Owen woke up earlier that he was used too, looking around his room, he started to wipe the sleep from his eyes. He didn't remember going to sleep the other day, he had been working on tempering the mithril... His eyes opened wide and he opened his system notifications.

*Congratulations, you have imbued and tempered your body with both Mithril and Orichalcum. You have unlocked a 1st grade tempered body.*

Owen wasn't quite sure what exactly it meant by first grade, but he assumed it was good. His next notification was even more surprising that the one before it.

*Congratulations, you have upgraded your Soul. 0 grade Soul has been upgraded to 2nd grade soul.*

Just as he was about to start asking questions, when he felt a familiar sense of disappointment as the next several notifications were missed stat opportunities.

*You are unable to gain additional stats after the initial 20, until after you have passed level twenty. 1 experience gained instead. x 14. 7 experience has been consumed by your 2nd grade soul.*

"What the hell?" Owen had never gotten ready faster. He rushed out to the training area and was momentarily stunned as he saw Xerxes back in his original form. "I suppose your rush probably has to do with today's notifications?" Owen nodded and Xerxes motioned to a chair. "Hmm, how to explain, lets start with your body tempering first because that information will matter more in the short term." Owen nodded hesitantly.

Wasn't missing out on half of his experience for short term really important? Pushing the thought aside, he listened in.

"Your body temper I assume was 1st grade?" Owen nodded and Xerxes smiled. "Then we were successful. Essentially a body temper can help control the effectiveness of your resilience and vitality. While those benefits would make it worth tempering by themselves, that is not all. It also helps keep your body from falling apart as your stats continue to increase. Let us say you had 20 stat points in strength, but you had a normal body."

"Even that much would cause your body to begin breaking every time you took advantage of your strength. The same goes for other stats, your body just generally becomes more powerful. You have more energy that it can normally contain in it's system which will begin to erode it from the inside. A temper needs to be done every so often as you continue to become more powerful and the grades can help determine roughly how long you will be able to go before needing to temper again."

"A third grade temper will only last for around 25 levels, if the person is maxing out the amount of stats they can gain up to that point. A second grade one gives them twice as long. The first grade temper you have can easily handle you gaining 100 levels and maxing your stats, before it is time to do it all over again." Xerxes leaned forward and patted the bottom of Owen's jaw to close his mouth. Owen was slightly stunned, but nodded his thanks before speaking.

"So what you're saying is that by tempering my body, it will be able to withstand all stats possible for me to gain until level 100?" Xerxes just nodded. "It is why it was so important you do that now, rather than when you return to your world. The rare metals in your world are not very valuable in the grand scheme of things and even if you were to collect and absorb all of it, none of it would be enough to get you to a 1st grade temper. At best you might get a second grade."

Owen had to fight the urge to prostrate himself. He knew his master wouldn't want that, but he did know that he wanted something.

"So, if the materials for my temper are so valuable, what do I owe you then?" Owen said narrowing his eyes. "We will talk about it in a moment, first we should cover soul grades." Xerxes said. Owen wanted to interrupt, his master had a weird glint in his eye, but Owen was caught the information was to important to him. Xerxes only smiled more mischievously.

"Soul grades are not normally unlocked until you reach a minimum of level 50. Normally, your mana needs to have reached a certain level of quality and quantity, which you should not have this early on." Owen nodded as if it made sense, but he was already lost.

"Have you ever had a more noticeable system screen pop up? Something warning you maybe, but you did it anyways?" Owen was surprised, this was the first time his master had seemed genuinely perplexed. He tried to think back to anything that stood out, but ever since the system had arrived, everything was so much more interesting. Thinking of closer to the beginning, he remembered earning the amulet and it turning the surroundings and inheritance into a pill or something.

He had had a red system message back when that had popped up, but there wasn't anything to accompany it like a warning or anything.

"Yeah, yeah there was something. When I defeated my first boss, it dropped a couple items, with an amulet being one of them. The amulet had said that I'd be able to use it to have the Polymath's keen eye skill. When I actually put it on, it had some alert pop up saying I could absorb the amulet inheritance knowledge or something to upgrade my identify skill." His master seemed to freeze in place, but Owen pushed through since he knew all of it was going to be important.

"I thought I would just sort of learn new things, but instead all this energy began pouring out of the amulet and began spinning, sort of like my core. I then sucked out the energy from all of the monster corpses surrounding me, before it finally settled. Then a red system window appeared and I absorbed the pill and got the skill. That has sort of been it."

Xerxes felt like the world had kept spinning and left him behind. An inheritance was normally something only given by the creator, or if the creator had achieved godhood, their inheritance could be left in an item. There had been a few rare cases where someone had created an inheritance, but the system had bestowed aspects of it into items. Red system menus also usually indicated that the quality of the soul would be drastically changed.

He spent a couple minutes explaining this to Owen, who seemed not too bothered by it. But of course he would not be bothered by it, he did not know the ramifications of what an inheritance taken versus an inheritance given would look like. "Owen, this is important have you been able to create experience debt already?" He was surprised to immediately see a scowl form on Owen's face. "Yeah, I was fighting an enemy called The herald of the zodiac or something..."

The pure hatred Xerxes could feel oozing out through his normally obscured aura, almost caused Owen to faint in the middle of him speaking. Forcefully hiding his aura, he gestured for Owen to continue.

Owen was fighting just to be able to breathe the atmosphere had become heavy and Owen felt like he was going to die at any second. He wasn't sure what he had done, but he had definitely done something wrong. Then it disappeared all at once and his master had a very clearly forced smile on his face, gesturing for Owen to continue. Not wanting to face that aura again, Owen began to talk quickly, hoping getting through it fast would help keep his master from getting angry again.

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"So, I and some friends fought the Herald guy and during the fight I kept identifying him with the Polymath skill, he gave me some deal to try and take the skill away, but I'm not an idiot, so we fought instead. During the fight, I had been trying to identify him, since every time before had made his pause slightly but one of the times it let me see how you'd have fought him. It then stole 150 of my experience from the fight."

He had been right to rush through. The aura hadn't reappeared, but the anger was still clear on his face.

Owen was not even remotely surprised when Xerxes asked him to fully recount his experience in the second round of the tutorial. It took a while, but his master seemed to calm down, of course until the very end when he got upset again.

"I am sorry, this is not something you should need to be bothered with, we have spent enough time on this and you only have so much time left before you must return home. The only important thing, is that you have somehow managed to take rather than be given my inheritance, which makes thing a little trickier. I was going to imbue you with knowledge of some of my skills, but as you already have my inheritance, there are more specific qualifications to unlock some of my skills now."

"I stole your inheritance? I'm very sorry, I didn't mean too. I hadn't even known that you were actually real when I did it!" Xerxes sighed, "I was not trying to make you feel bad or apologize for it. I only meant to say it will be a little harder for you to learn my skills." Owen looked back up at him , face full of relief and he could only sigh.

"The easiest way for me to teach you my skills is for you to practice the way I did, use the keen eye skill, while I practice with my spear and hopefully that will be enough to unlock the skill for you." Owen nodded and watched carefully. He much preferred this sort of interaction with his master. They had taken a short break after talking to let them get in a proper mindset for physical training again. He had been surprised when his master came back with a spear, but not at all disappointed, he was excited.

Even more so when he found out he might be able to learn a spear skill from him. He had to forcibly pull himself from his thoughts as his master began practicing several forms he hadn't ever seen before. He flowed through each move flawlessly and Owen even forgot to use his skill, before his master had shouted a reminder.

*This is the flowing waters technique, created by the Jeweled Monkey Emperor. It is widely known as a masterpiece in both technique and artistry.*

Every time he identified his master's training, it said something different.

*This is the Monkey's paw technique, the creator of this martial art is unknown, but due to the required movements and strength it is widely considered one of the harder spear forms to master.*

He had barely remembered to use his skill again as the movements for this style were drastically different from the first. Each movement felt like it carried a weight behind it. Many of the attacks didn't strictly flow together, but it was more his body that kept a certain rhythm and momentum.

It only continued, every time he used keen eye, it seemed like it would pull up the history of a different technique or style. After several hours of using his Keen Eye skill, he saw a message window pop up.

*You have witnessed the Jeweled Monkey Emperor practice each of his spear styles and have been able to grasp some understanding behind the forms he practiced. Would you like to view the Emperor defeating this type of enemy in battle? Y/N?*

"Uh, I'm not sure that is what was supposed to show up." Owen hesitantly shared the message with Xerxes who beamed. "You are right, that is not exactly what I was looking for, but I have never been so curious." His master chuckled and raised a hand before Owen could speak. "Do not bother, I may be curious, but I do not doubt that you would create an impossible experience debt by using it to fight me." Owen nodded and selected no. Less than a millisecond of time passed and another message window popped up.

*You have witnessed the Jeweled Monkey Emperor practice each of his spear styles and have been able to grasp some understanding behind the forms he practiced. Would you like to learn the skill Polymath's Spear Mastery? Y/N?*

Knowing that this is what they had been waiting for, he didn't hesitate in selecting yes.

Power flowed through him, not unlike when he had been tempering his body, he felt a part of him alter slightly and another message window appeared.

*You have upgraded Basic Spear Thrust to Polymath's Spear Mastery: Level 1.*

Owen pumped both fists in the air and an amused Xerxes made a small motion and Owen shared the screen grinning. Hiss master then seemed genuinely frazzled. "This was not the skill I was expecting you to learn," He said frowning. "I had expected you to learn the skill Jeweled Monkey Emperor's Spear Mastery." Owen couldn't help like he had done something wrong again. "Well, with a name that long maybe this one will work better?"

He sunk even further into himself when his master didn't laugh but only frowned deeper. "This is not good, you have my skills." His master said still frowning. Shaking his head he reread the panel and sat back. "Wasn't I supposed to gain your skills?" Owen said meekly. "Yes and no, you misunderstand the meaning. You should have my inheritance right now, mine." He said putting emphasis on the word, mine.

"But you don't have the skills that would normally be associated with the my inheritance. You keep gaining skills that are from the inheritance I have. Normally, the Polymath's keen eye is a skill given through an item. I am then able to grant my inheritance to them, because it is a skill that binds us partially, since it was a skill originally created by a god."

Owen felt like he was getting dizzy. He had stolen an inheritance rather than being given one, then it turns out that it's not his master's inheritance, but a god's. He didn't even have the energy to feel anything anymore, he was too overwhelmed by it all. Xerxes quickly noticed and force himself to set his surprise aside. "This is not a bad thing necessarily, it just is not what I had expected."

Owen just nodded and Xerxes sighed. "We should call it a day for now, I will need to find something for you to fight, to remove the experience debt you created by upgrading your skill."

Owen hadn't even noticed, he just nodded and went to his room, his master staring at him walk away with a worried look on his face.

"Rat, this serious, he does not have my inheritance, he has MY inheritance." Xerxes fumed, while staring at a pool of shadows through the transparent walls. "What did you say he has?" Rat spoke quickly, immediately forming from the shadows. "He somehow has the inheritance of the Polymath, instead of mine. Which means, I cannot have him be my heir, unless you are fine with a human being seated among the zodiac."

Rat moved closer to the transparent walls and spoke quietly, almost as if worried someone might overhear her. "You just need to remove the inheritance from him then, I assume you know how to do that?!" Her voice had raised in pitch until she was practically screaming at him. "I cannot do that, shattering his soul and core immediately after tempering, the backlash would kill even me. Then we would be stuck in the same situation." He was slightly exasperated now, not at Rat, but at the situation.

Plans had already begun under the impression all twelve members of the zodiac were prepared to have their heirs slowly groomed into taking over their position as a member of the zodiac. "You need to find another heir then, I do not care if you need to break a few rules here and there, just get this done, we cannot be delayed any longer.

Otherwise centuries of planning will have been wiped away as if it were nothing!" Rat barked out. Xerxes was only able to nod, he could forcibly give someone the Polymath's Keen Eye skill, but it would also cost him centuries of his own progress.

Rat ended the mana bond between them, leaving him to sit in the dark and think. Owen was now too far removed from being an heir apparent, but it was possible Owen could help him select someone. He would wait until tomorrow though, Owen had seemed almost unresponsive after he had accidentally made it sound like he was angry with him.

It was an overreaction, but he could not blame him, It was a dire situation, but now it would not be Owen's issue. He was an equal now as they were on the same path, even if they were on drastically different levels. He could only hope Owen would make it further than he had.