If there's one thing I want to learn in the next few days, it's how to fly. Silvia told me on the way over that we'd have to use air magics to manipulate the wind into letting us fly and create a barrier around us. Even with that, I know I want to fly again.

This flight was incredible, and it ends all too fast.

We land in a clearing beside a large pond at the base of a waterfall, a creek flowing out of it. The clearing is a few hundred yards across and a little bit further long, the forest starting up again right on the other side of the creek and pond.

In the clearing is a large, two-story log cabin with glass windows, and I think I saw movement in them. There are also a few wooden tables and benches, two large fire pits and one small one, a woodshed, an area for chopping wood, and a few other amenities.

Before Silvia can say anything after we land, a pair of boys burst out of the cabin. They look to be about ten years old, though they're definitely not identical twins. Both are wolfkin boys, one with platinum-blond hair and the other with jet-black hair. The blond boy has a golden left eye and storm-grey right eye, while the black-haired boy has a storm-grey left eye and golden right eye.

Other than that, though, the boys are identical, and they're even dressed in identical outfits – brown pants and green tunics with dark green leather belts and boots.

"Uncle Terrence!" They charge Terrence, slamming into him and wrapping their arms around him as their tails wag happily.

"Uncle Terrence?" I ask.

"They're my sons," Silvia tells me as Terrence scratches the boys' heads a little behind their ears. "They've known him their whole lives and view him as their uncle, and he views them like nephews or little brothers."

"So you guys aren't-"

"Related?" She asks, and I nod. "Not by blood. It doesn't stop me from viewing him like a little brother, though. There aren't many people who actually like him as more than just a Tier IV, so I'm not surprised he ran away."

"You knew?"

"I can make a guess," she says. "Terrence was fighting monsters during a Slip yet there wasn't a single royal guard around. The only plausible explanations for that would be he was exiled or he ran away. Since he was there, it was a natural assumption that he'd ran away and came to talk with me."

"Makes sense," I say. "He said he wanted to see if he could stay with you, maybe study here for a bit."

"I don't have an issue with that," she says. "Though it might be best for him to do some jobs for the town as well. As for you… if you were making a gate with dimensional crystals, then you no doubt know that in order to cross a distance using them, you need to know the precise location you're attempting to go in relation to where you're coming from. We don't have any maps that show the other continents, so unless you're able to do that, it will take some effort to sort it out. Even then, it might not be too accurate."

"That story was a lie," I drop the Southern accent as Terrence flings both of the boys into the pond. At the same time. "Best to let people believe I'm from another continent where we speak the same language – no doubt by the hand of the gods – than that I was summoned from another world."

"You were summoned?" She frowns. "Where were you summoned to, and why did you come here?"

"I was summoned into the fields," I tell her. "Terrence suggested you might be able to shed light on the oddness of it. There was no summoning ritual at all, and I was brought over through some sort of runic magic circle."

"Odd," she says. "A summoning by the gods doesn't do that, so it wasn't one of them. A summoning that isn't done properly doesn't send the target to the wrong location, either. They either appear in the ritual or they don't appear at all. Can you tell me more about what happened?"

As Terrence plays with the twins, I tell Silvia as much as I can remember about the summoning. She asks me a lot of questions, and I realize because of her questions that there were some things I missed during the summoning itself. I can remember quite a few of the runes, and Silvia takes me inside to write them down while she looks through books in her library, which takes up two floors of space. There was also a seven-tree emblem in the magic ritual itself, with the roots of the trees all intertwined.

The center of the roots connection was the spot that stayed directly under my feet, and the outer ring of the circle touched the upper branches. I didn't catch this during the summoning both because I was panicking and because there were already so many patterns set into it that the tree one didn't catch my notice.

"I've come to the conclusion," Silvia tells me. "That I honestly have no idea what happened. That's not any traditional summoning ritual, I know that much. Trees, suns, crescent moons facing down, seven-pointed stars, waterfalls-"

"Waterfalls?" I ask.

"Yes," she answers. "Some of the patterns you drew, see this here on the trunks of the trees? Look at the way the runes go down it. That's reminiscent of a waterfall, and more than sixty percent of the runes you drew are found in most waterfall patterns for runes."

"My memory isn't perfect, though," I say. "And I wasn't paying too much attention. I was mostly guessing on the runes based on what you were showing me."

Silvia didn't just have me write things down, she even had me recreate the magic circle that pulled me here from memory. I remembered the basic shape once I started drawing, and though I struggled a little with the runes, I was still able to do a fair bit. Silvia showed me a lot of runes from books, and that helped me piece it together further.

However, I know I probably messed up a fair bit, so this likely isn't the actual magic circle that pulled me here.

"Maybe you were," she says. "Maybe you weren't. It's been a long time since there was last a summoning. One thing that was absolutely clear, though, is that the summoned never forget the runic pattern of the magic ritual. Not fully. They can piece it back together by looking at runes."

"And reverse it to return home?" I ask.

"No," she answers. "They would need to modify it. The problem is, your summoning circle has runes I don't recognize. At all. I may be only thirty years old, Reid, but I know more about runes than nearly anyone else on the continent. A god most certainly did not summon you here, but I doubt it was a mortal, either. If it was, they used some form of summoning ritual unknown to our era."

"Meaning… what, exactly?" I say. "You've got nothing?"

"At all," she nods. "Even if they were able to change the target location away from the ritual, there's no point in sending you somewhere where you wouldn't have help and a guide. It most certainly wasn't Terrence. There are two options available to you, if you want answers."

"Stay in the area and wait for whoever summoned me to reveal themselves," I say. "Or go to the Shrine of Illusions and ask the gods."

"The latter is correct," she looks for something, eventually finding and pulling out a map, which she spreads out onto a tap, using little paperweights already here to hold down the corners. "So the way Experience works isn't as certain as people think."

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"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Everyone assumes," she says. "That Experience is purely a percent, and it's based on how difficult it was for you to kill the monster. That's incorrect, and it's why power-Leveling works."

"Power-Leveling being…?"

"When someone who can barely hurts something gets in one or two hits," she says. "And then someone stronger kills the beast. A few years ago, I found information in the ruins of an ancient civilization. Information about Experience."

"Which says that it's not a percent," I say.

"Which says that it's displayed a percent," she tells me. "To make things easier for people looking at their Statuses. It was these ruins here, to be specific."

She indicates a part of the map that looks to be around five hundred miles away, deep in the forested wilderness.

"That civilization," she says. "Said that Experience is actually based on a point value. They weren't sure of the exact values used, but imagine it takes 100 Experience to reach Level 1, 200 Experience to reach Level 2, and so on. The percent displayed when you gain experience is how much towards the next Level you gained and how much towards the Level after added on if how much you got takes you over a Level."

"So gaining 15 Experience Points at 95 Experience on Level 0 would display 10% Experience, rather than 15% Experience."

"Correct," she says. "One of the things they determined while researching Experience is that every monster has a base Experience Points value, which is split between everyone who killed the beast based on their contribution toward killing it. On top of that, you gain additional Experience Points based on how much you, personally, struggled to kill it."

"Let me guess," I say. "How many Experience Points needed to gain a Level didn't change based on your Tier."

"Correct," she says. "But they also theorized that people of a higher Tier received a bonus to their Experience gains."

"I was barely gaining any thing from kills by the end of the fight," I say. "At my Level-"

"That's another thing," she says. "You should have been gaining more, yes, especially since everyone else was shooting up in Level."

"So I have a penalty," I say.

"Or," she says. "It's that the struggle against monsters boosts the Experience gained by significantly more than believed. Something I've learned over the last ten years is that monsters of the same type, but of vastly different power levels, don't give much different Experience when there's no struggle."

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"As an experiment," she says. "I sought out monsters of the same type, but in different power classes. One of them is a bear that specializes in earth magics. At only 3.21% Experience into a Level, I fought one that could be killed by a Level 30 Tier II, and one that could be killed by a Level 50 Tier II. Both of them fell quite fast for me, due to how much above them I was. There was zero struggle.

"The weaker of them," she tells me. "Gave me 7.41% Experience. The stronger of them? 8.92%."

"Barely a percent and a half more," I say.

"Exactly," Silvia says. "And yet, a Tier II at the same Level as me would have struggled a bit against either, and gained a significantly higher amount. In fact, I tested that and had a Tier II at Level 70 fight ones of the same power level. He gained roughly 20% from the weaker one, and 28% from the stronger. Since my Experience Points boost is higher, being a Tier IV, that can only mean his struggle is what made up the majority of his Experience Points."

"And I was killing everything in one hit," I say. "So there was zero struggle. I was receiving purely the base amount. The base amount, which is much lower than was believed."

"Exactly," Sivlia pulls up a stool and gestures for me to take a seat as she grabs her own. "Sit, sit."

"So how does this relate to me?" I ask. "And my options?"

"Well," she says. "The Shrine of Illusions is an option. It's located here. Depending on how you travel, it can take two to three months. Once you're over this section of the forest, you won't be able to fly anymore, either. Protections added in by the gods to ensure people don't cheat their way there."

I examine the trail there, and two to three months seems like it would be about right based on the distance from here combined with stops for resting, dealing with monsters, and other things.

"Two to three months?" I ask. "That's walking, right?"

"Yes," she answers. "You're thinking of flying. That can take you significantly less time depending on how fast you go, and then once you get here, it would take you just a few days to go to the shrine by foot. Depending on your flight speed, you can reach that area in just a few days. The full trip can take you a week or less that way."

I trace a finger along what looks to be the route. The trail in the no-fly zone is marked out on the map, and it's not a straight path. Whatever the reason for it is, I'm sure it's because going another way isn't the best of ideas.

"Reid," she says. "I moved out here and wrapped myself up in wards for a few reasons. One of them is to do my research in peace. Another is because beings as powerful as I am are asked to deal with a lot of things."

Silvia drums the tables with her fingers a little.

"You're wondering if I'd stay until after the Slip ends," I say. "Rather than set off to the Shrine of Illusions now. Help out with things."

"Yes," she answers.

"I would really rather go home," I say. "I've been here for only a couple of hours right now, but I want to go home. I've got friends and family that are going to be wondering where I am and what I'm doing. This isn't my world, either. I know I'm going to not want to stay here too long, I really want to go home. I can't just abandon my friends and family."

Silvia looks a little disappointed.

"That said," I point at the Shrine of Illusions. "Terrence said you'd need to have around 500 of your offensive Attribute to manage this area. Considering a Slip empowers monsters and makes fewer, but stronger, ones appear, I'll need at least a few more Levels. It might be best if I waited until after the Slip ended… if it's not too long."

"I'm estimating," Silvia tells me. "Based on the power level of the monsters starting out for this Slip and how similar ones went in the past, that it will last around thirteen to fifteen days – or twelve or fourteen more."

"Two weeks," I say. "Plus another week of travel."

"Monster strength also continues to increase through a Slip," Silvia tells me. "Peaking near the end. It takes a few days for it to go back down to what it was once the Slip itself ends."

Though I don't know the gods, I'm sure they'd be more willing to send me home if I stayed and helped, too. There's something…

"Silvia," I say. "You said the gods didn't do this, but no people could have, either, right? The summoning of me, I mean?"

"As far as I can tell," she says.

"I just happened to show up," I say. "The morning of the day after the Slip began?"

Silvia's reaction tells me that either she's a better actor than I am, or she hadn't thought about it.

"You think you were summoned here because of the Slip?" She asks.

"By something not quite the gods."

"Trees!" She exclaims.

"What?" I ask.

The wolfkin doesn't answer, instead hopping off her stool to look through her library. I wait patiently for her to find what she's looking for, which only takes her a few moments. Silvia returns carrying a thick, leather-bond tome, which she plops down on top of the map. After flipping through it, Silvia stops on a page.

I can't read the right-hand page, but the left-hand page… contains the same seven-tree crest from the summoning circle. It contains all of the major emblems – the suns, the waterfalls, even the flower design that I'd partially forgotten about. The only thing it lacks are the runes and additional markings, the crest contained with a single band.

"You might be on to something," Silvia says. "This is an ancient text that I haven't had a chance to translate into our language yet. This crest has appeared before. It wasn't until you said 'something not quite the gods' that I realized it."

"What is this crest?" I ask. "Your statement suggests it's not well-known."

"It's not," she says. "This text is from an ancient ruin almost a thousand miles from here. I only finished figuring out the language a few months ago, actually. The System didn't always exist in this world, but the gods predate all history.

"One day," Silvia tells me. "The System simply appeared. With it came changes to how magic worked – more on that in a bit. No one knows how it came to be, only that the gods remained silent on all matters relating to it. Theories back then were that the gods themselves didn't know. The only thing that was known about it? This crest."

"The crest of the being that created it," I touch the page.

"Perhaps," she says. "According to this tome, they don't know what being made the System or how it came to be, but they do know that this crest has to do with it."

Which suggests that whatever being created the System brought me here – but this being isn't a god. To create something of this scale, however, means that they're still a deity of some sort. If this is a case, and the gods remained silent about this deity, then they likely wouldn't send me back home.

"Okay," I say. "So the second option is to wait for the Slip to end – and see if I get sent back home on my own?"

"No," she says. "That's option three. I hadn't thought about it yet. Option two for you, Reid, is to learn how to open the gate between worlds yourself."