“This doesn't make any sense,” Syl said, staring at Kai’s status page as if looking at it longer would give her answers.

  “You’re telling me,” Kai said as he summoned a mana potion. “My last few mana bolts did feel funny. It was like I was drawing the mana from somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere else…” Syl said, her mind working through the implications of negative mana.

  “Syl, what is your mana at? You said you needed to recover some before we went on.”

  “I was at around thirty percent, but it’s actually recovering quite fast…” Syl said as she looked off into space.

  Kai called up a mana bolt in his free hand and just held it.

  “What about now? Did your mana just drop by two percent?” Kai asked as he flicked the bolt off into the trees.

  Syl’s eyes widened as she looked at him. “You are insane! You have minus mana, and you’re using more.”

  Kai shrugged. “Quickest way to figure things out. Did you lose any mana?”

  Syl looked off into space again and nodded. “I did-”

  Kai upended the mana potion he had at the ready. Gulping down the thin liquid quickly, it burnt his throat on the way down. Thankfully, it was nowhere near as bad as trying to swallow that thick health potion he had used.

  Syl didn’t say much as she was looking stuff over, but as Kai watched, his mana jumped up thirty percent. Somehow the now negative fifty-six percent mana indicator he had remained.

  The change gave him a rough idea of what was happening.

  “I think we are sharing mana. My system is just having a hard time tracking it. Though this doesn't explain why I ran out of mana before you. I wasn't even using nearly as much magic as I was before; I didn’t need to with you blasting goblins left, right and even behind me.”

  “That is my fault. I’m using you as a proxy to cast my spells… So I’m using your mana before I use my own. Even though we are connected, your body naturally prioritises its own core. I should have been checking things better; this could have been very dangerous.” Syl said, frowning as she continued to contemplate the situation.

  Kai just checked the trait related to their connection: “Paired Individual, two souls, two minds and one connection. Everything that can be shared will be. Greater than the sum of your parts, two plus two equals five. Nothing adds up the way it should.”

  “Yeah, I think this must be one of the things that is shared,” Syl said.

  “The problem is the traits are so vague; I wish it spelt everything out for us,” Kai said as he watched his natural mana regeneration add to his mana pool as Syl’s own regeneration reduced the negative indicator on her end.

  “Syl, can you drink mana potions in the domain?” Kai said as he got one of his ideas, “You said you could parallel process to some degree; will meditating in the domain distract you out here?”

  Syl just looked at him as his negative mana dropped by around thirty-five percent. “You know this is why you broke the tutorial.”

  “This is a good thing. Unlike a normal spellcaster, you can recover mana using potions without exposing yourself. We can greatly improve our combined regeneration if you can meditate. We just need to test if your mana recovery is shared when your core is already full…” Kai cupped his chin as he thought of all the possibilities. “What do you think will happen if one of us drinks a mana potion when they are already full of mana? Will it overflow through our connection? Is our recovery split or shared? Do our stats work on our cores separately, or is there also some kind of sharing going on there too?”

  ‘You are just like my master. So much so it is almost frightening.’ Alicia said, suddenly entering the conversation from within the domain.

  “Core!” Both Kai and Syl said in unison.

  ‘About that, I think I finally felt something following my essence… I will keep working on it.’

  “If you have actually found your core, it is much faster than I expected.” Syl said as she gave Kai a doubtful look.

  ‘Kai gave me some advice.’

  “Why am I not surprised?” Syl floated over to Kai. “Your essence is stored around your core, so it makes sense that you should be able to find your core by tracking it back.”

  Kai just shrugged and focused on his mana readout; he wanted to make it easier to understand on a quick check.

  The moment he wished he could see Syl's mana instead of a negative number, his status changed from Mana: 36% (-29%) to Mana: Kai-36% / 71%-Syl.

  He wasn’t sure the new readout worked for him; it might be better if they just combined to give a total…

  Mana: Kai-38% / 73%-Syl, changed to Mana: 111%

  Kai was starting to get an idea just how customisable his personal system was.

  In the end he changed things back to the readout that gave him both his and Syl's individual mana readouts, as that would allow him to track things on an individual basis.

  Satisfied with his changes, he sent his status back over to Syl so she could see what he had managed to do.

  “So that last mana potion you took gave you over thirty percent. Do you think it will be a waste if you drink another one to see if the extra fills me up too?” Kai asked as she gave him an approving nod to his changes.

  “It is a waste, but it will keep you happy, won't it?”

  He nodded enthusiastically.

  Syl sighed as her mana jumped up to full as his own gained another three percent.

  He grinned, “There was definitely something carried over, a little less than I expected, but still this is great.”

  “You do realise your mana pool is larger than mine. Even then, one of those potions should easily fill someone of our level range up to full and then some. Our combined stats are definitely affecting things…” Syl trailed off, looking lost in a thought.

  “Is this the reason why our mana bolts tend to kill in just one shot?”

  “No, spell damage is usually just a case of mana invested. No stat directly affects spell damage, but if you have good flow, control and enough mana to work with, even simple spells can be potent.”

  Kai watched his mana tick up slightly faster than when Syl had less than her full amount of mana. “Your regeneration is aiding my own. If you can meditate in the domain while throwing spells out here… Two plus two is definitely going to make five.”

  “Yeah, trying to figure out the math is hurting my head. The fact our connection is involved complicates things immensely. Which explains why the trait is so vague about everything.”

  Kai had another one of his stray thoughts, “Do you think improving our connection will improve what’s shared?”

  Syl just looked at him and smiled, “I can think of a few things that will deepen our connection; no guarantee it will change any of this, but I promise you will enjoy it.”

  Kai felt the heat rise to his ears. “I meant like a spell or ritual we can do.”

  “It’s a soul connection; what I have in mind will work. Just trusting each other wholeheartedly will affect the connection.” Syl tapped her lips. “But yes, I think we should look into the more arcane ways of improving things.”

  “Great.” Kai said as he turned to walk off into the woods, “You drinking those terrible mana potions for me is a huge boon. I’m hoping stamina and health potions also work, though I’m doubtful much is shared on the physical side.”

  “I should probably invest in my mana core. The benefits for you would be insane, and my own magical abilities.” Syl said thoughtfully as she drifted after him.

  Kai spun round. “No! I’m getting you a body someday, and I’ll be damned if you’re a glass cannon that gets killed because you make one mistake.”

  Syl smiled softly, “You know Alicia is a sucker for this kind of stuff.”

  “I don’t really care right now. What would you say if I said I was going to work purely on my physical core because I have you to work on your mana core?”

  Syl actually thought for a moment, “I’d say it was foolish. We don’t know what will happen. We could encounter a lich or some other twisted creature that feeds on souls and-“

  “Exactly!” Kai said as he turned back to the woods, “Right. Where were those damn wild boar we saw earlier? I want bacon!”

  “You do realise none of us know what part of a pig bacon actually comes from.” Syl said as she turned into her wisp form and zipped off into the sky to scout things out.

  “Good point. We’ll either figure it out or hire a butcher. I know that weird stringy stuff Americans call bacon is actually just thinly cut pork belly, but I have no idea where the real stuff is.”

  “You can’t keep a butcher in your domain just because you like bacon.”

  “Can I keep a butcher if I like good meat and not just bacon? And I’m not talking goblin.”

  ‘It sounds reasonable to me; this place is relatively safe, and some people will do anything for money. You could have a whole village in here… I could lean on my contacts. I think Master might even like to set up and study this place for a bit; it could help with his own domain. Oh yes! Lilly, my maidservant, could come and cook and clean and care for our gear and-’

  “And Thanric thinks you’re spoilt?” Syl said teasingly.

  There was nothing but silence from his domain.

  “Oh god, it would be like having a hundred people with me on speed dial at any time they wanted,” Kai said as he thought about how Alicia could just talk to him whenever they wanted.

  Syl sighed, “It’s your domain; you can filter that kind of stuff if you really wanted. But that’s not the real problem, is it?

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What is the real problem?”

  “It sounds like a lot of shit to deal with… To your one o’clock, there is a herd of deer grazing in a glade.” Syl said.

  With that, the conversation died as Kai and Syl went on a bacon-hunting spree.

  Kai was worried they would struggle to get anything; his tracking skills were clearly lacking, but with Syl flying invisibly overhead and their mana bolts, it was almost too easy.

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  Syl had figured out Kai’s method of compacting the mana bolts, so they travelled as fast as a speeding bullet. And while neither of their mana bolts actively tracked targets yet, they did have a level of auto-aim tied to the caster’s intent and focus.

  All this meant that despite the occasional miss, the two of them working together had a successful hunt. Though it probably helped that what they were hunting was confined to the relatively small forest and not able to escape them.

  After a few hours they had four deer, three boars and even a couple of rabbits tucked away in a brand new cold storage Syl had set up near the kitchen just for storing perishable foodstuffs.

  Kai was over the metaphorical moon when he disassembled one of the boars to get a cut of wild boar bacon. So much for hiring a butcher, though he still mulled over the other possibilities and the limitations of his ring dismantle ability.

  After eating another bowl of adventurers’ stew and taking care of his basic necessities, they continued on to the next dungeon room.

  They ran the room just three times; there were no real changes beyond all the goblins levelling up to a level above what they were before.

  Kai was still hoping for a rare spawn, but even when they moved onto the third room, all that changed was the goblin camp had six more goblins set up in a perimeter around the camp.

  It took them a few attempts to get to the point they could neutralise the perimeter guards without alerting the whole camp. Not that it was necessary to eliminate them, as at this point wiping out the goblin camp was just trivial for Kai and Syl.

  Alicia actually complained at one point. Apparently, wiping out all the goblins at the camp was much faster than having to deal with the roaming hunting parties. She recounted how her party had to resort to tracking down the individual groups of goblins, carefully killing them off before they could get their own alerts off.

  Kai made an offhand comment about their tactics, then had to explain what guerrilla warfare was to Alicia.

  But Alicia had a point. Kai and Syl did in half an hour what Alicia's full party did in the better part of a day.

  Realising they were ahead of schedule, Syl, much to Kai’s surprise, approved the grinding of the floor for the rest of the day.

  That evening Kai killed the poor goblin they usually left alive and set up his sleeping mat next to the portal that led to the next room.

  It was then they found out Adventurer's stew was probably the limit of Alicia's cooking experience, as she absolutely destroyed the rabbit she tried to cook up.

  Syl too was useless in that area, as in her one thousand years as a system authority, she had not once needed to actually cook anything herself.

  Kai went through the motions of looting his gear and finding a tree off in the distance. His needs satiated, he got comfortable in his blankets and entered the domain to show them how to use a convection oven and distribute some of his basic cooking knowledge to the two of them.

  The rabbit they cooked together wasn’t bad, just a little plain. He was just happy it wasn’t reduced to carbon like Alicia's first attempt.

  To her credit, Alicia had taken plenty of notes and even said she had some spices that should work the next time she tackled lunch.

  He was just happy his dismantle ability did most of the prep work, such as skinning the little animal and removing the innards, because he didn’t have a clue where to begin with that. Modern living had robbed him of that skill set, and he had to wonder what else he might now struggle with in this new world.

  He had to return to the dungeon to eat his portion, which in a way was a blessing because Syl was dropping massive hints about a bigger bed that he didn’t quite feel comfortable sharing with the two seductively beautiful women. Syl was Syl, but Alicia was a different story. While she didn’t outright object, her wide-eyed expression spoke volumes, and even he managed to pick up on it.

  That and he had no clue where he and Alicia sat on the whole el’vei human age thing. He wasn’t even human anymore, so how did that work? No, he was going to have a long conversation with Thanric before he got himself into any trouble.

  Sleeping in the dungeon was weird; it was the same time of day every time they entered the forest, but time still passed, and it quickly got darker. He thought about how much harder the room must be if you had to go goblin hunting in the dark.

  Kai had a pleasant surprise as a mass of stars the like he had never seen before came out to greet him. He had always liked the stars, but with light pollution, he had never seen a true night sky with his own eyes. Though he was in a dungeon, so was this really a true sky; he decided it didn’t matter; it was so beautiful.

  Kai awoke the next day to a flickering cyan flame for an alarm clock. Apparently the dungeon air agreed with him, and he had slept like a log.

  The fourth room was again much of the same. Just a few more goblins to take care of. If there were any more changes than that, they were inconsequential and he didn’t notice them.

  Syl agreed to grind the floor as much as they could before moving on to the fifth floor around midday.

  How Syl was actually tracking the time of day, Kai didn’t know. He had lost track of things long ago, and if Syl got distracted and they ended up running the room a few more times than they planned, that wouldn’t be his fault.

  Kai didn’t even know how time on Alea matched up with Earth. He had been measuring things in days, hours, minutes, and seconds so far. Syl and Alicia hadn’t said anything, so he tried to not let the subject stick in his mind. He worried about it when it mattered; for now it was kind of convenient.

  About mid-afternoon, Syl had complained he didn’t keep to the midday plan.

  Apparently, she was mediating in the domain and lost track of time killing little green men with him.

  After he tried his excuse that he had no way to track time, Syl pointed out he had access to a system clock that had escaped his attention the whole time.

  Eventually Syl actually admitted she was having fun. Apparently getting to actually kill goblins like this was quite cathartic after years of watching millions of system initiates struggle to do it in the tutorials.

  They cleared the camp a few more times before finishing the floor and doing some hunting. Kai had some ducks by the river that ran along the bottom of the forest valley, and he wanted to expand the dinner menu.

  The ducks were a pain, and they missed more often than not.

  Kai found himself worried Alea might not have the domesticated chicken. He tried describing the plump, tasty bird that laid eggs each day to Alicia, but the closest thing to what he described was a type of lesser cockatrice that people had in fact domesticated. He prayed they at least tasted like chicken.

  The next day Kai finally got his first rare spawn on their first run of the fifth room of the forest set, the tenth room of the dungeon.

  They took out the two sentries at the start of the room with practiced ease. They didn’t even have to scout them out anymore, as after so many different runs, picking the little green men out among the trees seemed trivial.

  But something was clearly wrong when they approached the goblin camp. It was far too quiet, and none of the perimeter guards were anywhere to be seen.

  Confused, they approached the camp cautiously, looking for a spot Kai could hold up while Syl scouted the camp.

  They were expecting some kind of camp leader, a hobgoblin of some kind, according to Alicia. Instead, Syl appeared by his side.

  “Rune bear, follow me now.” Syl whispered, “We need to get downwind so it can’t smell you. And don’t use any magic until we are ready. These things can sense it.”

  Kai followed Syl's orange flame as carefully as he could. ‘What’s a rune bear?’ he asked, using their connection.

  “Think grizzly but twice as big, twice as mean and magically attuned. It’s level thirteen, and it’s already wiped out the goblin camp.”

  ‘Magically attuned?’

  “Their roar will stun you; its attacks are empowered, and it sensed me when I did a flyby. Luckily it was too busy eating goblins, so it wasn't too fussed with me.”

  ‘Level thirteen seems a bit steep; do you think we can take it?”

  “It may have wiped out the goblins, but they got their lump of flesh; it’s already wounded. I am surprised the goblins didn’t break and run the moment it showed up. It actually looks like the goblins were protecting something.”

  Syl brought Kai down and around to head in towards the camp from a different direction.

  He finally got a look at the rune bear as it pawed at the spot the goblin shaman in charge usually lounged on, a pile of hides. The massive beast was covered in matted blood and littered with crossbow bolts. He would have expected the bear-turned hedgehog to be more perturbed by all its quills, but it seemed more interested in something in that area, as after a few big sniffs at the bare soil, it started to dig.

  ‘What's the plan of attack?’ Kai asked through their connection as he ignored the bad feeling he was getting.

  ‘We both have full mana. We throw up a couple of low barriers to slow it down while we mana bolt it to death. That should just about do it.’ Syl replied in kind.

  ‘What, no escape plan?’

  ‘Run like hell back to the entrance. But it shouldn't come to that; it’s only level thirteen, and together we're a bit overpowered.’

  ‘I’m level two, Syl!’ Kai was surprised with how flippant Syl was being.

  ‘There’s an achievement for killing something ten levels above you. You’ve done it before. We have near-unlimited mana while we have a supply of mana potions, and I just about got the hang of multicasting.’

  ‘Right fine, is this the best spot? No bolder we can get on top of?’ Kai asked as he looked about, seeing nothing but trees around the clearing the goblin camp was set up in.

  ‘No boulders big enough. This is the best spot downwind… I know you have been working on your explosive bolt, but the rune bear's hide is thick; use the fast armour-penetrating bolts you came up with.’

  Kai nodded and summoned a set of four compressed mana bolts at her prompting.

  The moment he did, the bear lifted its head and looked right at him with its amber eyes that shone the moment they locked on him.

  “Shit,” was all he managed to say as the bear stood to its full height and roared.

  As the roar hit him, he froze for just a moment as he watched three barriers appear between him and the battle-scarred beast.

  Coming to his senses as quickly as he could, Kai fired off all four bolts at its exposed chest. He was aiming for the area he estimated the heart to be in. Unfortunately, in his haste, his aim was a little off. Fortunately, the target was so large it was difficult to miss completely.

  The rune bear roared in pain as it crashed back down to all fours.

  His mana bolts actually did surprising damage as they easily ripped into the thick hide; the spell broke apart before they could pass through the bear's bulk. There was an audible thump with each hit, and he could have sworn he saw a faint blue glow light up the bear from the inside.

  “Was that it?” Kai asked foolishly.

  “Don’t stop until we get the kill notification, you idiot!” Syl cried out as she opened up on the bear herself, firing a modest two mana bolts at a time.

  Kai didn’t need to be told twice, and he opened back up on the bear, firing off his four mana bolts in quick succession. Between Syl and him, they literally lit the bear up.

  With a faint yellow glow shining through its fur coat, the rune bear picked itself up and moved on them. Its giant paw tearing through the first barrier like it was nothing.

  “Reinforce the barriers!” he shouted as he dug deeper, calling up five, then six, mana bolts at a time.

  Kai started to back with each shot as Syl’s barrage stopped, thicker barriers springing up to overlap the ones that still remained.

  “My mana pool's empty.” Kai said again as he felt the bolts he was firing off change slightly.

  The bear hit the reinforced barrier and actually slowed as its paw got caught in the magic.

  Something seemed wrong; the bear didn’t seem to be weakening; it actually seemed to be getting stronger. Glowing patterns emerged, and Kai understood why it was called a rune bear.

  Syl hit the bear with a stun spell, but in the time she used to switch to her telekinesis to grab its back leg and pull it back, the beast had already recovered and shook her attempt to keep it in place off.

  It was then Kai noticed something else: together they had hit the bear dozens of times, penetrating its hide each time. Yet there was no fresh blood; the wounds they were inflicting were closing as fast as they could make them.

  “It’s regenerating!”

  “I noticed I’m adding more barriers.” Syl said as she constructed spell after spell in an attempt to pin it down.

  Kai used the opportunity to switch from his scattered attacks to focus on the head. but his flurry of attacks tore away flesh as the skull itself seemed too thick for his bolts to pierce; the shots just cracked against the now-exposed bone.

  “It’s blinded!” Syl said as she tried whatever she could think of to hinder its movement.

  Blinded and trying to break free of its confinement, the bear thrashed unpredictably as it started to panic.

  “I think it's healing itself faster than we can damage it,” Kai called out as he watched some of its torn flesh start to creep back across the bone.

  “It's over level ten; I wouldn't be surprised if it has some kind of basic regeneration.”

  Kai, feeling that he once again emptied his mana, decided he needed something a little extra or to run like a very fast, very athletic little girl.

  “Keep it contained; I’m going to go for a much more powerful shot. I want to destroy the brain.”

  “These potions are disgusting, by the way.” Syl moaned.

  Kai called up just one of his mana bolts, “Get ready to drink another one.”

  He gave the bolt a thicker shell and started to pour mana into it.

  “Wait, that’s dangerous; you could blow us both up!” Syl said.

  It was too late. In just the time it took Syl to warn him, Kai had already poured all he had into the spell. He only stopped feeding mana because he felt a faint headache. Satisfied, he struggled to control the thing. He then made things a whole lot worse as he started pressing in with what mana he had left to compress the whole thing. He knew that too much force in too little of a space equalled an explosion, and that was exactly what he wanted.

  A piercing pain behind his eyes threatened just before he felt a fresh wave of mana clear his mind.

  Satisfied Kai held the mana storm with all the control he had and started walking towards the bear that was now collapsing barriers as fast as Syl could put them up. He couldn’t afford to miss, so that meant he had to get closer.

  When Kai got to within just three meters of the bear and watched one bloodshot eye lock on him the moment it regenerated, he decided he was close enough.

  He focused all his intent on the broad head of the beast, and when he was certain he would hit, he unleashed the attack.

  The bolt shot off faster than any bolt he had constructed before, hitting the bear clean between the eyes; it penetrated its thick skull and exploded.

  It was then Kai concluded he would not recommend being within three meters of anything that was exploding.

  Bits of rune bear went everywhere as Kai flew backward.

  You have killed the terror of the woods. Lv. 13

  Kai sat up from where he had landed.

  “Syl… You didn’t say it was a named rune bear.” Kai said through gritted teeth.

  “Still a rune bear, just tougher.” Syl said it as if it was nothing. “Now quiet, I need to go level up… If I’m quick, I think I can do it two, possibly three, times.” Syl said as she vanished.

  Achievement unlocked.

  Great Monster Slayer.

  You have shown skill, determination and possibly a little bit of madness slaying something ten levels above your own. Killing above your level has a greater return, and your aura is enhanced by each achievement.

  Kai walked over to the rune bear's corpse. The head was completely gone, but the rest of its carcass remained.

  He tutted.

  The massive bear had been blown back a good meter, and as Kai looked it over, noting how few open wounds there were, he realised they would have been in deep shit had he not decided to go all out in the end.

  Looting the corpse, Kai sat down to do his own level-ups before he lost the essence he needed to Syl.

  He needed all the levels he could get if this was what awaited him deeper in the dungeon.

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