Seven months later-

  Rory held his breath, watching Violet slowly step through the bushes, being as silent as possible.

  C’mon, you got this.

  Still holding his breath, he gently fiddled with the bangle around his wrist. It was meant to suppress his aura -something he’d honestly forgotten as a tier-six he most definitely had- so that the low-tier monsters wouldn’t flee the moment they caught a metaphorical ‘whiff’ of him.

  The monster she was after was nothing more than a caerbannog, which gave Rory flashbacks to his early days. The one she was hunting in particular was currently munching on the bones of a monster Rory had left behind as bait the day before. Just out of sight of the killer rabbit, Violet drew her hand back as if drawing a bow.

  C’mon!

  Rory felt Pneuma begin to gather around the girl as she channeled magic. Apostolos was better at detecting this sort of stuff than he was, but as messy as the girl was with her handling of Pneuma, even Rory couldn’t miss it.

  Just a little more.

  At last, a flaming arrow snapped into existence. The good news was that the girl succeeded.

  The bad news was that she hadn’t expected to succeed, as the flaming arrow vanished as she yelped in surprise.

  Ah damn it, well good try.

  The caerbannog, noticing the girl, hissed at her as it leapt through the air, only to veer off course and flee as Rory deactivated the suppression bangle around his wrist.

  Using a gem to siphon off excess aura was clever, I’ve got to give myself that, but damn if they don’t burn out fast. Going to need another one already.

  “Sorry,” Violet muttered, crestfallen. “I know, this was supposed to be the day that-”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Rory cut her off from continuing her own self-flagellation. “You’re getting better with the fire arrow.”

  “It’s still hard to manage.”

  “Yeah, well, you also don’t have a tier yet. While it may not be an ‘official’ tier up, going from untiered to tiered does affect your control.”

  It was something he’d learned from Apostolos and Greg. Greg had reached tier one four months after arriving, and his ability to control Pneuma had -if not spiked- at least seen a moderate improvement.

  Of course, his usage of Pneuma was almost strictly for cooking. The boy managed to infuse the magical energy into food in a way Rory didn’t understand as it involved a lot of cooking mumbo-jumbo, and it had only improved after officially being recognized as tier-one.

  Violet was a bit different of a case. First, unlike Greg, she hadn’t committed to living a completely -or near completely- domestic lifestyle. Of course, what she had committed to was really nothing more than liking fire, so it was a bit of a crapshoot either way.

  Hence, Rory had found himself working with Violet the most of any of the kids for the time being. It was pretty damn apparent that Violet had never had any significant adult rolemodels growing up, likely ditched at a young age by her parents and then tossed into orphanages to bounce between.

  Now Rory didn’t know anything for certain, given that Violet had been memory-wiped while being pulled into their universe, but he could still infer.

  Thus, he made it his job to act as the ideal role model, or as ideal as he could realistically be. A large part of that was simply being there for the girl. Also, it was a chance to test a theory that by having her practice her Pneuma manipulation before she had a proper tier and killing a monster while still untiered, she would see better results in the long run.

  Making the girl in need of therapy your guinea pig for a theory, surely nothing could go wrong?

  “Are you sure I can do this?” Violet asked, still down on herself.

  “Of course. I said this before, but Apostolos was once nothing more then a rather crappy craftsman apprentice, and now look at him, Chief Protector and all that jazz.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Rory didn’t miss the slight blush on her face as he mentioned Apostolos, holding back a snort that might come across as demeaning.

  Oh, god, teenagers and their hormones. Doesn’t help that Apostolos doesn’t look much older than eighteen. Ah crap, going to have to talk with him to make sure he understands.

  Rory was glad that he was thankfully outside the age range the girls might find ‘acceptable,’ as it would have only made this all so much more… messy. Having arrived on Aelia at the crisp age of twenty-five-

  Or was it twenty-six? I really should have kept better track of the passage of time.

  Even with the slowed aging, he still looked to be in his late twenties, maybe early thirties, on a particularly grubby day.

  It’s odd to think I’m over forty. Eh, whatever. I’ve long since accepted that lifespans as we used to know them mean fuck all now.

  “Here, let me demonstrate for you,” Rory said, pushing back his random stray thoughts. He could have easily had a second thought thread spooled up at all times for handling wandering thoughts, but Rory preferred concentrating on a single train of thought, if only because part of him felt like it kept him ‘in the moment.’

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Rory slowly began to draw Pneuma to his own freeform magic. He’d been using Pneuma for enough years now that even as untalented as he was, he could still do something as simple as a magic arrow spell relatively easily, especially when he was making a point of doing so slowly.

  That is, rather than his usual five seconds for such a simple spell, he extended it to half a minute, giving Violet a long and drawn-out example.

  “You see how I do that?” Rory said. The arrow he’d drawn looked almost like a prism, refracting rays of light as he utilized his Lattice affinity to give the magical construct more stability.

  “I… I think?” Violet answered.

  “Great,” Rory said. Rather than release the arrow, he let the Pneuma dissipate into nothingness. “Then let’s give it another shot.”

  It took another two hours before Rory was once more masking his presence -his suppression band all but expended- as Violet once more drew back her hand, aiming at a small monster that looked deceptively like a two-headed toad with the crest of a rooster.

  A Gorf. Little fuckers are loud as hell when they get to croaking.

  It was also a tier-two monster. Rory had a feeling it had noticed Violet, but given she was untiered, it seemed to think nothing of her; the impression she left on the world was simply beneath its attention.

  Which would be its downfall. There wasn’t that big of a difference in durability between a tier one and tier two monster, and Gorfs did not like anything related to fire or heat. Rory could easily imagine a world where a lucky fire arrow would be enough to kill one if she struck the monster head -heads- on.

  This is it. This is when she finally pulls it off.

  Watching her perform her pre-hunt ‘ritual’ a few calming breaths before pressing her hands together and stretching out her wrists, the girl soon drew her hand back.

  His theory that the Gorf had noticed her already proved true when the monster frog-

  Frog or toad? You know, I never did learn the difference.

  -turned to face Violet. Before it could attempt to defend itself, tiny, shimmering threads suddenly bound its feet in place, forcing it to remain still.

  Now, I can’t have you going and turning this into a moment of fear for Violet.

  The threads were the newest weapon he’d added to his projection arsenal. He’d spent several days simply playing around with actual threads and conjuring strings made of Pneuma so that he was intimately familiar with the look and feel. Once done, it was relatively easy to swap the image of threads as his ‘focus’ within his Mind Palace, allowing instant projection magic.

  Of course, projection magic was still more costly than he would have preferred, but a few threads meant only to be strong enough to restrain a tier one or two monster was hardly a back-breaking effort.

  Concentration on Violet’s face, the girl never noticed that the Gorf had seen her, nor that it had now been restrained, struggling uselessly against his superior magic. Seconds passed until a flame arrow flickered into existence like a lit candle. Unlike her last attempt earlier that day, she held the spell stable, taking one last breath before she released the fire arrow.

  Whizzing through the air -almost lazily, to Rory’s perception- the arrow struck the Gorf mid-croak. Striking the back of its throat, the Gorf did what most things did when they swallowed a magical fire arrow.

  It died.

  Croaking, the Gorf lifelessly sagged to its side. The threads binding it vanished without a trace as Violet turned to Rory, excitement in her eyes.

  “I did it!”

  “You did!” Rory said, matching her excitement.

  Violet opened her mouth to say something, only to stop, the movement of her eyes making it clear she’d received a notification of some sort.

  “I tiered up,” She said, sounding surprised. “But I thought going from untiered to tiered didn’t work like that.”

  “It doesn’t, not usually,” Rory said with a slight frown. Untiered generally just meant that a person was still too physically immature to be recognized as having a tier. Once that point was passed, usually in the mid-to-late teenage years, a person would be listed as tier-one with only slight added benefits such as heightened sensitivity to Pneuma.

  Instead, Rory was reminded of his experience ascending from tier zero -a tier that normally didn't exist- to tier one.

  “Well, either way, it won’t be a bad thing,” Rory said, replacing the thoughtful half-frown with a plastered smile. “Eon wouldn’t do that. So go, take care of that. I’ll be watching over you.”

  Violet nodded before her eyes glassed over. Knowing that the first ascension took time, Rory let his plastered smile drop, once more replaced with his signature partial frown.

  Weird.

  It really was the only thing to say on the matter. When Greg reached A1, he hadn’t gotten the full benefits of a tier-up. Even Apostolos hadn’t. Irene had already been listed as A1 on arrival.

  The only ones who could say something similar had occurred to them were himself and the other founders.

  That said, Rory hadn’t been lying when he’d said it wasn’t a bad thing. Knowing Eon as he did, he knew Violet would be fine.

  It just didn’t change how odd it still was.

  Shrugging to himself, Rory crouched down as he hefted the small monster -large by Earth toad standards- and inspected it.

  I think it’s a frog. Something about frogs having bumpy skin? Or was it the other way around?

  As far as materials, Gorfs were entirely useless. Their skin was too oily to be used for anything useful, and their meat was awful and chewy.

  But I’m not a chef. Eh, I guess I’ll give it to Greg and let him see what he thinks.

  Seconds passed by, Rory juggling the monster frog a few times before Violet suddenly startled, eyes no longer glassy and devoid of thought.

  “Whoa,” The girl said, gathering herself. “That was wild.”

  “Did you meet Eon?”

  “No,” The girl said, shaking her head. “But I was floating in space! Then I saw this table and sat down, and a bunch of screens explaining stuff appeared.”

  Rory nodded, the experience one he’d gone through enough times himself to know exactly what she was referring to.

  “What then?” Rory asked. “Did you get attribute selection?”

  “No, it made it clear that it was an ‘informal’ tier up. No extra attributes, but I did get to select a skill already!”

  “What were you offered?”

  “Only four. Fire Arrow, Fire Dart, Inner Flame, and one more.”

  “I’m assuming the first two are just variations of fire projectiles.”

  “Yeah. Fire Arrow does more damage per aspect of Pneuma used, but Fire Dart is faster or something. I thought they were both stupid. Why take a skill for something I can already do myself?”

  She’s not wrong, even if she’s not entirely giving enough credit to the benefit of a skill.

  “Inner Flame lets me regulate my body heat, and the hotter I get, the more power I can draw out. That was pretty cool, I won’t lie.”

  Yeah, but it also says nothing about resistance to one's own inner heat, so I can already see some serious drawbacks.

  “But, in the end, I chose my last option.”

  “Which is what I assumed, given you did not say what it was at first,” Rory said, wise to the attempt at building suspense.

  “Oh, yeah. Was I that obvious?”

  “You’re a teenager; you’re hardly as slick as you might think you are,” Rory responded with a deadpan expression.

  “Oh… Well, you want to hear what it was or not?”

  “Shoot,” Rory said as he pointed to her.

  “It was a skill called Firefly.”

  “And what does it do?”

  Rather than say anything, the younger girl lifted her palms upward as around two dozen flickering embers began to float up from her palms, scattering around before fading.

  I’m assuming there is more because that was anticlimactic.

  Several more seconds passed before the air exploded with a swarm of embers, hundreds where there had only been two dozen before that.

  “Oh, now that is interesting,” Rory said.

  “Yeah. They burn out and vanish before reigniting when I want them to, with the added effect of igniting particles in the air. The more Pneuma I put in, the more I get out.”

  “Not bad,” Rory said. “An army of ten million fireflies. Not many would believe their eyes if they saw that.”

  “Well, ten million might be pushing it,” The girl giggled, clearly in a good mood. “I can’t wait to show the others!”

  “Yeah, I’m happy for you,” Rory said, playing his role of supportive adult role model to a T. A second later, he frowned as a new thought entered his mind.

  “Just, uh, maybe don’t show it off around anything combustible, would you?”