Chapter 416: Thera's Perspective

Chapter 416: Thera's Perspective

Walking to the clinic, Thera watched her aunt, not seeing anything amiss. Despite how she’d acted while drunk, she seemed like her usual self, chatting with familiar faces on her way to work and exuding an overall positive atmosphere.

So maybe I’m just overthinking it then? I’m sure aunty’s fine.

At least that was what she told herself, but she was having trouble really believing it. For as long as she could remember, her aunt had clearly held interest in her uncle, to the point that as a child she’d even once asked if they were ever going to have kids when she was longing for a friend, getting what in hindsight seemed like a thoroughly uncomfortable explanation from her that they weren’t like that, along with a separate talk from her mother giving a few more details.

Could ignoring your feelings for decades really be considered fine?

She loved Sonya and she wanted her aunt to be happy, and she certainly put on a happy face enough that Thera never really considered otherwise, but if all she was really doing was suppressing her feelings...

I should probably talk to her, right? But how am I even supposed to talk about this?

She wasn’t well practiced with anything like that, but then she did have all day to try and figure it out. With Ben planning on being out late, they’d even have the perfect time for a bit of privacy in the evening, just the two of them.

Deep in the woods, Thera practiced her new magics with Aso after leaving the clinic for the day. Since her goal was raising her non-affinitied ones she couldn’t put off practicing, even with everything else she had to be working on, so she busied herself with it, expanding her senses out with her newfound empathy to take in the emotions of the creatures around her until she could sense anything large enough to be a challenge, crystalizing her mana to probe at them, not treating it like an attack, but instead an annoyance, and once it got their attention, luring them back and holding them off with her barrier while Aso went for the kills, letting the other girl get just a bit of practice with her own skills as the hours passed.

“I still can’t believe you came back with three new magics,” Aso sighed as she tapped at a floating spear of mana that Thera was keeping up. “Genuinely, how?”

“Ahem, I just got kind of lucky,” She told her weakly, knowing it wasn’t much of an explanation considering the rarity of any non-affinitied branch.

It’s not really like I’m lying. It was lucky for me that Ben thought I could use them, so since he got me the opportunity I need to make sure I put my all into it.

She understood what he’d said at the time, as well as his reason for wanting her to get the skills, but since doing so had lost him the chance to learn plenty of new skills of his own she needed to put her all into training it to meet his expectations, namely awakening the skills. She knew she was powerful so she understood how useful it would be for her to get something like that, but she wanted her results fast enough to prove it was worth it.

Even if it means using something like this.

On her head was the circlet Ben had made her before, helping her train her skills all at once despite the general discomfort it caused to her mind. Since they were all lower level she probably wouldn’t have too much trouble raising them for the first bit at least, but she couldn’t help but look forward to getting them all to the fifth level so she could just focus on her telekinesis from there.

And I need to work on my life magic to finish this job and now that I’m one level away from being free from it I need to work on my charm and dark magic, and I absolutely want to be working on my earth magic too...

There was so much to do and so little time to do it all before the next wave but she wanted to try to manage it all somehow, on top of every other thing there was to do in life. She wanted to make sure she was visiting other towns to practice her life magic and she still needed to figure out what she’d be saying to her aunt in a bit, and besides that...

She pursed her lips, as she activated her earth magic, trying to put a spell together and feeling it completely fail as thousands of points of mana left her without achieving anything, thick enough in the air that Aso sensed it and looked at her curiously.

Yep, I still can’t materialize my mana.

She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but the fact that she couldn’t but Ben could left her feeling jealous. Magic was her thing, seeing him reach the pinnacle of it before she did filled her with complicated emotions that she didn’t particularly like that she was feeling.

The cheerful look on her aunt's face quickly turned to concern with the news as she let out a sigh. “There’s going to be a lot more of that for a while too. I’m just glad you’re alright.”

“I can handle it, don’t worry.”

She still felt a slight effect when killing one, a wrongness to the act that nagged at her mind, but it was ignorable. Any demon seemed to feel nothing from the system effect despite the fact that they should be under it as much as anyone else, and if they were willing to kill so easily despite it then she would do the same.

“I know you can, I just want you to be okay,” Sonya told her as she served dinner. “Still, Aso usually does gather quests alone if you aren’t with her, right? You should probably have a talk with her about either finding another party to work with or not going out if you aren’t around.”

“Yeah, I guess I’ll need to.”

Another thing to do. But at least I’ll be able to knock off one right now.

“Um, aunty? Can we talk about something a little personal if you don’t mind?”

“Hmm? Of course Thera, what’s on your mind?”

“I know this is a bit personal, but can I ask, what’s keeping you from talking to uncle about your feelings?”

“Um, what do you mean?” Sonya asked, playing dumb as Thera just stared her down.

“...Aunty, you made it pretty obvious you aren’t happy with how things are between the two of you yesterday, so why aren’t you telling him? You’re beautiful and a hard worker and you always treat people well, plus you’ve known him for how many decades? There has to be a reason it hasn’t come up.”

“...I’m never letting Ceselee make me drink so much again,” She muttered before focusing on her niece. “Thera, you really don’t need to worry about me, love. I’m fine. Obviously nothing’s going to happen so if I said something about it last night, well that’s just the drink talking.”

“Except it’s obviously not. Every time I see mom she won’t stop asking if anything’s happened yet.”

“...That reminds me, I definitely treated Pel far too lightly when I saw her,” Sonya grumbled before sighing. “Look Thera, I don’t think I need to tell you that your uncle is skilled, and I’m, well, not. He has his goals and ambitions and all I’d do telling him is just make things different between us. If I can’t stand beside him as an equal then nothing’s ever going to happen, that’s really all there is to it, even if I want to.”

Is that it?

Insecurity. She knew her uncle was powerful, with at least one awakened skill to his name, and her aunt had none. Was that really what was holding her back? A feeling of not being able to measure up?

She wanted to ask more and to reassure her aunt, but it was obvious that Sonya was done with the talk as she rushed to change the topic, trying to forget what was said and enjoy their little night together, even if it kept rattling around in Thera’s mind.

She loved her aunt, she didn’t want her feeling like that, but she had no clue what she could do.

Something else I’m going to need to get some advice on then.