Five Levels were Julia’s gains, along with a Class Skill and a new spell. She felt pretty confident that Trixy must become more intelligent with every evolution. How else would she have discovered a spell on her own? True, it was functionally the same as any of their other shared spells—just sending mana through their connection rather than thoughts or senses—but still!

  She also now knew what was responsible for the strange feeling she’d been having since awakening. She’d attributed it to being off-balance after such an extreme situation. Spiritual Domain made her…expand? It sort of blurred the line between where her body started and ended.

  Rather than just having her physical body, it was like she had a “cloud” around her. This cloud extended about a stride in all directions, with her body at the center. It technically went beyond that distance, but her perception and (presumably) control of it dropped precipitously past that point.

  This cloud—her “domain”—felt like an extension of herself. Casting magic within the cloud felt extremely similar to casting magic on herself, and she had an increased perception of all that was within the space. It seemed to be working in conjunction with both her Spiritual Sense and Perfect Control Skills.

  Her senses being increased was pretty obvious, but the Perfect Control Skill gave her a fine degree of control over the cloud—she could shape it as she willed. Ironically, although the Skill would undoubtedly be powerful for her magic, she felt the most immediately useful benefit would be for her swordsmanship.

  Simply being able to feel when strikes were coming—and from where—would be tremendously useful. Especially when paired with her Parallel Processing Skill... Actually, it made sense that all her Class Skills synergized well.

  There was one other thing that was overdue. She’d been thinking about whether to continue with her current Subclass or pursue another for a day now. Magic Swordsman had been tremendously beneficial to her so far, but the more she thought about it, the more she wanted one of the other options.

  She would’ve chosen much sooner if there hadn’t been so much happening over the last day and a half, but now was the perfect opportunity.

  This was exactly what Julia was hoping for. After experiencing Will Anchoring, she suspected Combat Enchanter might give her a way to more-firmly establish remote spells. Will Anchoring was a powerful Skill, but it was almost a quick-and-dirty version of Mana Runes. Infusing mana with one’s will is great, but extremely temporary and limited in how complex the imprinted will could be.

  Mana Runes was a Skill that involved creating actual runes from mana—the very same runes used for enchanting objects/items. This would be tremendously powerful depending on how difficult they were to use. She decided to test it out. She used some of the mana in her domain and formed it into runes:

  ?????

  Light

  The runes created a warm glow roughly equivalent to a candle flame. Yes! She would need to do quite a bit of testing, but those runes had been formed with the mana she controlled in her domain and her will—she hadn’t lifted a finger or said a single word. That would be huge in combat…if she could manage it while defending herself at the same time.

  She experimented with the light for a while before deciding she needed actual sleep before attempting any more cognitively intense activities. She relaxed back onto the branch next to Sahira’s and decided to check her Status before falling asleep.