They start gathering fruits right away from the forest around me, and I'm interested in spite of myself. I hadn't previously thought to check for food other than animals, but...

[How much energy does fruit give?]

[Well, there's a type called a Fissure Fruit that gives a whole lot, but aside from that, not very much. Oh, that reminds me!]

[What is it?]

[I finished processing and synthesizing the - stucats, did they call them? - and figured out how to use their abilities, more or less. You've also got a serious crapton of void energy right now.]

[Pour it all into the Void.]

Joule starts, and I can hear her somewhat frantically start talking.

[Uh - are you sure? That's a whole lot of energy that you're using right there, and we could probably invest it in other things, you know what I mean?]

I get what she's saying in a moment.

[I know it's going to hurt, Joule, but I can't grow right now with the humans this close. Besides, who knows how powerful you're going to be once it's all over?]

She sighs.

[Fine. Allocating all reserves directly to Void. And by the way, I'm going to be completely shut down, and I don't know how long for. We've never had this level of energy before.]

She grunts in pained surprise then continues.

[I'm just going to mute my telepathy, okay?]

[Sounds good.]

Dylan walks over to me, a pile of apples in his arms. "I've got to give it to this forest, the fruit is incredible. I've never seen such juicy apples in my life."

[Honestly, I never noticed. I was a bit busy fighting monsters.]

He dropped the apples in a pile on the grass, raising a finger to his chin. "Actually, I've been meaning to ask you. How come the more powerful monsters never attacked you? Surely you've got to be a threat to the forest's food chain."

He raises a good point, and I think about it hard before I come to a conclusion.

[More likely than not, Noah scared them off every time they started getting close.]

Dylan shivers noticeably, despite the relatively warm weather. "Man. He's a really scary guy, you know what I mean?"

[He's mostly just weird.]

He laughed halfheartedly. "Maybe for you. We've got stories about how dangerous he is."

[Like with the demons?]

His gaze switched to me rapidly. "What did he tell you about that?"

[He didn't. Kerem did.]

Frowning for a moment, his face lit up in recognition. "Kerem... the dragon?"

[That's what he called himself.]

He shook his head. "How many legends live in this forest?"

[How would I know? I've only existed for about four months.]

His eyebrows raise quickly, indicating his surprise. I wish I could do that. Facial expressions are so descriptive and my face doesn't really... move. "You got this powerful in four months?"

[Noah helped.]

The big human - Baby - walks over with his own pile of assorted fruit. "What are you talking about over here? We still need to get our bags so we can transport all of this."

I focus for a moment and realize just how much more difficult using abilities is without Joule guiding the background process. Regardless, I grit my mandibles together and shove the food into my subspace. Hopefully I didn't explode it or something.

Baby just makes a little 'humph' sound and walks away. Dylan is staring at me strangely. "How are you doing that?"

[Joule does all the heavy lifting when it comes to the 'how' part of the abilities. I just use them as best as I can.]

"It must be nice."

I flick my antennae indifferently. [I don't really have anything to compare it against. Again, I've only been here for about four months - it's not much time to have experience.]

Dylan nods agreeably, and I realize just how much I enjoy conversing with someone else. Especially with Joule shut down. I wonder if there's a word for being sad when by yourself?

[How long do humans live for?]

He shrugs. "It varies. Usually about a hundred or more, but the more powerful people can extend their life significantly. Like Noah, for example."

I consider it for a moment before responding.

[I don't think he's as old as he is through magic or anything. I'm fairly sure he was just born to live for a long time.]

"Does he ever mention time frames?"

[He said something about millennia a while back, but that was a pretty strange incident, so I don't remember much of it.]

Bubbles rolls over, several leaves stuck to his outside, and burbles pleasantly, jumping at Dylan and knocking him down. The human screams for a moment before realizing that the slime is just saying hello. He pets him awkwardly, and then happily. "This is kind of nice, actually. No guildmaster, no Archminister breathing down your neck."

I shrug, the movement shaking my carapace. [This is just what I'm used to.]