Tara and the zone boss faced each other, both of them bloody and exhausted, both of them ready to make this next exchange, the end of the fight. Stevens had run out of magic three minutes into the fight so now could only use his spells once every minute or two. Tara had managed to keep the fight going for almost an hour now, only using her curse slash once every minute to keep the vitality drain going. With her right arm mangled and barely attached as well as a massive wound in her right side, she held the axe in her left hand tightly and prepared to face death. She knew she wasn't going to die, she wouldn't let the world kill her, and if Eli could force the world to slightly bend to his will before magic, then she could do it with magic.
She would not believe it if she had not experienced it first hand. She had a high opinion of Eli, but what she saw and experienced the day he took a bullet for her changed everything. He had dove on her to knock her behind cover just as an ambush was going to hit them, one of the bullets was meant for her head. But as he wrapped his arms around her and they were falling, the bullet that would have hit her in the eye, slowed and curved into Eli's shoulder. He wanted to take the bullet for her, she just knew it, he wanted to protect her so strongly that the world bent and made it happen. Now it was time for her to make the world bend.
The zone boss charged at her with extreme straight line speed, it was its charge skill which had been the only thing that could hit her. Tara dodged at the last second, forcing her body to move and the zone boss to miss on sheer force of will. Its horns caught her in the right side, grazing her again but she managed to swing her axe at just the right time and the spike on the back of the blade drove into its eye. She then flipped it around and began hacking away at the eye wound getting three good hits in before it flung her away with a large jerk of its head.
Her arm was gone now and her side was so damaged her ribs were showing, but the zone boss was staggering. It looked like it had lost its balance and was having trouble standing, then a fire arrow struck it right in the spot she had hacked up and it let out a groan and fell to the ground dead. She smiled and sent Eli a message.
"Arms grow back, right?"
She lay back not caring that her wounds were getting dirty and just tried to focus on her breathing. The amount of pain she was in and exhaustion she was feeling almost led to her passing out, but she wanted to wait for the response from Eli before she did. Stevens finally caught up to her and was trying to pick her up, but she stopped him and said, "I need to get used to this kind of pain. I need to be strong for him." The other two walked up just as she finished speaking. They looked at each other with concern, then looked back at her, but didn't say anything. If she had to guess they had had a discussion about who 'him' could be and did not want to stick around long enough to meet him. Tara was fine with that, she would even leave Stevens behind if she didn't think Eli would frown on that. Also, he might be useful in the future. Then a message came back from Eli.
"My legs grew back, u good?"
Tara didn't really know what to make of that, he lost both his legs and still won the fight. She was going to need to keep pushing herself, if he got too strong he would be leaving her behind and that was not something she would tolerate. She would heal and then go back to fighting as much as possible. Since they started not very far from a safe zone but went the opposite way from it so they could get to Eli, there were plenty of monsters available to kill and they were leveling slowly but steadily. She needed to respond but wanted it to make him want her more, maybe tease him a little, so she took her time with the response.
"Better than anyone uv had"
Smiling to herself, imagining him blushing, she got to her feet and started slowly walking. Tara was very pleased at herself for how the message turned out, but after ten minutes of walking she started to get nervous. Despite always getting attention from men due to her looks, she was not very experienced with them. One guy from her high school relationship and one fling with an officer during her first deployment, she really didn't know if she would be any good in bed. Only having done the act maybe ten times, she hoped her body upgrade would make her attractive enough to offset any lack of skill. And again, the memory of her kissing Eli set her chest, and other areas, on fire and she stopped worrying. However, now she felt like punching something to relieve some frustration for a different reason than usual.
Stevens and Tara had both received two levels from the zone boss fight which made them happy and after a night and a day, her arm was well on its way to growing back. The pain was unbelievable, she kept passing out every couple of hours while they stayed in their camp for another night since Tara was not able to travel, or do much of anything while screaming and writhing in pain. Some casual fire arrows from Stevens were enough to help the other two kill any monsters who approached while he watched over her. Finally, after two full days, the bones were done regrowing and the pain was minor, especially in comparison to before and they were up and moving again. She didn't want to mention it but she had to ask him how he handled the pain.
"Arm is back you good?"
The answer was probably just as stupid as asking the question, that pain was mind-breaking, but something inside her knew he had handled it better. After an hour, Eli had still not responded, and she did her best to not worry. As she was healing, they were moving faster, or at least as fast as the other two would let them go. They didn't seem comfortable around Tara and Stevens anymore and Tara was becoming weary of them doing something stupid. With at least three days to go until they get to wherever they were going, she would have to be weary of them. It wasn't that she saw them as a threat, but she was worried she would have to kill them in front of Stevens who seemed to be befriending the younger man.
"Good here, plan for arrival" Eli replied with a message
Now Tara's mind was reeling with possibilities on what he was planning. Was it something for her like a house with a bed, or was it a plan involving something else that he needed help with. While it would be nice for him to have a place for them to live all set up, that wasn't how his mind worked, things like comfort and rest were never his priorities. Thinking it was assistance that he needed, narrowed down the options of what it could be, but Tara wasn't worried. She was just excited that now they were going to do things together.
***********
Eli was looking out at the safe zone from his high vantage on the cliffs, he was so close to 50 he could taste it, and there were two or three days left until Tara and Stevens arrived. Things were lining up nicely but the safe zone was growing faster than he thought, with almost twice as many buildings as two days ago. The buildings seem to be some kind of basic structure, maybe they were buying it from the system. However, the more disturbing part to him was that, even though the safe zone was miles across, the buildings were more recently being placed in tight clusters, like cities. This was going to get tribal quickly and he did want to stop it because this would lead to factions, which would lead to violence, but he couldn't get too involved too early. He wanted people to organize themselves and he would only step in to stop leaders who were cruel or evil.
Then he had a terrible thought, what if killing people gave experience, or you could loot them or something. That would make the war hungry people even more powerful and give an incentive to their followers. He was planning on asking the system but he killed a guy the other day and he didn't level so at least it wasn't extra experience. He asked the system about it out loud but no answer came, looks like its hand wasn't on the scale for him ever since he finished that dungeon. Eli shrugged and looked back out to the safe zone, he wanted to see which direction Audrey came from since the last three days she has been increasingly injured and was still the same level.
Most buildings were pretty far from the edge of the safe zone, so he didn't really see other people, but as it got closer to sunrise, he finally saw her walking toward their meeting place for the fourth day of instruction. She wasn't really walking, but looked like she was limping. Her armor was damaged so badly he could barely tell that it was armor and she was covered with blood. He ran down to get to the meeting place before she got there, he sat and did his best to get his emotions in control before she arrived.
Right as the sun was coming up and through the trees, he got a closer look at her injuries and was struggling to control his anger. She had been badly beaten, her foot was just starting to heal from being broken and her armor was so damaged that sensitive areas were no longer covered. He closed his eyes and kept them closed as she approached, they would speak before he decided what he was going to do and he would not look unless she requested it.
"Right on time, what would you like to go over today," Eli said, doing his best to keep his voice neutral. He could sense through his magic senses that she was standing about 5 feet from him with her hands on her hips, probably with an incredulous look on her face he guessed. Finally she sat facing away from him, and Eli used blink to turn himself around facing the opposite way as she was facing. The use of blink just to reposition himself was something that he had been practicing for days now so he could do it during a fight, but the shorter the blink distance the more it made him disoriented. After several attempts and even more injuries, he decided that it wasn't worth it in a fight, but could be used for a bit of fun around Audrey.
Basically, he was using an incredibly powerful skill to mess with her, probably not the best idea but it made him smile and he really enjoyed the rush of that positive emotion. Still struggling with emotions he tended to overdo ones that made him feel good. She didn't say anything for several minutes, until Eli couldn't stop himself any longer and just asked her about it.
"You wanna talk about your injuries?" he asked, in the most parent-like way he could manage.
"It's not something you can help with," she said, seemingly embarrassed by the whole thing.
"Ok, well if you ever want my help, just ask," Eli said. "In fact, I have a favor to ask after training today so I would owe you one anyways."
"Let's just get the training started and we can talk more after," Audrey said with a long sigh.
"So, what do you want to learn today?" he asked.
"I want to learn more about magic sensing," Audrey said.
"Let's get our magic under control with meditation, then we can pick-up where we left off," Eli said while trying to sound positive. But he was sighing internally because they had spent an hour on it yesterday and she made no progress. But she seemed determined so he prepared himself for more swear words than a 14 year old should know and got ready to try again.