First thing I did when I woke up was try to pull myself out of bed. Seemed I was still as clueless as ever.

  This time it was Amara telling me not to overexert myself. Her voice was calm, and she seemed visibly satisfied that I’d woken up, but her eyes constantly shifted, and she turned her head to glance around often.

  I got the strong impression something wasn’t quite right.

  I… also got the impression I didn’t need to stay in bed if I didn’t want to. Once the elder presiding over the hospital wing walked out for a smoke, I decided to test that theory.

  “Cael, don’t—”

  Too late. I was already standing. Getting up that quickly had hurt like a bitch, and I could feel a dull ache resonating in my spine, but it wasn’t anywhere near as painful as I’d anticipated it being. Seemed stiff muscles were more the issue than lingering wounds anyways.

  Compared to the last time I’d been in this room, and the agony my body had been in until I’d gotten multiple sets of pills down me, this felt way more bearable.

  “How are you—”

  “It’s not so bad,” I assured her, stretching my body as I spoke, groaning at the stiffness in my shoulders and sighing at an audible pop. “I… Ugh. That’s better. I feel fine, honestly. Ready to get back to my training. How long was I out for in the end, anyways?”

  I had a number in my head, so when she told me a week, I was surprised that I wasn’t far off. Time seemed to flow somewhat differently in the waiting room, but I didn’t think there was much in it. Maybe a 3 to 1 at best, but I thought even that was too much.

  For me it’d felt like about sixteen days. Maybe seventeen. Weird how that worked. Well, not that I had any clue how it worked.

  “Listen, Cael.”

  “Yeah?” I responded, still stretching.

  “I don’t want to pursue this any more.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. I stopped stretching and looked at her. I was genuinely perplexed by those words.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking while you’ve been asleep, and the truth of the matter is, I don’t think that anything we were doing was right, or safe.”

  “You don’t?” I asked. “Look. I’m sorry for insisting we go into the forest. Maybe we should’ve tried to find another human for me to fight, instead. It was a stupid idea from me, I know.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Amara said, shaking her head. “The fact is, you were honourable. You tried to help me when I needed help. You could’ve refused and tried to run away, or just focussed on fixing your own problems, but you helped me with mine and you saved me in that forest. I would’ve been caught by that beast if you didn’t push me.”

  I simply listened. I honestly didn’t know at the time whether Amara would react fast enough, I just did it. It was instinct. I was sure I’d do it again.

  “But now, my family tell me to make you contact your family, to make them offer money for my hand. They tell me that if you defeat or somehow appease Damian Voss, we can be wed… I don’t want any of this.”

  I sighed. I didn’t know what to say. “I know you don’t want any of this. I know that so much of this is because of stupid promises I made in the past and—”

  “No, I don’t want any of this for you!” Amara exclaimed, her eyes fierce. “You may have been a bastard once, but you’ve almost died fighting for me twice now! It’s not something I wish for, so I want you to get away from this place and start again elsewhere!”

  Her voice calmed, and the pair of them ignored the few bedbound onlookers. “You understand what I’m saying to you, don’t you? Why I beseech you so strongly?”

  She dropped to a whisper. “You will die here, Cael. You have far more enemies than friends.”

  “One friend is more than enough reason to stay,” I replied.

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  She stared at me like I’d just told her the earth was made of sand, her lips parted, mind on pause.

  “What else can I do for you?” she asked. “I’ve tried to help, and look where we are now.”

  “You already saved me twice,” I said. “When we were in that forest, you could’ve just left me. You grabbed me and you ran with me, and now, once again, I’m alive.” I leaned closer. “So it’s my turn now, okay?”

  “But what can you do?” she asked me.

  It was an excellent question. What could a useless third stage Tier 1 do versus a powerful enemy that wanted him dead?

  Let’s find out. I pulled up my system and looked for the part that said [Status], then pressed on it.

  I watched as numbers began to flood my screen. My plant had grown substantially in the time through which I’d trained in that room… Just how much had my stats grown?

  [Soul: Grade F, Level 18. Next advancement at 50.]

  [Vessel: Cael Soulgrave. Tier 1 Ascendant, Third Stage. Breakthrough imminent.]

  [Strength: 13 (24).]

  [Agility: 15 (28).]

  [Constitution: 9 (20).]

  [Dexterity: 19 (35).]

  [Willpower: 10 (20).]

  [Intelligence: 10 (17).]

  [Bracketed stat values are ‘true’ values given by combining the strength of the vessel with the power of your soul.]

  Holy shit. My stat values had completely skyrocketed. I had to remind myself that fifteen was the average stat value for someone of my tier and stage, meaning that I was way stronger and more agile than most early stage Tier 1’s at this point, as well as more durable.

  This kind of increase was insane. It made me think what kind of incredible advancements a person might be able to make to themselves in a room like that with regular access to it, but that was obviously unattainable.

  Well, as far as I knew, at least.

  What mattered far more than that now, however, was how these new abilities were going to manifest within me. That and the words ‘breakthrough imminent’ that had suddenly showed up… as far as I could tell, all of Caels breakthroughs to the next stage had happened randomly and without him being able to predict them, and as far as Cael knew, that’s how stage by stage breakthroughs typically went in general.

  Knowing that I was on the verge of ranking up was pretty exciting, but not knowing exactly when it would happen or what I needed to do to push myself past the edge was kinda frustrating…

  Eh, more intriguing than frustrating. For all that I wanted to be annoyed at things like this, I could see the wonder in them. Besides, that wasn’t even the end of the changes:

  [Bloodline Skill: Rock Spear, Grade F.]

  [Earth Affinity: Grade F.]

  [Poison resistance, Grade E.]

  [Astral Affinity: Grade G.]

  [Mark of Corruption: Dormant.]

  Even looking to my vessel skills seemed to confer a change, though my mark was still apparently dormant. I had no clue what ‘Astral Affinity’ was and neither did Cael. I tried asking System but didn’t get any answer…

  Even my Earth Affinity had gone up! I remembered it being G. G for Godawful.

  How’d that happened, though? I’d never trained earth skills whatsoever in all my time unconscious. I hadn’t even read about them. Could it be that strengthening my soul and making it more attuned to my body had just had a knock-on effect in terms of my other skills? Maybe I’d been on the verge of advancing to F already?

  This whole time as I looked over my skills, Amara was waiting for an answer. She’d asked me what I could do if I was gonna stay, and I was in the midst of getting a written account. But more than that, more interestingly, and, frankly, more entertainingly, would be to find out with action.

  So, expecting a nuclear level of resistance, I looked at Amara, trying not to grin too cockily.

  “So… ready to get back to training?”

  She, of course, looked at me like I’d gone completely insane.

  “It’s the middle of the day… you know you aren’t safe if you get spotted by the wrong person. Besides, you’ve just woken up. You should allow your body some time to heal.”

  “I’m going as soon as it’s dark out,” I decided, making my hospital bed and turning away. “You coming or not?”

  I was still willing to exercise some caution for Amara’s sake, but maybe they weren’t safe if they spotted me. Besides, if it was this or run away and leave her to stew in the shit, it was this every time. I couldn’t lie around waiting much longer.

  Had I waken up just to die again? Maybe. Let’s roll that dice.