With a sulking Rhea behind me, I continued walking forward; the spiders never stopped coming, but their ranged attacks couldn’t break through the barriers. Their very life fuelled it, and the spinning blades were powerful enough to cut to ribbons the ones who foolishly approached. It wasn’t even that strenuous to maintain; this was one of my best uses of a spell to date.

  “Isn’t it hard to keep so many skills active all the time?”

  So finally we are in a talking mood again. If I have learnt something about women, it is to never let these little matters become too big; I’ll take the olive branch and go forward.

  “Not really. Well, at the beginning it was nearly impossible, but I have a skill called multicasting; it helps a lot. The rest is practice. The real question is, how can you be this good at rituals and magic theory? Since we came to the tutorial, you modified a ritual after a night of study, started creating your own and managed feats that I’m sure many people find incredible. Compared to that, most of the others are far behind, even in their speciality. Well, Melissa is a monster in her own right too…”

  Some of the smartest spiders started to retreat and shoot at me from far away, never coming too close to get drained or torn apart, so I shoot them with a dart; that simple. My versatility in combat was becoming an asset, despite my skills being so few. But now it made me think again: if Rhea wasn’t right about not diluting your class purpose, I was a hexer, not a mage anymore, but I used a mix of both. Should I focus more on my hexes, maybe? I didn’t get very interesting upgrades for that skill after all… I’ll give it a thought.

  “I don’t know, I was always into this stuff, you know? I… I studied rituals even back home.” I looked back at her; she was still fiddling with runes and circles in the air, but she looked through those to stare at me. “The theories about connections and sacrifices were sound; they translate well to the more magical explanations I read in my tome. So I guess that part of that can be explained this way, but I simply get it, you know? There is an exact science behind rituals by the say of the book, but I feel that there is more to it, something related more to intent and will. You know that willpower is my highest stat? Even my class seems to agree… So that’s how I modify the rituals, even the one we used to heal Alya and the others; I went by feeling, and it worked.” She snickered. “It worked nearly too well. Marcus got some years back with that stunt he pulled, and you too, I think.”

  “Do I look younger?” I asked, No mirror means not being able to see my face; the only thing I could feel was my stubble growing by the day.

  She looked at me, searching for something on my face, wrinkles maybe, not that I had them in the first place; I wasn’t that old.

  “I think yes, you have a… mature air about you, but you do look younger; I will say that you look late twenties, probably…”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  That got me thinking, “Do you think it happened with the ritual?”

  “Mmm… maybe, but I think it happened later.”

  Now this was something interesting. Was it because I was using a tonne of lifeforce, stolen from my enemies, and used against them? Maybe, or maybe the ritual had influenced me, and people didn’t notice soon because the changes were harder to spot than Marcus’s? Could it be an effect of evolving my class too? So many questions all the time.

  “In any case, I think you’re a genius with rituals; I’m glad to have you on the team. We could do with more expertise.”

  “Yea, and less ogling… but I’m not sure about considering myself a genius; we should see what the standard is before judging.”

  “Ogling?” I know I didn’t really pay too much attention to the party’s dynamics, but were there people who had time for that? While monsters runned to us all the fucking time?

  Rhea sighed, “Yes, most of the men look at us like a lion looks at a steak; it’s exhausting. Alya was about to beat up some people even yesterday. We got approached many times; everyone seems to be using the excuse of the apocalypse and “we could be dead tomorrow” to get into our pants…”

  That was rough, but it was nothing that wasn’t happening before the tutorial too. It was unfortunate, but nothing really unsolvable.

  “I will talk with the men when we return. Here the only things that exist is the law of the jungle, and I’m going to remindare them. Who are the ones to keep an eye on?”

  Rhea looked at me with surprise. “You would really do that? Thank you, it will be great! Well look, I don’t really want to create trouble, but Marco is one of the worst… he already tried to grope me and tried to sleep with another woman. She refused, and he was livid. Then there is Mark too, not the mage, the crafter…”

  “Wait, you’re telling me that we have a Marcus, a Marco, and two Marks in the group? Is it a joke?” I was flabbergasted. What the hell were the chances?

  She stopped moving. “That’s what surprises you? Not the fact that your teammate is a scumbag?!”

  I snickered, “Yes, that Marco is a piece of shit. I’m absolutely not surprised. This other Mark, I think I know who you’re talking about.”

  “Then why did you let him in the team? It’s not that we need hi—” Realisation showed on her. “The curse… that’s why. This explains so many things…”

  “Yeah, you can see how someone like Marco could abuse that knowledge if it came out?”

  She nodded. “It will create lots of trouble for sure, but another thing…” she looked at me while snickering. “You should be careful too…”

  I flayed a couple of darts and ground six more approaching spiders to minced meat while waiting for Rhea to finish. What did she mean by that?

  “C’mon, spit it out.”

  She laughed, “There is someone you saved that has it hard for you… did you notice?”

  Of course I saw how she looked at me, but while I respected her and despite finding her very attractive, it wasn’t the time or place to get intimate; despite what happened with Rhea before, I wasn’t going to look for a relationship, not until I managed to rid myself of the curse. It will only mess things up otherwise.

  “I noticed, but regardless of what she feels, we are not in a position to consider something like that, even if I wanted to, and she’s at least ten years younger than me.”

  She looked at me, puzzled. “Who are you talking about?” Then added in a lower voice, “Age is just a number, anyway…”

  Leaving aside the last thing, I just answered her question. “I mean, Alya.”

  “Alya, no… well, maybe? But I wasn’t talking about her.”

  What? Who else could it be then?

  “I was talking about Jerome.”

  Huh?