Dyani’s current theory for why the whole city was looking for Pikawon was that he’d had a lurid affair with the Squirrel Lord’s kid. The only strike against that theory was that publicly, the city lord was childless, but she knew that this would hardly be the first time a politician had an undisclosed or illicit child.

There was a chance that Pikawon had stolen something valuable from the palace, but unless the city lord had an artifact-level toilet brush, she couldn’t think of how the son of plumbers would gain access to his treasures.

While coming up with theories while they navigated back to the base was amusing, it couldn’t keep her attention off the number in the corner of her vision for long. The percentage of her talent’s analysis had advanced to 7%, but it was progressing far too slowly for her taste.

It was time for an experiment.

Dyani had already tried feeding a small amount of her gathered experience into her interface to speed up the process, but all the power had funneled into one of the 2 incomplete skill functions, bringing its own progress up a fraction of a percent. That was certainly something she wanted to explore, but not her current priority.

After a few failed attempts in which the experience she fed into her interface twisted at her command, but sank into the same incomplete function, she managed to get a fraction of experience to feed into the portion of the interface that she could feel prodding her spirit, calculating, testing, and prodding again.

It sat somewhere between the Identification and Status functions, but beyond that, she couldn’t tell much about it. Once she got the hang of feeding the experience where she wanted it to go, Dyani poured everything she’d gathered today into it.

The steady movement of the analysis function slowed to a crawl as the power was absorbed, then returned to its job just a bit faster than before. It seemed she’d increased its overall efficiency, rather than forcing through the results she wanted right now. If she had to guess, it was moving 10% faster than before, meaning she’d get a new percent of her talent analyzed every nine minutes instead of ten.

That was better, at least that was what she told herself. A permanent gain was always better than a temporary one, especially since she’d only have to wait a day for something she’d been working months for. She almost managed to convince herself.

It was at 10% by the time they were back at their base, further hurried along by the experience of another couple rats.

Despite the ease with which Pikawon had finished his fights, he collapsed into the only chair with the apparent exhaustion of someone who’d worked several hard days without rest.

“So, are you going to tell me why everybodies looking for you?”

“Can’t I just rest for a second?” Pikawon cracked open a single eye to give her a half hearted glare.

“You don’t have to get up. You can talk and rest at the same time.”

“Neverfaint, grant me endurance,” he prayed. He groaned as he assumed a more normal sitting position.

“You really want to know. You realize that this could get you in real danger? The city lord’s dangerous enough, even without all his lackeys.”

Dyani was getting really annoyed with people trying to protect her from dangerous knowledge. Komo, her father’s old teammate and healer, had refused to tell her anything about his murder until she was stronger than he was. And she was sure her mother knew more than she was letting on.

She took a deep breath, reminding herself that Pikawon wasn’t refusing to answer, only making sure she knew the risks. Besides, these were his secrets. It wasn’t like she had a right to them.

“I can handle myself. If you’re willing to tell me, I’d like to know.”

Dyani was startled when her small interface icon started pulsing. When she focused on it, the five pointed star opened. The Connections section, the only active section she hadn’t yet opened, was pulsing with the same light. When it folded open, she had an alert.

Connection request from Pikawon Billbrook.

Accept?

As soon as she mentally agreed, the alert vanished, and she was left with a list of available connections, with only a single name. A moment later, Pikawon’s name pulse, and a message appeared alongside it.

Pikawon Billbrook has shared his current Status with you.

When she focused on the word ‘status’, a page similar to her own appeared before her.

* Name: Pikawon Billbrook

* Level: 2.2

* Experience: 24%

* Attributes:

* Mana Capacity: 0

* Mana Regeneration: 0

* Magic Power: 0

* Strength: 1

* Speed: 1

* Endurance: 0

* Vitality: 0

* Mind: 1

* Toughness: 0

* Perception: 0

* Talents:

1. Any skills you absorb are altered to make you the perfect predator. Your body is altered based on absorbed skills.

2. You can absorb experience by consuming the flesh of defeated creatures. Experience gained is dramatically reduced if you did not participate in the creature’s defeat. You cannot absorb experience from any other source.

* Talent Skills:

* None

* Skill Slots:

* Bestial Instincts (Unique)

* (Transformed from Enhancing Hearing)

* Type: Passive, Perception

* Affinity: Beast, Mental

* Range: Self

* Cost: None

* Effect: Provides a small, passive boost to all senses. Increases the strength and clarity of predatory instincts. The effects of this skill scale with Perception.

* Sundering Claw (Unique)

* (Transformed from Slash)

* Type: Attack, Melee

* Affinity: Beast, Blade

* Range: Self

* Cost: Low Mana

* Effect: Concentrates cutting energy around any part of the user’s body that is naturally sharp.

“Just look at my first talent. You can goggle over the rest of it later.”

“I’m not goggling,” Dyani said, schooling her face to hide her excitement and amazement. She’d only had an interface for an hour and she already couldn’t imagine living without it. Detailed information about herself, her resources, and her experience were enough to make it worth it.

She read through his talent, realizing that his claws, teeth, ears, and eyes weren’t the result of an inhuman heritage. If she had to guess, his Bestial Instincts skill had transformed his eyes to reflective yellow and stretched his ears to points, and his Sundering Claw skill had sharpened his claws and teeth.

All in all, it was a powerful talent, with obvious downsides if you cared about keeping a human appearance and not eating monster meat, but one that she would’ve taken any day of the year.

But it wasn’t so powerful that the leader of a city would take notice.

“Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see why this is a big deal.”

Pikawon gritted his teeth and balled his fists, but his anger was clearly directed at someone other than her. Once he had himself under control, he continued.

“What do you know about talent inheritance?”

“Talents aren’t hereditary, everybody knows that.” If they were, arranged marriages and outright breeding camps would be commonplace. Just look at Dyani, her father’s talents were focused on fire and shaping intangible energy, while her mother’s made her a human wraith, neither of which had anything to do with hers.

“That’s right, but there’s one thing that talents can do that is.” Pikawon wiggled his fingers, light sparkling off his metallic claws.

“Any changes to someone’s body can be passed down to their children.” Dyani immediately knew that was wrong.

“That makes no sense.”

“Oh, I thought you didn’t know anything about this.”

“I don’t, but if it was true, I’d be half ghost.”

Pikawon’s smug look was replaced with confusion.

“What?”

“My mom’s talent makes her body intangible. If I inherited that, I’d be at least half intangible, and I’m not.” Dyani demonstrated by poking Pikawon’s shoulder until he pushed her hand away.

“Let me guess, your dad was at a much higher level than your mom when you were conceived?”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Yes…. About three times as high.” As far as Dyani knew, her mother had been around level 2 until after she was born, while her father must’ve been at least level 6.

“Makes sense,”

“No it doesn’t.”

“It would if you stopped interrupting and let me explain. Saints, you’re annoying.” Dyani didn’t take that to heart, since Pikawon was trying and failing to hide a smile.

“Every child gets more attributes from their more powerful parent, and that difference scales with the level difference. Mother’s always pass on a bit more, from the gestation process, but if your dad was three times your mother’s level, there was little chance for you to be more than a bit intangible, and intangibility doesn’t sound like an trait that would work at 1%, so you got a normal body.”

“But that still doesn’t explain why the city lord would be interested in you. Why would he want a bunch of sharp toothed babies?”

Pikawon sighed, poking at one of his elongated canines.

“It’s not just physical traits that get passed down. Every change to the body has a spiritual aspect as well, some more than others, and they get passed on as long as the physical traits do. In your mom’s case, she probably has a different arrangement of resources, since health wouldn’t be much use without flesh and blood.”

Dyani nodded at that. She already knew her mother lacked health, and stamina for that matter, instead having a larger mana pool. It was lucky she hadn’t passed that trait to Dyani with her physical body. Even if she could live without health and stamina, it couldn’t be healthy.

“So what’s your spiritual change, and why does it matter?”

It would have to be significant, if it was powerful enough for someone to want to breed Pikawon to get more of it.

“Simple. My mana has an affinity, a beast affinity. And apparently our dear city lord, with his own beast centric magic, wants an army with the same affinity. I don’t know why exactly, but I do know he has at least one skill for increasing the power of beasts he controls, so I assume he’s hoping that would work on me and my potential offspring.”

It only sank in then that the city lord’s plans for Pikawon, her 16 year old friend, involved using him as breeding stock. It disgusted her. Even if he waited until her friend was older, forcing someone to have kid after kid, only to exploit them as soldiers or slaves was far worse than anything Dyani had expected.

The only brightside was that having kids required both physical and spiritual intimacy, so no one could outright force him to do it.

“I hate to say it, but I was right.”

Pikawon gave her a wary look.

“You literally just learned this was possible and have been arguing against it this whole time.”

“Not about that,” Dyani said dismissively, “I was right about teaming up with you. With a villain and a backstory like that, there’s no way we’re not going to have a kickass adventure.”

“Sure. You were right,” Pikawon said sarcastically, “And I’m hungry.”

Pikawon rose to his feet and rummaged around in a storage crate before retrieving two metal cans. He tossed one to Dyani before sitting back down. Instead of using any tools, he simply activated Sundering Claw on a single finger and sliced around most of the rim and bending the top open.

Dyani looked down at her own can, which was unlabeled. Her spear had a blade for cutting flesh, not metal, and would be unwieldy. Her belt knife lacked any enchantments to assist, but it would have to do. Before she could try using it, Pikawon interrupted her.

“Here.”

He leaned halfway out of his chair and switched her unopened can for his open one.

“Thanks,” Dyani said, trying not to let her jealousy show on her face as he repeated his earlier trick to open the other can.

“What is this?” It looked like a thick soup, with unidentifiable lumps that weren’t exactly stoking her appetite.

“No idea. I bought a bulk case of canned food, but they got all jumbled together. Could be anything.”

Lacking a spoon, Dyani took a tentative sip. It tasted like an oversalted vegetable broth, a conclusion that was further supported by the chunks of what turned out to be potato and carrot. It wasn’t good, but she’d eaten worse, and it didn’t smell or taste spoiled, so she finished it without complaint before Pikawon was halfway through.

He grunted through a mouthful of his dinner that he was eating with an actual spoon, something creamy white and filled with boiled grains and chunks of gray meat. He pushed everything in his mouth into one of his cheeks like a lopsided chipmunk.

“And I thought I was hungry. Or did you just get the better can?”

Dyani rolled her eyes but didn’t bother answering. She doubted her soup was much better than whatever he was eating. In fact, the reason she’d finished so quickly was to get it over with.

If she’d thought about it, she might’ve refused the canned meal, since she had food at home and didn’t want to burn through Pikawon’s limited food supply. The thought of her mother’s cooking made her smile. It was good, when she had the mana to spare to move everything she needed to, but in recent years, Dyani had done most of the cooking. It made sense, since her mother didn’t need to eat, but it still made Dyani sad sometimes. It was just another way their lives had changed.

Dyani pulled out the necklace with the skill shard she’d been given on her awakening from between her shirt and armor, clutching it in her hand as she thought of her mother. Her skin shivered anywhere it made contact with the condensed mana, more intensely than it ever had before.

Dyani’s breath caught. Was this how skills felt to everyone else? Maybe her mana sense had been dulled before thanks to her inability to absorb it. Which meant…..maybe?

Pulling up every memory she had on skill absorption, Dyani focused on one of her empty skill slots, which she could feel like divots in her spirit. Pulling a thread of energy from that open space, she pushed it, along with her mana senses into the skill shard.

The thread of spirit stopped right at the crystal’s surface, unlike every explanation of the skill absorption process she’d heard. Even trying to absorb an incompatible skill should allow her spirit to enter, the connection only breaking when she pulled on the connected thread.

Dyani groaned and tossed her empty can against the wall, drawing a raised eyebrow from Pikawon. She answered his unasked question by holding up the blue-gray skill shard.

“My mom gave me this shard after I awakened. I just tried to absorb it. I thought..It felt different this time. I thought my new talent might’ve unlocked my ability to absorb skills.”

Pikawon chewed thoughtfully, thankfully swallowing before speaking this time.

“Different how?”

“Stronger, like the shard was more powerful. I thought maybe my sense of it was dampened before, and that was just the restriction being removed, but apparently I was wrong.”

Pikawon’s brow pinched and his eyes wandered off in a memory.

“Talents don’t take steps back, only forward. I don’t know how much control the Lost Saint has over the process, if any, but we both know that, no matter how much it sucks. No talent is going to waste the energy of altering your spirit only to waste more by undoing it.”

“I know,” Dyani groaned, flopping over from her seated position on the cot to laying on it, hands clutching her head. She let out a small scream through clenched teeth.

“It just felt so obvious, so right, like the world was finally going to be fair.”

Pikawon snorted.

“Good luck with that. If you ever thought the world was fair, you weren’t paying attention.” When that failed to get a reaction from her, Pikawon tried a different track.

“It’s still interesting that the shard felt different.”

“Sure. So interesting.”

“Hey,” Pikawon snapped, pointing his spoon at her like a sword, “There’s only room for one sarcasm elemental in this cave, and I was here first.”

That actually got a smile out of her, but Dyani was quick to hide it with her arm.

“Fine, I guess it might be interesting, but I won’t know what it means for hours.” When Dyani looked, she saw the progress up to 15%, which was admittedly further than she’d expected. Maybe the experience she’d fed her interface had done more than she’d thought.

“You know, logomancers didn’t even exist a hundred years ago, probably less than that. And most people in the city don’t have fancy interfaces. In the olden days, people figured out their talents through their spiritual senses and trial and error. There’s no reason you can’t do the same.”

Dyani slowly uncoiled her arms from around her head. She felt a bit stupid for giving up after testing a single theory, and not even a good theory, about the nature of her new talent. Her reaction had been understandable, but it was closer to a child’s tantrum than anything else.

“Or you could just go to a temple. They’ll give you the results for free.”

That should’ve been tempting, but it felt too much like giving up. Even if she didn’t manage to figure out her talent completely, her interface would have an answer for her tomorrow at the latest.

“No, let's figure this out.”

Pikawon raised his hands up, palms out.

“Don’t look at me. It’s your spirit.”

Dyani rolled her eyes once again and made a rude gesture, at which Pikawon gave her a mock wounded expression as he clutched his chest.

“Just let me bounce ideas off you,” she said, cutting off whatever joke he was about to make, “And shut up.”

Meditation wasn’t one of Dyani’s strengths, but she’d done it at school when absolutely required. According to her teachers, it was essential at higher levels of advancement, but she’d never taken those claims too seriously. Her father had been the strongest person she’d ever met, except maybe Komo, and the only time he would sit still was when he was asleep.

She slipped off her boots and crossed her legs on Pikawon’s cot, pinching the skill shard between her fingers. Her interface interpreted her staring as a request to identify it.

* Skill Shard: Jump (Common)

* Type: Mobility

* Affinity: Force

* Range: Self

* Cost: Low Stamina

* Effect: Increases the power of an ordinary jump.

She willed the window away to use her natural, spiritual senses instead. She could still feel more mana from the shard, but in a subtler way than it simply being more powerful. The mana felt richer and more nuanced than it had before.

Once again, she tried to absorb the skill with no success, attempting with threads from all four of her empty skill slots, even using more than one at once.

The last time she tried pushing her spiritual thread into the skill shard, she didn’t pull her perception back when the thread was blocked. She was startled when, instead of limited feedback on the affinity and strength of the mana, the inner workings of the skill unfolded in front of her.

Pulling back from the influx of information, she nearly dropped the shard.

“What is it?” Pikawon said. Dyani hadn’t seen him move, but he was now crouching in front of her, the shining claws of one hand biting into the stone of the floor.

“I don’t know. Let me try it again.” This time, she closed her eyes before sinking her perception into the shard, to remove her sight from the overwhelming perceptions.

Once again, the spiritual structure of the skill bloomed like a flower, revealing a three dimensional matrix of mana. Reaching out with a hand she couldn’t see, Dyani rotated the matrix until it lined up to form a single, two dimension rune. Dismissing the vision, Dyani took Pikawon’s hand that still had its claws piercing the floor. With a single one of his claws and a bemused expression from him, she drew a rough copy of the rune.

“Do you know what this rune means?”

“Um…Identify says it means Bodily Force.”

Along with his words, Dyani received a message from him with the description his interface provided.

* Rune of Bodily Force (Uncharged) (Common)

* Level: N/A

* Condition: Poor

* Description: A rune used to increase the speed and power of bodily movements. This rune is most commonly used with Force affinity mana.

“Where did you see this?”

Dyani’s heart was bubbling with excitement and fear. She didn’t know what this meant yet, but it meant her new talent did something interesting, which was more than her first had.

“It was inside the skill shard, but it wasn’t just this. It was a whole mess of lines that made this shape when I turned it a certain way.”

“What’s the skill?”

“Jump.”

Pikawon nodded.

“Fair enough. That makes sense with the rune, but I don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it. Maybe you can get enchanters to pay you for the complicated version of the rune. I’m sure someone will pay buckets of scales for the pattern if it works better than the standard rune.”

That was one avenue to think about, if one that didn’t sound that satisfying to Dyani. She didn’t care about money, at least not more than becoming a slayer, but any talent that she could use was better than nothing, and her mother would be happy for any turn of fate that kept her safe.