Larry and Jorg stood before Melissa, unsure of what to do with her. The mage had fallen asleep at some point, her head hanging low as she sat bound and cross-legged on the ground. Occasionally, Larry could hear a quiet snore from her. He wondered if her nose had been damaged from the fumes of the acid that had burned her hand.

Larry looked at her hand. The scars she had on it looked somewhat similar to Larry’s burn wounds, but the healing potion seemed to have healed them more effectively. Jorg had saved her from death with that healing potion, but Larry doubted that even Jorg had enough good will to release the girl from her bindings, now that they planned to leave the clearing. She was simply too dangerous. Jorg moved to remove her bindings.

Of course, Larry thought, rolling his eyes.

“Hold on,” Larry said. “What are you doing? She attacked us yesterday, remember?”

“I think we can trust her,” Jorg said. “She doesn’t seem very angry at us.”

“That is clearly just acting. The moment you release her, she’ll blast us with fire.”

“She won’t.”

“She will,” Larry said. “She didn’t hesitate to attack us for even a second yesterday. I say we should just leave her here.”

“Larry,” Jorg said, putting his hand on Larry's shoulder. “I don’t think you understand. I agree that she doesn't have all her cups in the cupboard, but I’m absolutely sure she won’t attack us. There is too much Meaning going against it.”

There it was again. Meaning. The word had popped up from time to time, it even was part of his Adaptability ability, but he never quite heard an explanation for it. He just assumed it was something like experience from video games. Just some resource you gathered to level up, nothing more. Clearly, there was more to it than that.

“Ok, this might sound dumb,” said Larry. “But what exactly is Meaning?”

“Figures you didn’t know about that either,” Jorg said. “It’s like you know nothing about this world at all.”

Larry crinched. Knowingly or not, Jorg hit the nail right on its head. Jorg scratched his beard.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

“I know you said you grew up as an orphan,” Jorg said. “But have you ever read a fairy tail? You know, these the prince slays the dragon kind of things.”

“Yeah. Why?”

“I don’t really understand how Meaning works myself, but my mother used to say: ‘Meaning turns the world into a story.’ Most stories follow some kind for pattern, you know. If you compare enough of them, you’ll see that at their core, there are always similarities.”

Larry knew about that. Back on Earth, for example, many people complained about how every new action movie was just the same concept, regurgitated. Larry watched Jorg’s eyes glimmer with excitement. He was clearly happy to talk about this topic. Apparently, Jorg made a hobby of philosophizing. Who would have guessed.

“Real life works the same way,” Jorg said. “Everything that happens is part of a pattern, and the more you play into these patterns, the more Meaning you will pick up along the way. You become more important in the eyes of the world.”

“And what does Meaning actually do?” Larry asked.

“Many things. For most people, it's just enough to eliminate their need for food and drink, or at least suppress it to some extend. That’s the normal people, the villagers and townsfolk that aren’t really important in the grand scheme of things. The people that don’t go down in the books of history. But if you gain enough Meaning through your actions, it overflows and expands. You start gaining Levels.”

Larry’s eyes went wide. He realized he hadn’t eaten in three day, and never even grown hungry once. Which meant Meaning had actually taken away his hunger the whole time, but not only that, he had accumulated enough of it to reach Level 8. He raised an eyebrow.

“But I’ve reached Level 8 in only two fights.”

“It's unusual,” Jorg said. “But not unheard of. It's not the amount of fights you fought that counts, but the importance of the fights. You fought for your life two times now, and both times you risked everything to win. You gave those fights weight, because they mattered to you, so you got a lot of Meaning from them in return.”

Larry thought back to his fights with the beast and the Bone Knight. The decisions he made and how he acted on them. Jorg was right. These fights had been insane, and went far beyond what he would have expected from himself. It felt like he was a different person, when he had faced those enemies. No, the fights had made him a different person. They had given him Meaning.

Larry looked down onto Melissa.

“And why does Meaning prevent her from killing us?” he asked.

“Symmetry” Jorg said. “You had a fight to the death, and both of you nearly died. You both burned each other's skin, and you both lay next to each other when you both passed out. And lastly,” Jorg said, grinning. “You were both saved by the same person. Me.”

Jorg began to unbind Melissa. Larry watched him, unsure of what to think of this information.

“Us three are tied together by Meaning,” Jorg said. “For better or for worse.”

----

It had only been a few days since Mattlean had sent his daughter away to train her magic. Still, he missed her deeply. She was a bright girl, and while she did not have the magical talent that he himself possessed at her age, he loved her more than anything. His own father had never cared much for him, and Mattlean hadn’t had an easy childhood because of it.

He remembered how his father would keep him awake for weeks on end. In his sleep deprived state Mattlean would hallucinate the most nightmarish things. His father had called it “connecting with the deeper magics”.

Of course, Mattlean would never force his daughter to do something like this. He would be a better father than his own was to him, even if it meant his daughter would never achieve higher orders of magic. Even sending her on the small learning adventure she had gone to made him anxious. Would she remember him as a bad father, once he was dead? Did she love him as much as he loved her? He didn’t know, and it ate at his soul.