<Catherine's POV>

"You ready, Cathie?" I hear from my side as I'm finishing preparing my sword for today's mission.

It's much more work than one would have thought, you know? You need to check for any chipping, fix them if there are some, which usually takes at least half an hour, then sharpen the blade, because unlike it is in many games the blades actually get dull here, then check for any other things like damaged runes, loose hilt, or worn down rope on the handle. And yes, all of those are rather common with a blade this large and with the way I'm using it.

Right now the damage to the sword is minimal, fortunately. I woke up literally half an hour ago and I would be split if it turned out I need to fix something. I would like to go out as early as possible.

"Just a moment!" I remember to reply to Xethu, the person I'll be going with now.

Daria, Crimson, and Vulcan aren't here, they are at school. I'm not sure about Helia, but she said she won't be going to school, and Xethu apparently isn't going because of her... adventures a while ago, and I... I'm not going. I don't care if I miss a couple lessons. I'll watch the recordings later when I have time.

...Anyway, I'm now going with Xethu, on a nice request she apparently found just this morning when I was still grumbling in bed. Two of us might sound like a pretty small party, especially with no mages or rangers, but I have my hearing for scouting, Xethu is pretty damn strong as I've learned last couple of days, and I trust her to pick an appropriate request we will be able to complete even with the two of us. I'm a bit worried hearing her enthusiastic voice about a nice mission, but I don't think she would pick up something we can't deal with.

Well, at worst we'll get a death penalty, which is a small decrease in soul size and six hours till rebirth.

With such thoughts I finish re-carving a small rune in the pommel of the blade, which aids in channeling my mana into the sword, and close the panel with the reference photo. I straighten up with a soft groan dangerously resembling a purr, then hop down from the bed and put the blade on my back, looking at Xethu.

And I see the demoness staring at me intently, though she blinks a moment later and turns around.

"Let's go." She looks back with a smile, as she walks through the door, clad in her usual simple leather outfit with a blade strapped to her hip, bouncing slightly with each step.

"...Mhm!" I nod enthusiastically, slightly lagged by the smile, walk out after her and close the door.

"The request is to clear a small kobold nest around five hours on foot from Black Harbor." The demoness starts speaking as we walk through the inn and out onto the streets, then set out in the direction of the northern gate. "It was spotted yesterday, but the scout wasn't equipped to deal with it and they made this request. I figure we won't have problems with kobolds even without any support."

"Mhm, yeah. They're pretty stupid, huh?" I smirk. "Was there information about the number?"

"The scout stated ten to fifteen, with no elders. I was thinking we could take out a few by surprise, and then there should be no problems as long as they don't encircle us."

"Yeah! I like it!" I grin. Sounds like something more challenging than last wild herb collecting request, which was almost boring. "Let's go! I'll be ranking up today!"

...

"Say, Xethu, did your skills ever evolve?" I ask in wonder as I inspect my stats after going up to the third rank, giving me a great boost to my strength thanks to one of my skills evolving. Protection of the Moon into Blessing of the Moon, apparently, which is supposed to increase my strength in general, though I don't see much of an increase in stats. It's probably something a little less tangible or somewhat conditional.

It also makes me confused where the fuck Moon is, since I don't see the little shit in this world. What's even the point of Moon's blessing here?

"Ah, yeah, once." The demoness replies and brings me back to mundane matters, turning to me curiously from the kobold corpses strewn around, seemingly finished with extracting the stones from them.

She's the only one to do that cause she's not exhausted by the fight, which is particularly annoying. My stamina is severely lacking. I can match Xethu in terms of instantaneous power output, especially in regards to agility where I can even beat her despite the fact I'm a whole rank lower than her - even more than that if we were to convert her energy to mana - but it loses its meaning when she can kill a small group of kobolds with ease while I'm left wheezing after a minute of following her pace.

"Was it a significant improvement?"

"Hell yeah. Much greater than ranking up, I think." She says and I look up in surprise at her grinning face. "You've seen when I sometimes get that dark glow around my sword, which puts whatever I hit on fire?"

"Um, yeah?" I tilt my head questioningly.

We've fought quite a lot together, relative to the time spent in VOW overall, and I'm familiar with her set of visible skills. She might have some other as well, but it didn't ever come up during our talks.

"Basically, when that girl was training me, there was a time when she threw me against a particularly strong monster. When I was about to die from it, my Black Flame Refinement evolved into Black Flame Essence, allowing me to kill that thing." She unsheathes her sword and holds it up in the air while glancing at me. "The difference between the two is that if it was before, I'd be coating my sword in fire, while now I coat it in... well essence, which transforms into fire when I will it. For example inside my enemy."

I watch curiously as the sword gains a black glow... or that's how I describe it, but it's a little weird, like it's dimming the surroundings, and I'm not sure how else to put it into words, then blooms into black flames just when Xethu finishes speaking.

"It greatly reduces the energy cost since essence doesn't consume anything while fire burns my energy constantly. I'm not sure what this essence is though." The demoness says as the fire flickers out quickly and she expertly slides the blade back into its sheath.

Something I'd never imagine Katarin doing... She was definitely spoiled before, though not so much it would become infuriating like it was in some other cases. It was annoying at most, and occasionally even endearing once you got to know her. Another thing is physical activity, which as far as I remember from the talks we had she was completely not interested in. I have no idea what she wants to do in the future, come to think of it...

Likely because of the influence of her parents, she was a rather religious person and I've even heard she wanted to be a nun when she was young. Like, really young. Looking at her now, I say she'd be a really good nun if she went in that direction. With the horns and all... like a couple of kobold blood splatters on her pretty face...

Oh, here I go again.

Well, I doubt she wants to become a nun now.

"Why do you ask, by the way? Did one of your skills evolve?" Xethu asks, yanking me back to reality, and I refocus on her as I nod eagerly.

"Yeah, Protection of the Moon into Blessing of the Moon. It's supposed to strengthen me, but I don't feel much of a difference."

"Maybe it will strengthen you in the night? ...Ah." The demoness scrunches up her face as she looks up into the sky. "Where would you find a moon though?"

"Yeah, that's what I'm wondering about as well." I smile wryly.

"Mmm, well, I don't think we'll get an answer anytime soon." Xethu shrugs, hopping to me and plopping down on the stone I'm sitting on next to me. "You satisfied with the rank up past that?"

"Mhm, yeah!" I nod with a wide smile, looking at my character sheet.

I'm not entirely sure how it works, because it wasn't explained officially apart from the very basics, but ranking up is something along the lines of strengthening your core and consolidating a stronger foundation. I think Daria compared it to a building once, that growing the core means building upwards and ranking up means strengthening the foundation and overall construction so the core won't destabilize.

Point is that each rank up comes with a lot of discreet boosts that are not properly reflected in stats, for instance that while I initially had trouble activating my abilities in the middle of an intense fight, at Rank 2 I grew to be able to do that without problems as long as I kept my focus. Now, at Rank 3, I feel like I could compare it to writing on a keyboard; at first I needed to press each key individually, then learned to write smoothly, and now it would be writing without looking at the keyboard. It's still slow and I might stumble somewhere, but it's a great improvement.

"Say, Xethu, was there a similar change at Rank 4? I think it was said somewhere that there's a distinct divide between third and fourth."

"Yeah, there is." I notice as the demoness pulls up her character sheet and looks through it for a moment. "Even higher than earlier I'd say, because your energy gets compressed at that stage. Cynthia told me that generally ranks first to third are grouped as apprentice, fourth to sixth as mage, and seventh to ninth as archmage."

"What's further? And who's Cynthia, by the way?" I ask curiously. Did she go meet some girl behind my back?

"I haven't told you?" Xethu turns to me with a small frown. "Hm, that girl who was training me was called Cynthia. She taught me a lot of things as well, though her character leaves a lot to be desired." She touches her chin lightly and looks into the distance with a small smile.

Hmph. Bothersome. Pout.

"Ah, as for ranks further than archmage, she didn't tell me anything. Though I'm sure there is something. She herself was at Rank 9, and since the gap between each rank grows larger as you go higher, there's still a massive difference between us."

"Rank 9?" I turn back to her with raised eyebrows. "Wouldn't it be solid white rank if she was a hunter?"

"Well, she was a demon, so I think she was stronger than any ordinary white hunter." Xethu chuckles dryly. "I haven't meet anyone remotely as strong as her, at least. Not even Xavier."

"Huh." I let out in wonder. "What about Helia?"

"Normal measurements don't apply to her and you know it." Xethu says decisively as she turns around and looks at me with a smile. "I've an ability that allows me to vaguely gauge how powerful someone is, that's why I said I haven't met anyone stronger than Cynthia. Helia meanwhile was really weird, because she felt like she was no stronger than you. But we saw how powerful she can be, meaning I can't even approximate her power."

"...Okay." I say after a while, not sure how I am supposed to react to that. "What does it say about me?"

"Hm." The demoness looks at me with a scrutinizing eye. "You're more dangerous than you look. If I were to believe what Cynthia told me about this ability, then it would be dangerous for me if we were to fight."

I blink in surprise at that. "You're Rank 4 though? And a demon? Isn't it a little... hm." I drop my head, thinking intensely.

Is it something like instinct? Because looking only at our stats and pure power, then Xethu should be so far above me it would be hard to even compare us. But if her ability is based on instinct or something similar, not on mana or stats, then it might be much more accurate if she were to meet someone exceptional.

"Um, how high physical stats do you have?" I ask curiously, glancing at her sheet reflexively despite the fact it's censored.

"You mean after adding all modifiers?" I nod my head vigorously and gulp in surprise when she casually uncensors her panels and floats them to me.

Not willing to just sit there like an idiot and read her personal info, I pull out and uncensor my own sheet, then put the two side by side, rotating a little bit to let us both see them.

"Strength at twenty, mine almost one and a half that... Speed... what the fuck." Xethu lets out with a weird surprised expression just as she begins. "What's up with your Speed? How is it higher than mine? And Focus the same..." Her voice trails off.

"It's probably Blessing of the Moon. It provides a passive boost even now." I answer, looking through the stats and realizing that there is hardly anything else I can boast with. "My stats are really skewed though. Apart from those two only Channeling isn't bad, but you have all other stats higher by half or even more."

"Mmm, right~. " I hear a quiet voice just beside my ear and I barely contain a shriek of surprise, jerking away from Xethu and hearing my heartbeat drum in my ears a moment later.

Fuck. I turn away from the demoness as she looks at me with raised eyebrows. Fuck. I'm so sure I'm red as a tomato right now, and for much more than one reason, embarrassment probably one of the less important. And I worked so hard not to think about that now...

"Cathie?" She asks in concern.

"N-nothing." I squeak out.

Aaaah her voice is so... I don't know what! I've no... okay I know I'm attracted to her, and fucking hopelessly at that because many things happened after that damn nightmare that involved being intimate physically and emotionally and I just can't stop thinking about that and about the fact that nothing came out of it because of me.

And now... how can she catch me off guard like that... Speaking next to my ear in that quiet voice...

"Cathie." Xethu asks in a little more stern voice. "Your ears speak for you, and it's the third time I've ever seen them drooping. It was obviously something I did. Please tell me what's wrong?"

"Nothing!" I say, louder than I intend. "It's just..." Just my insecurities, I guess. Clashing with Xethu's genuine concern. Bad ears.

It's all so stupid... Why can't I just be the girl I want... or rather the Wolfkin, huh? It would all be so much simpler... I could just... tell her I love-

Huh.

I really did think that, huh? I'm so fucking hopeless.

It's at that moment that I feel a pair of strong arms wrapping around my figure, which I didn't even notice was hunched before, and I feel a droplet landing on my hand. I feel a pair of boobs pressing into my back as Xethu squeezes me hard, and I wipe my eyes of the tears that started falling at some point and I didn't even notice.

"Cathie." The demoness says softly, her head just next to my drooping ears, and takes a breath, seemingly wanting to say something more, but stays silent.

"S-sorry." I whisper, collapsing in her arms. "I just... can't deal with it."

"Mm?" She gently nudges me to continue, even though I should... I should tell her all that by myself, right?

"You know me out of VOW?" I ask, my voice slightly croaky.

"Yeah... Alex, right?" Xethu asks hesitantly, pulling back a little bit, and I nod repeatedly. "Why do you ask?"

"I hate it." I spit out angrily and distinctly feel as the demoness flinches in surprise. "I detest every fucking second of it. I thought HRT would fix it all, but it just..." I sob and feel myself shiver. "...Doesn't work anymore." A spasm shakes my body as I can't stop another sob, and I don't resist at all when Xethu turns me around and embraces me strongly.

And I feel... I don't know. The demoness holds me close and I wrap my arms around her, leaning fully on her warm body and pressing my face into her shoulder, silently crying only before Xethu puts a hand on my head and runs it lightly over my hair and my ears. Like it was a signal, I suddenly feel something welling up inside me and I burst out sobbing loudly, just like it was after that nightmare.

And it feels... fucking good, not to bottle up everything and cry. It's... I don't know. Stupid, maybe. But I don't think the tightness in my chest and the smile that shows through my tears mean anything else.

It's probably only because it's Xethu though. Because I fucking love her, despite the fact I told myself I would never let myself do that again.

...Maybe I should give it a try.

I glance up at Xethu's face and I see her looking down at me with a small, caring smile, and I shudder as a wave of something washes over me, beginning with my heart and ending at my glowing cheeks.

I bury my face in her shoulder again to hide the smile that somehow appeared on my face.

"...Don't leave me, okay?" I ask and pull my ears down instantly in embarrassment.

"Sure." The demoness says without missing a beat, and I hear that specific type of smugness and cheekiness in her voice. "I don't think I would even if you asked me to."

...Yeah, I really should give it a try again.