Jane yawned as she set about her morning practice, her mind straining as she tried to heed her mother’s instructions about Power and Control and all that stuff. Frankly, she didn’t quite get exactly what her mother meant, only that if she really squeezed the rock hard enough, it’ll crumble like a biscuit.

Her face screwed up cutely as she tried to squeeze the rock again, but failed to shatter it like her brother had yesterday. She groaned openly as she stopped supplying mana to her telekinesis, the rock dropping with a dull thump on the grass as she fell back first on the grass.

“I don’t get it!” She complained. She glared at the rock that just didn’t break like a good little rock and threw it at the fence.

The sound of the rock hitting the plank echoed as she glared at the rock again, ignoring the prompt that she got two points in Power.

She heard a chuckle behind her, making her whip around to a tall teenager with spiky black hair. He was wearing a white shirt with a brown jacket that had fur lining, black pants that had bandages wrapped on the knees and black iron-toed boots. He had a utility belt strapped to his waist, of which Jane had no idea what was inside. His brown eyes sparkled with barely hidden mirth, but his facial expression betrayed his internal emotion. “Having trouble?”

This teenager was Leroy Dekis. He had helped as an aide on the birth of the two children. He was registered in the Adventurer’s Guild as a B-rank adventurer, nearing the prestigious A-rank, and officially the apprentice of the retired A-rank adventurer, Hosef Worth.

These were the only things that Jane knew of Leroy’s public life. Everything else came from the annoyances he did whenever she and her brother were training or just in general. It didn’t mean that she disliked him, though. Kane told her that he was only doing it to poke fun at their expense and didn’t really mean much about it when she cried about it a few years back.

Her brother was smart, almost as smart as her parents! She could believe him. He knew a lot more than she did, and he was obviously a lot stronger too. Maybe he could help her with her Power problem when he came back from whatever he was doing.

She still had to deal with Leroy, though. Just because she knew why he did what he did doesn’t make him any less annoying. “Yeah,” she grumbled. Some of her annoyance stemmed from the rock, and the rest from the person talking to her. “I am.”

Leroy just chuckled. She wasn’t looking at him, but she could just feel his annoying smirk as he levitated a rock in front of her. She watched it as it cracked under the strength that Leroy was putting it through, making her eyes twitch as he completely shattered the rock without any major trouble.

She almost screamed then, but then she remembered her dad’s words. Tantrums are for bad kids, He had said off handedly. No one likes bad kids!

She was still a child, though. So she didn’t pay any attention to those words.

“Leroy!” She half-shrieked half-cried. “How did you do that?!”

“Easily,” Gods dang it, he’s smirking again. She could just feel his annoying smirk burning its way through her skull. Her face burned with embarrassment as she furiously levitated another rock and tried to crush it to no avail. She could hear Leroy chuckling at her expense, but she didn’t pay any mind to it.

I’ll show him! She fumed. He’s not the only one that can shatter a rock! Trying to show the elder Psion up, she doubled the power output she had on the rock. I can do it! I can do it just as fast as Kane did! That’ll show him!

She got another point in Power, but she quickly dismissed it in favor of the rock in front of her, droning out Leroy’s voice as she completely focused on trying to crush the rock in front of her.

It cracked, but it didn’t crumble. Jane let out a huge smile as she dropped the rock, showing it to Leroy. “See! I can do it too!” She didn’t shatter it, but it was still something to brag about, right?

Apparently not, as Leroy just shattered the cracked rock while it was still on her hand. “Sure you can,” Jane, frustrated, simply let out an annoyed sigh and flopped back down on the ground, her vibrant blue eyes not even looking at the annoyance and simply looking up at the sky.

“Why do I even have to do this rock thing?” She complained. “I want to do what mom and dad and Kane do!” And she really did—she sometimes saw Kane doing his experimental techniques. She saw him punch through a tree yesterday, and she bet that she could do it too! She doesn’t have to crush a pesky rock to do it, either! If her brother can do it, she can too!

… is what was on her mind.

“You have to do it because you don’t have enough Power,” Leroy patiently explained, an infuriating smirk still on his face (to Jane’s point of view, anyway). “Your Control is decent for your level and age—you can already lift a handful of pebbles, you just need more Power to destroy them.”

“How would crushing rocks help?” Jane sniffed, a bit gloomy. She didn’t see it, but Leroy had winced, a little concerned for his own wellbeing if he let Jane cry and sulk. “They don’t even do anything.”

Leroy paused. “They should be helping you. You are getting prompts, right?” She should be. Leroy vaguely remembered his own training with Hosef—he was first taught to try and crush rocks. Every failure to do so added a small amount of Power to his Telekinesis. In time, he learned that Power and Control went up according to what they were doing with Telekinesis—like trying to rip a tree off the ground would contribute a lot to Power, and that trying to trip multiple people would contribute a lot to Control.

In this exercise, crushing rocks would be adding a lot of Power all around the rock—that, or picking out a weak spot and applying pressure there. Either works.

“Prompts?” Jane echoed, a little confused, until her eyes brightened. “Oh, you mean the blue boxes! They’re annoying so I just wave them away.”

“Figures,” Leroy muttered, running a palm on his face. “Alright, check your Skills list. It should have your Telekinesis levels.”

Jane nodded slowly. “Status!” A blue box appeared in front of her, showing her attributes, name and anything the status box shows. Not much has really changed, but she noticed that her INT was at least a point higher. She knew her brother focused on INT and WIS, and her parents were encouraging her to do the same as well, but she was confused on why he still tried to raise his physical stats—exercises seem to be tiresome and boring.

Name Jane Worth Title --- STR 19 (-8) Race Human Condition Child END 15 (-8) Age 4 years, 2 months Jobs LV. 2 Psion DEX 17 (-8) HP 120 / 120 --- INT 37 Mana 370 / 370 --- WIS 18

“… but the skills aren’t here!” Jane exclaimed as she pointed accusingly at Leroy. He simply sighed and palmed his face again, muttering something about idiotic children. He ran a hand across his hair, his amused expression now a peeved one.

“I said Skills, kiddo. Skills, not your gods dam—darned status.” Ignoring his slip of the tongue, he informed her of her problem. Her mouth was then set to an ‘o’, after which she nervously giggled.

“I—I knew that!” She tried to save face. Unfortunately for the young Psion, the young adult was not impressed.

“Right,” He rolled his eyes. The children were endearing to him, of course. He didn’t hate them, and they were smarter than what their age implied, but there were just times that he felt his own brain cells melting away when he interacted with them. This was, unfortunately, one of those times.

“S-Skills!” She tried to hide the fact that she stuttered with a nervous smirk. Her shifty eyes and twitching fingers gave her away, though, making Leroy wonder if he was ever as insecure as the child he was talking to right now.

Well, it’s understandable, I guess. Leroy mused. He himself hadn’t grown up with a sibling, he could only imagine the pressure that Jane put herself into just to match up with Kane’s extraordinary growth. Even Leroy shuddered to think what Kane would grow into if his growth never ceased—that kid just had a drive that didn’t match up with his age at all. He was a little envious of him not that he would voice it out, but at the same time, pity him for all the attention he’s going to get when the family stops hiding out in the middle of nowhere.

Considering the fact that they’ve been hiding for 6 years, he doubts that they’re going to reveal themselves to the public any time soon. Their area near the east border of Viya also made revealing themselves harder, since the area was known as the Harrowing Wilderness—an area commonly known amongst the high ranking adventurers as particularly unforgiving. Their living space was right at the edge of that—monsters beyond their little circle of living were powerful creatures, with weaker ones few and farther in between. It’s like one huge dungeon, except without the loot drops and the extra risk of death.

The only hope for a low ranking adventurer to survive was to hide while the monsters were out and about, and run while the monsters were fighting among each other—there was a minimum of mid B-rank to enter the Harrowing Wilderness, and even then, they usually come in as parties of four. Anything less would be too dangerous if they were a low rank adventurer.

These weren’t any of Leroy’s worries right now, however. He was more worried about the admittedly smart girl in front of him acting dumb and comparing herself to her brother—who was on a whole different league and was suspected to be a chosen champion of one of the gods.

Leroy wisely didn’t say anything concerning that line of thought, lest his sister decides to ask more questions about his situation.

“Hey!” Leroy snapped back into reality. He had spaced out again—he’s really losing his focus these days. He needs to shape up. Maybe he should go out the bubble of safety their house is in, just so he could beat down a couple of Giant Basilisks and freshen up. “I said I checked my Skills!”

“Yeah, and?” Leroy motioned for her to continue, irritating the little girl further. He knew that his dismissive attitude grated at her nerves—a child didn’t want to not be noticed, after all.

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However, she had reeled in her anger and decided to keep her voice level and not blow his eardrums apart like the last few times he had riled her up. “It says I have 14 in Power and 9 in Control.”

“Mm,” Leroy nodded. That’s to be expected—a bit higher than normal, but expected. Idly, he wondered if Kane’s little sister was also a prodigy, since she’s certainly shaping up as one. She picks up instructions quickly and uses her Telekinesis as an extension of herself, not very unlike her own brother. If only she was as good at understanding what was being said to her as she was at understanding her power. “That’s to be expected. You need a few more points to crush the rock, but,” he decided to help her out. He wasn’t merciless, after all. He would also feel quite guilty if he just left her alone without any advice after poking her ego over and over. He leaned closer to her and gave her a small smirk. “You don’t have to crush the rock, you just have to break it.”

And with those words, he decided to stand straight and stretch. “Well, that was nice!”

“Hey, wait!” Jane called out to him, raising a small arm as she scrambled to stand up to follow him. “What do you mean I have to break it? Isn’t that just the same? What’s the difference?” She couldn’t hear the young man chuckle before he disappeared—to where, Jane didn’t know. She was determined to find out, though, so she’ll check in the house first, before doing anything stupid!

---

In the end, she couldn’t find him before lunch—he found her instead. He had multiple scratch marks, bruises, and lacerations all over his body, yet blood wasn’t leaking out at all. Jane watched with morbid fascination as the teen hobbled over to her grandfather, who had opted to gaze at the doorway when Leroy smashed it open.

Literally. The door was in tatters and the bigger pieces trapped on another room. It happens quite often so the room was mostly empty, which was why the little girl wasn’t very worried for her reluctant (or so she thought) guardian.

Hosef simply shook his head. “Foolish boy. You shouldn’t have gone outside the boundary by yourself,” he ran a hand across his blonde white-streaked hair as he sighed. “You might bite off more than you can chew. People would be sad if you disappeared oh so suddenly, Leroy,” Healing palms were set over his injuries, the green light seeping into the wounds. Jane was gaping as she watched the wounds knit themselves together, skin growing over the cuts and mending, bruises fading, and scratches disappearing.

“Can’t say it’s because I don’t care about my life,” Leroy grunted as a particularly long slash on his chest was mended, the skin crawling over the now bleeding wound. Leroy had finally started bleeding when Hosef had started healing him, making even Jane notice how immensely tired the boy was. His expression was that of the great grumpiness—even greater than his usual grumpiness, which emphasized just how tired he was. “Damn, this hurts..!”

“Language,” the old man off handedly warned him. Leroy simply groaned in response—to his wounds or to the warning, Jane didn’t know. “Training doesn’t mean go nearly kill yourself a few times, Leroy. Haven’t I taught you better?”

“Shhh…” Leroy was slurring his words now, his eyes were half lidded and expression vacant. He had a dumb smirk on his face as he looked above him. “Shhhuuut uppp…”

“He’s already delirious,” The blonde sighed as he doubled the output of his Heal, speeding up the process of mending and also quickly sapping the strength of the young man. Heal was a peculiar skill that used mana to, obviously, heal the target. This had the unfortunate side effect of sapping the target’s stamina due to speeding up the process of growing new skin and replenishing bodily fluids. It wasn’t lethal, but it’s a bad side effect when healing grievous wounds in the middle of a fight. “Stupid boy…” He muttered softly.

Jane had initially wanted to question the teen, but decided against it. Even she knew that he wasn’t in any position to answer her inquiry, and she was usually hailed as dense by the guy!

Hosef glanced at her as he mended the last wound on his body—a slash on his back. It was big, and there was a lot of blood around it. Jane didn’t know what happened to Leroy, all she knew was that he did something stupid—something she wouldn’t have done under normal circumstances—and paid heavily for it. He didn’t seem to be down about it though, in fact, he seems to be quite satisfied.

“It’s not as bad as you think,” Hosef tried to reassure her.

Jane frowned. “Huh?” She was confused. What did Hosef mean by that? Of course she knew that. She knew that he would survive, she knew that he would still be alive and that he’s stronger for it now.

She wasn’t—“You looked like you were worried,” Hosef gave her a wry smile. “I thought you didn’t like him?”

“Well, he’s technically family too, right?” Okay, she was worried. When he disappeared for a few hours, she didn’t know what had happened to him. The teen was something of an annoying uncle to her, and she didn’t like how he simply disappeared without even giving her grandpa a warning—she thought he might have gotten hurt. And he was. “I don’t want to lose anyone in the family.”

Yes, she didn’t want to. She had almost lost her brother a while ago—someone she looked up to, someone she considered her better, and someone she really considered to be her best friend. He had gotten hurt during one of his most vulnerable moments—when he was asleep. She was terrified when she realized that he was taken, but she couldn’t follow her family to the people who took her brother. They were too fast, and too strong. No matter how much she wanted to help—she just couldn’t.

Jane refused to be helpless—she refused to be a damsel in distress like the so called princesses in her father’s stories. She wanted to be helpful, and she didn’t want to wait until she was grown up. She had already decided to be an adventurer when she grew up, and with her mother helping her, nothing could go wrong! She would be strong and helpful and no one would try to take her brother again!

Well, it’s not like they could! Her brother was really strong right now, he even crushed a stone after only breaking one! He might be better at her in Telekinesis, but she refused to be the lesser sibling. That’s why she didn’t resent her brother—she understood why he wanted to be strong—at least, a little bit. She admired him—even after being hurt and rendered a permanent mute (something explained to her by her mother. She was saddened about it—she couldn’t hear any more of her brother’s stories about buildings that reached the skies!), he hadn’t fallen to despair.

Jane wanted to be like that, even if she didn’t quite understand why. She didn’t want to be terrified anymore, she wanted to be like her brother, who, in her opinion, was like the rock in the middle of the stream—the water would flow around him, but he wouldn’t budge.

Jane saw Hosef smile to himself and shake his head as he finished healing the wound. Leroy, at this point, had fallen unconscious, fully spent from doing what he did and getting healed. He would be fine tomorrow, Jane imagined. She couldn’t think of anything that would keep the guy down for too long.

Just as Hosef stood up, however, she heard a few voices coming from outside the house—she recognized those voices! Turning away from her grandfather, she raced for the door—now just a hole where their entrance should be—and smile. “Welcome back, Mom!”

“What about me?” Her father pouted. Jane stifled the smile that was threatening to come out of her face and forced herself to get a few words out.

“Oh, and dad too,” her father looked devastated as her mother laughed. Kane was standing right next to her, exhausted and beaten up for some reason, but he wasn’t fighting the smile on his face. She hugged her father’s side as they came closer. She was pat on the head by someone, but she didn’t notice who. It doesn’t matter who, anyway. Mainly, there’s something else on her mind.

“Why’s Kane with you?” Jane asked innocently. She hadn’t seen her brother since morning, and her parents never usually took anyone with them during their hunts, so seeing her brother beaten up and tired with her parents had piqued her curiosity.

Her mother had simply smiled at her, though, while shooting a glance towards her husband. “It’s nothing, honey. Can you go call your grandpa for us?” Jane nodded as she ran for the living room, leaving them outside.

“She sure is energetic, isn’t she?” Keith smiled, a little amused. “I’m hurt that you taught her to ignore me, though,” he held his hand over where his heart would be and did a mock hurt expression. “It hurts right here, Selene.”

“Oh shut up, you oaf,” She smiled at her husband. It seems that decade old antics don’t change—he was like this back when they were still teens, and it’s one of the things that she loved about him. Things were interesting with him around, and his unchanging personality made him endearing for her.

Unknown to them both, the child’s thoughts on their exchange was a little more deep.

They’re so sweet to each other that I’m getting diabetes. He thought dryly.

While these thoughts and similar exchanges happened, Hosef had apparently arrived at the doorway. He coughed once to catch their attention and nodded once, smiling at his daughter. “Selene! What do you need?”

“I’m here too…”

“Dad, we need you to use Appraisal,” Selene then said, ignoring the previous remark and her husband’s surprised look.

“An appraisal? What kind?”

“A Full Appraisal. I want to find out how strong he is right now…” and if Keith’s stupid plan had worked. She was sweet with him right now, yes, but she still hadn’t forgotten his bout of stupidity.

“Hm, alright,” Hosef nodded briefly. He lazily waved a hand behind him, and a light blue orb floated out. Jane, coming from behind Hosef, followed the orb and watched it with fascination—the thing didn’t wiggle in midair like her stones do!

“Appraise – Full!” There were two kinds of appraisals—one where the appraiser only saw the status and attributes of the person, and one that included the skills of the person. The only limitation of the two were the orbs required to each appraise skill—partial appraisal orbs are much more common than full appraisal orbs and are therefore available at most places. Full appraisal orbs are only available to the government and to the Adventurer’s Guild, which was independent from any kingdom.

A blue box appeared in front of Hosef. It was readable for everyone in the vicinity, but unfortunately, Jane herself couldn’t read very well yet. She only understood her own status because, well, it was her own. She did recognize the numbers and the attributes they’re associated with, though, and they were far higher than what she expected.

Name Kane Worth Title --- STR 33 (-7) Race Human Condition Child, Mute END 45 (-7) Age 6 years, 5 months Jobs LV. 6 Psion DEX 53 (-7) HP 420 / 420 --- INT 95 Mana 950 / 950 --- WIS 69

Beside that blue box, there was another box, this one containing his skills. It had five entries on it, but only one really stood out for the conscious adults.

Telekinesis [Stab] Power 104 Control 109

“Okay,” Hosef took in a deep breath, seemingly just done with everything. His body shook with barely restrained anger—to whom, Jane didn’t know— and several household items started floating around the house before falling back down to the ground. “Whose bright idea was it to force him into a life and death situation?”

The reason why Hosef was angry was because the stat growth was abnormal. It would have been possible if he trained normally—the old man imagined that his mental stats would grow faster than his physical stats, but right now, the stats were far above the norm. In contrast, a healthy non-job granted male has about 30 STR, 30 END, and 25 DEX. Currently, Kane was above those averages except for STR, but that was only because of the Child debuff. He was not angry about his attribute growth, however. He was mad because of the method to gain said attributes.

A person’s attributes can rapidly rise when stuck in a life and death situation—it was the way the soul reacts. It tries to strengthen its physical body to cope with the threat of death in hopes of surviving. This method was the tried and tested truth of the world—the more one is in danger, the faster one levels up. At least, that was it for combat jobs. Not necessarily for jobs like Psion, where it doesn’t always have to be a combat job—but it looks like Kane’s tiers are going up to be a combat one, anyway.

“Ehehe,” Keith simply chuckled nervously as he rubbed his hand on the back of his neck. “He wanted to grow strong and so I helped him?” he ended the statement as a question as he watched his father-in-law for any sudden movements.

“He could’ve died.”

“Well, yeah, but he didn’t! And he’s fine with it. Right, Kane? You’re fine with it, right?!”

Keith was desperate at this point—it’s not because he would be beaten in a straight up fight with his father-in-law, but because the disappointment that he would be dealing with for the next few months would bear down on him. He didn’t like to be the target of disappointment, damn it!

Kane simply shrugged and flexed his hands as he walked inside the house. A few pebbles trailed behind him, though for what, no one knew. Selene simply thought it was for practice, Keith thought that it was a taunt, and Jane didn’t have any opinions about it whatever, ‘Just Kane things,’ was the general consensus.

Keith watched, feeling empty as the old man’s disappointed look buried itself into his heart. Selene simply shook her head while she chuckled, and Jane still didn’t understand what exactly happened.

In the end, Jane summed it up to one sentence.

Just Kane things.