Tom was separated from his friends when he left the isolation room, but, to maintain his persona, he had no choice but to track them down. Anything else would have been out of character. They were like a millstone around his neck, and he wasn’t sure how to deal with the problem. If Bir hadn’t already demonstrated such outrageous talent, then he would have ditched them without question. Not today, but slowly, over the next couple of months. But her potential put him in a bind. Did he go solo and focus on himself? Or did he have a responsibility to humanity? Would it gain extra ranking points if he dedicated some of his time to help her out? Was guiding her to become powerful part of his job?

There was no way to answer this now, but it was an issue he found himself pondering on the regular. Was it selfish to not be a loner? Could he justify spending his training time uplifting these kids? It would feel good to help others, but was it right? Which path would deliver the most ranking points: prioritising himself or dragging others up with him?

He wished his trait was unlocked, as that would have been a brilliant question to ask it. A simple yes or no answer would have been able to give him clarity. Should I ditch them or not? As it was, he remained unsure, and decided he would chat with April about it. After descending the stairs, he went straight to the gymnasium, figuring they might be there for the fort, or the food or the bubbles.

As he entered, he stopped.

That is not good, he thought. He wanted to walk away, but his feet rebelled and forced him to watch. He frowned.

Internal alarms went off.

You will not intercede, he yelled at himself in his head. You will not break cover for anything this minor.

Ma was surrounded by a group of eight year olds. Her spell ring was out of charge, and they were not being gentle. Five of them circled her like a pack of hyenas. They were poking her from behind and laughing when she whirled to face them in anger, only to have someone on the other side repeat the movement.

This is not your fight, he reminded himself. She probably brought this on herself. He thought, to try and stop his anger from rising. But he was not sure he believed it. Ma wouldn’t be stupid enough to start something like this.

Their laughter was like crackles of a deranged witch, taunting her. Snotty Ma was living up to her nickname. Tears ran down her flushed face and nearly clear snot dripped from her nose in two streams that crossed her mouth. She was angry, flustered, and humiliated… he was, Tom realised, seeing the tail end of a confrontation, not the start.

His breath hitched, and he clenched his fist.

Children, he reminded himself. This was a disagreement between children.

There was no reason for him to get involved. They were behaving disgustingly, but they were not throwing punches, and intervention would be stupid. Even if successful, it wouldn’t solve the underlying social dynamics. Nor would it be effective. He was in a four-year-old’s body, and even with his years of fighting experience, he could not beat five people twice his age. One versus one, he would back himself, but to outnumber with them all? They were outweighing him by so much he wouldn’t have a chance in a brawl - and that’s what it would quickly become.

“Let me go,” she yelled and spun.

One pushed her in the back, and she stumbled but the boy she fell towards supported her to prevent her falling.

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Tom took a step forward before he could stop himself. If they were escalating, he would…

He forced himself to breathe in deeply. While one had pushed her, the others had looked annoyed at the action, and one had even helped.

That small bit of kindness did not register with Ma. She screamed louder in response to the escalation inherent in the push. Tom was paralysed with indecision, but one girl saw him watching. She grabbed the friend next to her and drew him away. That triggered the end and four of them left while the fifth stayed beside Ma and gave her hug while she whispered some words in her ears. As she did so, she gestured for Tom to leave.

He hurriedly obeyed and when he glanced back, he saw the older girl and Ma walking toward the drink station together.

Tom returned to his search and eventually found the other two practicing against combat dummies. He was stunned to see it, but threw himself into the game. He didn’t have the opportunity to check the settings, but it was a suitable one for their age. They had probably joined the course after some older kids had left and hadn’t lowered the difficulty. The combat dummies spun fast; they must have been programmed to help develop dodge or acrobatic skills. When he was too slow, he was knocked heavily to ground. There was a healing crystal in the corner that they had to use after most runs. They stayed for hours. Pa in particularly seemed to love it.

Four days passed, and he successfully merged the three precursor spells to form Heal Cut. The moment he was alone in an isolation room he used the ritual to reveal that part of his status screen.

He frowned.

Spell: Heal Cut.

Cleans and heals cuts through flesh and skin.

Sideways Evolution 1: May be focused to force out larger impurities

He had evolved it with the help of a full fate dump, and had been hoping to add to the sideways evolutions. Instead, only the earlier one had been inherited, with no extra functionality added. He felt like hitting something in response to the surge of disappointment. He had been so sure that with the fate investment he would get another sideways evolution. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like it was going to work like that. He hoped that his earlier one wasn’t a fluke, and that he would get more soon. He had dozens of mergers before obtaining Touch Heal, and even a bad ratio like one in five would give him lots of extras before he reached the first milestone spell. With the new spell confirmed, he turned his attention to the other pre-requisites of Touch Heal.

He glanced up at the cupboards that ringed the top of the room.

It was time to train Purge Foreign Substances, and then his annoyance deepened as he stared at the cluttered room and the full toy boxes. Building a tower in a normal isolation room, Tom realised, would be problematic, given his terrible physical attributes.

With a sigh, he poured the toys out of the boxes, then put the weapons out of their containers. Then he built the same structure he had previously. Rebuilding this daily was going to be a pain. He wasn’t at that point yet: the next three spells he wanted to create - namely, Identify Foreign Substance, Specialised Barrier Skin and Grow Skin - could be developed with minimal input. Only the first one even required specialised help. and that was weekly access as opposed to daily - or, at least, that was his guess. After that, things were going to get difficult. Tom considered that problem as he reached the section that contained the aids to help with the first spell on his list: Identify Foreign Substance.

There were six bottles.

Inert Substance 1.

Completely safe and will remain localised at injection point.

The other five bottles had similar descriptions, and, in the book, the recommended dosage was fifty microliters once per week.

Tom injected himself in four locations and then cycled through the other five substances. Job done, he closed up and clambered down. Since it was already set up, he repositioned the tower to check on the artefacts. However, the storage items he was after were missing, which did not surprise him at all.

Then he stared in dismay at the mess his activities had left. It was too early to throw a temper tantrum, as he didn’t need access to the cupboards daily. But he knew that, when he required that access, he would do exactly that. Throw and break toys in order to get exiled to those clean rooms. Not all the time, of course, as he still needed to reference the Healing Domain roadmap and the wire spell forms drawn within it. If he could engineer it, he would have four days in the clean room followed by a couple here.

Dimitri, he acknowledged, would hate him.

Annoyed with the need, but acknowledging he had no choice, he spent over forty minutes tidying everything up.