Chương 85: Interlude: Avelyn

Avelyn was having quite possibly the strangest day of her life. There had been so many incredible highs and terrifying lows packed into the past several hours that she genuinely couldn't decide whether today qualified as the best day she had ever experienced or the worst. Maybe both. She had finally left the estate. Finally become an adventurer. Even now, if she paid attention, she could still feel a little of the excitement from that morning lingering in her chest. The freedom. The nerves.

The anticipation of finally seeing the world beyond Bramblegate's walls. She had been so happy. Then the dungeon happened. A mid level cave system. Carefully chosen because Foxkin naturally excelled in it thanks to Silent Fox. It had sounded so safe. So reasonable. Then everything started going wrong. Mana overflowed. The dungeon mutated. Monsters grew stronger. The retreat order came. And then Tali... Avelyn squeezed her eyes shut. She still couldn't stop seeing it. One moment the Catkin porter had been smiling.

The next... Her stomach twisted. No. She wasn't ready to think about that yet. Afterward came the desperate struggle to survive. Every spell mattered. Every mistake seemed to make things worse, and every time someone stepped forward to protect another person, Avelyn found herself praying they would still be standing a few seconds later. Then Rin had been injured protecting her. That wound should have been hers. She knew it.

When the crawler finally broke through the front line, Avelyn had become completely certain she was about to die. Instead... Another Foxkin had appeared. About her age. Maybe a little younger, with beautiful, snow-white hair. She was calm enough to make the entire battlefield seem quieter just by standing there. The memory replayed itself so clearly that Avelyn almost smiled. Lyn hadn't arrived like someone rushing to save them. She had simply...

dived straight into the chaos as though it had politely waited for her. There hadn't been even the slightest hesitation. Every movement had looked effortless. Every decision had looked obvious. Before Avelyn even realized it was happening, everyone had started following Lyn's lead. The panic had disappeared. Hope had quietly taken its place. At that moment... Avelyn had almost fallen in love on sight. Which was admittedly a little embarrassing. Especially because the feeling had only gotten worse afterward.

She had immediately made a complete fool of herself by leveling her staff at Lyn without asking first. She still wanted to hide under a blanket whenever she remembered it. Instead of getting upset, Lyn had simply smiled... And patted her on the head. Avelyn had nearly died a second time. This time from embarrassment. Lyn was kind. Not in loud, obvious ways. The quiet kind. The kind that seemed to appear only when someone needed it.

At first, the disconnect between Lyn's behavior and the image she projected had confused Avelyn. Her face remained so calm so often that it created a strange sense of distance, as though nothing could ever truly reach her. But Avelyn had always been good at reading people. The longer she watched, the more cracks she found in that perfect composure. Lyn was unmistakably Foxkin. Just... buried much deeper than most. She was dramatic. A little vain. Quietly petty in oddly adorable ways.

Avelyn noticed every smug tail swish after Lyn did something impressive. Every tiny flick of her hair. Every subtle adjustment to her posture whenever she realized someone was watching her while she was trying to look especially cool. It was all so wonderfully... Foxkin. Then there had been that moment earlier. Nobody else seemed to notice it. Avelyn did. The rigid posture. The carefully controlled breathing.

The way Lyn's voice stayed perfectly steady while everything else about her quietly suggested she was forcing herself to remain calm. Something had frightened her. Or maybe hurt her. Avelyn still didn't know what. She only knew that, for the first time, the impossible prodigy standing before everyone else had suddenly become just... a girl. A lonely one, maybe. The realization made Avelyn's heart ache. It also made her admire Lyn even more. The rest of the day gradually stopped feeling quite so terrible after that.

The fear never disappeared completely, but little moments of warmth began slipping through it. Watching silver light catch in Lyn's hair. Seeing her tail sway proudly after doing something absurdly impressive. Catching the tiniest hint of satisfaction whenever she fought. Those moments kept making Avelyn smile before she even realized she was smiling.... Right up until the Evolution began. Pain swallowed everything. Not the pain of an injury. Something far worse.

It felt as though every part of her was being torn apart and stitched back together at the same time. She remembered screaming. She remembered crying. She remembered desperately trying to breathe. And through all of it... Lyn was there. The instant the pain began, she caught Avelyn before she could collapse onto the stone floor and simply... stayed. She held her through the entire nightmare. Even through the agony, Avelyn remembered noticing Lyn's hair. The faint silver shimmer.

The way it sparkled whenever it caught the light. Proof that Lyn had survived this too. For some reason, that thought had made everything just a little easier to endure. Then the darkness came. When Avelyn finally woke, the panic hadn't faded. Her body still trembled. Her heart still raced. Some irrational part of her remained convinced that something was terribly wrong. Then a gentle hand began softly patting one of her ears. The fear melted away almost immediately.

Without thinking, Avelyn had turned and buried herself against Lyn, crying openly into the other Foxkin's dress while Lyn simply held her there without a single complaint. Remembering it now made warmth creep into Avelyn's cheeks. Lyn very obviously wasn't comfortable with physical contact. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Avelyn had realized that almost as soon as they met.

The little bit of extra distance Lyn left whenever they sat together had been subtle, but unmistakable. And yet... She hadn't pulled away. She had simply stayed there, quietly comforting Avelyn until the worst of it passed. Only afterward, once Avelyn had finally calmed down enough to let go, had she realized what she'd done to Lyn's arm during the Alignment. She had been horrified. Lyn hadn't seemed to care in the slightest.

As if having her arm torn apart barely mattered at all compared to discovering what Avelyn gained from the experience. Even now, Lyn watched her with the same calm, unreadable expression as always. But Avelyn had quickly learned not to stop at Lyn's face. Her ears were standing proudly upright. Her tail swayed behind her with slow, unmistakable anticipation. Lyn was excited. The realization made Avelyn suddenly aware of just how closely she was being watched. Warmth immediately spread across her cheeks.

She did her very best to ignore it. Instead, she closed her eyes and focused inward. Her own tail immediately betrayed her, swishing happily behind her. The mana flowing through her body felt completely different. It was stronger and cleaner. Denser than before, yet somehow easier to move. Holy mana had always felt warm and comforting, like sunlight filtering through tree branches. Now... Now it felt as though every last imperfection had simply... disappeared. Nothing resisted her anymore.

The mana answered her thoughts so naturally that it almost felt like it had been waiting for her to catch up. Avelyn couldn't help smiling. She lifted one hand, only a little dramatically. Golden tattoos bloomed across her skin the moment she reached for her mana, intricate patterns flowing across her arms, fingers, and collarbone as radiant light gathered within her palm. The light spread outward almost immediately. Warm golden radiance swept across the cavern, washing gently over everyone nearby.

The effect was instant. Dust vanished and grime dissolved. Crawler blood coating armor and weapons broke apart into drifting motes of purified light. Even the dried blood staining Lyn's arm faded away beneath the sanctified mana. There wasn't even a skill. Just... Mana. Lyn blinked once before glancing down at her now-pristine arm.

"My. The scar is completely gone now." Avelyn's ears perked automatically. Then she froze. The scar. Lyn had mentioned that one of her Traits prevented scars from lasting. But that wasn't what had just happened. The mark had been there before the purification. Then her mana had passed over it, and it had vanished with everything else. Avelyn stared at Lyn's arm for another second.... That was strange. Maybe Lyn's Trait had just been sped up by her healing? It had to be something like that. Probably.

Her attention returned to the golden light still curling around her fingers.

"My mana feels... different," she admitted.

"Much stronger. And it's so much easier to control now." She hesitated.

"It almost feels like Holy was something I was born with from the beginning." A quiet laugh escaped her.

"Like I was trying to write with the wrong hand this whole time." Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Rin and Sylrae looking at her with poorly concealed envy. She felt a tiny bit guilty. Mostly, though... She couldn't stop looking back at Lyn. Lyn gave a thoughtful nod.

"Same as me, then. What about your racial skills? They should have changed as well."

"Oh!" Avelyn immediately opened her status window. She hadn't even thought to check. Lyn was right. Apparently she had completely missed several notifications during the Alignment. All of her racial skills had changed names, and there was even a third one she didn't remember receiving. Curious, Avelyn inspected them. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Hallowed Sense A sanctified mutation of the Foxkin's natural sensory ability.

Holy-aligned energy attunes the user to impurities and abnormalities within nearby space, instinctively identifying corruption and hostile influence. (Passive) Enhances the effectiveness of the Perception stat. Allows instinctive awareness of corruption, curses, demonic influence, and unstable magical distortions within the surrounding environment. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sanctified Fox A sanctified mutation of the Foxkin stealth instinct.

Holy-aligned energy suppresses disruptive presence and stabilizes the user's interaction with the surrounding environment, allowing movement with unnatural smoothness and minimal disturbance. (Passive) Erases all footstep and movement noise, reduces detectable vibrations, and minimizes environmental disturbance caused by movement. Greatly enhances stealth against creatures relying on sound, vibration, or corrupted sensory perception.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Sacrosanct Reflex A sanctified mutation of the Foxkin's reactive instinct. The user's body is instinctively guided toward stability and proper motion, reacting to danger with unnatural precision and fluidity. (Passive) Enhances reaction speed and the effectiveness of Dexterity when evading threats.

Improves balance, coordination, and motion correction during sudden movement, allowing rapid adaptation against erratic attacks, unstable terrain, and disruptive forces. Particularly effective against corrupted entities and destabilizing effects. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Avelyn pressed a finger lightly against her cheek as she read through the descriptions, her tail flicking thoughtfully behind her. Every few seconds she glanced back toward Lyn, quietly reading each skill aloud while watching for her reaction.

Lyn mirrored the thoughtful gesture almost immediately.

"Interesting," she murmured.

"Your mutations differ from mine in actual functionality." Avelyn smiled. Somehow, hearing Lyn sound genuinely curious about her abilities felt strangely rewarding. Off to one side, Zeke quietly muttered something about them apparently "multiplying." Avelyn pretended not to hear him. Lyn did the same, her attention remaining entirely on Avelyn. For just a brief moment, Avelyn realized she had never met Lyn's eyes. She decided that it didn't matter an instant later. Lyn spoke a moment later.

"What about your stat growth?"

"Oh!" Avelyn quickly opened her racial information. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Hallowed Foxkin [Tier 2] An evolved Foxkin mutation aligned with sanctified essence. At this stage, holy-aligned energy integrates more deeply with the body and senses, sharpening awareness of corruption, hostile influence, and unnatural impurity. Hallowed Foxkin move with supernatural grace, their reflexes and instincts refined by an innate rejection of demonic and corruptive forces.

Future tiers deepen holy alignment and strengthen resistance against corruption and spiritual contamination. Stat Growth per Level: → Vitality +5 → Dexterity +12 → Perception +13 → Wisdom +5 → Free +8 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Avelyn read the information aloud. Lyn listened without interrupting before giving a small nod.

"Lower than mine," she said matter-of-factly, "but still immensely impressive compared to normal." Avelyn blinked. Lower than mine. Lyn had said it with exactly the same tone someone might use to compare favorite desserts. She didn't even seem to realize how absurd that sentence sounded. Before Avelyn could think of a response, Lyn continued.

"Your racial skills are particularly interesting, and your stat growth is exceptional. We'll need proper testing before we know exactly how everything works." She tilted her head.

"Unless you've noticed anything else, I assume it's time for your Class Advancement?" The reminder immediately rekindled Avelyn's excitement.

"Oh! Right!" Her tail gave an enthusiastic swish.

"I almost forgot!"... Then she remembered something else. Her ears drooped slightly as she turned toward Marek.

"... Is it alright if I do it now?" The large Bearkin chuckled.

"Finally remembered you've got a party leader, eh?" Avelyn shrank just a little.

"Sorry..." He laughed again, the sound warm rather than teasing.

"Go on, lass. You've earned it." Relief washed over her.

"Thank you!" She hurried over to the sleeping bag Lyn had lent her, smoothing out the fabric with perhaps a little more care than strictly necessary before sitting down. After taking one steadying breath—and striking what she hoped was a suitably heroic pose—Avelyn reached out and accepted the notification. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Class Advancement activated. An existence beyond your current reach has recognized your potential. Class Advancement options have been influenced.

You have (3) Class Advancement options. [Sanctified Luminary (Epic)] A holy caster who embodies the purifying radiance of sanctified mana. Sanctified Luminaries weave healing, enhancement, and destructive invocation together seamlessly, allowing radiant power to shift fluidly between restoration and annihilation. Their magic grows increasingly potent against corruption and hostile magical influence, while their refined mana control allows them to sustain complex spellcasting under pressure.

This class manifests in Users whose holy alignment has evolved beyond simple support, granting them the ability to wield sanctified power as both shield and judgment. Aspect: Holy Stat Growth per Level: → Intelligence +12 → Wisdom +11 → Dexterity +4 → Perception +4 → Free +8 [Hallowed Arcanist (Epic)] A spellcaster who channels holy-aligned mana through refined magical structures and concentrated spell output.

Hallowed Arcanists specialize in transforming sanctified energy into dense offensive magic while retaining strong supportive capability. Their spells possess unusual stability and purification properties, allowing them to suppress corruption, disrupt hostile mana, and overwhelm unstable magical constructs through refined mana control. This class is rarely offered to Users whose holy mana has undergone alignment.

Aspect: Holy Stat Growth per Level: → Intelligence +14 → Wisdom +8 → Dexterity +3 → Perception +4 → Free +8 [Experienced Radiant Evoker (Rare)] A refined evolution of the Radiant Evoker path. Experienced Radiant Evokers deepen their mastery over radiant spellcasting, improving healing efficiency, mana control, and offensive holy invocation. Their magic becomes more stable and adaptable, allowing for consistent support while retaining reliable ranged offensive capability.

Aspect: Holy Stat Growth per Level: → Intelligence +7 → Wisdom +6 → Dexterity +3 → Perception +3 → Free +6 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Avelyn stiffened. Her eyes settled on the first two lines of the notification. An existence beyond your current reach has recognized your potential. Class Advancement options have been influenced. She had never seen those messages before. She had never even heard rumors of them. Almost immediately, one particular white-haired Foxkin came to mind. It didn't make sense.

It shouldn't have been possible. And yet... Somehow, Avelyn couldn't bring herself to dismiss the thought. She wanted to look toward Lyn. To ask. To understand. But the advancement window still filled her vision, making that impossible. Lyn... who are you? The question lingered for only a moment before Avelyn quietly pushed it aside. Whatever Lyn's circumstances were, she had done nothing but help. She had protected Avelyn. Comforted her. Celebrated her Evolution as though it were something worth celebrating.

Digging into mysteries Lyn clearly hadn't chosen to share felt... wrong. Besides, she'd heard stories about legendary adventurers whose guidance could change the futures of those around them. Maybe this was something like that. She hoped so. That explanation felt kinder. Satisfied enough, Avelyn turned her attention to the classes themselves. The Rare option was easy to set aside. Not because it was bad. It simply wasn't even close. That left the two Epic classes.

She read through both descriptions carefully, her ears twitching as she compared them again and again. They were remarkably similar. Both emphasized refined Holy mana. Both balanced healing with offensive magic. Both focused on purification and stability. The real difference seemed to lie in what they encouraged. Hallowed Arcanist leaned a little further toward destructive spellcasting.

Sanctified Luminary devoted more of its strength to sustaining allies while remaining more than capable of fighting when necessary. The decision became easier the longer she thought about it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Class Advancement confirmed. [Radiant Evoker (Rare)] has been upgraded into [Sanctified Luminary (Epic)]. You have gained the Class skill [Hallowed Ground (Epic)]. Skill has been automatically placed into your Skill Storage. [Radiant Lance (Rare)] has been upgraded into [Sanctified Spear (Epic)].

You have gained +28 Free points. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Healing people. Protecting them. Helping everyone else shine a little brighter. That had always been the reason she wanted to learn Holy magic. She liked fighting well enough. She loved helping even more. The choice almost made itself. Warm golden light flowed through her body as the advancement completed, her mana channels somehow feeling even clearer than before.

Without hesitating, she replaced one of her largely unused Uncommon skills with her new Epic one. There really wasn't much of a decision there. Only after everything settled did she finally look back toward Lyn. A smile spread across Avelyn's face before she even realized it.

"I got a good one." Lyn's ears perked a little higher.

"I can see that," she replied, sounding genuinely pleased.

"Congratulations are clearly in order." Avelyn's tail immediately began swishing.

"Would you like to see the new skills?" Almost immediately, Lyn's own tail answered with a matching swish.

"I would love to." Neither Foxkin noticed the rest of the party exchanging the resigned look of people who had quietly accepted that, from this point onward, the phrase "Where's Avelyn?" would probably be answered with "Have you checked next to Lyn?"