A week had gone by since that night. The alien woman has been given Marcelina's old shelter to stay in while she rests in recuperates in her comatose state. Benedictus was able to heal her body back to perfect health, but he was not able to find a way to bring her out of the coma she had found herself in. In the meantime, he had gotten himself familiar with the changes in his overall power and had made improvements to their base by upgrading the fortifications, adding more traps around the perimeter, and building Marcelina her own cabin to her liking.

He himself also upgraded his own living space after gaining access to some juicy new spells. He had used the 3 free earth spells that he had gotten to select: Replenish Nature, Construct Framework, and Wooden Spikes. Replenish Nature allowed him to essentially rapidly grow all plant life within one mile of him, which was then doubled by his dragon soul passive, but that was only if he chose to allow it to go that far. He could minimize the range of any spell as long as it was within the maximum range. He learned this through trial and error when it came to using Replenish Nature to try and use the seeds from some of the few fruits that he did have to start a small garden farm. 

Thanks to his Magical Genius and his Eyes of the Arcanist, he could accurately perceive the maximum and minimum range of all of his spells and he could see how to properly adjust them. Which ultimately allowed him to succeed in only growing the plant life in his garden farm. The spell essentially rapidly grew any plant life affected by the magic at an accelerated rate as if it had been lovingly and tenderly grown and groomed for up to a year's time in a matter of seconds. With its help, he was essentially able to create infinite food for them because he could just take all the fruits grown and use the seeds from them to make more food that he could grow in a matter of seconds.

With Construct Framework, it basically made the framework of a 25-foot by 25-foot room that could go up to 15 feet high. It was primarily made of wood and stone, and it was most of everything you would need to construct an individual room of a house without windows, doors, or cabling. Although it was insulated when he inspected the interior of the walls after first trying the spell. He did learn that if he envisioned the overall layout of the room when he initially cast the spell, he could set it up so that multiple castings could build a house. He would just have to use Minor Geo Manipulation to finish off the rest, like putting on a roof or making stairs and what not.

Using that, he made a proper log cabin for both him and Marcelina each. Marcelina had the slightly larger cabin that she had been spending the last week, making it feel comfy and cozy with some of the items that they were able to purchase from the Ascension shop. Since he was able to get a lot of household items like rugs, mats, curtains, actual beds, blankets for the beds, shower curtains, towels, more hygienic amenities like proper soap to bathe with and stuff for their skin, and the most important thing of all, toilet paper. They no longer had to use leaves whenever they went to the bathroom.

Meanwhile, he just added two extra rooms to his pre-existing cabin where he integrated a proper kitchen to store and cook the food and a working bathroom. Although the bathroom was slightly primitive, he got it to function using a combination of Minor Geo Manipulation and his recently acquired Minor Hydro Manipulation. It was actually easy for Benedictus to make a lot of the things that they might need so long as he could replicate what he knows from life on Earth.

That's how he was able to improve the stove that they cook with now from what it used to be. He knew enough about how an electrical stove worked, and he knew even more about how proper electrical appliances worked and were powered. He found a way to replicate an electric stove that he could power with a couple of charges from his Minor Electro Manipulation, and now they can cook food in a way that is more to what they remember how to.

Outside of that, they had primarily been focusing on sparring with one of the other things that Benedictus had purchased, the regenerative magical training dummy. It was a type of magical golem that had been technologically enhanced to be capable of repairing and restoring its body so long as its core was not destroyed. Its core was capable of surviving a wide variety of attacks up to level 60 spells. 

It had different threat levels that they could use that increased its overall intelligence and tactical skill so that they could practice many of their abilities on it in various ways. Benedictus had been primarily testing it out to truly understand how large of an increase in strength his spells had gained. Before, his spells had enough impact that he could only compare it to the force of a small clump of C4 capable of destroying maybe part of a small building or strong enough to blow up your standard SUV. But with the training dummies' help, he would describe his current output of power to be capable of destroying half of a city block when he was using it to its most effective form. Without trying to maximize his damage output, he would definitely compare his normal attack power to be more comparable to taking out an entire large building in a single hit.

Just going off of his level 1 spells, if you were to only use say Minor Electro Manipulation or Minor Hydro Manipulation, he would be dealing between 406 to 514 points of damage. But if it's a spell that allows him to apply his Brilliance, those numbers go up from 466 to 574. And if it is a fire or earth spell that allows him to add his Brilliance, which is the best possible damage output he can go for, his level 1 spell of that type would deal 566 to 674 points of damage. 

It gets even higher with his 5th level and 10th level spells. With the most damage he was capable of coming from his 10th level fire spell, Fireball. That spell was capable of dealing 650 to 970 points of damage. He compared it to essentially throwing a ball of fire the rough size and shape of a baseball and hitting a target with enough force that it would be comparable to a high-grade military ballistic missile, with the aforementioned force that would be equivalent to destroying a city block. And he got to select that spell for free as one of his 3 free fire spells he could choose.

Right alongside it, he took the spells Moderate Pyro Manipulation and Flame Crash. Moderate Pyro Manipulation was basically Minor Pyro Manipulation, but it did more damage, and he could create and manipulate up to a 50-foot circumference sphere of fire. Flame Crash was interesting as it was a level 5 spell that allowed him to essentially propel himself while on fire at a target in a short range and all the fire would envelop and explode onto the target for a small amount of damage. Despite the little bit of damage it dealt, it was good for both maneuverability and the fact that it can set an enemy on fire.

Outside of grabbing Minor Hydro Manipulation and Minor Aero Manipulation with two of his ability points, he had to spend, he also picked up Moderate Geo Manipulation for the obvious reason of the increased damage and area of influence. The last spell that he ended up spending his 4 ability points on was his first necromancy spell, which he decided to take the unholy spell called, Punish Sin. He took it for two reasons, mainly because the description of the spell basically stated that it forced whoever he cast it on to remember all of their greatest sins and the number of sins would inflict small damage directly on to their souls, bypassing resistances and immunities. The second reason was because he had learned that he could not take spells from higher level tiers without taking at least one from a lower tier. 

In actuality, he originally wanted to pick up the 10th level unholy spell called Grasp of Damnation, but he couldn't because he had not taken a spell of level 1 and a spell of level 5 for that branch of magic yet. He thought it made sense to a degree. You can't get higher level spells in the different branches if you don't know the lower level spells. A lot of them seem to be improved or better versions of lower level spells, so it would be like skipping some of the important steps of each of the different branches of magic if you could just bypass the lower level spells for the higher level ones.

He wasn't the only one collecting information either. Marcelina had been testing out all of her new abilities as well. Unlike him, she didn't use magic and her abilities were based off of an energy source simply called willpower. Her abilities were more support based, but she did have a couple that would enhance her in combat.

One of the things that she was really grateful about was that, when she had reached level 5, she unlocked a passive ability that allowed her to share all XP gained between both her and her bonded animal companions. Which meant that, going forward, any XP that Charles gained she would no longer get half of it but the entire amount, and vice versa would apply. Another useful thing is that, upon reaching level 8, she gained access to another open slot for a second animal companion that she could bond with. It was something she has held off on actually putting to use, since she wanted to find more unique creatures like Emma who had powers that could compliment Charles and his almost entirely pure physical capabilities.

In between training, both of them had been looking after the alien woman and making sure that she was properly fed and hydrated in her comatose state while they looked for ways to potentially wake her up. They were both taking some time to look after her together early in the morning. It had started to become a routine at this point for them. 

Not wanting to let the woman's muscles begin to atrophy, Benedictus was helping to stretch and move her legs and arms while she lay there in bed. At the same time, Marcelina was feeding her some fruit smoothie that she had made that the woman could naturally digest while unconscious. They would have used an IV if they were in a city with a proper hospital, but they had to do the best that they could with what they had. Shortly after Marcelina had finished making sure the woman got her nutrition and hydration in with the smoothie, the two of them let her body rest while they discussed what to do with her.

"Look Ben, I know this might not be the best thing to say, but...... This lady has been like this for a week now. That lady might be like that for weeks, months, maybe even years. I know you wanted to try and save her and help her in order to get some information about what had happened to her, but what if she never wakes up," Marcelina seriously asked him. She was worried that his sentimentality might end up getting in the way of their ultimate goal. 

"It's not like you to be this pessimistic. Usually you're the one that's more optimistic and cheerful. Why are you suddenly worried about this woman potentially slowing us down," he retorted, more so concerned for her because it sounded out of character from the woman he had started growing close enough to call a friend.

Marcelina scratched the back of her head and let out a long sigh, "I had a friend like this at once. Back on Earth, that is. She...... She got hit by a car, and it put her in a coma..... She never woke up, and we had to take her off life support eventually. I just don't want you to get your hopes up if the same thing happens with this lady."

He was about to say something when he looked towards the woman and noticed that she was actually starting to open her eyes. In surprise, he pushed past her and said, "She's opening her eyes." 

Marcelina at first thought he was making it up until she looked back and saw for herself as the woman's bright yellow eyes finally opened. They came over to make sure she was okay and the woman at first could barely see. The woman could not hear either of what they were saying at first. Everything was blurry and sounds were hard to make out. 

Then, as her full consciousness kicked in, her vision cleared and she could hear them. The only problem was that she couldn't understand them. She heard what they were saying, but she didn't know the language.

Ben and Marcy watched as the woman looked at them and started trying to talk. However, they did not understand what she was saying either, "Tak abala dae..... Et kon kalla doe....... Tutak mulas gona dyr...?"