“Well, you’ve seen circumstances, knowledge, and even items influence your own Class options, so it shouldn’t be too surprising that your bond could influence Trixy’s evolution. There’s a great deal of mystery surrounding evolution for monsters, but I personally think they aren’t too dissimilar from Class advancements at their core,” Braden said.

  They were back home, having completed the dungeon and gotten Trixy evolved. The dungeon run had been trivial compared to any others. Being invisible was really “overpowered,” as Braden would say. Julia assumed that in future dungeons—and especially out in the real world—there would be ways for enemies to detect them even while invisible. Still, it made this particular dungeon a breeze.

  She handled the third dungeon encounter much like the second one in her previous run—by burying the goblins underground. This particular instance was an easy one. There were four goblins guarding a crossroads in the path through the camp. Each goblin was stationary and watching one of the paths.

  Fortunately, Julia was intimately familiar with where the encounters take place—generally, so she and Trixy were already invisible. Julia didn’t even have to waste mana by extending her Manipulate spell out over distance. She was able to simply walk up into the middle of the group before casting. One happy side effect of the heart now embedded in Julia was that funneling more mana to Trixy became viable.

  Trixy took a bit of mana from Julia regularly to sustain herself, but Julia could additionally funnel her mana towards Trixy if she wanted. Previously, she simply didn’t have enough mana to justify doing so. Now, thanks mostly to her massively improved regeneration rate, she could afford to. They would simply rest for a few minutes after an encounter, and while Julia regenerated her mana, she would siphon some of it off towards Trixy. This enabled them to use invisibility for each encounter.

  For the boss battle, Julia took no chances. Despite being invisible on entering, she still launched herself through the room with reduced gravity until she landed directly in front of the shaman. She sliced the shaman’s throat while pinning the hobs’ feet to the ground, then zapped them with lightning. It was over in a matter of seconds.

  The loot for this encounter ended up being a pair of badly-damaged swords, which was not what Julia hoped for. It seemed the shaman’s focus was the highest-end for the dungeon loot. She shouldn’t have been disappointed since she shouldn’t have even been expecting much, but she couldn’t help but be.

  Regardless, the real treasures of this dungeon run were the cores. After feeding the two hobs’ and shaman’s cores to Trixy, a white light had enveloped her like a cocoon. Julia didn’t even have a chance to check her Status to see the progress reach 100%. The cocooning happened immediately, apparently. What emerged from the cocoon was not at all what Julia expected, which was why she was talking to Braden about it right now.

  “How exactly did her relationship with me turn her into…this…not that I don’t like it. You look stunning, Trixy,” Julia hastily clarified. She didn’t have definitive proof of this, but Trixy’s cognition seemed improved after the evolution. And her body…wow, was her body different.

  The Trixy before her was very similar in almost every way to her previous form, but the parts that were different were dramatically so. She was still the all-white with black feet coloring from before, and she was still…generally ferret-shaped. However, she was much longer now.

  She was about as long as Julia was tall, and she had a different fur pattern. Her fur was generally the same length, but now she had long fur coming out of her neck. Julia had read about animals that had long fur specifically at their necks called “manes,” and she assumed this was what Trixy had.

  Her legs had grown a little longer—not quite as stubby as before, but the biggest change to them was to her paws. Each digit on her paws had extended out, and there were now long, sharp claws that poked out from each. The claws, when retracted, looked like the claws of a larger, predatory cat might—except Trixy’s looked like that while retracted. When she extended them, they looked more like the talons of a predatory bird, all curved and vicious.

  Her snout had extended quite a bit. She used to have a stubby snout compared to other furry animals Julia had seen, but now her snout looked more comparable to a dog’s or a large cat’s. Her teeth had changed to match, as her mouth now gleamed with sharp fangs that were so long, Julia was surprised they didn’t stick out when Trixy closed her mouth.

  To top all these changes off, Trixy now…floated—which was not hyperbole. She literally floated around as though swimming through the air. Julia thought that the motion combined with her new, elongated shape made her look rather eel-like.

  Trixy zipped through the air to nuzzle against Julia’s chin before wrapping herself around Julia’s chest and neck like a harness. This was her new resting position—reminiscent of when she’d wrap herself around Julia like a scarf. Julia petted her head as she turned back to Braden.

  “I’m not overly familiar with her specific species of ferret, but I’ve not heard of many ferrets that evolve into spirits. It would be quite a coincidence for her to acquire a spiritual evolution immediately after you fused with a Fey Heart.

  “To be fair, it could very well be a coincidence. I don’t know for sure. Trixy did have a, uh…wispy quality to her before with the ‘Mirage’ in her name and the Illusion Magic. Maybe she was always destined to evolve into a less-physical being. I’ve got no idea,” he concluded with a shrug.

  Julia nodded—not like she knew either. She pulled up Trixy’s Status to review her changes.

  There were some dramatic changes—the most obvious of which was right at the top. She was a “Nascent Spirit” now. Julia understood the words—Trixy was a new spirit, effectively—but she didn’t understand the implications. Would she evolve further into the realm of spirits? Were her evolutions influenced by what Julia did in the future? Were some evolution options barred to her now that she had started down this path?

  She had no answers to those questions. Regardless, the next largest changes were in her Skills. The Mana Body and Spirit Core Skills were huge changes for only occupying two lines. Mana Body was easily understood on a conceptual level, but what it enabled Trixy to do was pretty wild.

  It was the reason she could float around. Her body was almost completely made of mana now, so it only interacted with normal matter as much as Trixy wanted and allowed it to. The exception to this was the other Skill in the list: Spirit Core (Nascent). Trixy didn’t seem to be a pure spirit. She had a physical core anchoring her to this realm, though it was still bound to Julia—Trixy drawing a small amount of mana from her regularly.

  The Core was essentially the core of Trixy’s being. It didn’t do much else besides, but it was directly responsible for Trixy’s existence, so it was pretty important, obviously.

  She also gained Arcane Magic, likely due to the Mana Body Skill. Since her body is literally made of mana, she can change the mana that composes her to whatever she wants, provided she is familiar enough with the mana type. I.e., she could Embody a mana type.

  The Streak skill is a direct result of this. It involved Trixy converting her body to Lightning (or EM, as her Status now said) mana, which enabled her to move at unbelievable speeds—provided she has enough mana to maintain it. That was a pretty large ask, since the spell consumed mana at a prodigious rate.

  Her previous Illusion Magic spells had been retained in the EM Magic category, and she still had her Danger Sense Skill. Those things and her name were about the only things that hadn’t changed.

  Julia couldn’t be sure, but she thought the changes had upped Trixy’s combat capabilities significantly. They’d have to do some testing. The opportunity should arise before long, since they had some jobs coming up.

  Braden had decided that she’d spent enough time bullying goblins. Now that her midterm was completed, it was back to jobs posted with the Guild. That was an adventurer’s purpose, after all. Running dungeons was a decent gig—and indeed, some adventurers made it their entire careers, but doing that full-time would be counter to the purpose Braden had shown her.

  She wanted to help people. True, that would sometimes mean focusing on herself and growing stronger, but she couldn’t forget her core objective.

  They would be back to jobs in the morning, so for now, Julia was planning on kicking back and relaxing. Trixy was sleepier than normal—possibly a remnant of her evolution. Julia wasn’t even close to understanding how any of it worked, but she was sure it used a lot of energy.

  She put her feet up on the table in front of the couch and glanced over at Braden, who was sitting in the chair across from her with his eyes closed. He wasn’t sleeping, he claimed. This was something he did frequently. “Checking on my other affairs,” he would say. Julia was pretty sure that he was sleeping but didn’t want to admit it for whatever reason.

  “Can we play a game?” Julia asked. Whenever she had time marked for relaxing, she ended up thinking about magic or combat or Guild jobs or dungeons…all things that were not relaxing. Braden always said taking time to relax was just as important as working, so he had taught her many games over the years to occupy her mind.

  “Sure. What would you like to play? Want me to get out the chess board? Maybe some number puzzles?” Braden opened his eyes and inquired.

  “How about riddles?” she questioned. Braden had attempted to make riddles several times before. He was bad at it, and Julia thought it was endlessly amusing. She’d never tell him that, though. Watching him think for several minutes just to come up with the worst shit she’d ever heard was fantastically relaxing.

  “I guess I could think of something…hmm…” he hummed while he thought. After a few minutes, he seemed to figure it out.

  “Always present but never felt,

  Usually too much or too little;

  Most don’t like you in theirs,

  But separating yours from mine is itself a riddle.”

  Julia thought for a while. Usually, Braden’s riddles were on either end of the extremes. He either gave too many clues and made it trivial, or he was so cryptic that no one would be able to guess it…or the clues were just bad rather than cryptic. This one seemed to be decent enough, but she thought the first two clues were really vague while the final two were too blunt.

  “Space,” she said confidently.

  “Damn. Yeah, you got it,” he grumbled.

  “Give me another. That one was too easy on the backend. The first half was challenging, but the second half was almost obvious,” she chided lightly. “Can you make one that’s a little more…relevant, I guess? Space is such a heady topic—maybe something more grounded or relevant to our daily life.”

  He closed his eyes and thought for a while again. He opened them and smiled. “Alright. I have one. It’s about a place you’ve probably never heard of, but I’ll tell you the riddle and then tell you about the place itself. That work for you?” She nodded.

  “Below your feet,

  But taller than the sky;

  Dark at first,

  With lights up high.

  Life flourishes,

  Without the sun;

  A world below

  Known only to some.”

  Julia resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was interested in the subject of the “riddle,” but she couldn’t help thinking about how bad it was. “Sun” and “some” don’t even rhyme! Braden had said something about “slant” rhymes before, but she wasn’t buying it.

  “That’s clearly about some kind of cavern or something below ground, right? What is it?” she asked.

  “The denizens don’t have a name for it. It’s just the world to them. However, the very few residents that live above ground and are aware of it call it the ‘Deep Down.’ It’s not one specific place so much as a series of interconnected caverns. Though, the entire cavern system isn’t necessarily connected.

  “Maybe it would be helpful to consider the Deep Down an elevation rather than any specific caverns. Once you get a certain level below ground, you enter the Deep Down. The caverns range from tiny to so gigantic that you can stand directly in the center of the cavern and not see its walls or ceiling. It’s an amazing place. We’ll have to visit sometime,” he finished.

  Julia had stars in her eyes hearing about such an alien environment, and she had inadvertently achieved her goal of trying to relax by completely forgetting about it.