Adam barely managed to stifle his scream when he awoke. Although his dream ended on a mostly positive note, it had still been a frightening experience. He’d not had nightmares in some time, and this one threatened to bring them back. Once more he pondered the possibility that being an orphan was actually better than what Jay had had to endure. It took him some time to settle himself enough to take over the watch. He knew he’d not sleep again for the night.

Smirking, he thought of another reason.

He was still smiling when he rolled out of the tent, and by the scowl on Martin’s face the man knew the smile was somehow at his expense. “What did you do?” the old man asked suspiciously.

With a bight beaming smile, Adam replied, “Old men shouldn’t stay up so late. Let the young take over.” He barely had time to duck as Martin threw his mug at his head.

“Old man my ass,” the man grumbled. They shared a laugh as Adam collected the mug, along with another. Filling them both with some water from the pot near the small fire, he added some leaves for tea. He returned Martin’s mug, then seated himself on the other log.

There were inns at each of the nearby towns along the route back to Sun King City, but they had agreed that another night outside would be nice before they were all stuck back inside for who knows how long. Even Jay, who had been terrified of the outdoors at the beginning of their trip, had looked happy at the prospect.

Adam sat silently sipping at his tea. He knew Martin was curious what he was doing up, as he could see the man watching him over the rim of his mug. Eventually he couldn’t resist it anymore. “My skills just gave me a peek at how bad the boy’s life really was.”

“Mm,” was Martin’s non-committal response.

“It was far worse than we were told. I mean the facts were there, but…” He trailed off. Martin said nothing, waiting for him to get his thoughts together. It took some time, but he started up again. “I’ve never known there was a life worse than being an orphan. I know how to help orphans, not whatever you’d call his situation.” He stopped again, unsure where he was going with that statement exactly.

Luckily, Martin had an idea. “But you want to help him?”

“Of course.”

“Then all you need to do is be there for him.”

“That’s it?”

Martin chuckled that sound of his that always signified he was about to make a point Adam should have thought of. It was annoying, but better than the “I’m about to beat you into the ground” chuckle. “Well, that would be it if you were his friend, brother, even his father. But you? You’re a Mother. I bet your class won’t let you leave it along. I’ve never known a mother that could.”

Adam groaned, and dropped his head to the other man’s amusement. Martin reached around the fire and smacked his shoulder. “That’s enough feeling sorry for everyone. I’ve still got an hour on watch, and the boy isn’t awake for you to spend time avoiding all of your responsibilities.”

The boy sputtered. “What? I’m not avoiding my respon-“ He glared at Martin. “Taking care of children is my responsibility.”

He laughed again. “I know, but it helped wake you up. Now, stop screwing around and dip back into your mindspace while we’ve got the time. You still don’t have anything on what’s going on with your staff, or the cleaver for that matter. And didn’t you tell me you had a heap of new skills unlocked?”

“Ugh, yes.”

“Well, new skills don’t choose themselves. You’ve got to at least look at them before you can complain about them.”

For a brief moment, Adam wanted to let it all go. Stop being responsible, and just be a child again. He didn’t entertain the thought for long because it was so hypnotically appealing, and he- no, his kids couldn’t wait for him to screw around. If he was ever going to help them again, he needed to buckle down and become the best he could be. The best what he didn’t yet know.

For the moment it looked like he was ahead of the curve for class progression, but the truth of it was that he was even farther behind than kids who hadn’t been Gifted yet. He didn’t just have to level and evolve his class, he had to do distillation too. If he recalled Szellem’s description correctly the process required him to max out his Mother class at level twenty five, and then distil a new class out of his current one. That would drop his level an indeterminate amount, down to ten at the maximum. And then he’d have to level to twenty five again before he could evolve that class.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

He didn’t know exactly how long it took most people to get through evolution, but he estimated that most people took five to ten years. If it was based entirely on time for the leveling process, he was in for a fair bit of trouble, but Martin had told him that people could level at vastly different speeds and that levels weren’t the only thing that people needed to work on before evolution. Skills were equally important. He had no idea how any of that would work with the distillation. A little math put most people hitting their evolved class around their early to mid twenties. That gave him seven to twelve years to do nearly double the work if he wanted to be around the same level as others his age when he hit evolution.

He thought about Martin’s suggestion, before suggesting an alternative. The man was right, he did need to go see to his status changes, but he was in no state of mind to meditate at the moment. He was still agitated from his nightmare, weird visitation, or shared memory. Whatever it was, he needed to work it out of his mind before he could head to the mindscape. And Martin was the perfect punching bag. “How about some practice?”

Five minutes later, Martin was becoming concerned. When Adam had suggested practice he had thought he meant sparing. Instead, he was the target, and the boy was attempting to murder him. With a broom.

Adam had asked him to move around him as though attacking, but to attack and move at a lower level. They had settled on him behaving like a very large goblin. In the beginning it all went so well for the man, but it quickly fell apart for him as Adam got more and more imaginative.

None of the strikes Adam threw out with the broom were particularly strong, or damaging, but they were still creating issues. There was momentum and force behind the magic wind blows, and Adam was beginning to learn to use that instead of searching for a way to actually hurt him. Even if the sharp edge normally associated with wind magic was missing, getting poked in the eye with a finger still hurt. Essentially, the boy was using the projected force of his new magic to poke, attack, and disrupt certain parts of the body or motions. Martin would be quite impressed if he wasn’t the target.

As he tried to imitate the idiotic leaping attack of a goblin, he watched as Adam swept the air in front of him. Judging by the way he held the broom he was going for a hammer attack for a change. He had mostly used the handle, finding the faster and more precise attacks to be easier to use. Martin had noticed that beyond the actual strength of the attack, the thing Adam was lacking the most was the correct distance at which to form an attack. The amount of mana he pushed into the broom determined that, but the boy was struggling to figure out how to match distance to mana. Or at least he had been.

Martin suddenly suspected that all of Adam’s earlier fumbling around had been specifically to both figure out the correct solution, and trick him into exactly the thing he was doing. He had expected the boy to attempt to hit him with a weak thrust of air to the chest or face, or a swing to the front of his legs. Neither of those attacks would have hurt him, and they didn’t possess enough force to halt his forward momentum. Instead of an attack aimed at damaging him, Adam instead went for disruption.

The airborne hammer blow hit Martin’s knee from the side. If it had been aimed higher he might have been able to reduce the disruption with his mass, and if it had been lower he could have more easily moved the leg to absorb the blow. Both would have caused him to stumble upon landing, but the blow he received was worse. It knocked him ass over tea kettle to start with, but he was still turning. Or he had been until Adam turned into his and then brought his arms down as though he was attempting to split a log with an axe. A log named Martin, and an axe of air right his chest. Once more the blow itself did very little damage, similar to being bumped in a crowd, but the force and momentum behind it forced him down at the perfect time to bounce his head off the ground. Martin tumbled from the bad landing, refraining from using his accelerated ability to maneuver to recover. He felt the boy deserved a win for the hard work, and creative strategizing. It still didn’t do any real damage, but it would be disorientating and surprising against foes the boy’s level.

The real surprise was finding the dust cloud he kicked up being swept away by another burst of wind just after he felt the blade of Adam’s new cleaver rest against his neck. With surprise written across his features, he looked at the boy. Adam had the cleaver in one hand, and the broom was sticking out over his shoulder where it had come to rest after he swung it around to clear the dust. From the look of things, he only really needed a single hand to actually activate the magical effect of the “weapon,” although it was more properly used with two so that he could use it faster and with more speed. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t drop one hand to do exactly what he had just done.

“Creative strategies indeed. Good work,” Martin praised him. Then he stuck his hand up. “Now, help an old man up. We get weak as we put on years.”

Adam snorted but helped his friend and trainer to his feet.

“Feeling better now?” Martin asked.

“Yeah. If you still got the time I’ll head to the mindspace now.” He looked Martin over, finding the man a little on the dusty side. With a hint of a smile he twirled his broom, gusts of wind converging from different directions to hit the man in series, blowing most of the dust off of him.

“Huh, convenient. Now get to meditating before I change my mind and kick your ass.”

The two laughed and headed back towards the fire to continue their duties.