“See, now that is the question, is it not? What makes the ambient mana in certain places so dense? There are perhaps some with the personal strength necessary to find out, but by and large they simply choose not to. Or if they do know, they keep it to themselves. Either way, we are left wallowing in ignorance.”

~Unknown

Fudge erupted into motion when I gave him the freedom to roam, practically diving into a section of longer grass and leaving a rippling wave of green in his wake. Vigil followed, albeit with a more dignified gait.

“Fudge is excited,” I told Tina in a textbook example of stating the obvious. We were walking at a leisurely pace, side-by-side. Despite the content of her note to me, I sensed hesitation as we danced around the topic of Fudge’s Advancement. On my part, it was because I still lacked confidence in the explanation I’d been able to concoct.

“Vigil is, too,” Tina replied with a soft smile. “He is a bit of a softie when it comes to puppies and children, no?” Mid-stride, she stretched her arms up over her head and gave a satisfied little grunt, but otherwise tapered back into companionable silence. A gentle breeze rolled through the fields and I briefly closed my eyes as it passed over my face and rustled my hair enough to tickle the back of my neck.

This is all very lovely, but we won’t get anywhere at this rate. It was a conflicting situation. In the short term, I would appreciate less scrutiny, but if we didn’t talk about it then the topic of Fudge’s Advancement would become yet another thing left dangling overhead. There was only so much room on my metaphorical ceiling.

Fuck it.

“Mom, did you still want to talk?” Puzzling though Tina’s reluctance may have been, I lacked the patience to decipher it. Every errant burst of curiosity or spontaneous surge of happiness Fudge experienced while exploring and playing with Vigil was transmitted through the Tamer Bond. It felt like trying to have a conversation while someone held a pounding speaker up to your ear and shoved ice cubes down the back of your shirt. That is to say, I was distracted. Perseverance helped, to a point, but it was running in direct opposition to Taming [Fudge] which largely dampened the efficiency of the Skill.

“I do, my Will,” Tina replied sweetly. “I am- I just-” She looked conflicted and took a moment to consider her words. “Did you know that sometimes adults get scared?”

“... I do know that.” It was a question born from the biggest lie I’d ever told someone else. If my parents knew the truth about my origins, there’d be no need to ask. I had firsthand experience in experiencing fear as an adult.

In response to my answer, Tina smiled again, a sad smile that spoke of reluctant acceptance.

“I thought you might. You are so clever.”

Where is she going with this… I tilted my head to one side, an act that made me veer slightly to the right since we were still in motion.

“I am your mother, Will. I am supposed to guide you, teach you, take care of you.” She stopped walking and waited for me to face her before continuing. “You have always been so independent, and I am scared I won’t be able to help you with this.” She briefly turned away and I watched her raise hand to her face and wipe something away. Then she chuckled. “It is selfish of me to even tell you, I know.”

At least she’s aware of it, I suppose. Evidently, my relative maturity skewed Tina’s parental sense in a lot of ways. Over the years,I encouraged frank discussions when I could, which culminated in the situation I now found myself in.

“I do not think being my mother means you need to have all the answers,” I said honestly. “You care enough to want to listen. You love me enough to take the time to help in whatever ways you can. That is enough for me.” I stepped forward and gave my mother a child sized hug, wrapping my arms around her lower back. “Thank you for being such a great mom.”

On one hand, it was a response that somewhat fed into her point. The way I articulated my feelings on the matter went beyond what a child my age should have been capable of. The alternative was to play dumb again, which I wasn’t willing to do.

I don’t want to lie about more than I have to.

Even with the extenuating circumstances, Tina was better at keeping her composure than most - when she cared to, at least - but everyone had their moments of weakness.

I mean, fuck, I just about have one every other night. There would be no judgment on my end.

Tina didn’t just hug me back, she hoisted me up and held me in her arms.

“Thank you, my Will.” It wasn’t a magical fix to the situation. Tina’s feelings wouldn’t suddenly change or disappear, but it was a start.

***

We made our way to a small hill - more of a knoll, really - and sat leaning against the slope. Tina listened patiently while I started recounting the events of several days ago. Perhaps patiently isn’t the right word. Rather, she watched with restraint; her eyes steadily widened the more I spoke, which was telling in its own right.

To clarify, I didn’t tell her everything. That… yeah, I doubt that would have gone down well. I’d committed to keeping my origins a secret, at least until I was old enough to fend for myself. That my parents attributed my borderline aberrant behavior as a side effect of Perseverance accelerating my maturity continued to be a boon. To be fair to them, it was a more sensible conclusion than the truth.

That didn’t mean I could act as if I were completely free from scrutiny, though. Spouting off the half-baked quantum theories I used to leverage Fudge into his Skill and the Advancement of Taming [Dog] - now Taming [Fudge] - wouldn’t have fit the narrative we’d established. Completely obfuscating the matter would have been equally problematic; despite Tina’s concerns, I highly valued her guidance on matters of Taming. The way I saw things, the closer I kept things to the truth, the better positioned she’d be to help me.

I just had to toe the line, a feat easier said than done.

I started with the what. The baseline facts. I didn’t get the Advancement bonus to Taming that we were expecting; both my Taming Skill and Fudge’s Dog Skill had been fundamentally changed as a result. When I finished speaking, there was a long beat of silence as Tina just stared at me wide-eyed.

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“Mom… is- is everything okay?”

Tina’s hands twitched at her sides, like the hand-talking equivalent of a stutter. Finally, she raised them to her face and, starting from the forehead, slowly dragged them down until fingertips rested on her chin. The action was accompanied by a low, exasperated groan.

“Will… you…” She groaned again.

My lips formed a thin line.

Not the most reassuring start.

“Will, you are going to give your mother gray hairs, did you know this?” Tina grabbed a small handful of her hair to shake as if to illustrate the point. It was a rhetorical question, but I was nervous and still distracted by Fudge so I responded before I could catch myself.

“I thought Vigil did that,” I quipped, referencing the transformation I’d witnessed when Tina drew heavily on the metallic dog's mana and abilities. Instant regret seized me when the look Tina shot me bordered on withering.

“Sorry, I-”

“No. The joke was fine. I just need to think.” Tina cut me off and sprang to her feet, no longer content to sit still. She started pacing in a small circuit and didn’t stop, even when she started speaking again. “This thing you and Fudge have done, it is not usually done by one so young, or of such a low Tier. Understand?”

“Not really,” I admitted.

So Tina explained it to me. I could tell the revelation had left her flustered; there was plenty of verbal meandering and gesticulation around the point, but it eventually got made. Apart from asking a few clarifying questions, I mostly just nodded along.

In short, changing a Skill was not a unique phenomenon. It was just considered difficult. How difficult was it? Enough for it to be a notable accomplishment among even professional circles, and an uncommon one at that.

Skill Evolution. It wasn’t the exact wording Tina used, but the concepts of fundamental change, growth, and redefinition contained in the expression made it the most apt translation. If the feat was attempted at all, it was usually by people looking to push through a difficult bottleneck at higher tiers. The most famous examples were martial arts, when a style of combat became so touched by an individual that it transcended the more mundane Weapons Skill.

In my case, I merely evolved the Specialization of Taming, but there were records of Skills like Forms of the Flowing Fist and other equally flowery names bestowed upon Skills by their creators.

The parallels between that information and my own experience with Fudge’s Quantum Manipulation were not lost on me.

“As for the Taming Skill, mastery of the Tamer Bond is an important part of Advancement.” Much of Tina’s initial fidgety energy had vented as she gave me the rundown. Now she just sounded tired.

“‘The bond is also important.’” I said, mimicking Tina’s own mocking of my mantra from the last time we talked about Skills. “I remember.”

She smiled at that, but it was a fleeting thing.

“I thought you might.”

“But?”

“Taming is my Core Skill, and I still have not given much thought to Skill Evolution. Not seriously. Not yet. I did not think it could happen without a Skill being at a much higher level.” It was like Tina’s voice couldn’t decide to sound proud of me or disappointed in her.

Even though it wasn’t necessarily rational to do so, I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. There is a certain self-deprecation that creeps up on a person when they see people younger than them succeeding. The feeling was one I’d grown intimate with in my first life. My tendency to hop from hobby to hobby like a frog with commitment issues primed me for the bitterness of mediocrity, for the realization that I wasn’t going to amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

It’s why I fell in love so hard, I think. In her eyes, none of that mattered. I was me, and that was enough. She was her, and that was enough. Compared to that, the rest of the world was inconsequential… I sniffled as emotions I’d promised were for the night rattled their cages. Recovery and Perseverance pulsed. The memories were good, even though they were hard, but they needed to wait until later.

Tina’s words were the window I’d been waiting for. I had to seize the opportunity.

“Maybe it is because I did not know it was supposed to be hard that I was able to do it.” The concept of not ‘tainting’ someone else’s journey of cultivation, leveling up in a System - whatever, really - by over-informing them was common enough in fiction that I figured it was my best bet for an alibi. By all accounts, it might have even been accurate; Evolving my Taming Skill wasn’t exactly something I planned.

“Pffft,” Tina scoffed. “There are some people who used to believe that, actually. We were taught about them in our lessons. We were also taught that such a philosophy resulted in most of the population stalling in their Advancement without proper guidance.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Though, there might be some wisdom in the approach. What did you do to provoke the change?”

“It is difficult to explain,” I said honestly and did my best to appear sheepish.

“So it was more of an instinctual thing? A feeling you acted on in the moment?” She sounded skeptical. To her credit, I’d been crowing about the importance of intent for years. To suddenly claim I achieved such a feat with a ‘gut feeling’ would be dubious at best.

“No, not that, it is just… difficult to explain. I wanted Fudge and I to be closer. Now we are.” Again, a half-truth.

Tina frowned but didn’t object to my explanation.

“Well please think about it, okay? I want to know as much as possible so I can try to help you.” I didn’t miss her addition of the word ‘try’. “For now, we will start practicing some more advanced Tamer techniques. We need to find out how your new Bond will affect the Beast High in a controlled environment; the last thing we want is for you to accidentally lose control.” She offered me a hand to pull me up and I was quick to accept

“Thanks, mom. That sounds like a good idea.” Given how intrusive Fudge’s emotions now felt ambiently, I suspected I was going to have some issues when we started practicing. Addressing them sooner rather than later would be ideal.

“Did you also want to talk about Fudge?” There was still a whole other half to the conversation.

Tina just laughed in a way that sounded forced.

“Not today. I already have enough to think about. Do you think Fudge is going to be a danger to you or the family?”

I shook my head.

“Then I trust you.” She whistled and within moments Fudge and Vigil came back into view, having both broken into a run that swiftly ate up the distance. Vigil easily outpaced the younger dog, but not by much. I’d seen how fast Vigil could really move, though. He was holding back.

All things considered, delaying that conversation might be for the best… It wasn’t ideal, but I didn’t want to push Tina too hard.

As Tina and I made our way back to the house, I reflected on how busy my life had gotten. Taming had Advanced, but it just spawned several additional concerns I now had to address. Recovery was similarly growing close to Advancement, for even though I didn’t have the benefits of a teacher, I had enough of a theoretical foundation that it didn’t lag behind my other Skills.

Another year. Tops. There were mana exercises; physical exercises; the drudge of socializing with Bella and avoiding her increasingly sharp senses; and the ever present possibility that any day a Crown representative could come to collect me and set off a chain reaction of conscriptions and whatever other political games I’d suddenly become a pawn in.

Before all of that, though, was a more imminent concern. In a couple of months, baby Marco would hit his six-month threshold and receive his Core Skill.

It was a terrifying thought.