What that meant, John managed to pry out of Tim after demanding he be a little less vague, was that John’s path to power and progress in the multiverse would not be like any of the humans’ on Earth.

It would perhaps be unlike any others in the multiverse, though his now forthcoming guide reminded him that was relatively unlikely. Not even the Progenitors could predict when John would run into someone with similar circumstances, though across countless universes there surely were some.

“Well, human, depending on the state of the multiverse, it could be decades or even centuries before you hear about anyone with an origin-blasted astral form.” Tim finally said after some deliberation. He then added, “Assuming you become strong enough and survive long enough to start moving towards the center of the multiverse, that is.”

“Great. So what, I should be planning to live for milenia?” John wasn’t looking forward to spending a millenia in confusion about the state of his body. He could hardly even fathom the next two-thirds of his previously normal lifespan.

“You,” Tim began pointedly, “should be planning to live for the next few months. At least take that advice if you want to ignore everything else.” That, at least, John could accept was meritable advice.

“Noted.” He said, as he turned his attention to his jacket sadly. It unfortunately did not survive the battle, having borne the brunt of the squirrel’s attacks. If he had access to his sewing kit it might not have been such a problem, but sadly he hadn’t had the foresight to expect a world-altering calamity. It was still tucked away under his bed at home.

The weather wouldn't be getting cold any time soon, at least. It was mid spring in his corner of the world, so theoretically it should only be getting warmer. Warmer and more humid, of course. Much of the northeastern quarter of the United States was always dreadfully humid in the summer months, often breaching eighty-five to ninety percent humidity.

But then again, he thought to himself, if he’d been thrown into a multiverse with new laws of physics, who was to say that the seasons would be the same as he remembered them? Then he remembered the unified time constant across all of the multiverse, and figured that it was just as likely to have remained the same. Even so, John still held on to hope that whatever changes took place on his planet resulted in less humidity.

His stomach grumbled and woke him from his existential worries of the seasons. He suddenly found himself staring at the squirrel’s corpse with noticeably less nausea than before as an idea cemented itself in his head.

“Hey Tim, that squirrel should be safe to eat right?” He asked.

“Of course, how else do you expect to survive out here? Foraging nuts?” The fluttering orb of sentience scoffed, which caused John to shrug. Surely there were some enhanced trees with enhanced nuts to forage for? As someone who loved cooking, John wasn’t about to subsist on a diet of only monster meat.

He grabbed the squirrel by its bushy tail, the furthest part from any of the worst of the animal’s injuries, and went back to his car. For his next terrible trick, he needed to get the knife out of his first-aid kit. Charlie probably had something more suited to his purposes, but he wasn’t about to get caught raiding another man’s pantry.

When he arrived, John unceremoniously dropped the twenty pound squirrel on the hood of the car. Luna stepped out of the backseat with surprise, and her eyes widened even more when she saw his state of dishevelment.

“Oh my god Dad, are you okay?” She asked with concern.

John looked over himself once more. He looked like he had just gotten into a fight with an overgrown feral cat, and he supposed he pretty much had. He was covered in dirt, scrapes, and long cuts down his arms that stung painfully.

He also noticed that they were trembling. Unbidden, John felt a rush of emotion flood his body as whatever shock that had been suppressing it faded away. He was suddenly hyper aware of his near death experience and, as much as he loathed to admit it, there was some repressed terror there.

How was it that he just walked out the door of his car and decisively utilized some kind of magic he barely understood to kill an animal just minutes before? What kind of decision was that?

He remembered all the times he related his current world to his knowledge of fiction and video games and balked at a growing realization. The slew of unrealistic experiences bombarding him had calloused him to the reality of his situation. Or maybe not calloused, John amended, but it forced him to logic his way through everything and throw away his emotional response.

He was certainly not okay.

He could logic his way through what was necessary, what he needed to do to survive, and how he needed to do it, but that could only get him so far. If he was being honest with himself, his throat was quickly becoming choked.

John didn’t want to cry though. Not in front of his daughter. It wasn’t for any desire to be manly, as he had let go of his aspirations for manliness years ago, but instead a heavy handed logic that bottled away his fears once again.

Crying in front of his daughter now would only serve to make her upset.

It was probably unhealthy, but functionally it was important for him to keep pushing himself. He could take some time to relax after he cleaned his wounds and started cooking the animal. There would probably be time enough later for him to stop and break down his experiences. Probably.

“I’m fine, sweetie.” He finally said with a bodily shake and a renewed smile. “Just a few cuts and bruises. That squirrel really was a monster!”

Luna’s gaze scoured his torn jacket and the numerous cuts beneath sceptically. John recognized the look in her eyes as a facsimile of the perceptive look her mother often stared him down with. She knew he wasn’t telling the truth, then, but she made no more note of it than a slight frown.

No longer young enough to take his words at face value despite overwhelming physical evidence, John noted. He was proud, but also uncomfortable that he was so easily read.

“Okay, okay, you got me. It was pretty scary and downright dangerous, but I’ll be okay.” Finally he told her most of the truth. It was better than trying to claim it was safe or something else that was blatantly false.

“Promise?” Her lips straightened into something less than a frown, but still full of concern as she held her breath. He had thought her distress earlier was related to whatever incident occurred while he was drained, but clearly that wasn’t entirely the case.

Well shit, now he felt bad for even going out there. It had to be done, but upsetting his daughter was unforgivable, even for himself. He’d have to work extra hard on dinner.

“I promise. I just need to clean up a bit and then…” He pointed to the squirrel. “Why don’t we get to cooking the little bugger?”

When she looked at the body sitting on the car’s hood, Luna grimaced. There was something visceral about seeing meat in it’s fully furred state that she found wrong. Before she could voice her intrinsic rejection however, a growl echoed forth from her stomach.

It had been over a day since her last full meal, and the hunger was getting hard to ignore despite the supernatural distractions.

“I guess I am pretty hungry.” She finally relented with a sigh.

“Right! Not to worry, then, Dad’s gonna fix this up.”

John smiled a real smile this time as he pulled a small knife from the first-aid kit. Cooking was something he was always excelled with, and he found the process to be very relaxing. How different could gutting the squirrel for a nice fire roast be from gutting a whole fish for oven roasting anyway?

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It was a lot different from gutting a fish, apparently. John screwed up the process more than once as he anxiously racked his brain for the proper method, until Tim finally couldn’t stand his ineptitude. With the space fairy looming over his shoulder, he made a lot fewer mistakes and the job was finished rather quickly.

Luckily he had done a good enough job to not spoil any of the meat, but his pride in his house-husband cooking skills had been damaged.

When would he have ever learned to gut and clean a freshly crushed monster squirrel for human consumption anyway? He felt it was unfair to expect so much of him, but then realized that the only one with those expectations was himself.

Putting his damaged pride aside for the moment, John turned his attention to the sizzling squirrel body over the flames. It may have been somewhat of a hack-job, but to John it was beautiful. He hadn’t eaten in nearly an entire day after all, and he was never much one for fasting diets.

And so he gazed upon the hunks of meat that glisted with the occasional run of fat that slowly roasted over the flames. The fire was something that he was proud of, even if his involvement was minimal. Luna had gathered all the materials after all, and he had merely supplied a small twig of fire to the pile.

His near drain experience had originally stopped him from trying, but Tim reminded him that such a small usage of divine energy wouldn’t cause him much strain at this point. By using a small twig as a focus, he was able to create a small sustained flame very quickly. It may have been tiny, but it was enough to get the fire going.

John noted the use as a soft confirmation towards his growing hypothesis about his wooden wands. By using them as a focus, his energies were inherently shaped by the nature of the sticks alongside his will. That was why his previous water spells netted him sappy liquids and his previous fire spells turned into sustained burning effects as the wood was consumed by flame.

In a similar way, air also burned. In his old world, it was actually oxygen that fed the flames and not the air itself burning. Tim however said that the multiverse equivalent process was close enough to his old world process and that he wouldn’t have to worry about it for now.

When John pressed him, he cited that people of the old multiverse studied such reactions for thousands of years and still never fully understand how it worked. That, and years of study weren’t necessary to cook a squirrel so he should stop asking questions.

What was important for now was that it worked, and John could begrudgingly accept that.

And so it was that he sat by the fire-side in the morning light with a blanket over his jacket-less body. He was nursing a bottle of water that hadn’t been magicked into existence, and was locked in thoughts alternating between magical powers and a deep desire to eat the squirrel in front of him.

He ultimately shook his head, as one of those things had to wait a few more minutes at least, and turned to his daughter who sat beside him. Her eyes were closed again, apparently in some form of meditation that John still didn’t understand. Cautious to not disturb her, he forced himself away from the tantalizing smells and got up with a stretch.

It hurt his arms to move them around, of course, but it was something he was going to have to do anyway. As much as he’d like to return to a civilized moment where he could rest all the time, John could logically reason that it was unlikely.

Once he had moved a small distance away from the fire, he beckoned to Tim.

“Hey, Tim, what exactly is she doing over there?” He asked quietly, pointing to Luna.

“John! Don’t you know that it is in poor taste to ask about other people’s cultivation methods? Especially from a third party?” Tim responded with second-hand aggrievement, his admonishing tone startling him for a moment.

“Uh, no? Must have missed that part of Earth’s multiverse history lessons.” John answered more annoyed than concerned. How was he supposed to avoid a faux pas he didn’t know existed?

“Oh right. Well, don’t forget it! Cultivation in general, now that I can tell you about. Even as your guide, I’m not about to start breaching social conventions for your sake.” John was pretty sure he remembered his guide not minding the social conventions of Earth, which he was fairly certain would have been included in Tim’s initial information gathering spree.

“Okay,” He answered slowly, “then how do people in the multiverse cultivate?”

“It’s different for everyone! There are so many various methods of cultivation across the universes that I could never tell you the process for everyone.”

“But you just said—”

“In general, it involves absorbing divine energy and holding onto it for future use. Humans have what we call Astral Forms, which act as a representation of their Body, Will, and Nature all at once. That’s the main conduit for their growth and powers, which is why lacking one is such an inhuman trait in the multiverse.”

That last part was clearly directed at him.

“I mostly understand the body and will parts, but what do you mean by nature?” John asked.

“I suppose you could think of it as what energies your form is attuned to. That attunement guides your future usage and progression of divine energy. For example, a human with a fire nature will be much better at using related energies to produce heats and lights.”

John thought it sounded a lot like a certain game from his childhood wherein you enslaved cute little animals and trained them to fight bloody battles for your own amusement and to commit highway robbery. Without attunement, it was beginning to sound like he would be giving up the STAB bonuses from the same-type advantage for a lot of versatility.

“So then with my form, I have no attunement? Am I some kind of jack-of-all-trades?” He chuckled. Would that make him something like a normal type who didn’t learn normal type moves?

“The human idiom falls short, fortunately for you. You won’t be empowered by having a clear Astral Form from the start, but you also won’t be limited by having one in the future either. That goes for your body and will as well.”

So he might one day get a STAB bonus for everything? That would have broken the game!

Theoretically speaking, John could follow the logic there even without the analogy from his childhood. When he was hit by the concentrated origin energy, it clearly had an effect on his body. He could still feel that things were different inside of him, even if he lacked the ability to see the changes. Furthermore, if the term ‘origin energy’ was literal, it made sense if it changed whatever he might have been ‘attuned’ to before.

It made sense in theory for his body and nature, since that was all he really had to go off of. However, as far as he knew, his ‘will’ was still the same as it ever had been. Unless the word was being used as a metaphor for something else?

If his will as he knew it was now different, wouldn’t that make him different? Was he himself not John, and ‘John’ just an expression of his intentions and desires? That sounded a lot like his will to him. John wracked his brain for some kind of answer that kept him the same person as he was before the incident as he was after it.

“I… I think I understand.” John said after a few moments of sweating deliberation.

He didn’t, not really, but he felt like he’d rather not know the truth if it was what he thought it might be. After all, John thought, didn’t people change all the time? He knew who he was at this very moment, and that was all that mattered.

“Wow, you handled that well.” Tim whistled appreciatively.

“What?”

“I meant the whole identity crisis thing. You wouldn’t believe how much of my programming is dedicated to stuff like that! Consoling poor proto-multiverse beings on the concept of changes to their will, identity, and self is an absolute nightmare.”

“So you baited me into considering it on my own?” John asked, pressing his thumb and forefinger together between his eyes.

“Tested you, human. And before you get mad, you have passed and shall be rewarded. Rejoice!” The space fairy’s exclamation was followed by a party-like kazoo blare, further clarifying that Tim knew of Earthly social conventions and just happened to ignore them.

John sighed.

“Wait. Didn’t you sign a contract to help me regardless?” He covered his eyes with his good hand, trying to remember the exact terms of the magical contract they had signed earlier.

“Nope! That contract states that I cannot lie to you, and I won’t! Important information will be locked behind various tests in the future to stimulate your growth potential.” With a flourish, Tim happily clarified the terms of their previous contract.

John suddenly realized why he was so eager to sign the contract before. He had actually been offered more specific terms than he realized, and now they were coming back to bite him. Clearly, his attempted mimicry of his wife’s business acumen he had been so proud of the day before wasn’t as effective as he had believed.

“Bet it would be a lot faster if you could just tell me.” He said. Unfortunately there was nothing he could do about it anymore, so John could only ruefully shake his head.

“But then you wouldn’t learn anything, John! What kind of guide just gives information away?”

“The helpful kind,” John said with another sigh. “The kind that is worth your money.”

“Well, good thing you’re not paying me yet! Besides, I promise every direction I push you will be the best for your growth.” Tim replied gleefully.

“What do you mean ‘yet’?” John interjected with some measure of disbelief. If Tim truly couldn’t lie to him, then John was left much more confused about the future nature of their relationship. Wouldn’t Tim be expiring at some point?

“Before you signed that contract, didn’t you say you would ex—”

“Speaking of helping,” Tim interrupted, foreseeing and ignoring his question, “if you leave that squirrel roasting any longer it’s going to lose nutritional value.”