On the second day of training, Audrey showed up with similar wounds as before. A bit more severe than last time, but again she didn't speak about it and he wasn't going to ask. This second lesson was on skills and finding them in your node. He explained that the node already has its own flavor of magic, so the closer your skill is to that flavor, the stronger it will be. He spent about an hour going over it with her just having her describe it to him. They were working on her light node since she already had a skill there, she could hopefully improve it some. It turned out that this skill from her class meshed with her node really well so they worked on her understanding of how it worked to see if they could improve it.
She was working very hard, focusing so much that she was dripping with sweat and one of her cuts started bleeding again, but she kept focus and within another hour she was able to level the skill. Audrey explained to him that the skill adjusted the magic in her body letting light through, and demonstrated the skill for him to see its increase in level. She got far more blurry with some of the colors behind her showing through, it would have been more effective if she had more intellect but she was doing well. He wanted to be encouraging but he didn't want her to get attached so he simply smiled under his mask, patted her on the shoulder and started walking away. She didn't stop him or say anything.
Eli got back to his volcano pretty quickly and headed south towards the biggest volcano of the three, there was probably an even bigger zone boss there and probably strong subordinates. The excitement and sense of adventure filled him again and he was ready to dive in head first. Smiling from ear to ear, he kept running faster and faster toward the massive volcano, it was easily twice as tall as the one he had been in before and visible from anywhere in the zone. As he got closer the terrain changed to volcanic rock and rivers of lava, with toxic gas clouds and demonic looking dinosaur-like monsters roaming around. This was truly a hellish landscape and it surrounded the volcano for a ten mile radius. Stopped at the edge of this nightmare fuel area around this massive volcano that was throwing ash and lava around, he took a deep breath and ran in.
At about the half-way point to the volcano, he was running out of time and was going to have to turn around. Not only was the terrain a challenge here, but the monsters were too strong to kill quickly. Some were just too fast to get with a single hit and required several interactions in order to get them with a trick or a combo of weapon swings and magic. But the most difficult one was a troll that would break apart into a cloud of ash every time it got injured and put itself back together removing the injury. It took Eli over an hour to figure out that it had a core he had to smash, and then another three hours to heal from his injuries, and by then, even with his speed, he was so far away that he would have to turn around now to make it back in time for Audrey's lesson.
Not wanting this to be as far as he gets all week he tried his long distance, no line-of-sight, blinking to take him back to his volcano, a place he knew well enough to be able to accurately imagine himself there. The volcano was about a ten hour run from where he was now at his top speed. He gathered his will and magic and focused hard on the ledge on his volcano that overlooked the forest and he blinked. When he opened his eyes he was there on his ledge, but he fell to one knee being almost completely out of magic. Not only that but as he was prepping the spell, which took about eleven or twelve seconds, he felt his chaos magic moving around him and utterly destroying the landscape around him. He would need to keep that in mind for next time and make sure he wasn't doing it somewhere that he didn't want to damage.
Having some extra time, he decided to walk to the meeting place late at night and maybe be able to scope out what the safe zone was up to. Surprisingly enough, before he got there, he came across a group of four fighting a monster. The fact that they were fighting this late at night confused him, why were they not in the safe zone for the night. He didn't bother hiding and just walked close enough to get a better view of their fight from a low branch that looked comfortable to sit in. They looked older, maybe in their forties with two melee fighters, a mage type, and someone doing something that he had never seen before. From his magic senses he could feel that they were taking a portion of their own vitality, mixing it with magic from a life and water node, then sending it to one of their teammates.
Eli's best guess was that this was a healer, but the way they had to use their own vitality worried him. That meant that healers could die from healing someone, that might explain why they are out here at night, trying to grow stronger to protect their healer. If that was the case he would commend them on their loyalty and trust in each other. While pondering this, the fight started to turn against them, the monster was level 24 since he wasn't far from his volcano yet, and all four of the people were level twenty to twenty three. The problem was both of the melee fighters were acting more like defense than offense so the only damage was coming from the mage type who seemed to use some kind of rock bullet spell. The monster wasn't fast, but it was durable, it looked like a fat werewolf but with a bear head and it was making very human facial expressions.
To help out a little since they didn't seem to notice him yet, he conjured a throwing cudgel, a small foot long cudgel, and got it right in the side of the head hard enough to daze it. The melee fighters finally took a risk and dove in for stronger attacks and that turned the fight around and Eli just sat and watched as they slowly finished their fight. From when he showed up to when they finished the fight had been almost twenty minutes. All four of them were exhausted and on a knee or laying on their back, laughing and congratulating each other on the victory, but then the healer walked over and picked up Eli's thrown cudgel and was looking at it.
"I don't think we are alone," the healer said. "This isn't one of ours."
Eli was not far away and expected them to see him any second, but as they looked around and didn't see him he thought that their perception in the dark just wasn't good enough to see what he could see with his improved perception so he decided to make a dramatic entrance and leaped from the tree branch he had been sitting on, landing about 15 feet away from them.
"That is mine," Eli said, "I would like it back."
All four of them jumped when he landed and seemed to be mesmerized by him. They did not speak, did not move, and he swore one of them wasn't even breathing. He didn't want to startle them further so he just stood there waiting for them to get it together. Eli knew he looked a bit crazy with his feather cloak and mask but he didn't think he was all that scary looking. Finally one of them got something to come out of their mouth in a hushed whisper.
"Level 47…." one of the fighters said so quietly that Eli barely heard him. And that is when he remembered that when everything is set to private it would only show race and level.
"Could I have that back please?" Eli asked again without moving so he didn't scare them any further.
It took over a minute for them to slowly start to move again and the healer finally spoke up, she was a fierce looking woman with a sort-of plain look with a long face and an almost sickly skinny body.
"What?" is all she could get out.
"I would like that back please," Eli said for the third time, doing his best to not let any of his frustration and impatience be heard in his voice.
"This?" the healer asked, holding up the cudgel seemingly forgetting she was holding it with both hands.
"Yes."
She tossed it towards him but it dropped to the ground a few feet short of getting to him. He took two steps towards them and squatted down to pick it up. As soon as he did, it dissolved in his hands into nothing and he stood back up. He debated on whether or not he should blink away to add to the mystery but he decided to just turn toward the direction of the safe zone and start walking at a casual pace. After two steps the healer spoke up again.
"Wait," she said, and Eli turned his head around to look at her.
"What is it," he said while letting some of his boredom leak out in his voice this time.
"Thank you, Lord," she said with a small bow.
"Why did you call me 'Lord'," Eli said with a slight tilt of his head as he turned his body to face them. The others took this as a cue to move and group up around her, weapons still in hand.
"Because you are one," she said shyly with her head down.
"Yes, but how did you know that?" Eli asked, now he was intrigued by this turn of events. He wondered if there was a list or something.
"When I focused on you, it said 'Human - Lord - Level 47'," she said, still looking down at her feet.
"Huh," Eli said, "I didn't know that." Then he shrugged and turned to walk away again. But he only got one more step before the mage in the group, a balding man with a gut, spoke up.
"What is your name?" the mage asked, but Eli kept walking and ignored them.
He didn't stop for anything else and moved quickly to the spot where he would meet Audrey. He still had about two hours until the sun would come up so he decided to go about a quarter mile towards the coast and sneak up on the safe zone to get a peak at what it looked like. The safe zone was a massive flat grassland surrounded by the forest to the west and ran up against the ocean to the east. It looked like the coast was all rocks and cliffs except at the safe zone which was a pristine sandy beach for miles. Eli climbed up onto one of the rocky areas that separated forest from the coast and looked down at the safe zone. He was shocked at the site of buildings, streets, shops and homes, scattered in a completely disorganized manner. He was going to need to find someone to explain all this, the people didn't build this in two days.