Eli reappeared near a clearing just out of the girl's sight, but close enough to hear them, despite all of his current emotional issues, he was still psyops trained and knew that she was trying to get him to leave, so he stayed close enough to listen. After hearing their exchange, he understood, the older of the girls had probably used this tactic in the tutorial. Finding a guy with a hero complex while playing the damsel in distress so she didn't have to put forth as much effort. He hadn't interacted with them enough to notice any of that but that other girl had seen it right away, and tried to protect him.
The girls split up and went in two different directions, Eli followed the girl from before close enough to be able to step in and help but far enough back that she wouldn't know he was there. When she got close to the safe zone he got closer and knocked on a tree while stepping out from behind it. She turned around and smiled at him, with nothing but pure appreciation in her eyes. He got closer and sat down on a log. She walked closer and sat on a rock not far from him.
"Thank you," Eli said.
"I should be thanking you," the girl said.
"What is your name?" Eli asked.
"Audrey," she answered.
"Well Audrey, I owe you a favor," Eli said, trying not to be serious about it. "I'll be around, but if there's an emergency, I'll be at the volcano back there, the closest one to here."
"Well, if you want to pay me back, how about coming back here everyday at sunrise and training me to be strong. I can promise to try but I'm not much of a fighter." she said, trying not to blush.
"I can try but I'll only be around for another week or so," Eli said with a smile.
"It's better than nothing, I'll do the best I can.," She said while standing and offering him a handshake. He shook it and walked back into the forest.
Eli spent several hours walking back to his volcano while thinking about the hand shake, most of the people in this area were making their way to the safe zone or already there. Almost every monster was dead rather by his hand or by the people returning. He was thinking about what to do next when he got another message from Tara.
"With Stevens, delayed, ILU"
He still really enjoyed seeing her say that she loves him, and it felt really good. It was a strong emotion, too strong to come from a message, he was going to have to get himself in check before she got here or he wasn't going to be able to control himself. He wasn't worried that he would hurt her, he was worried that he might do or say something that could ruin things between them. He was going to have to practice control, but he wasn't sure how to do that, whatever had been done to him had always controlled his emotions for him. He needed to train himself to control it, on top of training everything else. The more chaos there is, the more training that was needed.
While he was still walking, his thoughts drifted to the system and what it wanted because it seemed more psychologically aware than it needed to be. It seemed like it had a goal, and it certainly seemed interested in him, but he needed to figure out where it was pushing him and why. It is powerful enough to change the planet in a matter of weeks, so why monsters? They must serve a purpose beyond making people stronger. He opened his stats to see just how strong he was and if he could figure anything out about it.
"Magic level 44"
"Stats: Strength 20, Reaction 25, Vitality 25, Intellect 25, Wisdom 26, Resistance 25, Will 201"
The fact that his Will stat always went up, even if the level wasn't particularly difficult to earn it would still go up randomly. There was more to it and he just wasn't sure about it. It was only going up when he leveled, but if it's just a measurement like the system says, then it should go up intermittently. There was something there but he didn't have enough information. However, there wasn't anything he could do about it now. He needed to train, answers would come with strength and patience, he just hoped he could get them before the system's plan for him killed him.
After another non stop monster smashing, Eli returned to the spot Audrey and he had parted just before the sun came up. She didn't show up right away, but after waiting ten minutes, she walked up, but was injured. There were cuts that were healing and bruises that were almost gone, but her and her gear were clean, at least as clean as you can get in a stream. He wanted to ask her about it but decided against it, if she wanted to talk then she would bring it up, training was all he was here for. It would be months before he revealed that he could enter the safe zones.
"Are you ready to train?" Eli said to her, doing his best not to look at any injuries. "Let me know if there is anywhere you want to start, otherwise we can just cover the basics that I have been able to pick up."
"Well, my class is Rogue - Common and I have a dagger," Audrey said, with very little confidence.
"Ok, so do you want to learn magic, or how to use your dagger better?"
"Magic," She said with a glint in her eye.
"Ok, so then today I will teach you how to meditate with your magic," he said with a smile.
Eli went on to explain how to feel the magic inside you, but immediately ran into a problem. She kept saying she didn't understand, until she asked if the magic he was talking about was inside her heart node, because that was similar to what he was saying. Then it clicked in his mind, that the heart node was a gateway to the magic soul body that was on his outside due to him not having a heart node. He adjusted his instructions and she began to pick it up very quickly. Her descriptions were just what he would expect from someone with their soul in a node.
Audrey was patient and listened very attentively, after she got the meditation stuff down and was able to really get a feel for her magic he asked her about her nodes and skills. She had heart, light, and earth nodes with a very basic skill from her class on the light node that made her blur a bit and draw less attention. And she had a basic dagger weapon skill. Her heart and earth nodes were open, but she said she tried the light node for two days but couldn't get it to open. She spent the next hour or so just getting a better feel for her nodes and he would ask her about them every few minutes letting her get their flavor into words.
She was doing pretty well for the first day, but Eli could sense the hesitation in her, the unwillingness to grasp power and the violence that comes with it. She felt more connected to her earth node, like she wanted its magic to build a wall around herself so she could feel safe. But, as he knew all too well, hiding wasn't safe, there was no such thing as safety, only the feeling of safety. The trick was going to be for him to connect something within herself with that feeling of safety, it was the only way to bring her out of her shell.
"This is all the time I can spare each day," Eli said after two hours. "I'll see you tomorrow at the same time." Then he turned to walk away, but she spoke up first.
"Thank you, what is your name?" She asked in a very shy voice with her head turned and her eyes looking down. There was no way he would tell anyone his name at this stage of the new world, but he could come up with a fake name. However, he needed to know if he could trust her so he turned and looked at her, really giving her a good look up and down. She was short and thin, maybe five foot tall and no more than 110 lbs. She had long natural red hair that went down to the middle of her back and freckles on her cheeks and around her dull green eyes. A button nose and thin small lips made her face cute but it was obvious she was young and puberty was not over for her. Despite not knowing what to do he caved and gave her a name.
"You can call me Ash," he said.
"Like your cloak?" she asked.
"Yes, just like my cloak, I'll see you tomorrow," he said and walked into the forest at a leisurely pace.
************
Tara was standing watch while Stevens and some random guy and girl were sleeping. The four of them were moving south at a pretty good pace, and at night she and Stevens would take turns on watch while the others slept the whole time. Grinding her teeth she was still furious at Stevens insistence that they bring them along, the woman was in her mid thirties and seemed like an airhead, while the guy was maybe 20 and just simping for her hard. She wanted to move faster, getting that message from Elias made her chest feel like it was going to explode. However, it also made her weary since this was a new thing for him, she hoped that he hadn't gone through an even more difficult tutorial than she did.
A sudden expression of uncharacteristic emotion might point to a fractured mind and it might even be more than hers was right now. What she saw broke something in her mind and she was having trouble pretending to have herself together in front of the others. Tara took a deep breath and did her best to calm down. It was a good sign that Eli was still himself, not sending a bunch of messages. But how could he tell her he loves her then just not send anything for the whole next day? She felt like her head would explode trying to go through all the possibilities of what could be going on, he could have saved some hottie from certain death and now they are getting it on, or he could be having second thoughts about her after saying that he loved her and he doesn't know how to tell her about it.
She was unraveling inside her own head but when she would think about the lightning bolt of energy that went through her body the first time she kissed him, everything became calm and she knew she could trust him. The rollercoaster of emotions was mentally exhausting so she would scout ahead and kill all the monsters they were going to cross paths with. Her raw emotions were getting filtered into aggression and tense rage and she didn't have an outlet except to kill things. This would be fine with how many monsters they were coming across, but none of them were much of a challenge.
Then, they ran into a challenge. In one of the prairie sinkholes covering this zone was a massive monster that looked like a cross between a rhino, and a wooly mammoth. It had to be at least 15 feet long and 10 feet high with three rhino horns and it was all covered in fur. Focusing on it, the system said level 55 and zone boss, so she asked Eli about it with a basic message and the reply she got made her even more angry and frustrated than before.
"I kill ZB at lvl 38 I think"
Although she was already level 41, she knew Eli was special so she did not take this lightly. The two traveling with them wanted to go around and avoid fighting the thing because she needed to let off some steam, so she told Stevens to stay with them out of sight so she could go fight it. However, he did not like this idea and refused.
"What do you mean, 'no'," she said with an angry look in her eye.
"I cannot let you fight that thing alone," Stevens said. "If you die, he will kill me."
"I'm not going to die, I can take this thing, and if I can't, I can get away," she said.
"I will help you," said Stevens, "he isn't acting like himself, he will kill me if you die."
"Oh I'm sure he will kill you, I'm just also sure I can do this."
"I hate to interrupt, but who is this guy who will kill you?" the young guy travelling with them said.
"It's better if you don't know," Stevens said, after looking at Tara for permission.
"UGH… Ok you can come with, just find a place for your friends and I'll go scout it out," Tara said.