Immediately after he had been given the prompt that he was the dominant partner in the familiar pact, Cal was teleported back into the tree. He looked down at the wolves, it looked like they hadn’t reacted to his disappearance, and it almost seemed as if they hadn’t even noticed. Cal felt another nudge at his side and looked down to see the wolf pup.

A prompt appeared in front of him after he looked at the wolf pup.

[Your familiar does not have a name yet, please give it one]

Cal was struck dumb by the question. What would he call the pup? His first instinct was to give him a simple name like blue, but after looking into the pup’s dark eyes he felt like he should find a more fitting name.

After a while, a name came to him, and after thinking it over, cal felt that it would fit. “Would you like to be called Kaze?” Cal asked the wolf.

The wolf yawned and stretched and let out a bark that seemed to convey agreement. After accepting the name, a white light surrounded kaze and Cal had to cover his eyes to not be blinded. After the light faded Cal looked back at kaze. he looked very different now.

Its fur, which had previously been a dark blue, was now the color of the sky, and the white dots that earlier had resembled stars now made cal think of snowflakes. The pup’s ears, which had been the same violet color as the alpha's, now matched the rest of his body.

But by contrast, his eyes, which before had been a nondescript brown, had seemed to have taken on the heritage of his mother, and now were solid violet orbs without pupils or whites. Finally, the most notable change was a pair of wings sprouting from his back. After studying the wolf’s new appearance, a status appeared in front of Cal, but to his shock, it was not his own.

Level 1

Health 72/72

Mana 60/60

Stamina 42/42

Name: Kaze windlab

bloodline: frozen sky wolf: pure

Skills:

[hunting:1] [stalking:3]

Abilities:

[cold immunity:max] [ice magic:max] [frozen aura:max] [cerberus’s sight:max]

Spell:

N/A

Calaeris windlab 420/420

Stats:

Strength: 7

Endurance: 6

Dexterity: 8

Wisdom: 5

Intelligence: 5

Spirit: 8

Free points:3

While Cal was still wrapping his head around Kaze’s status screen, Kaze hopped out of the tree and tried to use his new wings. Having had no experience in flying, the pup fell almost straight down and was deftly caught by his mother. The purple wolf gently put down her pup and looked him over.

She was shocked by how different he was, but her sense of smell hadn’t lied to her yet and using that she knew that this was her pup. She looked back up at the boy in the tree. he had done this to her pup. She started growling and was preparing to jump up to where the boy was when her pup started whining and trying to stop her.

Meanwhile, Cal closed Kaze's status and climbed down the tree. After he got down, he was immediately surrounded by the wolf pack. It seemed like they wanted to attack, but the purple wolf, seemingly at Kaze's bidding, was holding them back. Kaze then bounded over to Cal and started nudging his leg. Cal looked down at his familiar with a bit of confusion, but after looking at Kaze he got the sense that he wanted to be picked up, so Cal bent down and picked up Kaze.

After he was standing up straight again, the wolves seemed to calm down and turned to leave. The purple wolf stalked back over to Cal and stared at him with all three sets of eyes. Then, with the middle head, she bent down and licked Kaze. Then she also turned to leave.

After the wolves were out of sight, Cal held Kaze out in front of him. The two stared at each other for a moment before Cal sighed and asked. “Now what am I supposed to do with you.” Kaze just barked and wagged his tail. Cal let out another sigh and started walking back towards his clearing.

Once he got there, Cal set Kaze down and started talking to him. “Being in a dangerous situation like that reminded me that I don’t really know what my abilities do, so we will have to test them all out.” while Cal was talking, Kaze had started chasing a bug. Cal sat down and watched Kaze; he had to wait for his mana pool to fill up anyway.

After a few minutes, Cal checked his status, and to his surprise, he had all of his mana. It had only been half an hour since he had used nearly all of it trying to get away from the wolves, so he shouldn’t have all of it back yet. Cal figured that making the familiar pact was why he had all of his mana back and decided not to worry about it. He stood up and stretched then decided to start testing out his abilities.

First, he used flurry, and, as the description had said, a small snow cloud appeared above his head. It was about 5 feet wide and across, and a few snowflakes started drifting out of it. As he looked up at it in wonder, he suddenly sensed a small animal enter the area behind him.

It was an odd sensation, he couldn’t tell what it looked like, but he knew how big it was and where it was located within the area of his stormcloud. He turned around to see Kaze jumping and trying to catch the snowflakes. Cal noted that the snowflakes never touched the ground and when he caught one on his hand it disappeared without leaving any water. After a minute had passed the snowflakes stopped falling and the cloud dissipated.

Next cal decided to test corporeal shadow. First, he tried to use it on his own shadow but nothing happened. It seemed that it would only work if he used it to boost a different ability or spell. Cal decided to cast miniature shadow summon to test corporeal shadow on. Once he cast miniature shadow summon the same thing happened that had happened the first time he had cast the spell and a small silhouette of himself detached from his shadow.

Upon noticing the summon kaze tried to pounce on it. Kaze easily landed on the unmoving shadow but he didn’t seem to affect it. Cal then used corporeal shadow on the summon and to his delight it seemed to detach from the ground and stood up. This appeared to be too much for kaze and he backed away and started growling.

Cal laughed at the wolf’s antics then noticed a prompt.

[miniature shadow summon is now tier two]

Cal was surprised. he didn’t think that he could improve his spells. Deciding to test the more new version of his spell cal cast miniature shadow summon again. This time 2 summons detached themselves from cal's shadow. Kaze still being occupied with the first one didn’t notice the two new summons.

After watching the new shadows for a second Cal decided that he wanted to see if corporeal shadow would only affect one of the new summons or both. Meanwhile, the duration of corporeal shadow ended on cals first summons, and it laid back down. Kaze who thought he scared the ‘creature’ into submission was feeling proud of himself. Suddenly the first shadow stood back up and so did two more behind it. Kaze who was now outnumbered decided to make a strategic retreat and ran over to cal.

Cal laughed at his familiar’s antics and sat down next to kaze. cal was about to go into his necklace when he realized that he wasn’t sure if kaze was able to go into it too. Cal tested it out he quickly entered the necklace and looked around. Sure enough, kaze was not there. Cal was about to leave but decided to grab the book about statuses. He then left the necklace and reappeared in the clearing.

He once again looked around and saw kaze freaking out and trying to find him. Upon seeing cal he ran over and started sniffing his legs and whimpering. Cal would have tried to comfort him except he saw the purple wolf standing in the clearing. It simultaneously looked sheepish at having been caught watching them and angry that cal had disappeared.

Before cal could say anything his stomach let out a growl. Cal still hadn’t eaten or drank anything and his stomach was starting to ache and his throat was dry and scratchy. The realization once again hit him that it had been days since he had eaten or drank anything.

The purple wolf looked from cals stomach to his face and back again, before snorting and heading back into the woods. Cal was about to go off in a different direction to try and find food, but a growl from the purple wolf kept him in the clearing. Deciding that he didn’t have to eat right now cal sat down and opened the book to the chapter about familiars.

While cal lay there reading kaze was having the time of his life sneaking up on cals foot and ambushing it over and over. Before he had met cal kaze had had a boring and sheltered life he had lived sheltered in different places and rarely allowed to wander. whenever another member of his pack went too close to him his mother would get angry and scare them off.

Since meeting cal, kaze had done a number of things that he hadn’t been able to do before it was rather amazing and kaze felt that things would always be fun and interesting if he was with cal. Eventually, kaze got bored and curled up on cal’s lap to sleep.

Meanwhile, cal was finishing the chapter. he had learned quite a bit about familiars and monsters in general. It seemed that when cal had given kaze his name he had evolved into a superior bloodline. Bloodlines worked similarly to classes so for kaze to evolve his bloodline was akin to cal changing an epic class to a mythical one. There were eleven ranks of bloodlines: common, low, mid, high, noble, peak, royal, imperial, pure, true, archangel. The higher ranked the bloodline of a beast was the more powerful they were.

As cal had continued reading he had learned that the evolution only happened to the non-dominant member of the pact so cal couldn’t look forward to having something similar happen to him. It seemed all awakened animals could evolve, and if they were to evolve enough times there progeny could be born as awakened beasts which would cause them to be considered monsters;

Another effect of the familiar pact was that their experience bar was at the same spot and according to the book they would remain at the same level until the pact was broken which could only be done by killing one of them.

Another thing that cal learned was that kaze could one day be as smart as a human though that would have to wait until he was older. The last and probably most important thing that cal learned was how he could communicate with kaze. what he had to do was improve their bond and the process for doing so had been explained by the book.

Before he started doing anything he took of his necklace and put his book back into it. This was his first time trying to influence the spatial artifact in this way. to do it he had to stick his arm through the opening with whatever he wanted to place in the storage in his hand. When he put his arm through his necklace everything that passed the opening of the necklace disappeared, and it was an odd sight to see half of his arm disappear.

After he had safely stowed the book Cal picked kaze up off his chest and turned him so that they were making eye contact. After staring into each other’s eyes for a while cal felt a stirring in the back of his mind. Quickly before the feeling could fade cal grabbed hold of it with his will and pulled it into the center of his mind. The odd feeling had been his bond with kaze and now that it was in the open cal had to try and expand it. The book had not been very clear about what this would entail but cal had decided to try anyway.

After about 20 minutes of arduous pulling and stretching what the book had called the bond cal finally felt as though he had done what he wanted to and let go of the bond. Instead of receding back into the recesses of his mind like it would have done before the bond settled and now felt similar to his bond with his artifacts. Cal felt excitement at his success and suddenly felt surprise coming from the bond.

Ah yes kaze what I just did will allow the transfer of our feelings and thoughts to be more complete. though I may have trouble comprehending yours considering you’re a dog, cal spoke to kaze telepathically using their bond.

At first, kaze seemed surprised to hear a voice in his head but after recognizing it as cals he went back to sleep. Cal felt a warm contentedness coming across the bond and smiled. He then laid down next to kaze and fell asleep.

After an unknown time had passed a bark woke both cal and kaze up. Cal sat up and reached for his sword but he only grabbed empty air and he suddenly remembered he had stowed all of his weapons in the spacial artifact. At the same time, kaze was sent falling to the ground from where he was curled up on cals chest. Cal looked around and spotted the purple wolf with a deer carcass.

She made a huffing noise at the two of them and then howled out a long and slightly sad note. Then she turned and bounded off into the forest. Kaze whimpered and took a few steps as if to follow but then stopped. Cal felt sadness bleeding over from their bond and went over to comfort kaze. He picked up the wolf pup and cradled him to his chest. Cal felt kaze’s sadness and recognized it as similar to what he had felt when he had lost his grandpa.

After feeling kazes pain, cal realized that that was likely the last time they would ever see the purple wolf. Cal let a small amount of the sadness that he felt from losing his grandpa leak over the bond. It had only been a few days since his grandfather had died and during those few days, cal had done so much that he had not had any time to try and deal with the pain. cal started crying and sunk to his knees holding kaze close to his chest. With this shared pain their bond expanded a little more but cal and kaze were too full of emotion to care.

After they were done crying cal looked over at the deer carcass which had been the purple wolf’s parting gift. He pulled one of his hunting knives out of his necklace and walked over to the carcass. After skinning and butchering it cal was left with a small feast. cal cut off a piece of the deer’s leg and threw it to kaze.

Kaze eagerly tore into the piece of meat and cal felt a sense of pleasure emanating from the bond. He then started a fire and cooked his portion of the meat once it was done he took a small bite. Thankfully no prompt appeared telling him he had been poisoned and cal started eating ravenously.

After he finished eating cal judged that there were about 4 hours till the sun went down. Cal started stacking the fire with green leaves to produce more smoke and then placed the meat on skewers in the way of the smoke. Cal had realized almost immediately that the two of them would not be able to finish the meat before it went bad, so he had decided to smoke what was left so that they would have food to last for at least a little while.

Once the fire had been built up and cal judged that the meat would smoke well enough. he started playing tag with kaze. After they had played for about fifteen minutes cal heard a cough from behind him. Thinking the purple wolf had come back cal turned to see what she wanted. To cal’s surprise, there was a group of five teenagers standing in front of him, and holding an assortment of weapons.

The two groups stared at each other for about a minute when one of the girls stepped toward cal. she had light red hair that was tied back in a ponytail and her ears stuck out a good six inches from her head. Remembering what his grandfather had told him cal assumed that she was an elf. Cal looked over her equipment she was in leather armor and had a sword belted at her waist. her sword didn’t look that fancy but it was still at least as well made as his sword.

After approaching cal the girl bent down so they would be at eye level and spoke in a language cal didn’t understand. “Hi we saw your smoke signal and thought you might...” the girl paused for a moment after getting a good look at Cal's face, and she seemed surprised about something. she then said in a voice that sounded like a question. “What is someone so young doing alone in the forest of kaar.”