Eli and Tara were making their way south at incredible speed, leaving a trail of broken trees and crushed rocks behind them; it wouldn't be hard for the others to follow the trail. At one point they were moving so fast that Eli ran into a monster and it just exploded. It was low level and not very big, but still it caused him to stop. He stood still, staring at his hands and breathing heavily. Tara noticed and approached him slowly.
"Everything ok?"
"I killed that monster by accident."
"Yes, I saw," Tara replied, then waited patiently for him to respond. It took a minute.
"I'm strong, my accidents are also strong."
"Go on."
"What happens if an accident kills someone? If that had been a person, they would be dead, just bad luck for them to cross my path and I wasn't paying attention."
"Eli, I…"
"No, what if I accidentally kill you, that would not be something I come back from. I'm sorry Tara, but we need to make you stronger, all of you, it's going to be hard, but I need you to do it."
"I can handle it, I'm not scared of you."
"I'm scared of me," he yelled, "Do you know how strong I have become? I was tempted to destroy those towns like we threatened, and I could have, I could have killed them all. You've seen how I'm not in control, what if we disagree and I get mad, I need you to be strong enough to survive me."
"I didn't jump into this blindly, I know everything about you, from before, and now. I know the risk of all of this. I am married to the strongest man on the planet, that is not safe, and it is not easy. But I wouldn't change it for anything." she said, while putting her arms around him and holding him tight.
"Ok, you know I love you but I need to work hard for this training. So, when I have the mask on, you obey me as my trainee. When it's off, you are my wife and we can act as such. Now I just need this one thing," Eli said as he took his mask off and kissed her very passionately then put it back on. "Let's get moving, faster this time, don't fall behind."
A little over an hour later, they were at the foot of his volcano, Tara was laying on the hot rocky ground covered in sweat and breathing like she might pass out at any time. Eli told her she had two minutes to rest then she had to meet him at his cave, before she could get a word out, he disappeared leaving a crack of black lightning and a smoking crater where he was standing. One of the things that Eli could do to prepare himself for the next event and beyond was to finish opening his nodes, but he could feel that that might take a week for the next one or longer so instead he would work on leveling skills. Specifically his blink skill, which had become his trump card and last second life saver.
The skill was his biggest cheat and with it being legendary, it was ludicrously powerful. But he wanted to be able to take people with him for long distance blinks, specifically he wanted to be able to grab Tara and disappear in case of trouble. He wasn't sure how many level-ups that was or if it was even possible, but he wanted it anyways, so while he was waiting for her to get to him, he focused on the skill. Really feeling it and making its use second nature to him, understanding the magic and how it worked, it was going to take awhile but he wanted her to catch up to him in strength before he kept getting ahead of her. Despite the furnace of emotions he had for her, which was a very new experience for him, he could see their relationship getting strained if the power gap didn't get smaller.
It had been three minutes or so now and Tara was still laying on the ground. The pace that Eli was capable of was staggering, she pushed herself hard and was going her top speed. The trees were a blur and she still fell behind, she knew him better than anyone and while sprinting around and over trees, she was thinking about what this training was going to be like. Tara knew that pain was coming, far more pain than sore muscles from running, she had noticed how he seemed almost immune to pain. You only get that way if you don't feel it or you get used to it. She wondered how much pain he had to suffer through to get to that point, and if she could ever get there.
There was a second reason for this training that she just couldn't shake thinking about. This could be him showing her just how strong he was, she didn't really know how big the gap was between them. She meant every word she had said to him, but now she was wondering if she even knew what he was anymore. He certainly seemed to be more than human, stronger than anyone she had seen so far even when they out leveled him. Before the event, when she was going through towns, she met 1 other lord and a couple people over 60, but they didn't even come close to his power at 50.
Fear ran through her as she thought that she might not ever reach him, she may not be able to stay by his side. He might just be forever out of her reach. She had heard that no one under the lord system could outlevel their lord, the system stopped their growth. She pushed her fears and self-doubt aside and focused on what she wanted, if he was willing to burn down the world for her, she would have to be willing to burn herself down for him. Then just make sure that she rebuilt herself stronger every time, even if it never worked, it was worth the suffering of trying to make the attempt.
Finally able to get up, Tara started up the rocky terrain already feeling the heat like it was a physical wall pushing her back. She climbed and she fought, the elementals gave her some trouble, but the vultures were easy for her. At two-thirds of the way up, she reached a point where the heat was burning her skin and her armor was melting so she took it all off except her boots and the cloth around her neck. It would repair from in her inventory. She got a little further and most of her body was covered in burns.
Eli appeared and stopped her, he took her back down slowly until her burns were healing as they appeared. He told her to sit and meditate here, to push magic into her body as it healed, with enough time, she would level her body again. After she started he went into detail about not using more magic than she could regenerate since this would take awhile. Tara did not speak, at first because the skin on her face was burned, but then because the pain was distracting and she needed to focus.
She worked hard to keep it going but she was losing consciousness. He told her to stop and carried her down the volcano to a hot spring that fed a stream near the bottom. He placed her into the water and let her rest. She lasted three hours in the heat and it took her three more to recover fully. During her recovery, they discussed the pain and the focus required. How her mind would lose focus when the pain spiked and the struggle to bring herself back to where her mind needed to be. Eli explained how pain gave him focus and with enough his focus could help me achieve his goals. This was the result of Will.
They spent the last two hours of her recovery discussing 'will'. The stat and what it practically was, which Eli thought was your ability to force reality to bend. However, Tara thought it had more to do with the soul after he told her about his will skill scaling with his soul. They kept discussing until he felt that her magic was settled enough to go back to it. He helped her out of the water and back to where she had been before, he told her to push herself and try for a hotter area but she said she wanted to try something using their connection.
She sat again and started to focus, while meditating, she focused on the same process as last time, but when she started to struggle, she pulled on her connection to Eli until she found something in it that helped her. A sharp focus came over her mind and she was able to maintain the process easier. This time she lasted six hours before she started to pass out and Eli moved her back to the hot spring. When she started to recover, she explained what she had done to see if he had been affected.
"It felt like part of my soul was dissociating, it was still me, but it was supporting you from inside you," Eli explained. "The part that worried me and almost made me pull it back was that it was out of my control, you could have taken it, destroyed it, and I think you could have changed it if your will was strong enough."
"For me, it felt like your soul hugging mine and allowing me to borrow your strength. Did you feel drained or weaker?"
"No, if anything it felt like I was able to borrow some of your strength," Eli lied, and was glad he was still wearing the mask since he always had trouble hiding lies from his face when talking to her. Now that he thought about it, that was probably how she knew he loved her back, because when he would lie about his feelings she could tell. The truth here was that with part of his soul in her, if he focused his will he could push enough in to devour her soul enough for him to basically be able to move her around like a puppet. Or maybe something more subtle, but he pushed it all out of his mind.
He wouldn't tell her this because a deep part of her would push him away to protect herself, he thought. She needed the strength so that she could borrow it from him until she grew stronger and didn't need it. While she was channeling a piece of his soul for the will, he felt her soul learning a piece of that strength and growing stronger. So he wouldn't tell her until she was strong enough to fight him off, so there wouldn't need to be any worry.
Tara was hiding it, but she had a new fear, when she reached for his strength of will, it was endless. She felt like she was pulling strands of power from the sun, her insides felt charred and bruised, but also stronger. It felt like when she would hit a punching bag until she collapsed, she was sore, but she felt like she would recover stronger. Something about what she was doing was dangerous, she just didn't know why, and she knew Eli did, but wasn't upset at him not telling her. From what she felt when she reached for their connection, there was a lot about his strength that she didn't understand.
It only took her two hours to recover this time, and she went a little higher up the volcano and started again. She made it ten hours this time and her body finally leveled up. As with Eli's body level increases, she felt herself change to be more attractive, at least she thought it's what men would find attractive. Her chest and butt stayed the same size but were more perky and firm, her waist got a little slimmer and her abs more defined. She felt a little shorter and her legs and arms more toned, but in a soft feminine way, her neck and collarbones changed, she couldn't see them but they felt different.
Eli took off his mask, and was staring at Tara with his mouth open. She was naked and dirty wearing boots and an ascot and he found her even more beautiful than ever, but something grabbed his attention. He wasn't staring at her chest or legs or waist, he was staring at her eyes and the way she was looking at him was driving him wild, that look crawled into a primitive part of his brain and pushed every single 'on' button it had. He picked her up and carried her to the hot spring where they stayed for the next day, entangled in each other's everything.