“I'm so sorry.”

  “Its fine, really.” I say again to the little human sitting beside me. She is a nightmare in the mornings, but always apologizes for it.

  “But I was so mean!” She protests.

  “Evelyn, I mean it when I say its fine. I'm not subtle with my emotions.” I nudge her side with a claw and smile. “I can get that you're cranky in the mornings. I think we both are. I nearly bit Snowstorm's tail off one time.”

  “Really?” She chuckles a little wryly.

  “Yeah. And speaking of Snowstorm…” I glare over at the wyvern by the fire, making breakfast while pointedly not looking at me, whistling innocently and badly hiding his smile.

  “I don't blame you because I blame him.” I tell evelyn. “You can only blame so many people for things, right? Only got a certain number of blames to give out, so I gotta use them wisely.”

  “I don't think that's how it works.” Evelyn says, looking at me with the odd expression she gives me each time I say something less then intelligent.

  “Its how it works with me.” I shrug.

  “You guys are so weird.” Evelyn giggles a bit. “Yet so utterly similar to humans.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I ask, curious.

  “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.” Evelyn shrugs. “It's all a matter of perspective.”

  “Breakfast is ready.” Snowstorm calls out to us, .

  “Good, I'm hungry.” I slide off the boulder, then help Evelyn down. I have to help her around a lot, now that I think about it. Maybe I should try helping her get stronger.

  {Would you like to transfer 12 stat points to Human:Evelyn Thornton? There will be a loss of 10% stat points transferred rounding down.}

  You know, system, you could just tell me all the overpowered stuff you can do This is seriously getting to be a bit much, and I am almost frightened.

  “Uh, Snowstorm, I can transfer stat points to others.” I call out to the frosty lizard by the fire, who snorts and looks up to my with a raised eyebrow. Yes, dragons have eyebrows, but no, we don't have hair. Its just scales, what did you expect?

  “Of course you can.” Snowstorm says, surprising me. He hands me a hunk of chicken meat and gives the legs to Evelyn. “But its usually not worth it. A 90% loss of stat points transferred just makes no sense to do.”

  “90%? The system is telling me its only 10%.” I respond. Apparently that wasn't what he expected to hear. Snowstorm spits out his chicken and starts coughing.

  “How did you figure that out?” Evelyn asks curiously.

  “Well, I was thinking about how I carry you everywhere and how nice it would be if you were strong and agile enough to move around without me having to help out too much.” I explain, sniffing the chunk of chicken I was given. For some reason, her cheeks change color. I didn't know they could do that. No wait, their skin goes all red when they are cold, right? Maybe I should find something to warm her up.

  “T-thanks.” She says, then smiles, snapping me out of my thoughts. Well, I might as well just try and do it.

  {10% lost in transfer. transferred 10 points. Remaining stat points:0}

  Evelyn's eyes go hazy for a moment, looking at her system. She cheers for a moment, then makes her selection.

  “Watch!” She proceeds to run at 88 miles per hour to a tree and back, then promptly slams into me at that same speed. It actually knocks me over, but I manage to catch her in a way that keeps her form exploding on impact. good thing her durability is decent. How do I know how fast she ran? Did I develop enhanced intelligence for a second just to calculate how fast she would run into me? No. I remember specifically how fast you can run when your strength stat is 13 because when I was younger and my speed was 13, I ran head-first directly into a tree. The tree broke, but so did I.

  “You put it all into speed?” I ask. Wait, how did I know her exact running speed. Was that part of the insight skill? Also I shifted my body perfectly to accept the impact. Damn.

  “Yep!” She responds, grinning. “You fly at over 4000 miles per hour at top speed! Of course I wanted to keep up a bit!”

  “My speed is 50 and yours is 13.” I point out. She sags a bit, then shrugs.

  “More work for me, then.”

  “More like, more shoving stats into you for me.” I say, then jab her stomach with a claw playfully. She coughs from the blow, but she's sturdy enough. Maybe I could get all her stats to max if I use essence for myself. Wait, can I use essence on her?

  {No.}

  Dammit. Worth a shot I guess.

  {No it wasn't. Essence only functions with divine aligned beings, and unless Human:Evelyn becomes a paladin or priest, it wont align with her.}

  “Makes sense I guess.” I say to myself.

  “What?” Snowstorm looks up from the fire to look at me.

  “Just talking to the system voice. Speaking of which, do you have a name?”

  {No.}

  “Do you want one?” I ask. It’s obvious this system is sentient, and has a personality from its little quips.

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  {There is no need for one.}

  “I'll call you Jim.” I decide. Evelyn laughs.

  {Jim:Why?}

  Ooh, now it show's his name.

  “Why not?”

  {Jim:...}

  “Abhor, why does the system have a name?” Snowstorm asks, frowning at me.

  “Because yes.” I respond with upmost dignity. With all the elequence of a nobleman, Snowstorm responds.

  “I want to hit you.”

  “Then go ahead!”

  “Oh, I will!”

  “Please don’t.” Evelyn interjects flatly. She climbs up my front leg and sits down on my back again, settling into the curve of my back as if I were a horse or something.

  “Alright, alright.” I say, chuckling and smirking to myself as I sit up and shake my wings a little.

  “I think we should get going.”

  “I agree.” Snowstorm nods and tosses the little skewer stick into the fire. He then opens his jaws and icy white breath blankets over the fire. I think his intention was to put the fire out. But no, he froze the fire. Literally.

  “W-w-what?” Snowstorm stares at the fire.

  “T-the flames aren't moving…” Evelyn looks just as confused, leaning over to get a good look at the fire.

  “Who cares, lets go” I slap the fire with a claw and it shatters, the fire still frozen inside.

  “I'm taking some of this to research.” Snowstorm leans down and picks up a larger chunk in his jaws, then swallows it.

  “Did you just eat the ice fire?” I blink at him.

  “You got an eye mutation, I got a stomach mutation. My stomach is very strong, and it feeds me information on whatever I eat over the course of weeks. It's slow, but it's knowledge.” I shrug. I don't care too much, but good for him for getting some cool gimmicks. It is going to be a long flight, I know that. The world is huge, and even with the ability to move casually faster than sound, it'll take probably a whole year to fly all the way to Evelyn's home. That's nowhere near fast enough, which is why we need either help or levels. If I can reach tier 2 and increase my maximum stats to 150 I could get there easily. But leveling is not simple. In order for one to level they need something called karma. Basically, one's karma is stuff that both can and can't be put down on paper. Impressive acts, overcoming impossible odds, not taking the easy way, that all builds your karma. So long as you do what you want and stay true to yourself, you have a path all the way to tier 4. However, karma is so much more complex then that. It’s one of the few topics I actually found interesting, but I still know very little about it as a whole. I only ever read the surface level stuff.

  Another thing about karma is that it can have affects on you too. Titles are simply just the result of karma, or more accurately karma itself. My barterer title came from being good at bartering. I didn't need the title, because I was good at bartering already, the title simply recognized that and boosted it further as a reward. Get good at something and karma will make you better. Find a passion and karma will help you along. All that sorta stuff is interesting to me. One other strange thing is that unless a title has defined parameters, like the murderer title, or the nobility titles, you can't actually get them on purpose. Karma decides when you get it, and if your karma isn't good enough, you won't get a title.

  Out of the three of us, Snowstorm believes evelyn has more karma because of us simply because she is older and more experienced, though she doesn't exactly act like an adult. I'm curious what titles she has. There's no harm asking, is there?

  “Hey, Evelyn?” I say, climbing up a particularly tall tree while she clings to my neck to not fall to the ground.

  “Yeah?” She looks up at my head as I make it to the top and flatten down a little to give her an easier time.

  “You have any interesting titles?” I ask her curiously. She seems a bit surprised, taking a moment to just blink, then she opens her status sheet and thinks to herself a bit.

  “Well, I have the Prodigy title, which I got for getting good grades consistently throughout every year at school. It gives me a +2 bonus to intelligence and +1 to perception for every subject I completed, so math, social, english, science, and religion.”

  “Thats good… I think. Snowstorm, is that good?” I call down to snowstorm who is cleaning up the camp to get rid of evidence.

  “Is what good?”

  “The prodigy title.”

  “Very much so, yes.” He nods, then spreads his wings to fly up to us. The tree makes protesting sounds ad he lands beside me, like a dying animal. “Its ranked within the top 100 titles best to get before reaching the age of 20. It positively affects you in all sorts of ways.”

  “Like?” I ask curiously, then flinch as my tail catches on a sharp branch and gets lodged between 2 scales.

  “You get smarter.” Snowstorm responds simly, shrugging.

  “Oh, cool.”

  “Shouldn't we get going?” Evelyn points out and I nod.

  “Yep, lets go.”

  <{(0)}>

  “Where are we going?” good question, Snowstorm. My answer?

  “You tell me.” I say flatly.

  “Well, we need to find someone who can get us nearly to the other side of the planet in less then 25 days. We have no money and nothing of value to pay with, though.” Snowstorm groans. “And you are just leading us randomly around. We either need to get stronger and faster and quick, or we need to find someone to help.”

  “Well, we could go to the tree.” I offer, gesturing to the tree that puts mountains to shame just a few tens of miles away. Snowstorm hesitates.

  “We don't want to mess with the forestry dragons. They are very closed off to all unless they are a part of the church or another powerful faction.” I nod and grunt at that. I've only met one forestry dragon before. She looked like a walking plant. Horns shaped like roots, smooth scales the color of grass, an underbelly like autumn, she was basically a forest with 6 limbs. Well, 7 limbs if you count the tail. Anyways, I don't know much besides what they look like. She was nice, though, I know she was with the church of life, and is apparently called a “Cleanser of chaos”. The name's super dramatic, but it makes sense. In a world with tier 3 and 4 powerhouses just running around, you need people who can regenerate the land after battles, and to prevent battles in the first place. Everyone is accepted into the church, no matter your species. The only exception to this rule are those that don't align with the species and archetypes they know of. They hunt down those not like them and do nobody knows what. What types of creatures might I be talking about? Me and Snowstorm. We don't align with any of the 10 clan's archetypes. To me it makes no sense why the dragon we met didn't try to catch us and take us back.

  “Snowstorm, do you remember the Forestry dragon who visited us when we were little?”

  “Yes, her name was maple.” He responds. “What are you getting at?”

  “She was definitely with the church of life, so that must mean they know about us, right? There shouldn't be a problem entering if they know about us already, right?”

  “That logic is a bit skewed.” Evelyn comments. “Just because the church knows about you guys doesn’t mean they want you near them. Maybe they were the ones to have your guardians keep you in a cave your whole lives.” She looks over to Snowstorm, who just shrugs.

  “So Camica has the church of life?” I ask curiously.

  “Of course we do, although we dont have any of the other 9 churches present. It's purely for the Cleansers of chaos, though. Theres a lot of strong sapiens, so some sort of policing force is required. Their destruction magic is great for putting down threats, and their life magic is perfect to wipe away the stains.”

  “Oh yeah, what was the name of the god that they worship? The destruction and life god.”

  “Did you seriously forget?” Snowstorm gives me a deadpan expression.

  “So what if I did?” I gesture for him to speak. He sighs, but indulges my lack of intelligence.

  “The name of the god they worship is Aftermath, the bone emperor, and the god of Life and Destruction.”

  Is going to the big ol' tree a good idea?