At a small, darkly lit table, sat a woman, her tantalizingly crimson hair a mess. She looked frantic, working on a glowing contraption in front of her.

Althea had already gotten to work, her hands rapidly moving in odd ways, with the mana around them ebbing to her flow. Small magic circles popped up, having their moment, and subsequently dispersing.

Currently, she was working on the CC and HC, the cooling crystals, and the heating crystals, respectively.

"Finally, using some outside mana can let me use a switch!"

The scales would emit a slight, but constant flow of lightning mana, a rare mutation of fire mana.

This was great, as passive mana producers were rare, and Althea had to rely on chance to get one, and she had won the jackpot.

She slowly moved the scale, as wires made of pure mana ripped themselves into existence, and attached themselves to the scale.

"Hmm. Yeah, one should be enough for the heating, but cooling? I should need a transmutator in the circuit, so that lowers the efficiency, so maybe 3?"

Althea did the same, just three more times, stressing for space on the circuit just a little more each time. Since these were just the small ones, it only took her a few minutes.

Usually, when the house was hot before, Althea or Leonhardt would have to constantly focus on getting mana to flow into the crystal, which was exhausting.

"Leonhardt, how's the progress out there?"

Outside, it was a great day. The sun was out, with very few clouds, yet it wasn't hot despite that. The sun shone in a pleasant way, which made the leaves on the trees glow with a stunning emerald-green color.

Max sat on the stump of a log, watching Leonhardt go up to other poor trees, and fell them in one clean strike of his sword.

The ice crystals left behind left a nice view behind Leonhardt, making a path of destruction. With an hour of chopping, Leonhardt had gotten about 20 logs.

However, most of the time was spent on cleaning them of branches and cutting them to a good length.

"Good over here, I'm almost done with getting the logs."

Max was now playing with a small, circular plushie, coated with the scales of the dragonoid. It had some small wings and looked like a chibi version of the dragonoid.

Leonhardt loved the thing, as watching Max bite the little plush reminded him of his promise to the dragonoid.

"What are we doing?"

Max piped up after being preoccupied with eating.

"So, we decided we wanna renovate the house. We're gonna add a few rooms, make it look much nicer, and add some features we've been wanting."

"Ooh, that's cool! What are you adding?"

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Max—as always—was curious.

"So... It's a secret! Just wait a few hours, you'll see."

"But! I wanna know now!"

Max then got angry and started biting his plushy a little more aggressively. Leonhardt saw this and started laughing so hard, that he had to stop work, and Althea even stopped her own work to see what it was that had him laughing.

Seeing Max chewing on his plush like it owed him money, and Leonhardt doubled over, she started laughing too. Max heard both of them and finally looked up to see his parents in shambles over his behavior, and got confused.

"What happened? Are you okay?"

"Max… You keep on attacking that thing, we're fine!"

Leonhardt managed to get this out between giggles, and Althea gave them a thumbs up.

Eventually, Althea and Leonhardt got back into their work and started to finish up on getting the new supplies, and could start on making the renovations.

Althea popped up a large chunk of earth with an adept spell, and Leonhardt chopped it into smaller pieces, to use as pillars. Due to their magic, building was incredibly easy, and they had made the outside quite well.

Now, Althea needed to put all of the pieces of machinery she had made into their places.

She brought out an odd-looking case and had Leonhardt and Max put some mana in it.

"This is the lightning defense, it'll strike down anybody that's somewhat strong who gets into the radius."

She got a few more pieces out, but most of them were only small things that needed to be connected around the house.

After making some furniture—in about a week—they were finished.

This wasn't to say their old house was bad, but their renovations truly blew it out of the water.

Their old house was reminiscent of a getaway home, with little space, and okay accommodations. It looked quite nice, having an oaky brown color due to the logs, and it smelled okay.

Though now, a training room had been added, a playroom, and the house had been given many features, so the oak was tinted with many colors, making it quite the eye candy to Max, as he loved looking for little hints of color in the walls.

It had a nice cozy vibe, due to the fireplace, and many pieces of furniture placed around. Althea quite liked the new additions though.

The training room was a stark white room with next to nothing in it, though it had a hologram constructor, along with a training dummy that Althea was quite proud of. It had 5 levels of difficulty, though the thing was mostly for Max. It also had environmental settings, to help him learn how any environment affected a fight.

The playroom had hologram constructors as well, though it was to make fun stories come to life, rather than teaching Max to fight. Max would probably like the room, as the constructs were nigh-indistinguishable from what they were trying to mimic.

"Oh, the house looks cool! I can see the colors!"

Max was running around the house, feeling the walls, and flicking new switches for lights. That was until he saw two new rooms at the end of a corridor.

"What's in there!? I wanna see!"

Max ran up, and Althea went behind him.

"Alright, Max, I made these rooms, so thank your mom for them!'

She opened the door, puffed up with pride, to a room covered in drawings of trees and picturesque sceneries.

"It's just drawings… and I could go outside!"

But then, Althea flipped a switch on the side, and using some magic, a captivating scene of mages, swords, towers, dragons, and phoenixes popped up. The two were locked in fights, in conversation, with the dragons soaring in the air, and the phoenixes going right behind them.

The mages would cast fascinating spells, their colors, their strength engraved in Max's mind.

The ground would shake, as the swordsmen crushed the grass under their feet, making dances, with the world answering, as the philosophies of each swordsman graced Max's mind.

And then it was gone. Althea had to turn it off, though Max was enraptured by it, and wanted more.

And then, It was off to the training room. Max thought it was boring until he asked about the training dummy.

"What's this do?"

"It's a training dummy, it'll fight back, so you can learn to use swords or magic better."

Leonhardt answered back.

"Can I fight it?"

Leonhardt looked at him funny.

"Sure? I'll watch you so it doesn't hurt you."

Max got his hands on a training sword and looked at the dummy.

It was humanoid, with a sleek black appearance, except for the singular blue eye in the center of its face. And this blue eye looked him back, its eerie, emotionless view frightening Max.

It slowly shrunk to Max's size and moved until its movements became oddly clumsy.

Then, it raised its sword.

"Beginner stage activated… Safety mode on. Get ready in, 3… 2… 1."