An hour later Nessa returned with the emperor in tow and introduced him to Jem.

“This lazy sack of bones is my husband Karim. Say hello, Karim.”

“Hello Jem,” said Karim, giving a wave. “It’s nice to meet you properly. If your system presence is still high we should definitely do some more training together.”

Jem’s brain fought itself as he struggled to reconcile his experience of ‘training’ with the man and this man with the kind eyes and warm smile.

“Hi,” said Jem, offering a small smile.

“Okay everyone, follow me,” said Nessa. She took them on a winding route through the castle and into some of the servants' corridors. They were much like the ordinary castle corridors except they had slightly lower ceilings and looked like they were actually used. Real secret passageways didn’t live up to the hype.

They came to a halt by a small door. It was indistinct from a myriad of other similar doors dotted along the corridors.

Nessa grabbed the door handle and yanked it open.

Three people were already inside.

The throuple, because that is what they evidently were, looked thoroughly dishevelled. Their hair was mused and all three were in various states of undress. Though thankfully none of them were naked.

Either they hadn’t gotten that far yet, or everything that was going to happen had already happened.

The three jumped at the sudden intrusion.

One groaned, “Not again.”

Another yelped as an antler smacked him in the face and the third curtsied. “Empress, if you’d excuse us.”

She grabbed the antlers of the other two and dragged them away as quickly as possible.

“That was mean.” Aoife jabbed Nessa in the ribs. “You knew they were in there.”

“What better way is there to make sure there’s no one listening in?” she said, her face a mask of innocence. “I would certainly make sure my hook-up locations had no prying eyes.”

Jem might have believed her reasoning if it weren’t for Karim doubling over in laughter. “That’s the third time. You can’t keep walking in on them.” He looked like he was crying.

Nessa’s innocent veneer cracked and she started laughing too. “But Karim, every time. They’re just so polite.”

They’re diabolical, all of them. Diabolical.

Karim straightened and let out a breath. “Hoo. Okay. Alright. Everyone in. It seems like we have a lot to talk about.”

Everyone flowed in behind Karim, leaving Jem as the last to enter. As he did he closed the door behind himself. The room was plunged into darkness for a moment before a blue sigil sprung up on the ceiling bathing the room in blue tinted light.

“Okay mum, grandad, you’re on wards. Karim, you do you. Jem, move out of the doorway so they can finish laying them down,” said Nessa.

Jem moved forwards into the centre of the room.

Despite their tendency to tease her, and in the case of Aoife, tell her off, every single one of them jumped to follow Nessa’s commands. It wasn’t strange in the sense of subjects and their empress, but it did feel a bit strange to see her own family respond in the exact same way.

Both Aoife with her divine magic and Haywood with his blue magic made a series of overlapping magic circles which touched every surface of the room. Where the lines of their different magics overlapped nothing special happened. The colour only shifted, becoming a mix of the two.

When they were done, Nessa spoke again. “Okay Jem, as I was saying. The dragon under the blankets is the charge on your dimensional mark. After we saw the signs of a mark in the Heart I did a little reading. From what I can tell, the mark charges at a different rate for each person who has one. Do you have a skill that can tell you what your mark’s charge is?”

Jem nodded and activated [Self Aware]. “It’s at 0.1594%”

“Good. That means that we’ll have–” Nessa paused for a moment.

“Just over two years,” said Haywood.

“I only have two years,” said Jem, batting a mothballed apron out of his face. “That’s not good.”

Did we have to have this conversation in a closet? A sex closet. Don’t their antlers get stuck in– He didn’t even know how he was getting distracted during this conversation.

“...to do?” said Nessa.

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They all looked at him expectantly.

“Sorry I missed what you said. Could you say that again?” Jem felt his face flush and was glad that colour was harder to see in the blue light.

“I said if you tell us about your class, we can figure out what to do together. Though I’m starting to think finding you an attention skill might be a higher priority,” she said with a slight smirk on her lips.

Jem launched into his description of what had happened during his class selection and then subsequent class modifier selection.

“Yeah, [Expert Skill Descriptions] was a waste, but the other stuff sounds very good,” said Nessa.

“Why does everyone hate ‘[Expert Skill Descriptions]’ so much? They are useful.”

This time Karim spoke. “It’s not that it’s bad per se. It’s just that there are much better options. Especially with your [Uncapped] modifier. You might have been able to get a weak experience boost modifier, or one of the more advanced versions of [Skill Slot]. With [Uncapped] you’d get far far more general skill slots than the average person as you get two every 20 levels in your starter class.”

Jem realised something and he smirked. “So what you mean to say is that it’s Haywood’s fault? After all, he is the one that didn’t explain it to me properly.”

“Wipe that smirk off your face brat.” said Haywood, clearly smiling himself. “Afterall, they would have all wasted your potential and encouraged you to pick [The Black Spot]. I saved you from mediocrity.”

There was a collective groan from everyone else in the room, bar Jem.

“Grandad, you put a target on his back and his dimensional mark still isn’t dealt with. Also A rank classes aren’t mediocre; you have a B rank starter class, [Barrier Mage]. And you were scheming for achievements if he got an A rank class. So if Jem wants to be annoyed with you I think that is very much his right. But. That isn’t what’s important right now so let's get back on topic.”

“Wait, how did you know I was scheming? I mean how could my sweet innocent granddaughter accuse me of scheming?” asked Haywood, clutching his chest dramatically. “I am mortally wounded, my life it–”

Aoife stepped forward raising her finger threateningly. “Can it old man. This is important for Jem. Also everyone else, apart from you, has things they need to be getting on with. So don’t play around right now.”

“Ah. Sorry Jem,” said Haywood.

“AS I WAS SAYING, we need to make a plan for Jem. As I see it there’s two or three main things we need to make a plan for. Firstly we need a plan for the mark. We've got time, but we do not want to leave it until the last minute. I have some ideas, and we’ll discuss the mark now, but all of you should also think about options over the next week. We will have another meeting then. Secondly, Jem needs an education. No offence Jem, but you don’t have any of the common sense knowledge I’d expect you to have. You’re going to go to the University, but obviously not in your true identity.

“It’s not unheard of for commoners to go and we might be able to get you in under the guise of a merchant’s relative or something of the like. We will obviously need a disguise for you. And some way to make you look Alcan. Being a Satyr isn't an issue. But it’s much harder to explain away a Satyr than an uninformed country bumpkin.

“The other thing we need to talk about is your role here. You’re legally part of the family now and that comes with responsibilities. That also means you’re going to have to attend functions as my brother. To explain it away we’ll probably say that you got an A rank class, but we decided to keep you close because people from other realms tend to have better class options. A person with potential future power, but for now mostly unobtrusive.”

“Wait. That’s a lot. Also it sounds like you were planning to adopt me from the start?” Jem directed that at Aoife.

She just snorted. “No, from the start, we were going to encourage Haywood to pick up some responsibility for once and get an apprentice.”

“What? You can’t just volunteer me for things,” said Haywood.

“Then there were the repercussions of the ritual, I was planning to adopt you at that point. I felt like you’d been dealt a rough hand and I could at least keep you safe from everything going on,” she sighed, “and then you sweetened the pot so much that it would be irresponsible to let you go. If you let the wrong person know about your class you’d almost certainly get killed or worse. You also have astounding growth potential that can be nothing but a boon to us. That is to say you’re part of the family.”

“Unless you want us to break your class core and cripple you?” Nessa chimed in.

“What?” said Jem, his voice breaking. “Please don’t do that.”

“Everyone knew I was joking.” She looked around. “Right?”

Karim winced. “Sweetie. You are the empress, and everyone just told Jem that he’s a potential war spell waiting to go off. That probably wasn’t obvious to him.”

“Right.” She said, shooting finger guns at Jem. “Sorry. Soo, yeah those things?”

Wait, do guns exist in this world. “What’s that thing you did with your fingers?” Jem mimicked the gesture.

“Kol blasters. Well, if I had the spell on, Kol blasters. They’re a Kol construct spell. You make the construct then it fires bolts of Kol when you pull the trigger, using your Kol to do it. Anyway, Haywood. You’re on notes. Write down that we need to get Jem an attention skill as soon as possible. At this rate he doesn’t stand a chance at university.”

“Hey, I was almost done, on my world,” Jem grumbled.

Haywood chuckled.