There is a delicate balance between dedication and motivation. One lasts longer than the other. I was quiet as my father approached the teleportation gate, and then on the way back home as well.

My father had thought I was overwhelmed by the events of the day. He was wrong. I was looking at the system.

Name: Andross Silver

Class: None Health: 50 Mana: 300/300 Vitality: 5 Intelligence: 15 Wisdom: 11 Stamina: 1 Dexterity: 2 Skill list: Earth creation(I): level 2 Fear tolerance(I): level 1 Earth Manipulation(I): level 1 Mark of the Crijik(I): level 1 Meditation(I): level 1

There were a lot of questions I needed the answers to, but only one part of my status window was completely unknown to me.

What is a class?

I knew what a class was in a game. Magician, warrior, bard, and all the others. If it was the same in this world then that’s probably how I would increase my stats. That led to my second question.

How do I get a class?

What classes are good?

What class is the best for fighting off a divine creature that’s planning to possess me or blow me up trying?

The list of questions was growing. I kept them all in my head, remembering each and every one of them. My father and mother were resting, and I was in my cot.

There was something I wanted to do before asking these questions. Gerial had mentioned that activating the Mark would give me a boost to my intelligence. He didn’t seem like he was lying, but I hadn’t received anything.

I wanted to see why that was.

There was a possibility that I couldn’t because of my intelligence. If there was a limit to how high it could go, then maybe I had already hit that limit. After all, a kid like Gerial would have started with the intelligence of a baby, not an adult.

[Mana: 0/300]

I poured dirt into the inventory box. I dropped it down onto the side of my cot as the pain took over. This time I didn’t want to go to sleep when it finished, I wanted to see what happened.

Golden light dropped from the ceiling and swirled in the air. I caught it in my hands, and then the lights rushed into me.

[Mana: 50/350]

The pain stopped, and I breathed a sigh of relief, but it wasn’t over. I waited this time. The second wave hadn’t come every time I did it, but I’d seen it more times than not.

A second wave of light came, slower than the first. It didn’t rush towards me and instead they wriggled in the air and crawled across the ceiling. They converged into a single spot and each individual part grew into a whole. It was a ball of mana.

It shimmered in the air, and then started moving towards me. I raised my hand towards it, ready to accept it.

Then a shadow crossed over my body.

A large belly and fourteen claws obscured my vision, the purple and black form of the puffer covering my eyes. It opened its beak wide, and the golden ball disappeared.

It had been eaten.

I stared in disbelief at the puffer, and it stared back at me. Then it burped and a small puff of golden light escaped its mouth. The puffer snapped at it, swallowing it again.

“You ate my skill?” I finally registered what had happened. “You ate my skill!”

My fingers curled into fists, and I raised my stone ball into the air. An emotion was igniting within me, anger.

No, it’s just a stupid bird. It couldn’t be held responsible for its actions.

Wait. It’s not just a stupid bird. It’s an intelligent bird.

I took in the room around me and the symbols that surrounded us. It had been learning this whole time. There were signs of its intelligence littered around the room.

I saw the stone that it had made its nest on. The first symbol it had carved in there was a nature symbol, and there were more now. They crisscrossed the stone. There were even symbols that I hadn’t learned.

I realised why the structure looks so familiar. “Are you making a regent?”

The bird squawked angrily at me. It flapped its wings and moved into its nest. Then it pecked at the stone underneath its nest, hitting the nature symbol directly in the middle.

The air around me let up bright orange. A dome formed around the bird and me. After a few seconds it slowly lost its lustre.

“Okay. Not making. Made.” I stared at the shimmering orange field.

It was transparent, slight tell-tale shimmers giving away its presence. I pressed my hand hesitantly against it. It felt like a wall. Not a strong wall, one made out of paper. Or cardboard.

“This is a shield, right?” I turned to the bird. “You made it to protect your nest.”

The puffer chirped at me.

I stared in amazement at the field. Then it disappeared with a pop. I looked at the stone and it had stopped glowing. I think the bird had run out of mana.

I looked at the ground and the dirt had been parted by the magic. The shield had clearly been designed to cover my cot, as well as the nest. The bird had built it to protect me as well.

I was touched. It was true the bird had stolen from me, but it hadn’t known any better. It wasn’t intelligent when we first brought it in, but I’m guessing it ate the first intelligence buff and then continued from there.

It had been listening in on my dad’s lessons, but that didn’t account for the working regent. His lessons weren’t enough for that.

There was something else at work here.

“How did you do this?” I pointed at the regent.

The puffer tilted its head at me and then lifted itself into the air. It went to an unoccupied stone and began scratching at it. The stone shaved off like ice cream and the bird was finished in less than a minute.

It was another nature symbol.

I sighed. It had taken my question literally and had shown me how it had used its talons to carve the symbols. I wanted to know how it had gotten the knowledge to do this.

I hadn’t expected to encounter a communication barrier so soon after overcoming my own.

“No. I mean how did you learn to make a regent. My dad didn’t teach us that much about symbols.” I pointed at the stone regent.

The bird looked at me. Then at the stone. Then back at me. It flapped its wings upwards in the bird equivalent of a shrug. It had no idea. I held down the frustration that still simmered in my mind.

“Oka-” There was a loud sound behind me.

I was interrupted by my father walking in. He took a look at me and saw me talking with the bird. He raised an eyebrow at me and chuckled.

“Having fun there, champ?” He moved over to my cot.

“Dad.” I pointed at the puffer. “The bird made a regent out of that stone after you taught us. How did it do that?” My dad’s mouth hung open as he heard me speaking. “I should also add, I can talk now, and I need to ask you a few questions about the system.”

I thought it was best to let him know sooner, rather than later.

To my surprise he didn’t immediately react. His back straightened, and he turned around. Then he walked out of my room. I heard his calm footsteps echoing through the house, and then they were followed by another pair.

“See, honey. I told you he’s a genius. He can even talk now!” My father broke through the entrance with my mother in tow.

She rubbed at her eyes, bags forming underneath them. She looked at him and then at me.

“Go on, champ, say something to your mother.”

“Googoo. Gaga.” I replied.

My mother put a hand on dad’s shoulder, and I saw his clothes crumble as her fingers dug into him.

“Teral, sweetpea, I’m trying to sleep. Please stop annoying our child. I know he’s amazing, but you can’t keep doing this over every little noise.” My mother walked out of my room and I heard the door close behind her.

My dad stared at me like I’d stabbed him in the back.

“I thought it would be funny.” I didn’t regret a thing.

Maybe I felt a little guilty.

“Okay.” I relented. “I’ll talk to her properly tomorrow.”

“Thank Fue. She’s starting to think I’m going crazy.”

“Well, you did make me get a job.” I jabbed at him playfully. “And you taught our bird how to make regents.”

Our attention turned back to the puffer. It was sitting in its nest, putting its beak into its feathers, and not paying us the slightest attention.

“Oh, I didn’t do that.” My father’s eyes shone. “Fascinating.”

He walked over to the stone and put his hands against the symbols carved into it. The puffer looked at him curiously, raising its head towards him and following him with its eyes. My dad ignored it as he became absorbed with the stone.

He tapped the stone’s sides, and even held the puffer’s wings up, much to its indignation. After ten minutes he was still at it.

I used my time emptying my mana again. It was already low, but I wanted to test a second theory, whether it was possible to chain together activations of the Mark of Crijik. That way I would be able to go immediately from one use of the Mark to another.

“So, how did he do it?” I got tired of my dad’s exploration.

My dad rose from the floor. “Well, that’s a hard question, champ. Do you know how we discovered symbols in the first place?”

I shook my head.

“The answer is that we found them embedded inside living creatures. Anything that uses magic, really. We used to hunt weaker creatures almost to extinction for them. Now we’re more civilised and have other methods that are more exact.” He turned to face the puffer. “Inside the flesh of magic creatures there is always a symbol carved. Usually, there are more than one. These symbols matched the type of magic that the creatures could use.”

That sounded suspiciously like attunement. I looked down at my chest. Was there an ‘earth’ symbol carved into my flesh on the inside?

If there was, how did it get there?

My dad read my expression. “They don’t appear in humans, and before now I thought they didn’t appear in puffers either.” He pointed at my bird. “Puffers aren’t meant to be magical. They’re ordinary birds.”

The puffer preened inside its nest. I could tell it was proud of its accomplishments. I hope it didn’t get too cocky. It had stolen my skill to get this far.

My dad’s description also made me think. The giant creature that Zodiac had taken down had a symbol carved into its flesh. A new one.

“That’s the kind of symbol you’re examining now with Femew?” I asked.

My dad nodded. “That was a symbol from a newly created monster. One that had never been seen before.”

He returned to the stone. “This appears to be a basic shielding ritual regent. I would say the knowledge to create it is embedded into the puffer. Who knows, maybe it can learn more symbol combinations.”

He rose and faced me. “Now then…”

“You said you wanted to talk about the system.”