Tom and Jeff soon relaxed as the days passed, the prickling of anxiety and frustration wearing off as catastrophes stopped flying in like metal shavings to the magnet Zoe sometimes felt like she was.

  The Frambling Woods were a few hundred kilometers to the south. Close enough that it was possible Tom and Jeff would stumble their way into cities Zoe had already visited, but far enough that she didn't expect them to. Though Zoe didn't mind that much anyway, anywhere she'd visited a thousand years ago would have changed enough to be new all over again.

  Zoe's nights were spent testing out her new skills as enchantments. With Enchantress lost, her Enchanting skill had been returned at level 113. Shockingly low for how important it was to her — and with a noticeable impact compared to what she was used to. Imbuing objects just felt so slow and tiring. Though that may have been caused by the mana she'd lost, too.

  The skills were somewhat interesting, as skills. Mana Cloak was an excellent effect, and was a high priority for a general skill when she had the time. Mark of the Beholder was very interesting, though Zoe wasn't sure what either of the two men had seen in her. Eliza would be excited to try it out though, next time they had a few hours to spare together.

  But where Arcane Beholder shone most was as fodder for enchanting, Zoe found. Each skill powerful and impactful, even to her vast collection of useless skills. Each one was a future general skill, as far as Zoe was concerned. Even if it weren't for her obsession with collecting class skills.

  Mana Cloak was a rather expensive enchantment, scaling with the physical size of the object being enchanted. But if the enchantment could be sustained, the object would be invisible to the naked eye and almost imperceptible even to her Arcane Beholding enhanced mana sight. There were tiny fluctuations — hard to see even when she knew the object was there, but unmistakable in their appearance.

  Scrying was interesting, effectively making a magnifying glass with x-ray vision. With the addition of mana, she could push the vision further, like stepping through the layers of something she was looking at. The range was quite small — not reaching to the other side of even just some of the larger tree trunks they'd passed, but even her Cosmic Vision hadn't let her see the rings within a tree's trunks.

  Obnubilate — which Zoe had taken to just calling Oble for lack of interest in figuring out how it was pronounced, made an object entirely immune to having any more mana imbued in it. Once the enchantment's initial mana ran dry, the enchantment would fizzle out. Even with Meditation and Mana Manipulation trying to overwhelm the enchantment, it would just reject any mana Zoe pushed into it.

  Zoe wondered what use the skill would be for a bit but as the days passed more and more ideas started popping up. Single use keys for her home that she could hand out to acquaintances without as much worry. Powerful gifts she could give to people without being concerned about how they would use them. The rings she would be giving the Wanderers for instance. They may still appreciate the gesture, but they wouldn't just be new weapons in their arsenal.

  Though Zoe wondered if the Wanderers would even be able to accept her gifts anyway, after her experience with the dragon.

  Arcane Shielding was a carbon copy of how it worked as a skill. A pulse of mana into the object summoned the same hexagonal shield around it, though the movement of the shield had to also be controlled through dedicated pathways in the object's enchantment. A little less versatile but at the same time while the skill was hardly of much use to Zoe, the enchantment would be very powerful for something like a child's coat or maybe a merchant's cart.

  Arcane Barrage was similar to the slew of other Mana Burst type skills. A simple blast of mana, essentially a battery that could expel all its energy at once. Like bursting open a compressed bottle of air. Though the blast could be directed, it wasn't all too useful.

  Assault of the Beholder however, was quite interesting. A destructive enchantment that required Zoe to be careful about where she defined the front of the object, similar to her Archery skill. With a pulse of Zoe's mana, the enchantment would send out a blistering fast stream of mana that continued in a straight path until it impacted something. When it did, the mana erupted in a violent outburst of slices and tears, ripping through the outer layer of bark on trees in moments and not slowing down.

  The actual damage it did was minimal, compared to her more powerful enchantments but what shocked Zoe about it was how mana efficient the enchantment was. Even without Meditation helping it, Assault of the Beholder was almost sustaining on the passive, ambient mana.

  And the last enchantment she tested was Mark of the Beholder. It was a strange skill, and the strangeness continued as an enchantment. At first, it didn't even seem like it had done anything at all. The enchantment settled in and nothing seemed to happen.

  Zoe could feel the enchantment within the object, she could push her mana through the pathways formed. The enchantment was real. It was successful. But it did nothing.

  She tried touching it to one of her allies — Jeff, tried combining it with other enchantments to see how it would interact. But it never seemed to do anything.

  It wasn't until Jeff had asked to try using the rock she'd enchanted with Mark of the Beholder and Archery that they'd first found what it had done. Which was still nothing. Although this time the nothing was interesting.

  Jeff pushed his mana through the enchantment and rather than shooting out of his hand through the forest, his mana just coursed right through and poured out the other side.

  After several minutes of testing her ideas, Zoe found that Mark of the Beholder made an enchantment only usable by either herself or people who were marked by the skill. Anybody else would be unable to interact with the enchantment at all.

  If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  Which was interesting — and would be even more interesting depending on how long and how far the buff lasted. If Mark of the Beholder was permanent then she could give it to Joe and Emma, along with powerful enchantments that would be useless to anybody that might steal them. Not that people often did, but there was little reason not to consider the possibility if she could prevent it.

  But while Zoe did like Tom and Jeff, she didn't trust them. And the skill was revealing something about herself that she didn't understand. Leaving them with the skill, to see some aspect of her that she wasn't even aware of was naive at best and idiotic at worst.

  The final testing would have to wait until Zoe was back home with one of her closest friends. Hopefully Eliza.

  Zoe paused.

  Definitely Eliza. The woman wouldn't stay away a second longer than she had to once Zoe sent her a message explaining the new skill.

  Travel down in the valleys was pleasant. The idea the valleys posed to many was one of terror, and fear. Darkness that enveloped the land, demons that lived within the shadows and corrupted Wanderers that prowled the forests at night.

  But reality was always different. Wanderers weren't all too common, the demons weren't a problem if you just didn't bring any light and the darkness didn't matter if you had some alternative form of vision. Tom didn't, but Jeff seemed to be able to see just fine in the earthen boxes he carved out of the world for them every night.

  What the valleys really did was provide a lot of time for experimentation and introspection. Time to think about plans and the future, time to talk about their lives and aspirations and goals.

  Zoe learned quickly that while Tom was the much more level headed of the group, he was also somewhat listless at times. He planned, he made decisions, he figured things out. But he didn't have any goals for himself, just ended up dragged along with Jeff's grand aspirations.

  Jeff on the other hand was the very definition of ambition. He wanted to make a school for sinkhole wizards, to spread the good word of sinkholes. To help people understand the beauty of them, the versatility of them. The dangers they posed.

  But before he could do that, he needed to understand the world better. He needed to understand the valleys — which were decidedly not sinkholes to him, for some reason. He needed to understand the peaks, the creatures that inhabited the world. The different ways sinkholes interacted with the flora and fauna of the world.

  And only half of it seemed to be a joke, Zoe felt. The man played it up, hints of pleasure and joy creeping out every time Tom cringed. But below, he genuinely believed in his sinkhole magic.

  Zoe didn't understand it, but she could respect the passion if nothing else.

  The levels came quickly for Zoe down in the valleys. Even without finding a dungeon or a violent rampaging hydra, Seasoned Persistence's passive experience gain was enough to get her to her level cap of sixty two in just two weeks.

  Most of that time — when she wasn't enchanting, she'd spent thinking about what she wanted to do with her class levels. There were only four Beholder classes to combine so she didn't need to be as perfect as when she went for her seventh class.

  But these early levels with so few classes came so quick anyway that it might end up saving time just to get a couple of minimum rolls.

  In the end, she decided to go for around the bottom ten percent on each class range. For Arcane Beholder starting at twenty two, that would put her to a class cap of about forty six or maybe forty seven.

  The benefit of resetting so early was that she'd also get back very quick. Level sixty two took two weeks, but with some dedicated levelling and resetting at forty seven when she didn't have her next class available it only took five or six days.

  Even still, the weeks raced by without Zoe's next class and the group found themselves at their first interesting distraction on their journey down in the valleys.

  The three stood at the start of a set of stairs that lead up to a ruined temple. Remains of the dark stone statues lay scattered about on the stairs, with large chunks of rock that had fallen from the tower in the distance resting in shallow craters. Vines crept through the stone, through the splits and cracks, tying broken arms down and propping up chipped statue heads.

  A dense blanket of mana covered the ruins, coursing along the vines and carved stone stairs, forming strange patterns that seemed to pace up and down. The familiar feeling of anomalous mana.

  "Anything we need to know about dungeons down here?" Tom looked to Zoe.

  Zoe shook her head. "Nope. Same as up above. Could be literally anything."

  "Can we have light in there?" Jeff asked.

  "No. I don't think we can have light anywhere down here, dungeon or not. Not without inviting the demons in." Zoe answered.

  Jeff shuddered, clearly remembering the time the two men had decided to try their hands with the creatures that lurked in the shadows.

  Tom looked to the sun that was beginning to set over the towering peaks, high in the sky. "Maybe another hour? Do we want to explore a bit tonight or set up camp and try first thing in the morning?"

  "I vote we set up camp." Zoe said.

  "Agreed." Jeff said, his magic already surging out as he formed a small room for the three to rest in.

  Tom summoned some wood and built a little firepit just outside. "Then we plan. You haven't heard of this dungeon by any chance, have you?"

  "Nope." Zoe sat down on the grassy floor next to the fire. Somehow, even after so many years the fear of fire never quite subsided. Not the fear of being burnt — that had long since been lost. But the fear of fire running rampant. A campfire set in the middle of a forest with no attempts made to keep it away from the flammable shrubbery nearby?

  Something about it still sent a shiver down Zoe's spine, even though she knew that such a thing would be impossible with the three of them nearby. And even if they somehow did let the fire spread on accident, Zoe would be more than capable of putting out a small forest fire on her own — and even repair the damage caused by it.

  It was an entirely illogical, irrational fear of hers. But every time she saw a fire made in such an irresponsible way she couldn't help but feel that slight twinge of fear. Her hands reached out and shoved away some of the nearby branches, tossing them further away from the fire.

  "Damn," Tom split another branch in half and tossed it onto the fire. "Would have been nice. Can you see anything deeper inside?"

  Zoe shook her head. The steps were too long for her mana to reach past them into the temple and then grope around for something to see. "Not passively. I could try scrying though."

  Tom nodded.

  Scrying was a strange skill. It let her peer through mana to see distant places, but the range was only a few kilometers and she could only see somewhere that she had actually been. She couldn't scry inside Jeff's box until she'd actually gone inside it.

  But her vision through the spell was drastically enhanced, so even if she could only see from somewhere she had been she could see much better and with much more clarity. Which was impressive, considering how incredible Zoe's eyes already were.

  Zoe flew up and looked down towards the temple, then returned to the campfire. She didn't expect to see much with her scrying skill — the temple door had been ripped from its hinge but the room behind was small and there didn't seem to be much to see anyway.

  Mana rushed to Zoe's eyes as she pushed it through her Scrying skill, and the dungeon exploded with movement. Dozens of stone creatures paced up and down the stairs in careful, practiced motions. A large guard stood in front of the temple entrance, its massive broad sword stabbed into the ground in front of it.

  "Oh." Zoe blinked, looking out at the dungeon with her bare eyes again, none of the motion visible. "They're all invisible."

  Links:

  Amazon Series:

  Ko-Fi:

  Patreon: