“Erica, do you know where Yuki is?” Akira asked, peeking into Erica’s room. Erica head slowly went up from her bed.

“Yuki?” she repeated. She scratched her head and frowned. “No. I came to the base and went right asleep. I haven’t seen her since she went back last night. It thought she was with you?”

“Yuki was, but when I woke up, I couldn’t find her,” Akira explained. “So I thought she might have passed through.”

“She didn’t,” Erica said, shaking her head. “At least, I didn’t see her.”

“Oh. I see,” she sighed. She went inside the room and sat beside Erica who was still laying on her bed beneath her sheets. “I’m just worried you know?”

Akira could tell Yuki wasn’t doing well the moment he had stood up. He looked distracted and felt distant, his mind elsewhere rather than on the situation at hand. She could feel it within him, but he withdrew too far for her to fully understand what was going on.

“Why not ask Uriel?” Erica suggested. “She would probably know where Yuki is. She knows where everyone is it seems.”

“I should have thought of that,” Akira said. “I wonder what Yuki’s doing.”

“I wouldn’t have the faintest clue,” Erica laughed.

---

 

Meditation. A common practice people would use to relax and empty their minds from the stress of the world around them. Yuki rarely ever used them like that. For him, meditation was a tool to focus his mind rather than empty it. And focus was what he needed right now.

The fight played in his mind like a broken recording. Every movement that he made replayed bit by bit. Every action that his opponent took that he could see flashed before his mind’s eye. He broke down, reconstructed, and broke down again the entire scene in an endless cycle in his attempt to understand it. And he still drew up blank.

‘I swear that my attack did something to him,’ he thought, rewinding back to when he did his last counter. ‘It looked like he reacted.’

But what Yuki couldn’t figure out was what happened after. His understanding of what the man did before was already blurry enough. Yuki understood that the man had converted himself into wind and blended himself in with the air. How that was possible, Yuki didn’t know though it wasn’t the first time he had witnessed something like that. He had watched Akira crumble into dust only to reform meters away. He had seen Zoe fuse with trees and travel through them for miles. 

‘But I never understood how to do it. I thought it was something demons could only do, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.’ 

That old man being able to convert himself into air proved to Yuki that such a skill wasn’t limited to only demons. However, just from an outside view, Yuki understood the amount of skill and focus that a skill like that required. To be able to do such a task while also fighting hinted at the true skill the man held.

The man’s small speech before he disappeared played in Yuki’s mind again. The speech where the man declared that they were fundamentally different. That the difference between them was focus. What exactly the man was referring to, Yuki wasn’t sure. However, it was becoming more and more clear as he poked at the fight to find what set him and the man apart. 

The man knew only one element from what Yuki could see and that was wind. That didn’t make him any weaker though. He seemed to have a mastery over the one attribute he had, a mastery that not many could obtain. Being able to attack while a mass of air particles connected by mana displayed just a part of his skill set. 

‘He didn’t use any other magic besides wind,’ Yuki thought. ‘I don’t think that it’s because he doesn’t know any other magic. It might be because he’s more comfortable with his elemental magic.’

There was a term for someone that dealt exclusively with elemental magic. They were elementalists. The term made Yuki think back to Earth and his time with Aether. They technically were elementalists as well since it seemed they only knew elemental magic. But elementalists in Ethros were different.

To be considered an elementalists, one needed to be a master of an element. One had to dedicate themselves to that element. Not many did this, at least from what Yuki could see in official records. Many who become an elementalist did so because they lacked talent in other types of magic. However, there were a select few that chose this path because it best fit them.

‘This man has to be one of them.’

There was no other way to explain it. The mastery the old man had over the wind and air was impeccable. If he wasn’t a wind elementalist, then that presented a whole other problem.

‘But there’s almost no way that he isn’t one. This might be premature, but that man might rival demons of the same attribute.’

And that was where Yuki believed the man meant when he said focus. The man had seemingly dedicated his entire life to the pursuit of mastery of the wind. A pursuit that looks to have been successful. Others, on the other hand, would dabble about in various practices and fields until they found one they liked and learned enough to become “good”. A few more would endeavor until they were “experts”. But few would spend the time needed to become a master. 

That told a lot to Yuki. For one, it meant that the man must have a lot of free time, or at least, had a lot of free time. Mastering something wasn’t something that could be done in a day. It also meant that the man was a natural talent. Finally, it told Yuki that the man had extreme amounts of focus and dedication. To master something like magic wasn’t an easy task. Yuki himself got frustrated at times with certain ideas that failed to produce results no matter how much he tried. It takes titanic proportions of will power to force oneself down the road of mastery.

‘And that type of focus isn’t something I have.’

Yuki had focus. He knew that for a fact. He also knew that it was fundamentally different from the man’s. Yuki’s focus was centered around necessity. When a problem arose, Yuki would throw himself at it and hit it relentlessly until it was solved. But once solved, he would move on.

‘And that has worked so far. But maybe it’s time to try something else.’

Because of how Yuki developed his skills, he was far from balanced, so to speak. His skills were disproportionate to each other in mastery and his techniques were rough. And despite being disproportionate, his skills were still too close to each other in mastery for him to consider one pathway as his main.

‘My class and passives don’t help with this.’

Assassin was by all intents and purposes, a wonderful class. However, it also required a multitude of skills from various fields. One had to be able to conceal themselves, track people, and learn various forms of fighting. Support mage was another amazing class. However, it required that one learn every support class known in order to truly become a master of that class. 

Then his passives. Demonic growth wasn’t a problem. If anything, it helped with the mastery of multiple skills and techniques. The problem was weapon master. By having it, it meant that Yuki had the potential to master any weapon he held. And by focusing on only one weapon, Yuki saw it as a waste of such a unique passive.

‘Then there’s that passive that still has question marks. But based on everything else, it probably also encourages me branching out to multiple fields.’

So it was impossible for him to solely focus on one skillset. Doing so wouldn’t be using the available tools he had to their full potential. However, there did seem to be implications as to what skillset he should focus on first. And that was that of an earth elementalist.

‘Show me my skills pertaining to the earth,’ he asked, directing his question to his UR. ‘I haven’t checked in a while. I don’t think anything has improved so far.’

A few moments later, lines of text appeared before his eyes.

「MAYUMI YUKI (Rank A / 2 Star / Tier 4)

    Title: Gaea’s Chosen One

    Class: Assassin / Support Mage

    Passive Abilities: Weapon Master , Demonic Growth , ???

    Blessings: Earth Dragon’s Blessing , Gaea’s Authority (10%)

    Skills: Metallurgy (Lv. 5)

    Techniques:

               Magic -  Elemental Magic: Expert Earth (Lv. 7)      

                             Earthen Core (Unknown)

            Physical - Dance of the Dragons (Lv. 6) : Earth Dragon (Lv. 5)」

‘The blessing is higher than I expected,’ Yuki thought as he read through the information. ‘Probably because of the metallurgy I was learning.’

Everything else was about what he expected. His skills had barely gone up in general because he had recently been focusing his efforts on other things. He suspected that his earth magic went up a little mainly because of the time he spent learning metallurgy which required him to use the earth in ways he never had to before.

But this was good in Yuki’s eyes. It meant he had something to aim for. It meant that he had goals that he could set. Focus. What the man said was important, but not in the way the man probably meant. Yuki would focus, yes. But equally on everything he had. 

‘So the goals for now. Raise my earth magic. Hopefully to that of a master, though that might be reaching. With it, I think I can improve my fighting skills as I have more to work with, but more I have to master. Lastly, I need to figure out what the hell Earthen Core really does as well as that blessing.’

Sophie had given him a brief explanation before on Earthen Core. Now he needed to figure out a way to utilize it. And that started with understanding it. If what Sophie said was true, then it would help him immensely. As for the blessing, Sophie knew nothing about it. That meant that Yuki was by himself on that front. He knew it was powerful. He just needed to know what that power actually is.

He opened his eyes, ending his meditation. Blinking a for a bit as he gathered his bearings, he checked the time. He was meditating for roughly a few hours. Akira must have woken up by now.

‘Akira?’ he asked, tugging on their mental chord. ‘Are you up yet?’

[Yuki? Where are you? I was just about to ask Uriel,] she replied, her words coming out in a tumble. 

‘So you’re up. I’m in the training room,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be going up soon to eat though. Then I have some business I need to attend to.’

[What business?]

‘Training.’