“That must be one smart giant if it’s brain-damaged and still smarter than me,” Dante said, tilting his chin up in mock ignorance. “So if I train hard with weights, I won’t become stronger? It’s all based on stats?”

Laurelai’s brow twitched, but she managed to keep a straight face. “Your ability and your stats are separate yet connected, almost like a multiplier that enhances your current self. If you never exercise, you’re going to be weaker than another human who does exercise, even if you both have the same stats. You have to train to remain in peak condition, the stats merely refining your body and enhancing what you can already do.”

Dante nodded in understanding. Stat points weren’t a direct reflection of your practical abilities. They were a reading of how much energy you held in your body, which enhanced what that part could do. But in the end, the efficacy depended on what it was improving.

“That seems like all the basics. But before we move on, what’s going on with my race?”

“Nothing is going on with your race,” Laurelai said, not even looking up this time. “It says that you’re human, right? Same as every other intelligent being on this planet.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Dante argued, becoming confused himself. “It says that I’m a Primal while my classification as a human is in brackets after it.”

“What was that? A Pri-,” Laurelai began, her little eyes turning blank. She eventually stopped moving and hovered on the spot, her eyes becoming unfocused as she gazed off into the distance. If her wings weren’t still flapping and letting of sparkling silver dust, he would have thought she was having a stroke.

“Laurelai,” Dante muttered, stepping forward to catch her in case she fell to the ground. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” Laurelai mumbled, blinking her eyes and looking around as though she had just woken up. “Where was I? Ah, that’s right. You should check out your titles and see what they do. I’ll answer any questions you have after you’ve given them a read…”

“Why are you looking at me like that? Is there something on my face?”

Dante tried to share his race with her again, but she simply blanked out like the first time. It took over ten minutes for a change to occur, and it wasn’t anything close to good. After fiddling with his menu for far too long, he figured out how to show it to other people, but when he displayed his race to her, she blanked out again before coming to and saying that she didn’t see anything.

From then on, she simply didn’t understand what he was saying. Using ‘Primal’ in a sentence only prompted her to ask him to repeat himself. It took a bit of discussion to coax an answer from her, but it seemed as though she didn’t hear what he said every single time—even spelling it out confused her since she would understand the letters, only to not understand the word itself.

Scraping the word into the ground using a sharp rock, saying that the cave looked primal since it was untouched by man, and even trying to explain the word’s definition. Nothing worked. She would simply look at him with one eyebrow raised, obviously unable to comprehend the word. His only relief was that she quickly stopped losing consciousness, merely becoming incapable of understanding what he was saying.

It felt like an improvement since the strange moments where she lost consciousness couldn’t be good for her, but when he explained what was happening after she started getting annoyed with him, she began to freak out. And apparently, it was with good reason.

“WHAT?” Laurelai shrieked, her little body beginning to tremble. “Y-you’re joking, right? I t-thought we were friends? W-were a team, aren’t we? Old Laurelai and Dante, b-best of friends who will face the multiverse together…”

Dante just stared at her, his eyes boring into her own until she snapped.

“I- I’m sorry!” She shouted, throwing herself to the ground. She began to kowtow on her knees, even going so far as to hit her head on the ground. “P-Please forgive my impudence! I-I’ll work hard, young master! I promise I’ll be so professional that even my ghost will keep working for you after I die! You won’t even know I’m there!”

“What the hell are you doing?” Dante said, stepping back before she could kiss his shoes. “What’s going on, Laurelai?”

She was obviously trying to suck up to him, but her sudden change in demeanour was more disturbing than endearing to him. Besides, he had already spent a fair bit of time with her. He had already gotten a feel for her personality and knew a bit about what to expect, so her claiming she would change felt incredibly disingenuous.

“W-What? Oh. Uh, it’s a H-Heaven’s Mandate,” Laurelai whispered the last part, even pausing to look up after she said the words as though she was waiting for some response. None ever came, of course. Besides, what would even happen to her? It’s not like they would get struck by lightning.

“W-Whatever you’re trying to t-tell me is banned knowledge by the heavens. If you keep trying to defy the commandment that the heavens have made, everything within your vicinity, including yourself, will be struck down by heavenly punishment!”

“What do you mean ‘banned’?” Dante said, nodding his head with pleasant surprise. It actually was getting struck by lightning, not that he fully believed her.

“Forbidden. Prohibited. Taboo. Whatever you’re trying to do might harm the natural order of the universe, meaning that it goes against the will of the heavens themselves. All who defy the heavens will be mercilessly crushed. The most well-known Mandates are practising forbidden arts and committing mass slaughter against those too weak to resist.”

Dante’s mind raced with ideas. The only reason the word could be banned was that he wasn’t a human being, but that couldn’t be true. It was impossible. He had gotten X-rays before, CT scans, and even an MRI once. He had a birth certificate and even a video of his birth that he adamantly refused to watch. If he was an alien, why had none of the doctors noticed?

Besides, medicine meant for humans worked on him, and even vaccines gave him no adverse side effects. If he wasn’t human, there was absolutely no indication. The only normal human activity he refused to partake in was the consumption of capsicum, but that was because he didn’t like the taste. He could still eat it and had done so on many occasions. It just tasted like crap.

Zoning back into reality, Dante began to accost a still trembling Laurelai on the ground. “Is it possible that I could be a human and have… changed, somehow?”

“Ah, yeah. Yes, you could have done that,” Laurelai agreed, nodding her head like she was trying to get on his good side. “Racial mutations are a common change. Many low-tiered races choose to adapt their form depending on their class, such as a human turning into a draconian to increase their affinity to fire. Actually, that’s a part of the forbidden techniques I just mentioned. A lot of enlightened beings try to enhance their strength by transforming into beasts, but the heavens don’t abide by complete transformations like that.”

“So it’s possible that I’m a human and accidentally underwent a race change or evolution somehow?”

“Yes, it’s definitely possible, young master. Although rare, treasures sometimes do crop up on ungraded worlds. They usually float around in space and crash into the planet or hitch a ride on a meteor or something.”

Dante felt the tension leave his shoulders. His mother was an archaeologist and his father was a businessman who sometimes dealt with the trade of rare and ancient items for a European museum. He might have been transformed by a random antique his parents bought when he was a child.

“Laurelai, please stand up,” Dante said, reaching out and picking her up off the ground. “Everything’s okay. There’s no heavenly tribulation and there’s going to be no divine punishments.”

“Oh, uh, that’s… good,” Laurelai muttered, regaining the spark of life in her eyes. “That’s right, almost dying does that to some people. Everything’s okay. It’s good that you have such a discerning eye. My true value to you cannot be underestimated, whether it be my beauty, charm, or shockingly agile mind. Together we will dominate our own corner of the multiverse, the Presieri Empire spanning thousands of-.”

“Okay, I take it back,” Dante said, dropping her. “You can tone it down a little bit for the benefit of everyone.”

“Oh, I see. You want your name to be first. I’ll take a step back and we can call it the Albalar Empire… Hmm, but it doesn’t have much of a ring to it. How about-.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it,” Dante muttered, immediately regretting his decision to be nice. “Now, how do I look at my titles?”

“Oh, just focus on the word and a new screen should appear.”

Dante did just that, and a second later, a new screen appeared.

Titles

Prime: Child of the ancients. Origin of creation. One split into three, all encompassing the same path. +5% mental stats.

Apex Talent: Possess a level of innate talent that exceeds what is conventionally and theoretically possible. +10% all stats.

Primal Elite: Qualify as a potential Terror before joining the system. +10% all stats.

Dante nodded as he read through the titles, but since he didn’t know what they meant precisely, he began to ask Laurelai some questions. “I’m just going to ignore the words for now since I don’t even know where to start, so let’s start with the stat boosts. All of them give me a percentage increase.”

“Yes, and?” Laurelai said, making the scroll vanish and giving him her full attention. “Is your planet really so backwards that you don’t even know what a percentage is?”

“No, I have a percentage boost with no stat points to increases, meaning it’s useless.”

“You don’t have any titles that give you a flat increase in stats?”

“No, all of them are percentage-based.”

“Odd to not start with one, but it’s better than nothing,” Laurelai shrugged. “Flat increases would be useful to you now, but percentage increases will be helpful until you die. Just bear with it and you’ll eventually do something meagre enough to get a few stats here and there. Killing your first monster usually gets you something small.”

A cry echoed throughout the cavern, making Dante freeze on the spot. The hawks were back, and they were probably searching for him. He looked around the cavern to see if any had spotted him yet, and when he found the skies empty, he followed Laurelai under a blue pillar of crystal that was leaning so far it was almost horizontal to the ground.

Almost.

For the next hour or so, Dante lay underneath the crystal with his knees tucked into his chest, his eyes closed as he prayed not to get found. There were still traces and puddles of his dried blood everywhere in the area, and that wasn’t even mentioning the hawk carcass dangling off of a nearby crystal like a keychain.

The moment the hawks began to stream into the cavern, he expected one to raise a fuss when it noticed the carcass. They would land near the body and investigate, maybe even search the cavern or linger for more time than they usually did. None ever did. They flew in, hovered in the sky, then slowly departed once they were done.

Dante slowly crawled out from under his shelter and glanced at the sky to make sure they were really gone, only pulling himself out and standing up once he was sure. He brushed himself off and turned to look at the carcass pillar, which was oddly bereft of carcasses at the moment, looking like there was never a hawk corpse there before.

No blood or feathers carpeted the floor either, making him wonder if he had the wrong pillar.

“Laurelai…”

“No, you’re not going crazy,” Laurelai said, looking at the same pillar. “There was a carcass there, but now it’s gone. And I think I know who the culprits are.”

“You do?” Dante asked, a little bit shocked. He wanted to ask her what she knew, but she started drifting towards the centre of the cavern before he could open his mouth, forcing him to follow behind her. After a minute or two of walking, they soon found a strange scene.

In the middle of the cavern, surrounded by an oddly symmetrical circle of pillars, was a small pool of rainbow liquid. The water’s surface didn’t shine or glow, the liquid only holding a faint tint that reminded him of the soul force in his head. Despite its diameter of about five metres, it looked very deep from where he was standing, his eyes unable to find any curvature in the rock, let alone the bottom.

Faint steam was rising from its smooth surface, joining the mist lingering around the ceiling. Was this pool the source of the strange fog on the roof? Dante took a deep breath and immediately felt his stomach grumble. The scent of fresh bread straight out of the oven assaulted his nose, oily bacon sizzling on a pan, onion and garlic and butter frying on-.

Laurelai touched his shoulder, startling him out of his trance. A cold sweat ran down his back as he fell on his bottom, his legs feeling numb and weak, followed by an ache in his head with every beat of his heart.

Dante swallowed. “W-what the hell was that?”

“Illusions, my young friend, are a bitch. This pool is a naturally formed Dream Well, a condensation of liquified aura. By breathing it in like that, you were allowing it to enter into your mind and corrupt your soul force.”

“So I was huffing magical fumes and it got me high?”

“Yeah, more or less,” Laurelai said, nodding her head. “It would trick your brain into believing the dreams were real, which isn’t too far removed from what most narcotics do. But narcotics can also be used as medicine.”

Before he could ask what the Dream Well could be used for, Dante felt something tug on the shoelaces of his right foot. Not a strong, slide across the ground like you just fell off a motorbike tug, but a gentle nibble that applied a bit of pressure. It reminded him of Michael’s Great Dane when she was a puppy.

Dante looked down and found a snail undulating on the top of his shoe, just too big to fit in the palm of his hand. That was fine, he thought to himself. A bit different from a puppy with big, floppy ears and oversized paws, but it wasn’t ugly by any means. He had even seen videos of snails that size online before.

What wasn’t fine was the acrid smoke drifting off his shoe as it visibly melted everywhere the snail touched.

Dante panicked and slid his right shoe off by the sole, scrambling back until he was far enough to be comfortable. Seconds later, the leather shoe melted into a puddle of goop, leaving the snail to feast on its meal. Dante took a deep breath to calm himself, ignoring Laurelai’s cackling laughter as it echoed off of the cavern walls.