Since there were still staves from yesterday Ben hadn’t bothered to make any new ones that night so after he gathered the supplies they would need he actually got some sleep in his home before meeting up with Thera the next day.

When they met up at the shop Falk ended up asking them about how yesterday went and Thera instantly got quiet, becoming more apparent it was a tell for when she wasn’t interested in talking about something. Presumably she wanted to keep their little encounter a secret from Falk so Ben stepped in.

“It went okay. The new staff didn’t work as well as I had hoped but we were able to get two shots off at least so we’re going hunting today.”

Falk gave Thera a quick glance but decided not to broach the subject either and instead focus on their hunt. “You sure you’re ready boy? Two shots isn’t a lot. You could always take another week to try and make a better staff. Heck, I’m sure you’ll improve their use when you get a bit more comfortable with how you manufacture them.”

“I’m sure you’re right but that still won’t be enough to get us to three shots. Don’t worry though we’ll be hunting these my way.”

“Well if it’s your way it should be fine, but will Thera get any practice with her magic?”

“Not to worry, I have a simple strategy that's going to rely pretty much entirely on her magic, with just a little help from me.” He told them, grabbing the staves, a small sack, and a shovel.

“Um, what exactly is your way?”

Ben was going to explain but Falk cut him off. “The boy’s just going to play to his strengths, try and learn what you can.”

“You’re really overselling me here Falk but it’s going to be a pretty simple plan. It will be maybe an hour of set up tops when we get there so let's go.”

“This doesn’t really feel like adventuring,” Thera said while on top of a tree branch.

“If it gets the job done that's all that matters. Now don’t be too loud, don’t want to scare anything off.”

Ben explained the strategy to her on the way there, while also giving her a rundown on how he would usually hunt in general. The plan was focused on the only way he could hunt any creatures, trapping them.

As soon as they got there Ben asked her to use her magic to pull a ball of earth from the ground, making a hole about six feet deep and wide, then carefully placing the dirt in a pile beside it. It took more work to pull a mass of earth to make a hole than it did to gather loose earth into a bullet, but it was still within the abilities of both Thera and the current staff. From there it was his turn to get to work. Just having a deep hole wasn’t enough, it wasn’t like the scrells would just throw themselves inside it for no reason, so he had to dig out one of the sides, making a small ramp in for any curious creatures. That's what ended up taking the greatest bulk of the time. In hindsight he should have brought another shovel to get Thera to help with the digging since her earth magic wasn’t precise enough to make a ramp, but what’s done was done, no point focusing on it.

Once his digging was finished and he found himself a fair amount more tired he started a small fire with a magic lighter he bought and began roasting some flail bird he got from a local butcher at the bottom of the pit. If the archive records on them were right then this should be a scrells favourite prey, and the smell of it cooking should attract any others that were in the area to come try and grab some.

It ended up being pretty similar to his amarok hunt but ultimately an animal was an animal, food would always be a driving force. Not to mention that they had a good chance of grabbing a bigger number of scrells this way.

Once set up was done they both climbed some nearby trees and sat on their own branches. All that was left to do was wait.

Thera seemed impatient, this certainly wasn’t how she was used to hunting, but Ben was happy to use this time to relax. He had brought a few good-sized stones up with him and was doing some sculpting by carefully breaking away parts of them using his enchantment and crafting. The end result was far rougher than if he had the proper tools, but it was a good way to pass the time and train his skills. The only real downside to being stuck in a tree in the woods was the bugs. He would be coming home with a few bites for sure.

Or would he? An idea flashed through his mind and seeing a bug land on him he immediately tried it out. Keeping himself steady with one hand on the branch he activated his connect skill, hoping that he would drive it off with the sudden exposure to his mind, but something else happened entirely. He felt a sudden sense of calm and a brief flicker of hunger coming from the bug before the hunger disappeared. The bug hadn’t flown off though, it had died.

Ben was initially surprised but thought back to what Myriad said when he got the skill and tried to use it on him. Maybe in the same way that he was weaker than a god, an insect was weak enough that it couldn’t properly handle his feelings, killing it? If that was the case then he would at least be able to get a bit of practice from using it on bugs, but would that really be enough to improve his skill level? It was at least better than nothing. He lifted his hand to swat away the tiny corpse when the sense of calm he was feeling vanished as well, causing him to pause again.

He hadn’t noticed it wasn’t his own emotion he was feeling, but the sudden loss made it clear it came from the connection breaking, much in the same way it felt when Falk pulled away after he first tested the skill. The only problem was he didn’t know what he had connected to.

He looked around and felt his body, wondering if perhaps a bigger bug had landed on him but taken longer to die or fly away, but if that was the case wouldn’t he have felt some sort of distress from it? He was at a loss until it occurred to him. He had been touching the tree.

He had to test it out again. Placing his hand on its trunk he once again activated his connection and experienced a feeling of calm wash over him. As that happened his excitement spiked and after a minute he felt the tree gently respond to it. It was slow but it felt as if its mood was picking up from neutral to something else he couldn’t quite identify.

The discovery left him elated. This was it. This was how he could train his connect skill without needing another person to help him. Thinking about it he could always get a pet as well, but a plant would be so much less effort, not to mention the lack of guilt of using the skill in case it has any negative effects on it. He still wasn’t sure it would have any real practical use, but it would be a shame not to level it a bit and see, at the very least it seemed to make a decent bug killer.

He proceeded to spend the next half hour using his skill to get acquainted with the tree. It wasn’t really a conversation, just an exchange of feelings, but it was still interesting to probe at it with his emotions and see how it would respond. He tried to send thoughts to it directly, but at least at the moment that seemed impossible. In that time he got the impression that even though the tree was alive and able to experience some external stimulus, its feelings and range of emotions were significantly more limited than he would expect an animal to be, but there was still so much to figure out.

It was as he was experimenting that Thera whispered at him to grab his attention.

“Hey, they’re here,” A small group of scrells were approaching the cooking meat. They were cautious at first, but once they saw it was unattended they raced towards it, with a few of the more cautious ones that were hiding farther back running to catch up. Soon enough there were around a dozen in the hole, each fighting the others for some of the scraps.

It was time to finish it. “Alright, Thera you got this.”

She gave him a nod and grabbed her staff, carefully activating her magic and directing it at the pile of earth, trying to make it do just one thing, shift back into the hole.

It was a task she normally wouldn’t have bothered with, but it was also significantly easier on her than trying to make a proper earth bullet. The dirt quickly slid across the ground, filling the hole with all of the scrells in it. For good measure she used a bit more mana to press down into the earth, making sure nothing would crawl out and resulting in her staff breaking into fragments.

“That was… easier than I expected,” She said when she was done and had dusted off her hands. “But can my magic actually get better like this?”

“Easy is good, why work your butt off for one kill when you can score a bunch. As for your magic, who knows. But from my perspective this doesn’t seem much different from when you shoot an earth bullet, it's all just moving earth around, the only thing that's changed is the intent. Anyway, let's give it another fifteen or twenty minutes for the smell to disappear, then can you dig out the hole again?”

“Sure, are we hunting more?”

“No I didn’t bring enough meat for that, this was really more of a proof of concept. My goal is all those buried materials we got,” Twenty screll corpses. Even if they were small, with the amount he had he would be able to make plenty of weapons boosted with their fire affinity from the bones and at least some fire resistant pouches from the skins. Plus now that he had a way to quickly make Thera a few adequate staves he would have a lot more time for his own training. Things were looking bright.