Warmth. Happiness. Completeness. Then, irritatingly, the warm complete happiness moved. I hugged it. Tight. That didn’t stop it. It tried to escape. I had to keep it!

Loosely, I pressed my sharp teeth against it in warning. I did not want to hurt the warm complete happiness. If it kept struggling then...

It stilled. Good. Joy! Pleasure. Elation!

Because... It was mine. My Oneness.

I removed my teeth and rubbed my cheek against the warm happy completeness to show it that it was a good-good.

A deep sigh ruffled my hair. The warm happy completeness gave me hugs. Double joy!

Relaxed now, a drowsy sleepiness returned me to the slumber...

***

The scent of the salty ocean suffused the chill room but warmth enveloped me. My head rested on a pillow that was simultaneously hard and soft. And it smelled amazing. Slowly, I opened my eyes. The boat rocked.

A beautiful masculine hand held a thin leather-bound book. With dexterous movements, the owner of the hand turned the page using only his thumb. Damn. That was sexy and his movements were practiced as fuck.

I blinked.

Wait! I shouldn’t be thinking things like that. There were more pressing issues to deal with.

I lifted myself up and away from Lore. My face burned with embarrassment.

Holy shit. I’d slept... in his arms! And he was just casually reading a book while we shared the same bed together... I mean, obviously platonically but...

He tossed the book up into his inventory and stretched his broad back. For some reason my mind blanked.

“Good! You’re awake. I can finally move!”

I covered my mouth in embarrassment and watched as he leisurely pulled on his arms and neck. That position must have been very hard on him. I might owe him an apology of some sort?

“Um. What...” Wait... that weird darkly possessive dream I had where I practically forced a warmth to stay near me? Did that—

“We need to figure out what race your other half is before your natural instincts start to affect your behavior... when you’re awake. From what I recall from others playing alien races in the sim, the longer you stay in a different body, the more its nature shows itself.”

I hung my head. “Yeah, well. Other than the fire that burns in my chest, I don’t really have any information to give you on that.” I froze as another memory floated to the surface. “Did I... um... try and... ah... bite you by any chance?”

Lore ignored me and strode out of the room. Eh, was it just my imagination or were his ears red?

Right. If I had... I wasn’t saying I had... but if I did, then maybe he was being polite by not mentioning it.

I also needed some fresh air. Badly.

I followed him up onto the deck. Waves of deep cerulean spread out in nearly all directions. Clouds covered the sky for miles but the sun broke through sending beams of light out across the water.

It was beautiful out here.

The only odd thing was the bluish translucent dome that covered a large swath of sky.

For a long time, while the waves constantly moved our ship up and down, I watched the beauty of this new world. We’d been so busy rushing everywhere that I hadn’t really taken the time to just be a tourist on an alien planet. It was nice.

Lore sat down beside me. “We’re going to move into that barrier eventually. Let’s equip the amulets that will keep us sane, now.”

I nodded, opened our shared inventory, and took out the box. This time, instead of staying closed, it revealed twin necklaces with a stylized shield pendant. We each took one out and equipped

“Here’s hoping this works.” Lore peered toward a small island in the distance.

After examining it for a while, I glanced past it to where the ocean met the sky. There was something very wrong with the curve there.

“Hey, Lore. How large is this planet? Because the horizon seems a little off to me.”

He shrugged. “You did see the cloud butterfly that died right? It’s large enough to sustain creatures of that size.”

But the gravity didn’t seem overly strong so maybe it was a large but not dense planet?

“I hear that in higher leveled areas, those mounts aren’t rare to see.”

Warning! You leveled 10 hours ago! Please go to your character information and increase your attribute points.

“Oh! I’m level 5 now thanks to that last bit of EXP from the event... but what’s with this increase your attribute points thing? Doesn’t it usually just do it by itself?”

Lore faced the cloudy sky as if a bit depressed. “Level 5, huh?”

Right he was stuck at level 4.

“What are your current attribute points looking like?”

I pulled them up.

(Add 4 Points!)

Strength: 8

Dexterity: 24

Athletics: 8

(Add 4 Points!)

Charisma: 5

Creativity: 5

Social: 2.5

(Add 4 Points!)

Constitution: 10

Armor: 8

Health: 4.5

(Add 4 Points!)

Wisdom: 8

Intelligence: 14

Magic: 5.5

Health: 63

Mana: 77

Current backstab multiplier: x2

My eyes widened. “Holy shit! It’s telling me to add 4 points to each of the major categories.”

“That sounds about right. Every 5 levels is special because instead of adding 4 points to your main and 2 points to your secondary characteristics, you get 4 points for each. Starting now, you need to think of the direction you want to take your character build.”

I frowned. “Shouldn’t I stick with just being a normal Arcane Assassin? I mean are there any differences later on?”

“Of course there are! While you can technically start any profession within the PPVS at level 10, Your stats will depend on how far you can go on each of them. And although you can participate in more, it’s also recommended that you only work on one craft type and one gathering type of profession so that you don’t spread yourself too thin. At least while we’re in the lower levels. I’m sure higher-level players get bored sometimes and decide to start new professions at random.”

“Okay, but I don’t know what kind of craft I want to do. And actually I kind of find crafting really boring.”

He frowned.

Oh, right. He’d been stuck in here without the ability to craft. “Well, what kind of profession do you want?”

He opened his mouth and then shrugged. “I’ve been stuck at level 4 for so long that breaking this collar and finally reaching 5 seems like a far-off dream.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that you haven’t thought about it.”

He glanced at me then cleared his throat. “I’ve thought about becoming an artificer so that if I ever get one of these collars put on me again I can take it off. But it would consume a lot of money and time spent on crafting. It doesn’t seem worth it merely for some peace of mind.”

I wrapped my arm around his. “You should do it! It doesn’t matter that it will be time-consuming and expensive. Having an artificer on your side will be important for the future development of your clan. Especially since they’re so highly respected.”

“If I become an artificer, what will you do?”

I took out one of the shitty potions I collected from a lucky encounter with a group of goblins. “I want to create potions that don’t taste like ass.”

“An alchemist then.”

I nodded as I peered into the red potion with chunks of stuff in it. Yep. I would drink this to not die, but I would not be happy about it.

“Then you’ll also want to learn to collect and grow herbs.”

“Collecting is fine but it’s not like I’ll ever have a place to grow them.”

Lore shrugged. “There are places you can rent to farm herbs though, otherwise potions would be even more expensive than they already are.”

I sighed. “Alright, then I’ll become an alchemist for my profession and an herb collector for my gathering job. So what are the best stats for those?”

“Wisdom to increase your Observe skill, Creativity to increase what you can do with herbs along with some few monster parts in your potions, and Charisma to sell them, when the time comes.”

“... To me, it sounds like I just need to up my wisdom and creativity a bit.”

He shook his head. “Charisma is important.”

I stared into his eyes and grinned mischievously. “Why should I use my precious points upping my charisma when my partner is a bard?”

He opened his mouth to say something but then stopped. Then continued. “What if I’m busy and you have to make a sale on your own?”

“Then they can buy at the price I set or not buy at all. Then I’ll just wait until my partner comes back.”

“I really think you should put at least one point into it.”

“My uncle usually gave me shit advice... but one of the few really good ones was this... In business you can be fast, you can be good, and you can be a pleasure to work with. As long as you have two out of three, you can make a living.

“So, if I know that I’ll never be a pleasure to work with based on my charisma, then I’ll just have to be fast and good.”

I grinned. Of course, my uncle also told me a bunch of other nonsense about how conmen like him got away with only being a pleasure to work with but I doubted Lore wanted to hear that.

He still peered at me super skeptically.

I shrugged. Then I started putting my points together and hit confirm.

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 26

Athletics: 9

Charisma: 5

Creativity: 9

Social: 3.5

Constitution: 14

Armor: 8

Health: 5.5

Wisdom: 10

Intelligence: 16

Magic: 6.5

HP: 83

Mana: 98

Current backstab multiplier: x3

My eyes bulged when I noticed that my backstab multiplier had increased after I leveled.

Damn. Level 5 was a hardcore upgrade. If things like this happened every 5 levels then, that Mossthorn was stronger than I thought. And Jethia Ravenborn was about to hit level 15! Shit. If we really were able to release Lore then he and I needed to power level as fast as possible. While also escaping her clutches.

“Looks like we have some time before we get to the island. Should we continue with your fire resistance training?”

I glared at him. “To quote The Lonely Island, ‘We’re on a boat!’”

Now he just looked confused and I made a mental note to show Lore that music video when we next took a break on Earth. Never mind, he wasn’t ready for that level of music comedy yet.

“That means, I don’t want to light our boat on fire.”

He sighed. “We’re not going to light the boat on fire. Something this expensive is thoroughly fireproof. Now let’s go back down and light a candle under your hand so you can see how little damage it does to you.”

I glared.

He shrugged. “It’s better than my flares.”

I winced. Cold sweat ran down my back, but I still followed Lore into the hold.