As we followed in the direction of my Father and as Row began his story about how he met my Dad, I decided to try eating the roasted meat that I had been given. After hearing that my biology wasn’t the same I wasn’t sure what to expect when I ate. Would all the food go into one lobe of my weird lungs/stomach thing that I had now? Would it settle all at the bottom giving me a weird top heavy sensation as it refused to go deeper to where food normally sat? To satisfy my curiosity I took a bite and then turned my new senses inward as I swallowed. The results were something of a disappointment. It mostly just felt just like eating normally.

“Is something wrong?” Row asked, likely noticing the face I was making.

“Not really,” I replied, not sure if I was really upset about this being so normal or happy that comfort foods wouldn’t suddenly be weird. “I just heard about my lungs and stomach being the same thing now and I thought that eating would feel different somehow. It mostly just feels like eating.”

He gave a chuckle. “Listening to your Da, are you? He probably started talking about a ‘lack of enzymatic function’ and something about ‘molecules’, right? That’s what he did when I caught him eating some cheese that was little more than a block of wood. I understand where he is coming from, meat from a 30 foot tall monster should be so tough that it would be impossible to digest, so why does it taste so good and why can we eat the thing in just seconds if we really shove it in? He is the type of person who tries to figure out the ‘why’ of those things. But, if your chicken is tasty then does that matter?”

I thought for a moment. Maybe sometimes it matters, depending on if you have some way to actually use that information. I could see his point, though; if it works then figuring out the why is less important. “So then is it not important? It seems like it should be important somehow. And why should it taste and feel normal when I eat even if things are completely different on my inside?”

“Why would it be different? Wouldn’t you enjoy it less if it was strange and alien experience? So of course it seems basically the same. As for how important the differences are, that depends on if you want to eat the meal or dissect it. At least, that is the perspective of most normal people like me. Do you need to know why the stars glimmer to think they are pretty? I don’t think so. Your Da, he isn’t normal so he cares.” His words came across as matter of fact but I wasn’t sure if I agreed with him. Knowing why the stars twinkle only made them more beautiful, at least in my mind and for many of the people I had known in the past. I wasn’t sure if that greater appreciation from knowledge was a universal fact or a personal preference, though, so I decided not to push it.

One other thing was bothering me, though. “You said ‘chicken’, I thought this was rabbit? I saw some fur that was left over and chickens don’t have fur.”

“Actually, it was neither. What you are eating there is a monster squirrel. Can you imagine the issues that would come up if any random person in a city of millions could go hunting the wildlife whenever they wanted? The entire ecosystem would fall apart in hours. Monsters, though, those are ‘fair game’ around here.” He gave me a smile like he had done something cleaver. ‘Fair game’, like ‘game hunting’. I smirked.

That answer only raised another question, though. “Shouldn’t that be a problem too? They have their own place in how things work, after all.”

“They do, but once a normal creature becomes a monster their position completely changes.” He answered. “Normal creatures grow faster than you might expect, but tend to fit into the world the same as you might expect from before. You know: herbivores, carnivores, scavengers and all that. Herbivores serve as the basis of the ecosystem and keep the plant life from choking the area, carnivores keep the herbivores from overrunning the area and keep each other in check, and the scavengers pick up the pieces of the other two so that everything runs smoothly and nothing ends up decaying on the ground. That’s a simplification, I’m not an animal scientist or whatever it is called, but that should get the point across.” The word was Botanist, not that it was important for his explanation.

“The magical side of things is similar.” He continued. “Elementals pop into being when there is too much wild magic and they turn it into aligned magic. They act like herbivores and both keep weird stuff to a minimum by absorbing the wild magic and increase the available magic of the area. Monsters act like carnivores, they eat the elementals and each other, keeping everything from growing out of control. They start out as natural plants and animals but change when there is too much magic around. Chimera act a little like scavengers, and actually are almost as much natural beast as magical manifestation. They fill in the blank spaces and keep both the natural side and the magic side of the environment balanced. What type of elementals and magic you get is determined by the more natural side of things. Both sides work together.”

So the whole thing worked like a secondary ‘magical’ ecosystem added on to the normal biological one. Magic helped the natural side to grow and created the basis for what you got in the magical side of things. If magic grew out of control animals would mutate into monsters. If magic fell off then the natural side would stagnate until the wild magic generated elementals started popping up, serving as the basis of the magical ecosystem. It seemed like a dynamic system, and explained why so many games included quests where you were supposed to kill so many of some creature. From the player’s perspective you do the job and then leave, but from the NPCs perspective you actually change the environment. The uniformity you see in most games was there to promote smooth progression and, for more open games, the ability to know where to go to find what enemy. That was important compromise for most game, made almost purely for playability, so I wonder if this world has some way to deal with those same problems?

That explanation begged another more immediate question. “But then, if it is legal for everyone to hunt monsters, then wouldn’t that change the environment just as much?”

He nodded. “That is exactly the point. People need to breathe, you know, and a city of millions can’t be supported by a stagnant magical environment. The people in charge want the environment to change so they promote and restrict things that will push that change in a certain direction. Taking care of the environment doesn’t mean being hands off, it means directing it purposefully.”

Wait, did people breathe magic or something? No, that question was a distraction. I should focus on the topic at hand. “But what about the elemental I killed and the other one that my Dad is leading us toward right now? Won’t that change things too?”

He made an indecisively unhappy sound. “A little. The effect will be limited if we leave the crystal behind, either an elemental will reappear or a wild Chimera will find it. Your father will probably have to pay a fine. What he is doing now; I don’t think either one of us can stop him now that he has that crazy look in his eye. Though, in our defense, we didn’t actually expect you to succeed.” So little faith in me, I should feel insulted.

Still, he was right about one thing. “I’ve seen my Dad like this before, he gets really grumpy if you try to interrupt him.” Then another thought crossed my mind and I had to ask. “How do you know all this, about animals and such? It seems really specialized for ‘some guy’ that my parents are friends with.”

He smiled. “I do a fair bit of hunting, a lot more than your parents at the very least. But enough of that, back to my story. I had just met up with some weirdo off by himself in the middle of a zombie plague. He wasn’t actually doing anything, he was mostly just watching and taking notes.”

I rolled my eyes. “That ‘weirdo’ was my Dad, wasn’t it.” I spoke with the definitive tone of someone who had met my Father even once before.

“I stand by my statement.” He answered, before continuing.

**********************************************

What my father found next was a Wind Elemental. It looked like the earlier Water Elemental, a small blob, except that this one was a pale color with a bit of a green tint and was nearly transparent. If I hadn’t had it pointed out then I might not have even noticed it. Stealth slime! Not a lot of games included them since it didn’t fit into a lot of settings and surprise attacks could be aggravating, but I had always liked the idea of a magic stealth enemy that was lower leveled than the fantasy staple of the Gelatinous Cube or things even more exotic. I wanted to spend some time studying it, like the last one, except… well…

“Just get in there and go after it,” my Father called out to me. “It is exactly like the last one, it just looks a bit different.”

I gave him a dirty look. I was pretty sure they were not the same. This one was almost completely transparent, so was that a defensive measure or was this thing some sort of a stealth hunter? How would that work? Even if it was for attacking the thing was pretty small and should be pretty dumb. It should be closer to a carnivorous plant than a cat about to pounce. Right now it just sat there on top of a hill in a spot that got slightly more of a breeze than most, doing all of nothing.

My father yelled out some more ‘encouragement’, which I ignored, and I decided to take my chances. In the worst case scenario I had two healers behind me and I didn’t want to draw out the battle as long as the last one. I may not be physically tired anymore, but I was still feeling the mental fatigue. I crept closer, keeping my eyes on the swirling mass of green. It was hypnotic, in a weird way, how the slightly different shades of pale green turned and undulated within the creature’s body. The spinning seemed to go faster and faster as I watched, like watching the inside of a vacuum cleaner that was just getting up to speed or a dust devil that was only beginning to form.

Suddenly there was a ‘wooshing’ sound and I saw that there was a very clear opening on the normally transparent surface of the Elemental. I also noticed a bit of pale color flying right at me and wisely decided to duck away. And by ‘duck away’ I mean ‘throw myself to the ground and be happy that I only got a little hurt by the wind cutting across my back’. I picked myself up, backing away behind a tree. So… rushing in was a mistake, I figured that bit out with my expert skills in deduction. Also, I’m being sarcastic right now. You probably can’t hear it, but the sarcasm is strong.

“Dad,” I called out from behind my tree, “that wasn’t the same at all.”

“Of course it was.” He called back from his spot in the distance. “It may be a slightly different element but it is the same in every way aside from that aspect.”

“Dad… It didn’t look the same, sound the same, move the same, give the same warning before it was fired, or cause the same amount or kind of damage! In what way was it the same?”

“Like I said, exactly the same except for the element and maybe some superficial details that don’t really matter.”

I glanced back at the elemental, which hadn’t even cared enough about me to move and then tried glaring at my father. He was a good distance away but his high wisdom should make it so that he could see me. “Those ‘details’ are what lets me dodge it.”

“How does that even work? You are so small that if you try to dodge you will just fall over.” I decided to ignore him insulting my coordination. He was right, every time I had tried to dodge out of the way I had ended up on my face, but I didn’t need him telling me that. To the uneducated eye what I was doing looked less like dodging and more like ‘walking out of the way’, but it was the intent behind the walking that was important. At least, that is what I decided to tell myself.

Instead I looked around for small rocks, manageable branches that had broken off, and other debris that I could throw at the elemental. I would have to figure out what its attacks looked like before I could get in close enough to figure out how to attack it.

**********************************************

“That was magnificent!” my Father exclaimed as he ran over to me after my victory. “Quick, Row, heal him back up!”

I have to admit, the Wend Elemental really was similar to the earlier Water Elemental once I understood more about its tells. The biggest differences were that the cutting wind didn’t hurt as much as the watery acid and cutting it without getting hit with what came out was a lot harder. I had to figure out a completely new way to cut at it that ended up being a lot less damaging per strike.

“Don’t you think you should give the kid a chance to rest?” he asked.

That said, this doesn’t mean it was easy. I was in better shape than last time, sitting on the ground panting instead of laying on it gasping for air. This was probably more due to how I had gotten too mentally exhausted to keep up the tension. There had been more mistakes on my part but, thanks to the less damaging element, this just traded out a little more physical damage for a lot less fatigue and time spent. I still went back and forth between giving Row a thankful look and glaring at my Father as they spoke.

“Nonsense! That is what you are here for! I found another weak water attribute, so it should be easy! He will just do what he did before, no problem!”

Row muttered something to himself that sounded like, “easy, he says…” while nodding to himself. He seemed reluctant; however he still did that weird beam thing that helped me recover my stamina as he spoke up. “I say we leave it to William to decide. Hard battles take more out than just stamina, you know. There is mental fatigue to consider and he has been making more mistakes. Look at how wounded he is despite this one being wind.”

“I’m sure he will be fine,” he answered then turned to me. “Won’t you son? We still have a few hours left till sunset so this may be your last chance for a while.”

“Edmond… Eddie… Ed.” Row said in a chiding tone. “Give the boy a chance to think.”

He grumbled under his breath, too low for me to hear and obviously annoyed, but didn’t speak directly.

I was tired and ready to rest, even after the stamina healing (or whatever it was called); so Row had a point. But I already knew how to beat the water type elementals, so my father had a point about it being easier than my last couple battles where I had to figure it out. I also had them as a backup, so I wasn’t completely on my own in these battles. Still, neither of those were what I was thinking about in terms of making a decision. The first and primary thing on my mind was how this was the first time I had done anything seriously ‘game like’ my entire time here. Sure, it was one thing to learn about the stats and how weird everything worked and how getting older worked; but everything before this was just background stuff behind the actual doing of the game.

Worse, I had learned that not everyone was a serious crafter or fighter or scientist or something; most people were manual laborers of one sort or another. That had been the thing to scare me the most, even more than my first death. It chilled me to my very core to think that I could get a new life in a game world and end up as little more than a hole digger or a porter or an office worker. It would be like living in space but never seeing anything amazing because I was constantly working fast-food, or having magic but only using it to clean office buildings. I would rather die, for real and permanently, than live that type of life knowing that there was the possibility to do and see so much more.

And here I was, having to make a choice: Do I live the dream for just a little longer before going back to my daily life of living through a ‘growing up backstory’/training montage the long way, or do I accept the mounting exhaustion that magic can’t fix and let it force me to choose to go home and rest. Given those choices I would fight till it killed me, at which point I would show back up at home beside my Mother and get to rest without having to walk all the way back. It meant getting to have the best of both options for as long as possible, having my cake and eating it too! I don’t know who decided to call this place ‘Paradise’, but they certainly picked the right name.

I looked up at Row and then to my Father. “I should be good to go on a little bit longer.”

**********************************************

My father looked appreciatively at the puddle behind me and how I was winded but still on my feet. “You certainly did make short work of that Water Elemental, comparatively speaking of course. How come it took you so much less time than the last ones?”

“All I had to do this time was confirm that it moved the same as the other one and then do what I did before.” I answered.

“So you are identifying weaknesses and pressing in on them? Perhaps Viscosity is a good stat for you to focus on!” I gave him a look at his use of overly specialized terminology. “Or ‘Charisma’, if you would prefer.” He quickly corrected himself before continuing. “A lot of people with that focus in their stats like to take their opponent apart extremely methodically so that they end up virtually winning before a single strike has connected.”

Row spoke up, interjecting himself. “That isn’t exactly a Charisma thing, almost every top tier combat specialist learns to identify an opponent’s weakness and use it against them. The Charisma stat itself doesn’t even help with that goal.”

“But what about the abilities that are most closely associated with that stat? The connection there seems too strong to discount. Would you still ignore it?” He asked, with some frustration in his voice and an uncomfortable glance in my direction. He must be referring to one of those ‘class’ things that he doesn’t want me to know about yet.

Row seemed even more uncomfortable than my father, looking between me and him before speaking up. “You know as well as I that basic abilities and personality aren’t the same. Also, statistical numbers for success among the average person have very little to do with the extreme outliers.”

My father seemed on the backfoot from the retort. I stood quietly to the side and watched their interaction, thinking that I might gain some early insight from what they were saying. He decided to speak up again. “But surely, Row, you don’t mean that…”

“Eddie, your three year old son just killed as many elementals over the course of one day. That ship has well and truly sailed.”

The two of them stared at each other uncomfortably for an uncomfortable period of time. I didn’t know what was such a big deal about it, the monsters were dumb and predictable enough that even my currently awkward body could keep up with them. Once you figured out their patterns, there wasn’t much more they could do. I’m sure that anyone my age could deal with them just as easily.

Roman broke the ice first, his body posture changing completely as he did. He became more relaxed but there was still a seriousness to his tone. “How is Thea doing? She seemed a bit…” He trailed off rather than explaining.

My father narrowed his eyes, then nodded his head and relaxed. “She’s fine. Resting. We aren’t exactly telling people yet. How did you know?”

“I may have met you first, but I’ve spent a lot more time around her. That’s only half of why she insisted I come instead of some of your other buddies. Also, I remember last time.” He glanced at me as he spoke. Wait, why did he look at me?

My father glanced down in my direction, seemingly reminded that I was there, and cleared his throat. He was about to change the subject. He always did after making that sound. “So, William, there are still a couple hours of daylight out. Do you feel up to one more?”

“Uh, sure?” I answered, still trying to figure out their earlier discussion.

My father looked at Row who took a few moments before simply shrugging. Taking that as some sort of permission he turned back to me. “Right, so this one is a ways away. I’ll have to carry you.” He reached down and picked me up before jogging off at a dizzying speed. “Off we go!” He announced as we went.

**********************************************

I wondered back over toward were my Dad and Row were watching. I was in better condition than after any of my other fights, but that wasn’t exactly something to I was excited about. “Sorry guys, I don’t think I can take that one down. I can’t even make a mark on it.”

My Father furrowed his brows but Row spoke up. “I was afraid of that. Good job recognizing it before you wore yourself out or decided to try something stupid.”

“What was so different about this one?” My father asked. “Its basic abilities shouldn’t have been any different then the last ones. Its element couldn’t even damage you if you managed to hurt it.”

“It was like trying to stab a rock.” I answered, looking back toward the Earth Elemental. It looked like someone had taken a few dozen stones, some little more than shards and others the size of small boulders, and formed them into the basic shape of an oblong blob. It had been way easier to follow its movements then the Air Elemental but wasn’t as showy as the gelatin-like Water Elementals. Actually damaging it with my low physical strength (I guess that would be based on ‘Constitution’), was an exercise in futility.

He seemed to consider my words before nodding his head and clearing his throat. “Right. Well I’m not sure if you are up to it, but I did find one last one if you wanted to attempt the whole set. I know that it is already getting toward night, but this one should be easy to follow since it actually glows in the dark!”

Row spoke up, seeming a bit worried. “I’m not actually sure this is a good idea.”

I shrugged, thinking to myself how even if I failed hard I would just end up back at home where I could get some rest. I never realized before this how much sleep kids get. “It’s fine. I might fail again but it never hurts to at least try.”

**********************************************

“Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch.” I said to myself as I headed back toward my Father and Row. My clothes were in tatters and my skin was probably blistering from the heat. “I couldn’t get within three feet of that thing without my clothes trying to burst into flames. I couldn’t even try to hit it, it was so hot. A little healing would be nice, please.” I directed my last words toward Row. I knew my Father could heal somewhat, but apparently they both recognized who was better at it.

“ ‘It never hurts to try’?” He said, sarcastically throwing my words at me. He did heal me, though, so I decided to let it go.

“Why did that hurt so much? It was way worse than any of the others.” I asked as we walked over toward the makeshift camp that they had set up. Apparently it was late enough and we were far enough from home that they decided we should just stay the night.

“Because it was fire and that’s what fire does?” My Father replied back with an eye roll. He was leading the way with a glowing light floating above his left shoulder.

“Because your clothes are naturally earth aligned; as is, to a lesser degree, your body.” Row answered back moments later with more assurity.

I glanced up at both, deciding to ignore my Father’s sarcasm. “Wait, what do you mean my clothes are ‘earth aligned’? What does that have to do with Fire Elementals?”

He looked at me and my Father as we neared a shadowy clearing, seeing my Dad’s embarrassment and my likely confused look, then spoke to me. “What do you know about the basic elements and their interactions?”

I looked at my Father, he was being strangely silent and looked away as though something had caught his attention. Great attempt to not look guilty, Dad. I wasn’t sure what Row was expected of me but I might as well give what I had. “I know that you don’t see opposing element combinations in nature: Solid/Gas and Liquid/Plasma; or Earth/Wind and Water/Fire, if you want to use the more normal names for them. It has something to do with how they conduct energy that makes them incompatible, the stability and ‘exothermic’ properties? I think? I think my Dad said that the molecules of Water and Wind move around a lot and mix together; but Earth is Solid and one of the marks of Plasma is that the heat ‘disassociates’ the atoms so that they no longer act as distinct units. And no, I don’t know what ‘disassociates’ means in this explanation, only I was told that it means that fire acts like one single mass despite it being made up of various types of molecules.”

Row was getting an annoyed look so I decided to skip the whole part about the different maximum transfer rates of energy between the elements. “Um, as you add energy and mass the elements naturally transform from one to the next? Is that what you want to know? Solids turn into Liquids, which turn into Gas and then Plasma? Apparently if you get enough mass and energy Plasma actually compresses itself into a Solid, like the process that happens in nebula and…”

“Stop.” Row interrupted. “Please just stop. Is this all your parents taught you about the elements and how to fight them?” My father looked somewhat embarrassed as he stood quietly to the side.

“That was mostly stuff from my Dad. Mom didn’t focus much on the elements, she said that the more important thing was the ‘Major Triad’ of Offense, Defense, and Speed or Skill. She said the last two were interchangeable to a degree. She also said that it was important to remember the person’s ‘theme’, but refused to explain what she meant by that. Apparently Attack beats through Defense; Defense shrugs off Speed; and Speed outmaneuvers Attack.”

He seemed a little bit less annoyed by that explanation. “I think I figured out why your Mother was so insistent that I come out here with you. Your Father is an expert in his field but knows nothing about what we actually came out here to do, which is fighting monsters. Thea knows more, but she usually fights people and there are different priorities to focus on. What you need to remember is ‘Active vs Passive’, and ‘Attackers vs Defenders’; each of the four elements uses a combination out of each category. Fire is a Passive Attacker, Earth is a Passive Defender, Wind is an Active Attacker, and Water is an Active Defender. Remember that order: Fire, Earth, Wind, Water, and back to Fire; that is the order that they trump each other.”

“So then if it is about Active Attackers and such, what does that have to do with the stuff my Mom told me about?”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Think of it like two different layers, the first of inborn ability and the second of choice. Humans can choose what direction we grow in and what tool we use at any given time and that choice is far stronger than any inborn talent. Here on Paradise that is especially true, since you can adjust your talent in ways that were likely impossible before. Even our tools take on this heightened focus toward choice by virtue of how we wield them. Monsters, beasts, elementals, chimera, specters, and everything else nonsapient; they lack the human capacity for true choice. Some creatures may seem like they have choice, especially the Active Attackers and Defenders, but they really don’t. They may be devious but they lack the capacity to choose to be straightforward or anything at all other than what they naturally are. That’s why the first layer is more important when hunting but the second layer is essential for fighting.”

He paused and I took that time to think about what he had said. So it seems like this ‘game’ separated out some stats, or use of stats or whatever, for PvE vs PvP. That way people doing ‘Player versus Environment’(PvE) type challenges, fighting monsters and whatever, would naturally be using slightly different skills than those players who liked to fight other players (PvP). This was actually pretty normal in most games and was usually designed into the very fabric of the game out of necessity. For instance, a lot of PvE games utilized the ‘holy trinity’ of Tank, Healer, and Damage roles. The Tank would keep the enemy’s attention while the Damage killed it and the Healer kept the others in fighting shape. Each role was designed to fulfill their job as efficiently as possible and so it forced players to work together and have fun together. A traditional Tank is built to take lots of hits and deal just enough damage to look like a threat without actually being one. A Healer healed or prevented damage and only gave other buffs as a secondary thing. The Damage role was often labeled as ‘Damage Per Second’, or DPS for short, because that was the only metric that usually mattered.

Transitioning this to a PvP setting completely changed how everything worked. Even the dumbest person is usually smart enough to ignore the Tank and kill the Healer when you are dealing with the traditional character archetypes. Not all games dealt with this difficulty the same. Some tried to preserve some aspects of the holy trinity by simply modifying it. Tanks no longer were focused on taking as much damage as possible but became either ‘off-tanks’ which combined decent tankiness with decent damage, or retained their extreme tankiness but added an ‘anti-support’ role where they focused on disabling and hindering the enemy team. Supports took on either a defensive support role, which focused on buffing as much or more than healing, or an offensive support position, which ended up being halfway between traditional support, tank, and damage dealer. The damage dealers pretty universally became more mobile and often specialized to overcome certain defenses or focus on vulnerable opponents. This may seem like a lot, but it ends up being the bare minimum of complexity among a world of people and their attempts at hybrid roles, unique approaches, and catching others off guard.

More common, however, was the solo approach to PvP. Battles were often one-on-one tournaments or group battles relied on individual strengths such that there was no overarching strategy that every character must attempt to fit in, only emerging strategies that could be modified for nearly any diverse group. The sustain from healers was replaced with items or natural regen, but the extra from an actual healer would be appreciated. The defense of tanks was replaced by individual tankiness, but it was always nice when an ally could jump into the enemy team and become a big enough distraction that others could set up for big attacks. Everyone could deal damage, but certain characters whose method of dealing damage worked better against certain situations would free up the others to focus on problems that they were more equipped to deal with. But while this specialization was nice, it was neither mandatory in games with this approach nor necessarily used at all. Some games just had masses of identical or nearly identical avatars whose only role in the battle was whatever they chose at any given moment.

Not that these were the only options, they were just the most common ones. Tank and naval focused wargames, for instance, were usually divided between the roles of Striker, Sniper, and Scout. More realistic wargames had the line, artillery, and fortification. You know, now that I think about it, there are a lot of sets of threes in different games. This game world seemed to be more geared to the ‘solo PvP’ approach, or at least it was at the level where my Mom operated. I had heard of some games where different levels of engagement required different tactics and, while it was rare because of the complexity of setting up battles of such varying degrees, this world’s ‘system’ seemed convoluted enough for it to fit.

Still, I should try not to get distracted. What did he say again? Fire beats Earth, beats Wind, beats Water, which beats Fire? It seems to be a simple rock-paper-scissors type situation, and not as haphazard as some games I’ve played (looking at you, Pokemon). Still, why did I have so much trouble with the Earth and Fire elementals? Was it because they were ‘Passive”? That seems like it would make them easier to fight, as in they would just sit there and let you beat on them, but all of the Elementals attacked in similar ways and with similar timings and none seemed much more willing to chase me than any other. I could try to puzzle it out, but getting better and more sure answers was the reason why experts existed. “So why did I have so much trouble with the Earth and Fire Elementals?” I finally asked.

He nodded. “Part of that is their passive nature, it makes them harder to get around but more stable. You always know how powerful a Fire or Earth Elemental will be in a situation if you just look around, but a Water or Wind can surprise you in both a good and bad way. This means you can use skill to bypass or trick them much more easily when they are of the Active variety, but with the Passive ones you mostly just have to endure or overpower them. While what you have done is impressive for your age, you just don’t have the basic abilities to damage the Earth or get close to Fire.”

It wasn’t something I wanted to hear, but I accepted that there were some obstacles I just couldn’t overcome without more power or some extenuating circumstance. No matter how skilled I might be, power still meant something.

“The other issue is that humans naturally have a slight Earth alignment and that makes us weak to fire. It also gives people some resistance to Wind, which is why I was concerned when you took more damage from the second elemental than the first. You can eventually change that, but for now you should just get used to it. It’s good to keep in mind regardless because most clothes and equipment is earth aligned as well, especially stuff you will have access to at your level, so be prepared for Fire to be a hard opponent for some time.”

I nodded, committing his warning to memory. “Noted. Is there anything else I should try to keep in mind?”

“Oh, plenty.” Row answered. “You know, your mother told me that this trip would be more interesting than I expected. I think I’ll have fun seeing how you grow.”