Strangled shouts and constrained grunting made Gad look up from her weight lifting routine. She already knew what she was going to see, but was still unable to not put down her weights and walk over to the handrail to look down, to the training grounds of the Tanks Hall.

  “Put your backs into it!” an instructor roared. “Push!”

  Below, a line of thick, heavy tanks groaned in reply, and pushed harder against the line of ethereal, yet solid and very real, golden tower shields blocking their path.

  “Come on! Harder! Harder!”

  Beyond the struggling tanks and alongside the translucent golden shields, Tun stood with an impavid, braced posture. He was locked in place, and the dark gray and black spotted scales of his head glistened with sweat in between his head spikes.

  He’s not even moving, Gad noticed, with both approval and a touch of jealousy. The translucent shields were reminiscent of the same massive kind she had seen the navy apprentice tanks using, and Gad had learned that they were called tower shields.

  “And… Stop!” the instructor called from below.

  The other tanks eased off the golden shields with sighs and groans of relief, and Tun straightened his back and deactivated his newest skill, [Phalanx of Safeguarding]. The skill allowed him to create four shields of aura, mirroring his own, real and new tower shield, creating two shields on either side of his real one. These skill shields acted just as normal shields would, but of course, the morsvar still needed to be strong enough to hold the increased pressure of blocking off the enemy with his five shields, which was something that Tun’s instructor was working on.

  In silence, Tun dropped to one knee, hanging his head low and breathing hard, and the instructor leaned down next to him to speak with the exhausted tank.

  Gad lifted her eyes from the two of them, and scanned the rest of the Tank’s Hall from her vantage point atop the metal walkways where the gymnasium was set up to strengthen the tank apprentices.

  In one corner, an altei had turned her body and uniform into a dark blue, matt metal of some form. Another tank circled her, probing her metallic body with glancing blows but none seemed to be having any effect.

  Nearby, another tank hesitantly circled his opponent, who seemed to have sprouted two sharp, yellowish and vicious looking bone spikes that curved up from his shoulder blades. Every time the two of them locked shields, one of the bone spikes would dart over the shields, lancing for his head or shoulder, and he would be forced to jump back again.

  Earth, rock and metal, but also fire, blood, and bone, and many, many more, Gad thought, as she scanned the training grounds. Her eyes easily picked off the new and flashy skills being tested and displayed by those who had unlocked their affinities, and who were now seeing the first results of their much anticipated path’ course corrections.

  There’s even shadow… she thought, considering another tank.

  The woman held her shield aloof, almost taunting her opponent to step closer and come and get her. But the tank facing her was understandably hesitant as she stared at the shifting circle of shadows that spread from and covered her opponents’ feet.

  Gad observed their encounter and winced as the affinity-less tank stepped onto the shadows, and immediately swayed sideways, thrown off by whatever status effect those eerie shadows had as they latched onto her feet and ankles.

  Gad sighed and returned to her bicep curls. There was nothing she could do now other than to keep training, keep getting gains and strengthen her body to make full use of her attributes, and hope that her affinity would reveal itself to her soon. Without it, she was stuck with her lackluster Climbing skills. And with nothing better to do than to lift the weights, Gad scanned her still unchanged list of skills as she pumped the irons.

  She grunted and closed the list.

  It was not that the skills were bad per se. In fact, they were perfectly good tanking skills, being composed of a mix of aggro management and survivability enhancement capabilities, which were the basic tools a tank needed to perform its role. With them, Gad had protected the party across the B-Nex and in their latest fight, at the den. And the [Toughened Constitution] passive had been an extremely pleasant surprise to receive with her post-Ceremony gains.

  However… The skills weren’t exactly great. With only two single target charges and one multi-target one, each taking thirty seconds of cooldown, her [Shield Call] skill limited her aggro capabilities in large scale battles like the Ceremony and the den. And even on smaller battles, a lot happened in just a couple of seconds, much less half a minute, and while it didn’t happen a lot, the enemy was capable of resisting her taunts, especially the multi-target one… Which meant not only a used taunt charge, but a wasted one when it happened.

  And her [Shield Barricade] skill, with its full half an hour of cooldown meant that she needed to be extremely cautious of when she used the skill, knowing that she would be locked from using it for the following thirty minutes. In a quick battle, as they had commonly faced in the Climb, that made the skill only usable once. Besides that, while the AOE aggro wave was excellent, the extra 5 points in [Strength] and [Toughness] that had been lifesaving in the Climb were barely even felt now. With her large [Constitution*] granting her a comfortable 610 points of HP, alongside her much smaller, but still very much significant 34 points in [Toughness], the extra 5 points were, for the most part, not ground shaking to say the least.

  And while such defenses were impressive by the party’s standards, they were just average amongst the other tank apprentices. Plenty of them even had [Toughened Constitution] just like she did, having been trolley pushers just like she had.

  Even her passive [Threatening Hits] felt lackluster, forcing her to constantly swap between enemies to keep her aggro up and the party safe. And it was a dangerous thing to do, juggling her attention between multiple enemies like that. Luckily, her [Awareness] attribute was greatly helping her out with that, and sometimes, it felt like she had multiple sets of eyes, and her [Perception] wasn’t bad to have either. But she didn’t have Nar’s [Speed], [Agility], [Reflex], [Instinct] or [NPC], which was starting to seriously hinder her as the enemy got stronger… Meaning, either she quickly improved, or she needed to start tanking in a different way, moving past the normal “sword and board” as the instructors like to call the combination of a one-handed weapon and a shield.

  She grit her teeth against the burning pain of the rep and forced herself to keep going, demanding more from her muscles.

  She was being harsh on herself. Her skills were pretty much the same as everyone without an affinity in the Tanks Hall, and her performance was more than acceptable. Where she lacked, was in comparison to those who had unlocked their affinities… And that perhaps was what had her so frustrated, for the base skill set of the auramancer tank failed in one, very crucial, and spectacular way. It made absolutely no use of her aura whatsoever.

  How could she be an [Auramancer Shield Warrior] without any actual aura combat skills? For that matter, she hadn’t made any [Aura*] gains since the Ceremony, and was still stuck at the same 59 points of it, the lowest in the party.

  True, she could cycle her aura into her shield and her mace again, and she was making respectable progress in her combat cycling. And while this helped hold her ground, it was not enough. She needed more. She needed her affinity to unlock.

  Without it, and without improved and new aura skills, there was no way she was going to be able to keep up with the new and powerful skills that the others in the party were starting to display.

  Especially Mul’s fire, she thought.

  She could still feel that blazing heat on her face, coming off the brawler as he enraged. She had felt it even through her aura armor, and she had been powerless to match the tremendous amount of aggro that the lengos had exuded from just his very, burning presence. If not for that hideous, and horrendous suppressor that had been forced upon the brawler, there was no way she could operate as a tank in the same party as him.

  And what effect would Jul’s fear debuffs have on the enemy? What havoc would Viy cause with her yet to be understood affinity? Or Rel’s mighty blood focused, repentance path? Or Kur, whose debuffs would now hit the enemies’ mind directly?

  And soon, Tuk and Cen would gain their affinities as well, and there was not a single shred of doubt in her mind that the two of them would become even more DPS monsters than they already were, especially given Cen’s desperate beam of pure aura…

  And then there’s Nar, she sighed, and put down the weights.

  Nar was building something much beyond her ability to foresee. It was slow going now, yes, but she wasn’t sure for how long… Or when he would suddenly explode and leap much further than all of them. Nar’s path was going to be a sight to behold, and she almost dreaded the day he would unlock his affinity, for she doubted there was a tank out there that would be able to keep up his Champion path and aggro.

  Especially not me. Not like this, at least, she thought, as she leaned over the railing to look down again.

  Tun was going at it once more, the tank apprentices opposite him having been cycled out by fresh ones.

  I need something like that, she thought. Something that can keep up with the others… Something that can keep us all safe out here.

  Unfortunately, all she could do for the moment was continue her training and conditioning, and continue to learn and study the ways of the tank, and hope that she would be capable enough to keep the party safe until she finally unlocked her affinity.

  *********

  Viy stared into the vast, silken twilight outside. In the quiet of the night, with the snack machines humming at the back of the leisure room, she eyed the void with blank emptiness upon her features, blind to the glimmering trails of aetherships flying alongside the Scimitar.

  She saw things that weren’t there, but which she would never forget. And even in the silence, especially in this silence, she could still hear their screams… As she always would, and just as she had, when the psaelis had invaded her mind due to her low, almost non-existing, 2 points of [Ego]...

  Laughter and footsteps startled her out of the deep darkness into which she always found herself slipping towards, and a ghost of a smile touched her lips.

  These apprentices knew nothing of who she was, or had been, and she had quickly made friends with several of them. Soon, she might even become more than friends with a few of them… And both genders at that! Being outside was beyond amazing.

  She shot to her feet, grinning. It was time for fun and for laughter, and the memories could be forgotten for the night.

  However, though she might have left the cubeplant and the B-Nex behind to step into the bright, glamorous Nexus and Labyrinth outside, a part of her was still trapped within the dark, chained by her guilt.

  It kept her back there, with all that screaming…