Clara blinked.
She looked at her hands. She looked up at Arthur with the expression of someone who has noticed something and is not sure if she is imagining it.
'I feel different,' she said.
'How different?'
'Like — ' She opened and closed her hands slowly. 'Cleaner? Sharper. Like the air is a bit more there than it was.' She frowned at him. 'Did you do something?'
'Yes. I cast a spell that captured the energy from the monsters you defeated and transferred it to you. Same way I grow stronger when I hunt.' He lowered his voice for the last part since it was not widely known that he hunted or that he grew stronger from it. 'How are you physically? Any pain? Anything wrong?'
'No. I feel good. I feel — ' She seemed to be taking inventory of herself. 'I feel more than I did before. Is that going to keep happening?'
'Only with me here to cast the spell so if I keep doing it, yes. Your reservoir grew slightly. Your body got slightly more durable. Over time, with enough transfers — ' He stopped. 'It adds up.'
Clara was quiet for a moment. Then:
'Is this how you got strong?'
'Part of it.'
'Have you been doing this for seven years?'
'Hmm yes but don't tell mom that, I don't want her to worry or have even more to think about.'
She looked at him — really looked, the way she sometimes did when she was recalibrating something she thought she had already understood. Then she nodded once, firmly, the way she did when she had taken in a piece of information and decided where to put it.
'Then let's do the rest,' she said.
◆ ◆ ◆
He had four more ready.
Clara stepped back up to the opening and worked through them — three casts each, clean and controlled, the aim precise in the way it got when she was paying full attention. Arthur ran the capture net each time, let the energy collect and purify, transferred it in batches. He ran the diagnostic scan between each transfer, watching the baseline shift in small consistent increments.
By the time she stepped back from the opening, the changes were small but real. Her reservoir sat noticeably higher than it had at the start of the morning. Her physical baseline had moved enough that he could read it clearly in the scan. And she moved differently — not dramatically, but with a slight quality of ease in her joints, the specific looseness of a body that had been quietly upgraded and hadn't quite registered it yet.
'Better,' he confirmed, before she could ask.
'I can tell.' She flexed her right hand thoughtfully. 'Kiiro's going to be smug about this.'
'Kiiro is always smug.'
'She's going to be smugger.' Clara stepped aside and looked at Lyra. 'Your turn.'
◆ ◆ ◆
Lyra had been standing three meters back the entire time, watching Arthur rather than the pit. He had noticed. She had the quality of someone who had been piecing something together while everything else was happening.
'Same as Clara?' she said.
'Same as Clara. Three casts, through the opening.'
She stepped up to the opening without hesitation. Her spell of choice was Water Bullet, three clean shots, the aim considerably more precise than Clara's had been at the start — Lyra had always had the better natural accuracy of the two, though she would never say so and Arthur would never confirm it in front of Clara.
He ran the capture net again. Let the energy purify through the filter keyed to Lyra's signature.
The small dose first.
He watched the diagnostic as it arrived.
Her reservoir moved. Her physical baseline moved. Both in the same direction and roughly the same magnitude as Clara's, which meant the method was consistent and not just a one-time result. He noted this with the part of his mind that filed things and moved on.
But there was something else.
The light-quality signature he had noticed in Lyra's mana during the diagnostic — that subtle warmth, the readiness — shifted slightly when the transferred energy arrived. Not much, not in a way that would be visible to anyone but him. But the quality of it changed, the way a color changed when you added light to a room. Became more itself. More defined.
He stood very still and looked at this for one full second.
Then he transferred the rest.
Lyra was quiet for a long moment after. Longer than Clara had been. She stood with her eyes half-closed and her head slightly tilted, the way she was when she was listening to something interior.
'Did it work the same as Clara?' she asked.
'Same direction, yes. Both your reservoir and your physical durability increased. The method is consistent.'
Lyra glanced at the pit. Then at Arthur. 'How many times can we do this?'
'As many times as I go into the forest.'
'Which is how often?'
'How often do you want to get stronger?'
She turned back toward the house. Tsuki appeared from somewhere in the undergrowth and fell into step beside her, silver coat clean despite having been in the forest, because Tsuki was always clean.
'Every day,' Lyra said.
Arthur looked at the pit. He looked at the forest beyond it, vast and deep and full of everything that lived in it.
He thought: I have been hunting alone for five years and putting all of it into myself. The idea that the same resource had been available for everyone else the whole time and he had simply not thought to route it there — he set that thought down and did not pick it up again.
What mattered was that he knew now.
He grabbed the rabbit bodies and cast a quick spell to skin them and prepare the meat. He put half away in storage and took out a basket for the other half. He looked at his sisters and said, 'Congratulations on your first successful hunt. You both are providing the meat for dinner tonight. So thank you.' Perhaps remembering all the days they used to go hungry, as the second oldest child, Clara took those words to heart and became visibly embarrassed yet proud. Just looking at her made Arthur giggle, to which he owed him a punch to his shoulder.