"Wait," Keith said in shock as he came to a realization during another session of attempting to help Nathan learn how to interact with people a little more appropriate in various scenarios. "So you really don't like oral at all?"

"Yeah."

"But what if that's what Samantha wants?"

"Then I'll say 'no'."

"I can't believe this," Keith sat back in his seat. "You don't like oral either way. That's… a new one to me."

"Is it really that weird?"

"Yes," Keith said. "I mean, I guess I can see why it wouldn't be weird to dislike giving oral for some, but receiving it? You really don't like that?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Keith said. "I guess that explains your responses. So if Samantha really wanted you to give her oral, you'd say 'no'?"

"Yes."

"What if she told you that if you didn't give her oral, she wasn't going to sleep with you that night?"

"Ask her if she lost her fucking mind," Nathan answered.

Keith sighed.

"Okay, Nathan," Keith said. "We talked about this. Be nicer."

"It's Samantha," Nathan said. "If she insisted on me doing something she knows I don't like, she's lost her fucking mind."

Keith sighed again.

"Fine," he said. "What if Katie was begging you to pleasure her orally?"

"Go to her boobs."

"And she was clear it was down low she wanted you to pleasure."

"Tell her 'no'."

"And if she kept begging?"

"Tell her to shut the fuck up because I'm not doing it."

Keith rubbed his temples.

"Okay," he said. "We're not getting anywhere in this situation, so let's move on to a different one. You're out grocery shopping, and as you're putting your purchases in the trunk, you see a ten-year-old boy struggling to carry his purchases out of the store. It's obvious the groceries are too much for him, but he's doing his best. What do you do?"

"Look to see where he's taking them."

"He starts walking on the sidewalk, clearly heading home or something."

"I'd approach and ask where he's going."

"He says he's going home."

"I ask why he's shopping alone."

"His mom's dead and his dad's unable to leave the house very often due to an injury and illness."

"I offer him a ride to his house."

"He rejects because you're a stranger."

"I ask if he'd be fine with me buying him a wagon to make it easier to bring his stuff home."

"He rejects."

"I tell him it wouldn't be much trouble," Nathan told Keith. "And that it would save his back and arms. And that he can keep it when he's done using it, so that it's easier in the future when he needs to go shopping."

"He accepts it then," Keith said. "Now let's go back to the start, and it's an old woman, maybe around sixty, but the rest is the same."

"I finish packing my groceries and leave."

"What do you have against old women?"

Nathan stared at Keith in confusion, and Keith sighed.

"Why do you treat her differently than the boy?"

"What difference does it make?" Nathan asked. "I don't see how this is supposed to be a lesson, Keith."

"Answer the question," Keith told him. "It'll help me figure out why you act the way you do, which will help me guide you on how to appropriately respond."

"She's sixty," Nathan said. "If she's too stupid to know to use a wagon or have someone help her or something if she doesn't have a ride, she deserves to suffer. Maybe then she'll learn to use a wagon or something."

"The boy's ten," Keith said. "Why not make him learn the same lesson?"

"He's still a kid," Nathan explained. "Give him the experience of a thought he probably didn't have. The woman's six times his age. It would be like you and me facing the same white-belt opponent who's been training for only six months, two hours twice a week. I've been doing martial arts for five-sixths of my life. Longer if you include time spent in the game. You've only been doing it a month. I lose, that's on me, because I have fifteen years of experience in martial arts with nearly-daily training for one to three hours. That's more than most police officers and entry-level Seals, Special Forces, et cetera, even if some might argue they went through more training for a shorter time. I still went through thousands of hours of it. If you lose, you need advice on what you did wrong."

Keith wanted to argue with Nathan on that, but knew it wouldn't go anywhere. While most people would see it as a case of helping the elders, Nathan viewed the world differently. To him, an elder had the experience needed to know when to get help, and simply 'giving respect' or 'giving help' because she was an elder didn't apply.

"Alright," Keith decided on how to approach the correction. "Nathan, the generally-accepted response would be to help her."

"Why?"

"Because she's old."

"And that matters why?"

"I-" Keith began. "That's just how society views it, Nathan."

"Society is stupid, then."

Keith wanted to argue, he really did, but 'respect your elders' and 'that's how society views it' weren't valid arguments to Nathan. He'd learned that well enough since the first attempt at teaching Nathan how to interact better with people.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

After a few moments of thought, he decided to change scenarios again.

"Let's say you're at a party," Keith said. "A guy comes up to you and asks what your favorite football team is."

"I don't watch football."

"No, how do you answer."

"That's my fucking answer."

"Okay," Keith said. "Nathan, it would be 'that is my answer'. The swearing annoys people."

"They can fucking deal."

"Okay, Nathan," Keith said. "The whole purpose of these sessions? It's to help you handle people better. That demigod attitude won't help you much."

"Am I supposed to care?" Nathan asked.

"Yes, you are."

"But I don't."

Keith sighed. That was part of the problem with talking with a demigod, he head learned.

"We've been at this for an hour," he said. "Why don't we give it a rest for today? We can pick back up tomorrow."

Not that we'll make much progress, he thought to himself.

"Okay," Nathan slid back his seat as he stood. "I'm going and making dinner."

"Speaking of dinner," Keith stood as well. "I have another-"

"No."

"Dealing with food?"

"As I work."

Nathan went to the kitchen, Keith following, and began preparing their dinner.

"You're sitting at home," Keith began. "Watching T.V. Samantha comes in after a long day and sits on the couch, then complains about being hungry."

"I tell her to go make something to eat or shut up."

"Why not make it for her?"

"Because she has two functional legs."

"What if she's too tired to make something to eat?"

"There's a microwave and snacks, and she can still get them."

"The courteous thing to do would be to get it for her."

"She has the energy to complain, she has the energy to get it."

"Not necessarily," Keith said. "And it's not a matter of energy. When your significant other is exhausted-"

"That has to do with energy."

"Okay, Nathan, stop!" Keith nearly shouted in frustration. "Listen. When your significant other – or others – is exhausted, it's courteous to help them out. What if you were exhausted and didn't want to move, but were hungry?"

"I'd get a snack."

"Nathan," Keith said. "The appropriate response is to help the other out. That's what's socially acceptable. There are those who would say only the man should help the woman and not the other way around, but that's a toxic, sexist viewpoint. Both parties should do so, as that's what's fair and equal. Samantha probably won't care much, but the others who join you might."

"Then they can deal or leave."

"And if they leave?"

"There are plenty of other women out there."

"Nathan, just… do this, okay?" Keith asked. "It'll make them happier. I'm sure you'll come to appreciate it as well."

"What I'm going to do is make dinner," Nathan said as he began pulling out ingredients.

"That's not what I-" Keith began, then stopped and shook his head.

Over the weeks they had been in the Challenge already, he had realized part of why Nathan acted the way he did, and both his familiar and both of Nathan's had confirmed it to him. Nathan was a demigod. Their entire mindset was completely different.

He didn't view others as beneath him so much as he was simply above them was a basic fact that he didn't even consciously realize he accepted. His entire mindset wasn't a superiority one, but a factual one. Divine blood and power ran through Nathan. He had innate abilities that didn't require any training, simply desire.

He could command divine things.

Nathan had the actual, honest-to-gods ability to command the divine. The Divine Authority was something all gods and their children had. Any divine thing beneath them was affected by it. It made several things make sense.

Such as the heavenly storm familiar obeying anytime Nathan gave it a command out of frustration or anger. The demigod was subconsciously using the Divine Authority. He had even used it on Evala, the familiars had revealed, which told Keith, based on their explanation, that Nathan's father was more powerful than her own godly parent in the divine hierarchy.

Apparently, having the Divine Authority also created the – quite true – mindset of being superior, but not in an arrogant way. It was purely factual in mentality, which caused a different way of treatment than one would ordinarily expect from someone who believed themselves superior.

Such as Nathan's 'this is how it is' approach to things. Or his 'do it yourself' mindset for everything. Keith suspected it had to do with Nathan's pickiness when it came to food as well – his body was trying to compare things to how they were in the heavenly realm, even if he had never tasted such food before.

The familiars had revealed all of this to Keith a few days prior, while Nathan was showering, to avoid him overhearing. They had known it upon first sight, but never said anything. However, with Keith trying to teach Nathan to interact with people a little better, they felt it necessary to warn him that Nathan's mindset was not a human mindset, but a demigod's.

One wouldn't expect a god to be benevolent to everyone, after all. It was a part of who they were, and that trickled into their children. Even Nathan's son would have it, but to a much lesser degree.

That meant it could take a lot more work to help Nathan stop trying to dominate everyone – he was above them.

Deciding to truly end their lessons for the day, Keith returned to working on enchantments. He entered the cafeteria and sat at the table with the mana orb. Nathan had worked on it last, dealing with it while Keith sorted out some stuff on another enchantment.

When he picked it up to see what had changed since he had worked on it a couple of days ago, Keith nearly dropped the orb. Not that it would break – they had already learned that lesson and enchanted the orbs for durability.

"I'm going and testing something," Keith told Nathan.

"No punching holes in the building."

"I'm going to be very careful about that."

Keith took the orb and made his way to the gymnasium, which was around the size of the Dome at their high school. He made his way to the upper level and walked so that his back was nearly against the wall. He would have backed against the wall, except that it had blood splatters from a demon the familiars had killed.

The teens weren't there to kill, and they hadn't slain a single monster since they began the session. They left that to their familiars.

Holding up the orb, Keith drew on the mana within it and channeled it into his other hand. A jet of flames burst out, and Keith continued casting until he ran out of mana, yet continued to draw on the mana in the orb. And draw. And draw. Yet no matter how much he drew from the orb, he never ran out.

Almost twenty minutes of constantly casting the flames, increasing their power and reach until they covered nearly the entire gym and made him sweat so badly from the heat his clothes were soaked, yet he didn't sense a dip in the orb's power.

Canceling the spell, Keith returned to the cafeteria and walked straight into the kitchen, only briefly registering that Nathan was making lasagna again as he approached the warrior.

"I can't properly sense the mana stored in here," Keith told Nathan. "And it doesn't seem to fluctuate. How did you solve the issue?"

"I watched you with my magic sight as you used magic," Nathan answered. "And watched myself. And the familiars. The elementals, especially. I may not have the anatomical knowledge you have, but I do have an anatomy book."

"And?"

"It doesn't give anything on elemental anatomy."

"It wouldn't," Keith said. "And I meant about the mana issue."

"Oh, that," Nathan said. "I don't know."

"You… don't know."

"No."

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"It was an accident."

Of course it was, Keith thought to himself. All great discoveries have to be. It's a law of the universe.

"What were you thinking about when you did it, and what runes were you implanting into it?"

"Unlimited mana," Nathan answered. "And for runes… I think I did a did an 'unlimited' linked with 'mana' out of frustration, plus 'production', 'mana', and 'continue'? Maybe 'infinite' or 'unlimited'? I was frustrated and trying not to strangle Icthvar."

"I'll try to reverse engineer it," Keith said. "What was Ichtvar doing?"

"Trying to get strangled."

"Alright," Keith returned to their workstation and set the orb back on its stands, then changed into shorts and a tee.

He would take a shower then, except he wanted to try to reverse engineer the formula for the mana orb. If Nathan didn't perfectly recall what he had put into it, then he wasn't even paying attention to what he was doing, which meant that the demigod had been extremely distracted. The shower could wait.

By the time Nathan finished dinner, Keith had mostly finished reverse engineering the enchantment. While he appreciated that Nathan had put in the blocks for reading the enchantment, as it let them know if it would work or not, it made it a lot more difficult to figure out how it was made for the creators.

Having worked on the various iterations of the orbs over the last several weeks also helped Keith figure out what Nathan had done.

The pair ate dinner, then Nathan cleaned the dishes as Keith finished reverse-engineering the orb.

"I'm going to take a shower," Keith told Nathan once he finished.

"I made pie," Nathan held up the pie, and Keith frowned. "They sent us a bunch of peaches."

"I got that," Keith said. "It's just that you don't usually make dessert."

"We've been throwing away a lot of extra food," Nathan said. "Which I don't like. So I made peach pie."

"Alright," Keith said. "I'll have it before the shower, but only because the pie's still hot."

"I made ice cream, too."