“Not even privacy in my own home.” Mike mused softly to himself as he stared at the point that radiated the System’s influence.

After a few moments, he turned back to look at his newly created rock, but now that he had noticed the System’s observance, he couldn’t get his mind off of it. He had debated with himself what the System actually was many times over the previous year, and he always knew that there was the possibility that it monitored his every move, but he had never felt observed until that moment. There were occasions where he felt like it was logging his actions, a snarky message when getting a new Skill or the custom Quests he had received, but this was the first time where he felt like it was watching him.

Unable to focus on anything else, he returned to his bedroom and decided to meditate. He didn’t know if the System could see his channels, but he felt confident that it couldn’t see what he was thinking.

After a half hour, he was able to calm his troubled mind, despite still being able to locate the small dot above him that seemed to be watching. Nothing about his situation had truly changed. As far as he knew, the System had always been watching, he was just able to detect it all of a sudden.

He was eventually roused from his meditation by a wet tongue licking his cheek. Opening his eyes, he saw both Ash and Autumn sitting patiently in front of him. They were clearly asking for more cosmic water, but rather than simply giving it to them, he took a moment to check in on their growth.

Name: Ash

Monster Type: Fleetfoot Fox

Level: 75

Strength: 70

Dexterity: 150

Intelligence: 80

Charisma: 55

Toughness: 30

Luck: 40

Abilities: Dash-Gain massively increased Dexterity for a short duration. Wind Ax-Propel a sharp gust of wind through the air. Aeromancy. Avis.

Affinity: Solar-Lunar

So much had changed since he first rescued them. Not only were all of their stats higher, they had gained a few new abilities–he was eager to see if Avis actually allowed them to fly or not. He also realized in that moment how much they had grown physically. Where once they had easily fit in his arms, each of their heads was now up to his waist, and he knew they would only get stronger.

A soft whine broke him from his reverie. They wanted more water, but for the first time, he was unwilling to give it to them. Not because he didn’t want to waste it, but because he didn’t feel like it would be in their best interests. Even gaining stats and skills, were they actually any better off at protecting themselves than they had been before? They had gained no real experience in fighting or using their abilities, and he decided to change that.

It was still 5 hours until daylight by that point, so he immediately walked towards the tunnel's entrance, calling for the cubs to follow him. As he began his descent, they both whined softly, standing away from the edge while looking gingerly in every direction.

“I’ve raised a couple of wussies” he muttered before hollering up to them, “Hurry on down here you won’t get any more cosmic water from me.” That said, he simply kept climbing down without looking up again.

He was still a few body-lengths away from the ground when both of the cubs descended past him, gliding on the air with all of the grace of a baby bird. Just as he suspected, some hands-on training would benefit them both greatly. Releasing the wall, he fell the remaining distance and landed lightly on his feet.

“Ok ladies, I’m going to go wake up some wurms and I want you to see what you can do to them.” He said, before immediately stepping off into the sand and activating Unflinching Meteor.

He had already shattered his first wurmlet and was flying through the air from its explosion when he heard their first attacks.

*Whip*

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*Thud*

*Screeeeeech*

The noises continued intermittently while he killed two more wurms and was finally able to move again. Using a gust of wind as he jumped, he propelled himself back to safety, where he was finally able to see how the foxes were doing. The short answer was, not great. Though their wind blades seemed powerful, they were directly countered by the hard skin of the wurms, and it was only when they managed to land a blade in an enemies mouth that any damage was delivered.

The good news was that they had a seemingly unending amount of targets. With the wurms fighting over their brethren’s scraps and being unable to see their attackers, not to mention being unwilling to exit the sand and enter the rocky ground of the plateau, the foxes were able to hone their skills without any risk. While Mike was positive that this wasn’t the way to gain experience using skills in the long run, it was a good place for them to at least measure their power.

Over the next 20 minutes, Mike noticed a dramatic improvement to their attacks, both in terms of power and accuracy, and a few bladed actually managed to take out a wurmlet altogether. It was evident that they had both gained at least one level in their skills.

Not wanting to overstay their welcome, Mike instructed them to return to their home while he began climbing the tunnel. Rather than asking for more water, both seemed content to consolidate their gains through the kill energy already shadowing their cores, and they both settled bedded down for the night. Mike decided to follow their lead. With his ability to mine during the day, his need to regulate his sleeping time was dramatically diminished.

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After that first hunt, He had been forced to make a decision: either he could keep giving them water and they would continue to grow in his cavern, or he could help them achieve true independence. It was a no-brainer, and he held his course, even when the foxes tried to cute their way into getting more of the cosmic water.

Over the next several weeks, the cubs continued to grow dramatically, and their insistence at wanting to hunt was becoming troubling for one very specific reason: wurmlets were no longer strong enough to help them grow. Much as Mike had been required to kill hundreds of adventurers to gain a level, the fox cubs were reaching a similar pain point. The issue was, the only other things to hunt were birds, and with the ruling giant being in their midst, all three knew that wasn’t an option.

They no longer simply processed energy all day long either. Without the energy dense cosmic water, they spent much more time awake and alert, practicing their Aeromancy. He tried to get them to help move rocks, but it seemed they could only understand his commands not related to working–at least that was what he told himself when he was alone working and they were playing.

At length, the day came that Mike had been dreading. The fox cubs were ready to go hunting on their own. Their ability to fly had grown truly impressive, and as he watched them soar over the wurm-nest in the moonlight, his heart hurt. For the first time in months, he was completely alone again. He would miss their flying practice in the gorge while he collected blasting stone and the sound of their wind blades hammering against the caves while he dug. He knew it wasn’t goodbye forever–without another water source, they would likely be back within a few days. But he worried that that might be just around the corner.

In his semi-depressed state, he turned to symbol carving and creation, feeling less careful and more willing to press the boundaries than ever before. Throughout the previous week, he was fairly confident that he had figured out what portion of the Energy Suck symbol was responsible for doing the sucking–although it was more complicated than simply sucking. It was more like absorption.

Eager to create his first sentence, Mike combined the symbols for Rock and Absorption into a piece of Quicksilver. He didn’t know the right way to connect the symbols, so he simply went with his gut. By now he had spent so much time studying the fractals that he felt he could at least make an educated guess.

Boy was he wrong.

After combining the symbols, he pushed energy into the Quicksilver and touched the stick to a rock lying on the ground. The same blinding light occurred as when he had transmuted metal into stone, but this time, it was accompanied by a massive energy discharge, which expanded across the room, some of it going through Mike’s body as it made its way to the ground. He had built up a tolerance to electrical shocks after years of wiring homes, so he could say for certain that while this acted like electricity, it definitely wasn’t. Burns covered his body and he could tell he was going to pass out. Before the darkness could take him, he activated Hands of Healing on the largest patches of burns.

Six hours later, when he awoke, he was still riddled with pain. Unable to activate the skill again, he simply poured cosmic water on the wounds, believing that somehow it would help, before he turned inwards. His channels had been harmed too, further confirming that the energy that entered him was something much different than electricity.

As gingerly as he could manage, he pulled energy from his core and began pushing it through his channels. It was painful, almost on the level of carving new channels, but he kept at it, because he noticed that as the energy circulated, the channels healed. Bit by bit, he continued working, taking breaks only when he could stand the pain no longer.

During one such break, he opened his character sheet and was surprised to find that Johnny Appleseed had reached 500000 trees. When did that happened? He didn’t check it regularly, but that still seemed like exponential growth. It brought him a small bit of comfort to know that the valley was still doing well.

After the happy thought, he turned to see how his stats had changed over the previous weeks. Bringing Dodge up 4 Levels had given him 8 more Dexterity, and bringing Tumble up 7 Levels had led to him gaining 7 points in Strength, Dexterity, and Toughness each. He was missing something with the Level 8 barrier. No matter how much energy he threw at the problem, it always seemed like an impossible barrier, so instead of trying to get any skill to Level 9, he had decided to simply start by getting all his skills to Level 8.

It was only in noticing taking the time to look at his Character Sheet that he realized a grievous mistake: why hadn’t he been leveling Energy Sense? Surely that could only help him in understanding his channels. Mentally facepalming, he vowed to do better, before activating Hands of Healing and passing out again.