"Are you sure I don't need to open a slit for your wings?" Amanda asked, examining the suit jacket she had just finished.

It was amazing watching her work on the fabric. Instead of sewing it with a needle or something, Amanda just used her magic to control the fibers and weave them together, creating a seamless join between the two pieces. Even when examining this closely with his fairy eyes, Robert couldn't find the join. It was as if the whole piece had been woven in place from the get-go.

"No. My wings aren't really material. They are more like manifested Ether constructs."

She crouched next to him, then came really close. To both of them, that was a novel experience. Robert was seeing a giant Amanda and he got a bit scared by the proportion. It was as if she could crush him with her foot. His instincts were telling him to go invisible and maybe play some prank on her.

"Can I touch them?" She asked with bated breath.

"Sure," Robert replied. Amanda gently rubbed her hand over his wings. He had some sense of touch but not much. Despite his fears, he asked for something he was curious about. "Hey, try to pinch them and pull me up."

"Wha-what? Pinch them and pick you up like an insect?" She shook her head.

"Yeah. We need to see if I can escape. Can you imagine if we go into combat and someone pins me down like some mounted insect display? We need to test it before that can happen."

"Okay, then," she replied, unsure.

Amanda pinched his wing and pulled up. Robert felt a tug on his back and soon his feet left the ground. In this form, he weighed a little less than a pound and that was with the added weight from his biomass absorption tempering. Where the extra mass went and came from when he transformed was unknown. It just did.

Up in the air, he fought to keep his limbs from flailing. Robert then quickly dismissed his wings and reformed them, trying to catch himself in the air before he...

Splat.

"Robert!"

He fell on the ground but didn't damage anything on him. He was lightweight and though his wings didn't have enough time to lift him, they surely cushioned the fall by creating drag.

"I'm okay. I'm okay. Not even a sprained ankle. I think I dropped from too low to have enough time to catch myself in the air."

"You are a slowpoke, that's what," Blossom berated.

"Ouch!"

"You are hurt!" Amanda said, picking him up and examining his legs.

"I'm fine. I said 'ouch' because of the burn." Robert said as he stared at her with his tiny fairy eyes.

"Your eyes are deep green," Amanda said after a chuckle. "Sorry! Hard to take you seriously—"

"When I am a foot tall, I know," Robert grumbled. "Let's try it again, but this time hold me at eye level."

They repeated the experiment. When Amanda rose him up, Blossom chimed in.

"Focus on your wings. You don't need to waste that much mental energy. The wings are part of your body, you can manifest and dissolve them with but a thought. Think of it as a muscle. Just practice it."

Robert dismissed his wings and manifested them back faster than before. That, with the extra falling time, allowed him to dart off the ground and pick up altitude again.

"I need to train more if I want to fight in this fairy form. And if I don't, it will be just a liability in combat."

"Yes, and if you need a sparring partner, I'm here," Amanda added. "Now, let's make you another two sets of clothes. If you have one, you have none."

After that, they explored the city for the rest of the day and went to sleep. Robert spent the night working on his puffblooms' minds, making sure they would never turn on him again. Not that he intended to release them. These buggers were now going back to Earth with him, whether the universe wanted or not.

*

*

The next day, he went for a flight with his mutated puffblooms. Calling them deviants was not the right choice, as current belief stated that deviants were born, not made. The circumstances regarding their uplift were up for debate but he was amazed and scared of the lucky events surrounding his life.

The encounter with Cerebelon he dismissed as something triggered by that cursed book.

The cult attack on the Academy could be because of his shenanigans on the liminal void.

But Blossom manifesting with a talent that would bind anyone who merged with her to him was a bit too much. Noah's silence and reticence around the subject were also telling.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

And now, the two monsters he'd tamed and released returned with extra affinities and a will to kill him?

It was preposterous to believe it wasn't by design.

Something caused the changes in Cotton and Coal but there was another problem. If that something or someone wished him dead, why not send more powerful monsters? It was as if they were a tribute to him. Because if one assumed they knew he had tamed those two particular puffblooms, they would also know he could dominate them and re-tame the monsters.

So why go through the effort of enacting these unheard-of changes and then just set them loose? Worse, Robert would've killed the puffblooms if not for Amanda.

He worried that whoever was "helping" him, would one day come to collect the debt.

Robert focused back on the real world when Freddy started barking beneath them. He stopped and looked down. Freddy was jumping and spinning, alerting and looking in the way of the workshop.

A massive explosion and a pillar of flames erupted from the back where the hole to drop balls from was. It went almost forty feet in the air.

What the hell was Noah forging in there?

He lowered down so he could talk to Freddy. "What is the matter, buddy?"

"Mask-man asked for your help!" Freddy barked.

"Well, let's not keep him waiting."

Robert and his mutant puffblooms flew to the workshop, following Freddy.

*

*

Once inside, they watched as Noah withdrew the platform. Steam and smoke still came out of the box mounted on the specialized anvil.

"Robert, over here!" The teacher shouted.

They approached. Freddy sat at a distance while Robert flew closer.

"What are you cooking in there, professor?" Robert asked.

"Runic rings. I need you to infuse Space and Time essence on them."

Robert paused. Why does everything Noah does have to do with runes? Unless... No. Robert knew about almost every affinity there was but never heard of the Rune or Runic affinity. However, it's named. But then again, he never heard of the Fairy affinity but.... lo and behold. There it was, inside his stars.

"Cool. But I'm out of essence, burned everything out recapturing and re-educating these two," He moved his arms to point at the two puffblooms.

Noah examined the two mutated monsters. "Deviants?"

"No idea. Wanted to ask you that exact question. Aren't deviants born? How could they develop new affinities out of the blue?"

"Not out of the blue. They are weak because they have recently ascended, but Cotton and Coal are two stars now. I would guess they're at zero percent in their second star. Archhumans can develop a second affinity if they have only one upon ascending. I believe that's what happened to them. We know very little about monsters even though we've been studying them for two centuries. It's really hard to study monsters in the wild because of the aggression. They often behave suicidal."

"I saw in their minds that they slaughtered the other puffblooms," Robert reported.

Noah shook his head. "A shame. This realm cannot afford such loss."

"True but as I told you, the issue is the platforms. The puffblooms learned to avoid islands with them. I think that outside the explored area, the realm is thriving just fine."

"Anyway. It's not like they will tell us what happened. Do you want to help with this project?"

"Sure, but what should I do?"

"Set up your gathering array, top up your essence. Use your puffblooms to bring essence into the chamber, just like before. Now that they have two affinities, they can gather more wisps. See that they do. When you show up on Earth with these two plus Freddy, you will draw a lot of attention. I'll shield you from what I can but still... It's better to get as strong as you can."

"Okay."

Robert did as asked. he set the gathering chamber on the roof of a building, then asked Cotton and Coal to fly around and drag wisps to him. What Noah said eased his worries. Not deviants, not mutants, but ascended.

He filled up his essence. It took one hour, while back in the monkey rainforest, it would take only ten minutes. It's not that the Ether density in this place was one-sixth of the other realm, it was lower. He had help from the puffblooms' talent, which he called Ether carry for the time being. In all the books he read, nobody said anything about the peculiar monsters native to this place.

*

*

Back at the workshop, Noah showed him two dozen rings. The teacher mounted the ring on an apparatus that had two hand marks on either side, like those used in Rubik's Cube competitions. The ring seemed to be firmly fixed on the raised center bar, letting Noah work on it unimpeded.

"Sit on that chair. Place your hands on either side of the essence infuser. I want you to saturate each with sixty percent Space and forty percent Time essence. Go for broke, push as hard as you can. Even if the ring shows resistance, you keep pushing."

Robert put his hands on the pads, then started to flood them with Essence. The contraption greedily devoured his essence, channeling it into the ring. Meanwhile, Noah was engraving something on the ring with a long and thin tool.

"Steady. Keep pushing," Noah said with a droning voice. "Maintain a steady pressure."

It was hard. The amount of essence drained in such a short time was actually harming Robert's body.

"I know it hurts but keep it steady. Keep the pressure. Now, raise it. Push really hard." Noah continued. "Almost done..." a pause that went for too long. "There. You may let go."

Robert slumped. That ring took more than eighty percent of his essence. He heard Noah's tool scratching metal but was too tired to look. He used diagnosis on himself and found he was actually wounded from all the essence he channeled. He started to heal himself with reconstruction.

"There. Perfect!" Noah cheered. He shifted his attention from the enchanted ring to Robert "Feeling any burns?"

"Yeah. Hurt me pretty good."

"Is it already healed?"

"Yes."

"Good. Think of it as body tempering but for channeling big bursts of essence. I know it sucks but it is well worth it. Behold, a three-cubic-meter storage ring with time compression abilities. Five, no, four times."

Noah offered the ring to Robert, who took it with awe.

"Three cubic meters?" Robert asked, just to be sure. It was ridiculous. Because if true, this ring was worth close to half a billion dollars.

"All yours. If you help me enchant the other ones."

Robert stared at the ring and quickly pushed his last dregs of essence into it. The space expanded in his mind's eye. Damn. He could fit everything in his other four rings into this one. Wait. No, this ring might be worth half a billion dollars or more. Because it had four times time compression.

"Are we doing the other twenty-three rings?" Robert asked.

"That's the plan," Noah grinned.

"What are you doing with them?"

"We are going to enchant them all, then give the biggest one to Freddy, then the second biggest to Amanda. I'll take the third biggest one, and we will sell the remaining others. We'll split the earnings four ways. What do you think?"

"What about this one? Where does it lay on the size scale?"

"That one was the best of the batch. I used that one as an incentive because it had the least chance of failure. I don't think you would agree to do this if I didn't show you what we could accomplish here."

Robert found one thing in Noah that irritated him. How the damn teacher was right ninety-nine percent of the time. How easy he read him. But for the money they could earn and free body tempering, he was all in.