The day after the Wolf fiasco was a rather peaceful day. It was also the day I asked Lilly to help me train my mental attacks.


    “I can’t really help all that much,” she started explaining. “I have some training for how to defend against mental skills, but that’s mostly to deal with people trying to jack prices up or down when negotiating. I don’t have any idea as to how I could help with attacking or defending with what you described about your new use of the Telepathy skill.”


    That was disappointing. I was tempted to beg a bit more, but I’d rather not come off as needy to the first person I could consider a friend in this world.


    “I understand. How about any other form of magic? I have a bunch of mana, and Telepathy barely takes anything. I don’t think I’ve dropped below 100% despite how much I’m actively using the skill.”


    If I couldn’t get mental magic, maybe she could teach me something else about magic. She did mention having met a few magic caster adventurers in her travels before, though I wasn’t sure how much aptitude Lilly herself would have for it.


    “Now that, I can teach a little about,” she said excitedly. “One of the skills I was working towards getting as a bit of a ‘for fun’ thing was Water Magic. I had a user of the skill teach me a bit of how to use it one time while she was escorting my caravan to Ostlan a few months ago. I haven’t had much time to really put in a concentrated effort into learning it, but I at least know enough that I should be able to learn it, and you should be able to learn it as well, theoretically.”


    I was immediately hooked. “How do we begin?”


    “First, I need a bowl and water to fill the bowl with. Now, I could dig the bowl out of the ground, but it would be better if- Okay, that’ll work too, I guess.”


    As she spoke, I formed a bowl about 6 inches in diameter and 4 inches deep out of one of my smaller branches up high, then I tore the bowl off with two vines, making sure to keep the integrity of the bowl. It felt like pulling out a hair, but doing it actually earned me a skill.


    New skill [Wood Crafting (C)] has been obtained!


    Well, that seems self-explanatory, and I realistically probably won''t be using it all that often. It didn’t hurt all that much, but I still won’t be tearing off little bods and do-dads for just anybody.


    I then brought the bowl down in front of her. She accepted it and held it in her hands while we figured out the next part of our plan. We needed to find a way to fill it with water.


    “I can sense water being brought up to me through my roots, but I can’t exactly force it up or out of the ground all willy nilly. Maybe if I had the skill already, but I need to skill to get the water, and I need the water to get the skill.”


    Lilly and I were both slightly dumbfounded as to what we were supposed to do about our little conundrum. After close to an hour of silent pondering and relaxation, I grabbed the bowl from Lilly and brought it up to my higher branches to get a Resource Berry lunch for her. It was a lot more convenient for me to fill the bowl with berries to bring down to her than it was to juggle them in the tips of my vines. When I brought the bowl down to her again, something occurred to me.


    “Lilly, humans require water to survive, right?” I hoped she wouldn’t take the line of questions in the wrong way, so I pushed through before she got the chance to. “What water have you been drinking the last few days that you’ve been with me?”


    She considered the question before answering, “I guess I haven’t really needed water lately. The berries you provide me are more than enough for me to live... Off... Of... Wait, do you think we could use the juices from the berries to work with? I don’t want you to feel like you’d be wasting them or anything.”


    She sounded slightly defensive, so I lightly smacked her head with a vine.


    “I told you not to worry about it. I have plenty of regeneration, and now we know that I’ve been getting more and more regeneration as I level as well. I’ll be perfectly fine, thank you very much. Now get to squeezing so we can get some Water Magic skills!”


    Lilly rubbed the back of her head, though I know she didn’t actually get hurt from that. She smacked my trunk and got to work squeezing the Stamina Berries I brought down for her to eat. I wondered if using Mana Berries would be better for this experiment, or if I should try making non-resource berries instead. Heck, with what I was doing to BBW yesterday, I wondered if I could put mental energy into a berry and make a sort of Mental Berry. That would be an experiment for when Lilly was asleep and I had the forest to myself.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.


    “Okay,” Lilly interrupted my line of thought. “Now that we have our ‘water’ to practice with, it’s time to try getting the skill. The mage told me that the best way to get the Water Magic skill was to pour a bunch of mana into the water and focus your intent on making the water do something. I think I’ll be focusing on making the water just ripple for now. The more low-key the change you try to make the first try, the easier it will be.”


    She held the bowl of yellow jam in between her hands and I felt her concertation focus solely on getting the water to make small waves. I watched closely, hoping to see any sign of either success or failure. I then felt her pour a small amount of mana in through the bowl and into the liquid contained inside.


    A few minutes later, and a whole lot of nothing, Lilly almost dropped the bowl and sat down hard. I caught her and the bowl with a few vines. I made sure none of the smashed berries fell out and that she didn’t hit the ground too hard.


    “Any success?” I asked her. She only shook her head. I felt a wave of disappointment emanate from our bond, but made sure to keep my end full of feelings of support and confidence. I’ve been noticing that more of our conversations have become less about words and more about emotions. It was an interesting feeling, but I can’t say that I dislike it.


    Lilly looked down at the berry jam in her hands and dipped a few fingers in. She scooped out the contents and began eating them. I had forgotten that this was supposed to be her lunch. I quickly brought down a few more Stamina Berries, and added 5 Health Berries to the mix for extra measure. I felt a wave of mental exhaustion from her, and realized she would probably need Mana Berries as well to recoup what she just spent.


    I replaced 5 of the Stamina Berries with the Mana Berries and brought them down to her. She looked happy to see them, and popped them in her mouth, one at a time. I took the bowl from her and used a few vines to wipe away the remaining contents. Lilly had eaten most of it, but there was still some residue left over.


    Lilly leaned against my trunk and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed, and soon I felt her drift to sleep through our bond. It was pleasant feeling the dreamlike state in this manner, but I removed myself from her mind, as that felt too much like a violation of privacy.


    I brought the bowl up to the top of my canopy and set it down in a small nook. I grabbed a single Stamina Berry from my branch and took a few of the thinnest vines I had to make a sort of mesh strainer. I squeezed the berries into a pulp, then strained them further to get a more liquid consistency than what Lilly previously had. This looked more like a proper juice than the jam it was before. I repeated the process a few more times, hoping that this would help Lilly get the skill a lot faster. This way, she wouldn’t have to deal with all the solid bits like before.


    Lilly slept for about an hour, and I handed her the bowl so she could try again. She eagerly accepted it, but I insisted she eat a few more Mana Berries to get fully topped off before she do so.


    “The 5 you gave me earlier were more than enough. But I will keep them for after this attempt, so thank you.” She set the berries aside and got to work.


    Lilly put her hands on either side of the bowl and closed her eyes. I felt our connection dim a bit as she put all her mental effort into making the liquid in the bowl start to ripple, as if a droplet of rain just plopped in the middle of an otherwise mirrored pond. It was honestly a rather soothing image she was transmitting. I could tell she had done this many times before in hopes of getting the skill.


    After a minute of concentrated effort to get the scene firmly in her mind, she started adding mana into the liquid in front of her. I could feel her arms start to get tired, but she made sure to hold the bowl nice and still.


    I watched closely as stared at the bowl. I felt her hopes rise as a small ripple formed, but she quickly cooled herself, swiftly returning to the previous image. I made a few mental notes on her image for things I wanted to try when I made my own attempts.


    Lilly drained most of her mana trying to get the juice in the bowl to move even the slightest bit. It was all to no avail. I could feel her start to get a bit light headed, so I prepared to catch both her and the bowl again.


    With vines at the ready, her collapse went rather smoothly. I caught her under her arms and I had two vines under the bowl forming a slightly larger bowl to catch it and its contents. I made it water tight, so there was no spillage.


    “Lay down and breathe for a bit. Eat the Mana Berries and relax. You probably just used your entire Mana Pool in that endeavor, no? You need to recover before even thinking of trying anything else.”


    I felt frustration coming from her in great waves. Between waves was exhaustion, both mana related and mental. I could tell she was getting irritated that she hadn’t picked up the skill yet despite how long she had been working at it. A few months isn’t a short time. Well, it is for me now, but it definitely wasn’t for me when I was human.


    I lay Lilly back down in her spot when she was resting before and made sure she ate the Mana Berries. I could tell she didn’t want to, but I also felt a wave of relief when she finally did. I sent a mental smirk at her and she just rolled her eyes and smiled.


    I took the bowl out of the impromptu catcher and brought it under the vine bowl. I made a small gap between the vines and let the Stamina Berry juice pour into its previous container.


    I studied the liquid and could feel trace amounts of mana swirling in it. I didn’t want to use Mana Berry juice just in case it messed with the process of getting the skill, but I was starting to suspect that using it might have actually made it a lot easier for Lilly to get the skill in the first place.


    I was about to tell her my discovery, but when I checked our bond again, I found she was back to sleeping again. Maybe she hasn’t been sleeping as well as I thought up in my branches. How can I fix this?