When my sacred power is restored I open my eyes and look around for her, she is sitting on the edge of the nest watching me. When she sees that my eyes are open she gives this adorable little chirp and jumps onto my lap. She is simply too cute, even if I could leave right now I couldn't leave her behind to die of hunger.

"Little one, I am going to name you Kechara!"

As soon as I finish pronouncing the name there is a flash of light that seems to come from everywhere and flow into Kechara. For a solid minute she glows, and then it slowly fades away.

SP: 325/1325

'What? Naming her cost me a thousand sacred power?!?'

Either it is my imagination or as the light faded away she grew a few inches. Now that I think about it, naming Lizzy cost me about the same, but that doesn't make much sense. After all Lizzy was a fully grown creature with serious combat abilities, and yet Kechara who isn't more than a baby cost the same amount?

In this world naming things seems to invoke power, I get that mostly, but is it just a set amount? Or is there some other factor like potential involved? Maybe I should ask the goddesses about it the next time I speak with them.

For now Kechara seems very happy with her new name, and the burst of light doesn't seem to have hurt or scared her. If anything she seems to be more energetic than before, even so far as wanting to play now. Watching her try to wrestle my hand into submission is not only hilarious but seriously the cutest thing I have ever seen.

It makes me glad none of the girls are here, the last thing I need is one of them trying to adopt her and take her home. While I wouldn't really mind taking her home, I get the feeling she is meant to stay here and become the new guardian. That's the only explanation I can come up with for the energy that moved from her mother's corpse into her.

As I am playing with Kechara I suddenly realize that for some reason my upper body is really itchy. So I start removing my chest peice so I can scratch the itch, as soon as I do fur goes flying everywhere. Kechara immediately starts pouncing on random tufts of fur, but I am not paying any attention.

Instead I am staring in shock at my chest which is now free of any fur at all. I quickly remove the rest of my armor to see how far the loss of fur has gone. The fur is gone from my upper arms, shoulders, chest, and back.

My forearms, hands, legs, and feet however still have fur, and when I pull out my little mirror I find my head also still has fur. But as I am looking at myself in the mirror I find some other changes have taken place. They are subtle but there is a definite change in the structure of my face, I now look just a bit less beastly.

If anything I would say I look more like a beastman and less like a humanoid beast. I wonder if this process is going to continue as I go up in ranks now and if so how far it will go. I hope I don't change too much, I have gotten used to this body and I have grown to like it as it is.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

As I turn my attention back to her I find Kechara struggling to gather up all my shed fur and push it into her nest. Laughing, I lean over to help her get the fur into her nest, she isn't satisfied until every piece is gathered. Once it is all in the nest she spends a few minutes moving it around before she curls up and goes to sleep on top of it.

Since she is sleeping I go back to meditating to recover the sacred power I spent on naming her. Once that is done I switch to working on my core again, I want to get to rank one before I try to do anything else. Right now the progress is quick and easy, but I know that won't last.

Core Upgrade Progress: 100%

Core Upgrade Complete!

Congratulations! You are now Rank 1!

Sacred Power +100, All Stats +5!

"Stats!"

Strength: 150(530)

Agility: 150(289)

Endurance: 150(382)

Intelligence: 209

Wisdom: 402

Charisma: 171

Willpower: 55

Luck: 30

Toughness: 40

Regen: 15

Unspent Points: 50

'Wow! It raised all my stats, even regen and luck! I was worried since I wasn't getting the ten point of SP for every ten percent increase like I was before.'

Now that more of my physical stats are unlocked I can move a little bit easier. This is a good thing because I have a lot to get done, I am going to be staying here for a while so I should make it a bit more comfortable. First I need to finish cleaning up the guardian's corpse, but when I step outside I get a shock, it is snowing.

Luckily it is only a light snow, but it tells me that I need to get a move on because 'Winter is coming!'. I can't help laughing to myself as I head down the slope to take care of the corpse. After I am done with that I gather all the branches that fell during our battle for firewood.

As long as I keep the fire small I should have enough for a few days at least. If nothing else at least I will be able to enjoy some cooked food, raw meat is getting a little old. I will keep feeding Kechara meat from the rex, it doesn't seem right to try feeding her part of her mother.

Without my fur I feel the cold a lot more so I hurry back to the cave, I find Kechara is still fast asleep on her fur bed. Before I start a fire I take a long look around the cave, I want to make sure there is a way for the smoke to escape. I learned that lesson the hard way while I was in the pit, and this cave is a lot smaller.

Thankfully, I find a crack in the ceiling at the back of the cave that should act as a natural chimney. So I move some rocks over to make a firepit and start a small fire that I can cook with. Once the meat is cooking I again look around the cave, but this time I am looking to see how I can improve it.

The most important thing is to find a way to make a door or something to block the entrance. The little fire isn't going to do much unless I can block the wind from blowing into the cave. Squaring off the entrance wouldn't be hard, but a stone big enough to block it would be too heavy considering my current strength.

Walking to the entrance I take a look at the slope, there are a couple of dozen trees in total so if I cut down a few it should be alright. With that decided I get to work, I take out my pickaxe and start cutting away at the stone. It takes a lot longer than I thought it would since I am a lot weaker than I used to be.

The noise shortly wakes up Kechara who quickly comes to see what I am doing. Instead of pestering me like I thought she would, she just sits calmly and watches me. Then after a while she seems to understand what I am doing and she runs over to start pushing away the rock chips that are falling on the floor.