Hikaru groaned and tried to roll out of the sunlight streaming into his face. An odd weight on his chest kept him from rolling. Sleepily he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, only to find his hand smaller than expected. Looking around he soon found the source of the odd weight on his chest. Amy was using his boobs as a pillow. His mind froze for a moment as it registered the boobs, and took a couple moments to recall last night. He had gone to bed with Amy after the lesson and forgotten to change back to a boy. Hikaru decided to leave Amy alone for a while and began considering what it was like to spend the night as a girl. Last night she had been too tired to really notice how her body settled differently in the roll. Now that she was awake the differences became quite apparent. Her butt had a little more padding, and she rose a bit more off the ground because of it. Her chest had more weight to it, in addition to the head resting on it, and her frame was overall smaller. Honestly as different as her new form felt lying against the ground she did feel comfortable. Thinking back to last night, she began to feel and gather the mana around her. Gathering mana felt quite good and fairly relaxing. So relaxing in fact that she began to forget her surroundings.

She didn’t even notice when Amy woke up, nor did she note the shift in the weight on her chest. If she had maybe she would have noticed Amy get up, but she didn’t nor did she notice anything else her fellow party member did. Instead, Amy was able to get ready for the morning without interruption. Given their lack of spare clothing and general supplies that mostly amounted to casting a cleaning spell, and hand brushing her hair. Hikaru was suddenly jolted when Amy shook her a bit violently. With a bright smile, Amy said, “I was going to suggest you take up daily meditation, but it is nice to see you doing it on your own. Just a minor suggestion, pay a little more attention to your surroundings while you do it.” Then she lifted up a pair of panties. It took Hikaru a couple of seconds to realize they were hers. The spell changed her clothes to match her changed form. The moment she did, she turned bright red and snatched them back. Then she ushered Amy out. She found what just happened to be rather embarrassing, and spent several minutes sitting there trying to sort out her feelings on the matter.

Her morning so far had been rather, well different from what she was used to. Having her panties stolen while meditating was particularly distressing, but after calming down she understood the point. Meditating was good, but letting herself slip so deeply was dangerous. Doubly so for her sanity. After calming down, she grabbed her staff and changed back but not before putting the panties back on. He didn’t know any spells yet, so he couldn’t clean his clothes. Instead, he packed up the roll and exited the tent. Amy was at last night’s campfire, and already working at making last night’s leftovers into something they could eat for breakfast. While she was cooking, he took down the tent and packed it for travel alongside the bedroll. By the time he was done, Amy was done cooking.

Breakfast was a mostly uneventful affair, during which they discussed their travel plans. The goddess wanted them to clear out a few areas of corrupted mana, and to make a path through the mountains. First however they needed supplies, and a better map of the region. Amy wasn’t certain of their exact location, but she believed that a village should be located a couple of days walk to the south of their current location. Any direction was good as any, and if they could find it he hoped they could trade for supplies. Highest on the list would be spare clothing, an extra tent, and a second bedroll. They could also use a new pack, as the goddess had only given them a small bag filled with dried food. The more he thought about it, the more items he could think of that they needed. The goddess had really only given them the bare minimum in terms of supplies. They didn’t have much to trade either. Most of their coin had been lost to the waters earlier, and between the two of them, they only had about twelve silver marks left. Most of which was actually Amy’s money, she had those coins sewed into her robes as emergency funds. He had also had some stuffed in a hidden pocket for emergencies, but he hadn’t been active as long. So he didn’t have as big of an emergency fund.

Amy said that they had enough coin to buy the essentials if they were smart with it. She had also saved the horns and pelts of last night’s catches. They weren’t worth much given how common horned rabbits were but that was still about a quarter of a silver mark. In other words, they were worth a few days rations or a couple of outfits. So they were a welcome source of funds for the party.

Arlie stretched and took a moment to just lay there. Last night had been rather tense, but they had found a safe room, and the boss room last night. Looking around she noticed that only Rose was awake, and that she was already hard at work making breakfast for them. So far this trial had been rather interesting. Each floor was more challenging than the last, and they were forcing her to push herself. Seeing she had the time, she began to meditate and gather mana. Where she quickly discovered a pleasant surprise. Her mana pool had expanded noticeably since she last meditated. Like any muscle, magic improved with exercise, but this dungeon had done her wonders. Normally she would be lucky if her mana pool had improved by one percent over the course of a day, but after taking the measure of how much mana she had found hers had increased by ten percent since yesterday. The last floor had raised it as well, but not as much.

Part of this was likely due to the new technique she had figured out yesterday. She had always been told the lightning magic could be used to enhance a person’s speed, and she had figured out how to do it yesterday. Not that she was very good at it. The efficiency of the technique was horrendous, at least for her version. It cost about twice as much as a simple lightning strike spell per second for a ten percent boost in speed. At least it helped her keep up with Imps, but she really needed to work on that efficiency. She also didn’t quite feel ready to challenge the floor boss. The last one had been rather tough, and this one was likely to be even harder to beat.

Breaking her meditation, she headed over to the fire. The others still hadn’t woken up, but she did notice her Alra familiar was stirring. She started helping Rose make breakfast and dropped her bombshell at the same time. “Hey, Rose? What do you think about staying here for the day?”

“Huh? You want to stay here today? Why?” asked Rose as she added something to the pot she was cooking. Some surprise evident on her face.

Arlie hesitated to answer and looked around a bit before she replied, “I don’t really feel ready to challenge the floor boss, and I want to work on improving that new technique of mine.”

Rose smiled and stirred the pot replying, “I recall, those bursts of extra speed did seem useful, but you always seemed tired out afterward.”

Arlie shifted her posture, and replied, “Its elemental enhancement. I’m not very good at it, and I want some time to practice.”

Rose nodded and spared a glance at the Alra as she stretched her vines and limbs. “I guess I could use a break, and I wonder could you teach me how to add elemental effects to my arrows?”

Arlie paused thoughtfully for a moment, and then replied, “I could given enough time, but not in a day. That would, in fact, take quite a bit of time. You are practically asking me to teach you a spell.”

Curious Rose cocked her head and cutely asked Arlie to elaborate. Arlie didn’t answer right away. Instead, she spent the next several minutes considering her response, by which time the Alra had joined them, and Lily was waking up. “Well at its simplest, magic is the power of will over reality. A mage uses their will to cause a desired effect. Enchanted objects are tools imbued with a magical effect, and they effectively do the job of a spell. In the case of an object, all the real work is done by the enchanted object, and the user simply provides the energy to do the work. Spells are very different, they are a sequence of instructions that a mage makes to the surrounding mana to generate an effect. They can get very complex, and take a lot of concentration to do. Many mages use a focus which acts just like a lever. It gives the mage an advantage magnifying the force of a spell and reducing the effort needed to cast one, but it doesn’t cast the spell for them. Now you want to imbue an effect into your arrows, well to do that you first need to understand the effect you want to imbue into an object. Take fire for instance, what exactly is fire?

Is it heat? Light? Both? Or something more? Without being able to answer those questions you won’t make a very good fire mage. The more you know about fire, the more easily you can gather fire mana and use it. In addition to understanding, affinities have to be taken into account. Affinities make it easier to work with certain mana types over others. A high affinity with fire makes it very easy to cast a fire spell, even with a low understanding, but a low affinity will make it very difficult without a high understanding.”

Lily was settling near the fire clearly a little confused about the topic of conversation, as Rose said, “I guess that explains why you spend so much time pouring over books.”

Arlie nodded, and said, “Magic takes a lot of study to do. Anyone can cast a spell if they take the time to study, and learn. Now the first step on the journey to being a mage is learning to meditate, and gathering mana. The next major milestone is casting your first spell. If you really want to learn, I can help you get started, but I won’t teach you any spells. You will have to create one, if you want to cast a spell.”

Rose digested that for a moment, as she checked the pot. It was about done, so she took it off the fire, and then said, “I would like to learn, but maybe we should wait until after we are out of the dungeon.”

Lily took that moment to ask what was going on, and they filled her in. The Alra, on the other hand, didn’t really care about the conversation and instead made herself a bowl. Lily was a little surprised to learn what was going on, but she needed a break as well. She agreed to spend the day here and asked Rose if she wanted to spar. Lily wanted to practice her skills with short blades. By the time the boys woke up, everyone else had already agreed to spend the day here and were already practicing where they felt they were coming up short. This left them with little choice but to find something to do.