“Uuuuurghh,” Mia groaned, eyes fluttering open, then shutting closed as the bright light of the morning sun seeping through the window saw fit to poke her eyeballs.

  Her head was pounding like a bitch, and her memories were a touch fuzzy in a familiar way. She’d gotten pretty drunk, though even with that she remembered quite a lot.

  Her thoughts came to a halt as she was about to shuffle to her side to face away from the torturous sun, and she felt a warm body pressing up against hers.

  Taking in a short gasp of air, she smelled roses and pines. It brought back old memories, calming memories of playing out in the garden of her childhood home, which sat just outside a pine forest and smelling the roses her mother cultivated around the fences. It instantly calmed her down, and she stopped shuffling around, instead pressing up against the other occupant of the bed like a needy cat seeking warmth.

  “Awake?” Carmilla whispered.

  “Mhmmmm,” Mia answered, throwing a hand across the girl’s waist as she placed her cheek on her chest.

  “How do you feel?” The vampire asked, still in a blessed whisper that saved Mia from her headache worsening.

  “Like an entire horde of goblins trampled over my head,” Mia said, drinking in the comforting feeling of having another person’s body so close to her own.

  “I suppose that ‘new study’ of yours was a fake then?”

  “Wha- Oh,” Mia said, the memory coming back to her along with a hint of embarrassment. She’d been … pretty shameless yesterday, but it ended well as far as she could remember. More than well, seeing as she woke up cuddling Carmilla. “Maybe we need to cuddle more for it to work. Could be that you’re just not cuddling hard enough.”

  “As you say, princess,” Carmilla whispered teasingly, a hand reaching up to caress Mia’s unruly mane of pink hair.

  A blush crept up to Mia’s ears as she buried her face into Carmilla’s shoulder. Yes. Absolutely shameless. How did such a cringeworthy line leave my lips?

  “So, what’s the plan for the day?” Carmilla asked in a whisper, continuing to play with her hair as she did.

  “I don’t know yet,” Mia said, jumping at the invitation to change subjects that the vampire so graciously extended to her. “I … I’ll need to get my Main Body stat up by two points for the Quest. Then we’ll probably need to help out with cleaning up the stragglers that remained behind just looting the abandoned houses in the other districts. Then, we … should probably discuss looking for one of the Rifts to dive and destroy them now that we don’t have to worry about that General anymore.”

  “I’m sure others can handle the cleanup,” Carmilla said, humming thoughtfully. “But you’re probably right about the rifts. If we want to stay in the city, those will need to be taken care of. As for the Body stats … you just need some exercise.”

  “I want to wait for the next Realm Event reward for that,” Mia said, not wanting to suffer a repeat of the training she’d underwent under Carmilla’s hand again. Especially not when the rewards would be much less than before without the potion. “I’m hoping for new Potions of Unleashed Potential this week, and maybe some Natural Treasures. Maybe I won’t even need to train at all if I get a bunch of the latter.”

  “It’s your choice,” Carmilla said, shrugging a little. “So, will you use your Ring already or will you continue suffering with that headache?”

  “Oh,” Mia said. “I forgot about that … why didn’t I use that yesterday?”

  “I remember trying to tell you to,” Carmilla said, the eye-roll audible in her tone. “But you were convinced you had to have a hangover to convince me to … cuddle.”

  “Well, it worked.”

  “It did, I guess.” Carmilla huffed in amusement, patting Mia’s head gently. “But we should get up. If we want to stay, we should start looking for those Rifts as soon as possible. I don’t want to see what sort of a monstrosity that goblin Rift spits out next.”

  “We will see it anyway if we go inside, no?” Mia said, activating her Ring with a thought and feeling a warm, comforting buzz spread throughout her body and coalesce around her head. It was gone a second later, and along with it went all of her muscle strain and even the pounding headache. “Ohhhh, I feel alive again.”

  The two stayed in bed for a while longer, much to Mia’s silent delight and only got up when they heard Mark stumble into the house on the floor below.

  They quickly freshened up, got dressed … during which Mia most certainly did not peek at anything she shouldn’t have. We are dating, sort of. I can look, right?

  One thing she was glad to find though, even if a bit disappointed too, was that she was cohesive enough the day before not to try anything with Carmilla beyond just cuddling. She’d promised to behave after all, and it would have been a breach of trust with the vampire if she broke that.

  Before they went down, Mia placed a hand on Carmilla’s shoulder to halt her for a moment. Looking up into those questioning ruby eyes, Mia smiled. “Thanks for taking care of me yesterday, I know I’m … a troublesome drunk. So, thanks.”

  “Oh, it was,” Carmilla said, blinking in surprise. “Nothing really- I mean, I was glad to. Yeah. Of course, you’re welcome.”

  Mia heard a crash from the living room and the smile that was plastered on her face since she woke up flickered for a bit.

  “Let’s see what this idiot is up to,” she said, eyes narrowing menacingly as she went down the stairs with the vampire hot on her heels. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, Mia ran her fingers down her face. “Oh for the love of- Urghh.”

  Atop the remains of the small coffee table between the two sofas lay Mark, passed out dead-drunk and snoring up a storm. He also had a damned road sign atop him that he clutched like a blanket in his sleep.

  “Want me to toss him into a bed?” Carmilla asked, staring down at Mark’s sleeping form like he was some exotic animal she had the fortune of seeing in a zoo.

  “Ah, no, he is … well, he couldn’t keep the contents of his stomach before when drunk.” Mia tapped her chin thoughtfully. Her go-to solution to Mark being drunk back when they lived together had always been asking Sam to dump him in the bathtub. “Let’s drag him out into the garden. He can vomit all he wants out there, just make sure he isn’t lying on his back please.”

  With a small snort, Carmilla did as she was asked and gently dragged the dwarf out to the garden. Through it all, and even as he was deposited atop the grass, he kept hugging the roadsign and Mia even caught some murmured phrases she really didn’t want to hear. The dumb dwarf was having a wet dream for sure.

  “Coffee?” Mia asked once they were back inside, grabbing the box of instant coffee Helene had in the cupboard. “I can’t make it hot like Mom can with her magic … actually, maybe … “

  Mia got herself a mug, filled it with water then poked her finger inside. Arcane was supposedly the element in control of natural, physical energies and the two most prominent ones of those were kinetic and thermal energy.

  She’d managed to flash-freeze her hand once by accident so it wasn’t unreasonable to say she could also just spend a little mana to warm up her water. With her Arcane Mana Manipulation up a grade, it should have been pretty easy … and it was.

  It was too easy even, or she’d just used too much mana because instead of getting hypothermia, she burned her finger this time as the whole mug of water went boiling in just a second.

  “Note to self,” Mia said, the burnt index finger stuck in her mouth for comfort. She still had about one and a half hours till her Ring came off cooldown. “Use half a Bolt’s worth of mana next.”

  “I could heal it for you?” Carmilla said, looking on with a hint of worry. “I … have a healing spell.”

  “Isn’t that the one that uses up three syringes of my blood worth in lifeforce?” Mia asked, raising an eyebrow.

  Blood Heal, if she remembered correctly, was a pretty powerful healing spell that would give the target’s blood some regenerative effects. It wasn’t Troll levels of regeneration, not by a longshot, but it was something.

  As for why Carmilla had it when she could already heal herself? Well, Blood Heal was exponentially more powerful when it had a preexisting natural regeneration to boost and didn’t have to do the work itself according to Carmilla.

  “Yeah,” Carmilla said, nodding simply. “I don’t mind. My Blood Bank is at … 460%. A single Blood Heal will at most eat twenty percent of that.”

  “Well,” Mia said, drawing out the word as she thought it over. A glance into those hopeful ruby eyes eager to help her made her decision for her though. “Alright, if it’s not too much trouble I won’t say no.”

  Saying so, she grabbed the scalding hot mug, holding it with extreme care and plopped down to the kitchen table across from Carmilla. As she shoveled a few teaspoons of the instant coffee into the water, she extended her other hand with the burnt finger to the vampire who gently took it in her palms.

  Feeling the surge of mana, she looked up and saw that crimson energy seep into her extended arm.

  Mia winced as goosebumps and tingles ran up her arm, then grimaced as her aching finger turned itchy. It only lasted for a few seconds, but it left Mia shuddering a little even as she inspected her remade digit.

  “Thanks,” she said, giving a small smile to Carmilla even as she decided that an ice bath and waiting for her fingers would have been the better choice. “You feel that whenever you heal yourself?”

  “No,” Carmilla shrugged. “The spell makes it much worse, plus I have pretty good control of it if it's happening inside my body and not someone else’s.”

  After that, with much more care, Mia made another mug and pushed it over to Carmilla. They relaxed for a bit, just chatting about mundane stuff like movies and books.

  Mia was just starting to tell the patiently listening vampire about that one game she never got to try out because the world went to shit just when it was done downloading when Helene came walking down from the upper floor.

  The woman smiled seeing the two of them up and awake, dressed in only a silky black night robe and a towel wrapped around her head. She sat down next to them and Mia noted how her mother was pretty much glowing with a pleased smile on her face.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Mia raised an eyebrow, but only got an amused look in turn from her mother.

  “Did you two enjoy yourselves?” Helene asked instead, curtailing Mia’s question.

  “We did,” Mia said suspiciously, glancing over at Carmilla.The vampiress just smiled and gave a small nod that almost looked shy. “It seems like you did too?”

  “Mhmmm,” Helen hummed. “Can I get a mug too?”

  “Fine,” Mia said, rolling her eyes, but then stiffened as she heard Brent walking around on the floor above. If her ears weren’t playing tricks on her, he was going towards the bathroom … from Helene’s bedroom. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Interesting. “Here.”

  “You warmed your own up somehow?” The ashen haired woman asked, gingerly tapping her own mug and then looking askance at Mia when she found it only lukewarm.

  “Yep,” Mia said. “You can pay in gossip for getting your own heated too.”

  “Can I?” Helene smirked. “Well, I heard Mark confessed his undying love for that waitress girl, Kelly I think. Did he come by, by the way? I also heard the girl told him to sod off because he smelled like alcohol and sweat.”

  “Oh dear,” Mia mused, giggling. “Fine, you can get a heating. As for Mark, he is sleeping out in the garden.”

  Saying so, Mia unceremoniously poked her index finger into the water and then applied a hint of arcane mana. Warm. Heat. Give it some heat.

  It took focus, quite a bit of it, more than any of her spells, but it was working. The water heated up and just as she removed her finger with a hiss; it was just warm enough to be called scalding. Just how coffee water should be.

  I just wonder whatever else I could do with this? Electricity? Light? Gravity? Those are physical forces too, right? Soooo~.

  The day started slowly; it was normal and so relaxed Mia just let it happen. She didn’t want to think too much about monsters, fighting to the death and the possible end of the world for just a short while. She just … relaxed.

  Though that relaxation included playing with some magic and launching into assimilating new runes from her new Lexicons.

  Her possible spells were Aegis and Phalanx for the Abjuration one while the Warding Lexicon offered Lesser Ward, Mage Armour and Alert Ward.

  Her choice fell firmly onto Lesser Ward after some consideration. Aegis and Phalanx were both active barrier spells, one in the shape of a dome while the other in the shape of a thick wall, while Lesser Ward basically allowed her to hang Amulets like her own onto every member of her party’s necks.

  Sure, it broke after one use and only lasted for half an hour before it dissipated. But it could save the lives of both Helene or Lina who had little actual magical protection of their own.

  Helene’s quest-given protective item had been a bracelet that helped her with aerial stuff like protecting her from the wind blowing in her face blinding her and warding off some of the air resistance.

  Lina, in turn, got a pair of ankle bracelets that gave her some swiftness associated with her element. The girl was apparently pretty bad at the manual body enhancement part of her element, which she should have been able to do with her Air Mana Manipulation Subskill, but that pair of anklets handled that for her.

  So yeah, they needed every bit of extra they could get. Had Mia been more selfish, she would have chosen Mage Armour, no questions asked. The spell was a more powerful version of Lesser Ward that stayed active constantly after cast and could be recharged like the Spectral Blade if needed.

  The one problem was, she couldn’t just slap that onto someone else. It was only usable on herself. So, Lesser Ward.

  I’ll have to remove some Bolt variants from the Spell Tome. Mia thought with a wince. She had 15 pages in it at the moment, and with all the Bolt variants and her other spells, she was at 14/15 pages used. And that’s with me putting that prototype nail spell into the trash bucket. I’ll need to experiment with that too. I remember it enough that I can probably just jigsaw it together from my runic-model’s floating parts.

  Currently, she had the shockwave, the barrage and the homing variants of Bolt on the chopping block and was considering adding the so-far useless Arcane Explosion to that list.

  I’ll see in time. She decided not to delete anything for now and only resorting to it when she had a new, better spell to add in already. Which would only be once all the new associated runes were assimilated into her runic-model.

  First, Lesser Ward. I should hopefully get it usable before we dive into another Rift. Then if I have time for another … Phalanx, maybe? I could use a big, strong, impregnable wall I can throw down that I can carry in my back pocket.

  Mia was busy working the knots out of an annoyingly stiff vampire’s shoulders with her fingers, the redhead having agreed to be given a shoulder and neck massage after some nagging, when she heard a knock on the door.

  “Soldiers,” Carmilla hummed, her voice husky as she spoke. Mia smirked, having enjoyed the little groans of pleasure she let out throughout the massage.

  “I’ll get it,” Helene said, hopping up from her seat and throwing down a book she’d been reading. ‘Aerial combat doctrines for Storm Sorcerers’ hummm, is that her equivalent of my ‘First Steps of Arcanism’ book? “Hi, how can I help you?”

  “Ma’am, you are Miss Vexley?” The soldier asked matter-of-factly.

  “Yes,” Helene said. “Though I suppose you were told to look for my daughter, Maria, were you not?”

  “Oh,” the soldier sounded startled, likely trying to figure out how a ‘twenty years old girl’ like Helene had a daughter that looked not a day younger than her. “Yes. We’ve been told to deliver this package to Miss Maria Vexley and her team for services rendered to the army as auxiliaries. I’ve been told I can trust her to fairly distribute the items among the team members, so if she would come out and receive them?”

  Mia sighed, letting go of Carmilla’s still all to coiled up shoulder muscles and quickly went over to the door. She did her best not to smile at the disgruntled growl from the vampire behind her. “Hi, what do I have to receive and where do I sign?”

  “No signing required,” the man said with a twitch of his lips, handing over a sizable duffle bag. Mia took it, and the man just nodded and turned to leave. “Have a good day.”

  “Huh.” Mia shared the glance with her mother, then shrugged. They went back inside and set the bag down on the kitchen table. “Let’s wait for Lina and Brent before we check what goodies we got. Do we know anything about where Lina went? … or if Brent will bother coming down today?”

  Mia glanced at her mother at the last bit, an eyebrow raised and the woman just smiled back at her. “Brent is getting his beauty nap, the poor man was tired after all that … fighting. As for Lina, I haven’t seen her since she dragged that poor boy off to only god knows where.”

  Yeah sure, Brent is tired from ‘fighting’. Mia rolled her eyes. The man only sat around and watched the mages fight the day before, plus he had quite the endurance with his Ki enhancing his body. Okay. There are things I don’t want to know. With these ears on me, I’m just glad I was too deeply asleep to hear whatever they were doing during the night.

  “I could track her down if need be,” Carmilla said, still sitting on the sofa in the same pose Mia had her settle in for the massage. There was a clear request in her ruby eyes that her mouth was too embarrassed to speak.

  “No need, we’ll do that if she doesn’t come home for another few hours.” Mia smiled indulgently, then obliged the girl’s unsaid request and went back to finishing up the massage she’d started.

  *****

  “Tear of the Zephyr,” Mia read out the description attached to a small sky-blue gem. Weirdly, the teardrop shaped crystal felt like a gummy bear to the touch. “Increases Attunement to the element of Air depending on the User’s Affinity for the element. I guess that’s yours, Lina.”

  The blonde girl took the weird gem, inspecting it with a curious glance. She had come back a few hours after the soldiers stopped by, hair and clothes ruffled all over and a satisfied little smirk on her lips.

  “Do I just … eat it?” Lina asked, turning the strange gem over in her palm and squishing it a bit.

  “I suppose?” Mia said, looking around for anyone that might have read something about it in a book.

  “Let me check!” Saying so, Mark ran off and went to dig out a book from his bag titled ‘Gems, Rocks and all the Fruits of the Earth’. He’d woken up only a few minutes before Lina came back, sitting up out in the garden without even a hint of tiredness or hangover. “Here it is! Tears of the Zephyr … holy shit. That thing could buy you a smaller Barony on a Minor Plane. Anyways, yes. You just have to swallow it whole, chewing makes it a bit worse as it bleeds out its … elemental essence?”

  Shrugging, the girl did just that. Then wobbled on her feet, eyes dilating and glowing white as her arms went out to the sides as if to stabilise herself. She flailed a little and even avoided anyone trying to grab her to keep her from falling.

  In the end, she managed to stay standing until her eyes went back to normal. Blinking, the girl looked around with wide eyes.

  “That was freaky,” she said, shaking her head. “43% Attunement, that thing gave me a whole 20% … I got a Trait called Misty Step. Let me try this thing out … “

  “Is that what I think it is?” Mark whispered excitedly.

  Lina ignored him, just raising a foot and lowering it down slowly. Before it touched the floor, a small misty disk formed under her feet.

  Gingerly, Lina leaned onto it, and when it kept stable, she stepped onto it fully. Mia watched it, not quite able to tell even with her Spirit Sense how that thing was working.

  By all accounts, it looked like the ambient Air mana just decided to assist Lina by forming into a misty little platform.

  Ignoring a disappointed looking Mark, the group went back to distributing the other items. Sadly, Tears of the Zephyr was the only one increasing Attunement to such an extent.

  Mia herself got a small prismatic berry that increased her own by 3%, but that was it. In contrast to that, she’d been much more lucky with the Natural Treasures giving Gained Attributes.

  Three Golden Solar Apples and two Silverlight Pears were her haul, and she was ecstatic with it, even if it couldn’t entirely banish the jealousy she felt watching Lina hop around in the air like a butterfly.

  Getting out of having to train up her stats to complete her quest was one thing, getting to fly — running on air counted as flying — were two completely different things.

  She glanced down at the descriptions.

  ***

  ‘Solar Golden Apple: +(1 or 2) Strength; +1 Agility; +1 Flexibility’

  ‘Silverlight Pear: +(1 or 2) Cognition; +(1 or 2) Memory +(0 or 1) Will’

  ***

  There were also potions, healing, mana and otherwise, but Mia zeroed in on these beauties. Potions were temporary, stats were eternal.

  Okay, she did eye the Healing Elixirs for a bit, but she still had three of the Greater ones while Helene had given hers away like some good samaritan. One ended up in the belly of that little girl she saved on the wall, one in that girl’s father and the rest spread out among other people.

  Mia had made her mother choose those potions, then made her promise she’d keep at least two in reserve for her own use.

  There was also one new nugget of information they’d learned thanks to Mark’s number of books and encyclopaedias on Natural Treasures. They were fucking expensive.

  The gem Lina got was by far the most expensive, but even just the fruits Mia chose were worth a hundred times their weight in gold. At first they thought gold was just abundant in whatever Plane the books originated from, but it was actually quite the opposite. Silver, copper, bronze, gold and other similar metals were all used in the creation of various enchanted items and artifacts.

  We’ll be having a much harder time getting our hands on these sorts of things once the Realm Event and this Newbie Quest-Line stops dumping them in our laps.

  Mia looked down at the bowl next to her, then picked up a slice of apple with juicy metallic gold flesh and popped it in her mouth. I just ate a slice of apple that’s worth 3 kilos of gold. That’s … about 240,000 dollars? Wild.

  Apparently, it was fine not to shove them down her throat whole. She just had to make sure she ate the whole fruits in the one hour following breaking their skin or their power might start leaking out and away into nothingness.

  So, while her runic-model was busy digesting her latest rune, she herself nibbled on the sliced fruit while Carmilla attempted to reciprocate the massage Mia had given her.

  I appreciate the effort, but you are gonna break my neck. Mia gave a pained sound, and Carmilla froze.

  “Be gentle,” Mia whispered. “You are my masseur now, not my chiropractor. When my bones are creaking, it’s a bad sign.”

  “Is this better?” Carmilla asked in a small voice as if afraid of Mia’s rebuke. She went back to continuing her attempt. This time, Mia barely felt what she was doing with how overly careful the girl was being.

  “Yes,” Mia said gently, smiling up at the vampire who was trying so very hard to make this work. That eagerness is new. She’d been just going along with me before, but … whatever I said and did yesterday got her to be a bit more proactive. “Try a bit stronger, maybe with a force between what had my bones creaking and this? … oh, yess. Much better. Continue that.”

  Enjoying the feeling of those graceful fingers filled with supernatural, vampiric strength working through her muscles, Mia smiled and pushed another slice of golden apple into her mouth. We can make this work. I’m sure of it.