The Western Continent, Rangbit, on top of a hill in a tropical rainforest.

Two figures were studying a collection of Memory Spheres. Projected in each was footage filmed by a voyeuristic blowfly of a muscular blonde woman in various states of undress. The clips were unified by a common theme: a pair of panties embroidered with sunflowers.

“My protégé,” said Karnon in a feeble old man voice, the God having shapeshifted into an ancient Asian-looking dude, “has this view not stirred up something inside of you, has it not awoken your inner beast?”

“She’s going to kill you if she finds out you took these.”

“Us, she’s going to kill us. For the next lesson, you are going to take that primal urge and learn to concentrate it.” Karnon summoned five canvases along with an oil painting set.

Shaking his head, Henry created a throwaway identity with his ring so the work couldn’t be traced back to him.

“Will an automated Method do?” he asked. “I have no artistic talent.”

Not yet, at least.

Artworks could confer special bonuses, like curing a viewer’s illness or increasing the quality of armour forged in their vicinity. However, these bonuses required manual creative input.

“That is acceptable,” said Karnon. “The recipient would be disgusted by your personal touch. Please use a standard, realistic style. Your only task is to concentrate.” The God pressed his fingers to his temples in a gesture Henry assumed mimed serious thought. “Concentrate on the panties. The individual fibres should be visible.”

Henry didn’t inquire into the identity of the recipient, nor did he point out the inherent contradiction between using an automated painting Method and Karnon’s supposed lesson purpose. After prepping a canvas, he selected a Memory Sphere with the muscular woman in her underwear flexing in front of a full-length mirror. Then, the art episode began.

During the Earthfriend quests where a player built their connection with a domain, motes corresponding to its Energy subtype would be absorbed by them to signal their progress.

None of that happened because this painting task was a scam, the ‘lesson’ being an excuse to have him perform manual labour.

But he’d expected such antics when he’d agreed to comply. As long as he got his skills eventually, he was content.

With a swarm of brushes flying around him, he set his character to display as online and chatted with his friends. Not much had changed in their lives in the 19 years/1 in-game hour he’d been away. His guild’s inner circle, noticing his character’s location, bombarded him with demands for whatever Legendary item could teleport him across the globe.

-Silver Wolf: You enabled Online Mode! Feeling lonely?

Henry sneered. ‘I recall a certain promise not to talk to me again. Let’s renew that arrangement.’

-Silver Wolf: What are you doing in Rangbit?

‘Painting creepshots of a God.’

-Silver Wolf: We’re taking a break this week. Want to hang out? I’ve got a story that needs editing.

‘I’d love to. Catch the next boat here.’

-Silver Wolf: Really?

‘Of course. I’ll be the guy down on the docks, waiting with a bouquet of roses.’ His mouth curled into a devilish smile. When his archnemesis arrived, would he be on this continent? ‘I'll even pay the fare.’

-Silver Wolf: !!! You're so rude, sometimes, do you know that?

You have been blocked by Silver Wolf.

Never mind, thought Henry. Revenge would be his soon enough. After his editors went over the manuscripts he'd written in The Overdream, the fame, glory, adulation, and awards would be heaped upon him. Wherever he went, it would be his books in the hands of the grubby plebs! No more would he suffer accusations of unoriginality and unrelatable character design! His pennames would ring across the...

...

...

After the paintings were finished, Old Man Karnon transferred them into his Spatial Bracelet, before raising a wrinkled finger. “We may pat the fur of the beast, but not its claws. This reflects the dualistic nature of Fauna, which is both tenderness and ferocity. Through this lesson, I have taught you to master the first aspect.”

The God paused.

“Arigato, sensei.”

“Next, you will learn the second. Equip your combat gear.”

Henry put on his ninja costume with chest straps for Spelltomes and the Cloak of Water and Flame.

“What kind of weapon—“

He plummeted into a rift that Karnon created with a stamp of his foot.

Descending into a pitch-black underground cavern, he saw thousands of pairs of red eyes staring up at him. Summoning a Lightstone and throwing it down, he revealed a colony of hairless moles the size of cows.

These were Wild Tunnelling Cowmoles.

Their domesticated cousins were employed throughout the Western continent for harvesting minerals. They also produced a foul milk that tasted like fatty goat milk filtered through rat fur.

While the domesticated variants were docile, friendly creatures, these wild ones were hostile to humans. Moreover, they were Level 100, which was a tad beyond his character’s current strength, even with the bonus stats of his Spelltomes.

This last fact didn’t bode well because, when throwing the Lightstone, he’d glimpsed one of the monsters, which'd been latched to a stalactite near the rift, lunging at him and slashing with its metre-long digging claws.

If the intended target were struck, his neck, his head would be lopped off. Shortly after that, his decapitated body, hitting the ground, would be consumed by the Tunnelling Cowmoles below.

Could he dodge with a spell or become water or sacrifice his forearms? Perhaps. However, despite his intense combat training with The Cap, his physical reaction speed continued to be painfully slow. Thus, his hand, shifting over to the Spelltome for , would not reach it quick enough.

He was dead.

Having been numbed by tens of thousands of deaths, he experienced the claw swiping across his throat with indifference.

To both his and the monster's surprise, though, the slash, while it did manage to slice through the skin and arteries, caught on his neck vertebrae.

“Oh, I forgot,” he remarked. “. SVAL.”

A flame door swallowed him and shot straight down, setting the Tunnelling Cowmoles below on fire and spitting him out amongst a mess of melting flesh.

“BRAN.”

A cone of lightning erupting from his palm showered a cluster of monsters, the sparks slicing out meat chunks and afflicting them with temporary paralysis.

Jumping amongst the stunned group, he bit his thumb. “DING.”

Spinning around with his hand outstretched, a bucket of blood streaked through the air as though he were finger painting on a transparent sheet of paper. With the blood circle's completion, it summoned a wall of screaming white faces. Their horrific moans stunned the monsters in the contact with them and terrified those outside from approaching.

This last spell was , cast by Tier-3-and-up Bloodmancers in emergencies to buy crucial seconds for their Skeleton Summons to save them.

Henry made use of the respite to toss out extra Lightstones and develop a plan of attack.

In the past, against so many, he would have built distance to blow them up from afar, but, now, it would be slightly faster if he wove in some of the skills he’d learned in The Cap. The styles he had available so far were five melee martial arts, one archery martial art, and a non-combative style that was essentially battlefield parkour. Against massed monsters, slashing sword styles tended to be ideal, but the weapons in his inventory were so low-level that they would break against the Tunnelling Cowmoles' flesh.

Once the faded, he punched the nearest monster in the face with a Karnon-blessed fist. What erupted from its mouth was not only a few teeth and a groan of pain but a dirt-coloured mote of Fauna Energy, which fused with his knuckles.

Fauna, spirit of the beasts, rewards your deeds! 1% of the Energy necessary to build a connection has been accumulated.

During the massacre of the Tunnelling Cowmoles that followed, he mulled over the oddity that an ‘Earthfriend’ could develop their connection with the Fauna domain by murdering monsters, a kind of animal.

However, while Earthfriends were generally hippies, some did follow alternative Paths of ‘Evil’ or ‘Randomness’. According to their lore, Nature adhered to a morality ‘unfathomable to the human mind’. Indifference; it was indifference.

A more accurate name for the class would have been ‘Earthaffiliate’, but he supposed that didn’t roll off the tongue as well.

Mentally shrugging at these thoughts, he ducked a swipe from behind that tore open the creature before him’s side, spilling out its guts and another dirt-brown mote.

Fauna, spirit of the beasts, rewards your deeds! 2% of the Energy necessary to build a connection has been accumulated.

After the time it takes to wipe out several thousand monsters, one wall of the cavern was transmuted from outside into mud and sloughed away.

The entering sunlight revealed Henry standing amidst the meaty carnage before a cooking fire. His hand, moving the handle of a wok in a gentle circle, was encased in a dense glove of dirt.

At the new opening, regular-form Karnon grabbed his antlers in shock. “You were supposed to tame them!”

Ignoring the joking God, Henry picked up a chunk of meat with his fingers and sampled it. His face scrunched up at a flavour that tasted like rats soaked in vinegar and sewage. In his Mental Library, he navigated five months ahead in his calendar, to the conquest of cooking, and wrote a challenge for himself to invent a palatable dish with this taste.

From behind a Karnon, a random dude he'd abducted stepped out awkwardly. He wore a chainmail sarong made of a metal resembling seawater beginning to freeze– Amaittal, a Tier 6-3 material.

Paying no mind to the dead creatures, the man focused on exotic chef Henry, his fingers fidgeting with the stem of a flower slotted in his afro.

It was customary in the former territories of The Old Rangbitan Empire – Nilke, Rangbit, and Nikrugbeet - for one to greet a superior by gifting them a worn flower. This action had evolved from an older custom where the subordinate would rip out a strand of hair. For Rangbitans, that was an act of severe humiliation due to their belief that one's physical appearance is synonymous with one's social identity.

Karnon laughed at the man's hesitancy. “You should show him deference. You probably know this outstanding Offworlder as The Ty...” the God looked at Henry until the latter pretended to be annoyed. “...The Ty-remendous New Protégé of Me, Karnon!”

“Skip the introductions,” said Henry. “I’m an insignificant pleb. Karnon, why have you abducted a Rangbitan Prince?”

“Abduction, me? Never! Prince Sulkatai begged me to rush him here after hearing that you’d cleared this location of its deadly infestation.”

Henry doubted that; the Rangibtans despised Karnon because he and five other Gods had killed their patron God about 1100 years ago. It’d kind of deserved it because it tried enslaving the world, but its followers were also understandably irritated because its death caused their once glorious empire to fracture and lose its overseas territories.

“Prince,” continued Karnon, “I believe you have a prize for our hero!”

At the God’s prompting, the Prince came forward and presented a treasure chest that contained black crystals speckled with yellow dots, resembling a starry night sky.

This was Kamalite, a mineral utilised in the formulation of a super-luxury pigment. Mined from the heart of a dormant volcano in the territory of Peenutuh City, one of Rangbit's two capitals and the city who this abducted man was in line to control, the mineral was quite pricey. Clearing a thousand more Tunnelling Cowmole colonies would not justify Henry being given this chest.

The Prince spoke painfully through clenched teeth. “You may also help yourself from the rest of our Kamalite stores.”

Henry turned to the God orchestrating this farce. “Is there an extra layer or am I shamelessly accepting his offer?”

“There is no shame! An Earthfriend lives off the land! When the trees begin to shed their fruit, we must be ready to catch them!”

“Then...thanks, mate."

Henry took the chest, only to have it immediately pried away by his ‘mentor’.

Through this convoluted exchange, Karnon was side-stepping rules imposed on the Zone Guardians by a higher entity that restricted them from exploiting their powers in foreign starting zones, of which Peenutuh was one.

This cavern wasn’t in the starting zone, as could be seen by the level 100 monsters.

The Prince had been convinced somehow to give the gift ‘voluntarily’ to Henry, not Karnon. (The God had promised to leave his kingdom alone for a century).

“Hehehe...don’t worry, my protégé...Hehehe....I will transfer your prize to a secure location. While I’m raid...collecting the rest of your bounty from Peenutuh’s stores, feel free to experiment with your new Fauna abilities. We’ll connect your other domains soon enough.”

After spouting this nonsense, he began to cast his global teleport.

The last line made the Prince look at the piles of Tunnelling Cowmoles with confusion.

“Yeah...” said Henry, “you haven’t actually connected me with the domain yet.”

Karnon, cancelling the spell, nodded with pride. “The ever-fluttering leaves of the Mudgi Tree hide the wounded Songbird, yet it behoves us to find it. Fantastic job, my protégé. By noticing that minor flaw that I left intentionally there, you have demonstrated an absorption of the final, secret lesson in the heart of the animal: attentiveness. You pass! Let’s start!”

For connecting with a domain, there were lengthy rituals in which the mentor would use mental fusion magic to hover as a projection behind the protégé like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, directing them through the complicated steps. The Fauna ritual, in particular, ended with a rather beautiful moment where the protégé animated an insect out of soil and leaves.

Instead of doing that, though, Karnon approached Henry and flailed his arms around randomly for a few seconds.

You feel a spiritual connection to all that walks, flys, crawls, and swims.

With the domain of Fauna having opened its ear to you, you may call upon it to refine Nature into Fauna energy for the creation and utilisation of spells.

Seek the guidance of your mentor in this procedure.

...

Henry inspected his hands. “The Fauna energy I gathered earlier is still here.”

It should have been consumed by the ritual.

“That’s how it’s done in Togavi!” It wasn’t. “The side-effect will take care of itself when crafting your first spell!”

Directly contradicting the lying God, Henry's dirt-brown glove, sensing that it was no longer needed, dispersed away like smoke.

“You can generate connections at will,” concluded Henry. “Unlock the rest for me now, please.”

Karnon hastily cast his teleportation spell. “The first lesson in the way of the plants will be conducted through a top-secret infiltration mission! Being a gracious mentor, I will personally bring you any sneaky monster of your choosing. Quick, make your selection!”

“Chameleon Monkey.”

“We’re going somewhere snowy.”

Chameleon Monkeys were adapted to tropical climates.

“Bring it anyway. Don’t forget the Prince.”

“Right!”

The God shot out a vine from his palm that wrapped around the Prince's waist and dragged him back to him. And then they were gone.

Alone, Henry decided to craft his Fauna spells. Luckily for him, this part didn't require aid.

Step one: gather Fauna Energy Charges.

He shaped a hand so that the tips formed the Constellation of Zeyma, the same one he’d formed when unlocking the class. Although the hand choice could differ, this gesture was always performed to initiate the Energy Charging Mode.

The instant he made the shape, tiny stars formed at his fingertips, along with a syllable for him to chant.

“Pra.”

Motes of white Nature energy drifted from out of everything in his surroundings, the dirt, the air, his clothes, even his disgusting cooking.

With the miniaturised Constellation of Zeyma remaining in place and sustaining itself, another constellation manifested within arm’s reach whose stars were coloured dirt-brown. As his hand formed this shape, the motes of Nature energy were vacuumed into the new constellation, converted by it, and then condensed into a brown Fauna Charge on his pinky finger.

Easy as that.

Later, after connecting with the other domains, constellations coloured to correspond to them would appear simultaneously, from which the Earthfriend would select their choice depending on their needs.

Henry, chanting a new syllable that popped up below the tiny Constellation of Zeyma, repeated the steps.

Charging could be stopped mid-way, leaving one with what they’d gathered up to that point, but, for the next step of spell creation, he gathered all ten.

Step two: make the spell.

Mentally directing the Charges into his palms, he focused on the memory of Karnon into a dolphin and clapped his hands.

Inside his skull, Zeyma the Earthfriend progenitor’s voice echoed. ‘My babysitter was the forest behind our village. In the evenings, I grew jealous of the lizards who didn't need to return home.’

Your aims resonate with a higher being. They have granted you .