypassing normal nerve pathways in the central nervous system to enact a quick response by using unique, shorter nerve paths.

I wasn’t sure how accurate that was, but that was essentially Reflexive Mana’s function. Unique, fast reaction paths created using mana to react to danger.

“It sounds like it’s redundant since Agility improves reaction time,” Gutran said. “But it’s actually almost like cheating. It’s my second Agility Augmentation, and believe me, it’s saved my scales quite a few times.”

Gutran went on to explain how Reflexive Mana essentially created fine lines of mana around the caster, which functioned kind of like the feelers of an insect. As soon as something touched the mana strand with enough force or energy, the Augmentation triggered, reflexively moving the caster away from whatever had touched the mana line.

I was starting to see how that would be useful beyond just the reaction time improvement granted by ranking up Agility. “But what if I didn’t want to dodge away? What if I wanted to take advantage of my opponent rushing into me?”

Gutran slowly smiled. “Well, then you need to master it, don’t you? Establish a level of control over it.”

My mind replayed my attempts to corral mana for Threaded Reinforcement. “I think I’m already working on it, actually.”

We focused on my Agility for the rest of that day. Gaining Reflexive Mana required the same kind of process that simply ranking up Agility did—training up my reactions and dodges and things like that. The only difference was that I had to maintain my control over mana and try to exercise that at the same time.

Which wasn’t easy.

“Ow,” I muttered as I failed to evade one of Gutran’s heavy blows, my knees buckling at the impact.

“Focus,” Gutran said.

“I’m trying. It’s just hard to practice controlling mana while also trying to dodge you when you’re moving that fast.”

“Practice makes better.”

I thought it was practice makes perfect, but I supposed perfect was the enemy of good. We didn’t need perfect. What we needed was good enough to go on with.

The next several hours were spent trying to wrangle my mana in the way I wanted it to go while also continuing to work with my Agility. I was sure I made progress, but it was so incremental that it was difficult to feel satisfying, though Gutran never complained.

“You know,” I said, wiping away my sweat after we stopped for the day. “I keep working on everything I’ve got thanks to your help, but it’s never the other way around.”

Gutran gave me some water to drink, which I thanked him for. “Well, that’s because I’m not looking to raise my ranks higher for now. I’m satisfied where I am.”

“Huh, I see. I just felt a little guilty that you’re helping me rank up all the time, but I haven’t really returned the favour.”

Gutran grunted and shook his head. “Don’t be silly. You’ve got me some new business, and that’s tremendously helpful. Not just because of more money, which is nice, but it’s helping me rank up my smith Path faster too. That’s what I’m actually focusing on.”

“Oh! I suppose that makes sense.”

Gutran was a soldier-turned-blacksmith, so I imagined he had at least two Paths just like me. He had stopped ranking up his military Path since that was no longer relevant.

Before I left, I spent some time with Aurier, who took a break from his daily tasks to just sit and chat with me.

“You know, you keep inspiring me to try more stuff,” Aurier said.

“More stuff?” I asked.

“Yeah! Like, once I break into Silver after I finish your mace, I can start imbuing everything I make with special properties.”

I blinked. Not wanting to burst Aurier’s bubble of excitement, I tried to think of the best way to tell him what Gutran had told me. “That sounds pretty cool. Although, wouldn’t any effects you put into anything you make depend on what the client wants?”

Aurier shook his head. “Ha, master must have mentioned it to you. But no, it’s not that kind of special effect. It’s more general things like self-repairing and self-cleaning and adaptive weighting and things like that.”

“Oh! Wow. All of those sound really neat, actually. And kind of powerful. You can do all that just from Silver onwards?”

Aurier flushed. “Not all of those. Master said every rank tier will let me specialize in a couple of new effects, via new Affixes at every tier basically, so I’ll need to keep growing if I want to get more and more.”

“Oh, I see how it works.” I slapped his shoulder with an encouraging smile. “Still, that’s really cool, I think.” I laughed. “I’ll never have to clean or repair my mace again!”

We snorted and joked together for a bit. I waited up at the smithy until Aurier was done with his work too, so we could return home together. Yes, I was being a good friend, and no, it wasn’t because there was less chances for me to get lost when I had company.

Back at the temple, the day was almost out, but I thought I would try a couple of things before bed. One was the fact that I was aiming for Manifestation, so it would help if I tried focusing on manifesting Aspects without relying on of their Affixes.

I wasn’t really sure if I was making progress with it. None of my Aspects showed up. But I could feel threads of mana swirling within me, almost like they were waiting for something.

The other thing I focused intensely on was Threaded Reinforcement. I drove more threads of mana into my arm, trying to infuse it there. No using other Aspects in the meantime. My mana felt just as troublesome to control as it always did. At least it seemed to calm down to some extent when I managed to stuff it in my limb, especially when it turned into those fractures.

It was well into evening by the time I felt something click withing me, like a tiny shift in my mana core that made the cracks in my chest move around.

Then the cracks that had been forming in my arm, which had been growing since the moment I had started using Threaded Reinforcement, kind of… solidified. I frowned. When I tentatively channelled Gravity, it didn’t disappear. Unlike last time, the cracks remained.

My arm was more or less permanently reinforced.

So that was it. I breathed out in satisfaction. There was a threshold of reinforcement I needed to cross before the reinforcement became at least semi-permanent. All I had needed to do was infuse mana from the tips of my fingers all the way to my shoulder.

I wasn’t sure if it was going to last forever or fade on its own, but at least using Aspects wasn’t going to remove it.

Slowly, I breathed out. “A good find,” I said.

Then I used Sacrifice on the Threaded Reinforcement in my arm.