Both Thera and her copy found themselves laying on the ground after a few hours of work, sweat pouring down their faces. It had started out simple enough, they both wanted to see how much earth they could raise without a staff. Before her level up a while ago she could suspend earth about twenty meters around her in the air until she lost her grip on it and it fell back down, and even then there wasn’t really anything she could do with it so it didn’t act as real practice.

Still, she hadn’t tried it since and giving it a go was happy to see she had improved, pulling only about 10 meters around her. She couldn’t use it to form a spell, but she could make it hang in the air longer than previously and even move it around to an extent, though not very much.

When they both worked together though they were able to do things she could never do alone, at least not without a staff to help focus her mana. While one of them raised the earth the other focused on shaping it, bringing it together into a ball. It was still huge, bigger than even her typical earth bullet, but by combining their wills from there they were both able to launch it almost as far as a regular one, and with no worries of needing to replace any staves they were able to fire for as long as their energy would carry them.

It wasn’t their mana that gave out though, but their stamina and mental energy. They simply weren’t used to how mentally taxing putting together and firing dozens of spells could be, and they needed to rest.

The Bens were to the side, continuing on their own, and Thera was struck by the uncomfortable realisation that she should try talking to her copy. They had just spent a couple of hours training together, but any time they spoke had been centered around that, but now that they were having a break to recuperate what would they even say? If they really did possess almost the exact same personal history then what would she want to say to herself?

“Do you think this is the right choice?” Is what ended up slipping out, and her copy, thinking along the same lines, didn't need to ask what she meant by it.

“Of course. We want to be mages, we need to do the trial since mom decided to be a huge pain about it. What else could we do?”

“Maybe we could have found a job to pay Falk for his work? Honestly, we should have been doing something this whole time instead of just leaching off his kindness.”

The idea seemed to take her duplicate by surprise. “I guess we could have tried, but who would hire us for casual work? We can’t exactly interact well with customers if they’re afraid to get close to us. We can’t cook so that cuts out restaurants and we working in Anailia would be a no-go with everyone knowing who our parents are.”

“We could clean maybe. We do it for the clinic every now and then to help Sonya anyway.”

“True, but then the issue is the pay. We’d never make enough to cover the rate we currently go through staves, which means our progress slows even more. I’d much rather get better as quick as I can to improve my magic before the world ends.”

“You’re right.” She said with a sigh. “But we’ll have to if we fail the trial.”

“Maybe not,” Her copy replied with some thought. “Not like we couldn’t make an arrangement with another country. Show the amount of raw mana on our card and I’m sure plenty of places would be willing to take the risk of training us in exchange for our service.”

“Okay but how long could that service be? I’d rather not spend a hundred years working at the whims of a random kingdom, not to mention how pissed mom would be if we pulled something like that. Plus the political ramifications of working for another country, I think that really needs to be our last option.”

“Also true.” Her copy assented. “Still it wouldn’t hurt to look into a bit if things don’t go our way here. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to give up my passion just because it would be inconvenient for the country if we officially start working for another.”

“I guess worst to worst if we could find a good offer we could just threaten mom about taking it and see if she feels more agreeable,” She said, a wicked smile forming on her face.

“Ha, it would be fun to cause her some stress for once.” Her copy agreed, thinking back to how much of a pain her mother had been when she first met Ben, not to mention all the times while growing up.

After having a nice chance to relax and breaking the ice with their chat they went back to practising. Neither Ben seemed like they would stop anytime soon and they wouldn’t waste the opportunity either.

After many more hours of practice and a night of sleeping in shifts they finally resumed the trial, walking deeper into the forest in the hopes that they would soon see its end.

Both Bens took the lead, still hand in hand, unwilling to give up the chance to practice, but also because it let them see out of each other's eyes, creating a larger range of vision than would normally be possible. Both Theras hung to the back, staves ready in case anything came up, but at least for the time everything seemed calm.

It really did seem like a relaxing walk through the woods at the moment, but after some thought it made sense. If the point of this section was all about the duplicates then they had already seen what it had to offer, they just elected to do nothing about it. It had seemed to take about a day of walking to get from the start of one section to the end of another if the first two were any indication, and with nothing else popping up perhaps this expanse was meant to be a little break from any stress assuming they completed it early.

Or maybe it’s so we could run in the event a fight happened and didn’t go well. She quietly thought.

No point dwelling on that though, they had chosen peace with their copies so that wasn’t a concern, at least for now. Maybe things would change if the next section of the trial never appeared and Ben was forced to reveal how to figure out who the originals were. She personally didn’t know how she would react., but she couldn’t imagine herself just sitting down and accepting it. Would she try and progress further in or try and turn back? Really just do anything to determine the truth of it if it wasn’t self-evident in some way.

Still no point in worrying, they would get there when they get there. On the opposite side, they would face a different issue if Ben’s proposed strategy of everyone working together were to be possible. Food. They had only packed so much and While sharing a couple meals with their duplicates wasn’t too bad for their supplies, doing it for too long could leave them feeling pretty tight by the end of it.

After a few more hours of walking everyone began feeling antsy. The nervousness that came with nothing happening made them want to find the next section even quicker, but there was no hurrying the trial. All they could do was keep going. Thera was going to turn to her copy, just to discuss anything to pass the time, when she felt her head pound.

<EARTH MAGIC LEVEL INCREASED>

It felt like a mind had slammed into her own, as if Ben had tried connecting with her by giving her a headbutt and somehow forced a sense of Deja Vu on her. She couldn’t immediately process the notification through the pain, putting her head in her hands and gripping her temples.

Ah, what? Why did it increase?

She would normally rejoice, but at the moment she was too confused and filled with pain to be happy. If it was going to level up then why hadn’t it during practice with her copy earlier? Speaking of, did anyone else feel it or was it just her being targeted by whatever the trial threw at them?

When she found the energy to look up both her and Ben's duplicate were gone, and Ben was on the ground.

“Ben!”

She rushed to his side and looked him over. Whatever happened hit him significantly worse than her. He was unconscious and blood was leaking from his nose and eyes. She had a bit of medical knowledge from reading some of Sonya's books as well as a skill, but she didn’t know what she could do about this beyond some basic measure. She made sure he laid comfortably on his back and raised his legs to aid blood flow to his brain while loosening his clothes to try and make sure they didn’t constrict his breathing. As for the bleeding, she couldn’t be sure but thought it might be strain.

Still she wasn’t a healer of any sort and didn’t know what else to do. For maybe the first time she cursed the fact she didn’t have access to any healing magics. In Stonewall she never worried too much about it, as long as they could make it back to the town they’d be fine, but even if she tried to carry him back now it would take days. With no other option she took his hand, sat down beside him, and waited to see if his condition improved.