“What?”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’?!” Fyrellia demanded, at a complete loss. “This is too much! What- how-, gah!” she said as she looked between the staff and her absurd young master.

“OK, chill,” Joram said, now looking slightly annoyed, which then sent a cold shiver down her spine. “If you need to level, just use that. I’m sure it’ll be enough for a few levels. I’ll look into how to make staves for combat later,” he said, then turned to Qyress to address her.

“Though, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have any bows on hand,” he said apologetically. “That said, I do have a projectile weapon that might be of use. Though, I’m not sure if it’ll jive with you class… and it’s a bit loud…” he said, then another item appeared in his hand.

It, too, had a sort of sheath, though it didn’t look like anything she’d ever seen before. Its shape was similar to one of those small squares that a carpenter used to measure and draw lines on lumber. It was all black, metal, and eerily intimidating even though she didn’t know what it was.

“Hmm,” Joram hummed as he stared at the weapon for a minute or so before stepping over to Qyress. “This is what’s called a handgun. You hold it like this, and aim like this. I’ve fixed the sound issue, but I’m sure that it’ll still give a small sound when used.

“Now, this is the safety. Keep it on at all times unless you intend to ruin someone’s day, including your own. This here is the trigger. You just need to flex your finger like so to pull it enough to fire the gun. I’ve also enchanted the clip here,” he said, then slid a small lever on the side of the handgun that made a small cartridge fall out of the handle.

“I’ll enchant another couple of them so that you’ll have enough ammunition to keep going in a drawn-out fight. As-is, I think that it’ll create a new bullet every couple of seconds when it’s below capacity. So, really, unless you’re going ham with it, you shouldn’t run out of ammunition,” he said, showing them the odd little metal cylinder inside the cartridge.

“Anyways, I’m not sure if that’ll work well for you or not. Just give it a try and let me know how it works for you,” he said, then passed over the handgun to Qyress who held it reverently… or perhaps warily due to the explanation.

“Aside from that, I’ll have to take a few to make some armour for you three,” he said as a large lump of black metal appeared beside him.

They then watched as the metal seemed to flow into three separate balls before those balls split into two each. From there, each lump of black metal began to elongate and flatten, then curve, then segment. As that was happening, she watched as a bolt of cloth appeared, just as dark as the metal, then unwound a bit. Then the cloth split into six ribbons before going to each of the metal… bracers, she now saw.

Within mere seconds, three sets of bracers were made. Each one had a small flap that would cover the back of one’s hand, with a small strap that would go around the palm of your hand. From there, the bracer extended far enough that it would come up just past the elbow, making her think that it would save one’s elbow from a break if they fell on it.

Overall, its design was impeccable. Though, she wondered how heavy they would be, given how much metal went into their creation.

Then Joram picked each pair up, one by one, and did… something to them. Fyrellia didn’t feel any mana flowing, but she did feel… something happening.

After holding each one for about a minute or so, he looked over at them and smiled.

“Those should do,” he said, smiling at them, which caused her heart to skip a beat as she took in that genuine smile.

Who would smile at a demon like that? She wondered. For someone who came from a world exclusively populated by humans, she thought that he was very strange indeed.

Though, that wasn’t a bad thing….

“So, put them on. Let me know if they need adjusting,” he said as he passed them each a pair of bracers.

Fyrellia tucked the staff she was holding into the crook of her arm before taking the bracers. Then she marvelled at how light they were, and saw that both Arise and Qyress were equally impressed. She then looked down at her arms, happy that she was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.

She then slipped on the bracers, once more impressed with the design. It was so easy! Once in place, she moved her arms around for a bit, testing her range of motion with them on, and seeing if they’d interfere with her movements at all.

Surprisingly, it was almost like she wasn’t wearing anything at all. She looked over at her friends and saw that they were equally pleased and impressed with the bracers as they moved about with their weapons.

“I added a few things for safety, so they should be good for a while at your level. Just let me know when you grow out of them, and I’ll see about upgrading them at that time,” he said, nodding at them.

“Holy mother of the [Demon Lord]!” Arise exclaimed as her eyes bugged out. “Are you kidding me?!” she demanded as she practically swooned in place, looking both dizzy and angry… almost offended.

“What’s wrong?” Joram asked, looking concerned.

Arise just stared at him as though he’d grown a few new heads, some horns, and possibly some tentacles to top it all off. It took her almost a minute to compose herself enough to speak again.

“You can make [Relic]s,” Arise stated flatly, obviously beyond overwhelmed and in shock.

“Maybe?” Joram asked, looking confused. “What’s a [Relic]?” he asked, looking at each of them in turn.

To save Arise from any further mental strain, Fyrellia quickly spoke up.

“There are a few classifications of magic items, with [Relic] being the pinnacle,” she said, making sure that Arise would stay quiet before she continued. “Most are classified according to standard adventurer ranks, though only from Rank E to Rank S. After Rank S, you get [Artifact]s, then [Relic]s.

“What differentiates standard magical items from [Artifact] Grade and [Relic] Grade is the inclusion of Skills in their creation. If an item has one Skill added to it, then it’s considered an [Artifact]. Two or more Skills in an item and it’s considered a [Relic].

“The issues here is that you’ve just gone and created three [Relic]s in the space of time that it takes for a pot of tea to steep,” she finished while shaking her head.

“Oh,” Joram said, sounding as though he’d both learned something and was regretting having done such a ridiculous thing in front of them. “Well, uh, please don’t show those around then,” he said with a sheepish look.

They just stared at him for a few moments before eventually nodding as he retrieved what looked like two more of those cartridges for the handgun that he’d given Qyress. A moment later, he hesitantly stepped over to Qyress and handed over the items, motioning to two spots on the harness that looked like slots made to hold them.

“I’ll leave you to it then,” Joram said awkwardly as he slowly stepped away from the three of them.

Once he was back at the stone cubes, she looked over at her friends and saw that they were as flabbergasted as she was. Then a bit of schadenfreude came upon her.

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“So, do you still think he’s not worthy of serving?” she asked Arise, who then turned to her with a blank look on her face.

“You’re ridiculous. He’s ridiculous. Everyone’s ridiculous!” she yelled before stalking off towards the Dungeon.

Qyress gave her an exasperated look that couldn’t quite hide her grin before turning to follow Arise.

Hefting her new staff for a few seconds, Fyrellia then flapped her wings to take off so that she could quickly catch up to her friends.

This is going to be fun!

* * * * *

With that, Joram settled into a new routine.

Wake up, escape, play some guitar, teach a cooking lesson, help with this or that, then head off to practice after going to see Lory every other day. He would end the day by heading off to bed to become a much-coveted pillow for five incredibly beautiful women before meditating for the night.

All the while, M2-M12 would be working on this and that, usually just producing more Dust Crystals, though also working on assimilating the Psionic Library.

Two more weeks passed like this before he was comfortable enough to try an experiment.

*Day 23*

Joram looked at his System notification and smiled at his progress. He’d purposely stopped adding random Attribute points, but he had given himself 3 Levels to bump him up to Level 20. He then used his free points to level off everything to nice even multiples of five, leaving him with 2 free points. He also bumped up a few Skills, like [Mana Well], [Master Summoner], and [Source of Power].

The two resource Skills gave him a huge jump in mana and power, while [Master Summoner] was due to his “capstone” ability.

[Return to Creation]

Designate a target or an area and return it to the basic building blocks of creation, annulling all atomic bonds of the target or those in the area designated.

Caution: this may have unforeseen consequences.

You may choose to immediately use the free atoms to create a new life or object with [Summon: All], modified by [Master Summoner].

Which was all sorts of broken. The save, as it were, was based off his [Creationist] Level + his SPR Mod. Which meant that pretty much anything he targeted was toast. Or atomic dust. Which was dangerous, and not just because of the warning.

Free atoms tended to react with one another, and some were quite… vigorous in their reactions. He just hoped that there’d be some System shenanigans to give him a buffer of time where he could make something afterwards, otherwise it was just basically setting off a bomb, in his opinion.

He was glad that the description said that it annulled the bonds, instead of breaking them. Otherwise, he was sure that he’d get an even larger bomb going off in his face. Well, if he was stupid enough to do that close to him anyways. It also gave him a ludicrous range, his SPR Mod x INT Mod in metres. Which, being 80 and 70 respectively, was getting onto 6km away. Which was, once more, crazy.

Shaking his head, he got back to what he was trying to do. Namely, create a portable structure.

To explain; he’d always been a bit of a geek. Reading about characters who could basically push a button and take their house/building away with them had appealed to him greatly. Button, boom, gone. Well, not gone-gone. Just turned into an item that the person could take with them. Then use whenever they found an appropriate spot. And bam! Relocated house/building!

To that end, he’d ventured pretty far into the forest and had built himself a duplicate of this house, down to the last detail. Which included all the furniture and other objects that the house currently had inside of it. Minus the people of course.

He’d gotten pretty far with his [Dimensional Manipulation] and [Spatial Manipulation], getting them both into the early 20s. Which brought him here so that he could try to put the duplicate house into a portable space attached to an item. Which was just a token he’d made out of some of the Black Moss Stone, etched on one side with a representation of the house, and his name on the other side.

Now that he was ready, token in hand, he called upon [Dimensional Manipulation] and began to… envelop the house in its influence. It was a bit hard to describe how it felt to do so, but the closest thing he could think of was trying to pull a deflated ballon over something. If he pulled at one spot and didn’t keep up the pressure on another, it would slide back to its starting point.

Which made him very glad to both have his extra Minds running as well as [Multitasking] to help with keeping up with everything.

It still took him a few minutes of hard work, but in the end the whole house shimmered, then just vanished from his sight. He then felt that the token had “taken” on the dimensional space of the house. Which then prompted him to use a bit of Dust to make the item into a permanent magic item.

Grinning, he then activated the token and watched as the house appeared where he wanted it to; back into the hole that had been left when the house had vanished.

Then came the slightly less nice experiment.

He picked up the small cage at his feet and looked at the mouse-like creature inside. It was pretty much a mouse, except for the larger claws and needle-like teeth in its mouth. It even tried to snap at him as he picked up the cage, reminding him that it wasn’t a very nice creature. Well, not a docile creature, anyways.

He then used a bit of [Telekinesis] and put the cage and its occupant onto the front porch before activating his house token again, causing the building and the cage to vanish from sight.

‘Do you think there’ll be air in there?’ Avi asked curiously as she tapped her left index finger on her lips in thought.

“I really don’t know. But I’m sort of hoping that there’ll be some sort of stasis effect for anything stored away like that,” he said, voicing his hopes on the matter.

If it didn’t, then he’d have to see if there was a time manipulation Skill he could either learn, or get his hands on. Though, if he had to fight a monster with a time manipulation Skill, then he might just avoid the matter until he was much stronger than he currently was.

‘Well, that would be handy,’ Avi said, nodding. ‘Though, you could just store anything that you want into your Realm, as that does have the ability to have an area designated as “storage”,’ she said, causing him to look over at her incredulously.

“What? Why didn’t you say that before?” he asked, both annoyed at her for not saying anything, but more annoyed at himself for not thinking about it.

‘I tend to forget that you’re still a fledgling given how powerful you’ve already become,’ Avi said as she frowned at him slightly. ‘Well, if you’d like to give me permission to work with your Minds, and administrative access to your Realm, then maybe I can help you more,’ she said, sounding both disapproving and resigned at the same time.

Which got him thinking.

Well, on his behaviour and words, but also about how Avi must be feeling being attached to him.

“Does it bother you that you’re stuck with me?” he asked quietly, suddenly very scared to hear what she had to say, but nevertheless needing to know.

Avi regarded him for a few minutes as she thought about his question, making him feel extra terrible for not having addressed the issue before now.

At length Avi sighed, stretched, then took a deep breath before finally speaking.

‘Joram. I am a part of you. We’re effectively one being. What you “see” of me is basically just me manipulating your visual cortex to create an image of myself.

‘I’m a purely mental being, though I guess I, too, have a soul. But it’s kind of attached to yours. If you die, I die. If I die, well, you’ll still live. But you’ll probably get lonely,’ she said with a sassy grin.

‘Anyways. Would it be fun to have a body to wander about? Surely. Do I need one? No,’ she said, shaking her head before the sassy grin came back. ‘Besides, if another beautiful woman suddenly appeared at your side, what would the others think?’

Joram nodded along at her words, taking the revelations that she dropped on his head in stride. Even the joke- he hoped- about the gals. But when he thought if he’d be OK just existing in someone else’s head, he really couldn’t leave it alone.

“How can I make you a body that you can… use?” he asked after a minute of thought.

Avi looked at him with an unreadable expression as he waited for her answer. Then the expression cracked, slowly revealing a smile that nearly floored him with its brilliance.

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that,’ she said, then proceeded to lay out her thoughts on the matter, starting a back and forth of ideas.

* * *

Asami swished her tails happily as she nibbled on another tea biscuit, then took a small sip of tea. She really enjoyed the “green” tea that Joram had shared with them, as its bitterness went well if the tea biscuits. She watched as the few women left in the kitchen worked at making various things.

Now that everyone ate much less than before, they were just basically experimenting with recipes that Joram had shared with them. Especially the sweets, as those were even more popular than the savoury dishes that were sometimes prepared for the younglings who still hadn’t quite given up eating at least once per day.

The outside door opened behind her, so she turned to see who’d come in. She smiled to see Joram so early in the day, as he’d been off doing his own thing for the past two weeks. She idly wondered why his ghost was walking behind him, but shrugged it off because the lady would do whatever she wanted to do.

“Hey!” she said, waving at Joram to get his attention, then smiled when he veered over towards her.

She grew curious when his smile grew strained, then even more curious when he quickly glanced at his ghost who then nodded back at him. He usually didn’t do that. Which now got her into serious mode, so she stood up as he arrived at her table.

As she was about to say something, her nose caught a whiff of something unfamiliar, though quite pleasant. She looked around, sniffing as Joram looked at her oddly, but kept on going. She stepped forward to see if the scent came from behind his ghost, then bounced back and fell on her bottom in shock.

As she stared up at Joram’s “ghost”, her mouth dropped open as Myra started making her way over.

“Ahem,” Joram cleared his throat before continuing once Myra stopped beside her to help her up.

“I’d like to introduce you to Avi,” he said, motioning towards his not-ghost, causing her legs to give out again.