Once upon a time, Uncle Dorthna had told a lovingly beautiful tale of a simple world. At least he had called the world simple. According to his story, it was a world filled with one people. They were religious, their actions and decisions guided by the words of the two false gods they worshipped. Yes. They themselves called both gods false gods. As for whether the gods were truly false, Uncle Dorthna had given no clarification.

  The inhabitants of the world were a race of pale, yellow skins. With three legs and four arms, they stood as tall as eight feet, sometimes ten. In Uncle Dorthna’s own words, whether they were some out of the way descendants of the infamous Asura or not was anyone’s guess.

  This race was called the Elvians, and they were a peaceful race. Conflicts were solved with the decorum of intellectual battles. Debates were often used, but rarely, as they believed that as sound of mind and intellect as debates were, they were, ultimately, a matter of opinions. So, they had games. Countless and created in multitudes as they were, these games served as their battlefield.

  Their games were designed to test them, rule them, control them. These games were designed to help them keep themselves in check, for as a race, they were averse to violence, to conflicts and wars. But when Uncle Dorthna spoke of the games that were most often used, it brought questions. If as a race you had games more complicated than chess or shogi, more demanding of physical prowess than races or weightlifting, why were the games of intellect so terrifying? Why did they have games like deducing the chemical compounds presently interacting within an active volcano with nothing but your mind and the body you were born with?

  So, it came as no surprise to anyone when Uncle Dorthna clarified that while the race was averse to violence and wars and conflict, they were not incapable of it. They were a ‘simple’ race on a simple world made popular by how easily they had dominated their own portals.

  In the simplest of explanations, they had possessed no recorded Chaos Runs in their history.

  With the story, Uncle Dorthna had taught the children of Madness and War, that while you should not seek out violence, you should learn to be capable of it, to be confident in it. You should learn to wear it as a mantle when you need to.

  So, he had used this story to explain to them the reason their parents were sending them to learn self-defense.

  The Elvians were the creatures on Melmarc’s mind when he opened his eyes. A race averse to violence but more capable of it than they had any right to be. Scholarly warriors, Uncle Dorthna had called them.

  Melmarc groaned as the light from the window hit his eyes, slowly washing away the thought of the Elvians. It was the harsh brightness of the afternoon sun. He could note the heat that came with it but could not feel it.

  When he drew in a deep breath, his throat was clear, and his lungs felt clean. The breath was so refreshing that he took in two more, each one deeper than the last. He would’ve taken a fourth breath if the third had not filled him with pinpricks of pain all over his chest and his sides.

  The points of pain were countless and elicited a grunt from his lips. Reflexively, his muscles tightened from the pain and seemed to cramp up. His eyes widened as the cramp spread all over his torso, embracing him like a vest that was two sizes two small and constantly growing tighter.

  Melmarc opened his mouth, gasped for air as he fought off the pain with nothing but his mental will. When nothing happened, he clamped his mouth shut and breathed through his nostrils with gritted teeth.

  Counting each breath, he tried to focus on something else. It was his hope that if he could focus on something other than the pain, his muscles would relax on their own. It took him only two breaths to know that it would not work. Then panic set in.

  Melmarc closed his eyes and tried to struggle, to push and pull and toss and turn. He tried anything. Unfortunately, the moment he began, new pain shot through him. This time, it was in the form of a throbbing headache. Like a thousand drums beating in a steady rhythm to a marching parade, his head vibrated with every throb. His vision waned as the pain assaulted him on two fronts and his lids grew heavy.

  When a weight settled on his chest, Melmarc couldn’t help the tear that slipped from one of his eyes. It was not the pain that birthed the tear but the helplessness in the pain. There was something daunting about being in pain and being unable to do anything about it.

  There was something saddening about being helpless.

  Surprisingly, there was no third pain. It did not come as he’d expected it to. Instead, he felt a slippery rubbing against his chest like the feel of a very slimy tongue. Even held in the clutches of his own pain, he was curious to know who would be licking him at a time like this.

  Peeling his eyes open through the pain, he found Spitfire licking his chest as if it was licking a particularly fine piece of meat. The demon lifted its head to look at him. Eyes of a starry night met Melmarc’s and held his gaze. Melmarc focused on those eyes even as his teeth remained gritted against his pain.

  Without breaking eye contact, Spitfire bent its head a little lower and licked his chest once more. The feeling of being licked was another thing to focus on besides the pain. With those starry eyes and the sensation of being licked, Melmarc distracted himself from the pain. It was still there, but the helplessness was waning. The inability to do anything to help himself was flickering like a dying candle.

  Spitfire licked his chest three more times before finally stopping. Breaking eye contact, it looked to the side and, surprisingly, only then did Melmarc really think about where he was.

  Leaping off his chest, Spitfire hit the ground and ran out of the room. Hopefully to get help. It took a moment to stop at the door only to look at him once more. After a while, it cocked its head to the side as if in thought, shrugged—at least it looked like it did—then left the room.

  It took Melmarc a moment to realize that the pain that had taken him in its hands and began molding him in a sea of helplessness had subsided. Whether it was because of what the demon had done or because of the distraction, he did not care to know. In fact, he feared that if he really thought about it and it turned out to be the distraction, the realization would bring the pain back.

  So, Melmarc did something else. He turned his attention to his surroundings, trying to ignore the fact that he was trying to ignore the pain. Surprisingly, it came easier than he thought.

  At some point in time someone had removed his shirt, leaving his torso bare and placed him back in his room. Ark was not the best at house chores and needed a lot of motivation to engage in the chores left to him consistently so there was no surprise that the room wasn’t at its cleanest. Over the years—to their parents’ chagrin—Melmarc had practically usurped Ark’s chores from him.

  It had been his defense that Ark was only going to do a poor job of it. His parents said that he was spoiling his older brother. Ninra said she would smack him over the head but never did. Uncle Dorthna didn’t care if the house was as dusty as a desert or as clean as ‘the surface of the heavenly road.’ His words.

  The books resting on the reading table were stacked in three rows. Each row looked like they had been done in a hurry, a rush job performed by someone who simply wanted to get a task out of the way.

  Beside him, Ark’s bed was dressed very poorly in clean blue sheets. It had two to three rumple lines spanning its width at the middle as if Ark had tucked it in at the sides but had not done a proper job of tucking it at the top and bottom ends. Once upon a time, this very thing had constantly irked Melmarc to the point that Ark had begun considering the possibility of him having OCD.

  “It’s just annoying to look at,” Ninra had hissed in response, smacking him behind the head. “Dress your bed properly.”

  At least the pillows are arranged properly, Melmarc thought, turning his head to the other side of the room.

  With the doors to their wardrobe closed, he had no idea if there was a tidy mess inside or an arranged set of clothes.

  All around, the room was acceptably neat if not for a few traces of dust here and there. Ark had not been very diligent in wiping down the room. Melmarc almost made a mental excuse for him.

  Letting out a sigh, Melmarc turned his head back in place and stared up at the ceiling. He had been avoiding it long enough, but it was now time to address the important question: How had he gotten in bed feeling so much pain?

  After a few seconds of thinking, the answer came to him like a wish from a shooting star. He had no idea.

  All he could remember was a conversation with Ark and a visit from a tall person.

  “I’m glad to find you alive.”

  Melmarc’s attention moved to the door to his room at the sound of his uncle’s voice. Standing there in baggy jeans and an oversized brown short sleeved shirt, his uncle leaned against the edge of the open door with folded arms.

  Melmarc cocked a quizzical brow. “Is that Dad’s shirt?”

  “How are you sure it's not yours?” Dorthna asked instead of giving him an answer. “You’re something of a monster of a boy, too, you know.”

  Melmarc took a very short moment to take the shirt in. He had a similar brown shirt, too. But the dimensions were wrong. If he wore the shirt it would be a little too large on him.

  Shaking his head very slowly, he said, “It’s not mine. It’s too big.”

  “It’s good to see you still possess brain functions.” Uncle Dorthna nodded like a doctor checking off symptoms. “You’re right, it’s your dad’s shirt. He’s not back so I’ve been playing around in his closet.”

  That was… confusing. Uncle Dorthna never played around in their parents’ room. In fact, as childish as he could be, it was clear that he was only childish because Ark and Melmarc were childish. Apart from that, his childishness was in his nonchalance.

  “Why are we playing in dad’s closet?” Melmarc asked.

  “Because we can.” Uncle Dorthna walked into the room. He took a moment to peek outside before closing the door behind him. “Think of it as me trying something new.”

  Melmarc frowned. Uncle Dorthna didn’t try new things. Not really.

  “Should I be worried, Uncle D?” he asked.

  His uncle snorted in amusement. “You’re the one with a broken leg, kid.”

  “Yet you’re the one trying new…” Melmarc’s words trailed off as his eyes widened in confusion. “Wait… what? What do you mean?”

  Uncle Dorthna paused as if he’d just said something that he shouldn’t. He waved Melmarc’s worry aside.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said as he came closer. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

  Panic crawled up from Melmarc’s stomach and settled on his tongue. “A flesh wound?”

  “You aren’t usually this panicky,” his uncle pointed out, not looking at his face. “Or were you always this panicky and I just didn’t know?”

  Melmarc was not always this panicky, and with good reason. A reason he was more than happy to tell his uncle.

  “I don’t always wake up with my shirt missing and being told that I have a broken leg,” he pointed out.

  Then there was a sudden burst of pain in his side. It was a flash, heavy, yet gone as if it was never there. It reminded him of being hit with a powerful blow while under the effect of [Knowledge is Power]. Oddly enough, he knew where the pain was coming from.

  Melmarc frowned as he looked at his uncle. “What happened to your side?” he asked.

  “My side?” Uncle Dorthna asked, slightly confused.

  “Your side,” Melmarc repeated more confused than his uncle looked. “Why does it hurt? And why am I feeling it?”

  His uncle slipped his hand under his shirt and rubbed his side gently from within. “You can feel it?”

  Melmarc nodded very slowly worried that he would suddenly begin feeling his own pain.

  “I guess we can add the concept of pain to the list,” his uncle muttered. “Not really the concept I would’ve advised getting next.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “What do you mean the concept of pain?”

  “As an [August Intruder], you will gain concepts,” his uncle said, removing his hand from inside his shirt. “Pain is one of many.”

  Melmarc knew about the concepts and gaining them. He knew of the Oaths and a thing or two about how they worked. He’d since deduced that he had his father’s Madness and his mother’s War.

  Now he had pain?

  “Does that mean I’ll be feeling people’s pain?” It was a daunting thought.

  Uncle Dorthna shrugged. “In a manner of speaking.”

  He still wasn’t looking at Melmarc. Not really. His eyes continued to settle on a spot just above his head.

  Melmarc didn’t like the idea of feeling everybody’s pain.

  “Anyway,” Dorthna bent at the waist so that he hovered over Melmarc. “What do you remember?”

  “Elvians,” Melmarc said without missing a beat.

  “Elv…” Uncle Dorthna’s words trailed off as he took on a thoughtful expression. He was silent for a while before speaking again. “That is an odd thing to remember. I think I told you about those guys when you were what… ten?”

  “Eight,” Melmarc corrected.

  Dorthna nodded. “Eight. Kind of odd that you’ll be remembering the intellectual warriors right now, don’t you think?”

  Melmarc would’ve shrugged if he didn’t think the action would kindle some kind of new pain that he was not aware of. He was still stuck on the fact that he had a broken leg that he was not feeling.

  “Moving on,” Uncle Dorthna declared suddenly, still leaning over him. “What else do you remember?”

  A thoughtful line creased Melmarc’s brows as he thought about it, knowing exactly what his uncle was asking for.

  “I was talking to Ark,” he said slowly.

  “About?” his uncle urged.

  Melmarc didn’t have to think about that. “We were talking about my mentorship program and the [Sage] I worked with.”

  “[Sages], interesting people,” Uncle Dorthna commented as if on a side note. “What else?”

  “We talked about the tasks I did and how I went undercover.” Melmarc smiled. Now that he thought about it, his life was beginning to sound like something you would watch in a movie or read in a comic. “Then we talked about how I got stuck in a portal…”

  His uncle still wasn’t looking at him, focusing instead on a spot above his head. Was he looking at his hair?

  “I’m listening,” his uncle said, urging him on. “What else?”

  “Then we talked about the creature’s I saw in the portal,” Melmarc continued. “We talked about the terrain, what the place was…” Melmarc frowned. Had they talked about the terrain? “I think… I don’t think we talked about the terrain,” he amended. “We talked about the monsters, though.”

  “Did you talk about fighting the monsters?” his uncle asked.

  Melmarc nodded very slowly as he remembered the [Damned]. A sharp memory pierced his mind and he felt his chest tighten. He could feel the pain from the blow he had taken to the chest. It was tight. Painful.

  His eyes moved to the foot of his bed and he was suddenly alert. The [Damned] hadn’t come out at him from out of nowhere. It hadn’t ambushed him. They’d been fighting and he’d made a wrong step, a costly mistake… right?

  There had been a very small chance that he wouldn’t have survived it. A chance that he would’ve died. What he needed to do was strike first and strike fast. Especially now, if they had somehow followed him back home. It was an impossible thought but portals often worked in strange ways. The monsters found within them, too.

  So, if the [Damned] had followed him back, what he had to do was—

  “Ow!” Melmarc exclaimed with a grimace as his uncle flicked him on the forehead with a finger. “What was that for?”

  “You need therapy,” Uncle Dorthna said with a frown. The words were surprising because, like Ninra, his uncle didn’t believe in therapy.

  “You don’t believe in therapy,” Melmarc pointed out. “And I don’t think I…”

  Melmarc trailed off as Uncle Dorthna pointed at the foot of his bed. “You looked in that direction and started gearing for a fight. Who are we trying to beat?”

  There was nothing at the foot of his bed, but Melmarc already knew that. He wasn’t trying to beat anybody.

  But you thought the [Damned] had followed you back, he thought in a slow growing realization.

  “But you don’t believe in therapy,” he repeated.

  His uncle moved back and sat comfortably on Ark’s bed. “I believe in therapy,” he said casually. “What I don’t believe in is your world’s version of therapy. Why would I want to go sit down in front of some random stranger and talk to them about my problems?”

  “Because they know how to handle problems?” Melmarc tried.

  His uncle sighed. “So why not talk to someone you know and trust?”

  “Because they’ll be biased,” Melmarc answered easily. “They’ll try to solve your problem based on who they think you are and not the problem itself.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” Uncle Dorthna asked. “It just sounds to me like it’s a more personalized form of therapy. Definitely better than telling my problems to a stranger for a price. And why do I have to pay?”

  “Transactional trust?” Melmarc suggested. When Uncle Dorthna gave him a dry look, he added: “It’s easier to trust that a person will do their job properly if they have a tangible benefit that comes with getting the job done. Then you pick a stranger because they have the lowest chance of using your problems to ruin your life socially. Why? Because they do not know the people in your circle that they can go blabbering to. And if they go blabbering to the people in their circle, the chances of it getting to the people in your circle are very unlikely. Then there’s the trust that they’ll keep your secret because you can justifiably ruin their lives if they don’t.”

  “By suing them to your court of law?” his uncle asked.

  Melmarc nodded.

  With a tired sigh, Uncle Dorthna folded his arms over his chest. “Well, you need therapy, and not therapy from some stranger.”

  “We have a family therapist,” Melmarc corrected, even though Uncle Dorthna was already supposed to know this.

  His uncle waved the words aside. “Still a stranger. You people only talk to strangers because you believe they possess the skills required to help you and, because with all the money paid and everything, you think they won’t shiv you in the back.”

  Melmarc intentionally ignored his uncle’s use of the word ‘shiv.’

  “Here’s my problem with your therapists,” his uncle continued. “Their job is not to fix you but to remold you. They don’t make you better. They make you better for society.”

  Melmarc said nothing.

  “Alright, you’re more of an answer and question kid, so let’s try something else.” Uncle Dorthna paused for a thoughtful moment before continuing. “If you come to your therapist with a problem and the solution is for you to actually become a serial killer, what would your therapist do?”

  “Find another solution.” It was a no-brainer. “There is no one solution to a problem.”

  “Agreed,” his uncle said with a nod. “But I’ve lived long enough to be able to tell you this. When it comes to people, while there is no one solution to a problem, there is a best solution to a problem. Now, what will your therapist do if the best solution to your problem is for you to become a serial killer?”

  “In this hypothetical situation, are there other solutions?” Melmarc asked.

  Uncle Dorthna nodded. “There are.”

  “Then the therapist will find another.”

  His uncle snapped a finger at him. “My point exactly. Your therapist does not fix you, they remold you into something more fitting for society.”

  “So they make you good.”

  Uncle Dorthna shook his head. “They make you acceptable. The perfect human is not good or bad or acceptable, Mel. The perfect human is the perfect individual.”

  Humans were social animals as far as Melmarc knew. A social animal was designed for a social life. What good was a human life if the person could not assimilate with a society.

  “Humans need society,” he said.

  “Humans need a society,” his uncle corrected. “But if the perfect version of you does not fit into the society you find yourself in, then it is not the society for you. Just the way people aren’t meant to be bad, people aren’t meant to be good, Mel. The man or woman that picks up a gun and goes to another man’s land to take it from them so that his family can survive is necessary. If you walk into therapy in a peaceful world and the solution to your problem is to be that man, they’ll lead you in a different direction. It is a direction that works, but it is not the direction you should be headed towards.”

  “But it works,” Melmarc said. “It is enough.”

  His uncle smiled softly, sadly. “Enough,” he said, emphasizing the word, “is no longer good enough for any member of this family, Mel. Your father is Madness. At all times, he must be at his very best or risk bringing out his very worst. Your mother is War and the same rules apply to her. Ark is a [Demon King], 'enough' will have catastrophic repercussions on far more stakeholders than himself. He cannot afford to settle for enough.”

  “And I am an [August Intruder],” Melmarc said. The Lockwoods were a powerhouse in their own right, it seemed. “So, what of Ninra?”

  Uncle Dorthna shrugged. “It may not seem like it, but she has it the toughest. She’s a normal human being who has tasked herself with keeping the Oath of Madness, the Oath of War, a [Demon King], an [August Intruder], and—for some reason—me in check. She probably has it the toughest. She certainly cannot settle for 'enough.'”

  “So, there is someone I’m supposed to be, and I can’t be anyone else,” Melmarc concluded sadly. It sounded like having a destiny and being told that you were not allowed to be what you wanted to be.

  Uncle Dorthna shook his head. “No,” he disagreed. “You are who you are, and beings like you and your brother and the people who belong to this house cannot afford to be some lesser variation that some therapist requires them to be for the good of the community.”

  “So, I shouldn’t be who I want to be?”

  “You can be whoever or whatever you want to be, Mel,” Uncle Dorthna said softly. “That is your right as a sapient being. Good or bad. Right or wrong. But you have to understand something simple. A lion that wants to be a jaguar is free to do so. It could even end up being the best jaguar to ever exist. But no matter what the lion does, it will always be a lion behaving like a jaguar. It will live up to the fullest of a potential, but not the fullest of its potential.”

  Melmarc thought about it. His uncle was practically saying that he owed it to himself to be the best version of himself, regardless of whether society accepted him or not. Regardless of whether his family accepted him or not.

  “It sounds lonely,” he muttered.

  Uncle Dorthna’s expression saddened, and he looked away. “Well,” he said quietly. “There’s a reason it’s lonely at the top.”

  He looked like someone speaking from experience.

  “If you want a chance to stand at the pinnacle of everything,” he continued. “You have to learn to be unapologetically you. Sometimes you might end up being the villain in the story. Sometimes you might end up being the hero.”

  It only sounded lonelier with every word Uncle Dorthna spoke.

  “But whatever you end up being,” Uncle Dorthna said, “you can at least take pleasure in knowing that you ended up being you. I have watched beings reach the pinnacle of who they are and come to the end of their story with a smile on their face because they knew that they reached the end of their story, not a story.”

  “And none of them had regrets?” Melmarc asked.

  His uncle hesitated. “Everyone has regrets, Mel. I’ve watched a girl reach the pinnacle and die, and her only regret was that she had waited too long as a teenager for a boy she liked to tell her that he liked her instead of telling him about her feelings first. In her old age—and she was very old—her greatest regret was in an action she had not taken at the age of fifteen. She had others, but that was the one that had lived with her the longest and weighed heavily on her in her final moments.”

  “Why was it her regret?” Melmarc asked, knowing that his uncle would have the answer. He always tended to have the answers to such miniscule things in the stories he told.

  Uncle Dorthna shrugged as if it was not important. “If she’d told him, then maybe he would’ve reciprocated and she would’ve been the reason for him to stay in their little sect instead of going out to fight a war he had no business fighting and dying in.” He shrugged again. “It's all that first love madness people sometimes get hung up on. In your series they call it the one that got away... maybe. I never said the regret had to make sense. I only said that everyone has regrets.”

  “So, you’re going to convince mom and dad not to send me to therapy?” he asked.

  Uncle Dorthna got up and walked up to him. “I’m going to convince you to convince them to not send you to a therapist. It doesn’t change the fact that you need therapy, though. What that means is that you need to heal. You are wounded,” he placed a finger on Melmarc’s forehead, “in here. And you have to heal that injury, which will take time. Until then, I’m going to do something that will help the rest of the world so that they don’t die because of your injury.”

  Melmarc would’ve asked what his uncle meant by that if he didn’t already have an idea. He was a Gifted now. There were people who got into fights because of things like post traumatic stress disorders. As a Gifted, he could only imagine what could happen if he had an episode around normal people.

  Judging from his current state and the pain he just realized he had completely ignored talking to Uncle Dorthna, he could only say that it was a good thing that Ark had been there to stop him from going overboard this time.

  As for therapy, he didn’t really need to think about it.

  “It’s lonely at the top,” he muttered to himself. “And the world may not accept you for you.”

  Uncle Dorthna nodded, standing straight. “But you’ve got two options. Settle for what society wants you to be and maybe be accepted for it. Or reach for the heavens and become who you are and maybe be scorned for it.”

  Melmarc looked up at the ceiling above. With all the maybes his uncle had tossed around, it all boiled down to two options in the end.

  Be accepted or be me?

  Uncle Dorthna was still looking at his hair. Melmarc was certain of it now. Since entering the room, his uncle had been oddly fixated on his hair.

  When it all boiled down to an answer, Melmarc knew which option he wanted. After all, his uncle had gone out of his way to make the option sound more interesting. Better.

  Who wouldn’t want to reach for the heavens?

  Melmarc nodded. “I understand,” he said, in the end.

  Uncle Dorthna nodded. “Good. Now, your parents are already on their way home, so I’ll just get you all fixed up.”

  He turned and started moving to Melmarc’s leg.

  “Can I ask a question?” Melmarc said as his uncle squatted at his leg.

  Uncle Dorthna turned his head to the side, surveying the leg. “Go for it.”

  “Why have you been looking at my hair since you came in?”

  His uncle froze then looked up at him. He gestured at a part of his own hair as he answered. “You’ve got a white lock of hair just around this part of your hair. I was wondering if you would want to leave it like that or dye it.”

  Melmarc instinctively moved his hand to touch his hair, and pain filled his chest once more. Placing his hand back down, he wondered how it made him look.

  “No,” Uncle Dorthna said, looking at him. “It’s just a white lock of hair. We can talk about that when I’m done healing you up. Its easier to explain to parents why the child they left in your care has white hair than it is to explain to them why the child is covered in bruises, has a broken rib or two and multiple fractures.”

  “I didn’t think you were scared of mom and dad,” Melmarc teased.

  Uncle Dorthna returned his attention to his leg and held his foot with both hands. “I’m not,” he said, gently turning the foot one way then the other. “But your mom will complain to Ninra who’ll have a number of words to say to me. I’m not scared of your parents, but your sister is a different question entirely. Does this hurt?”

  He turned Melmarc’s foot a little too much to the side and pain shot up the entire leg.

  Melmarc gasped in pain. “A lot.”

  “I see,” Uncle Dorthna mused. “So, you’ve got more than just one compound fracture. I guess the spell I had in mind won’t work… Let’s get to it then.”

  Melmarc returned his attention to the ceiling, hoping that whatever his uncle was about to do wouldn’t hurt too much. He could still feel the pain in his uncle's side from where he was.

  “Thank you,” he said after a moment. “For doing this.”

  Uncle Dorthna didn't look up from his foot. “It’s the least I can do after what happened."

  Something in his uncle’s voice made Melmarc ask, “What exactly happened?”

  Uncle Dorthna stopped what he was doing to look at him. “Oh, you wouldn’t really remember.”

  “Remember what?”

  “You lost your cool, started messing things up.” His uncle shrugged. “So I had to beat you up.”

  “Oh.”

  His uncle nodded. “‘Oh’ is right.” He turned back to the leg. “Now, once I’m done with all the spells, we’ll talk about your hair, because dying it isn’t all there is to be talked about. Then we’ll see if you got any titles.”

  “Titles?” Melmarc asked, confused.

  Uncle Dorthna gave him a flat look. “You went on a rampage and got beaten up by me. Going on a rampage might not be a big deal, but trust me, being beaten up by me is. You even managed to land a few blows here and there. At your rank, that’s probably the biggest deal.”

  That was… interesting.

  It also left him with a curious itch. But as much as Melmarc suddenly wanted to pull up his interface, experience had taught him to listen to his uncle. He also had another thought as his uncle poked different parts of his leg with a finger.

  I wonder why everyone’s so scared of Ninra.

  Personally, he thought his sister was lovely.