Almost before Natalie k, the first week of csses had passed, and the weekend was on her.

  Not that the weeke time to rest. Though pleased she hadn’t embarrassed herself with her debut spars, she had a long way to go, and not for spellcasting alone. Her more traditional skillsets needed work. Failure in the dungeo endangering her, Jordan, Sofia, aher teammate’s lives. Natalie had zero iion of resting on her urels. A mi, she assumed, shared with most of Te’s studentbase.

  So, she set a more brutal pace during the weekend than the schoolweek itself. Without a long break of academid an enforced lunch hour to hamper her, she worked herself to exhaustion. It wasn’t an unfamiliar process. She wouldn’t have ever qualified for Te if so.

  Ohose grueling training hours were pleted, she met with Jordan. Uheir typical post-workout sessions, though, they took a more focused approach. Instead of colleg energy—though that would happen shortly—they focused first on strategy.

  Natalie had been making steady progress filling up her al Energy resource. She had yet to expend it on anything since her first-to-sed adva of al Harvest. They’d wao see whether the resource decayed slowly, encio spend it rather than h. As it turned out, no. Healie’s sistent geion—because the question had beeher there . Perhaps there was a rge one, but in the days she’d steadily been colleg, she hadn’t brushed against the limit.

  “Okay,” Jordan asked. “How much do you have, again?”

  ***

  al Energy: 122

  ***

  “Owenty-two,” Natalie said. “Probably enough to take everything up a tier. Maybe kick harvest up once, but probably not.”

  The excitement of the first week of csses had had Natalie pushing off from making a decision. There’d been practical reasons to hoard and not choose what to advance, like wanting to see if there oint decay or limits in pce, but she couldn’t persist with that test forever. With the dungeon opening tomorrow, it was time she decided how to allocate the points she’d earned.

  They had, of course, talked about what Natalie should do, but there were gouments for multiple paths. Keep rushing al Harvest, thus advang how quickly she earned further points? Advance Illusion, maybe making the skill easier, aainly more powerful?

  Or even Heavy onry, that amusingly—and aggravatingly—named skill. The two of them had a hunch that progressing the skill wouldn’t only e with a size increase.

  “I think taking everything forward once is smart,” Jordan said. “It’s cheap, and Illusion and Empower will be useful for the dungeon. But you should keep a healthy reserve. Being able to catch up your level two skills as soon as they e will be nice.”

  The st strong point for building up a backlog, rather than rushing adva. Not only was having al Energy on hand for when she o Empower skills smart, possibly saving them down in the dungeon, but when the day came that Natalie hit level two, and received new skills, having plenty of al Energy on hand tress them—assuming they were useful enough to justify it—would be extremely practical.

  But, she shouldn’t be a total hoarder, either. Advang each skill once, as Jordan suggested, would be a good promise. She’d have plenty of energy left over, but would also boost relevant skills for their uping delve.

  “Yeah,” Natalie said. “Figured that’d be the best move. I’ll do it, then, unless …?” She waited a moment for Jordan to interjey st opinions, but she waved for Natalie to hurry up.

  Seizing trol of that strange energy, she activated [Advance], funneling enigmatik ribbons inside her brain—a sensation purely imagined, but vivid, lifelike—into the first of the relevant skills.

  ***

  [Empower]: Progression advanced from 1 to 2.

  ***

  ***

  [Empower] - ACTIVE. PROGRESSION 2. Amplify the potency of any ACTIVE or AURA skill by {2.0x}. Expend al Energy equivalent to mana cost.

  ***

  “Went from one point five to two,” Natalie said.

  “Mm,” Jordan said. “Doubles the strength of a skill. I could see that being …” she trailed off.

  “Incredible,” Natalie said bluntly. “With higher level skills? Doubling their strength?”

  “More, as yress Empower even further. Triple? Four times?”

  Though Natalie had yet to see the realization of the cim, when she’d received her css, The Bestower had told her that she’d gotten a, if strange, exceptionally powerful css. Even if it hadn’t turned out true yet, it certainly would iure. Doubling the strength of a skill. Unless Natalie received abysmal base skills iure—and she doubted that—then Empower would bee eously useful.

  “But it costs experience, basically,” Natalie said.

  Strong as the skill was, it came with heavy downsides. She’d yet to experiment with it, but fually, the skill used up al Energy. It used up her ‘alternate progression points’—so, equivalently, she had to spend experieo activate it.

  “It should only be used when necessary,” Jordan agreed. “Still. Depending on how expe is, the bes could massively outweigh the cost. If it allows you to take down monsters out of your level rahen the bonus experience could more than make up for it.”

  “Sort of,” Natalie said. “Guess it depends oher al Energy progression is more or less useful than normal levels.”

  “True,” Jordan said. “And speaking of that, we should test the skill. It’s a waste, but we o know the cost, and the exact meaning of ‘doubling’ an illusion’s potency.”

  That sort of thing was better learned beforehand, not in the moment. When tomorrow’s delve began, Natalie wao have a strong hold of her capabilities—including her emergency options. While burning al Energy, that slow to acquire and vitally useful resource, pained her, what would pain her a lot more was dying. Obviously. Or worse, getting someone else hurt.

  “Yeah,” Natalie said. “Let’s finish leveling everything else up, first, though. Then we’ll go test things out.”

  Jordan ined her head, theured for her to tinue.