Things had eventually settled down, the three of them sitting at the table in the kitchen, Syl sitting so close to Kai she might as well have just crawled into his lap.

  “Are you sure about running this next test? We don't even know what it will be," Kai still wasn't completly onboard with the idea.

  He had a feeling things would be okay, but he still worried about Syl's mental state.

  Sensing his lingering concerns, Syl leaned over and kissed him gently on the lips; he couldn't get past how soft her lips were.

  “You’ve done your part already, but I have to do this. I need to show that woman just how wrong she was.”

  “My part?” Kai asked in confusion; he was having a hard time thinking straight. Whenever he tried to focus, he found himself staring at Syl's soft pink lips.

  He shook himself, focusing on Syl's clear cyan eyes. However, that wasn’t much better than staring at her lips.

  Syl, for her part, had seemed to recover; the insecurity and fear that had gripped her had all but vanished with that first real kiss between them.

  He caught her a longing look; then, shaking herself, she turned to Alicia. “What about you? I was an emotional wreck; Kai was cut to ribbons. What was your experience in that last test?”

  Alicia was sitting across the table from both of them, eyes wide and grinning like a schoolgirl reading her romantic novel. She had spent the last ten minutes with her head on a swivel, only squeaking when either of them broke and chanced another quick kiss.

  “Alicia?”

  She blinked, her ears twitching as she too had to snap herself out of the mental fugue that had taken over their little group. “A sweet old lady, she was an expert in items with egos, especially those like Gift,” Alicia lifted her left hand to show a black pearlescent organic mesh that intricately wrapped around the inside of her palm, fingers and thumb.

  “Is that Gift?” Kai asked as he leaned over the table for a closer look.

  Alicia nodded enthusiastically, “Once she tested me and was happy, I didn’t see Gift as a tool to be used, abused, controlled or even forced into submission; she taught us both so much.”

  “So that on your hand is actually Gift?” Syl said as she too couldn’t help but lean in to get a better look.

  “Yes, he is sleeping right now. The training we went through took a lot out of him. But the moment there is a threat, I'm sure he will wake up. He is a little too eager to prove himself…”Alicia said happily, before whispering to herself, “Kind of like me.”

  “So gift is a he?” Kai asked, glad to have another guy in the group.

  “Well, no, not really; items technically do not have genders. But he looks up to you, Kai, so that is what he decided on.”

  Syl chuckled; everyone “Everyone looks up to Kai; he’s too tall. I preferred it when you were a little shorter; it would have been easier.”

  “What would have been easier?” Kai asked, confused yet again.

  Alicia let out a contented sigh, “The kiss… Syl was on the tips of her toes for most of it.”

  Kai glanced at Syl. She grinned, whilst he fought back a fresh wave of embarrassment over such a public display of affection.

  “I suppose I just need to add taller heels to my attire. But I'm sure Kai will learn to bend his knees. Alicia’s much shorter; can you imagine when you two get to that stage?”

  Kai felt hotter, his face now burning in embarrassment.

  Sinking his face into his hands, Kai moved the conversation on, “Inego was kind of like that, like the sweet old lady… One minute he’s running his sword through my kidney in some kind of test of my abilities, then the next he was all fatherly, trying to impart all the wisdom he could.”

  Syl tapped her fingernails against, her frustration clear.

  “Kain wasn’t like that, not at all; from beginning to end I wasn’t good enough, would never be good enough. Every time I thought I succeeded in what she asked of me, she beat me back down and told me I had to do better if I wanted…” She paused to take a long look at Kai, carefully finding her words. “She said I was unworthy, that I would never be worthy no matter how hard I tried…”

  “No… she didn’t?” Alicia hissed.

  Apparently Alicia had picked up on something Syl would or could not bring herself to say, as Syl answered Alicia's question with a scowl and an angry nod.

  Feeling clueless, Kai leaned over, squeezing Syl's hand; he kissed her brow. “The Syl I know can do anything; just look about you. You have me, Alicia, and this home. You did all that; I'm just your support. If anything, I'm the one who is unworthy.”

  Alicia groaned, “How does he do that?”

  “How do I do what?”

  Syl just patted him on the cheek as she smiled at him.

  “It is like watching a blind orruk. Big, soft and cuddly, but also not too bright. Yet somehow you always stumble down to the nearest watering hole just in time to get the last drink. Despite having no clue how it got there!”

  “Don’t know if I like being the watering hole, definitely not the last drink when you’re around.”

  Alicia's eyes flashed to Kai before fixing on the table, mumbling, “If we are doing this next test, I should get started on something for us to eat.”

  Kai coughed, “Yes, erm,” he wasn’t so oblivious that he didn’t pick up on the implications of that last metaphor, “I’ll hop out and sort out my gear.”

  “Before you go anywhere, don’t you think you might be forgetting something?” Syl said, touching a finger to her lips.

  Alicia giggled.

  At around one in the afternoon on the system clock, the three of them stood before the third arch, looking into its shadows.

  “And you’re sure we have time?” Kai asked.

  “Kain told me if I used the skills she was teaching me, it would be trivial. She hinted I wasn’t ready, but we are going to prove her wrong.”

  Alicia flicked her left hand, Gift shifting from wrapping around her palm and fingers to grow back into a bow, the transformation taking only seconds. “We are ready.”

  Impressed by the magical transformation Kai asked, “Why the change? I mean, why wear him? Didn’t you just store him before?”

  “I can still do that, but like any other growth item, storing gift places him somewhere within my soul, with my cores. I don’t have a domain yet, so it isolates him, forcing him into a kind of stasis. This is much better.” Alicia said as Gift chimed. “This way he can observe, learn and grow.”

  Syl floated to stand just in front of the arch. “Kai, my handsome meat suit, we’re waiting on you.”

  Kai flexed, rotating his shoulder as he tested the fit of his new set of armour.

  With blood, sweat and grime, he had just about worn in the last set, so much so that it was beginning to feel like a second skin to him.

  Now almost everything he had equipped was new and needed breaking in again.

  His fresh set of armour was almost exactly the same as it was before, only missing all the scuffs, rends, and cuts he had accumulated over the last couple of days.

  All the new pieces were coming from the duplicated sets he had from what he had been given as part of a tutorial package. The only thing he was missing was the left vambraces Inego had ruined; the plate piece of armour now replaced with a leather one.

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  He would have to be careful he didn’t go blocking any attacks with his left forearm thinking he still had the added protection of steel.

  “We need to think about upgrading your armour if you are going to stay on the front line. I don’t think any of the armour from Bob’s package is going to stand up much longer, especially if we keep taking on higher-level threats.” Syl said as she gave him a once-over before they committed to passing through the arch.

  “My armour was actually doing okay until that old man decided a quick flick with his blade was a good way to provide the needed motivation in the limited time we had. It’s my stash of weapons that has really begun to fall behind, though that shouldn’t be much of a problem anymore.”

  “Yeah, we noticed the broken hilts…” Syl said, giving him a questioning look.

  He pulled the longer longsword hilt from his belt, holding it down and to the side; he called upon the mana he needed, pulling it through his channels as fast as his flow would allow without causing undue injury; he anchored it to the broken hilt as he built his blue-glowing, phantom blade.

  “Oh gods, we’re doomed; you’ve only gone and figured out laser swords. That litigious mouse might just come for us if any lawyers manage to survive the tutorial,” Syl joked.

  Kai lifted the blade, pointing the faint blue tip at Syl; he grinned, “This is way better than any laser sword.”

  “Kai, it’s a glowing sword you just made appear by pulling out a hilt,” Syl said as she tapped the point of the vorpal blade with her finger; it flashed purple, and she jumped back in surprise. “Fuck! That hurt; that thing actually cut my astral projection!”

  His control slipped, the mana making up the blade scattering before Kai could draw it back in.

  Concerned about taking control, he stepped over to Syl in a flash. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean- I didn’t even intend- I didn’t think that it could harm you.”

  Alicia was right there with him. Both of them inspected Syl's hand as she held it out, rotating it back and forth; everything seemed fine apart from the tip of her finger, which was fuzzy and distorted.

  “Relax, you two, no lasting damage, just gave me a shock…” Syl reassured them. “Kai, what else can that thing do?”

  “It’s just a sword made from mana, so everything a sword can do, but also tied to my willpower and intent… We only talked about being able to use skills and abilities, and eventually, as my control grows, I can expect to slice through almost anything. But Inego did say I had a lot more to learn.”

  Syl shook her hand vigorously a couple of times, eventually stopping to show a perfectly normal, fully restored finger.

  She sighed, “You got a cool new sword technique, which will only get better with practice, and Alicia has Gift that will continue to grow as she does. When do you guys think I'll get something, and I mean something good, not just skills and a mental flogging?”

  “You finally got Kai.” Alicia said enthusiastically.

  Syl snorted, “I’m sharing him, so that doesn’t count.”

  “Right, so everyone’s ready; let’s get going.” Kai said, not at all liking the direction their conversations always seemed to come to.

  “Yeah,” Syl pouted, “I guess it is about time I show you what I got for my troubles. It’s not as flashy as that sword or making Gift shrink down into a fancy glove. And I hate to admit it; it was worth learning sooner than later.”

  Kai stepped into the arch, “See you both on the other side.” If they kept talking, they would be standing there all afternoon.

  He found himself standing in a small, round, open-top room with only one exit.

  Syl was floating to his left while Alicia stood with Gift at the ready to his right.

  Looking down the only exit from where they had been placed, he saw the path split and diverge at irregular intervals.

  He groaned, “It's a maze; this could take hours.”

  “Not if I exploit what I just learnt; be right back,” Syl said as her full form disappeared and an orange ball of spiritual fire shot up high into the sky.

  Kai looked about; the walls were solid sheets of an off-white marble-like material, with no visible bricks or lines or mortar. The perfectly smooth surface would be impossible to climb.

  A bright blue sky drifted by high overhead, so high that from where they stood, Kai guessed the walls reached up to be a good six or seven stories above him.

  He hopped where he stood; it was no good, even with his greatly enhanced stats making him reach what, quite frankly, was a stupid height for just a hop; there would be no way for them to even attempt jumping a wall.

  Although, he thought, the walls ahead of them were closer together than they were in the little starting room. Maybe he could wall hop from one to another.

  “What are you doing?” Alicia said as she looked at him, bemusement writ large in the smirk she had cocked to the side of her mouth.

  “Thinking of ways to make this easier, like hopping from that wall,” Kai pointed to one wall in the corridor ahead, then to the other, “and back again until we got high enough to either get over a wall or move along the top of the maze.”

  Alicia giggled and shook her head. “Do you really think that has not been accounted for?

  “She is right,” Syl said through the party chat, “about halfway up here I encountered a barrier. Only just managed to phase through it. I think this place is only open to let light scatter down to your level; that, and it adds two separate time limits to the test… Prepare yourselves; I'm going to share my sense of sight so you can see what we are dealing with.”

  Kai felt a pressure behind his eyes; the moment he acknowledged it, he was overcome with sudden, unexpected vertigo as his vision shifted from where he was to somewhere far above.

  “Oh spirits. Syl, can you keep your eyes on one thing at a time? This is disorienting with you looking this way and then that,” Alicia complained.

  Kai agreed with the sentiment as his mind and body couldn’t agree on what was happening.

  “Sorry, I’ll pick a focal point and hold it,” Syl said as things settled down. “Ok, luckily we're not dealing with some infinite labyrinth. Unfortunately, it's constantly shifting, so there is no real point in us memorising the layout from up here.”

  Kai agreed with the assessment as he watched several walls shift all at once, others disappear and one whole section rotate and merge seamlessly back into the maze's structure.

  “Could we not wait, see if there is a pattern?” Alicia suggested.

  “No, I’m shifting my vision…” There was a whirl of shapes and colours until they were looking more up than they were down. “You see the position of the two suns? At my best guess, we have maybe five hours before it starts to get dark… Again, no actual training; it’s just a guess.”

  “I suppose if it comes to it, we can just camp out. I didn’t see or hear any signs of monsters.” Kai said, adding his own suggestion to the party's little conference. He really did feel like the three of them worked well together.

  “There is another problem; look here.” There was a blur, and they were all looking at the far horizon, where grey and black clouds rolled in. “That is coming this way; any bets there is no drainage in the maze? I have a feeling if we take too long, you two will have to swim through the maze… In the dark.”

  Kai watched the angry mass of storm; Syl was right, it was definitely heading their way.

  From what he had seen of the maze, he didn’t like their chances of getting through this dry.

  “So this is the part where you tell us you learnt something amazing that will get us through this mess.”

  The pressure behind Kai's eyes subsided, and he was suddenly looking at a beaming Syl.

  “I learnt Mana Sense.”

  “Mana sense? Didn’t we already have mana sight? I'm still getting used to it, and it's been useful. But I don’t see how-” Kai started but was cut off by Syl.

  “Mana sense is an evolved, more advanced form of mana sight. You see, mana sight just tweaks your visual senses to help you pick out the traces of mana that sit just outside the average being's visible spectrum.” Syl tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Kai, do you remember how I told you to work on meditating so that one day you could feel the mana as it moves within you, that eventually you’ll be able to feel it not just within but also without, if you were lucky?”

  Kai nodded; he hardly felt anything. The only time he got any real feedback from mana was when he drew upon it and put the energy into something he could see react to his input and manipulation, like his mana bolts or his phantom blade. No, soul sword, ah, shade blade… no, he would be damned if he ripped off one of his favourite authors, even if he found himself in a magical world who knows how far away. He really needed to settle on a name for the technique; he wished Inego had just told him what to call it. Maybe Syl of Alicia had a suggestion.

  “Well, mana sense is just that, a whole new sense for detecting mana,” Syl closed her eyes. “Right now I’m feeling five, maybe six traps, a secret passage and…” Her eyes shot open, and she smiled. “A chest.”

  She pointed, “It’s about ten corridors away, erm. Two rights, skip three left turns, pass a trap and then take another right and then two lefts; that should get us there.”

  “Wait, you said there was no point in committing the layout to memory; how did you work out directions so quickly?”

  “I didn’t.” Syl grinned.

  “Oh, oh,” Alicia literally bounced with something to contribute, “Master talked about this once. You can feel the difference between the dungeon walls and the ambient mana that’s present everywhere in between! You’re using mana sense as a wide area perception skill to map out the local area.”

  Syl snapped her fingers. “Bingo!”

  “What's bingo? You know what! I am just going to assume I was right and move on.” Alicia said, “You two shoul know, I am looking forward to throwing about some Alean lingo and confusing you two when we finally get out of here.”

  Syl chuckled, “You don’t know any Alean lingo; you’re a prim pretty princess, remember.”

  “There will be something… Like, do you know what getting your tips off means?”

  “Not a clue,” Kai said honestly.

  “Actually, back on earth, it had something to do with removing artificial nails, but here, with El'vei about… my guess is something to do with ear tips and orgasms.” Syl suggested. ”Is that close?”

  Alicia looked off into space, blinking, her ears twitching as she thought about what Syl just said.

  “I don’t actually know… was something I overheard, but…” Alicia flushed, the tips of her ears turning pink as they continued to twitch. “That actually makes sense.”

  Gift started to chime; to Kai's ear, it actually kind of sounded a little like laughter.

  “You stop it; that is crass, and it is unbecoming to laugh at someone's embarrassment.” Alicia scolded Gift, “And why would anyone want artificial nails?” she said, turning her attention back to Syl.

  “Oh, Alicia, we need to get this done and have another slumber party,” Syl said as she pointed down the corridor, “lead on, meat suit; it’s girls night tonight!”

  “Isn’t it girls night every night?” Kai asked.

  “Yes, but you have an open invitation. Don’t you want to, what was it, spoon with the two of us?” Alicia asked innocently with no tone of jest or tease to her words.

  But before Kai could ask if she knew what spooning was, Syl shouted, “Bagsy little spoon!” as she turned and drifted off down the corridor.

  Kai had a bad feeling Syl might be rubbing off on Alicia a little more than he liked.

  He watched Syl bounce happily as she drifted away, a fiery ginger with her impressionable young platinum blonde El’viairen best friend, a prim pretty princess in tow, asking what bagsy meant as she followed.

  Maybe it wasn’t so bad.

  Though when he thought about it, Thanric might not be pleased with the two of them corrupting his apprentice. At least her mother didn’t know her daughter was being corrupted little by little… yet.

  Seeing the two were getting away from him, he dashed off to catch up.

  “No, I told you, Kai is the middle spoon; that way, when he rolls over, you get a turn being the little spoon…” Syl whispered as the two girls turned the first corner.

  He decided it was best not to dawdle.