CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE - IS IT REAL?

I frowned as I channelled magic through the carvings poking out of my core, then tried to feel as thoughtful and think-y as I could. Pensiveness wasn't the easiest emotion to capture, but it didn't feel too far from what I normally did... I was the sort of woman used to spending entire days alone with no one but myself and my thoughts.

If anything, the loops helped. I was often working entirely on my own, and the conversations I did have in a loop that I knew I wouldn't keep were always a bit stilted, I think because I knew that they weren't 'real.'

"Close," Dharti said as she touched my back. "But not quite. You need Sadness. This spell is perhaps not entirely suited to you."

"I can do it," I said.

Sadness, right? Damn... I stepped to the side, and sighed. How to feel sad? Well, shit, I had a lot of regrets hanging over me, but I was a bit too excited at the moment to really feel sad. "Do the emotions you feel need to be real?" I asked.

"Real? What is a real emotion?" Dharti asked. "If you feel it, it is real. Now, you might wonder if you deserve to feel something, and that is a philosophical question that I am not ready to answer, but anything you feel is real if you're feeling it."

"It is what it is because it is what it is," I muttered and Dharti chuckled.

I frowned, then pulled out my phone and a little set of earbuds. My helmet was off already. There was no need for it while just standing outside next to a small cordoned-off parking lot behind a few offices.

My playlists were all rock and punk rock. Some indie here and there too. I slid my earbuds in, then tapped through a few menus until I had some soft croning filling my mind.

I stood, eyes closed, just soaking in the cloud-filtered sun and the cool, too-humid air. It was just September, but the weather was already starting to turn cold. Winter soon. Jane would love that, it meant whole new fashion. Did Ojou have a wardrobe for every season? Wasn't she an Ice mage? She'd like the cold.

I shook my head and refocused on the moment, on the music, on the melancholy.

It took a minute or two, but eventually I was feeling... more depressed than sad, I think. Still, I stepped back and to the side, then raised a hand and focused. The motion wasn't necessary. In fact, it was bad. Gesturing was a shorthand (pun unintended) that the guidebooks suggested against. But it felt right anyway.

I cast.

The grass ahead of me was patchy and sad. Lumps of green in a parking spot that had been walked over too many times, not rained on enough, and which didn't receive enough sun.

And yet a cone of it ahead of me, stretching out a solid five yards or so, twitched, and then all at once, the grass grew.

I hadn't 'aimed' it at all, so the grass and weeds simply burst upwards, whipping around themselves and the air, trying to grab anything that might be there. The smaller grass went from as long as my hand to tall enough to reach my hip, and then I swayed back, suddenly dizzy and tired.

"Ohh," I said.

Dharti was there a second later, an arm wrapping around my shoulder. "Arre, beta, easy now. You've used too much magic all at once."

"Oops," I said. "But it worked!"

"Mhm! You did very well. Now sit here, yes on your tall grass it doesn't matter. Come now, before you faint."

"Faint? I'm not gonna faint," I said. Wait, did she call me a beta? What did that even mean? Was that an insu--

I fainted.

It was only for a moment, but I woke up with a surge of vertigo to find Dharti looking down at me with an amused smile. "You still need to learn your limits," she said. "Do you know, most D-rankers take some months to learn second level spells for a reason?"

"Ah, right," I said. I asked Dharti if the spell had worked well, and she confirmed that it had. Then she gave me a few pointers that I listened to before, finally, I Reloaded.

My second attempt was a little worse and better. It was easier to slip into the right mindset, and this time I cut the magic off early, leaving a rough triangle of grass that rose to about knee-height.

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"Whoooo," I said as I let out a breath. The grass and a few prickly weeds continued to writhe around for a few seconds before stopping. Terry, standing nearby, put her foot in and laughed as a bunch of greenery wrapped around her leg. She tugged it out pretty easily, though. "That took a lot out of me," I said.

"But not all," Dharti said. "Good job."

"Thanks," I said. "Do we have one of those juice-packs around? And, ah, how was that?"

Dharti hummed, tapping her chin, then suggested a few minor tweaks, some which she'd covered already in another timeline. Mostly it came down to practicing and reinforcing the carving so that it wasn't so wobbly

I nodded along. I was gonna get to it.

I was also tempted to learn non-carved casting, like what Becky did, but every resource I found said that it was a stupid, bad idea until someone was C-ranked. I didn't quite get it, or believe it, but I only had so much patience for learning spells, especially with as little magic as I had.

Erde came over to get us a few minutes later. "Portal's about to appear," he said. "Eldur wants us ready to jump in as soon as it spawns."

That got us all moving. It was an hour shy of noon, so we'd been here for a while already, and I was genuinely starting to be worried that we wouldn't be finished by five. I didn't want or need to be late to dinner tonight.

We returned to the office to find it lit up by an angry blue gash in reality, one that was spitting and hissing, magic pouring out of it in bursts. The portal was still so fresh that it hadn't had time to equalize and calm down just yet.

"As soon as it settles, we're going in," Eldur said. "I'll take point with Terry. Newbie, you're middle. Dharti and Erde take the rear."

I nodded, checked the fit on my helmet, then I flicked the safety off and chambered a round. "Ready here," I said.

The juicebox helped equalize my magic, not that I expected to spend much of it in this portal world. Still, just in case, when Dharti started to pass out buffs, I offered to use Soothe Minor Pain and Eldur agreed. I think less because we needed it, and more because it was just good practice to get me used to being the team 'buffer.'

I think that was the role he saw for me. The little girl at the back who handed out combat buffs and occasionally cast a crowd-control spell and who could handle a rifle.

Honestly, it wasn't the worst position to be in?

Eldur jumped in first, then Terry, then I followed after.

Immediately on arriving, I reached up to my harness and turned on the little light hanging off of it, casting a beam of light ahead of me. At the same time, I took a moment to look around while silently casting See Darkness on myself, just in case.

The portal opened into a cave. It wasn't anything like that kobold cave, though. This one had tall ceilings, with little alcoves dug into them and along the walls, and no stalactites or mites.

Eldur cracked a glowstick and tossed it ahead, filling a corner of the cavern with a lot of sinister red light. "This one's going to be a bit rough," he said. "Move while expecting ambushes. Keep an eye on the ceiling."

"Urgh, I hate caves," Terry muttered.

"Why? Are you claustrophobic?" I asked.

"No. Everything is grounding all around. If I miss just a bit my spells smack into a wall and poof. It's annoying. Plus it's dark, so your eyes adjust to that, and when I get zappy you lose your dark vision and Eldur complains."

Eldur breathed out of his nose in a silent snort. "Stow it, Terry," he said.

The others stepped through, and soon we had a neat little five-man formation. Eldur at the front, Terry to his left, and I a bit to his right while still being in the middle.

With that set up, Dharti's buffs running through us, and a lot of company-paid glowsticks to throw around, we started forwards through the dungeon.

Hopefully it would be a quick one, because I really didn't want to be stuck here after five.

***