Nathan continued to pace around in the gym, causing some of the other survivors to look at him in annoyance. He'd been doing that for nearly an hour, and they were starting to get annoyed. No one dared to say something to him, however.

Eventually, he turned and left, making his way to the classrooms of the school and locating their culinary room.

Inside, he went to work preparing a meal. An hour passed as he worked, then set one of the tables for three spots. Just as he set the last of the food down, Samantha and Katie entered the room, Samantha's hair still wet from her shower.

"So?" He looked at her.

"It wasn't anything we couldn't handle," she told him. "We picked a Beginning Survival Challenge, which lasted for only four days. Wasn't anything we couldn't handle."

He let out a sigh in relief, before pulling her into a hug. Katie shifted uncomfortably for a moment, only to find Nathan grabbing her arm and pulling her into the hug as well, before showing them to their seats.

"Just one?" He asked Samantha as he took a seat.

"We went through two Challenges," she said. "They kind of ripped into us for that, even though we all made it out alive – and stronger."

"Level?"

"I'm at Level 135, now," she answered, and he frowned. "What?"

"Nothing," he answered.

He was only Level 121, and he didn't like the idea of her a being higher Level than him. However, the increasing difficulties to gaining Levels suggested something a bit more than just two Beginner Challenges. He might not have been the strongest among them – apart from his level of magic – but he was certainly the highest-Leveled of them all.

"Second Challenge?"

"Eight-day Beginner Survival."

"Third Challenge?"

"We only went on two Challenges," she told him.

"Tower Floor?"

Samantha let out a sigh, knowing she'd been found out. The agents hadn't been so obvious with knowing – if they'd even realized it.

The Tower's Floors worked off the Ranks of the monsters. Rank H-3's were on the first and second Floor, H-2's were on the second and third, H-1's on the third and fourth, and so on. The Tower was Normal Difficulty as well, putting everything at full strength.

Knowing just how strong things were – and that strengths had an additional reduction to them for the Tutorial beyond the difficulties' reductions – meant that they couldn't have gotten very high.

"Floor 2," she answered. "Those things hit hard, Nathan."

"And my baby?"

"He's perfectly fine," she promised. "I was never that far in trouble, and kept close enough I could escape."

Nathan grunted, then cut into his food and started eating. Katie and Samantha talked the rest of the meal about what Samantha had gone through, since Katie's team was being given the clear two days from then.

After dinner, Nathan kissed his two lovers, then made his way to his personal project room. It was off-limits to the other students unless he gave them permission, and out of respect for his privacy, they left it alone. Some of them had their own personal project rooms, after all.

Inside the room, Nathan checked on the curtains, making sure they were still pulled with the blinds down behind them, then he walked over to one of the tables as he unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled it off and hung it off a chair, and Ichtvar shortly pulled out of his chest, hovering in the air.

With his familiar out, Nathan then walked to the cabinet, where he'd stored the prepared cards his father had arranged for him to acquire. Exactly one hundred fifty-four-card decks were sent, each with their own box.

Over the last few days, he'd been preparing the cards, ignoring his classes. They were promised graduation even if they didn't attend, and he cared for this project more than he did for the classes.

The cards in this cabinet were the ones he'd already finished preparing, organizing them into smaller stacks and labeling each stack with a sticky note. Selecting several stacks, Nathan set them on the table, then opened up another cabinet, from which he took out a set of magical pens.

Not inscribing pens, like the one Keith let him keep, but pens that could write on nearly any surface. With more than five hundred colors to choose from, Nathan wasn't at a loss for which colors to use.

Sitting, Nathan got to work drawing on the face of each card. The first set of cards was labeled 'storage', and he was drawing a box on each of them. Once he finished each box, he wrote the name above it in black, then set it aside to dry.

Being magic pens only meant they could write on most surfaces, and not immediate drying. Were he to write on paper, probably, but the finished surfaces of the playing cards meant they'd take around five minutes to dry and set.

Once they did, however, only an enchanted pen could erase the ink.

There were one hundred cards in that stack, and after finishing, he selected the next stack of cards he'd pulled out, the note claiming them as 'ninja star'. There were only twenty in that stack, much like each of the other stacks he'd grabbed.

On those, he drew four-pointed ninja stars with a hole in the center, then wrote the name at the top of the cards, setting them to the side to dry. All of the Storage cards were dry, so he stacked them into two piles and wrapped a rubber band around each, before setting them to the side.

For nearly three hours, he worked, creating eight different types of cards as his phoenix watched.

When he finished, he put his finished cards into an empty cabinet, then cleaned up his supplies and made his way to his room, where Samantha and Katie were both waiting, talking. Both were dressed in their pajamas – Samantha in a tee and shorts, Katie in actual pajamas, both wearing slippers.

Rather than asking why they were lurking outside his room, Nathan stared at them until they finished discussing their plans for the next day and looked at him.

"Hey, Nathan," Samantha said, and he stared at them. She shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. "Alright, so I'm heading to bed. Good night, Katie."

"Sleep well," Katie told Samantha, who echoed the statement before starting to walk away.

"Don't be rough, she won't take it well," Samantha whispered to Nathan, who raised an eyebrow as she left.

He turned his gaze to Katie, who shifted uncomfortably for a few moments.

"I'm still having a hard time sleeping," she told him, her claim evident by the tired look in her eyes and the dark circles beneath them. "I know I've been turning down your offers to sleep together again since I got back, but I don't think I can continue. Samantha and I shared a room the last couple of nights, and it helped, but-"

"Sure," Nathan said, unlocking his door and entering.

Katie let out a sigh of relief, then followed him into his room. As soon as the door was closed, Nathan was stripping down to his underwear, then looked at Katie, whose face was flushed as she tried to look away, clearly bothered by something.

"Either underwear or nude," he told her. "I'll do either, but not more."

"I know," she said. "You're just pretty well-built, and, uh, pretty obviously aroused."

"Even without Charisma, you're very beautiful," he told her. "Deal."

His piece said, Nathan climbed into bed. Katie shifted around uncomfortably, before turning off the light and climbing in with him. He pulled her against him, spooning her from behind, and noticed that she was tense.

It couldn't just be from his boner, he knew, but decide not to press it. When she overcame whatever it was and was ready for him, he'd be happy to pleasure her.

"Samantha," Katie whispered. "Mentioned to me that you tend to fondle her breasts if you two sleep together, especially first thing in the morning. Would you mind not doing that?"

"I'd mind," he whispered back. "But you clearly aren't ready for that, so why would I?"

Katie let out a sigh of relief, though remained tense. Nathan listened as she tried to calm down, taking more than two hours to fall asleep. Once she had, however, he allowed himself to drift off. In the morning, he woke to Katie climbing out of bed, though pretended to still be asleep as she did, watching through half-closed eyes as she left.

Hard to fondle something that isn't there, Katie.

Shaking his head, he sat up and checked his system notification, as he'd grown used to ever since contracting Ichtvar. Or at least, since two days after.

Due to contracting a powerful familiar beyond your normal ability, your mana regeneration has had to adjust, which occurred as you slept. Mana Regeneration has increased from 1 Mana every 37 seconds to 1 Mana every 18 seconds.

Only a nineteen-second decrease, he noted. A contrast to the thirty-second decrease he had initially. According to Ichtvar, the reason it didn't adjust the first night was due to his body not yet acknowledging it needed to adjust. From every night until he was within the 'safe' amount, however, his body would continue to adjust itself.

The headache that came from having such a powerful familiar without a proper amount of mana regeneration was worse every morning as well, and Nathan had a prickly feeling all over his body. A prickly, icky feeling.

Keith said that it took him nearly a month to finish adjusting to having his own familiar, having apparently undergone the same adjustment period. Strangely, it didn't affect their actual mana amount or magical strength, but they dismissed it as being a quirk of magic.

Grabbing some clothes, Nathan made his way to the showers, where Keith and William were already washing up for the morning.

"Morning, Nathan," Keith said. "Still feeling prickly?"

"Yes."

"Has Ichtvar given an estimate on how long it'd take?"

"Awhile."

Keith snorted, then returned to washing himself. Nathan finished his own shower, then dried and dressed before returning to working on his cards, stopping for the period between lunch and dinner to practice both his training with his weapons and with his magic.

While Ichtvar couldn't see what Nathan was doing, the ancient phoenix could sense what Nathan was doing with his magic, and provided additional guidance in shaping his basic force spell. As a result, Nathan had already nearly completely grasped the basics of it.

Something that frustrated Keith, due to how quickly it was. Even the magic instructor brought in by the government was astonished at his speed.

The ancient phoenix claimed that it was partly due to his status as a demigod, though Nathan didn't care. He was only practicing it so that he could use a barrier in a pinch. He was also sure that having the phoenix guiding him from within was part of why he was mastering it so quickly – the phoenix's aid was giving him a feel for the spell, which made it easier to visualize.

That night, Nathan went to bed, and Katie showed up again, still nervous to sleep alone and wanting something there to comfort her, even though Nathan didn't notice her waking from any nightmares.

Morning came, and once again, he woke to her leaving his room. Sitting up after she'd gone, he read the notification in his vision.

Due to contracting a powerful familiar beyond your normal ability, you rmana regeneration has had to adjust, which occurred as you slept. Mana Regeneration has increased from 1 Mana every 18 seconds to 4 Mana every 5 seconds.

In other words, he recovered 0.8 Mana every second, but it looked like the System registered only whole numbers. Based on his math, he could recover to full from empty for his mana in around eleven hours.

Clicking his tongue, he wondered if there was a way to increase his Health Regeneration. Since Health was purely a System-based thing, he didn't know if it was possible outside of the System's own things.

"Ichtvar," he said, allowing the phoenix out. Once the bird was facing him, he spoke again. "You can sense my mana, yes?"

"Correct," came the response.

"Can you sense another energy there?"

"No," the phoenix answered, then paused. "Other than some sort of shield that stems from an interesting piece of magic."

"Interesting piece of magic?"

"Yes," Ichtvar said, and Nathan sensed the bird was frowning. "It's difficult to describe. It has its own recovery and everything, and something… artificial is responsible for it."

Nathan nodded. He figured as much. His Health Regen was part of whatever this artificial force of magic called 'Health' by the System was. Hopefully, he could find some way to boost it other than needing to use it or those packs he could buy from the System.

Thinking about the packs, Nathan wondered how they'd affect him, with his powerful regeneration rate. Would using one increase his Mana Regen by fifty per second? Or increase it to five every six seconds? If he used one while he was recovering at a rate equal to 1 Mana per second, would it increase how much he recovered each second by a full point?

Rather than thinking on it too much past that, Nathan got dressed, then headed down for breakfast, doing his usual day routine, switching his shower to the evening.

When Nathan entered the changing room for the showers, he checked to make sure no one was there, then set his change of clothes down on a bench, though he didn't take off the backpack he was in a habit of carrying around with him. He felt weird without it nearby, after the Tutorial.

Game Access.

Would you like to reenter the Game? Yes No Warning: You will be entered into a neutral zone upon arrival if confirmed. You will not be able to leave until you've completed at least 1 Challenge or at least one Floor in the Tower.

Yes.