When Thera parted, training for the day from there consisted of exploring the gate network, walking through different cities as she continued to work on her soul magic, having a far better understanding of her spells by that point as the people she passed got to benefit from her power.

She could see levels being gained and one person manifesting a skill, her confidence in that spell now equal to the others, with a greater understanding that even if she could help them form, it was still uncommon, leaving her only needing to help someone awaken something to say that she had a proper proficiency in what the world considered to be the core abilities of a soul mage.

Of course, there was more she could do and more she still had to practice. Despite the casual attitude Ben seemed to have with his own soul, she wasn’t so willing to go and cut pieces off of herself quite yet, even if she had the knowledge to do it.

Especially since any blessing I give will have to be shaped to one specific attribute or skill, she thought with a sigh, with that adding a different bit of complexity it seemed that neither the gods nor her boyfriend would have to consider. I have to do more to get less. Annoying.

She couldn’t deny that was affecting her willingness to practice the ability either. The great thing about a blessing from a god was that it helped one grow in all areas, and while nobody would be ungrateful for additional growth in whatever aspect of themselves they wanted, as the person who’d be giving up a piece of her soul to make it happen, the comparison made it feel like a poor trade. Better to let the gods decide who they should bless, rather than want her to do the same.

And yet, despite that, there were people who she knew she’d do it for once she finally allowed herself to properly practice, pointing to the importance of just getting past that first step. Even if it felt lacking, every bit of growth held value, something she was seeing in herself as well.

While she’d yet to get any new levels, skills, or awakenings from applying her magic to herself, her attributes were growing nicely, the constant bonuses from that front giving her clear results that she could see in a far more consistent way than she would for anyone she passed in the street, and it left her feeling powerful.

Well, even without that, I am powerful, she smiled, able to see the system information on herself without the need to pull out her card, just by looking down at her hands. But when it comes to becoming even more so… hmm.

She said she was going to take the rest of the day to practice, and that didn’t just mean her soul magic, even if she was so close to finishing that job. She now had expectations on her of awakening her earth magic, and with a need to test her ability to properly awaken a skill as well with her new powers, an idea began to take shape as she looked at the spirits around her.

“Excuse me,” she said, pulling the attention of the swarm that followed her. “I was hoping you all might give me a hand with something.”

… Now that I’m actually up here, this feels like it might have been a rash idea.

Of the various skills she had, only four were on the edge of reaching the second tier, being her coordination, her earth sense, her soul knowledge, and her spirit comprehension, and of them, she decided to focus on the first two. She’d wanted to see if she could properly help skills awaken and if she could increase their awakening bonuses after all, and awakening her earth sense especially seemed like it would only help her awaken her spiritual earth magic in the future, but the means through which she’d decided to test those two skills could easily be described as reckless as she stood blindfolded on a platform, hundreds of meters in the air as a means to push herself.

She wasn’t normally afraid of either heights or a bit of danger though, and the idea had been simple. All around her were spirits of both earth and space, as well as what other onlookers simply wanted to be by her side, but the main groups she needed were either floating stone platforms of various sizes, thickness, and materials, while the others were teleporting them about in a regular pattern, all of them at different speeds though, for her to run between to her final target a kilometer away. It would test her spatial awareness while also forcing her to focus on her earth sense, and while she didn’t think any of the surrounding spirits would let her plummet to her death, there was no denying that she’d let herself pick one of the more idiotic ways of training in her rush for progress.

And they aren’t making it easy to say I change my mind either, she sighed, the various spirits around her cheering her on, even if they didn’t seem to completely understand the purpose behind the request. Okay, let’s just get this over with, and if I miss, I’ll either catch myself or one of them will catch me. It will be fine.

With that cheery thought, she didn’t give herself another second to hesitate; instead, sensing when a platform appeared nearby to jump to it and felt herself land comfortably, that one first step filling her with the confidence she needed to keep going. Even if she wasn’t using her eyes, she could time the platforms around her from the feel of them alone and judge their dimensions as well. The closer she got to her target, the quicker they may have changed, but she found all of it within her grasp no matter how far she went.

This might actually be too doable to actually count as training, she admitted, leading to another quick decision she was only somewhat sure she wouldn’t regret as she called out while she ran. “Could all of you try to make this a bit harder, please?”

“Harder?”

“A challenge!”

“Something to strain our princess!”

“We can do that!”

… Yeah, I can already tell I’ve made a mistake asking.

After a quick flurry of conversation between the spirits, in an instant, the course changed. Even if they didn’t completely understand why she was doing it, they all would watch her and they all knew her abilities, they had no issue adjusting the difficulty as need be and Thera could instantly tell, platforms flashing through locations in less than a second while some were either replaced with softer stones or hollowed out to be brittle enough to break under her weight, and she couldn’t deny that they’d understood the assignment.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

With the change, she wasn’t given the chance to think, all movement needed to be done through instinct as she trusted her body to reach appropriately as she raced through the air, jumping from one place to the next on progressively smaller and weaker platforms, seeing that the spirits had prepared a correct path among so many other false branches as she attempted to run it.

Distances grew, requiring greater leaps, and timing became more tight as she was forced to jump before a given landing spot would appear, but as she did, the stone marking where she would end came closer in the distance, feeling almost within reach until finally, a misstep. Where one stone had been, seemingly the same as so many others that she’d jumped to before then, the spirits had prepared a small trap for her, with just what material it would be made of being changed each time it teleported back to that original position and with it, she’d gotten a bad pull when it came time to her landing. The platform crumbled into nothing more than loose dirt, letting her fall through it as her stomach rose to her throat until a second later, her magic responded, leaving her floating in midair, catching her breath.

And since I didn’t succeed or die, I guess I’m doing it again, she sighed, a vision of how the rest of the day was going to go now clear to her.

<EARTH SENSE HAS AWAKENED TO SPIRITUAL EARTH SENSE>

<ACQUIRED SKILL SPATIAL AWARENESS LEVEL 0>

<MAX LEVEL OF THE SOUL MAGE JOB ACHIEVED>

Catching her breath as she reached the final platform, Thera let herself lie down on it before she would bother to return to the comfort of the world sitting so much farther below, as she grinned despite the effort. Even if it was only one, she’d gotten an awakening, and she could feel that her soul magic had contributed to that success.

What she was less sure about was if the skill she’d gained was a bonus skill or just a result of spending the day running around while blindfolded, with the new one being a non-affinitied ability, both despite the earth skill it would have been gifted from, as well as ‘spatial’ in the new skill’s name.

Although, if I had that affinity, space sense seems like it would be pretty nice to get too, Thera mused, thinking that the power to feel any object in space around her would likely be more helpful overall than what she currently had of either life, soul, dark, and earth. Although it probably wouldn’t have helped keep me from falling so much either. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

Still, with that done, all that mattered was the result as, even from as far away from the ground as she was, she could now feel it with her awakened earth sense, and the completion to her job that the soul spells she’d had in constant use contributed to, letting her touch the crystal around her neck to check for any changes, finding nothing new in the process.

Her two best options continued to be mana goddess and great spirit, and of them, it wasn’t even a choice.

Give me great spirit.

<ACQUIRED JOB- GREAT SPIRIT LV0>

<MASSIVE BONUSES GRANTED TO ALL ATTRIBUTES>

<ALL SPIRIT SKILLS WILL RECEIVE A MASSIVE GROWTH BONUS>

<SPIRITUAL DARK MAGIC LEVEL INCREASED>

<SPIRITUAL MANA ENHANCEMENT LEVEL INCREASED>

<DARK SIGHT LEVEL INCREASED>

<MAGIC AFFINITY LEVEL INCREASED>

<DARK SENSE LEVEL INCREASED>

<EARTH AFFINITY LEVEL INCREASED>

<INTEGRATED DIVINE BODY LEVEL INCREASED>

<MANA EMPOWERING LEVEL INCREASED>

… So this is great, but if I do somehow manage to awaken my earth magic in the time we have left and Ben starts saying anything to the gods about getting me to awaken my dark magic next, I’m going to have to get Fontesh to babysit for a night with how long I’m going to want to swear at him.

With the level to her dark magic marking her rise to that of a contender for the skill, that was the first thought that went through her head despite everything else that came with it, the idea of being dragged into another meeting like the last a greater nightmare than missing a step and falling through the sky ever could be, but with the job taken, Thera took in the changes that came with it.

It seemed that the job was treating anything affinitied or magic-related as a spirit skill, with the only outlier being the level to her integrated divine body that she chose not to worry about. When it came to a skill brought forth by harvesting the flesh of a god, she didn’t want to question why or when it would grow, instead focusing on the rest.

With her various dark skills all growing at once, she felt those senses improve as the notifications went out, making the subtle actions of some of the dark spirits in her radius stand out just a little more as they cast tiny spells between themselves, and the growth of both of her affinities could only be a good sign. Earth and magic, exactly what she needed if she wanted any hope of getting her next awakening, but even that felt insignificant compared to a different level she’d gained.

Ever since her attributes had exploded upon awakening to soul magic, the range of any passive effect she put out had ballooned with it, much to the spirits’ joy. While she would occasionally change the one she bound to her soul, mana empowering still took up the most of its time, and with it, the new level only increased the range and depth of that power. Already, she could tell the ones around her were feeling it, and it couldn’t help but bring a question to the front of her thoughts.

“Could any of you tell me what your population is like compared to back on the spirit homeworld?”

“0.01 percent,” a nearby life spirit answered, who happened to have enough interest in such things to give an estimate, leaving Thera to frown. Even if they tended to swarm her, she was sure that she was seeing significantly more spirits in her day-to-day life than she had been back before she’d gained the skill.

“And what about before I started helping you all?”

“0.00001 percent,” it answered again, sounding full of love instead of the horror such a number should have instilled, even if it gave her context. As she constantly put out mana for them, the spirit population of that world had grown a thousand times larger than what it had been in only a few years, her recent development surely adding a significant boost to that speed, but it also implied the scale of what was lost. As mana-based life, not having a physical body like the fairies did, the spirits didn’t take up space in a traditional sense yet still, when her father had spoken about them in the past, he’d always described their world as having been unfathomably full. If their current numbers still needed to increase by another ten thousand times just to make up for what they’d lost, the scale they’d been at in their height began to make sense as she once more stretched out a hand to examine her soul, an unreasonable thought crossing her mind as she did.

If I just had a few more years, my spiritual mana enhancement would keep growing; eventually, I’d get my total pool over ten million. If I could use my soul magic to get my mana empowering to awaken in that time too, wouldn’t I be able to bring the spirits’ numbers back to their prime?

Not for the good it would do the war effort but instead the good it would do for her people, she knew that she didn’t have the time, but that fact didn’t change the way the thought subtly directed more of her power towards growing that very skill, feeling an area she wanted to grow to do more than just slaughter the things that came to take the world away.