Charles spent the walk back to their room going over what had happened. Clearly Jenna was upset, and he was directly responsible. While he had not known about how she felt, it was crystal clear in retrospect, and the fact he had been flirting with someone else in front of her painted a pretty damning picture. Jen was attractive, and more than once he had considered asking her on an actual date, but a combination of wanting to keep their delve team professional and seeing how flatly she had rejected the advances of other guys at some of the parties they went to, he had tamped the idea way down. With present events however, that looked like a bigger mistake. “Had she rejected everyone else because she was interested in me?” It felt conceded to consider, but Jen’s clear aggravation lead some credence to the matter.

  Arriving back at the room, Jen was nowhere to be found. He tried pinging her AI for a location, but was met with a message stating she had “Do not disturb” mode on, only an emergency message would bypass that. He felt it would be an evasion of her privacy to do that when it wasn't a real emergency, just a friendship emergency. Feeling like he had damaged the partnership by blatantly disregarding her feelings filled him with worry, “I should write out a good apology, at least that's something.”

  Earlier.

  Jen stormed off. She was spitting mad. At first she headed to their room, but realizing that Charles would do the same, and that she needed space, she headed for one of the shops on the island to pick up some drinks. After all, getting drunk was the next best thing to actually having your feelings validated by your crush. “Getting drunk is a time honored tradition for being rejected.” she reasoned. Grabbing several bottles of her favorite coconut rum, she set off for the beach, planning to get drunk watching the sun set.

  Meanwhile.

  “Ok, if she isn't back by 6 I'm going to look for her.” Charles said. Over the last 3 hours, he had cleaned the entire small apartment, done all the laundry, and made Jen’s favorite fish tacos as an apology gift. When she had still not returned, he started to worry, at 5, he had ordered a dozen roses hoping that might soothe her anger when she got back, the delivery boy had shared some advice upon delivering the flowers. “They work best if you take them to her, if she goes to the flowers it is less effective, trust me, my girl loves it when I bring them to her way more than just seeing them when she gets home.”

  To Charles, that sounded like solid advice, so he stored the bouquet of flowers in their storage bracelet and set out to see if he could find Jen. The first place he checked was the training hall, if he was pissed, he would go there to punch things and blow off steam. After checking with the front desk to see if Jen had a room, and finding she didn't, he went to their favorite park. No Jen there either. He asked a few of the other teams he had met if anyone had seen Jen, after almost 3 hours he finally got a hit, Carol, one of the girls on team “Four Seasons” , an all female team of melee fighters, they said they saw her on the beach around sunset, also she added, “She did not look happy, and given your state, I suspect it's your fault.”

  “That's fair, I think I may have ruined things between us.” he said, moving towards the beach. The girls all looked after him like a brave soldier marching to his death.

  “Odds she sets him on fire?” Olivia the party leader asked once Charles was out of ear shot.

  “50/50, she will set him on fire or sleep with him.” Lesli said.

  “That's fair, she has been secretly intercepting women for a while, and trying to flirt with him. Lucky bastard, to bad he is thick as a brick when it comes to her emotions.” Carol added. “She did look pissed when I saw her.”

  Amber, the final team member, and one of said women who Jen had warned off Charles added, “Well that brick just cracked, it looks like he knows now.”\

  The girls all shrugged and headed off.

  Charles reached the beach at a sprint, it was after dark, but the full moon and street light from the nearby road provided enough illumination to spot Jen sitting on a log near the water.

  Crap, how do I approach this? He panicked internally. I cant just saunter up and say ‘Sorry I'm a dumb ass.’ …… That is exactly what happened, so that is what I'll do.

  Walking up to the log, Jen saw him coming, when she said nothing, he sat on it next to her.

  “Sorry I’m a dumb ass.” he said, pulling the flowers out of storage and offering them to her.

  “They are pretty.” she said, accepting the bouquet.

  “Looking back, it feels painfully obvious that I was ignoring both our feelings, and the not so subtle signs that you were interested in being more than friends.” Charles said, skimming his pre-written apology, and deciding, perhaps foolishly, that just going with what he felt in the moment would be better than the pre-written one. “I wanted to keep our relationship professional, a failed relationship can damage or break a delving team, and I wanted to avoid that so bad that I basically pushed us into said damage without giving a relationship a chance.”

  “You did.” Jen said, still admiring the roses. “The flowers were a good choice, I considered setting you on fire up until you brought them out.”

  “I felt awful about this, and figured you deserve something nice.” Charles said, ignoring the statement that he narrowly avoided being used as firewood.

  Jen put the roses in their storage and turned to him, “Now what? I don't want to go back to pretending we are not interested in each other.”

  Charles was about to respond when he got an AI ping from the last person he had expected, KI, the island’s second in command, and the scary storm dragon woman who threatened to eat people if they broke the rules. Quickly he opened the message, as it had the “Urgent” tag, it read “Kiss her you Idiot!”

  Going more off instinct than anything else, he moved to wrap his arms around her and leaned in, there was a comforting warmth in the embrace, and when their lips met he felt like his heart was running over time after drinking a tier fifty coffee. After a moment, they parted. Despite the kiss ending, she never let go, holding him close.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  With a pulse, Charles’ spirit formed a new skill.

  Jen said, “Well that was unexpected. Is it a weird sex skill this time?”

  “Please stop asking that, it's not going to be a sex skill, we don't need a skill for sex.” Charles said, slightly distractedly as he felt out the skill structure in his spirit.

  “Oh we don't?” Jen asked, leaning over and pushing them off the log to lay in the sand.

  Charles realized too late what he had said.

  (Author's note: Many spicy moments are happening behind the literary curtain, please pay no mind.)

  After their shared experiences on the beach, the two of them headed back to their room to take a shower.

  “Ok,” Jen said, “sex on the beach is too sandy. It gets everywhere, I mean my hair is full of it.” she shook out her waist length ponytail for effect, a shower of sand falling on the path as they walked back.

  The outcome of the night thoroughly confused Charles, but he was happy with the it, not only had he smoothed things over with Jen, gotten a skill, but had also somehow managed to enter an actual relationship with her, rather than just patching up the working friendship they had previously had. Now they were walking hand in hand back to their room. Charles heavily suspected that Jen was doing all the emotional heavy lifting here, she had forgiven him, and not set him on fire when he kissed her without warning.

  As they walked into their apartment, Charles suggested “you shower first, and I'll reheat the food, then we can swap.”

  Jen, in her infinite wisdom, ignored every word he said and pulled him into the shower with her.

  Some time later they were relaxing on the couch, watching a show, it was a drama set during the last war, and was about a spy who routinely infiltrated federation outposts, uncovering their inhuman experiments, and sabotaging them before always managing to slip away, this time the spy was in a facility where the feddies had attached lasers to sharks for some reason. Charles wasn't really paying attention, most of his thoughts were on the night's events, and Jen’s hand that he was holding.

  —---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  Three days later.

  “Hey Jen, Maybe you should pick up the sword.” Charles suggested as they were eating lunch.

  “Don't be an idiot, as long as you don't flirt with the blacksmith again it will be fine, go grab it. I need to pick up the boots I had made, the old combat boots were falling apart.” She said.

  Taking the easy out, and being grateful that she was more than reasonable about past offences, he went to go pick up the new custom made saber. The tier three weapon was a thing of beauty, finely crafted, and sharpened to a raiser's edge, the only words spoken to the smith however were “Nice, thank you.”

  Reconvening after with Jen, they headed to the training hall to break in the new gear and test the skill that had manifested during their night on the beach.

  Unknown skill, Skill effect:

  Send mana into the skill to imbue a strike with spiritual flames.

  “It is some kind of fire attack, I'm not sure what ‘Spiritual flames’ means, but it sounds good.” Charles said.

  “It's a fire skill!” Jen squealed. Her love of all things hot and burney on full display.

  Setting up a target dummy for tier 3 attack evaluation, Charles drew his new sword and activated the skill, the blade was immediately coated in blue flames, and upon impact, the dummy was immolated.

  The sensation of using the attack skill was new, but more pressingly was the mana headache, the single attack leached nearly one hundred and fifty mana from him. That level of cost was insane for a tier three with only five hundred and twenty mana.

  “That mana cost is insane.” Charles stated.

  Jen asked, “How bad? Twenty ,thirty mana?”

  “One hundred and fifty” Charles said, recovering from the backlash quickly.

  His [AI] beeped with a readout from the room’s evaluation of the skill.

  Attack potency: High tier 3 to low tier 4. Deals burst fire damage with penetrating effect , the flames are short lived.

  Charles sent the evaluation to Jen and watched her reaction.

  “Well that's bullshit, I'm the party’s pyromancer. Can I just swing you around at things?” She asked.

  “Not a chance. What should we name this one?” He asked.

  “I vote for ‘Bullshit fire attack’.” Jen jokingly suggested.

  “How about ‘Smite’? “ he asked.

  “I mean, if you hit something with that, they will be good and smote.” she laughed.

  “Smote is not a word, but yeah, that looks unpleasant to receive. Smite it is.”

  “Its time!” Jen said excitedly, pulling Charles by the hand into the rift building.

  “After this delve, we only have 6 months on the island, lets make this count.” Charles responded, trying to keep up with his girlfriend so she did not literally drag him.

  The entrance to the tier three rift was just like the others they had seen, a faint shimmer to their eyes, but a jagged tear in reality to their spiritual senses. Stepping inside, they emerged into a heavily wooded forest’s clearing.

  “I can feel the exit that way.” Charles stated as he stepped in front of Jen, checking the area to insure no monsters were too close.

  “We go as planed, head away from the exit, then circle around to the boss to get as many monsters as we can on the first pass.” Jen recited the plan they had formed after reading the guide for the rift.

  Shortly after they started moving away from the entrance they encountered their first monsters, large dog sized badgers. The monsters immediately moved to attack Charles as he was closest.

  Jen opened up on them sending [Solar Flare] after [Solar Flare] at them. At first her spells were small darts of fire, splashing against the monsters leaving spots of charred skin, but as her talent started stacking on the buffs the attacks started hitting harder.

  Charles kited the three badgers, taking opportunistic stabs at them, and forcing them away from Jen, by the end of the encounter she was firing arm sized lances of flame that did large damage to the badgers.

  “Not bad, they had more staying power than we hoped.” Charles said, inspecting the burning badger corpses.

  “Let's move while my buff is still active.” Jen said.

  As they moved deeper into the woods, Jen fired an occasional [Solar Flare] to keep her stacks up, it was a waste of mana, but at 3 mana per cast, she could play a little fast and loose.

  By the time they reached the boss of the rift Jen had long since reached her buff limit. Once they engaged the boss she dumped mana into her single skill and fired off a stream of [Solar Flare]s each one a lance of flame that struck with force.

  Charles for his part fed mana into his dash skill and closed the gap, immediately charging his blade with [Smite] he brought it around in a slash on top of the bear sized boss badger’s head. The creature was engulfed in blue flames, and with their spiritual senses the duo could see the flames ripping at the creature’s spirit. It promptly fell dead in a heap at Charles’ feet.

  “Well that's terrifying to watch.” Jen commented, “And I burn things to death.”

  “Note to self, never use that in a spar.” Charles said, nodding along with Jen.

  Gesturing to the reward distortion Charles said,” Ladies first?”

  Jen walked over and dismissed the distortion, grabbing the small white stones as it fell.

  “Its essence stones, two of them, that's rare.” She said, adding the small fortune to their storage bracelets.