Zeke leaned against the wall of his hut, his fingers snaking their way through the bear cub’s soft fur. Using the hut’s water pump, he’d cleaned it as best he could, but it was still matted in places. However, his rampage through the harpy population had accomplished his goal; the bear was entirely healed. For a couple of hours after Zeke had summoned the hut, the bear had even been frisky, and he’d spent a while just playing with the animal – much to Abby’s amusement.

“What’s his name?” the archer asked. She was nearby, sorting through the various pieces of equipment they had looted. There were piles of leather armor, a variety of weapons, and a few packs.

“Huh?” Zeke asked, taken by surprise by her sudden question. She’d been almost entirely silent for quite some time. Still, it only took him a second for his mind to catch up to the question. “Oh. I haven’t named him yet. I just…well, we just got together yesterday.”

Abby shook her head, saying, “I still don’t get how you did it. Most monsters…well, they’re not really tameable. And you’ve got that thing acting like a puppy after only a day? How is that possible?”

For a moment, Zeke didn’t answer. While he very much wanted to trust Abby – after all, she was the first human being he had seen in more than two years – he couldn’t help but be wary. Something told him that in this new world, giving out too much personal information could get a person killed.

“It’s a skill,” he said. “Just a one-time thing. Me and this little fellow are stuck together, now.”

“Oh,” she said. “Then you should definitely give him a name. Something fierce. Like Fang. Or Claw. Something like –”

“Pudge,” Zeke said. The moment the idea of giving the bear a name popped into his head, he knew precisely what it would be.

“W-what?” Abby asked. “Isn’t that…I mean, he’s not even fat…”

“Not a baseball fan, I guess,” Zeke said, raising his eyebrow.

“Not…um…particularly,” was Abby’s response. “Does that make a difference?”

“Well, Pudge Rodriguez was the best catcher I’ve ever seen play,” Zeke stated. In fact, considering that Zeke had played that position, he had been his hero, growing up. “It wasn’t even close, either. Defensively, offensively – he was great.”

“This guy’s name was actually Pudge?” she asked.

“Nickname,” Zeke answered. “His real name was Ivan, but everyone called him Pudge.”

Abby shook her head, muttering something about “men and their stupid sports”, but she didn’t further criticize his choice. However, the next moment, a notification flicked across his eyes:

Would you like to rename your Soul Bonded Companion, “Pudge”? Y/N

As soon as Zeke selected the affirmative option, the newly renamed Pudge stirred, raising its head to regard its companion. Its eyes flashed for a moment, then it settled back down.

“Well, I guess it’s official, then,” Zeke said, inspecting his companion.

Pudge – Level 4

“So,” Abby said after she’d finally sorted everything out. By that point, night had fallen completely. “What’s your deal? How are you so strong? And why do you have so many weird skills when you’re only level ten?”

“Eleven, now,” Zeke said. At some point during his massacre of the harpies, Zeke had gained another level. For his last two levels, Zeke had continued to pile points into strength, but given that it had risen past two hundred, he had begun to consider allocating them into a different stat. Perhaps vitality or endurance. Either way, he’d figure it out when he got to it; from what he could tell, though, that might take a while. There had been quite an increase in the amount of experience required for level eleven, and it felt like it would take half-again as much to get to twelve.

Abby rolled her eyes. “I could really grow to hate you,” she deadpanned. “It took me almost a year to go from ten to eleven. How long did it take you?”

“Um…a day?” he said. “Or two, maybe. I don’t know. It kind of all blends together. There were a lot of harpies.”

“So? Not going to tell me how you did it?” she persisted.

Zeke sighed, then looked down at Pudge. The bear was still napping away contentedly in his lap. Would it be such a bad thing to trust her? Though he hadn’t really needed her help, she’d had no way of knowing that. As far as she knew, he’d been in mortal danger, and she had only hesitated for a few seconds before deciding to help. Sure, she had an ulterior motive, but that didn’t negate her choice.

Trust female. Smells good.

The words sprang into Zeke’s mind, seemingly from nowhere. However, he didn’t need Pudge’s sudden stare to tell him where the thought came from. Until that point, he’d only gotten vague impressions from the bear, but was it so surprising that they could communicate via thoughts? After everything Zeke had seen since being reborn, that he shared a telepathic link with the bear wasn’t even that shocking.

What was surprising, though, was that he trusted the bear’s judgment. Zeke couldn’t quite understand why that would be so, but he did, implicitly. If Pudge trusted the blonde woman, then he would, too.

“Okay, so I’ve spent the past two years in my tutorial dungeon,” Zeke said. “I had a few lucky fights, and I had some opportunities that I think probably aren’t normal. Like, for instance, I evolved my race when I was only level three. I almost died doing it, but…well, I got an achievement for it. And I guess everything just sort of flowed from that. And when I finally killed everything in the dungeon, I got more achievements. Some quest rewards, too. Like my mace. Or this hut. I even got this weird spatial storage thing that’s tied to the –”

“Wait – you’ve got spatial storage?” Abby asked. “Where is it?”

Zeke pulled a strip of his ruined shirt aside, revealing the tattoo on the upper part of his chest. “Right here,” he said. “It’s not that big. Only about twenty-by-twenty, as far as I can tell. But it’s really helpful.”

Abby just stared at him, her face blank. Finally, after a few awkward seconds, she said, “I…I don’t know what to say. Two years? Spatial storage? And you’ve already evolved your race? Do you have any idea how rare that is?”

“Not really,” Zeke said. “I’ve only been out of the dungeon for a couple of weeks.”

“Okay, okay,” said Abby, holding her hands out in front of her. “Let’s just address the racial evolution. I’ve been here for seven years, now, and I haven’t evolved even a part of my race yet. There just aren’t a lot of ways to do it, and those that are available are pretty closely controlled by the heads of the guilds. Or the church. Or the Temple. Either way, it takes years of hard work and a lot of luck just to put yourself in a position to get access to the natural treasures you need for an evolution.”

“Really?” Zeke said, suddenly wishing he’d brought more of the mushrooms out of the caves. Not knowing that they were valuable, he’d devoured his stock already.

“And then there’s your tutorial dungeon…”

“What about it?” Zeke asked.

She sighed. “It sounds like it was a lot more elaborate than what people normally get,” she said. “For instance, my tutorial dungeon was just a valley. I only had to kill a few bugbears before I got out. It took two days, and I got out within sight of Beacon. That you were all the way out here…”

Zeke didn’t respond. He’d suspected that his experiences within the tutorial dungeon were abnormal, but he’d had no idea just how strange his cirumstances had been. For so long, he’d been so entirely focused on survival that he never even considered how odd the difficulty was. He’d only managed to survive because of a few lucky opportunities. If one of a dozen things would’ve gone even slightly differently, he would never have escaped those horrible caves. So, it didn’t stand to reason that everyone would have it so hard. If that was the case, there would only be a few survivors.

“What about the bear?” she asked.

“Oh,” Zeke said, self-consciously running his fingers through his companion’s soft fur. “That actually is a skill. Kind of. I have this skill called [Mark of Companionship] that lets me share experience and benefits with other people. So, when I saw that Pudge was dying, I sort of altered the rune associated with the skill and –”

“Wait, what?” Abby interrupted. “You altered the rune? That’s not possible.”

“It’s possible,” he said. “Not easy, but possible. It’s not so different from unraveling a curse. You just have to –”

“Unraveling a curse?” she interrupted again. “What the hell are you talking about? You can’t just unravel a curse. You have to have a special skill, and anyone who does belongs to the Church of Purity. They charge an arm and a leg just to cleanse basic curses.”

Zeke shrugged. “I don’t have a skill,” he said. “But I do have an Artisan Path that helps me. Not that I had it when I was unraveling curses in the dungeon. I suspect it would be a lot easier now. Would probably still hurt, though.”

Abby just stared ahead in disbelief. She very clearly didn’t understand how any of what Zeke had described was possible. Briefly, he considered trying to explain things more fully, but before he could do so, she said, “Can you unravel a curse that Julio put on me?”

Zeke shrugged. “Maybe?” he said. “I’ve never tried on anyone else. But it shouldn’t be that difficult, I guess. Do you want me to try?”

For a second, hesitation filled the air, but then Abby nodded, saying, “Do it. But if you kill me, I’ll…I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.”

Zeke chuckled, then said, “Fair enough.”

Then, he gently shifted Pudge off of his lap, eliciting an annoyed snort from the bear. He ignored it, rising to his feet and crossing the small hut. Once he was next to Abby, he knelt beside her and asked, “Where is it?”

She indicated her left side, just below her ribs. In that exact spot, Abby’s armor had been rent, looking like it had exploded from the inside. Below that was a half-healed wound. Vaguely, Zeke could feel the malevolent rune, pulsing just beneath the surface of her skin. It was weak – far weaker than the curses cast by the troll shamans – but he could feel the energy within the rune slowly building upon itself. If left untreated, it would return to full-strength within a few weeks. And while Zeke had no idea what it was supposed to do, he knew it couldn’t be good. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a curse.

He placed his hand on Abby’s side. She flinched, but only slightly. Still, that slight tremble was enough to make Zeke incredibly uncomfortable. He wasn’t a complete novice when it came to the opposite sex, but two years alone had certainly dulled his social skills. He said, “Sorry. Should’ve warned you. I’m going in. Try to stay quiet.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zeke saw that she was biting her lower lip. He forcibly ignored the woman’s anxious expression. Instead, he focused on the task at hand. Slowly, he extended his awareness into Abby’s body, quickly latching onto the ominously pulsing curse rune. Then, with a thin thread of his mana, he started unraveling it.

Abby hissed in pain, the muscles in her stomach clenching. However, that was expected. He knew precisely how agonizing it was to feel a curse unraveling inside you. So, he pushed past the thought and bent his willpower to his task. Gradually, he managed to wrap his mana around the weakest point before beginning the process of loosening the tightly woven bonds of foreign mana. Thread by thread, then symbol by symbol, he unmade the malevolent rune until, finally, it was nothing more than a mass of disorganized threads of mana.

“Okay, so this is going to hurt,” Zeke said, looking up into Abby’s pain-filled eyes. After almost an hour of constant pain, a sheen of perspiration clung to her forehead, and her eyes had become red-rimmed and bloodshot. Still, she nodded, telling him to get it over with. He complied, and with agonizing slowness, dragged the foreign mana out of her body. It took another half hour, but eventually, he got it all, letting it dissipate into the air. When he’d finally finished, he let out a long sigh, saying, “There. It’s done.”

Abby groaned, leaning back against the stone wall of the hut. “God, you weren’t kidding about how much that would hurt, were you?” she muttered, tilting her head toward the thatched ceiling. “But it’s gone, now. So, thank you. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to get back to Beacon before it regained its power.”

“What would the curse do?” Zeke asked.

“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But I heard rumors that it did something to mess with your free will. That’s just the kind of guy Julio was.”

“Good riddance, then,” Zeke said. He hadn’t felt guilty about killing the men, per se, but it did help that they were bad people. “What now?”

Abby arched an eyebrow at him, saying, “Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you might want to…ah…put on some normal clothes. I know you probably aren’t too keen on wearing a dead man’s clothes, but…well…”

Suddenly, Zeke was very aware of just how little coverage his shredded rags really gave him. He had originally planned to get dressed sooner, but a host of distractions had sidetracked him. Now, he wanted nothing more than to put on some clothes.

“Most of these have sizing enchantments,” she said, indicating the pile of armor and clothing she’d been sorting. “So, just pick something that suits you, and I’ll…ah…well, I’ll make a fire outside.”

“Thanks,” Zeke said. Then, he started rummaging through the pile, hoping he could find something appropriate.