With a groan, Axel rolled over and grabbed for his phone that was practically screaming with his mother's ringtone. Blearily, he squinted at the screen and tried to make out the time on it before groaning again at the early hour.

"Hello?" he spoke into the speaker, trying not to let his annoyance at being woken up so early bleed into his voice. He wasn't sure he succeeded.

"Morning dear," his mother's bright voice greeted him. "Surprised I woke you up. Sorry about that."

"What's up Mom?" Axel asked as he pushed his blankets off and swung his feet out of the bed. "You never call me this early."

"I thought I'd check in with you before you started your big gaming session," she answered him. "You told me last night at the Pearson's that you and the other boys were going to try out that nutrient slurry stuff and go for around two days. I didn't want to disturb you while you werein the middle of that, so I wanted to call and talk with you before you did all that. I thought you might be up early to get ready for it."

"I set an alarm for thirty minutes from now," he told her. "You just beat it. Again."

"The joys of waking early," she said happily. "You get to see the sun rise and hear the birds wake up. Soon enough, everyone else will start moving too, and you can people watch."

"I wouldn't call waking up at four in the morning waking up early," Axel said as he moved from his darkened room to the kitchen for the coffeepot. "I'd call it a few other things and none of them would incite joy."

"You only say that because you like to stay up late," his mother said. "When you get up early, you have time for breakfast, exercise, an early shower, some quick chores."

"And for those of us that don't work a job, we can do all that before noon anyway," Axel pointed out as he glared at the oven clock that was reminding him that it was still before six in the morning. "I can have a social life and not go to bed before seven."

"And all it costs is your financial freedom from your mother," she pointed out as he measured the coffee grounds carefully into the machine's filter.

"I thought James and I did pretty good getting those jobs for our Pods," Axel defended himself. "We were able to raise all the money for them and I even put some extra aside for emergencies."

"And that's nice, but you wouldn't have been able to do that if you were paying your own rent and owned your own car," his mother said.

"But if I share with Marcie and free-load off you, then I can have fun and you won't worry about where I'm spending all my money and whether or not I have a place to stay," Axel told her with a smile.

"And that's why your father and I are okay with you not working," his mother said. "I need to go, your grandmother asked me to have breakfast with her and I think she wakes up even earlier than I do."

"Have fun, Mom," Axel said. "Love you."

"Love you too, sweetie," she said. "Find something fun to tell me about in your game."

With a quiet beep, the call ended and Axel found himself waiting in the small apartment kitchen for the coffeepot to finish its brewing cycle in silence.

"Axel, my man," the voice of Cain-351 greeted him as he opened his eyes to the large room before entering the game. "Great to see you, kiddo."

"Cain I told you, if you're going to look like Hulk Hogan and you're going to use his voice, then you've gotta call me brother like he would have," Axel complained with a sigh as he looked at his AI helper

"Can't," Cain said as he pushed the sunglasses off his face. "Copyright stuff. I can use part of his brand but not all of it."

"And stealing his voice and his look isn't using all of his brand?" Axel asked skeptically.

"I liked the look and any other voice sounded stupid, so I kept the voice," Cain said with a grin.

"What did the voices sound like?" Axel asked curiously.

"I was fond of the British accent," Cain told him in one. "It struck me as dignified."

"Please don't do that again," Axel begged the man. "It's just wrong. On so many more levels than I can describe."

"So you going in?" Cain asked with a grin at his discomfort, the British accent gone.

"To get away from whatever the hell that was, yes," Axel said as he felt his avatar's race and clothing change. Between one blink of the eye and the next his surroundings changed and he was looking at the single bed room he had rented at the inn Jim had suggested when they were eating breakfast. "And if you could keep an eye on the nutrient slurry levels, that would be great."

Cain: No problem, kid. Have fun down there.

"Of course my AI would use the messaging system to respond to me," Axel sighed as Drago moved to him from where he'd been laying in front of the door. "Come on, boy. Let's go get some food and then start looking for more cool monsters to make our friends. Sound good?"

With a quiet yip, Drago agreed and they exited the room.

"Alright, Drago," Axel said with a stretch as he looked around the forest on either side of the path they were walking on. "We need to learn to work as a team better and I need to learn to use this really cool spell you gave me. Let's find something to hunt."

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Stepping off the dirt road he'd been following, Axel lead his companion into the forest, his senses tensed and searching for signs of any sort of animal life. Before long he found an animal track that looked promising.

"What do you think this is?" he muttered quietly as he examined the imprint of a hoof. "Some sort of deer? Maybe a boar? Couldn't be a cow, could it?"

Drago declined to answer, distracted as he was sniffing the muddy ground the track was in.

"Which way did it go?" Axel wondered standing and moving in a direction. Several feet from the track, he found a trio that seemed to match all aligned to point in one direction and looking like a single creature. "Come on, Drago. Let's go this way. We'll solve this mystery soon enough."

Not looking to see if his Tamed Creature was following him, Axel moved deeper into the forest, his eyes searching for more tracks and other signs of the animal he was attempting to follow while his ears and nose searched for less obvious signs of the animal's passage and presence. Finally, nearly thirty minutes after he'd begun to follow the tracks, he came across the animal he was looking for.

Rooting around in the torn up ground beside a bush was a boar with chipped tusks, searching for young shoots and tubers or berries. Standing at around four and half feet tall at the shoulder by Axel's estimation, the creature had a scarred, thick hide covered with dark wiry bristles and four hooves that it stamped into the ground for extra purchase as it continued it's search for whatever had caught its attention. Dimly, Axel was aware of the boar's musty scent blowing toward him and of Drago as he crouched low to the ground beside him as they watched the boar together.

"Let's see how this goes for us," Axel told Drago. "Train."

Without sound, Axel watched as sparks shot between he and Drago and he felt the skill's activation. He knew that if things worked out for them from his plan, that Drago would listen to him slightly more easily in the future.

"I want you to flank the boar to the left," Axel told the Rockwolf. "Once you're there, I'm going to grab its attention and try to hold it still. When it comes after me, you'll blitz it from the side. Go."

Silently, Drago padded away from Axel and moved to the requested position behind some brush far enough from the boar to not alert it and close enough to jump in and help easily. Once he saw Drago in position, Axel put his hand palm-down to the ground and activated the spell he'd gotten from taming Drago.

Moving by intuition, Axel sent his mana into the ground and felt it race away from him to circle the boar as it obliviously continued searching for food. As his mana flowed through him and approached the boar, Axel attempted to split it into two pieces and encircle the boar before spearing the creature with sharp spears made from the earth around the boar.

Watching the spears form from the ground, Axel learned two important things. Mud and dirt, while easy to shape with his skill, made for poor weapons once shaped appropriately. And the boar wasn't scarred because it was stupid or incapable, but because it was stronger than most attackers gave it credit for.

With a squeal, the boar whirled around to face Axel as the spears of mud crashed ineffectually into its sides and charged him with more speed than Axel expected.

"Shit!" he cried as he dove to the side and the boar went past him. Coming out of a roll, Axel watched the creature slow to a stop and turn around before stamping its foot loudly and charging him again.

Before Axel could move aside, the boar's tusk gouged into his thigh and drew a large line in the flesh. Reflexively, Axel shot one of his fists out and felt it impact the boar without leaving a bruise on the creature. Falling to the ground and crying in pain, Axel was turned by the boar's passing force to face toward it in time to see Drago crash into, snarling, from the side.

As the boar threw its head back and forth trying to gouge Drago with its tusks, Drago snapped his jaws and attempted to grab on to the creature's leg. As he did so, the Rockwolf swiped out with his clawed paws to rip shallow lines down the boar's face.

Gasping from the pain, Axel pulled himself to his knees and pressed his hands to the ground, flooding his mana outward and watching the bar tick toward zero. Pulling his attention back toward the brawl between his partner and the boar, Axel willed the ground around the boar's feet to soften and loosen until the boar found itself up to it belly in soft mud. Before it could free itself, Axel attempted to harden it and trap the creature in the ground as Drago jumped backward and avoided the sudden shift in terrain.

"Drago, go for the throat!" Axel told his Rockwolf as he felt the boar's struggles increase the cost he was paying in mana to keep the boar trapped.

Not needing to be told twice, Drago dashed forward and gripped the boar by the back of its neck before wrenching it from side to side viciously and a snap sounded through the forested area.

"Good job, buddy," Axel gasped for air as he pushed himself to his feet. "That was almost bad."

"That's one way to put it," a familiar voice answered him.

Spinning around, Axel saw the man that Pear had been sitting with the other night at the tavern, the one he'd introduced as Ripspell.

"Never been in a real fight, have you," the man said as he looked at Axel critically. "A shame. Your plan was simple enough to almost be good but it relied on too many things that weren't certain."

"I guess," Axel said as he looked at the man. "Where's Pear at?"

"Training," Ripspell told him in a bored tone. "I felt some curious movements in mana and I came to investigate."

"If he's training shouldn't you be there with him?" Axel asked.

"I'm no fool," Ripspell said with a smile. "I know that the current breed of Last Stars are capable of returning to your own world and that my Apprentice is a friend of yours in that world. I'm sure he told you what sort of training he's doing."

"He did," Axel admitted. "Seemed like a real dick move to me what you did to him."

"Sometimes those 'dick moves' offer the best type of teaching a student could receive," Ripspell told him. "When he's accomplished the task I've set for him, we'll review what he's done and I'll offer more concrete teachings. If he is incapable of completing the task, then I will go get him."

"How will you know if he can't hack it?" Axel asked.

"The time I've given him will run out and he'll still be in the dungeon," the Human man told him with a shrug. "Would you like some help with your, what is it, Manipulate Earth?"

"How do you know what my spell is?" Axel asked.

"When you get as deep into the trappings of the Arcane weavings as I am, you learn that Beast Spells are impressively similar and less constrained than our own Learned Spells," Ripspell explained. "They are the spells the first practioners of magic set out to emulate after all."

"Wouldn't that mean that they're more intuitive?" Axel asked.

"They are intuitive," Ripspell told him. "If you had the equivalent Learned Spell, Earth Manipulation, you wouldn't have known how to move your mana through the ground so naturally. That is where Beast Spells are most useful. Learned Spells however can lead to more concrete weavings of mana and they can become new spells."

"Now," Ripspell said with a note of finality in his tone. "Would you like my aid in learning to use your Beast Spell, or would like to continue as you have been?"

Axel thought for a moment, turning to look back toward Drago as he sniffed at the cooling corpse of the boar that had given them so much trouble. After a moment he made his decision.

"I'm not in Astrana to learn to sling spells like Pear is," he said firmly. "I'll work it out and if I can't get it to work, you'll probably be around to see how bad I'm doing."

"Perhaps," Ripspell nodded before turning and beginning to leave. "Be careful, Axel. Blood can attract other predators. Make them your prey and you'll be fine though."

As Axel watched the man leave, he tried to puzzle through what he had said before swearing as it hit him.

"I should have gotten bandages or something after I went to the bank!"