"Mmm..." Sophie groggily opened her eyes and blinked several times once she noticed that another set of eyes were calmly watching her.

"Lone... Lone! Lone! Lone!" she immediately wrapped her arms around his neck and began sobbing.

Unsure of what to do, Lone just returned Sophie's hug. "What's with the overreaction?"

Sophie pulled away from Lone momentarily in shock before she dove face-first back into the nape of his neck. "You... You wouldn't wake up! It's been so long!"

Sophie's cries filled the bedroom and did little more than make Lone feel both awkward and sorry.

It was never a very good sign when a girl was crying, especially when it was your name being said alongside the tears.

‘'Been so long'? How long, exactly? I got beat up pretty badly but I’d healed myself too so it can’t have been, what, more than a few days, right?’ Lone thought.

He continued to hold Sophie and gently pat her back as he waited for her to calm down.

It took some time, but after roughly ten minutes, Sophie managed to settle her emotions. She got off of Lone and scurried out of the room quickly before returning with some clothes and some soup.

"I-I'm not that good at cooking... I’ve, uh, I tried to do what you taught me,” she said as she passed the bowl of soup to him.

He brought it up to his nose and sniffed it. “Mushrooms?”

She nodded happily as she sniffled a bit. “Mmm. I-I know it doesn't look that good, but I promise it's really tasty! I, uh, only picked the mushrooms you said were safe and I tasted it myself earlier. Sorry it’s cold…" Lone couldn't help but smile at her.

He brought the bowl of soup to his lips and took a sip. 'Lacking in all flavour but her heart was in it. I give it a… hmm… 7/10. Could use more salt.'

He patiently enjoyed the meal of cold mushroom soup. He had an audience, after all. It would be rude to let her down when she’d clearly tried so hard.

“You went outside?” he asked. “To get the mushrooms, I mean.”

She nodded slowly. “Mmm. I teleported. I never stayed out for more than a few minutes. I, uh, didn’t spot any more goblins… I think.”

Lone wore a ponderous expression on his face but didn’t speak. Once he was done with his soup, he said, "It was delicious, thank you very much, Soph."

A smile bright enough to put the sun to shame appeared on Sophie's face. "I'm glad..."

"Soph, how long was I unconscious for?" Lone asked as he sat on the side of the bed and started getting dressed.

Without hesitation, the girl scootched right next to him. She was practically sitting on his lap at this point.

Apparently, his extended state of unconsciousness had made her more attached to him.

‘Not the best of signs,’ he thought.

"I-It's been four days..." she said in a soft tone, sadness clouding her words. “I was… I was worried you’d never wake up.”

"Four days… Fuck I must’ve been exhausted or what, huh?” Lone laughed dryly.

He finished putting his clothes on and flopped down onto the bed. “Is the dome still active?"

It only had a life expectancy of three days since it was still beginner rank. By all rights, it should have dropped and disappeared yesterday.

Sophie shook her head, “N-No. It’s still there, uh, kinda…”

“How and what does’ kinda’ mean?” Lone asked.

Soph crawled up next to him and asked, “Don’t get mad?”

“I won’t,” he replied.

“Promise?” she pleaded, looking right into his eyes with those dead grey ones of hers.

He raised an eyebrow. “You saying this is making me think I should be mad. Just explain, yeah? You know I’m a reasonable guy.”

"O-Okay.” She took a deep breath then explained, “I-I've been giving it my mana... I'm really happy that you woke up when you did. Of course, I'm happy that you woke up in the first place, but I feel like the dome might explode soon."

"Well, you should have said that straight away. Still, you can funnel your mana points into my spell and keep it active? How does that even work?" Lone said as he got up and began travelling to the illusionary dome.

“Y-You’re not mad?” she asked in shock.

Lone stopped to give her a funny look. “No. I said I wouldn’t be and if anything, I should be happy. You extended the dome’s lifespan by an extra day. That’s no easy feat. Hell, I don’t even know if that’s normally possible. I wouldn’t be able to do it for the elves’ dome, that’s for sure.”

"O-Oh… Sorry for being so worried… I just, I… I don’t know what I expected,” she giggled a little bit awkwardly as she matched his pace.

Sophie then said, “I don’t really know how I can do it. I have a lot of mana points so I just thought about putting them in the barrier and it happened.”

"I definitely can't do that. Maybe it's to do with your unique skill, Mana Sensing?" Lone asked.

"Maybe. I never knew you couldn't do that. You always make me feel like you can do anything. You're really amazing, you know that?" Sophie's undisguised admiration caught Lone off-guard.

"I'm not, really." Lone's voice clearly stated how much he felt that he wasn't deserving of Sophie's praise. “I’m just some dude. I'm not anyone special or anything.”

Sophie tilted her head. "But you left a proper life behind, unlike me, and you've adapted so well to this place. Most of the people that I met while I was still... travelling, were very bad at getting used to new situations. They hated that I was an immortal girl, so they always tried to burn me. Not once did a person just accept me and question their old way of life."

Lone ended up laughing lightly. "You think I've gotten used to this place?"

"You haven't?" Sophie questioned.

"Not even slightly." Lone scratched his head as he thought of how best to explain what he meant.

"If you weren't here for me to talk to, I honestly think I might have gone insane by now. Do you think a normal person like me can just endure being cut up and torn to pieces by a boar and goblins several times? It fuckin’ sucks, but I don't mind doing it if it means that you're safe. That we’re both safe. How to properly convey this… hmm... You're like an anchor? Certainly an upgrade from your typical Wilson, that’s for sure. Does that make any sense?" he asked with a sigh.

Shock filled Sophie's blind eyes. "Wilson? And, uh, I never knew you were struggling... I-I just assumed-"

Lone stopped walking and put a palm out to stop her from saying anything further. "It's fine. To be honest, I probably am more adapted to our situation than most people would be. It's definitely lucky as fuck that I used to study engineering for a bit. Not to mention that my Creation Magic is an incredibly convenient skill."

Sophie's cheeks were dyed red as she stared at Lone’s long fingers. "All of your skills are really useful. Mine are terrible... especially my new one..."

"Wait. 'New one'?" Lone definitely didn’t miss her saying that. 'Did one of her skills get unsealed?'

"Mmm." Sophie nodded her head softly. "When you let me out of the dark room, and after I'd cleaned you and put you on the bed, I noticed that I had a bunch of messages from the system. I'd ranked up and one of my unique skills was unsealed. Weird, huh?"

"Maybe... Maybe not. We've already established that your level is tied to mine, so maybe your rank is as well. And it's also not out of the realms of reason that you'll get one of your skills back every rank-up." Lone frowned. "But you have seven skills left, and the letters only go up to A, meaning you'll get them all back if you can reach A-rank?"

"I never even thought of that." Sophie's dead eyes were sparkling. "You're really smart, Lone. I guess that makes sense since you were a teacher."

"I'm not quite sure what your medieval idea of a teacher is, but that has nothing to do with my intellect," Lone joked as he rubbed the girl's hair playfully. "Anyway, what skill did you get?"

"Em, well, it's a really useless one..." Sophie averted her eyes as she squeezed Lone's tails.

"C'mon, don't be shy. Tell me. None of your skills are useless, no matter how useless they may sound. True, some of them wouldn't be very helpful right now, but eventually, I'm sure we can find a use for them all," Lone said in an attempt to boost Sophie's confidence.

"Mmm... Well, It's my Body Manipulation skill. That's the one I got," Sophie said in a very quiet voice.

"Ah, the one that lets you change your body to be five or ten years older?" Lone asked as he approached the illusionary dome and began the process of taking it down and replacing it without revealing their base.

"Yup. See? It's useless," Sophie protested as she patiently waited for Lone to finish.

Once he was done, he wiped the sweat that formed on his brow. "Jesus, this thing really was about ready to explode. Dangerous shit. I'll keep a note of that for the future."

He then sighed mentally. ‘No level up… Maybe next time. I could use it since it’ll push the skill to the intermediate rank.’

"You swear a lot for a teacher," Sophie noted with a cute frown on her face.

Lone chuckled. "Hahaha, you're not the first person to tell me that. You, Zar and my sister. All of you seem to notice it, huh?"

"Who's Zar?" Sophie asked as she trailed behind Lone and followed him back into their home.

"Just some Canadian kid who I played a game with. Nice girl, but she always kept her feelings very close to her chest. Y'know, the type who says yes to almost anything, even if she doesn't want to do it. A crowd-pleaser I guess," Lone explained with a dismissive wave of his hand to add emphasis. “Quick learner, though.”

"'Canadian'?" Sophie didn't recognise this word.

Lone sighed. He gazed at Sophie with a slight disappointment in his eyes. "I told you about all of the countries only a week ago. Did you really forget already?"

"Sorry," Sophie avoided his eyes as she apologised.

"It's fine. Not like it really matters, I'm just upset that my teachings didn't stick with you. Maybe I was a crap teacher after all?" Lone mused sarcastically as he stroked his growing stubble.

It had been two weeks since he'd last shaved but a fine-looking beard was starting to take root on his face.

Sophie got a bit flustered upon hearing his words. "Th-That's not it! I just always get distracted by your fluffy tails..."

"Hmm, I should really start regulating your access to my foxy limbs, shouldn't I? You're almost like a drug addict," Lone said with absolutely no seriousness in his tone.

Sophie's face fell. What Lone had just said to her was the equivalent of telling a normal person that the world was coming to an immediate end.

He knew that and so did she. He also knew she wasn’t the best at picking up on jokes.

"Please don't do that! I-I’ll try to remember whatever you say," she begged as if someone was holding a gun to her head.

Lone laughed. "I was only kidding. Anyway, why don't you show me your other forms? I'm curious about what you look like as a teen and an adult."

"Ah, that’s good..." She scratched her cheek and said, "Sure. I, uh, don't mind showing you. D-Don’t laugh though, okay? I probably look stupid…"

“I would never laugh at you, Soph. Not unless you did something funny,” Lone said with a grin.

Soph pouted but didn’t reply. She instead led him to their bedroom. Once there, she picked up the duvet and then stripped.

“Look, I like you a lot Soph, but that isn’t going to happen,” Lone said as he averted his eyes.

“Dummy. I don’t want to r-ruin my clothes,” she explained. “I get bigger, after all.”

“Right. That makes sense,” Lone replied as he saw her with the corner of his eyes using the duvet to cover herself.

Her body then grew before his very eyes. Her hair stretched to remain at its prior height of being just below her knees.

She easily shot up by a few inches and her childish face looked a lot more defined, elegant, even.

‘Yup, she could definitely have been a fashion model or a kid movie star or something. Fuckin’ gorgeous people with their gorgeous genes,’ Lone complained internally.

Sophie didn’t stop to ask for opinions or anything but instead simply became her adult self.

Her hair flowed down to her toes. Her face was noticeably sharper, like a European beauty. She was certainly far less cute and much more graceful than her younger selves.

Lone ended up turning his head away after he found himself staring at her. 'Shit. She's exactly my type. Fuck was that a curveball. I did not expect that one bit.'

"Lone?" Sophie's voice trembled a bit though it was much more… alluring now to his ears.

Gone were the childish inflexions, replaced by a soft and soothing voice with hints of a Russian accent. ‘That’s so fuckin’ sexy! Shit! Control yourself, Lone. She’s the same person on the inside… She’s just a 1,000-year-old woman who acts immature half the time… Fuck. Nothing is normal about that.’

She ran up to him and pressed herself against him. She grabbed a few of his tails and hugged them too.

Sophie then stared up at his face with those beautiful grey eyes of hers, tears threatening to leak out of them. "Why are you looking away? Am... Am I painful to look at?"

"Ah, fuck. No, no, that’s not it," Lone felt like he had been sighing a lot today.

He could also feel something else not quite so harmless welling up inside of him. "Please go back to your kid form. I’ll be honest, you’re exactly my type in your, uh, adult one. Bit of a curveball if I’m being honest. I’m feeling very uncomfortable right now, so, uh, yeah, revert. Please?”

“Your... type?” her face flushed red as she immediately shifted back. She quickly rushed over to her clothes and began dressing.

Lone looked down and sighed once again. “And one problem is replaced by another,” he muttered before leaving for the bathroom. “Being a virgin sucks…”

Sophie couldn't be more puzzled even if she tried. "He said I'm really attractive, but why is he so... frustrated?"

She finished putting on her clothes and just sat down on the bed in a bit of a daze. She held her face in her hands and couldn’t help grinning.

“I’m his type… Heheh…” She grabbed a pillow and hugged it. “He’s a virgin too, huh? That’s oddly comforting…”

Quickly, her good mood was ruined by a throbbing pain in her mind. “Not now… You can’t come out!”

She curled up and fought back, waiting for the pains to fade. Things were finally going her way. Sophie wouldn’t have this be taken from her.

Not now, not ever.