The next five days fell into a steady rhythm.

Kai would wake Jack up and tell him they were leaving soon. After eating and playing with Lucy for a bit, Ava would fly away to, what Jack assumed, scout out the area. They would spend the next few hours hiking, a task he was slowly getting better at. A rest of twenty minutes would follow, where he would spend some time digging for bugs for experience. This would repeat itself six to seven times until Kai would call a stop for the day. A simple camp would be made, and since Jack was not affliction-level exhausting himself he had enough energy to try to practice his Staff Mastery skill before it was time to sleep.

At first, Jack used a tree as a simple target to practice hitting by himself. After ten minutes, his technique seemed to somehow offend Kai. Taking over Jack’s practice, Kai showed him the proper way to hold, swing, defend using a staff. Apparently, Jack was trying to use it more as a club; using it that way could work but didn’t make full use of a staff’s versatility. Kai made sure all his movements were slow and as fluid as possible not only to avoid agitating Jack’s injury but also as Kai says “If you can not do it properly at this speed, you will not be able to do it properly at a normal speed.”

Kai was much more engaging when it came to fighting and combat; instead of being annoyed to show him how to use his staff, he seemed excited. He went so far as to construct a training routine. From then on when Jack would wake up, he would do some warm-up exercises that Kai also showed him, then he would do a few drills with his staff.

During rest periods of the day, Jack would still make a point to ask Kai a few questions about the world, the system, and about Kai himself. He still seemed to get annoyed with the talking after a couple of questions abruptly leaving to wander the forest until the twenty minutes it took Jack to regain his stamina was done.

“So why were you out here hunting just you and Ava? Why are you so far from your herd?”

Kai was bending down inspecting the ground. “We fly ahead of our herd, so we may hunt and gain experience. We are also not that far away from our herd, we are normally flying and that is much faster.”

Jack held up a beetle he was about to smash, “Why don’t you just kill bugs like me sure you only get one experience point but from what I’ve noticed you only get around ten experience when you kill something.”

Kai clicked, “When you defeat an enemy of an equal level you gain ten experience it increases and decreases based on your level difference. Once you kill something below ten levels, you no longer gain experience. Level zero creatures give you one experience until you reach level ten, then they will not be of any value to you.”

Lowering the beetle, Jack frowned. He knew there was going to be an end to easy, albeit slow, leveling. What upset him was that experience wasn’t given to you based on just your enemy’s level, but it compared to yours. He had thought the small amounts of experience was due to the low levels of his enemies. Looking back on it though, the math did make sense.

He was filled with more annoyance as he contemplated what it would take to go from level ten to eleven. Based on his own stats, the experience required to level up is one-hundred times your level. So you would need to kill one-hundred level-ten creatures to hit level eleven, or he could think of it as one-thousand level ones. Breaking it down like that doesn’t seem that bad, but the issue seems to be what happens when you can’t find hundreds and thousands of creatures within ten levels of you.

“Kai, what level are you?”

“Twenty-nine,”

“How long have you been at that level?”

“Two years” Kai’s face seemed to tighten and even though he had a beak it looked like he was scowling.

Jack could definitely feel this was a sore subject for the bird-man and decided to drop the subject. But he could understand Kai’s frustration even in the Spider’s Den dungeon the only monster over level nineteen was the broodmother, and she was level forty. He had no idea if Kai could take her on and he didn’t know if it would be worth it for just... he did the math, twenty-one experience for the guy. Not even touching on the fact that Kai should need twenty-nine hundred experience total.

Feeling a little overwhelmed with the colossal task of advancing at higher levels, he focused back on his bug smashing.

On the second day of traveling, Jack was met with a much anticipated notification.

**Skill Up** Hair Manipulation Level 5 Hair Manipulation has reach level 5 and is now able to be evolved. Level 5 is a free evolution and does not require a skill evolution token. Would you like to Evolve this skill? Yes No **Alert** New Skill Evolution Available Choose one Pigment Manipulation Micro-Manipulation Hardening

With a glance, Jack knew what one he wanted, but the two other options did make him wonder what all Hair Manipulation could be used for. Pigment Manipulation sounded like natural hair dying, which could be cool if not kind of useless.

Hardening though is what gave him ideas. He was pretty sure that hair was made out of the same thing as fingernails and by that extension possibly the same thing as animal claws. Turning all his hair into a bunch of dagger-like claws was definitely a cool idea, but not nearly as appealing to Jack as wall climbing.

Micro-Manipulation fits right into his initial thoughts of Lucy’s wall climbing being like tiny velcro grabbing onto things.

**Alert** Hair Manipulation has gained the evolution Micro-Manipulation Hair Manipulation Level 5 Control your hair as you would any other body part. Evolutions Micro-Manipulation

Jack focused on his skill. He moved his hair around at this point he has been braiding his hair without looking using the skill. He noticed nothing different, no grand insight on how to climb walls. His braid, which reached down to his shoulder blades when laying, was pulled around so he could look at the end of it.

He put his hand out palm up and manipulated his hair so the end of the braid rested on his palm. Concentrating as hard as he could he tried to grab ahold of his skin with the ends of his hair. He would press his hair against his palm and pull it away, trying to get some sort of hold. In the end, he only felt the slightest pull on his skin, but nothing close to an actual hold on it. Jack took that as a win and figured he’d practice more while hiking.

“So before you said you fly ahead of your herd, what do you mean by ahead?” Jack had just finished his nightly staff training and figured he’d get a few questions in before bed.

“I do not understand the question.” Kai sat, leaning against a relaxing Ava.

“Well, by saying ahead of them implies they are going somewhere. Is your herd moving?”

“The herd is always moving.”

“Ok, so you are all nomadic. Why not settle down and start a village?” Jack sat down and pulled out a piece of cooked great owl meat. They had finally found a type of tree not resistant to fire, so Jack was able to eat something other than the calorie bars.

“Dungeons.”

Jack tried to hide his annoyance at his overly stoic friend. “Kai, you know I need more information than that.”

Kai sat up, giving Jack his full attention “Periodically a Dungeon will break. By break, I mean it will release a large horde of monsters that will seek out life and either kill it or drag them back to the dungeon to die. We move to avoid breaks of the larger, more dangerous Dungeons that we would not be able to protect ourselves from.” He gave Jack a look that sarcastically asked if he was happy now.

Jack was shocked. He didn’t know Dungeons would pose that kind of threat, so much that an entire group of people could not settle down in one location for too long. “Why does a dungeon break? Is there a way to prevent it? How strong are these monsters that you have to run away!? Can’t you all just band toget-”

Kai clicked in annoyance then turned away and laid down, ignoring him.

“Come on, you can’t just leave it there! At least answer this, is everyone nomadic?”

Without turning around, “Everyone is in these lands are, it is very different across the sea.” He gave another click, signaling this was the end of the conversation. Ava brought her head up and glared at Jack.

Ava, Guardian of Echos Level: 29 A protector of the Falling Rain herd. Irritable and egotistical this golden eagle will defend all she cares about with her piercing scream.

On the fourth day of travel, Jack got his next level up. His first plan for his attributes was to bring everything to at least ten, then invest in dexterity and endurance. His level up had an additional surprise this time.

**Level Up** You are awarded 5 attribute points

You are awarded a Skill Evolution Token

A familiar golden coin appeared, floating in front of him. One side had a treasure chest and the other the letters S.E.T. Reaching out it grabbed it.

Kai seeing what happened walked over “Congratulations on your level up, are you now five or ten?”

Jack was confused for a second until he remembered that he never told Kai about his level or really anything about himself besides the few things he originally asked when they first met. He felt kind of bad always asking him questions but never volunteering anything he made a note to try to share more about himself provided that it doesn’t annoy Kai.

“I just hit five. This is my second coin now, but I don’t know how to use it. I mean, I know they are used to evolve my skills now, but how do I activate it?” Jack opened his inventory and pulled out his other coin.

Kai’s eyes were hungrily staring at the two coins Jack was holding. “Every five levels in a skill, you have an option to evolve it. Levels five and twenty-five are free, but the others each consume a coin. Usually, you only receive a single coin every five levels otherwise they are very rare.” Kai turned his head away breaking his eye contact with the coins and went back to whatever he was doing.

Jack quietly thanked this luck that the first person he ran into was a good person. If you only get a coin every five levels, Kai being stuck at twenty-nine for the last two years must really want to evolve a skill. And here he is, holding two like the weak idiot that Kai could probably take out in less than a second.

Jack tucked away his coins and closed his inventory so he could get back to digging.

After the five days of travel, Jack woke up feeling better than he had in a week, he pulled up his status.

Name Jackson Calder Race Human Class Adaptable Dungeoneer Age 5000 Level 5 Health 36/36 Stamina 30/30 Experience 113/500 Strength 10 Dexterity 10 Endurance 10 Vitality 12 Perception 8 Intelligence 21 Available Points 0 Skills Class Mimicry 3 Hair Manipulation 6 Identify 4(24) Wanderer 3 Hydraulic Leap 3 Staff Mastery 3 Burrow 3 Baking 2 Researching 2 Cleaning 1 Fear Resistance 1 Impact Resistance 1 Medicine 1 Perks Pioneer Dungeoneer Dedicated Dungeoneer Dedicated Pioneer Slow Learner Slow and steady wins the race How are you still alive? The Wizened Sage At your age, you must have aches and pains Buffs Human Resilience Afflictions

His wound was finally healed! He hopped out of his makeshift bed and let out a cheer. Lucy who had been sleeping on his chest jumped off as he was getting up, she sent some strong annoyed feelings towards him for waking her.

Kai walked over with a slight cheer to his step. “I assume from your celebration that you are fully healed.” Instead of waiting for Jack to confirm this, he went on as if he had. “This is good, Ava has spotted the trail of our next hunt target so I must leave you for now. Do you know how to tell which way is north?”

Jack thought to his compass in his inventory and nodded his head.

“Good, then keep traveling north. Ava has scouted the surrounding area and there is nothing threatening to you two on your way. If we do not catch up to you, you should arrive within ten days if you keep on our current pace.” Jack’s face twisted in worry at the thought of what would happen if he does run into something.

Kai placed his scaly talon-hands on Jack’s shoulders “You will do just fine, I believe you can take on any of the local creatures here with ease just keep a sharp eye out.” He pulled out the hide cloth from his bag. “Use this while you are sleeping and no creature should bother you. When you find the herd, seek out Ethan Buck, he is the Summum, and tell him I sent you. Can you do that?”

Jack sheepishly nodded his head. Kai gave an affirmative nod back then took a few steps back and prepared to take off. By now Jack had seen Kai fly a few times and every time it fascinated him. Kai crouched down and rose his arms into the air. The feathers on his arm, normally tucked and neatly folded in, would spread out like a fan, the feathers near the end of his arm/wing would fold out extending his wingspan by several feet. With a powerful push from his legs, Kai would jump into the air, and only then he would bring down his mighty arms, pushing back a large gust of wind. The first flap of his wings never actually gives him any lift it only seems to stop him from falling, the second and third flaps are what gives him lift and sends him off into the sky.

Waving goodbye, Jack watched him go. Once he was out of sight over the trees Jack pulled out his compass, found which way was north, and started off in that direction. Jack was never one to question a device he knows works well, so he didn’t even think about why the rising sun was directly behind him.