Her soft body leaned into my arm. Her forehead pressed against the front of my shoulder. Her breath came fast and shallow through her teeth, the small hitches of a person working through pain in a place she couldn’t reach.

"It’s okay." I whispered in her ears, "Everything will be fine. I’m here to support you...you will be fine."

She made a small moan that made my heart skip a beat. My hand stayed at the small of her back. Her fingers came up and closed on the front of my uniform, twisting the fabric hard enough that the seam pulled at my shoulder.

The heat and the cold worked against each other on her skin. The sweat came, the wind took it. Her face flushed dark under the hood, then pale, then dark again.

A minute of it. Maybe less.

Her breathing evened out.

She stayed leaning against me for another beat after the pain left her. Her forehead was still pressed to my shoulder. Her fingers hadn’t let go of my uniform.

Then she stood up.

She lifted her head. Her hood had slipped back an inch and a dark strand of hair had stuck to the sweat on her cheek. Her eyes were wide.

"This... my core."

Her hand went from my uniform to her own busty chest. Her palm pressed flat over the centre of her sternum. Her lips parted.

"I’m no longer an F-rank. It’s E-rank now."

I smiled at her.

"Seems like it."

Her eyes came up to mine and stayed there. The dark in them had gone soft at the corners in a way I hadn’t seen before. Her hand was still flat against her own chest, but her other hand hadn’t come off my arm yet.

Kira stepped back from me.

Her hand slid down my arm and dropped to her side. She pressed her palm against her chest one more time, feeling the change from the inside, then lifted her chin to look at me.

"I have a new skill."

"Yeah?"

"It came with the rank up." Her eyes moved to the sheath at her belt. "It’s a class skill. Related to my class."

"Which is."

She’d never told me. I hadn’t asked. F-rank classes were an easy thing to skip past in casual conversation because most of them were dead-end awakenings that never developed a proper skill tree, and Kira had never volunteered the information.

Her mouth tugged at the corner.

"Blade Dancer."

I raised an eyebrow.

"I am proficient with the blade, but not enough for it to be anything meaningful, at least before you gave me this pill. Now, I have a powerful skill..."

She drew the dagger from her belt.

She flipped the grip in her palm and settled into a light stance, the dagger held reverse-grip along her forearm.

The wind caught the loose strand of hair at her cheek and lifted it clear.

"The skill I got is called Flying Dagger."

She lifted the blade to eye level.

Blue mana crept out of her fingers and along the hilt, then along the edge, coating the whole length of the dagger in a thin skin of light.

She flicked her wrist.

The dagger left her hand.

It cut across the pass at a flat trajectory, faster than a normally thrown knife. The knife buried itself to the hilt in the trunk of a pine tree twelve metres out. The impact cracked bark loose in a small ring around the point of entry.

Kira held her open palm out toward the tree.

The dagger tore itself free.

It came back across the pass on the same flat line, spinning end over end, the mana coat still glowing along the blade. It landed in her open palm hilt-first, the grip settling against her fingers, and the light along the edge dimmed to a soft pulse before it went out.

She closed her hand around it.

"The coat holds for one throw. Then I have to re-channel. Range is around fifteen metres before the return pull weakens. If I miss, I still get it back, so I don’t have to worry about losing the blade in a fight."

She slid the dagger back into the sheath at her belt.

"It’s not a big skill, but its very useful to me."

I smiled at her. "Small is fine. Small is more than most E-rank classes get on their first skill. And a returning blade means you can throw without committing your only weapon. That’s worth a lot in the wrong terrain."

She tilted her head at the pine tree.

The gouge in the bark ran deeper than a normal throw should have gone. Splinters had cracked outward from the entry point in a small starburst. Whatever the mana coat had added to the impact, it was more than the blade’s own weight.

"Thank you for trusting me...for giving me this chance to get stronger. It really means alot, all the help you’ve been providing. You not only saved my brother...you also did something this big for me..." Her eyes held resolve.

Staring into them, I found myself lost for a moment.

Suddenly, her body crashed into me. She hugged me tight, and I could feel her soft body engulf mine. For a moment, my heart melted, before a small smile escape my mouth.

"You are welcome. You deserve better." I hugged her back with my left hand, patting her head that reached my shoulder with my right.

After a minute of hugging, she finally separated from me, albeit reluctant.

"Let’s keep sweeping. I want to see you fight those monsters with your new skill, I have a feeling that you will be a problem for them."

Kira, who regained her confidence, nodded her head, a small smile settling on her face. "Hehe."

It didn’t take us long to encounter our first beast.

"Let me handle it." Kira stepped forward, dagger in hand.

"Go ahead." I watched from the side.