“This way I am going to run out of clothes.” Rick bickered checking on his burnt shirt. His first pair of clothes was ruined in the Awakenment and now his shirt was ruined again.

The heat from his hands quickly dissipated in less than half a minute and cooled down to a normal temperature.

“Let me just try working on the spell,” he mumbled.

He cast the Hot Hands spell again.

Now that he had experienced it once, he knew that the spell had been cast successfully. It was time to check the strength of the spell.

He walked up to the bottle he had got to test his spell on. Before he even touched it, the heat from his hands crumpled up the surface of the plastic. The moment he lay his palm on the bottle, the plastic melted down.

“Okay that’s cool,” Rick smirked.

The spell broke and Rick was panting gasping for breath. Casting the spell for just over a minute had him out of energy.

He paused for a moment to cool off his hands before touching his temple to call up his stats. All his stats were just the same.

From what he had researched, the [Mana] stat quantified the amount of Mana the body could store and this amount could be increased. The more advanced the spell, the greater the amount of Mana it would require to cast.

Besides, the greater the Mana you have, greater would be the strength of the spell. For instance, now when Rick cast [Hot Hands], he could reduce the heat, but not increase beyond a limit. The heat would only increase once he was able to supply more Mana to the spell.

Moreover, the duration for which the spell could be cast was not based on the [Mana] stat. It was rather determined by the [Stamina Stat] you had. Rick, with his less than twelve points in stamina, could only cast the Hot Hands spell for just over a minute long.

After resting for a moment, Rick prepared to cast the spell again. He needed to master the spell completely.

“Adolebitque Huoagni.” he cast Hot Hands again.

If he had not been expecting a fireball, he would have immediately noticed that the spell had succeeded the first time. The heat distorted the air around his palms once he cast the spell.

This time around, he tried to concentrate the heat only on the tip of his fingertip. If he could concentrate the spell on one finger, it would expend much less stamina that would let him cast the spell for that much longer. He had read of a person in the Lemegeton who had used the spell along with his martial arts to such a degree of mastery that he used could burn a hole in his opponents with just the tip of his fingers!

After spending the entire afternoon practising he could finally direct the spell from the entirety of his palm to just his fingers. If he cast [Hot Hands] now, the plastic would melt in the shape of just the fingers.

Now, exhausted he laid down on the driveway, The soft sunset light bath the entire neighbourhood with a red glow.

Brr... His stomach growled.

“How long was it anyway,” he wondered. Once he tried to recall, he realized that he had not eaten anything since his dinner with Samira and Jay the night before they had left.

“Wow, that’s been quite a while,” he picked himself up. He patted his back to remove any dirt on him before walking back in.

Back in his kitchen, Rick realised there was nothing he could actually cook and eat quickly.

“Well, canned food it is” he was too tired to cook something up. Jay on his supply run had grabbed quite a large stash of canned food as well.

He walked down to the basement where all the food was stashed.

“Canned tomato, sardines, pumpkin, clams…” with the torch in one hand, he looked through the stash looking for something for lunch.

“Canned chicken, never had that,” he picked up the can. Now that he had learnt [Hot Hands] he could warm the can quite easily. He quickly wolfed down the food before putting the empty can on the floor.

“No point in delaying this,” he sighed. It was time he paid the Library a visit. Now that everything else around was over, the next thing was to go to the Library and find out about the runes required for summoning.

He changed his clothes to a white shirt and grabbed a black overcoat from the pile of clothes in the basement for easy access to the Lemegeton and all his talismans.

As he looked around to grab all his things before leaving, a sound reached him.

Crunch 

Initially, he thought it was the sound of paper. When he turned to look at where the sound came from, he realized it was from the Egg. He had brought the Egg along but after the Awakenment, the Egg almost slipped from the mind.

Now, the Egg had small cracks appearing on its surface, the [Fire Core Rune] on the surface of the egg was flashing as well.

The Egg was hatching.

With a smile, he crouched on his knees to witness it. An Egg with a rune etched on it should definitely be a special animal.

Slowly, more cracks appeared on the egg. It was pipping! 

When he first found the egg, it was the size of a normal sized chicken egg. Now the egg was bigger than even a tennis ball!

Within minutes, more cracks started appearing on it. Slowly, the bird inside pecked at the shell, trying to break it.

Rick had no idea about eggs. So he assumed that at most, it would take the chick a few minutes to break out. Little did he know that a chick could take a full day to break out of the shell after it pipping.

After fifteen minutes Rick realised that it was stupid to expect the thing to come out immediately.

He could not just leave now before the Egg hatched. He had to wait. He walked out to get some water and a few grains of rice and milk in saucers and got them down.

After preparing everything, he laid back on the sofa for a quick nap.

---

A sharp pinch on his arm woke Rick up from his sleep. His arm was hanging out of the sofa. He turned his head around and noticed that it was a small yellow oversized chick pecking on his arm. 

The Egg had hatched while he was out dreaming of the Kings of Hell.

He immediately sat back up and grabbed the chick in his palm and brought it up. The chick looked extremely normal while he was hoping it would be a ferocious bird he could fly on maybe.

“Maybe it is actually something else” he mused. After all the egg had become so much bigger right before his eyes

He quickly grabbed the Lemegeton and opened it up the best encyclopedia.

[Chick: An overgrown chick

The infant chicken is called the Chick.

The Chicken was a fowl known greatly for the various delicacy prepared with its meat. Historically, the chicken was also considered to be a harbinger of good fortune.

There are several well-known recipes on how to cook a chicken.

1. Chicken Steak...]

Rick’s lips twitched with irritation. The information on the Lemegeton was about any normal chicken.

“Is it really just an ordinary chicken?” he wondered.

No matter what, he could not bring himself to just abandon the little fellow or much, cook it like the Lemegeton seemed to suggest.

 "Cut it out will you!” Rick said to the chick he was holding in his palm. The little thing was going on at his hand without sparing a moment.

 The chick stopped for a second as if understanding Rick. But the next moment he went at it again. This time it even cut his skin and drew blood.

 “That’s it, get down,” Rick snapped and placed the chick back on the floor.

 “Bad chick,” He reprimanded the little thing.

 The chick tiled his hand and called out “peep peep peep!”.

Just that moment, he heard a voice in his head “Mommy!”

Ding

[Congratulations!]

[You have tamed a chick]

Ding

[Congratulations!

[You are now a Novice Beast Master]

Ding

[Congratulation on being the first to become a Beast Master

Reward: 5 Blessed Stones]