Rafe didn't know how long he had been out, but he was sure the room should not be as big as it appeared.

With his vision swimming and hazy, he figured maybe he wasn't as back to it as he'd thought. Until he started hearing things. Like the rhythmic breathing of someone sleeping.

It was physically impossible for two people to sleep comfortably in his little tent together. He had even made sure there was no bed there. This comfort he was feeling was definitely strange.

Maybe he was in some kind of recovery area, he reasoned. That seemed vaguely possible. After getting injured in the way he had, it only made sense he was in a recuperating area. And they were in an army-ish camp, weren't they?

Of course the person softly breathing next to him could perhaps be a nurse, tasked with looking over him. This mystery solved, Rafe allowed his eyes to slide shut again. He took a deep breath, opened them again.

It took a lot more to regain clarity of vision than just turning it off and on. It wasn't like a glitching computer or smartphone. And even those sometimes, very rarely, required more than that. If they proved stubborn, he'd just have to give them the boot. And then reboot. He couldn't do that with his eyes though. That didn't mean he wasn't going to try.

"What are you doing?" he heard a familiar voice, though it was distorted by his also glitching hearing.

"I'm trying to find the off button," he said, still moving his left hand along the left side of his face.

"What?" Filoria Benhaven asked even as she stepped into view, looming over him.

"You know, an off switch? I can't see or hear right so I'm hoping with a reboot, I may—"

"Did the accident kind of fry your brain?" Filoria asked.

Rafe snorted. "Hardly." But then he tried to think harder about it. "Well, maybe…"

Even insights and techniques had something that powered them. Noid had told him it was unlikely to matter as early as the F grade because he wouldn't have much use for his insights in terms of combat. They were just the foundation to grow further. Well, his master had been wrong. About so many things.

Rafe could say he had indeed felt his mental energy drain away, and that its absence was something he keenly felt now Filoria mentioned it. It would probably recharge, but slowly. And in the meantime using techniques or his, decidedly life threatening, insights was off the table for a while.

And there was a familiar pain he could feel. A soul deep ache. His rogue insights had reeked some havoc on his insides.

A rogue thought had him comparing this, what he assumed was a soul cramp, to what one of his old godly mentors of Skyholm had grown through. Liam, the first of that particular pantheon, had had his soul torn into pieces. Rafe couldn't even imagine the pain. And yet the man hadn't gone mad. He had gone on to become the first guardian of his universe, and perhaps even the multiverse.

Thinking of his godly mentors, there was another pantheon that had gotten involved in Rafe's life recently. Who were they? They definitely couldn't be guardians. The other guardians did not have pantheons the way Skyholm did.

They had cults and disciples and the like. They had never passed down their mantles until the damn things had been stolen.

Who were these new gods Rafe had to deal with? What was their deal? It was like they couldn't deal with the material world most of the time. Like other people couldn't see them. Except Rafe.

And the first time he'd seen one, his blessing had reacted and given him the ability to see beings of Essence. So these gods were beings of Essence? Was that similar, or different from the gods of Skyholm who were soul remnants? And now that he thought about it, weren't elementals also beings of Essence without physical forms.

Somehow that felt wrong. Elementals did not have physical forms most of the time, but he could always see them. Any one could see elementals. His blessing couldn't have been a dud like that, could it? Then he realised something. Mana. Mana was one of the products of Essence. Just one of the forms of energy living beings created from Essence. Mana was not Essence. They were different, even if they could be derived from each other.

Elementals were beings of mana while these gods who were haunting him like ghosts were beings of Essence. There was a difference between them.

So, what had he learned from this extended session of brainstorming? Rafe considered for a few moments.

"Huh…I learned nothing…" he said disbelievingly.

"Are you sure you're all there?" Filoria's voice broke through to him again.

"Huh? Oh, you—"

"Come on, don't open the flap, Filoria. Give me a few more minutes," another familiar yet drowsy sounding voice interrupted Rafe.

Rafe froze. The voice was close. Very close. It was right next to the bed, on his right.

A chair's legs scraped backwards. And then for the next few moments, sounds of someone trying to adjust themselves in said chair abounded. The sounds stopped. A heavy silence blanketed the tent. And then it was punctuated by a loud snore.

Rafe whipped his head around. She was there, right next to his bed. It was not a nurse like he'd expected. It was not Filoria taking care of him on Helare's orders either. The princess herself was sleeping there, cradling her knees in an armchair right next to Rafe's bed.

His vision clearer than before, Rafe noticed the opulence of the room they were in. Even the armchair the princess slept in looked ostentatious. And he was in a bed.

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"Tell me something, miss Filoria," Rafe found himself saying, his eyes never straying from Helare's sleeping form. "This isn't… this isn't…"

Filoria didn't answer him for a while. Perhaps she was slow on the uptake.

"Oh! Um, yeah. This is the princess's personal tent. In the inner chamber, no less. You have no idea the kind of rumors going around."

Rafe ignored her teasing. "How long?" he asked.

Filoria once again took her time answering him.

"It's been four days," she answered. Then as if after great deliberation, she said, "she never left your side. Slept in that uncomfortable chair the whole damn time."

There was something like confusion in her voice. Like some kind of implied question. Rafe pretended he hadn't heard it.

She left the tent eventually. Rafe kept his eyes on the girl sleeping next to his, no, her, bed. He was sleeping in a princess's bed.

He wished he had balls of steel, for the whip needed to be walloped.

****

A week after he first roused, Rafe returned to his forge to once more start working on metals. He had to finish working on the blade that had been the source of most of his current pain.

He touched it. It did not harm him. The insights inside were his. Or should he say the insight? There were traces of his other two insights, but he somehow knew they would only trigger if he was the one using the blade. Or if the person using it had both a metallic and another insight similar to his.

Which, even to find someone who had an insight into metal, an elite-tier insight by his estimation, would be hard. Using the sword himself was off the table.

Name: ## (legendary)

Type: Blade/weapon. Insight filled instead of enchanted.

Description: A blade whose metal has been infused with an insight into liquid metal. There are traces of space and time ( the void) in it too.

Effects: Magnifies the strength of any metallic or fire based insight, although the fire user has to be strong enough to isolate the metallic component.

'Ding' Special quest completed.

You have created a legendary item as an F grade being.

Rewards: 1000 quest points, 1,000 credits, level up by inspiration.

Rafe had already got the level up by inspiration reward. In fact, he'd leveled three times since he'd finished his insights, as one of his rewards from allowing the system into his insight creation had been two levels worth of experience. He hadn't done any proper hunting in a while, but he had still grown stronger.

He stared at his status screen to gauge the changes, considering he'd also received some free stat and spec points.

Name: Rafael Kingsley Wilde

Race: Human (lvl. 14)

Class: Warrior (lvl.14), Mimic (lvl.14)

Health: 290

Stamina: 400

Stats.

Strength: 42

Agility: 75

Coordination: 60

Endurance: 40

Vitality: 29

Intelligence: 24

Wisdom: 33

Paranormal: Luck: 21

Mana: 330

???

Free stats: 13, 6( End, str, vit, Agi), 3(int, wis)

Class Specs.

Defense: 23. Offense: 20.

Control: 2. Density: 12. Regen: 2.

Free spec points: 20, 6(off, def), 3(cont, dens, regen)

Quest points: 45,271

Credits: 132,760

Now for his stat distribution, hmm. He could not let his coordination lag behind. He poured a whole five of his free stat points into coordination. Eight were left. He divided those equally between strength and vitality. It pained him physically to do it, but he was a warrior and needed those strength numbers.

His vitality had proven its importance during this period when he needed to get back to peak health but had been unable to for all of eleven days. Well, there was a soul aspect to that, but still. He was like a child who'd just learned the need to eat healthy.

He was unwilling to completely ignore his agility though. His best stat. He dumped three of his class stats into agility, and the other three into endurance. It was lagging behind.

His mental stats all went into wisdom, his mana slowly but steadily accumulating. He didn't do a lot with his mana yet, but seeing the number go up was amazing none-the-less.

Then his spec points. For some reason, the two's on his mana control and regeneration got to him a bit. With a shrug, he decided to dump six of the twenty free points there. To at least get them to five, which he found a better looking number than two. Then the remaining fourteen he distributed equally between defense and offense.

He dumped the six meant for defense and offense into defense, to further increase the chances of a defensive build now he felt he was close to a class evolution. He dumped the remaining three points all into mana density.

Now, to address the elephant in the room.

"What is it, princess?" Rafe asked.

Looking over his shoulder, Helare jolted when he called to her. She had not allowed him out of her sight since he'd woken up. He'd refused to hog her bed, so she'd had Hestus buy him a new one and place it in her old sitting room.

And when he came back to work, she'd followed him right upto the forge and stood directly behind him as he inspected the blade. Did she not have tasks to complete as the expedition leader?

"Do you not have tasks to complete as the expedition leader?" he asked.

"What?...Oh, yeah. I just…Hestus wants to know about that blade…so?" she shrugged, as if to tell him, 'that was just an excuse and I couldn't come up with any better. I just wanted to be near you.'

Maybe Rafe was reading into things too much, but was there some sort of chance here? He didn't know. He couldn't read her mind. He only guessed there was something there from her actions. And hadn't she tried to charm him when he'd first got to the camp? To own him? Like some sort of slave?

Rafe shrugged, as if to send all those extraneous thoughts away.

"What do you want to do with the blade?" he asked her.

"What?" she asked, and when he just stared at her she continued. "It is your blade, no? No one can even use it. You could do whatever you want with it."

"No," Rafe said resolutely. He already had a perfectly functional sword he'd received from Noid. The blade and the sword it would make wasn't even that interesting to Rafe. "We are under a contract. What I make using your materials belongs to you. Besides, I did ruin the whole current stock of weapons and metals, didn't I?"

The Essence he'd needed to level up via an inspiration. He'd had to get it from somewhere, and it had to be processed very fast. Faster than his soul Essence processing apparatus was used to. Maybe that had been another cause for his soul cramp?

Anyway, getting Essence related to the inspiration, and mostly semi-processed, had been necessary. The dungeon was also metal themed, so he had had a whole lot of Essence to work with. Sadly, Hestus had informed him even the mines had taken a hit because of course they had. His levels required a lot more essence than was normal.

And he wasn't even a crafter. It just went to show how much his first insight, even if Rafe doubted it was the strongest currently, had taken complete control of him at the time.

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