“You have been practicing your exercises, right?” asked Knot.

Corn nodded. Personally, he felt it was pointless to train his awareness of his Hunger. But having found someone willing to teach him, he wasn’t going to stint on their lessons. He had spent two pointless hours a day slogging through it.

“The thing you had to understand about Desire is it’s not random. Yes, there are some universal traits like Hunger, but most of the Stats have their own philosophy and type of Desire.

Take for example Strength, its central philosophy is to fight. That can be conveyed as aggression, honour or camaraderie. For Charisma, it is to feel. That can be conveyed as compassion, worship or extroversion.

Explaining all the profundities and subtleties behind the Desire of each Stat would take centuries. Ten people might have thousand different ways of expressing and grow their Desire for one Stat.

But to both manage and grow your Desire you need to understand the central philosophy behind your Stat.”

“What is the central philosophy behind Magic?” asked Corn, seeing the nymph go silent.

“To create. Every point of power you have under your Stat is related to an aspect of this Desire.

If my assumptions are right then you had to reach about 10 points in your Stat before you could actually become a Chaotic Race, right?”

“Yeah?”

“That means that your Hunger corresponds to a maximum of 26 points. It’s hard to calculate this number exactly but given the way you’ve been eating it is probably correct. The remaining ten points must belong to some aspect of Magic’s Desire.”

“But I didn’t grow my Desire, I just practiced Magic and I’m also sure I have some points from the System,” protested Corn.

“Doesn’t matter how you practiced. If you’ve grown your powers, Desire has grown with it. Do you know why I had you perform that exercise? It was to be aware of all your Desires. Only with awareness can you grow.

And as a digression, I’m fairly certain you have no points from the Systems.”

Corn roughly described his situation with the cube and how he got his few points.

Knot shook his head and smiled, “Nope, that’s not power from the System. That’s a soul trinket. It’s a rare Device but it can give power. But even that power must have some Desire attached to it.”

“But why are you that sure?”

Knot chuckled, “Believe me, it’s a part of my profession as a priest. You can only have System driven powers as a Player. Unless you become a Player, all your power is attached to some sort of Desire.

If not our civilization would be drastically different, everyone would be gaining levels like crazy.”

“What are levels?”

Knot rubbed his eyes, “You know, liquorice, I do need my beauty sleep. Ok, ok I’ll answer. Well, you must have played games, right?”

Seeing Corn shake his head, the nymph went on, “No? The basic idea is progression or growth. Once you’ve grown above 250 points for each Stat, you can move on to the next level. But each level of each Stat grants a different kind of power and has a different form of Desire.”

“Different form?” echoed Corn.

“Level 1 requires growing your Desire while level 2 requires growing your foundation. While level 1 gives you the ability to manipulate your Stat, Level 2 gives you a body imbuement which varies according to the Stat.”

“How many levels are there?”

Knot yawned loudly, “Last question and then I’m out. The truth is I don’t know. I’ve seen deities with level 4 and level 5 of Charisma. But what’s the limit? I have no idea.”

Corn still had more questions but didn’t pester Knot. While the others slept, he tried focusing on his breath, emptying his mind and listening to his Heart. He could still sense Hunger, but whatever his other Desire was, he was still clueless.

He temporarily stashed his goods in a locker assigned for him in the gym. Then he went to bed.

When he woke up, the nymph hadn’t come down. Corn had no choice but to work on Magic. In between, he sparred with the elf. Corn was amazed at how quickly he could beat him. It was impressive how a little advice had improved his fighting so much.

Unlike Line, the rest of the members of Knot’s ‘company’ were only partially employed by Knot. They still had day jobs.

The elf, after being beaten back-to-back, quickly left for his job and Corn was tempted to slip back to his. Even if Knot and Line had helped him a lot, he needed the gang.

Why would anyone join a gang? Well, the first reason was obviously credit. Other than the soul eater who introduced him to the Underworld, he hadn’t seen a lot of Chaotic Races under blue System employment. But the second one was the food required for easy growth. He had enough for now, but food had a funny way of running out.

His best, if unstable, chance of growing Desire was still Hunger.

Just as he was preparing to leave, he spotted Knot in a bath robe. Nibbling liquorice and with cream slathered on his face, the nymph was humming as he came down the stairs.

“Do you even sleep?”

Corn shrugged.

Knot sighed and reached out in a mock face palm, before he remembered the cream and jerked his hand away in time.

“Since you’re awake, I suppose you still have questions?”

“The most important one of all: how do I grow my power?”

Knot nodded, “The first way is to practice your Stat on a technical basis and with time and let any Desire haphazardly grow over. If it hasn’t sunk in with all my lessons and everything I’ve mentioned before, let me repeat it again: this is a very bad idea.

The second way is to grow your Desire, fitting it in with the philosophy of your own Stat while still tailoring it to your own Heart.”

“Yes, but how do you grow Desire? How can you make yourself want to do something? Do I just wish really hard?”

Pouring rich, aromatic coffee into a mug, Knot added seven cubes of sugar, three teaspoons of honey and twirled the mixture with his half-bitten liquorice stick.

“It’s the other way around. Action comes first, then comes Desire. One of my many Desires is to socialize with others. To grow that, I had to first go see and meet lots of lots of people, use my Charisma while doing all that socializing and only after that did my Heart form that Desire and cause my power to increase.

But a reminder before you go, the Desire you want to grow has to both match the central idea of your Stat as well as suit yourself personally. You can’t grow Desire that you don’t want to grow. Or at least, that’s a very hard thing to do.

And to grow your Desire, you actually have to use your Stat while performing the action.

It’s the reason why Magic is so rare and why I’ve never seen anyone use it as their first Stat. For all the other Stats, the moment you receive them from a Stat priestess or priest, you receive a certain number of points.

So, all you have to do is use the Stat. Desire will grow whether you tend to it or not.”

Corn mulled that over. “You’re saying without that soul trinket, I wouldn’t have become a mage.”

“Oh, liquorice. Soul trinkets are a dime a dozen. If all you needed was one, there’d be a lot more mages around.”

“So, it was the storm,” Corn thought aloud. It was where he got his source from, whether he understood it at the time or not. Was that luck or some intuitive cleverness?

“The what?” asked Knot while sipping his coffee.

Corn shook his head and left.

Most of Blood Falls had already moved out from Purple Hearts. Corn accompanied a few trolls to his old base which had gone back to being their actual base. Just life as usual.

Once he was there, Care made him open the vault. She had curtly reminded him that they still needed 130 million credits.

Corn, however, breakfasted on the remaining ice crystals and was thinking deeply on how to grow his Desire.

To create. Creativity. To make.

What was he supposed to create? Should he start writing stories or poems? Make drawings or sculptures? All that he thought of seemed uninteresting to him. He wasn’t a storyteller or an artist. Yet he also knew he had some talent so what could he do that came under create?

In the first place what did ‘create’ mean? Did it mean to create something new?

Corn was struck with a realisation. He could create new spells. That would satisfy the condition of creation. Then a second realisation followed the first.

Dripping wet, he sat down on the metal walkway and began to listen to his Heart. He had consumed a sliver of his mana reserves to digest his breakfast, but the rest was still there. He could clearly feel the Hunger attached to his mana reserves.

But along with the Hunger he could also feel a faint flicker of a Desire. The Desire to create spells. Spell craft, he dubbed it, was the first Desire he grew, with or without the knowledge on how to grow his powers.

It made sense. A mage created and used spells. Even as a Base Slave, ignorant to the point of stupidity, he had known that much.

So, to grow his Desire of spell craft, he had to spend time creating new spells. In particular, he was interested in the spell that caused him to see strange visions and later to faint. He had a strong suspicion that if it was perfected it would be very useful to him.

But the problem was he couldn’t grow this Desire now. He needed back up to watch over him and everyone here was bustling with action.

So, what else was there that he could create?

The happiness that came from his discoveries faded away as he continued thinking.

“What are you doing here, bug boy?” chirped the fairy. “Don’t you have work to do? You there, if you’re going to fence our goods take him with you as protection.”

“But I already produced 20 million,” argued Corn.

“We have a deal that you will help release our don.” The fairy wagged her finger at him.

Corn continued arguing. The deal only mentioned that he had to do what he can. Not that he had to die trying. But after some haggling, he relented. He was part of this gang, so he had to protect their interests to a certain degree.

Predictably they went to a bunch of weasel kin and dwarves to peddle their goods. Corn was left outside while a bunch of trolls haggled, so he practiced his control. He drew out water mana and formed a levitating ball of water mana that had a tiny whirlpool in its centre.

The effort of spinning water inside the ball caused the ball itself to spin around a locus like a marble attached to a string.

After ten seconds the mana dispelled, and water burst into nothing.

“Whippee! Do ish again! Do ish again!” A five-year-old kid clapped in glee.

Another kid, a dwarf old enough to be a teenager, approached Corn, holding a large camera and a tripod. “Could you do that again?”

A bunch of kids were playing around, right next to the periphery of his mana vision. They were mostly weasel and racoon kin with a few dwarves mixed in.

“Why?” asked Corn.

“Why?” The kid adjusted his glasses and looked affronted. “Why? I want to be the greatest cameraman in the world.”

“Oh hush Mark,” shouted a female dwarf, babysitting the kids, and addressed Corn, “Don’t let him bother you.”

“How could you say that? You dare stand in the way of my greatness? If I put this on the Feed, maybe the whole of Iridicrodium, no, the whole System will see and know my greatness. How dare you?”

Corn smiled, almost flashing his teeth. He liked the kid’s drive. “I doubt it will be as entertaining as you think it will be.”

The kid loudly harrumphed, “I’ll be the judge of that.”

“Ok. I’ll do it. Just let me wear a mask.”

He slipped his hands into his pockets and took half of the mask before he was interrupted by the kid, “Ugh! Please don’t tell me that’s a clown mask. Only weirdos and gangsters even touch that stuff.”

“Err…”

The kid ran off and got a mask that was completely blank, “Here. Use this.”

Corn turned around, slipped off his googles and put on the blank mask.

The kid made Corn spin his ball of water around and around, till it burst. The way he filmed it and his instructions made him laugh out loud.

“Come on. Time to go,” called out a troll.

Corn handed the mask back to the kid.

“Wait! Here’s my card. If you ever want to get filthy rich, you know who to call.”

The female dwarf ran over and tried to grab the card.

“Ugh! You will be the end of me woman,” cried the kid and ran off.

“This is awkward,” she started, but Corn handed over the crumpled piece of paper to her.

“No problem,” he said and left.

While the whole incident was amusing, it was also very inspiring. It showed him a new path to grow his Desire that resonated with him.

He could create a performance.