Day 5 Report:

designation:ZLTDB0K9HUV continues to exceed growth rate projections [PL+4].

STAT gain: N/A

SKL acquisition: N/A

Variable isolation unsuccessful: one further incursion from stat.eff (EXCLUDED).

Sprite systems unaffected, incursion contained.

Analysis of problem of noncompletion of harvest.directive: 9.55%.

Resuming special protocol with exclusionary status.

Albek was running. From what, he didn’t know. He fled down dark corridors with too many angles, his footsteps echoing off cold stone. No matter how fast he ran, the thing chasing him only seemed to get closer. He couldn’t hear or see it—he didn’t even dare to turn around and check—but he knew with each step he took, it was taking one and a half. He turned down doors, zigzagging madly in an attempt to lose it. Just as he felt the first icy tendril run down his back, he awoke, gasping for air.

Dreams had not been kind to him lately.

He got up, stifling a groan. His muscles felt like absolute death. Jameson’s workouts were bad enough, but hauling water yesterday had just about done him in. Luckily, today was a break day. Not that he wouldn’t be busy, but he wouldn’t be “Jameson-level” busy.

Checking the peephole on the front door, he saw that it was still dark out. He doubted he’d be able to go to sleep again, so he decided to practice Increase Momentum, convincing himself as he did that if he could get a handle on this spell, Levitate Object would be right behind it.

An hour later, the rest of the house woke up for breakfast. The atmosphere at the table felt rather strained. Albek and Chelsea avoided meeting each other’s eyes, Hemash appeared distracted and tired, and Liyne was even more reserved than normal. Albek spent some time observing his sister, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her. He made sure his locket was hidden away.

Jameson finally spoke up. “Was it someone I know?”

Everyone’s gaze turned towards him.

“What?” asked Chelsea.

“The guy whose funeral we’re at right now.”

Though he earned a few groans, even Jameson couldn’t bail this sinking ship. Everyone quickly finished eating and put their minds to the tasks at hand for the day. Albek went right back to training with the Order of Force for his ultimate goal: Levitate Object. He had gotten a handle on the basic idea of the Order, but a lot more work was needed.

A wooden board creaked as he sat on the steps of the porch, closing his eyes. His father was behind him, scanning the surroundings as per normal. In Albek’s right hand, he held a baseball. Occasionally, he would give it a slight toss, catching it when it fell.

He was sensing the object’s weight with the Sight. This was the strangest use of his magical sixth sense that he had tried yet, as it didn’t involve his eyesight at all, or even really his sense of touch. It was simply his sense of how “heavy” the object was. For Increase Momentum, Albek didn’t have to view its entire imprint like he did with Levitate Object. He only needed the portion of it that was dominated by the Order of Force—the mana that determined (or represented) its weight. It was truly an odd experience. It seemed to Albek that the ball was constantly falling up. Its natural inclination was to dig its way to the center of the earth, but his hand was pressing on it, stopping it in its tracks. It wasn’t only the ball. The ground, the trees, everything around him was also driven up by the mass below. It was a dizzying sensation, like the planet itself was pushing on him.

Ignoring the pangs of an incoming headache, he directed all his thought towards isolating the weight of the ball. Since he was holding it, he already had a good idea of its heft.

While it wasn’t being moved, the weight of the object in his hand was its only inherent force. That lone force changed whenever he moved, because the ball would accelerate whichever way his hand was going. When he threw it up, he sensed a flare from the Order of Force passing from his hand to the ball, which gave it an upwards momentum and temporarily counteracted the force of its weight.

That flaring of Force was key, he knew.

It was a struggle to not think of the motion of the ball as its kinetic momentum, but that’s what it was. He’d been making more of an attempt to emulate his sister and see magic as an instinctive force rather than a mathematical one, but there was only so much he could do to work a decade of science classes in public education out of his system. Magic didn’t like being placed into these categories (which made sense, since it laughed in the face of physics), but it would have to put up with being penned in for the time being.

Jameson stomped up the porch, carrying water inside to refill his various basins. A few drops of cold water landed on Albek, shocking him out of his deliberations. He readjusted, moving over to a bench nearby, and returned to sensing these familiar, yet alien, forces.

Sensing the forces that acted on the ball was only the starting line of Increase Momentum. Albek had to then isolate and amplify a specific force.

He had been successful so far in strengthening its gravity and making the ball drop slightly faster, but that was about the extent of his results. This was simple to do because the ball’s mass was always constant. Grasping that vector was child’s play.

His problem was that he wanted to increase the ball’s momentum in other directions. This was what made it tricky. He wouldn’t be able to use this spell to suddenly fling the ball forwards from a resting state, but if it were already moving forwards, the spell should let him amplify its motion and send it flying forward at sonic speeds. Albek had a picture in his mind of himself casually flicking pebbles through the skulls of zombies.

‘Gotta set goals.’

The problem was, as soon as the baseball started moving in any direction, he couldn’t maintain a solid grasp of its imprint. The faster it was moving, the harder it was for him to sense it. If he waved his arm around, its vector seemed to change constantly as new forces were introduced and lost. Though moving it in one direction made it follow a clear enough trend, the level of precision that was required to grasp that imprint of motion was immense.

And to cast Levitate Object, the big brother to Increase Momentum, he would need to grasp all of those vectors constantly. Yikes.

The upside with Increase Momentum was that he didn’t need to maintain the spell once it left his hand: the Low-Rank spell would continue to power the object forward in whatever direction it was going until the mana ran out—as long as he could perform it correctly.

Spotting a tree across the driveway, he reared back in a pitching stance, closing his eyes. He concentrated as he moved the baseball through the pitch in slow motion. Very slow motion.

‘Sense the forward acceleration of the ball. It’s shifting. Gravity is still the greater force, but now there’s a bit of forward motion. Isolate that motion. That’s what you want. Here goes.’

“Sukar!”

With intense focus on the forward movement, he let go. Instead of tumbling down immediately, he felt the ball practically fly from his fingers. That was a good sign. Upon opening his eyes, however, he saw the baseball only made it three feet before plowing into the ground—literally. There was a little crater where it landed, and he hadn’t even thrown it with that much force, meaning that his spell had succeeded, just not in quite the way that he wanted it to.

He sat back down as he thought.

‘I must have failed at isolating the forward momentum and instead added a blanket increase to the existing forces. Even the ball’s piddly gravity was stronger than my throw. It would have gone farther if I threw it harder. Gee, who woulda thought?’

…

‘Still, it’s the best result I’ve gotten yet. This might not be too bad, even. If I can increase the speed of my pitch while maintaining focus, I can probably make the ball go a fair distance, and it will have a lot more power when it lands. Only, this means I would be limited by the strength of my throwing arm. And my Sight. And my thauma—okay, you know what, I’d be limited by a lot. Guess I need to keep practicing. I’m starting to see what Embryo meant by this being a good combat spell, though.’

Albek rolled his arms. He didn’t feel drained in the least from a couple successive uses of the spell. Perhaps it depended on the weight of the object and the amount of force he applied, but he had a feeling that this could become one of the main spells in his arsenal.

Just then, he heard an exclamation from across the yard, near where Chelsea was watching Liyne play in the grass. He wandered over to get a closer look.

Liyne was… playing in the dirt. He ignored his first reaction to rush over and stop her like he might have done six years ago when she was a toddler, noting that Chelsea didn’t seem concerned. As he watched, Liyne’s hands plunged into the earth, scooping out a mass of dirt larger than her head, and—

“Wait, what? How are you doing that?” he asked, drawing the duo’s attention.

That pile she had just rearranged was probably upwards of thirty pounds of dense soil and clay. Liyne dug it up like it was nothing. At his question, his sister glanced up and squinted at the air. Albek wondered why for a second, then realized what she was doing.

‘Ah, she’s typing.’

She’d mastered the art of touchless typing in the past few days, so she could now communicate with Embryo’s chat function pretty easy. Albek could do it too, but it was annoying to concentrate that hard just to get a few letters out, so he normally stuck to the keyboard.

CHAT LOG Liyne [whisper]: I learned mold clay

Albek’s eyes widened.

“Wow. I had no idea that was the spell you’ve been practicing. You’re really doing it! How hard is it to keep up?”

He crouched down, observing the progress she had made. Albek could probably fit his whole body inside the hole she spent thirty seconds digging. He noticed Chelsea’s gaze boring down from above, but he avoided meeting her eyes for now.

CHAT LOG Liyne [whisper]: it’s easy! it doesn’t last long so i have to keep refreshing it though

As he watched, his sister began to pile up more and more dirt, and began to shape it into… well, the best thing he could think of to describe it was a “dirt man.”

“What are you doing, exactly?” he asked.

CHAT LOG Liyne [whisper]: dirt man

“Ahem. Right. Should have guessed that. I guess you can make all sorts of cool things with that spell.”

He heard a low whistle from behind him and turned to see Jameson admiring Liyne’s handiwork. He crouched down to inspect the hole she dug.

“You over here shiftin’ dirt, kiddo?”

Liyne shrugged.

“Tell ya what. Instead of diggin’ holes in my yard, I’ve got this ditch that floods dang near every time it rains up here, and it’d be a fine sight to see it a little deeper. Think you and I could give it a go? See who can dig faster?”

Liyne stood to her full height and met the man’s eyes. She gave a single nod, and the pair of them strolled down to the side of the road to start working, Jameson with a spade and Liyne with her hands.

Albek watched them go, mouth agape.

“Hey…” he mumbled belatedly. “Aren’t there child labor laws against this sort of thing?”

“Pfft, like Dad cares about that. He had me mowing the lawn since I was, like, eight,” Chelsea said. “If he finds a way to make a kid work, he’ll make them work.”

Albek started to laugh, but cut himself short. He hadn’t forgotten the conversation last night, and it loomed over all of their interactions like a great, awkward specter.

It was surprising that Chelsea was even talking to him. He glanced over to see what sort of expression she had, but she turned her head away and, faking a cough, headed back inside, leaving Albek alone with the dirt man. He scratched the back of his head.

‘What was that about?’

He looked up at the sky. It wasn’t quite lunchtime, but he thought he could do with a break from practice. He approached Jameson, who had already started digging on one side of the ditch, his back muscles straining.

“Hey, Mr. Bray, are there any houses around I could check out that you think would have clothes in my size?”

“Oh, yeah. You’re looking a little, ah, ‘engulfed’ there, aren’t ya?”

That was a nice way of putting the fact that Jameson’s shirt looked like a dress on Albek.

He gave Albek the addresses to some houses that he had already cleared out of other supplies and checked for monsters. Albek took a moment to gear up and inform his father where he was going. As he told the man about his plans and made to walk off the porch, something happened. Hemash, who had seemed out of sorts all day, suddenly grabbed his arm.

“Son.”

“Yes?”

“Tell me. Will you ever use that aegis of yours again?”

Albek was speechless for a moment. His father was intently searching his face, and didn’t seem to be willing to release him until he received an answer.

“…No.”

Not if he could help it.

His father replied, “Even if your life is at stake?”

He’d struck right at one of Albek’s biggest insecurities, but his answer would remain the same.

“No.”

“Don’t be a fool, Son.”

“What?”

Switching to Kalkian, his father spoke. “Does the Voice terrify you that much? That you would abandon your greatest tool out of fear of an unknown possibility?”

“What…? What are you talking about, Dad? I’ve talked about this before.”

‘He knows that I could be at risk of attacking one of them. I’m not myself when that curse flares up.’

Hemash didn’t reply for a while. He appeared to chew his words over before he spoke them.

“I have given this thought,” he said. “What that Voice said to you made it seem to me that it placed significant value on keeping you alive. I believe the aegis is a tool for that purpose.”

“And what about when it drove me to the Robinsons to fight that cat thing?” Albek replied. “That wasn’t self-preservation, it was suicide. Not to mention the time I used it on you.”

“Right. Good thinking. Despite its advantages, the aegis also makes you reckless. Perhaps the intent is to make you little more than a savage beast. But if you need to use it… you can overcome it. You shouldn’t call upon it frequently. It would be perfect if you never needed it, but that isn’t the reality of our world. Not anymore. More dangers lurk out there than I think any of us realize. You shouldn’t be afraid to use your tools, because if a situation comes around where you have no choice, a second’s delay could mean death. A single second. Understand?”

“…Yes, Maata.”

At his son’s answer, all the rigid tension in Hemash’s body appeared to slide out of him. Save for his grip on Albek’s wrist.

“Good. Use everything at your disposal… that’s what Umeith would—would want…”

His father began to nod his head as he spoke. Albek carefully pried his fingers off as the man slumped back in his chair. Hemash’s grip left a white mark on his wrist.

‘He needs to stop pulling all-nighters. He’s too busy watching us during the day to practice his ki, so he’s moving it all to nighttime. I’ll talk to Mr. Bray about it later.’

On the way out, he informed Jameson that their sentry had fallen asleep at his post. The man gave a wry grin and promised to keep an eye out. Albek only made it another few steps before stopping. A small brown figure had attempted to trail after him.

Turning, he crouched down. “Hey, pup. You need to stay here. Stick by Liyne, okay?”

Dune stared up at him for a long moment, then trotted over to his sister and sat down.

‘When did that dog get so smart?’

“Be careful out there!” Jameson called after him.

Albek waved his hand in a salute.

- - -

The first place Jameson mentioned was only a block away. The mailbox had the markings of a looted house, but just in case, Albek was sure to check the perimeter over before entering. The front door looked like it had been bashed in and put back into place. One light push sent it toppling over.

‘Mr. Bray sure has a different method of doing things, huh?’

Albek usually depended on his crowbar to pry his way through windows. It seemed that Jameson just kicked down the front door. He remembered that the man used to be a volunteer firefighter in his spare time.

Albek had long ago gotten over his problems with looting abandoned houses for food and supplies, but going through stranger’s clothes was a little different. There was something deeply personal about it that raiding a pantry for beans didn’t quite capture. He held up a child’s shirt from where it had been neatly folded in a cabinet. Whoever lived in this room must have been Liyne’s age.

He folded it up, putting it back in the drawer. Liyne was doing well with Chelsea’s old attire. Besides, giving her the clothes of a dead child… the idea made him shiver. He whispered a silent apology to the eerily immaculate room and left.

Nothing in this house fit him. He decided to move on to the second place on his list and hope his luck would be better there.

The second address was a little further away. He had to follow a long, winding driveway to even see it behind the thick sea of trees and shrubs that dominated its yard. Save for a few small hamlets, in North Hill, most houses were fairly spread apart to accommodate the mountain’s topography. This home was more isolated than most. He might not have even noticed it if Jameson hadn’t given him a few landmarks.

As he was walking up the narrow drive, something began to tickle his nose, but it was so faint that he paid it no attention. When the house came into sight, however, he began to notice it. Food.

He stopped in his tracks. Yes, there it was. It was definitely food. Something light and citrusy, but not a fruit. It was a gentle, enticing aroma. Involuntarily, his mouth began to water.

‘I should have eaten before I left. Damn, that smells good.’

It was highly suspicious. He couldn’t help but think back to the aroma from outside the infested house that Jameson showed him yesterday. The scents had their differences, but Albek wasn’t about to forget the sounds the thing inside that house had made, and the freaky sensation that he was being watched.

Narrowing his eyes, he inspected the home from afar. Was it a trap meant to lure in humans? No, Jameson couldn’t smell it before, which meant that he had some ability to smell things that others couldn’t.

He just wished he could place it. He had no frame of reference for the aroma. If he investigated a little more, he’d have some idea of what the scent meant. His stomach began to rumble, and convincing himself that he was just doing this to gather information, he crept closer.

The growing hunger pains in his stomach were just a side effect of his investigation.

The house was a simple one-story affair with white paneling. Its windows were all intact, but the door itself had fallen down. On the steps leading up to the porch there were several sets of dirt tracks. One looked like a large pair of boots that might have belonged to Jameson, but the others were numerous but small, with three sharp talons in the front.

His head was beginning to feel fuzzy, and he ran a tongue over his teeth. So what if there were monsters in there? He had a pretty good track record fighting them, anyway.

Then, one more step brought him to the breaking point.

One way or another, he was going in there. He’d be careful. Yes, careful. Readying Cold Snap, he felt the strange focus overcome him, shutting out extraneous thoughts so that he could home in on the task at hand.

He’d been holding off using his injured right hand for physical tasks, but he tested earlier whether he could cast spells with it, and there didn’t seem to be any problems.

This let him wield the bat in his left and still get full use out of both arms, despite the injury. He would have preferred the bat in his dominant hand, but he’d always thought he was decently ambidextrous.

He tested the stairs to the porch. They didn’t creak. Good. He reached the doorway and stopped to listen for any sounds. There was nothing, but the smell did grow stronger, convincing him that this was the place. In fact, he could even give a rough estimate of the direction the smell was coming from. Stepping inside, he gave himself a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dark.

Past the living room and down the hall. Second door on the left. It was slightly ajar. In there.

Before he knew it, he was far deeper into the house than he meant to be. His mindset narrowed, sharper now, like that of a starving predator. All that he was conscious of was his senses told him. A feeling of immediacy brought him into the now like never before. He was capable of anything.

He pushed the door open with his foot, revealing two sleeping forms about the size of one of Jameson’s dogs, resting in a pile of mattress shreddings that had been arranged into a facsimile of a bird’s nest. One of them began to stir.

“Tsivuk,” he said.

Even as the blast spread out, connecting with both the figures, he was bringing down his bat from high above. There was a sickening thud and a squawk, and the first creature was out, dazed or dead. The second one, slow to stand thanks in part to the spell’s effectiveness, suffered a second Cold Snap at point-blank range, exhausting Albek’s reserves but effectively ending whatever threat it might have posed him. Alive or dead, it wouldn’t be able to do much when all of its skin was frozen solid. Now at level 1, the spell appeared more effective than it had been before, even though he was technically using less mana than he had while fighting the flower monsters.

He knew what to do without skipping a beat. He stowed his bat and reached out, grabbing the first creature. It struggled weakly, but it was too injured and confused to fight him off. In the dim glow, it looked like some sort of bird. Completely covered in feathers, it stood at about five feet tall, but most of that height came from its long, spindly legs. A strangely humanoid body and head was perched above those legs. It had wings, but no arms. A beak replaced the mouth and nose of a person. Its wicked curve, along with the hateful gleam in its eyes, told Albek that this thing was certainly a monster.

He began draining it. As the creature felt its life force begin to ebb away, it started thrashing wildly, heedless of the injuries it was creating by tearing its frozen skin. Albek had a solid grasp, and the thing didn’t seem very strong to begin with. As its life flowed into Albek, he shuddered. This was it. This was the source of the aroma. It fulfilled that aching hunger that he always felt at the edge of his consciousness, even if he wasn’t fully aware of it.

He finished with the first and moved on to the second. Shallow, frightened breaths were coming from its beak, but it wasn’t moving. Almost gently, Albek’s fingers closed around its neck.

Milestone Reached!

Stat advancement: Thauma 10 -> 11

Stat advancement: Dexterity 13 -> 14

When Albek came to, it wasn’t a particularly strong transition. Instead, he just gradually shifted away from a state of predatorial consciousness to something more resembling human thought. He was already back to the street by the time he was fully himself. His light jog slowed to a walk, and then he stopped completely. Lifting his shirt, he checked himself multiple times for signs of the dark, lightning-like lines that showed him the aegis was spreading, but they didn’t appear.

He’d never felt as good as he did just then, with a bag full of new clothes on his back and inundated with a feeling of complete satiation. He took a moment to indulge in the sensation before reality could settle in.

Then, he shouted an expletive, reared back, and punched a tree with his good hand. The bark chipped off, along with a layer of his skin.

‘Wasn’t I just telling myself to get stronger and overcome this piece of shit aegis?’

His father had brought it up before he left, but Albek certainly hadn’t intended to be using it so soon. It had taken him over, so gradually and insidiously that he hadn’t even noticed it happening despite thinking he was on his guard. He’d first grown tipsy, then more and more inebriated as the aegis had taken hold.

His memories of the last twenty minutes came back to him as a trickle of images and sensations. It was like he was looking through a foggy window or a television with poor reception, like it wasn’t something he himself experienced.

Propping his hand against the tree, he lowered his head and thought to himself. Why was he so upset? Because he lost control? Yes, he hated it. The feeling of not being himself—of being a puppet dancing to the whims of another. It made him feel powerless. But was this result so bad? He wasn’t being controlled right now, so the effect at least ended if he waited long enough. He went in, killed two monsters, caused no collateral damage, and got out.

‘And my stats increased…’

His hand dropped to his side. Barely paying attention to the blood slowly dripping from his knuckles, he waited for another ten minutes, examining his emotional state and only returning to the Brays’ house once he was certain that he was completely himself. On the way, he wrapped his fist in some spare bandages, putting the hand in his pocket so nobody would notice.

There was an impressive amount of work done on the ditch by the time he arrived. Liyne had apparently upgraded from using her hands to a small spade, and she was cutting into the dirt like it wasn’t even there. Evidently, she’d discovered a new application for her spell, and no longer needed to use her hands. In terms of speed, she was a bit behind Jameson, as she still had some trouble with the weight of the dirt. The earth seemed to react to her wishes, but the spell didn’t magically make her stronger. It only helped her with digging in, scraping, shoving, and things of that nature.

Upon spotting Albek, Jameson stuck his spade in the dirt and announced a break for lunchtime, and everyone went inside for a quick dish of pasta with tomato sauce. Conversation was limited to a few comments about everyone missing cheese, or congratulating Liyne for her new spell.

Albek didn’t eat quite as much as he had been the previous days. He felt much fuller now. And that worried him.

After lunch, Jameson reminded his daughter of something.

“Isn’t it time to change Albek’s bandages?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess it is.”

The others all slowly filed outside, leaving the two of them alone. Albek glanced down at his hand. Since it hadn’t been in any pain, he wasn’t sure whether it even warranted as much medical attention as she had been providing, but Chelsea still changed out the bandages for him every day.

Albek sat at the table while Chelsea gathered the supplies: sterilized water, soap, a towel, ointment, and bandages. She sat down across from him and began unwrapping his hand silently. She glanced over at his other hand that he bruised from his encounter with a tree, but didn’t mention the new injury.

Albek did his best to count the flowers in the wallpaper on the wall behind Chelsea.

By the time his injury was fully revealed, even he had to admit it looked awful. The missing two digits were almost unnoticeable thanks to the shredded wreck of skin that was his hand. The predominant colors were either an angry, mottled red or a dead gray. He flexed his fingers, testing his range of motion, then clenched and unclenched his fist. It still didn’t hurt. If not for the ghostly sensation of his two missing fingers, he might not have known his hand was even in this state under its wraps.

Chelsea grimaced.

“Ugh, it’s like watching roadkill flop around. Stop that.”

She cleaned the hand the best she was able and started bandaging it.

He asked a question while she worked, “Could you do me a favor and not wrap it so tightly this time? I want to be able to pick things up with it.”

“Sure. But if you get it hurt any worse, you’re going to be doing your own bandages from now on.”

He wanted to thank her, but the words didn’t make it to his lips. He couldn’t shake off the previous night, no matter how she appeared to be over it. Just as he couldn’t forget Liyne’s reaction to his mother’s locket.

It was a mystery that he still wanted to get to the bottom of, but at the same time, he was terrified of hurting her.

Right as Chelsea was finishing up, Jameson opened the front door and poked his head in.

“Kids, hurry, you gotta come see this!”

He ducked back out, but something made him double back again.

“And grab a pair of binoculars!”

Chelsea sighed and went to do as he asked. Albek went outside first to find the others all standing together, looking out towards the neighbor’s lawn. There were some birds and squirrels drinking or bathing in pond used by the Brays. This wasn’t unusual in itself, so it took Albek a second to realize what was wrong with the scene he was observing. Chelsea walked out with the binoculars just as his jaw dropped.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

He raised a finger and murmured, “Squirrel.”

She followed his finger, scrutinizing the small gathering of woodland creatures. Then, she had a similar reaction.

“Holy shit. Is that real?”

Nobody even chided her for the language she used in front of Liyne, so focused were they on the sight before them.

Albek reached for the binoculars, but Chelsea held them up to her eyes before he got a chance to use them. While he waited his turn, he listened to the two older men.

“…can’t be, right? Has to be a squirrel.”

“I have heard marmots could grow that big…”

“Marmot? There ain’t no marmots for a thousand miles from here. But I’ve never heard of a squirrel that size, either.”

The animal of interest was a simple gray squirrel. At first glance, it appeared normal, but when Albek compared it to the other animals nearby, the difference quickly became evident. This squirrel was extremely large. It had the same bushy tail and body shape of the other squirrels, but Albek estimated that it weighed at least fifteen pounds. Possibly twenty. It was as big as a small dog.

Chelsea wordlessly handed off the binoculars to him, and he was able to view it in more detail. Through the binoculars, he could tell that there were a few other things that were different. First, he was certain that most squirrels didn’t have razor-sharp fangs protruding from their lower jaw. Its fur was also less sleek, looking more rough and matted than that of others. Finally, it lacked one other, very important thing. The other squirrels around it behaved as most squirrels did: jumpily. They were wary of the slightest motion, and twitched constantly, alert to any changes in their environment.

This squirrel did not. It was still alert, but the giant hopped with an almost leisurely swagger. Where it walked, birds flew off and other squirrels moved from its path. Then, without warning, it pounced to the side in a blur of motion. Albek reoriented the binoculars to see a shocking sight: one of the normal-sized squirrels had been pinned down by the giant. It then lifted the smaller animal in its claws and ripped it in half.

There were several gasps from the spectators as the large rodent settled in for a meal.

Albek slowly lowered the binoculars.

There was something very wrong going on here.

BASIC INFORMATION Name Albek Shokarov Titles N/A Race Human (Low) Age 16 STATISTICS Strength 11 Vitality 11 Stamina 10 Agility 11 Dexterity 14 (▲1) Thauma 11 (▲1) Ki 0 Mental Strength 10 DETAILS Skills Shimmer [Lv0], Cold Snap [Lv1], [EXCLUDED.SKL] Class Neophyte [Tier 0] Status Effects [EXCLUDED]