Author Notes: Was listening to various books over the last two weeks or so, I feel like my writing has improved because of it.

I had never taken the time to look at the sky and judge it, but lying here in the blue green grass of the clearing. My eyes lazily looked up at it, stuck there, my mental and physical energies depleted, Bear looking like a towering figure of demonic, almost child-like energy. The blue of the sky was much more blue than Earth, it was probably due to the blue sun that took up about twice the area of the sky than our own sun. I pondered as I lay there, how much bigger this sun was compared to ours, though the blue tint on Bear’s skin made more sense now. It made me wonder why I never regarded the sky much while I’ve been on this world, though most of my travels were through lush, almost endless forests.

Most of the plants in the sun looked a blue-green, like algae, and in most cases seemed to be harder than the ones on Earth. A brush of my arm snapped a large amount of grass in half, I felt like with them being so brittle the grass would die off, but I was informed by a druid which I assume is a credible source, that the broken pieces would grow into more grass. The stones around me glistened with luminescence, if science was involved I would assume the sun gave off a sort of UV light that made certain materials glow under it since these rocks never gave off a speck of light in the night.

Three weeks, I scoffed at my previous thoughts of how easy this would be, power leveling as I previously called it turned into something like physical, and magical training from hell. I saw him as a duke now, a grim reaper from the pits of hell that forged the marine corps drill instructors, making me both hate and respect him at the same time. If I ever had the thought or notion that humans were weak in this world, that had been shattered forcefully by Bear. Creatures of both massive stature and power were forcefully brought down like giant gods praying to a man that was not even a quarter their size bleeding and screaming as his powerful punches made the ground quake. I was getting more powerful, but it seemed like my power was stemming from, and reinforcing my actions since most of the creatures saw my magic as a threat it was highly focused on running.

Comparing myself to the me of three weeks ago, I was several times faster, my spells in a sense weaker but more precise and much quicker to cast. Bear’s trial by fire made me a silent ninja of death, and necromancy that carved away at life force until there was nothing left but a withering corpse. My cores were numerous at first, though I rarely used them, myself testing the ebb and flow of the energy, destroying most of them in the process to learn more about necromancy and becoming more efficient, plus Bear didn’t like me using the souls of our enemies to create things that defiled nature. I hadn’t shown him the Dryad, thinking he would fly into a rage knowing that I killed such a delicate being of nature, but Mr. Fly showed his face every now and again.

Mr. Fly proved one thing, as long as I grew more powerful, his duration seemed to grow until finally, like me, he became a permanent being. He informed me a week ago that he had not only become permanent, but had gained his independence, no longer having to serve under me. He bent his knee, bowing to me afterwards, “My Loyalties will always lie with my master, I was born from you, and will always regard you as my master, and… my father.”

The last part of that made me really consider never making another being like that again, I was too young to have illegitimate children running around, heck I had almost become a wizard in my previous life, only five small years left.

Bear broke my near meditative exhaustion, grabbing me by the skull and standing me up. After he learned of my near indestructible nature as a skeleton he has been a lot more rough with me. Once he had thrown my head into the mouth of a large, toad about the size of a house so I could bite at its innards with viger, acid rather hurts if you don’t know. My head has never been the right shade ever since, too white, like my skull has been bleached.

“Enough rest, Skeletons don’t need rest, they don’t get winded right?”

I shook my head at his reasoning, and sighed, “How many times have we been over this? When my mana is low, I get tired, though not as weak as three weeks ago. Also all of these spells takes a strain on my mind.”

“Eh, that’s why you should just use your fist. A mighty fist is greater than any spell!” He held his fist in front of himself, it was about as big as my head.

“Maybe if I was a brute, or a skeletal warrior I’d feel where you’re coming from, but I’m a mage damn it. If you want me to fight all day and night, than let me summon!” I grabbed at one of my soul crystals that I hadn’t experimented on.

“A true man would never rely on summons, they aren’t your own power. They are…-”

“...a misuse of nature, a corruption of magic. Yes, yes, but don’t druids use everything from a kill?” Rolling my eyes, a very practiced motion.

“If you have enough wit to talk back to me, than you can fight.” He lifted the body of a large cobra that could summon clones of itself out of acid. If it wasn’t for my ability to detect his soul it would have been a very prolonged battle. Gripping my shoulder with his giant hand he guided me further into the forest.

My fingers brushed the hilts of my two swords, the third on my back was much larger than the two on my hips. They were mostly used for defense, you’d be surprised how many creatures develop tentacles, which I’ve happily not grown as of yet. An evolution did happen a few days ago, my bones started to grow an inky black substance that as far as I could tell was a very slow moving liquid. It seems to be tied to the shadow beasts we have been killing mostly in this forest.

“Two, one left, one above.” Bear frowned, “I’ll take the one above, you can’t fly yet.”

“You can?” I tilted my head a bit, I had yet to see this but he just smiled nearly jumping up the side of a tree to its top, nails clawing into the wood hard as jumped quickly to another tree scattering to the top of the tree out of sight. “I guess he’s shy about flying.”

Ducking down, and moving through the shadows, and letting them consume me as I step quickly among the brush watching to make sure that my footsteps don’t cause too much noise. My steps were very fast between the shadows, slowing down, and observing the area around me until my prey was in my sights. The prey that was my fight was a large black cat, with horns running down its head down to spines that curled to his tail which ended in something like a morning star at the end.

These were minor creatures were weak, moving swiftly my sword clashed against its neck moving it off its balance. Twisting back my other sword slashed at its eyes, forcing my step forward making its vision with my sword, and body. My magic swirled around, piercing into the body though nothing physical happened its life force started to bleed from its body constructing into a core behind it out of magical energy.

The fight was only a distraction so it couldn’t resist my life taking power, it was very easy to shrug off and resist in its current form but required concentration. My sword plowed hard into its leg, knocking it down, its skin was far too hard for mundane weapons with my strength, but it was enough to make it stumble. As it went down, the morningstar end of the tail crashed into the ground where I was a second ago making the ground quake and rocks shatter under it. Moving between the spines as my sword suddenly went into its neck slashing blood all over the blade.

The creature was weakening quickly, its body becoming soft under my blade as it danced like a silver snake, piercing and thrusting making shallow cuts in several places. Blood, and life force slowly dipped out of the beast as it roared with frustration, biting at air afterwards. My sword hacked at the legs of the creature bringing it down, before it pressed like butter through the withering skin, and skull of this beast.

After it stopped moving, I grabbed the orb floating there in mid air, turning my back to the corpse of the big cat. The body wasn’t my loot, though the druid did make things for me, my new clothes were made from a previous cat such as this the material had a natural blending with shadows. Wiping off the black blood from the creature into a cloth as I waited for bear, I knew he was done with his kill, and done with it for a while as the experience from the kill has already been given to me.

Starting to move after about a minute, I would tell Bear later that I felt his presence as, but honestly I found out how to pull up menus internally, his dot now behind me around where the corpse is on my map. “Eat up, I need to check on my Brothers. A good soul stone or two should strengthen them.”

“Those two lazy brats should be doing more than swordplay back in the village.” He grumbled as a knife worked the skin off of the meat. I wasn’t sure, but I could have sworn you had to drain the blood before you did that. “They are like leeches you know.”

“Yes, they drain some of the power that I would gain from killing these beasts. It isn’t split evenly in three ways, but it's enough. If they weren’t family I would consider breaking them off, but they are my first friends coming to this world.”

“Vami rasp.” He said in a tongue that I couldn’t understand. At first I had thought he was making up words to curse at me since this world seemed to conveniently translate itself into English. Though after listening for a while, a blue screen showed me I was starting to learn Aralic, at a rate of 1% every two hours, this would take some time if I seriously wanted to learn it. What he said though, was often repeated, and often directed at him, ‘Useless child of mine.’ I hadn’t told him I understand some of his words, so his worry was very touching, even if he is a bit insane.