Asta was staring at his envelope like it contained the secrets of the universe. "I've never seen this much money in my life. Sister Lily could feed the church for a whole year with this! I need to send some to Hage Village! No wait, I should buy new training gear! No wait, I should save it! No wait—"
"Tomorrow is your day off," Yami said, already walking toward the door. "Do whatever you want. Just don't destroy anything. And don't make our stars go lower than negative thirty. I swear to every god in this kingdom, if I wake up tomorrow and we're at negative forty, someone is getting thrown through a wall."
He paused at the doorway and looked back at the two holes in the wall. His eye twitched.
"I'm going to fix those tomorrow. Nobody touch them. Nobody make MORE holes. If I see another hole in this base, I'm going to start making holes in PEOPLE."
Then he was gone. His footsteps faded down the hallway. A door slammed. Silence.
Everyone looked at each other. A day off. No missions. No training. No chores. A whole day to do whatever we wanted.
Luck dropped from the ceiling and landed right in front of me. His grin was so wide it looked like his face was cracking open. Sparks of lightning danced between his fingers and made his hair stand up.
"FIGHT ME."
"I thought you'd never ask."
---
We went outside. The moon was bright and full, making the grass look silver. The air was cool and clean. Perfect weather for beating each other up.
"Rules!" Magna announced. He had found a stick somewhere and was pointing it at us like a teacher. "No killing! No permanent damage! And nobody touches the castle! If the captain comes out here because someone broke another wall, I'm blaming ALL of you!"
"Fair," Luck said, bouncing on his toes. "Ouga, you ready? I've been waiting for this since your first day. The way you blocked those fireballs without moving. The way you just stood there and took it. I knew right then that you were different."
"I'm ready," I said. "Give me everything you've got."
Luck's grin somehow got wider. "Everything? You sure? Most people regret saying that."
"I'm not most people."
"No. No, you're really not."
We faced each other across the grass. About twenty feet apart. Luck's grimoire floated up beside him, pages flipping in a wind that came from nowhere. Lightning started crackling around his body. His hair stood up straight. His eyes got that wild look, the one he got when he was about to go all out.
"LIGHTNING CREATION MAGIC: THUNDERBOLT!"
The bolt hit me square in the chest. It was fast. Really fast. Faster than Magna's fireballs. Faster than Heath's ice needles. One second Luck's hand was raised, the next second my whole body was buzzing with electricity.
My muscles locked up. That's what lightning does. It doesn't matter how strong you are. Electricity hijacks your nerves and makes your muscles contract. My arms snapped to my sides. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached. My heart did a weird flutter in my chest.
But the wheel behind my head was already turning. The Talent was already working.
"AGAIN!" Luck shouted, and he didn't wait for me to recover. Another bolt hit me in the same spot. Then another. Then another. He was laughing now, that high-pitched laugh that meant he was having the time of his life. "COME ON, OUGA! SHOW ME WHAT YOU'VE GOT! ADAPT! EVOLVE! BECOME STRONGER!"
The electricity was inside me now. Not just on my skin. It was running through my mana pathways, through my blood, through my nerves. The Talent was cataloguing everything. The voltage. The current. The frequency of the magical energy that made Luck's lightning different from natural lightning.
My mana pathways started to adjust. They widened slightly. Changed their structure. Built tiny channels that could redirect electrical energy away from my muscles and into the ground through my feet.
CLUNK__
The first lock engaged. The muscle spasms stopped. I could move my fingers again. Not much, but enough. The electricity still hurt, but it was a distant hurt. Like touching a hot pan for a split second instead of holding it.
"THERE IT IS!" Luck yelled. He had seen the wheel flash. "That sound! I felt it in my bones! What was that?! What just happened?!"
"Lightning Resistance," I said. My voice came out a little rough. "Lowest level. Do it again."
Luck didn't need to be told twice. "LIGHTNING CREATION MAGIC: THUNDERBOLT ARRAY!"
This time it wasn't one bolt. It was five. They came from different angles, surrounding me so I couldn't dodge even if I wanted to. They hit my chest, my back, my shoulders, my legs. The grass around my feet caught fire from the heat.
But I was already adapting. The second wave of lightning felt different from the first. My mana pathways recognized the attack now. They knew what to do. Instead of just enduring the electricity, they started absorbing it. Not all of it. Just a little. Just enough to learn from.
CLUNK__
Lightning Resistance (Low) acquired. I could move my arms now. I rolled my shoulders and felt the electricity slide off my skin like water off oil.
"THAT'S THE SECOND ONE!" Luck was practically dancing with excitement. "I felt it again! Your wheel spun and the mana around you changed! It's like your whole body is learning how to ignore my magic!"
"It's not ignoring it," I said. "It's understanding it. Every lightning bolt you throw at me teaches my body something new. The frequency. The voltage. The way your mana shapes the electricity. Once my body understands it completely, it can't hurt me anymore."
"Then I just have to hit you harder before you understand! LIGHTNING CREATION MAGIC: THOR'S HAMMER!"
He raised both hands above his head. Lightning gathered between his palms, forming a sphere of pure electrical energy. It crackled and hummed, so bright I had to squint. The air around us smelled like a thunderstorm. The hair on my arms stood up from the static.
He threw it at me like a baseball.
The sphere hit my chest and exploded. For a second, I couldn't see anything except white light. I couldn't hear anything except the roar of electricity. The ground under my feet cracked from the force of it. My clothes smoked. My skin tingled.
But the pain was already fading. My body had learned enough. The third lock was building, faster this time because the Talent had more data to work with.
CLUNK__
Lightning Resistance (Mid) acquired. The electricity that was still crackling around my body just... stopped. It didn't hurt anymore. It didn't even tingle. It was like standing in a light rain instead of a thunderstorm.
Luck stared at me. His hands were still raised, ready to throw another spell. But his grin had changed. It wasn't just excitement anymore. It was... respect.
"Three hits," he said. "That's all it took. Three hits and you're basically immune to my lightning."
"Not immune," I said. "Resistant. There's a difference. If you used a spell twice as strong, it would still hurt me. My resistance isn't absolute. It builds up to match the strongest attack I've experienced."
"So if I want to hurt you again, I have to get stronger first." Luck lowered his hands. His lightning faded. "That's... that's actually really cool. You're like a training partner who forces me to improve. If I don't get better, I can't touch you. But if I DO get better, you'll just adapt again."
"That's the idea."
Luck laughed. It was a different laugh from before. Less wild. More... happy. "I finally found someone who understands. Fighting isn't about winning or losing. It's about pushing each other to be better. You get that. You really get that."
He walked up to me and held out his hand. I took it. His grip was still crackling with leftover static, but I didn't feel it.
"Friends?" he said.
"Friends," I agreed.
"Good. Because now we can fight ALL THE TIME and nobody can complain because we're friends and that's what friends do!"
"I don't think that's how friendship works."
"It's how MY friendship works!"
---
Magna was next. He had been watching the whole fight with his arms crossed and his jaw tight. When Luck stepped back, Magna stepped forward. His fire bat was already blazing, the flames brighter and hotter than I'd ever seen them.
"You good to keep going?" he asked. "I don't want to fight you if you're tired."
"I'm fine," I said. "The lightning didn't do any real damage. And you look like you have something to prove."
Magna's grip on his bat tightened. "Yeah. Yeah, I do." He took a deep breath and let it out slow. "Back in Saussy Village. When those robed guys showed up. When the mist covered everything and the villagers were screaming and old man Seyhi was bleeding... I couldn't do anything."
"You fought the henchmen."
"I held them off. That's not the same as winning. If you hadn't been there, if Noelle hadn't cast that spell... those villagers would be dead. Old man Seyhi would be dead. And it would have been my fault because I wasn't strong enough."
He looked up at me. His sunglasses hid his eyes, but his voice was raw. "I'm supposed to be the senior. The big brother of the squad. I'm supposed to protect you guys, not the other way around. So today, right now, I'm going to hit you with everything I've got. And even if it doesn't hurt you, even if you just stand there and take it... I need to know that I tried. That I gave it everything."
"Then give it everything."
Magna nodded. He raised his bat. His grimoire flipped open to a page I hadn't seen before. The spell diagram was new, the ink still fresh. Whatever this spell was, it had appeared recently. Maybe during the fight in Saussy Village. Maybe during the long night after.
"I felt this spell appear in my grimoire after the mission," Magna said. "I don't know where it came from. I don't know if it's because I was so frustrated or so scared or so determined. But I think... I think it's my answer to everything that happened. My promise to get stronger."
He swung his bat in a practice arc. The flames along its length compressed, becoming denser and hotter. The air around him shimmered with heat.
"FLAME CREATION MAGIC: METEOR BAT!"
The fireball that appeared above him was different from his normal ones. It wasn't just a ball of fire. It was compressed. Dense. The flames were so hot they had turned blue-white at the core. When Magna swung his bat and connected, the sound was like a cannon going off.
The fireball hit me dead center. And for the first time since my Fire Resistance had reached Intermediate, I actually felt heat. Real heat. The kind that makes your skin tight and your lungs burn. The impact pushed me back. Not far. Maybe six inches. My feet left grooves in the dirt.
CLUNK__
The lock engaged immediately. My Fire Resistance, which had been stuck at Intermediate for months because I couldn't find flames hot enough to challenge it, finally had something to work with. The Talent absorbed the data from Magna's new spell. The temperature. The density. The way the compressed flames tried to burn through my Mana Skin instead of just washing over it.
Fire Resistance (High) acquired. The blue-white flames that were still licking at my chest faded to orange, then yellow, then nothing. I looked down. My shirt was completely gone. The skin underneath was pink but unbroken. It would heal in seconds.
Magna was breathing hard. His bat had gone out. His arms were shaking. But he was standing. And he was smiling.
"Six inches," he said. "I pushed you back six inches."
"You did."
"That's six more inches than last time."
"STAND PROUD, YOU ARE STRONG."
Magna laughed. It was a tired laugh, but a real one. "Yeah. Yeah, i am." He stuck his bat into the ground and leaned on it. "You know, Ouga, when you first showed up, I thought you were scary. Like, really scary. The height. The muscles. The way you just stood there and let things hit you. I thought you were some kind of monster."
"And now?"
"Now I think you're a monster who's also a really good training partner." He held out his fist. I bumped it with mine. "Thanks. For pushing me."
"That's what squadmates do."
"Yeah." Magna's smile got softer. "Yeah, I guess it is."
Gordon was next. He shuffled forward from the shadows at the edge of the clearing, his hair hanging over his face, his hands clasped together like he was praying. Or maybe like he was trying to stop himself from running away.
(Author note: just give me some motivation 🤑)