Rhea perked up suddenly, distracted. Her eyes went distant, scanning something in the air only she could see.

  "Telekinetic Tug just hit level ten," she said. "It's giving me perk options."

  David's attention sharpened. "Really?"

  He'd learned that every message from the system was a clue. Not just for him and his oracle sight, but for everyone. It showed what it wanted you to have. What was possible. The scope, the scale, the nature of skills and the system itself. It showed what other creatures could have too. What other humans and demons or horrors from places his portals led to would have. It could help him understand this place and its laws and deeper secrets. Prepare him for any possibility.

  Every single one's a piece of this places mystery, or more accurately; it’s machine. Its blueprints were there for all to see. To piece together. You just had to pay attention.

  "What options do you have?"

  "Four choices," she said.

  "Yeah, I had four too."

  "One of them's called Telekinetic Domain." She paused, reading. "Increases the range to three hundred feet but lessens the power."

  Three hundred feet. That's a lot of real estate.

  "I'm not really into that one," she continued. "Less power means weaker javelin shots. Weaker projectiles. Weaker flight and everything. Even if I could see and do things from farther away, it'd change the style and habits I already learned."

  She had a point. She'd built her whole approach around those javelins, around hitting hard and precise. Trading that for reach meant rebuilding from scratch.

  "Does it say how much less?"

  She shook her head. "No, it's pretty vague. I get the general idea, but not the specifics."

  "How many feet does your telekinesis work at now?"

  "About fifty. But after forty, all I can manage is barely lifting things. The closer something is, the stronger the effect I can have on it." She gestured with her hand, closing the distance. "This seems to fix that but weaken my manipulation. Everything else."

  She'd described the trade-off perfectly. Range for power. A different way of fighting entirely. The current setup gave her precision and impact at the cost of distance. The perk flipped that. Made her a sniper instead of a more versatile soldier.

  Gutting her whole style for the ability to poke things from far away. Not worth it.

  He thought about it for another second, just to be sure.

  Yeah, no. Let's throw that option away.

  Rhea looked up from the system messages. "Remember you said I should get something that lets me mess with mana? Manipulate it directly? That it'd help me create side skills or branching skills or something?"

  David considered that. He'd said that, yeah. Probably. It sounded like something he'd say. Mana manipulation opened doors. You could build on it, branch out, create new applications that the base skill never intended. He'd seen it happen with his energy affinity enough times.

  "Sure, I guess," he said. "I mean, it's not guaranteed. But it's a possibility." He shrugged. "Better to have more, right?"

  She nodded, agreeing.

  Called that one too soon, maybe. Or maybe not. Depends on what else is on the table.

  "What are the other two perks?" he asked, conversational.

  "The second one's called Telekinetic Aura." She read from the air. "A constant telekinetic aura surrounding the body that responds to my subconscious. Grants flight, super strength, durability, and environmental protection through force projection. Basically anything I think I need without thinking it."

  That's a lot. That's a whole toolkit in one package.

  "But," she continued, "it's difficult to control because of the subconscious link. Easy to lose control. Strong emotions could cause unpredictable results."

  David processed that. Flight on its own was useful. Super strength and durability on top of that? Environmental protection too? That was three or four skills rolled into one. The catch was the subconscious part.

  So if she gets startled, things fly. If she gets angry, things break. If she gets scared...

  He imagined Rhea, normally so composed, suddenly surrounded by flying debris because something jumped out at her. The image had a certain dark irony to it.

  That meant if she got upset, she could attack someone without meaning to. If she was afraid, her aura might form a shield, or worse, stopping others from helping her. And who knew, maybe if she sneezed she’d blow everything away from her. It was a significant drawback.

  Not ideal in a fight. Not ideal anywhere, really. Hard to plan around emotions. Around her emotions especially, and she's pretty good at keeping those locked down. Which means when they slip, they really slip.

  So. Powerful option. Maybe the most powerful on the list. But power you can't control is just a hazard with extra steps.

  She interrupted his thoughts. "The third one's Telekinetic Lord." She read from the air. "Increases my ability to manipulate multiple objects by a lot. Increases the power of the skill. But it halves the range."

  Halves the range. So from fifty feet down to twenty-five.

  He did the math in his head. Trading distance for density. More objects at once, each one hitting harder, but for anyone else with the skill, they’d have to be closer. Much closer.

  But she had Distant Gaze. She could see threats coming from way farther out. And with that much power behind her telekinesis, she wouldn't need to guide her shots anymore. She could just fire.

  He pictured it. A hundred javelins, all at once, each one hitting hard enough to dent metal. Maybe pierce it. She'd turn whatever was in front of her into a pincushion before it could close that twenty-five-foot gap.

  For anyone else, losing half your range is a death sentence. For her, with that aim, with that power... she doesn't need to arc shots. Doesn't need to lead targets. Just point and shoot.

  "And the fourth is Weight Shift." She kept reading. "Lets me imbue a small telekinetic aura on things in my range to make them heavier or lighter. However I want."

  David paused, considering.

  Four options. Domain for massive range and less power. Aura Master for the wildcard versatile subconscious power suite. Telekenetic Lord for less range but controlling multiple javelins. Weight Shift for... what, exactly?

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  He turned the last one over in his mind. Making things heavier or lighter. On the surface, it sounded simple. Maybe too simple. But simple could be… useful. Make an enemy's weapon heavier mid-swing. Make their armor lighter so it doesn't protect as well. Make yourself lighter to jump farther, fall slower.

  Or make a rock really heavy and drop it on someone's head. Classic.

  The question was what she wanted. What fit how she fought. She'd built her style around those javelins, around precision and impact. Lord played to that. More power, more objects—she could throw multiple javelins at once, control the battlefield better. But losing half her range meant getting closer to things that might not appreciate her being close.

  Weight Shift was trickier. More creative. Less straightforward. Harder to predict how it'd work in a fight.

  She's good at adapting. But adapting takes time. We might not have any time left.

  He let the silence stretch, turning each option over, slotting them into scenarios, watching how they played out in his head.

  Rhea looked at him. "What do you think?"

  She was weighing them herself, he could tell. Running the calculations behind her eyes.

  "I like both Telekinetic Lord and Telekinetic Aura," she said. "Both are strong. The Aura is stronger than the Lord, overall. But the Lord probably has more firing power. More punch per shot."

  David considered that. She'd laid it out cleanly. Lord gave her more projectiles—much more, hundreds maybe, with harder hits, but cut her range in half. Aura gave her more versatility and power with less control—flight, strength, durability, protection—all running on autopilot, but with an emotion wildcard.

  "Choose the Aura," he said.

  She blinked. "Really? Why?"

  He thought about the knight. That thing wading through a hundred stagfiends, swords projecting green death, armor regenerating with every kill. Put her in that fight. Fifty javelins? A hundred? Would it matter?

  "Imagine you had to fight that knight alone," he said. "Which one keeps you alive? A hundred javelins? Or a telekinetic aura that boosts everything you do without you having to even think about it?"

  He let that sit for a second.

  "You could still shoot javelins. Nothing says you can't. But your movements, your steps, even your skin—all of it's connected to the aura. Subconsciously. It's not something you have to activate. It's just there."

  She nodded slowly, working through it. "Yeah. Okay. I see your point."

  He watched her connect the dots. A hundred javelins wouldn't have meant squat against that dead knight. They'd bounce off its armor, get dodged by its speed, get healed through by its kills. The Aura was different. It wasn't about offense. It was about not dying.

  "I mean, let's be real," he added. "You'd probably die either way against that thing. It was a monster. But with the Aura, at least you'd have a better chance of escaping. Living to fight another day."

  She agreed. He could see it in her face.

  "Go with the Aura."

  She nodded, and he watched her make the choice. The system acknowledged it. Then her knees buckled and she fell forward, catching herself on her hands as the skill changes took hold. Painful ones, from the look of it. Her whole body tensed, muscles locking up, breath coming in short gasps.

  He remembered the feeling.

  Yeah. That looks pleasant.

  David then studied Rhea's soul.

  Rhea's soul was a layered structure of crystals. Like a surprisingly aesthetically well made monument of endless encasing crystals, like those nested dolls where each one opens to reveal another inside, all circular in shape and large, one after the other stacked within the next. They were translucent, and looked hard as diamond. But there were so many layers stacked up that he couldn't see what was inside. Layer after layer of translucence stacked until they turned opaque, the accumulated crystal hiding whatever sat at her core behind walls of refracted light.

  Outer ones are clear. Easy to see through. That's the part she shows people.

  The nurse who ran toward wounded without thinking. The one who patched up strangers like they mattered. That part was visible, accessible. The empathy, the human need to connect, to care for others automatically. Right there on the surface.

  Go deeper and they stack.

  Layer after layer accumulated until the light couldn't penetrate. The pragmatic assessments. The clinical distance. The way she cataloged injuries without flinching, pressed on wounds to check nerve damage like she was checking fruit at a market. The part of her that watched instead of felt. The cold pragmatism underneath all that care. All those layers suggested she kept that part guarded, protected, hidden behind translucent walls that only let you see so far before they turned opaque.

  Surface is what you get. The rest you work for. Or earn. Or force.

  Normally he could tell he'd probably need to enter her soul realm just to see past that first layer. Step inside, navigate whatever landscape her soul built, find the center through exploration. Invasive. Not something you do to someone still breathing.

  But the system's interference had changed that. For a short time while it worked in her, he could see through. His gaze sharpened, his oracle sight piercing her soul space, observing the system granting her a perk up close.

  The door to her soul was welded shut. Solid barrier, no entrance, no hinge. But his gaze followed the system's energy and found an opening it had made to change her. Precise incision, clean and deliberate, made specifically for this purpose.

  How'd it make that?

  He didn't know. He noted the ease, though. The system just opened her up. Like it wasn't even hard.

  The system had appeared as an objective thing so far. A tool with rules. Interface panels and skill descriptions.

  If it has a will behind it, if it can open souls whenever it wants and make changes from inside, I need to be careful. Real careful.

  Deep in the center, past all those stacked crystal layers, past the opaque wall where light stopped reaching, he saw two star-like structures. Complex and branching through the layers like roots through soil, like veins through tissue. Integral to everything. He instantly knew they were her two skills.

  He watched the one the system was working on. It was grafting complex patterns and shapes into the skill. Imprinting what looked like pathways, carving connections, causing the skill to change shape slightly. It was beginning to resemble whatever it would become. Like the death knight's skill-trees. Those eleven glowing structures in its soul, each one a skill made manifest.

  So that's how it works. Skills take form in the soul. They have structure. And when they change, the system rebuilds them. Adds pieces. Reroutes the pathways.

  He watched the patterns being woven, the connections being carved, the whole process of a skill being remade.

  And they take shape in the soul. Develop. A visualization. A representation of what they are.

  He wondered what that meant. Skills having form in the soul.

  If I wanted to do this myself, without the system's help, I'd have to replicate the process. Shape the skill. Create the pathways. Engrave the patterns. Make it into what I want it to be.

  He watched every detail. Each graft. Every imprint and connection carved into the star. He committed the process to memory, his concentration absolute.

  David stopped studying once the system finished and Rhea stopped shaking.

  He thought about what happened when he was being chased by the stagfiend horde. He lost control. Of his body and his mind.

  My emotions under high stress are out of control. Like there's an external influence. Like the chemicals in my body are supercharged and I can't manage them.

  When he was running, he felt as if his unconscious had taken the driver's seat. That wasn't him making those choices. That was something else.

  The reason is the Demon Body perk. Has to be. That perk changed how my energy works, and apparently changed how I work too.

  With Demon Body, his circulation of demonic energy had improved. The potency too. His fireballs moved faster, burned brighter. When he used energy to manipulate death or souls, his control now couldn't be compared to before. Before it was a baseball bat. Swing hard, hope you hit something. Now it felt like a tool. Something with precision. A thing he could actually work with.

  Still can't figure out sigils though. Haven't managed to construct a single piece. But the finer manipulation helps. Takes one layer of impossible difficulty and makes it just... really hard.

  His conjured projectile spears of energy were no longer jagged. They held a firmer shape now. Like the energy was more in tune with his will instead of fighting him. It still raged, had its own wild current, but he'd gotten used to its ebbs and flows. He stopped fighting it and started riding with it, raging too.

  What else can I shape it into? Compress it, see what happens. Spin it. Make it do something other than fly straight. Make something that’s not a weapon.

  He realized long ago that he was maintaining a lower version of Calm Mind almost constantly. Just a background hum of control. The full version, the one that he filled extra mana, he only used when battling something serious.

  I need to test it more. Experiment. Find out what it can actually do.

  To really understand, he needed to put himself in those desperate states again. High adrenaline, high emotion, like when he was being chased. That's when Demon Body's psychological effects triggered. When he could study what happened and learn to counter it with Calm Mind. Learn to turn the skill into something active.

  Can't face the Mind Knight without it. That thing attacks heads. I need my head well defended.

  It was integral to his survival. Not optional.

  Rhea lay on the ground, grumbling stifled complaints about the aftereffects. David looked at Fenrir.

  He turned to the warlock, making sure his voice carried so Rhea could hear. "Protect her. And do anything she says. Anything at all."

  Rhea groaned, pushing herself up on her elbows. "What's up? I appreciate the new henchman, but why the sudden change?"

  David met her eyes. "I might be gone for a while."

  It was time for him to get a class.