"Lay this unto your breast: Old friends, like old swords, still are trusted best."

John Webster

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It is incredible how fast time can pass when you keep yourself continually occupied. Barring the few times Nero had to log out for checkups, he spent all his time in Gods' Nature training or reading. Not much had actually changed really, only the intensity with which he threw himself into the tasks, so it wasn't really a surprise when three and half weeks passed in the blink of an eye.

He spent every night at Ground Sheer training and, while not to the same extent as the first night, would still come away with more than a few bruises. Following that he would either sleep if he was tired or take that time to investigate forums and the like online for information about the game. In a way, it was more useful than knowledge from in-game books as it pertained to stuff other players were doing and what they had discovered for themselves about the mechanics of the game. It also steeped him further in the lingua-franca of gaming.

Once the sun started to rise he would set off for work. Being a delivery boy did not really pay well, mostly because he was only making short trips within the city and they were of low importance. Despite that, Nero was getting enough money to survive and even have a little put away for future use. It also increased his understanding of the city, its streets, and its inhabitants.

Before he knew it, he was building connections with people all over the city. Like the baker apprentice who usually burned the first few batches in the morning, Nero could often get a bit of breakfast for free if he passed by. Or the old lady at the pawn shop who was more than willing to give gossip and information to anybody willing to listen. Kaesar's exploration also led him to realize what exactly Paul had been talking about that day in the carriage.

There were more things in heaven and earth than he had dreamed of. Just the week before he had seen two orcs arguing, not that rare a sight, but they had been arguing over the value of a weapon. The sword that was the subject of their dispute didn't seem that impressive at first glance, but when Nero passed by it had opened two eyes on the handle and, seeing him, had given him a friendly wave. Unsure what to do, Nero had waved an awkward hand back in response and been on his way.

The people could also be incredibly diverse. While most of the population of the keep were human, other races and cultures had settled in their own little districts as well. The acrid smell of coal in the dwarf's neighborhood was perhaps only matched by the pungent odor of the troll's small but tight-knit family compound. People, players, and NPC alike could be as standard or as weird as anything else. At one point Nero had seen what could only be a monkey. It was a bit shorter than him and nude save for its black and white fur, walking on two feet (hands?) with its back strait and a cane in its grip, it looked as casual as any other passerby. The uncanny valley feeling only increased when noticing Nero's stare, it raised its top hat in greeting before sauntering off. It (he?) pulled off the look of a Victorian gentleman rather well, Kaesar could admit, but it was kind of ruined by its tail swinging behind him as he walked.

When Nero wasn't at Ground Sheer or working, he and Jorry would be training. It was for the most part straightforward fare of muscle building and endurance raising exercises for increasing strength, with the odd smattering of what little he knew of yoga for flexibility and raising dexterity. He hadn't managed to save enough money for Jorry's official course so the snake was stuck with whatever Nero could think of at the time, much to his grumbling protest. Perhaps the best exercise they had found for him was to practice jumping. It involved the snake coiling itself like a spring and trying to jump high enough into the air to then twist itself around a branch. It was a surprisingly good way to raise both strength and dexterity, at least according to Jorry as Nero could not see the snake's stats.

Though the pair hadn't increased in level over the weeks, they still saw significant growth both in stats and in skill levels. Jorry's Bind skill, despite not using it on live targets had increased by three levels. Something that was far more useful as the snake grew. It was either because Jorry was so young or because of his recent evolution but the serpent was now over a foot long and still growing, much to his pleasure.

Nero had increased the level of both The Nest and Assimilation when the progress on Jorry's tongue had been completed. The Nest had only received another increase in Nestmates available and a small increase in the bonus they received while Assimilation hadn't said much at all barring 'larger traits may be assimilated.' Unfortunately, it was still impossible for Nero to get the scales he wanted or the flexibility and muscle control that Jorry so casually displayed. That left him a bit torn on what to assimilate. He wasn't going for the eyes because a snake's eyesight was actually worse than a human's. In the end, he decided to go with the jaw, a snake's split jaw was able to handle food much larger than normal. Nero wasn't sure what it would be useful for, but it at least helped increase Assimilation's level for more significant changes down the road.

There was the possibility of recruiting other animals into the nest, but any significant and useful traits generally were not too common and would take auxiliary assimilations to work correctly. Like how Jorry's taste buds had only become really useful after Nero had assimilated the tongue as well. Apart from that, Nero just had not found another animal he had taken a liking to. It wasn't that he hadn't tried, he had kept an eye out while he investigated Beast Tongue but for the most part animals were merely uninteresting. They did not have room for more profound thought for the most part, more concerned with living their daily lives and finding food than anything else.

Apart from conducting a few experiments, most of Nero's days off were spent in the bookstore, getting a nativist perspective on the game. For all the excellent information forums and blogs might provide, it was limited to a player's perspective and could sometimes be false. The internet was not famous for only containing the truth, and more often than not people were merely bragging and did not provide proof of their claims. That is not to say that all the information in books was necessarily accurate, but there was a significant difference between the effort it takes to write a book and a small forum post. That and Nero tried to keep his studies to books which were either primary sources or provided references to such.

It was actually while Nero was reading a book on the properties of sacred grounds in the bookstore that his routine was finally interrupted.

"Why am I not surprised to find you in a fortress made of books?" Nero heard an amused voice say, taking his attention from the page.

Looking up, he noticed that he was no longer alone in the corner of the bookstore he had repurposed for his own use. He was surrounded by piles of books, some of which were as high as his seated form. Peering over one of these piles was a face of an old friend.

"For the same reason you knew where the bookstore was in the first place. Because we are a pair of unrepentant bibliophiles and we like it that way." He answered, allowing a grin to stretch on his face as he rose to his feet to give the woman a hug. She gave a small laugh and returned to gesture. "It good to see you, Sophia."

"You too Gus, though you should probably call me Medea" she answered.

Pulling back from the embrace he took the chance to get a better look at her. She did not seem too different from what he remembered in real life. She had kept her hair long and straight, her skin was still the darker color that hinted at her Mediterranean heritage, and she stood with a confident grace, her expressive brown eyes staring at him in turn. The only thing that seemed out of place was robe-cum-dress she was wearing. It looked like it wouldn't be out of place in a magic show, either as the magician or the lovely assistant.

"You look different. Shorter." She noted.

"Nothing I can do about it." He shrugged his shoulders uncaringly. "I'm using a helmet rather than the usual capsule, so my measurements aren't really the same."

His unique circumstance probably brought to mind what had landed him in the hospital in the first place. She shuffled uncomfortably for a moment before responding awkwardly.

"Look," she began, "I apologized once but will repeat it: I am sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. It was an accident, and I don't regret what I did."

"Not for that. While I am not happy with what happened, I have come to terms with it. I can understand your reasoning for your actions, I would have done the same in your position. No, what I am apologizing for is what came after. I shouldn't have left you alone like that. I should have visited, talked to you, brought flowers, something! Instead, I was wrapped up in my own pitty, too busy feeling sorry for myself. I was so caught up in the trauma of seeing you like that that I never really thought about how you felt, confined to your mind like that."

"You do not have to apologize." He repeated, this time more forcefully. Seeing the mist in her eyes, he continued. "As you said, if our situations were reversed I would probably have done the same."

"Knowing you," Medea snorted in amusement followed by a slightly wet chuckle. "You would probably take the opportunity to pester me non-stop when I couldn't retort."

He smiled. "Besides, I wasn't really alone. My sisters come to visit sometimes. And your uncle helped out a lot. Now that I am playing Gods' Nature I can talk to you guys whenever I want."

"Speaking of my uncle," she started, playing with her hair and not looking him in the eye. "He didn't say anything strange to you, did he?"

"Not really, I wasn't in the best condition to hold a conversation, so it was mostly him talking at me than anything else. Looking back on it, it was weird at the time, but now that I know he was the creator of Gods' Nature it makes some sense. For the most part, he just thanked me, told me he was in my debt and that he would take care of any problems with my hospitalization. He came back a few days later with the helmet for playing the game and talked a bit about how to use it and Gods' Nature. He left after telling me to talk to you if I ever need to contact him."

"Good," she sighed in relief. "My uncle spent more than a few years out of contact with any humans while developing the game, so he's a bit eccentric at times. The first thing he said to me once he got back from the hospital was to ask if we were courting."

"He doesn't really know much about you does he?" Asked Nero with a wry smile.

"To be fair, he spent most of my lifetime on Gods' Nature. Once my mother died, he took pretty good care of me, though by that point I was almost entirely independent. It mostly involved him checking up on me every few weeks and asking if I needed money. You never came up, so to him, it must have been a surprise that we are so close."

"I'm not judging him," Nero denied." I know more than most about being too busy to properly take care of a family. All I'm saying is that he obviously doesn't know how picky his niece is when it comes to partners."

"I'm not picky." She mockingly huffed. "I just know what I want, and I have high standards."

"You are picky then," Nero chuckled. "Anyway, do you have some free time? I still have a couple hours before I need to be at the training hall so we could start the lessons now if you want."

"Sure," Medea nodded in agreement. "As I mentioned, I'm a Sage, so I have a lot of magical knowledge. If I'm only teaching you, we can probably cover basic theory in a few hours and get into specifics another day. Are you actually planning on using magic?"

"I don't know," he shrugged his shoulders. "I created my Nature to give me a chance try a little bit of everything. Right now the only thing is specialized in is giving me access to supplementary skills. I'm sure you noticed my new tongue." He had managed to make the movement of flickering his tongue to taste the air unconscious over the last few weeks. Now he stuck it out so she could get a better look.

"I noticed, but I thought you had managed to get access to an evolutionary pool of some sort of beast type. I knew you weren't a normal snakeman, they tend to have scales and no hair, but maybe a subspecies of a sort."

"Evolutionary pool?" He asked but was waived off.

"I'll teach you about them later. So your nature gives you snake traits? Or any animal trait?"

"Neither, it is more like I can copy traits of my companions. Speaking of which, I haven't introduced you to Jorry have I?" He asked rhetorically as he looked around for the snake. Nero finally saw him curled up asleep in a patch of sunlight streaming through the window and went to pick him up.

"Jorry?"

"Short for Jormungandr, an interesting story I'll have to tell you sometime." Picking up the dozing snake, and getting a sleepy 'what' in response, Nero brought him over to the table the pair were sitting at.

"Oh, he's so cute." Medea always had a thing for reptiles, she had told him she used to have a pet iguana as a child who she had named 'Smaug.' So it was no surprise when she stole Jorry from Nero's hands and cuddled the confused serpent to her cheek. "Who's a good deadly animal? You are, you are. Aren't you the most adorable world serpent ever."

Jorry just looked at Nero in alarm, as if to ask what on earth was happening. Nero completely ignored his desperate look.

"He's grown and evolved since I met him so his much bigger than before. He wasn't even a month old when I found him. Another skill that I got from my Nature lets me talk to animals, so I've been teaching him a few things here and there."

"If only we could do that in real life, the things we could learn." She sighed at the thought and finally stopped nuzzling the snake. Medea still did not let him go though. Instead, she started to scratch unconsciously at the base of the head. It must have felt good as Jorry's eyes closed in pleasure.

"Anyway," Nero said, trying to get back on topic. "Before we start I have a few questions. There are some conflicting statements in a few of these about magic I was hoping you could clarify. Give me a few seconds to find the right books."

The passage Nero was looking for provided more challenging to find than he thought. After a minute of searching, Medea spoke up once more.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Hm?" Nero looked at her, she was still petting Jorry, but her eyes were a bit unfocused as if not really paying attention to the snake in her hands.

"You ever wonder," she started hesitantly. "If things could have been different. If I had said yes back then I mean."

It took Nero a moment to realize what exactly she was talking about and another to think about the answer.

"It would be a lie to say I, over the years, never thought about what could have been, that's human nature after all. But, looking back I think it was for the best. With everything that happened right afterward, there would have been no way I could have given you the attention you deserved, I would have been too busy and have called it off. That might have soured our friendship, so in a way, I am glad you rejected me."

"I mean," she pressed. "If nothing happened, if your father hadn't died. Do you think we could have made it work?"

"No," he answered right away this time. "Oh, we could have made it work, but I don't think it would have lasted. At the end of the day, I just wasn't what you were looking for. There's nothing wrong that. You shouldn't have to compromise your happiness to satisfy my romantic interest."

Medea studied his face intently for a moment, looking for something perhaps regret or wistfulness. She apparently found nothing because she sounded almost surprised when she asked: "You really mean that don't you?"

"Indeed," he nodded. "If we were to be in a romantic relationship I would want it to be because you wanted it, not because you wanted to avoid making me sad. Was I sad? Certainly, but sometimes sadness is necessary."

"Thank you." She seemed to compose herself. "I suppose I have been a bit melancholic and uncertain since the accident. I've been looking back a bit too much I think."

"We all get like that sometimes, I was the same in the hospital before I started playing." He shrugged in acceptance before changing the subject. "So, magic." Not the most subtle of transitions but Medea seemed to appreciate the thought as she grinned at him in thanks.

"Magic."

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