Lisa Anders was currently at work in her study. Mickey had fallen asleep after a playdate he had earlier in the day, and was currently sleeping in his room. This gave her some time to plan. Lisa was never really a combat type, and while she had picked up some combat skills here and there for safety, she decided to focus on more utility with her skills. Thanks to Carl being on Metal City’s council she had access to plenty of skill crystals so it wasn’t hard for her to pick up some useful ones.

Lisa decided to devote her skills to theory crafting. She loved puzzles, and what she was working on now was one giant, convoluted puzzle. She was working on planning out skill builds for people by planning out which skills they should learn to synergize with each other and give them the best use of combination points.

People were limited to only having fifty skills, so they immediately realized that having skills that worked well together was paramount. There was a reason that RPG video games had parties with specialized people. With only fifty slots it was much more efficient to have a team of highly specialized people who could complement and cover for each other rather than having a bunch of jack of all trades.

This is where people like Lisa came in. They would pour over the lists of known skills and theory craft to figure out which ones worked together best. There was a lot of data to go through. Not only was there practically unlimited skills, but their names were often misleading and they often had to be judged solely on their effects. There was a skill called Fire Blast that only deep fried meat. Then the combination data had to be factored in. Combination crystals were exceedingly rare, and most people would be lucky to use three or four of them. Only the true powerhouses could afford to use ten points to choose which skills they combined.

It took a real penchant for number crunching and problem solving to go through all this data, but luckily Lisa had some skills to help her with that. She was currently going over all the data on resistance type skill combinations. Having at least a small damage resistance was hugely beneficial for someone’s survivability, but all around resistance type skills were rare and even tanks often didn’t have the skill slots available to get every single type of resistance skill.

Lisa was focusing on pain resistance and mental resistance type skills and how much they overlapped when the doorbell rang. She was brought out of her data induced reverie and got up to answer the door. Since magical communication technology was rather rare, if someone was at your door it was best to see who it was, as it could easily be a visitor or someone bearing important time-sensitive news.

Most people who came to the house had something for Carl about council business, and that was Lisa’s expectation as she went to open the door. When she opened the door the first thing she noticed was the attire of the person standing outside. While not rare, it was not common to see people wearing only leather, especially with fur on it. There were enough people with tailoring skills that cloth was more common. It was then that she looked at the person standing there, really looked at him. Kyle had changed a lot in the two years he had been gone, but she could never mistake that goofy grin he had on his face.

“I’m back,” was all he managed to say before he found himself embraced in a tight hug.

It took a while before Lisa was able to speak. Kyle was like a son to her and Carl, as they had watched over him when he was a toddler and he and his dad had then moved in with them when he was still a kid. She had feared the worst when Sarah showed up without him. Luckily he was found to be alive using divination skills, but his whereabouts could not be located. When knowledge about the secret training areas was discovered, Lisa had known that must be where he was. She could only pray to Gaia that he would come out alive.

“I knew you would come back safely,” Lisa said as she wiped tears from her eyes. “Carl and Sarah are out of the city right now, but they should be back in a few days. Carl is making a trip to the dungeons second level. Oh but you probably don’t know about all that. Come in and I can catch you up, but be quiet because Mickey is taking a nap. And you obviously need to eat more, just look at you! I’ll have to prepare something right away.”

“It’s okay Aunt Lisa, I’m fine. There’s no need to rush.”

Kyle was ushered into the kitchen as Lisa quickly got busy making some berry pancakes. Soon Kyle was wearing some of his uncle’s clothes and chowing down on the first real food he had eaten in ages. All he needed now was a real shower and he would feel like he was back in civilization again. Monster meat tasted pretty good but it had nothing on his aunts cooking, and while leather looks cool and all, it chafes something fierce when you don’t have anything to wear under it. Kyle may have had a superhuman constitution but he would never go without proper underwear again.

Mickey must have smelled the food as he came out while Kyle was still eating. He paused for a second, and then with a shout of “Kyle!” ran over and jumped on his cousin who was more like a big brother. Kyle thought he would be able to take coming home calmly. He knew everyone was okay and he even had skills that increased his ability to stay calm. That all went out the window when he heard Mickey say “Kyle” instead of “Kywle”. Kyle hugged Mickey as he bawled his eyes out. He had missed his family, but he was finally home.

“What’s wrong Kyle? Do you have a boo-boo?” Mickey Patted Kyle’s cheek as he held him. Mickey was still a kid, and didn’t quite understand why Kyle was crying.

“It’s okay Mickey. I’m fine now that I’m home and I have my cute younger brother Mickey with me.”

Kyle eventually calmed down. They ended up with Mickey sitting on Kyle’s lap and eating the rest of the pancakes while Lisa filled him in on what had happened with everyone while he was gone. The house that Carl and Lisa were living in was really more of a villa, but it wasn’t just them there. Sarah, Li, Walt, and Sarah’s dad were also living there, although he spend most of the time elsewhere.

After Kyle had disappeared it took the other three about seven months to make it to the city. They had been met by a search party a few weeks out to guide them the rest of the way there or it could have taken them even longer. Sarah’s dad had been lucky, and was transported fairly close to the city and the group of people he was with, despite not being very strong, were able to hold out long enough for people to find and rescue them.

Li’s parents had made it to the city, but had not even bothered filing a report on Li’s whereabouts. They were currently living somewhere in water city and Li had not talked to them at all since she came back. It was determined that Walt’s parents had been in a group together but they had been transported to a dangerous location and somehow been wiped out. If it had not been for him becoming closer friends with Sarah and Li on the way back to the city and having them for moral support Walt would have broken down. He kept it together though, and the three of them were currently in a monster hunting team with three other people.

Kyle had heard something about Carl being on the council for Metal City, but he didn’t really understand what that meant until his aunt explained it to him. When Humanity was first transported, most of the adults in the city were not suited to combat, as they had small children and so were not dungeon diving. Carl was one of the few people that was crucial in the early stages because he could use his stealth skill to pull monsters for the golems to kill. Thanks to that, he was able to quickly increase his personal strength and now occupied the head of the monster hunting force for Metal City.

Each of the five outer cities had five major council positions. The head of the monster hunting force, the person who organized the logistics of the city, like making sure everyone had housing and food, the treasurer, who organized the loot and also oversaw the information network for each city, and two council members who interfaced with the other outer cities and were part of the council that met in the main inner city. The outer cities were more focused on fighting monsters while the central city was more focused on child rearing and the development of the younger generations. It was filled with hundreds of schools and academies. Cultivating the children and making sure they had optimal skill builds was currently one of Humanity’s top five priorities.

Once Lisa had given Kyle a rough run down of what he had missed, Mickey made Kyle play hide-and-seek with him. It was Mickey’s new favorite game, and he would ask people to play whenever he could. The dungeon had a high mana density where earth had almost none, and this caused unawakened kids to start showing some signs of supernatural powers even before puberty, and the children who were awakening were starting to do so with two or three skills instead of just one.

Mickey seemed to have some sort of sensing ability, and despite him being only four years old he always managed to find people when he played hide-and-seek. The only person who he couldn’t immediately find was Carl, who had to use a skill to hide. After ten rounds of immediately being found Lisa finally caved and told Kyle about Mickey’s skill. The game then changed. Kyle had both an invisibility skill and a hide presence skill, and soon Mickey was searching all over the house for Kyle who would then appear as if from thin air from behind Mickey and surprise him, causing him to laugh uproariously before demanding to play again.

Sarah’s dad stopped by later that day and Carl came back late the next. The mood in the house was incredibly festive. Kyle told some interesting stories from when he was trapped, like when he drank his own pee, but for the most part left out his life-threatening encounters.

It was three days after Kyle came back that Sarah, Li, and Walt were done with their dungeon diving expedition. No one told them anything before they got back, and when Sarah saw Kyle standing there she tackle-hugged him with enough force that he likely would have gone through the wall if he didn’t have a Combat Sense skill and inflated stats. Li and Walt were happy Kyle was back, but they had really only known him for a relatively short time and did not feel like their life depended on his safe return like Sarah did.

After their hug ended and despite their embarrassment, by tacit agreement they both refused to let go of the other’s hand for the next few hours. When Sarah found out the Kyle had his own room she insisted with a red face that Kyle was staying in her room, and practically dragged him to move his few possessions in, only stopping when he agreed to move his stuff in later.

It took another few days before the festive atmosphere died down. Those days were spent showing Kyle around the city and relaxing and having a good time. Li was focused on the fact that Kyle and Sarah were sleeping in the same room, and kept trying to get the inside scoop. Kyle kept deferring to Sarah who refused to answer Li’s questions about exactly what their relationship was and what was ‘going on’ nudge nudge wink wink.

Sarah eventually had enough and blew up at Li saying things like “there’s nothing going on”, and “It’s none of your damn business”, and “Kyle is never leaving my sight ever again”. At the last one, Li kept on asking, “he will never leave your sight even if/when” kinds of questions. Sarah continued saying she would never leave his side, “even if Kyle was secretly a tentacle monster from mars intent on world domination”. It devolved into Li rapid-fire suggesting scenarios and Sarah saying no to them, when Li finally asked if they would never separate even in the bathroom. Sarah only realized what she said no to after she said it, but didn’t take it back despite her obvious embarrassment over the statement.

Sarah did let Kyle use the bathroom without her, but only after an anti-teleportation array was installed in it. She wasn’t taking any chances. Kyle didn’t want to leave her side either, but was happy he could finally poop in peace.

It was a week after he was back when it was finally time to get down to business. Carl had a duty to do as one of the leaders of Metal City, and he had to submit a report about Kyle’s circumstances. The first thing on the agenda was the secret training area. Secret training areas could never be accessed from the same spot twice, but usually moved around in the same general area. As far as they could tell they also stayed the same for each person who entered them. Mickey was taken to a daycare while everyone else gathered around the kitchen table to listen to Kyle’s story, this time the unadulterated version. Lisa was in charge of taking note of the information and Carl was in charge of asking questions, while Sarah, Walt, and Li just listened.

The story took five hours to tell, and there had to be a meal break in between. After he was finished, the topic naturally turned to Kyle’s stats. Carl had been dying to ask Kyle about them, both as his uncle and as a council member, but had held off to give him some time to settle in.

Lisa was actually the best person to judge Kyle’s stats, and once everyone had finished looking them over they turned to her for analysis. She took a good while thinking the information over before she spoke.

“Honestly, your stats are very high, but there are many people currently in the second tier of the dungeon with higher stats. The same thing for your skills. The real thing of note is your titles. Exponential Growth is flat out ridiculous. Combination points are one of the most valuable commodities, and anyone who can save up enough to choose which skills to combine has a huge advantage. Having three titles in general is considered excellent, even if they were all subpar, which they are not.”

Lisa took a short pause to think for a bit.

“Overall, you seem to be mostly focused on ranged magical DPS, but the width and breadth of your skillset is astounding. Mostly because it does not negatively impact you in the slightest, and because you do not need to worry about combination points you could theoretically learn every single skill in existence. Most people tend to focus on doing one thing, and doing that to perfection. Your skills allow you to practically solo a dungeon expedition, which I suppose is exactly what you had to do.”

“So what do you think I should do from here?” Kyle agreed with his aunt’s analysis. He had been focusing more on survivability than specializing in any one thing.

“Hmmm. I think you should focus on mana, and then branch out from there. You already have one of the largest mana pools and highest regeneration rates I have seen, so it would make sense to expand on that, be it with high DPS skills, expensive buffing skills, or mana intensive enchanting skills. That would also synergize with your skill leveling title.”

“How would I do that though?” Kyle asked, confused. “I have tried a bunch of different mana pool skills and I can’t seem to learn any more.”

Carl reached over and gave Kyle a pat on the shoulder. “You are underestimating Humanity. Someone came up with the saying, ‘if there’s a will, there’s a skill’. We managed to combine a skill that searches the known skill database for certain types of skills, and then cross references that with the ones someone can actually learn from among those types.”

Kyle sat there is stupefaction. He had tons of skills that he wanted to learn but was not able to because the system deemed that he already had a skill of that type. If he could actually find skills that he could learn, the future was truly limitless.

That means I should easily be able to double my mana pool. Heck, why not triple it! Quadruple it! I knew saving those combination points was the right idea. I could even upgrade my enchanting skills now. I bet I could make a suite of power armor! I could add rockets, and machine guns and…

Sarah had to hit Kyle to wake him up from his daydreaming.

“Just because you can learn a million skills doesn’t mean they are free. You can join our team next week to get some crystals to trade in for some merit points,” Sarah said. “Good skills don’t come cheap and your millions of mana can’t conjure up merit points.”

Kyle started laughing, before turning to Sarah with a wide grin on his face, inwardly gloating about getting one over on her. He had told them about his Pocket Dimension skill, yet none of them had asked him what was inside.

“Wanna bet?”

Kyle extended both his arms over the table, as if in supplication.

“Oh Gaia, our creator, I beseech thee to grant this one your blessing one more time and turn my mana into skill crystals!”

He then activated his Pocket Dimension skill. Skill crystals started to bubble up from Kyle’s cupped hands and spill out onto the table. There was no limit to how much he could take out of his pocket dimension at once, so all the over two hundred skill crystals he had no interest in formed a mound before him, leaving his audience stunned.

Some of them had suspected he had some crystals stored in his pocket dimension, but no one had suspected he had this many.

“I have a bunch of enhancement crystals too, but if I took all those out now we would be trapped in crystals.”

Kyle then took out a medium sized jewelry box from his storage. He had forgotten about it until just now. It was made of stone, and beautifully decorated with rough unpolished gems. Kyle then presented it to Sarah before anyone had recovered enough to comment on the mountain of crystals in front of them.

“I’ve missed at least two of your birthdays, and I never repaid you back for when you gave me a present for my eighteenth birthday. Here’s a late birthday present!”

Sarah mutely took the box, still stunned at Kyle’s previous display of wealth. She slowly opened it, and then froze, mouth wide open.

“What did you get?” Li asked as she peeked over Sarah’s shoulder. She also froze with her mouth open.

Everyone else turned to look at Kyle’s newest surprise as Sarah cleared some crystals off the table to make room for the box so everyone could see.

Nestled inside were ten combination crystals, slightly glowing within the mirror insides of the box.

“I don’t really need combination crystals, but I hear other people want them.” Kyle was really enjoying the looks on everyone’s faces. Only Carl had ever actually seen ten combination crystals in one place before, but even he could feel the allure they represented.

Before anyone could recover someone came bursting through the kitchen door.

“Commander! We have a problem! The...”

The man who came through the door momentarily froze when he saw the mountain of crystals in front of everyone.

“Well don’t just stand there Ori, what’s so important?” Carl barked, quickly recovering from his previous shock.

“Sorry, Commander. The second tier city is under attack! The minotaurs are launching a coordinated assault with the spelled lemurs!”