Gadget was laying on the ground heaving, which was concerning. Since the System considered him to be Gadget’s caretaker- because he was-, it allowed him to pull up Gadget’s ‘Panel’.

Subject: Gadget

Class: Overloader

Level: 3

Rank: 0

Attributes:

Agility: 0.8

Creativity: 1.6

Fortitude: 0.6

Insight: 1.3

Magic: 1.2

Processing: 0.9

Strength: 0.9 – 9.2

Class Description: Overloader allows Subject to flood their body with mana, granting them temporary but great bursts of power.

After briefly skimming through the text, Ethan was glad to see that he was in his current state due to simple exhaustion. He must’ve ‘overloaded’ his body twice in order to knock the Wyrdfur over.

Judging by the lack of attribute points, he also must’ve already spent them- on his Strength, presumably, as he definitely hadn’t been only ten percent weaker than a younger dog.

Gadget’s Attributes weren’t very good, which was proof of the fact that, while the System had healed his cataracts, it hadn’t healed the results of his old age- not entirely, at least.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t spare much more attention towards Gadget, because he had his own problems to deal with.

Ethan’s leg dripped with blood and ached like hell, but he wasn’t sure what to do about it. He could tie his shirt around the deep gouges that the Wyrdfur had left on his leg, but that would leave him exposed to the cold even more. He hadn’t really thought of it until now, but it was quite chilly even in the middle of the day, and as the sun began to descend, it only got worse. In an hour or two, once night truly fell, he was certain that it would be frigid outside. Moreover, the shirt would be soaked through with the blood in mere minutes, anyway.

He considered tying the Wyrdfur’s fur around the wounds, but he had no clue what the fur had been in or around and didn’t want to find out. The idea of using the Wyrdfur’s fur caused him to find a solution, though. He could use his shirt as a makeshift bandage and cover himself in the Wyrdfur’s fur during the night in order to remain warm.

He completely and utterly failed to extract anything more than a few strands of the Wyrdfur’s fur after a minute or two of effort. It was anchored into its pelt well enough that it was almost impossible to get out, and the fur itself was very durable. He gave up after a while, plopping down on a root and feeling light-headed from the physical exertion and blood loss.

“I’m going to need help,” Ethan finally admitted. Alyssa seemed to come out of her daze when he did, standing up and walking over to where he sat.

“It got you good, huh?” She commented after a few seconds of staring at the wound on his leg. It was difficult not to snap at her lackadaisical demeanor when he was in as much pain as he was in, but he had practice holding his tongue. It was a skill he’d developed from years of having to deal with his absent father.

“I need something to hold the blood in.” Ethan said, gritting his teeth as pain lanced through his leg. The pain was coming in waves, he found. He’d barely felt a dull throb in his leg before, while the adrenaline was still pumping, but it was rapidly becoming harder to endure.

Remembering that he hadn’t spent his final Minor Physicality Point, Ethan opened his Panel even as Alyssa stared at him, wondering what he wanted her to do. He put the point into his Fortitude before mentally waving the text away.

“Cut off a bunch of the Wyrdfur’s fur, please.” Ethan told her, and Alyssa nodded.

“I’ll need to go and get another branch from the Shardtrees- one that has a blade, to cut the fur.” Alyssa told him, already moving away. “Don’t bleed out before I get back!” She shouted at him as she ran off, and Ethan sighed.

‘The Shardtrees are the oaks with the metal shards growing out of them, I presume.’ Ethan thought to himself. It was a decent enough name, and he decided to roll with it.

Since he’d hopefully be replacing it with the Wyrdfur’s fur, Ethan shed his shirt and wrapped it around the gashes on his right leg. He had to punch the ground to avoid making too much noise; the wounds being directly touched hurt like hell.

The olive t-shirt was already being soaked through, but it would be better than nothing even then. Knowing that he’d need to be moving around even with the injured leg, Ethan stood up and made sure that the shirt would stay secure when he began moving- the answer was that it wouldn’t. He had to apply the shirt a second time, and more securely this time.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

After that was finished, he sat back down on a root with a deep sigh. Ethan checked his watch, finding that it would’ve been 5:12 P.M. on Earth, and the sun was already beginning to fall. They had… maybe an hour till it fell entirely? It was already getting cold, and he reckoned that it wouldn’t be long before he could see his own breath.

Alyssa returned ten minutes with another Shardtree branch, and approached the Wyrdfur. He unfortunately couldn’t tell how well it was going from where he was, since the Wyrdfur’s body blocked his view, but after two minutes of listening to grunts and groans he got up and limped over to where she was.

“Anything I can do to help?” Ethan asked. There was a moderately-sized pile of the fur next to her, and it became clear why she was having such a tough time; the fur was durable. She had to spend several seconds to get through each section of the fur, even with the sharp metal blade.

“Not really, unless you managed to find something else that can cut through this thing’s fur.” Alyssa answered, and Ethan sighed. “I’ll work on fashioning… something… out of the fur.” He said.

He sat down on a nearby root and gathered the fur in his hand. Ethan’s hands went to work, and as the minutes passed, the temperature dropped. He glanced down at his watch frequently, and soon, an hour had passed. It was getting dark; they were only able to see a few feet in front of them at most.

Alyssa had stopped cutting off more of the fur half an hour ago, and had gotten to work helping him turn the fur into something usable. Neither of them knew how to weave the long hairs into something usable, but they did manage to clump and tangle them together well enough that, another thirty or so minutes later at 6:43 P.M., the large sheet of fur held together for the most part. They’d only had time to make one, which had rather embarrassing implications for the near future, but Alyssa didn’t mention it and so neither did Ethan.

Ethan leaned back, sighing as he did. The process of creating the fur sheet had been boring, but it had given him time to process… everything. It helped him to lay it all out and learn that the colossal changes to his entire perception of reality barely took up a paragraph.

The Earth had been gobbled up by the ‘seventy-ninth Tower’ and now had to struggle for its survival. ‘System Four’ had been assigned to their planet, and he now had a ‘Panel’ as well as ‘Attributes’ and, indeed, the ability to cast magic.

Somehow, it hadn’t quite gotten through to him yet that he could do magic. Perhaps it was because the core of his brain refused to believe that this was all happening- it was simply too absurd, and not enough time had passed- or magic was less thrilling than he’d expected, but he’d gain an ability that tens of hundreds of millions of people had dreamed of wielding.

It had gotten through to him recently, though. His heart beat with excitement every time he considered summoning another goblin, and he’d finally regenerated enough mana for it to be possible.

…Before he was willing to do that, though, he knew that there were things he needed to do. They needed to move away from the Wyrdfur’s body, and he wanted to practice the four Forms to summon a goblin, so that his third goblin would be the best that it could be.

After a brief conversation, they gathered their few belongings and began walking East, stopping when they found a small clearing quite the distance away from the Wyrdfur’s body.

His fingers and hands felt a bit sore from the crafting of the fur sheet, and he stretched and popped them until he felt he couldn’t make them much better. Before Ethan started practicing the four Forms, he decided to explain what he was doing to Alyssa.

“I’m going to practice my Forms before I actually go through with summoning another goblin,” Ethan told her, distantly recognizing that he’d never told her what Forms were but also recognizing that she could figure it out with context clues.

“I was starting to get worried that you couldn’t summon another one before nightfall,” Alyssa said. “It’ll be able to stand guard while we’re asleep, right? Or does it need to sleep, too?” She asked.

“They don’t need to sleep, no, but forcing them to go without food, water or sleep for long periods of times increases the mana cost to maintain them.” Ethan told her. He’d gone over the Impartment on summoning goblins more thoroughly by now, which would also likely improve the quality of his third goblin.

He went through the first Form slowly at first, making sure he could move his hands as necessary. The Impartment seemed to go deeper than he’d thought it did, because when he focused on trying to place his hands perfectly, he got a sense of right and wrong; of mediocre and good. He went through the same Form three more times, each time far slower than he’d gone even the first time he’d performed it. Finally, he started trying to speed it up while maintaining a similar level of skill.

Twenty minutes passed, and he’d clearly improved, but he realized that it was taking too long. He’d need to cut this short, even if he’d started to want to get lost in the Forms. After that, he only practiced each Form for a few minutes, starting slowly and then gradually speeding it up while trying to maintain a roughly similar level of precision.

His watch finally read 7:24 P.M. and it was becoming unbearably cold, especially without a shirt. Ethan was certain that he should’ve been trembling by now, but he wasn’t- due to the Fortitude enhancement, perhaps. It didn’t change how cold he felt, though.

Enough time had passed since he’d decided to summon his third goblin by now that his mana core was roughly sixty-five percent full. Since the capacity of his mana core had increased, summoning the goblin he was about to summon would probably cost about half that.

Ethan closed his eyes and tried to center himself in a way he’d never tried before. He pushed aside all distractions and all of his worries; his fear for his mother was pushed aside, and the pain he was in seemed to fall to the wayside. It was strangely easy, but he pushed his confusion at the ease to the wayside, too. When he next opened his eyes, he quickly prepared the clump of mana necessary to summon the goblin and slid easily into the first and most simple Form. Even his breathing seemed to match up with the relatively simple movements of his hands and the slight twitches in his arms.

The clump of mana floating before his mana core became a precise sphere.

That was only the start, though; the second Form went easily, too, but the more complex movements and addition of light whispering made his concentration waver. He pushed through, performing the second, still simple Form with relative ease.

The sphere became a ball of knotted rope.

The third was even harder, and his unprecedented concentration came incredibly close to breaking when pain lanced through his leg as he adjusted his stance- for, while he’d never realized it until now, this one incorporated slight footwork as well.

The ball of knotted rope became a pulsating ball of knotted rope.

He managed to bring it to a close, but his mind felt exhausted. His leg hurt, and his hands were sore. He pushed it all aside and moved onto the hardest Form. His concentration broke halfway through due to exhaustion, pain and the overwhelming complexity of the fourth Form, but that was fine; he’d summoned goblins before without it. Finally, it came to a close, and the beautiful mass of his mana floated a foot or two away and began to form his third ever goblin.