With his Mana low, Keith took out several potions and drained them. Unlike Nathan, he kept a stock of the game's Mana Potions on-hand, just in case. Purchased outside of the game, he'd be able to use them time and again as long as he only used them within the game.

Even though he could restore his Mana to full in around an hour, he wanted to be prepared in case something else came their way. The few potions he had wouldn't be anywhere near enough to bring him to full, but they were enough he could use his basic attacks again if something attacked quickly.

His Mana partially refilled, Keith began cutting into the boar, pulling out some of the meat that cooked with his attack, then he devoured it before sitting beside Nathan. His familiar had already cut off the tusks and were playing with them, and he shook his head in a mixture of disbelief and amusement.

Because history was wrong, people would get the wrong idea if they knew who his familiar was. Fifteen centuries ago, it was only a storm elemental. One contracted to a figure now commonly depicted and believed to have been evil.

Mordred.

They had no idea that Mordred was good, nor that his familiar was a playful thing. The latter part, Keith found out through Nathan and Ichtvar. Until the springboard incident, Keith had always been formal, even if friendly, with his familiar.

Contracting something so powerful had made him nervous of upsetting the elemental and losing the contract. He'd been lucky to find it, but now that he thought about things, and some of the hints he'd received, he started to wonder something.

If maybe the heavenly storm elemental had sought him out and intentionally let himself be 'found' by the teen.

As Keith finished eating, he sensed something else approaching and looked at it. Since his familiar hadn't reacted, the blob-like magical thing was likely a phantom and not a shade. This was confirmed when it morphed to a humanoid appearance and stepped out of the shadows, lunging towards the wizard.

Reacting immediately, Keith fired off a slash of light at the creature, which dodged, the attack nicking its arm. Keith was already casting another, this one shaped like a plus. As the phantom dodged that, Keith pulled Nathan's gun from his hip and aimed at the creature, firing at its head.

His arm jerked with the unexpected kickback from the shot, the bullet going wide. Adjusting his aim for the chest, he fired again as the phantom charged towards him. The bullet slammed into its chest, causing the creature to let out an ear-piercing shriek of pain.

As it flailed around, Keith dropped the hand with the gun and summoned up a sphere of light, an alteration to simply gathering mana above his palm. He took two swift steps forward and pressed the sphere into the phantom's chest, causing the creature to dissipate.

"Sorry, Nathan," Keith sat down and opened up Nathan's backpack. "I'm probably going to use this a little until you wake up."

Sustaining an orb of light wouldn't be too difficult or intensive for him, as he didn't need to do anything other than create and sustain it. If he were to move it around on its own, send it flying, or something else like that, then it would be as draining as the light slashes.

Since the phantoms stopped moving to wail and shriek from the pain of light-enhanced bullets, that meant that if Keith could manage to hit them with a single bullet, he could finish them off with little magic expenditure.

Keith pulled out several of Nathan's decks, locating the box with a gun drawn onto it. Opening it, Keith pulled out a card with an ammo box drawn onto it. Triggering it, he opened up the metal box that formed and pulled out a bullet, then pulled out his inscribing pen.

He kept an ear and an eye out for danger as he worked, occasionally needing to take down a phantom, but no more boars attacked. A few hours passed before he stopped to eat again, and as he did, Keith stared at the boar's corpse.

There was no vegetation that they could find so far, and Ichtvar had made it clear that he'd apparently been mistaken when he detected plants of some sort. Or had he actually detected some somewhere on the island?

What did the boars eat? Where were they hiding? How many were there?

After eating, Keith asked his familiar to keep an eye out and to wake him if something happened. The magician was exhausted and elementals didn't sleep. With Nathan out for the count until Ichtvar had recovered enough, shifts couldn't be taken for keeping watch, and Keith wanted to be as alert as possible.

Keith settled down into sleep, waking to his familiar zapping him lightly.

"What is it?" Keith asked, realizing immediately what the problem was.

With his magic sight, he was able to see what appeared to be many, many magical threads surrounding him in the darkness, almost as if a web had been woven to trap him and Nathan where they were.

"Uh," Keith murmured to his familiar. "Pretty sure I said to wake me if there was a problem."

His familiar gave off a shrug, then returned to gently poking at Ichtvar's markings on Nathan's chest.

Rubbing his temples, Keith stood and slowly turned, examining the all of web that encircled them. It was around thirty feet in diameter and formed a dome over them. After a few minutes of examination, he spotted the location of the spider that created the thread.

Or rather, it began to weave more of its magical web, this time aimed at Keith. The magician flicked his wrist, sending a slice of air at the web. The two connected a few feet above his head, the silvery web cutting in two and splitting to the sides of him as the spell continued forward.

The web was wearing away at his spell, but Keith knew it wasn't that effective on a spell as powerful as his. He shot off several more slices of air, surrounding the spider as it attempted to move out of the way.

Hissing, the spider dropped to the ground, and Keith gave it a satisfied smirk when he noticed one of its eight legs was missing. Dark brown fur with onyx-black eyes, the beast stood nearly three feet in height.

"You're a big one, aren't you?" Keith asked as it shot web at him.

Raising his hands, the magician summoned a wall of wind that stopped the magical thread in its tracks. Punching at the wall, Keith sent several small blasts of air at the beast, which scurried to the side to avoid being struck as it shot more webbing at him.

It was a bad match-up for the spider, Keith knew. His air magics were perfect for stopping the webbing dead without giving it anything to latch onto, and he was powerful enough that the webbing's magic-draining property took too long to make much of a difference. In addition, his attacks were powerful enough that any which missed the spider and didn't hit the ground hit the web wall instead, damaging it.

All he needed to do was find a perfect opportunity, as the creature continued to evade his attacks. He continued to generate his wind barrier as he shifted to continue to protect himself, Nathan, and their gear from the webbing, noting the web wall surrounding them mending, even without the spider's work. It was obviously draining magic from his attacks to repair itself, even if the attacks themselves broke through and continued on until fizzling out.

"Fine, fine," Keith growled as he blasted off another leg of the spider's, causing it to hiss once more. "I'll use fire magics again. I fucking hate it, though."

Focusing on the feeling of heat and flame, Keith mixed it into his wind as he continued to punch. While the wall itself remained the same, he was no longer projecting out blasts of air, but fireballs.

The spider hissed at Keith, jumping up to avoid the flurry as Keith's breathing quickened. He needed to end it quickly, before he had a full panic attack. Praying to whatever deities would listen, he hoped his tactic would work.

When his fireballs struck the web well, they ignited hit, his magical flames spreading quickly enough to do massive damage, enough that the wall wasn't able to repair itself. The spider shot web up to ascend to the dome, then began scurrying to repair the damage left when the flames faded. Keith aimed at the spider's path, firing off several more shots.

They quickly connected, setting the spider and the webbing aflame, and he continued igniting the webbing until it was no more.

Sweating and breathing hard, Keith collapsed to the ground. Using fire magics wasn't easy for him, not since the accident a couple of years ago. His first attempt at it resulted in disaster, a disaster that left him fearful of using fire magics.

Much like lightning, it wasn't easy to control, and his arrogance from easy learning back then led to him thinking he could use it easily and outside of a controlled environment without any training. Madeline had to have trained for years to be able to wield fire magics the way she did.

The only good that came from that incident was that it led to him meeting his familiar. Kieth had gone outside of town to use it, not wanting to be caught at home. There were some decent-sized woods not far out of town, so Keith had gone there.

He summoned a fireball, and in his joy at having managed it with relative ease compared to what it should have been, he forgot to keep control over it. The fire expanded with his emotions, exploding outward.

The woods around him, his clothes, and his body were all set aflame. By rights, Keith himself should have been covered in burns from the incident, but the next thing he remembered, aside from the pain and all the flames, was the cool, concern-filled touch of water flowing over his body.

When he came to, Keith found himself being washed by water, touched by a breeze, and lightly zapped by electricity, his flesh mending. The woods around him had been put out, and as he collected himself, he realized with a start that there was an elemental there, mending his burnt body.

Keith spent a few days out in the woods, recovering from the fire and communicating with the elemental, which accepted his contract before he went home. According to the familiar, it had just been passing through.

But was it? Or was it intentionally there, watching Keith? The magician slowly sat up and looked at the heavenly storm elemental, which was still poking at Nathan's chest. Mordred's familiar had become his own, and then a few years later, its old friend Ichtvar became the familiar of someone who was rapidly becoming close friends of his. In real time, it would not be soon before Ichtvar's surrogate son would be reunited with them as well.

Keith focused on his familiar's form, on the way the wind, water, and light mixed together as it flowed smoothly through the air above Nathan. Watching it helped calm him down after being reminded of that incident.

It was a humbling experience, and one that led him to focus more on enchanting than spells, though he kept up with wind and force magics, as they were easier to control and shape.

"Hey," Keith said, then sensed his familiar's gaze upon him. "When you contracted with me… you weren't 'just passing through', were you? You were there for me, weren't you?"

"Yes," he heard his familiar's cool, gentle voice in his head. "I was watching you for weeks before the incident. Do you think you've recovered enough to try fire magics again? When it's not something small, like igniting a twig, or in an emergency, like an hour ago?"

"Has it really been an hour?" Keith asked, then sighed. "I don't know. It was the only thing I could think of to quickly end the fight. I was able to damage the spider from the start, but it was fast. I got lucky. Even with my System-enhanced speed, I was barely able to keep up with it. My attacks weren't doing much damage to the webbing, and it was repairing… hey!"

Keith stared at his familiar, sensing it knowing he'd realized why it had waited so long to wake him up.

"You knew I'd use fire magics."

"Yes," his familiar responded. "I have been all about helping you, Keith. I saw an opportunity to maybe help you with your fear. Remember, Keith, that fear isn't a bad thing. Don't let it control you, but instead, allow it to make you stronger. You faced your fear earlier. Using fire magics shouldn't be as difficult anymore. And also remember that as cold as Nathan seems, that despite what he says, you are his friend. It will be okay to admit your fear of using fire magics to him. He may tease and taunt you over it, but that's simply how he is, much like with making you uncomfortable by suggesting you do something else you fear."

"Have sex with Michael," Keith said.

"Correct," his familiar said. "It's a deflection for him. He knows you'd never do that. By making others uncomfortable, he keeps them from getting too close. That's why he will taunt and tease you over your fear.

"However," it continued. "You have already broken past his walls. He refuses to accept that you are more than a tool, more than a means to an end. You are his friend. And in the end, past his taunting and teasing over your fear, he would be more than willing to help you face it and overcome it."

Keith snorted.

"Nathan doesn't have any fears," he said. "And I really don't see him willing to help anyone overcome a fear. I'm sure he'd tell Samantha to just suck it up."

"That's how he seems," the heavenly storm elemental said. "But that's not how he is. He'd say that, but at the same time, do what he could to make them face it. If you told him about the incident, and how it gives you nightmares still, he'd tease you while simultaneously telling you to ignite the fires with magic. For a fear of spiders, he'd probably take you to a store that sold pets like spiders, teasing you as he held them up. It would be his way of trying to make you face your fears."

"I'm not scared of spiders," Keith said. "And doing something like that would probably make an arachnophobe freak out hard."

"Maybe," the familiar said. "But you've already seen how Nathan misunderstands things sometimes, or views the world with a skewed lens. It isn't intentional, but simply part of who he is. And who knows, maybe the person with arachnophobia would realize later that it hadn't been as bad as they'd thought, and maybe want to give it another try. Maybe not let the creature crawl all over them, but perhaps just visit the store again."

Keith thought on his familiar's words. It had never pressed him about trying to overcome his fear, simply let him be, helping him when he asked and acting as a friend when he needed it. It was his friend, which was why he could tap into the being's full power through their connection.

"Do you think," Keith took a shaky breath. "Do you think that using my magic, my fire magics, for small things would help me?"

"Help you acquire fine control over it," his familiar responded. "While allowing you to use it in such a way that it would be hard for it to go wrong? Yes, Keith. It would help you acquire a comfortable feel for fire magics. Nathan would likely think the same thing, which is why I mentioned it."

"Okay," Keith said. "Though I'm not sure I'm ready for Nathan to know just yet."

"He already suspects, according to Ichtvar."

"No reason to confirm," Keith looked at his teammate, who was still unconscious. "Do you know how much longer they'll be out for?"

"No," his familiar responded. "Awhile, though. I'd recommend staying put, it'll give you less chance of facing more monsters. It could take a few hours, it could take a few days."

"Great," Keith muttered. "I could be stuck here for a few days, waiting for Nathan to wake up."

"On the bright side," his familiar said. "It'll give you time to not be shadowed by Nathan's own ability to steal the spotlight. That's the phrase, right?"

"Yes," Keith said. "That's the phrase. And how, exactly, would Nathan steal the spotlight? We're alone, and against anything tougher, we'll have to work together."

His familiar ignored the question, continuing to poke at Ichtvar's marks.