“Pretty!” Melody yelled and reached for it

He promptly pulled another one out of his pouch and handed it to her. It didn’t last long in her hands and was crushed almost instantly. She really didn’t know how to be easy.

Michelle was inspecting the one that he’d given her when she heard Melody yell and point, “Mommy! Book!”

She glanced over at her daughter, then back at Taylor. “Well, I guess Albus is real, but you’re still insane. What would have happened if you’d blown yourself up?”

“I would have died.” He said while shrugging. “Now go ahead and crush that core so that you can get used to things.”

She just looked at him and sighed while doing what she was told. “I’m going to blow you up myself if you don’t start caring more about yourself.” She muttered.

They walked along in silence for a while. Taylor noticed that she continually made gestures in the air, or moved her eyes like she was reading pages. Melody had tried chasing her Grimoire around more than once and he had to keep catching he as she pulled too far away.

“Hey, what do you think I should do?” She asked after a while.

He frowned a bit and replied, “It isn’t for me to say. Even though I can make suggestions, whatever you choose is going to change how you live from now on. Your decisions will also affect the passive Talents that you’re offered, which can dramatically change the way that you take on enemies, or protect the children.”

She nodded and thought for a while about what he’d said before making a decision. “I’ll just go with what I’m comfortable with then. As much as magic interests me, based on what you said, it will be complicated until there’s already some collective information floating around. I’ll add my points to Strength and Agility to make sure we can kill things quickly.”

He nodded at her choice, it was a smart move. She already had an idea of how to play a melee fighter roll in a party from the games they used to play. Even though this was real, he imagined that groups would be built similarly, and the same strategies would be applied the majority of the time.

“Very well.” He pulled out all of the Level 2 cores that he’d found and gave her enough to Level 4. This left him with 29. He didn’t want her to get to Level 5 right away, her Grimoire needed to know which talents would best suit the way she thought while she was fighting.

‘Albus, is there any type of party system?’ He asked while she was crushing the cores.

:Yes, your Inventory page can toggle between the Inventory and what you would call a “friend list”. It’s a bit more complicated than that, however. The process actually links Grimoires in a way that lets them know you’re friendly. Different abilities that can apply to multiple targets are affected by the link. You wouldn’t want to cast a large scale curse and kill your friends, so to speak:

‘That’s more useful than I thought He wondered about the complexity of Albus’ abilities before asking, ‘what do I need to do to initiate a link?’

:You just tell me who and leave it to me. You should let her know that she will receive a prompt to create the link shortly:

“Hey babe, you’re about to get something similar to a friend request from Albus. Don’t take it lightly, it’s a link between Grimoires and not a friend list like in a game.” He made sure to give her the same warning.

Shortly after, a name popped up in a right-hand column of the Inventory page. ‘Zolis huh? She’s using the same name as our D&D sessions.’

:I suggest you start using these names regularly, if you could forget your given names it would be even better. Multiple kinds of magic can affect a being by using its true name. Your given name and your True name aren’t exactly the same of course, but humans are so attached to their given name from birth that it has a slight effect on one’s soul:

‘That’s… going to be a bit difficult to get used to. Maybe not for the children, but most adults will have issues with it.’ He quickly relayed this information over to Michelle, and both of them agreed that they would forsake their given names and go by their alias names from then on.

After the trip was complete, they stood at the top of the first hill and looked over the Slime field. There were noticeably more Slimes around from the first time Geth had visited the place.

It looked like Albus was right about their reproduction rate. The overall number in the field was around 500 at this point.

Zolis saw the large puddle of dried blood on the foot of the hill from where Geth had crashed into it. She realized now that he’d actually almost died, and decided that it was definitely a good idea to stay away from magic for now.

Geth walked over to the edge of the hill, pulled up his kilt a bit, and started pissing down the other side. He looked over his shoulder, “All right, go on and have some fun. Stay closer to the edges until you’re comfortable with taking them out.”

She rolled her eyes at him again and nodded before heading down the hill. He looked to where he’d laid Melody and Kael. She had fallen asleep just a few minutes before they arrived, and he still hadn’t woken up.

Carrying the two of them and walking instead of jogging had slowed their pace to a crawl. It had taken them nearly three and a half hours to get there.

He watched his wife walk down the hill and towards the Slimes that were further back than before. The first one she came to was blue, according to Albus they had likely taken on the water element by absorbing the morning dew on the ground.

He watched her somewhat timidly ball up her fist and punch out at it. It was really awkward, but the effects were amazing.. That awkward-looking hit splattered the creature and then sunk slightly into the ground.