By the morning of the third day since going to the astral plane, I finally felt like my body was recovering back to full strength. I could get up, stretch and even go for a quick jog around the nearby mountainside without feeling dizzy or exhausted. As enjoyable as the scenery was, however, my endurance still wasn’t back to a hundred percent. I didn’t want to risk holding Alice and Freya back while they went out for another day of gathering, so I stayed back at our camp one more time.

And I had some unfinished business I needed to take care of.

I still hadn’t forgotten about Viela’s fire spell and my anti-magic Divine Gift that was supposed to help me safely cast it. After all, that was the original reason I did that soul bond with the fox spirit and drank her weird potion. Now that I knew I had enough soul magic proficiency to shift between my human and fox spirit forms, I should be able to control my Gift, too.

Freya felt like her cub Arwen was getting too spoiled from being pet all day long by Titania and me, so after many mewed complaints, Arwen left with the snow leopard spirit. As sad as I was to see her go, I did need some personal space for this.

When I finally had some time to myself in my foxy form, I crossed my legs, reentered my meditative stance, and focused inward. Just like I could reach out to the part of my soul bond with Viela, I reached out to my own soul and the gleaming, amorphous barrier surrounding it—my Gift, Mirror of Soul. If I needed that anti-magic protection for my body, then there was only one thing to do.

After an hour or so of effort—it was hard to keep track of time like this—I managed to get a good enough hold on the ethereal ‘Mirror’ to precisely bend it to my will. I ‘pulled’ a portion of the barrier from that astral space, bringing it outward from deep within me. With a concerted effort and copious amounts of mana, I bent and stretched the Mirror like I was putting on an invisible, skintight wetsuit from the inside out, covering every bit of my body. I felt a slight tingling sensation when the barrier reached the edges of my skin, but I kept shaping it until everything from my toes to the tips of my hair were covered.

I stood up, stretching my muscles that were aching from sitting cross-legged that long. I felt pretty good, physically and mentally now that my task was complete. At long last, after all these days… I finally mastered enough soul magic to level up my anti-magic ability!

Now it was time for a little test.

I ran out of the cave, looking for Viela. Titania had departed earlier in the morning to go hunting again, but the fox spirit should be around here somewhere…

I came to a stop when I spotted her. Sitting outside the cave on a flat bed of mountain grass, a busty brunette was meditating in the sun. Her eyes were closed, her legs crossed, and her usual distinctively foxy features were missing.

Just when I was about to ask Viela what she was doing in her new human form, my jaw dropped. A burning ball of fire almost the size of her head burst into existence behind her. Then another, and another. The three flaming orbs spun around her in a slow circle for a while, coming to a stop in the air behind her.

I damn near lost it. That magic… I recognized it! That looked exactly like Flame Orbs, a spell from the sorceress class in an MMO I played back in high school! A spell I must have cast hundreds if not thousands of times, back when I played my first sexy sorceress I named Lady Beryl.

How the hell did she…?

As if sensing my presence, Viela opened her eyes and smiled at me.

“Yes, this is a nice little trick,” the fox spirit said. “I think I can make use of this one.”

I gulped, preparing to ask the obvious. “Y-You saw that from one of my memories, back when we soul bonded together, didn’t you?”

Viela shot me a wink. As she stood up, the orbs of fire behind her rose in the air as well.

“Not telling… Lady Beryl~.”

Ugh!

“Well, fine. It just so happens that I want to try another ‘test’ with fire magic. You might not be able to see it, but thanks to you, I should have enough anti-magic to safely cast fire spells now.”

She considered my words in silence for a moment, staring at me as though she were trying to see the results anyway. A minute later, she shrugged, her fox ears and fluffy tail rematerializing in a blur of light.

“Very well. But you should remember what I warned you about playing with fire. If you think you can handle this, I won’t hold back.”

With that, she thrust a hand forward, and the three flaming orbs behind her flew through the air toward me in three wide arcs. I was about to curse her recklessness, but a fresh rush of adrenaline redoubled my confidence, and I braced myself for the attack.

Two balls of fire flew at me from my right and one from my left. When the first was nearly about to collide with me, I focused mana into the Mirror around my fist and punched the burning orb. With a blast of smoke and a pop like a firecracker, it sputtered out of existence.

I threw two more punches at the last two orbs, both of them suffering the same fizzling fate, dispelled for good.

“Alright!” I cheered. “How do you like that?”

Viela stared at me with her mouth half-open. “Beryl, I… I wasn’t going to actually make them hit you. They were going to curve in front of you and miss.”

“Huh? Oh, well… That just goes to show you shouldn’t underestimate me now, right?”

She let out a quick laugh, smiling. “Don’t get too cocky now. You really didn’t feel a thing?”

I held up my hands and stared at them. It could have just been my imagination, but maybe they felt a little warmer than before.

Or that could have been because I was standing out in the sunlight now…

“They’re fine, see?” I said, holding them up.

Viela stepped toward me to take a look, then finally relented. “Alright,” she said with a sigh. “It looks like you’re ready. Let me teach you the basics.”

The fox spirit grabbed a stick off the ground and traced a symbol into a nearby patch of dirt. The flame-like symbol to cast the simple Fire spell looked about as predictable as I expected, but Viela insisted that tracing it correctly would make all the difference.

“Remember, fire magic is all about drawing out your mana and igniting it as quickly as you can,” she said with a nod of encouragement. “The heat needs to be ready the moment you finish tracing the symbol.”

I did everything she described, drawing mana to the tip of my finger while I traced the Fire spell’s symbol. The moment I finished, a tiny candle-like flame flickered into being over my fingertip.

I was so excited to finally get to cast a fire spell that my concentration wavered for just a second, and the flame evaporated into thin air.

Viela stepped toward me with a smile. “That was great for your first go,” she said, gently wrapping her arms around me. “You’ve come a long way since we first met, Beryl.”

Her sudden affection caught me off-guard; it took me a moment before I hugged her back. The sensation of my chest pressing into hers nearly made me quiver. With my enhanced hearing from my fox ears, Viela’s hot breaths on my neck sounded clearer than ever before, making my heart beat faster and faster.

Still, the last thing she said brought the memory of that first fateful encounter to the front of my mind…

“There’s something I’ve been thinking about now and then,” I whispered in her ear. “I don’t know how to say this, but back when we first met, I didn’t really know you that well, and… I kind of—”

“You don’t have to say it,” she whispered back. “That’s just the way it goes sometimes, you know?” Viela gently pulled away, her fiery red eyes staring into mine, still smiling. “We might not get much time alone together from now on, so… we should make the most of it.”

For the second time today, she shocked me by leaning forward and kissing me. My hands started moving up her hips when I returned the kiss, and her hot lips melted into mine. We lost track of time as we lost ourselves in that moment, embracing each other like passionate lovers on our honeymoon.

I felt my fox tail wagging behind me again, but this time… I didn’t even care.

After a minute that might have been an hour, she suddenly pulled away again. Her fox ears twitched overhead before she spun around to check behind her. A tall, well-armored girl came clanking up the mountain pass toward us with something massive in tow. It wasn’t hard to tell then that it was Titania returning with another feathery raptor carcass, dragging it along the ground by its lifeless tail.

“Hey Beryl, I just speared the biggest one yet!” Titania called out with an air of pride. “I still haven’t seen any of those dangerous monsters around here. They really do hide like cowards during the day! Oh, uh… am I interrupting something?”

Viela considered something for a while, then whispered in my ear, “Have you ever done it with her?”

“You… Wh-What?! No! No, of course not.”

Viela clicked her tongue. “Then she probably wouldn’t play along. Well, I think I’ll be good today and keep this little idea to myself. For now,” she finished with a wink.

Wait, what idea…?