Thera sat down in her living room, focusing intensely on the mana within herself. As annoying as it was to have dealt with her aunt a week ago, she couldn’t deny that for once Vividus had been useful to her.

Neither she nor Funa had considered that she’d never experienced dark mana in its natural state, but now that she had, she was aware of the subtle differences between it and the charmed dark mana within her. Funa had told her that she would either need to stop her mana from being charmed before it could be or to remove it after, but given what Vividus explained, stopping it from being charmed might not even be possible currently. If the mana was being charmed within her soul, she didn’t know how to interact with it at that point without doing something crazy like getting the help of the soul mage, but that was all but impossible, meaning she’d have to focus on removing the charm when it left her soul.

That at least meant she wouldn’t be wasting her time trying both options and hoping one would work anymore, but it still wasn’t an easy feat. The little help she had was that now she could feel the subtle difference from how her mana was compared to how it should be, and with as much focus as she could muster she worked on removing her charm from it.

She’d had her first success a few days prior, but she hadn’t been able to remove enough to hope to do anything with it, and before she knew it she’d lost it, feeling it disperse amongst all of the other mana flowing from her. Disappointing as it felt, nonetheless it was still major progress. Every day since then she’d done a little more, gotten a little better, and today she wouldn’t stop until she was able to achieve a spell.

She felt her dark mana gather, little by little as she devoted herself to her task, not letting a bit of it get lost in the chaos that was her charmed mana. It was slow, tedious, and mentally exhausting. She felt sweat form on her brow as all of her mental energy was spent trying to achieve her goal but she was getting there.

It was hard to tell how much time had passed, she knew she wasn’t quick at this from her previous attempts, but she was able to gather more pure dark mana during any other time and she was straining to keep it in one place within herself. If she didn’t succeed now she never would, so she pressed on and tried to form a spell.

She went with what Funa had suggested all those months ago and devoted herself to creating darkness fog, doing her best to assign the characteristics of the spell to the mana, not letting it leave her control until every aspect of it was perfect, and when she could hold on no longer, released the spell.

All at once, light vanished from the room, as if it was a moonless night that not even the brightest of fires could illuminate. If anyone had been with her they might have feared they’d suddenly gone blind, their eyes failing them without reason and trapping them in an eternal darkness, but Thera could only feel elated, and all the more so for the notifications going off in her head.

 

<ACQUIRED SKILL DARK MAGIC LEVEL 0>

<QUEST- MAGICAL GROWTH COMPLETED. SELECT ONE SKILL BELOW THE FIFTH LEVEL TO INCREASE>

 

It would be impossible for her to suppress the smile stretched across her face hearing that. She’d done it. She’d completed the quest she’d gained through the kindness of her god, and now it was time to claim her reward. She clasped her hands in prayer and spoke aloud.

“I humbly request a level to my earth magic.”

<REWARDED WITH ONE LEVEL TO EARTH MAGIC>

<MAX LEVEL OF THE EARTH MAGE JOB ACHIEVED>

 

Her eyes opened wide in shock. She knew that some of the most significant gains in job experience could come from leveling up job-specific skills, but she hadn’t thought she’d been close enough for this to push her over the edge, especially so quickly after gaining her last job.

Then again, she hadn’t checked her card in a while to see any changes that had occurred. Since her last job she had been practicing her magic during her hunts, and thanks to her level-ups in her skills and Ben making better and better staves she was able to regularly use more spells at a greater complexity than she ever had before, not to mention what was sure to be massive gains from killing the invader back then, This reward was just as much a bonus as actually completing her quest.

The darkness that filled the house was beginning to clear up so she wasted no time throwing on her cloak and rushing to the guild. It was never good to wait on these things, especially when putting it off meant potentially missing out on valuable experience.

 

---

 

She made it through the guild without any problems, though was a little disappointed to learn Onk had the day off and couldn’t chat, so she made her way to the job room, placing her hands on the crystal within and letting the options fill her mind.

 

AVAILABLE JOBS

• Queen of mana
• Musician
• Professional Dancer
• Bard
• Darkness mage -charm specialized
• True mage
• Life mage
• Healer
• Telekinetic mage
• Dark mage
• High earth mage

 

Seeing just how many mage jobs she had available to her left her giddy. How could she not be? Since she had already completed the apprentice path, all of her magics would be getting a bonus already which meant she could access the main mage-type jobs for each of her skills. It meant that even if she were to ever run out of options on the earth mage path, she would have other areas she could focus on magic-wise and it would still help her control as a whole.

She looked over each new option and weighed them carefully. She had expected most of them to be there, though healer came as a surprise. From what she knew, it was a job that showed up after one had enough knowledge of medicine as a whole, something she did not possess but assumed it must have been an option for her as a result of having both life magic and her knowledge skill. She wouldn’t be taking it this time or even next, but it was worth considering in the further future.

Looking at the options, it really just came down to either high earth mage or true mage. High earth mage was straightforward enough, it was a continuation of the earth mage job path, one that would focus on providing benefits to that magic alone. It should have been the obvious choice for her, she’d only wanted to work on that magic for the longest time, everything else was just to aid her in growing it.

But that was the issue. Growing her other magics would make earth magic easier to use as well, which meant she had to at least consider true mage. It was a mage path that would grant bonuses to all of a person's magic skills, in her case for better or for worse. While anyone else who practiced multiple mage skills would take it without thought, she had to consider the fact that it would provide bonuses to her charm magic as well.

She was already getting bonuses to it from when she’d taken the apprentice mage job, and as Funa had warned her, increases to her dark magic as a whole could also increase her level of charm if she kept at it. It probably meant she couldn’t take dark mage either in the future if she wanted to avoid that, and right now she had probably already gained experience to the skill by gaining dark magic. Did she want to risk making it worse by getting even more bonuses to it?

To take the chance to try and grow her magics as a whole or to focus in on the one she cared about most, that was the question. Still, there was no reward without some risk, so she decided to take one, just this once.

 

<ACQUIRED JOB- TRUE MAGE LV0>

<BONUSES GRANTED TO IMPROVING MANA, MANA RECOVERY RATE, AND INTELLIGENCE>

<ALL MAGICS AND ANY RELATED SKILLS WILL RECEIVE A GROWTH BONUS>

Name: Thera Oress

Race: Succubus/Spirit Hybrid

Titles: Spirit Child

Jobs: True mage (lv0)

Previous Jobs: Beginner Dancer, Dancer, Apprentice mage, Earth mage

Attributes:

• Vitality: 1003
• Vitality recovery rate: 10/hr
• Mana: 255,639
• Mana recovery rate: 30/min
• Strength: 105
• Agility: 333
• Stamina: 264
• Intelligence: 243
  

Affinities:

• Light: 4
• Life: 22
• Fire: 11
• Water: 14
• Air: 12
• Earth: 103
• Death: 3
• Dark: 43
• Space: 2
• Time: 1
  

Resistances:

• Light: 5
• Life: 9
• Fire: 11
• Water: 16
• Air: 12
• Earth: 35
• Death: 13
• Dark: 42
• Space: 7
• Time: 8
  

Blessed skills:

• Earth magic lv5
• Charm magic lv1
  

Passive skills: 

• World speak+
• Coordination lv3
• Medical knowledge lv1
• Bind

Active skills: 

• Calculate lv1
• Dance lv4
• String instrument lv3
• Woodwind instrument lv2
• Cleaning lv1
• Staff wielder lv0
• Meditation lv2
• Speed reading lv2
• Life magic lv0
• Telekinesis lv0
• Dark magic lv0

Blessings

• Anailias Blessing

Trials

• Trial of Anailia and Tolona

New job selected she let herself breathe a small sigh of relief. A part of her had worried that upon taking the job her charm would level up immediately, something that had the power to instantly destroy her mood if it ever occurred.

Despite any immediate negative consequences to her choice though, she was a little disappointed that no skill came with the job change. She knew that sort of thing only happened occasionally, but she couldn’t help but hope one day something like magic control might fall into her lap, if only she were lucky enough for such a skill to exist, but really any new one would be nice.

Still, she had gotten what she’d come for and nothing disastrous had happened. With so much occurring throughout the day she figured it would be nice to treat herself by putting a pause on all of her practice to sit down with a book and relax, especially given what day it was for her.

 

---

“You can’t be serious.”

When she had gotten home she’d thought she’d get to relax for a bit until dinner while everyone was out, but Ben was home early and laying on the ground, looking like he’d been beaten half to death.

“Hey Thera, I wasn’t expecting you to be out. Mind fixing me up?” He asked, sounding surprisingly upbeat considering his poor condition. Every day that he’d been working on getting the skill, he’d asked her to heal him for her own training, with Sonya correcting whatever side effects her overwhelming mana caused after the fact.

“You sure you don’t want to wait until Sonya gets home?”

“If I feel too off I’ll just go to the clinic after, but I’m sure you’ll be able to manage without it being too bad. You did keep me alive before without any issues, right?”

“I kept you alive long enough for Steph to heal the disaster my magic made of your body. Maybe have a little less trust in me.”

“Hey, you need someone to practice on, right? Besides, if you don’t improve then I won’t get the benefit next time something tries to eat me.”

“The last one didn’t try to eat you,” She said as she placed her hands on his bruises, letting her mana flow through him as she got to work.

“We don’t know that for sure, you stopped it first. Just think, a few more bites and I might gain something like flavour enhancement.”

“There’s no such skill.”

“It will be a passive effect of course, making me more savory every time something gets a taste. If that’s even possible that is. Given the way creatures want to go at me, there's a chance I’m already at peak flavour potential.”

“Yes yes, I’m sure you’re delicious. So what has you in such a good mood given how beat up you are?” He had been far less cheerful the last few days while being healed and took it as a sign of something good at least, and she was spot on.

“I finally got defense enhancement, my torture ends today,” He told her, absolutely brimming with cheer. “With that all done Zandale is heading off home tomorrow and my body can finally know some peace.”

“Except for when it comes to leveling the skill.”

“We aren’t thinking about that today.”

She gave off a small chuckle before telling him everything that had happened with her as well. From gaining a skill, completing her quest, and getting a new job, her day had been almost overwhelmingly positive.

“Dang that’s excellent. Wish my birthdays were that productive.”

He said it kindly and was clearly happy for her, but she felt awkward when it was spoken aloud.

“You heard?”

“I live with your aunt and work with your uncle, of course I heard. Was it supposed to be a secret?”

“No, not really, I just never see much point in bringing it up. I can’t do much for it like others can so it’s just a night in,” She told him with a shrug. Sure, it was nice celebrating with her family, and whether she was with her mother or her aunt, there was always a good meal to go with it, but it also served as a reminder that she wasn’t like others. She couldn’t simply go somewhere to celebrate for fear she’d charm everyone around her, so in the end she didn’t give it much thought, instead trying to let the day pass while enjoying whatever her family ended up planning.

“Well, I’m here so let me change into something nice and we'll have some fun until Sonya and Falk arrive. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep you entertained for a couple hours at least.”