(Arc 2 Complete!) Path of the Last Champion [Sci-Fantasy LitRPG, Party Dynamics, Earned Power]

Things went a little better the second time around.

Nar looked up from the sand elemental as it burst apart, its core shattered by his blade, and he scanned the rest of the battle.

Cold wind blew sand and grit in his face, tugging at his body with its sudden gales as it howled across a narrow strait of beige sand that rose from the ocean. Around them, in the distance, pillars of black rock, cliffs and other isolated sandy beaches dotted a roaring dark gray ocean, which mirrored the heavy skies overhead.

Mul was still struggling with one of the sand elements that had accompanied the sand boss, but he seemed to have it somewhat in hand so Nar let him to it. Meanwhile, Gad had finally managed to get one of her aggro flows in place and despite losing her aggro a couple of times, the tank had, for the most part, managed to keep the boss under control as the rest of them sort of spread along the beach to tackle the smaller sand elemental adds.

Jul had, for the first time, encountered something that was seemingly immune to her fear in these sand creatures, which were neither beasts, nor truly monsters, given their lack of intelligence. However, she had quickly changed her strategy to simply targeting the elemental's cores and managed to keep them from disturbing Gad's already frayed concentration.

From what Nar could tell, other than getting used to and learning how to fight with her new weapons, the wakizashi and the war pick, as she told him they were called over breakfast, it looked like she wasn't going to be facing many difficulties in adapting, just as he had predicted.

As for learning how to sense fear aura and aether? Well, she had done her best to explain it to him, but she herself was still very unsure and confused about the whole thing. What he understood from it, was that the Master of Shadows was guiding her towards a path of fear manipulation and control from within her foes, though just how exactly Jul was going to achieve that, she still had no idea. But that was the end goal her master was adamant in her reaching, which frankly, if she did manage it, it would make Jul a terrifying combat class to face. Beast, monster or even sapient…

As long as they can feel fear, that is, Nar thought, eyeing the green haired quam as she down her last opponent and approached the tank, who was examining the sand that had made up the boss' body with Viy standing at her side.

Kur had advised Gad to focus on getting her aggro flows under control first, in the hopes that she would gain a new skill that would make controlling them easier, as well as to replace the [Shield Call] skill that the tank had lost with her gains from the forest dungeon. Her aggro flow ability was already difficult enough without her trying to get her flail to behave as she wanted it, so it was best to just leave it for practice aboard the Scimitar for the moment, and the tank was only too happy to accept the wisdom in his suggestion.

Viy had no issues whatsoever with facing the elementals, just as she had none when dealing with the crabs. The halberd was a terrifying weapon in her hands and she cleaved and smashed her way through anything with utter devastation. The sand elemental's only hindrance to her was that she was still struggling with precisely aiming her weapon where she needed it too, which made it tricky to get the small cores inside their bodies.

The range had some trouble too with that. The elementals did not bleed, which nullified Rel's main active skill, [Arrow of Penitence], and it was hard for projectiles to pierce their bodies of shifting sand with enough accuracy to hit their moving cores… Which was the reason that Tuk had managed to get himself whacked in the face, unable to stop an elemental from getting too close to him.

Despite the helmet, he now sported a large bruise over his features and one of his eyes was closed shut and swollen. Jasphaer was bent over him, his hand glowing over the truggers face, as Tuk sat by the bottom of the single, long sand dune that ran across the little island that made up their tiny dungeon, somewhat managing to get some shelter from the wind while Jasphaer worked.

Tuk's face had become Jasphaer's first official healing act as the healer for Kur's party, and Nar still found it strange whenever he looked around and found the O-Nexian amongst them.

Not that he had anything against Jasphaer being born in the O-Nex, rather than in a cubeplant like the rest of them. It was just that they had been through so much together that the man felt like a complete stranger in their midst.

Then again, so was Rel, he thought. And now look at her.

The archer was trying to hold back her laughter as Jasphaer healed Tuk's face, and apparently, unlike Gad, something about healing faces was causing Tuk to occasionally whimper out in pain and close a hand over his mouth to keep his breakfast inside him. Rel held his other hand for comfort, even as she did her best not to burst out laughing.

Nar shook his head and he scanned the beach for the others. Kur was halfway heading towards Mul, maybe to check in on how he was doing with the last elemental, which only left…

Where is she? Nar thought, frowning at the caster's absence.

He climbed up the fin-like dune and almost immediately spotted the caster, sitting amidst the line of white, fluffy flowers and yellowed, dry tall grass that grew atop the dune.

Cen didn't look up as he approached, transfixed as she was by the floating glob of aura that she passed from hand to hand.

"Are you alright?"

The caster startled and looked up at him, the aura in her hands evaporating into the wind.

"Oh, sorry!" Nar said, making a face.

"Don't worry. It was just practice," she said, smiling at him.

Nar sat beside her, and Cen formed another ball of aura.

"How's it going?" he asked her. "It looks like you're also not using your weapon anymore."

She sighed, then she shook her head.

"Ah, honestly, it's not that bad. I think I'm almost there," she said. "It's just that the staff acted as a focus for me, and I didn't realize how much it helped me in the middle of fighting. Without it, it's a lot harder to concentrate on my aura, the skill and my intentions for it… As well as everything else, of course."

Cen looked up from her aura and smiled at him.

"But see, I can do this much without problem," she said, deftly keeping the aura going from hand to hand, and even increasing the distance in between them. "And the System is still taking care of most of [Aura Projectiles] for me. It's just that during combat there are a lot of things distracting me and the staff helped a lot with stabilizing the skill and targeting."

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"Yeah," Nar said, lamely, unsure of what to say.

She chuckled at his discomfort and bumped into him with her shoulder. "Don't worry about it. I'm really excited for this! And if anything, I'm not really that worried about it. I know that it's just a matter of time until I get the hang of it."

"Then?" Nar asked, prodding gently further.

"The real issue is that everything is faster than my eyes can follow. Sometimes faster than I can even think!"

"Oh…"

"Yeah," she said, making a face. "Kur has managed to solve that, fortunately, but for me it's not so simple."

Nar frowned at her. "He has? How?"

"He gained a [Neural Processing] attribute just like the rest of you guys did, except his is specialized for leadership. It's called [NPL]," she revealed. "One of its bonuses is that in combat his sense attributes are all boosted to match the average of the entire party, though only for those he has, so only [Hearing] and [Sight] for now."

"Really?" Nar said, glancing towards their party leader, who stood, arms folded, by the brawler now, as Mul still engaged the sand elemental. "The average?"

"Yeah, it's pretty good, isn't it?" Cen asked, smiling. "He gets his [Hearing] bumped up to 17 and his [Sight] to 22, which isn't bad."

"Bad? That's insane! That's more than most have!" then he regretted his words.

Cen burst out laughing. "It's thanks to yours, Rel's and Jul's massive sense attributes skewing the average, but yeah, isn't it unfair? Party leaders just get it at level 35!"

"All… All of them?" Nar asked.

She chuckled and shook her head. "Unbelievable, isn't it? But I mean, can you blame the System for it? Party leaders would be pretty useless if they couldn't keep up with their parties. Or the enemies."

"I guess…" Nar said, rubbing his chin. "But then, what about you? Isn't there a [Neural Processing] for casters as well?"

Cen allowed her aura to evaporate, and instead, she buried her hands in the cool, soft sand. Around them, the sound of the waves crashing below and behind them mingled with the sigh of the flowers and the tall grass in between gusts of cold wind.

"There isn't," she said.

"What? Why not?"

"It would be unfair to have it plus the capacity to boost ourselves with aura or aether," she said.

"You can do that?" Nar asked, frowning.

"Apparently," she said. "The master is guiding me in learning how to boost my sight with my aura."

"Wow… I mean. Isn't that like cycling?"

"It's like a much more complicated type of cycling," the caster revealed, letting sand fall from her closed fist and onto her other hand. "It requires me to create a lot more pathways into my eyes, brain and everything that's connected in comparison to other auramancers. And these pathways are all really, really thin. You need a very fine control over your aura to not cause any damage to yourself… You can even go blind if you're not careful."

"And you want to do this?" Nar asked, aghast.

Cen shrugged. "I have too, if I want to continue being a delver. Otherwise, I won't even be able to keep up with what I'm trying to hit. I'll keep making slow gains on [Sight] and [Hearing] of course, though I've mostly given up on [Smell] at this stage, but they won't be enough to keep up. Our fights are only going to get faster and faster from now on."

"Still…"

"Ah, don't worry, Nar," she said. "Everyone will end up doing something similar, just not as crazy. You'll probably go farther than most melee too if I were to guess, given how much aura you have."

Nar shook his head. "I still have no idea what the Master of Aura wants to do with me."

"I'm sure it will be amazing!" Cen said, patting his leg. "But speaking of… Are you sure about becoming Tys' disciple?"

Nar gave her a halfhearted shrug. "It was always my… Goal."

Cen grimaced, likely realizing he had just stopped himself from saying "dream" instead.

"Your goal was your dad, and a ship to sail out into the Labyrinth. I remember that," she said, in a hushed tone that was almost carried by the wind.

Nar kept his eyes on the horizon, roaming them across the towering spikes of black rock, and distant cliffs and beaches that indicated the rest of the dungeons in the cluster, and at his side, Cen respected his silence.

"I'm still figuring it out," he said, his words too, almost lost to the gales. "But right now, I need something to work toward. Something else. To keep me from going crazy and thinking about…"

He sighed.

"If that's what you want, you have my full support," Cen said. "And for what's worth, I think you'll make a great Named Few!"

"Thanks."

"And when you're rich, you can just buy me access to all the aura knowledge that I want!" she said, giggling. "You and Gad both!"

Nar laughed at that. "Sure. I'll buy you more than you can ever read!"

Her eyes grew distant, shining with the possibilities.

"Crystal… More than I can ever read? You say it as a joke, but it really is like that, isn't it?" she said. "A whole infinite amount of knowledge is out there, more than any one person can ever hope to learn in a single lifetime, no matter how long it is…"

And as she spoke, she stared down to her hand, sand slowly blown away from it by the wind, and her expression became one of transfixed sorrow, as though she wasn't fully there.

"Cen?" Nar whispered to her.

She looked as though she was having a moment of enlightenment, and he feared disturbing her out of it.

"And yet, with all the possibilities out there, why are my skills all promising to be like this?" she whispered.

"Like what?"

"So… So horrifying. So destructive," she said.

She raised her hand to her face, watching the sand fall.

"I can feel it coming… A new skill. Aura like a sandstorm, peeling armor, flesh and bone, and HP. The enemy screaming as it's shredded alive… Unable to do anything but take the damage."

A solitary tear ran down her face, and was blown away in a sudden gale

"I can choose to end the skill whenever I want… Leaving them alive and disfigured instead. Their flesh stripped. Their tendons showing and twitching in the exposed air."

Another tear joined the first, and then they were falling freely down her face, whipped away by the wind into running down the back of her neck.

"At first, I was doing my best to stay away from it… To not gain this skill. But if I don't, I know I won't be able to find my affinity," she whispered. "But if I do, then what kind of affinity am I going to unlock? One that is so disgustingly horrifying…"

Nar placed a hand on her shoulder, and Cen blinked, her yellow neon eyes focusing on his dark ones.

"It's your path, Cen. You make it what you want," he told her.

The lengos nodded and angrily wiped away at her tears with her arms, leaving spots of sand glued to her ashen, dark gray skin.

"I know. And that's what the master said. That if I want defensive or supportive skills instead, that I should just create them, but she's not telling me how, and I have no idea how to do it either!"

Nar nodded. "She probably wants you to build these skills according to your own wishes for yourself. And Cen, you're like the smartest person I know. I'm sure you'll be able to do it!"

She snorted. "You don't know that many people, Nar."

"Ah, yeah. Fair."

A little chortle escaped her lips.

"Just hang in there," Nar said. "I'm sure you'll figure it out, just like all of us."

Cen shook her head. "It should be me consoling you, Nar. Not the other way around."

He shrugged.

"It is what it is. Can't do anything about it," he said, his tone flat. "But for you… There's loads we can do! And I believe in you, Cen! You got this!"

"Ah… Whatever. I'll just keep doing my best then!" she said, with a tentative smile.

"That's the only thing any of us can do. Even Mul. Poor guy is having a rough time."

"Ah, don't worry about him," she said, glancing at his brother, just as the sand elemental buffeted him with a spray of sand. "If anything, being able to punch things with his bare hands will only make him happier… Once he figures it out, of course. It's one less thing for him to rely on."

Nar nodded, considering the implication in her words.

"But what about you? What are you learning next?" she asked. "Anything as impressive as that [Aura Blade] of yours?"

Nar snorted. "I actually have no idea what the Master of Blades or Aura want me to do next. As for Tys, she wants me to focus on unlocking some kind of passive skills."

"Passive skills? Don't you have loads of them already?" she asked, her eyebrows rising to nearly touch her bald forehead.

"That was exactly my face," Nar said, shaking his head. "Tys didn't explain. She only said that I would need them, and the sooner I got them the better. I guess I'll know more tonight."

Cen nodded and patted his knee. "Good luck."

"Thanks."

I'll probably need it.