Curio mewed from his hiding spot, which seemed to be between Serenity’s belly and his armor this time. Serenity was certain the shadowkitten was mostly shadows right now; otherwise, he wouldn’t fit. No matter his shape, though, Curio was always able to make cat noises. Serenity wanted to learn that one of these days, but there hadn’t been time.

“Come on up, boy.” Serenity still wasn’t certain if Curio was male or female; it was entirely possible that that wasn’t even a relevant question. He’d somehow fallen into referring to Curio as male, but he’d have to change that if he ever found out otherwise.

Curio wriggled his way up and out of Serenity’s armor, headbutting Serenity in the chin as he emerged. Serenity jerked his head back, then laughed. It hadn’t really hurt, after all. “Silly boy. At least you’re not sitting on the record books this time. Do you know how many times I’ve had to move you this week?”

“Mew!”

Serenity laughed at his cat’s indignant response. He knew Curio understood him, but that didn’t mean Curio was willing to obey. No, Curio did what Curio wanted; if that sometimes happened to coincide with Serenity’s desires (especially when treats were a reward), well, that was just happenstance.

Serenity leaned back in the chair and stared at the records. They were less useful than he’d hoped, but more useful than he’d feared; there was limited information about most of the buyers, but all of the big, regular customers were clearly identified. Fortunately, most of the Earthlings had been bought by regular customers. There were only three he still needed to locate who hadn’t been; Serenity thought he’d just figured out who a fourth’s owner was.

Unfortunately, about half of the ones they’d tried to recover so far this week had been shipped off to one of three holdings outside Zenith. Most seemed to have been sent to the Mountain’s Crest Estate on Iron Mountain to the north, not too far from Lowpeak. The others who had been sent out of the city seemed to have been sent to either the Heavenfall Enclave, which was located in a river valley that reminded Serenity of the Grand Canyon far to the east, and the barony of Celestials’ Rest, which was situated on a vast stretch of plains between Zenith and the Heavenfall Enclave.

As far as Serenity could tell, Lowpeak was the only duchy still in existence on Zon; everything else was either larger and designated as a march or barony, or it was a single Enclave or Estate (which seemed to be about the same size, a single settlement). It wasn’t a pretty picture, and it made Serenity wonder just how intact those larger areas really were.

Serenity realized he was woolgathering while he petted Curio. “Thanks for the break, buddy. I needed it. I should get back to…”

[Tutorial Complete]

[All Mandatory Goals Completed]

[Personal Tutorial Results]

[Survival Rate: 95%]

[Average Level: 61]

[Group Grade: Excellent]

[Dungeon Trials: All 10 levels completed]

[Trials: All Trial types completed]

[Great Tutorial Dungeon: Standard Mode completed]

[Great Tutorial Dungeon: Duo Mode completed]

[Great Tutorial Dungeon: Solo Mode completed]

[Personal Grade: Excellent]

[Group Reward:]

[Choose one of:]

[Customized Item Reward]

[+40 to an Attribute of your choice (cannot exceed Tier limit)]

[+5 to a Resistance of your choice (may be used to initiate a new Resistance)]

[+5 to an Affinity of your choice (may be used to initiate a new Affinity, limited)]

[Minor Body Modification (your choice, limited)]

[100 Etherium]

[Bonus Path Skill (limited selection)]

[Personal Reward: Credited to Instructor Tutorial]

Serenity stared at the notice for a solid minute before he was able to really process what it meant.

Rissa would be headed his way soon!

Well, not all that soon. Probably two or three weeks, and then it would take some time for her to make her way from one of the markets to Zon; if she came directly and didn’t do any sightseeing or shopping, she could make it in only a few days, but Serenity had recommended that she do some of each. Interstellar travel was different, and some people had issues if they hopped through too many portals too quickly on top of that. It was better to spend some time acclimatizing.

Still, he might see her within a month or so!

He realized he’d stopped petting Curio when the shadowkitten hissed at him. Right, focus. Serenity went back to petting the cat while he checked out the reward choices.

The item seemed pointless. It would be something very nice for someone just getting out of the Tutorial, which meant that it would either be a utility item Serenity could easily buy (as long as he wasn’t on Zon) or it would be almost useless. A Tier One item, even a nice one, wasn’t going to do Serenity any good in a fight. That was how he’d snapped his naginata, after all.

The attribute bonus was definitely out; not only was he currently maxed, but so far attributes had been far, far easier to gain than they had any right to be. The Etherium was just as pointless, since he had the Earth dungeon tax filling his pockets. He still needed to figure out what to spend that on; for now, it was mostly just stacking up, and that was pointless.

The resistance bonus could be useful if he stacked it on one of his high, difficult-to-level Resistances. The only reason to initiate a new resistance with such a thing was to get the chance to even try to resist the first encounter; simply encountering something would usually grant the Resistance, unless you were actively vulnerable to it. If you were, it was harder but still not impossible. So that was mostly a trap. Serenity didn’t really feel like his resistances were lacking, however; sure, they weren’t going up quickly, but that was normal.

The bonus to an Affinity was nice but, unlike Resistances, being able to initiate a new one was significant. He wished he’d had that option when he tried to initiate Liquid; that Affinity had sucked. He’d nearly drowned himself. Repeatedly.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of any Affinities he was missing that he really wanted, at least not without going exotic and going for something like Ita’s Connection Affinity. Unless…

Voice? Can you give me the Life Affinity?

That Affinity would be worth giving up the other options.

[The Life Affinity is not available for you]

Serenity wasn’t really surprised. He’d been pretty sure when his Death Affinity overwhelmed his Life Affinity that it was gone forever. Perhaps he’d find a way in the future, but he could work around it. It wasn’t like his Life Affinity had even been that good, but it would have been nice to be able to do simple health checks on other people again.

Serenity took his time thinking about the Minor Body Modification option. He was really quite happy with his body. He was comfortable in his human form, even when he changed the bloodline, and his chimera form felt even more natural. His Sovereign form was good as well, and it wasn’t something he would want to change. His sword and armor forms were already adjustable, at least to an extent.

The only thing he was unhappy about, really, was the age he appeared to be as a dragon. Rissa found it cute, but Serenity was seriously annoyed by still being a hatchling. He couldn’t fly, he was short, no furniture fit him at all, and worst of all everyone treated him as a child. Yes, that might be worth changing.

Can you make my dragon form an adult? Or at least a juvenile? Anything as large as a human or Raz?

[Minor Body Modification could be used to advance your age to Wyrmling]

Serenity sighed. That might be better, but it wasn’t what he wanted. Even if it probably was better to grow into the body.

He should probably abandon the idea of growing up quickly. He was pretty confident he’d spent far longer as a “hatchling” than normal for a dragon, even if you didn’t count the time in a Tutorial, but he couldn’t be certain. Chances were good that no one could be certain; after all, there wasn’t another Essence Dragon to ask.

That really only left the bonus Path Skill.

That was a reward that could be extremely powerful if you were trying to reach a Path you didn’t normally have access to; Serenity knew Kerr was looking for exactly that reward to let her break into Tier Four. Other than that, it allowed you to customize things a bit since it was a direct choice instead of what the Voice picked, but Serenity didn’t think it was all that valuable for most Pathed, especially not hybrids like Vengeance was; Vengeance had had so many Path Skills that there were dozens that he’d used only a handful of times after discovering they didn’t really fit into his fighting style, and hundreds more that were simply upgrades to Skills he’d earned at a previous Tier.

For Serenity, it might be more valuable. He seemed to be running about two Paths to the Tier, and one of those was often a racial Path. That was lighter than even a specialist would go, and the only reason he was managing was that his Species Skills didn’t seem Tier-limited; unlike most Path Skills, they weren’t limited to benefiting from the maximum Attributes of the Tier where they were gained.

Before he opened the list, Serenity wanted an idea of what sort of Skill he wanted. He already knew he’d be choosing something for combat; for anything where he could take his time, he had spells. They couldn’t do everything, but they were likely to be able to do anything a bonus Path Skill would do.

Serenity paused. There was a question he needed to ask before he went too far down the path of picking out a Skill; the disappointment would be terrible if he got the wrong answer and had already picked out a Skill.

What Tier will the bonus Path Skill be at?

[Bonus Path Skills are always set to the current Tier of the recipient]

That was the answer he’d hoped for, even if it did surprise him a bit. It definitely made having his reward delayed helpful now, though if he’d gotten it when he actually exited the Tutorial on Tzintkra, he’d have gotten something extremely helpful then and that was a worse situation. It only seemed better because it was in the past.

Serenity knew his elemental Skills Infused Strike and Far Strike had to be suffering by now, because they were from Battle Adept, which was classed as a Tier Zero. The only reason they were still useful was his extraordinarily high Affinities for his Tier. A replacement seemed like a good option, especially for ranged combat; for melee, he had his ax. It was a very good Tier Five weapon, so at Tier Three he didn’t really need to be enhancing it; the simple fact that he could use it was more than enough.

He had his Infused Spells that he could Evoke. They were very helpful, but he’d found himself using them less than he expected. It was simply a lot of planning to infuse them and do it every day, since they degraded. Worse than that, each spell took a good bit of time that he could have been doing something else and it was only a guess which ones he’d need. He’d been wrong a number of times and not had what he needed; worse, he was pretty certain he’d forgotten to use what he had a few times.

He could try for something clever again, but Serenity was pretty confident that what he needed wasn’t a clever solution or a multitool; he simply needed a bigger hammer. Preferably one that came in the form of a ranged attack and used magic instead of stamina, to take advantage of his larger Mana and Essence pools. Perhaps he could even find something that used both?

Please show me the options for bonus Path Skills.

[Path Skill Categories:]

[Weapon/combat Skill (single style)]

[Crafting Skill (individual subskill)]

[Social / Interaction Skill (limited options)]

[Magebolt (Variants Available)]

[Stealth subskill]

[Sensory Skill (single sense enhancement or low-grade addition]

[Utility Skill (basic only)]

Serenity suppressed a chuckle when he saw that the only magical skill category was the extremely specific Magebolt, a single-target aimed attack spell. He was confident that Manasight would be somewhere, probably in Sensory Skills, but it was funny to see that the Voice wasn’t handing out large-scale Skills with the Tutorial bonus.

It was probably a good thing.

Magebolt.

[Caution: Selecting Magebolt will consume both Infused Strike and Far Strike]

[Magebolt Options:]

[Select an Affinity]

[Affinity Choice at time of Casting (lower power)

Serenity knew he’d just thought that what he needed was a bigger hammer, but that was a hard choice. Extra power was good, but sometimes someone was simply far more resistant to one Affinity than to others. Nihility was difficult to become immune to, but Serenity had run into creatures with significant Void Resistance in the past (or perhaps future?) and he couldn’t count on it. He needed to either choose the multitool or plan on doubling down on different Magebolt options with his next Path. Perhaps he could also pick up some weak area spells?

Serenity was torn, but at the end of the day he knew what the right answer was. Sometimes you just needed the bigger hammer and the multitool wouldn’t work. He had other ways to use his other Affinities; they took longer, but that could be dealt with. He could probably go toe-to-toe with any individual at his Tier, anyway.

Death Magebolt, please.