[Xander – 13 years] → begins during Chapter 125/the start of Chapter 126.

"What was the update post about?" I read off a message while chatting with my chat in the first part of stream. "Um… was it not clear? Dad said it would be clear to anyone with a properly-functioning brain they actively use that it's an announcement that seven new players are joining the XSL SMP next Monday, at twelve-thirty in the afternoon, Mountain Standard Time."

I didn't think it would be clear but Dad assured me that it would and he was being honest. Was he wrong?

"We're not going to say too much about the new members," I tell my chat. "But don't ask the others for information. They agreed not to and pressuring people to give information they aren't allowed to give isn't good. We're letting the new players on the server not get asked a bunch of questions before they're actually playing on the server. That's just rude and mean and anyone who does that isn't allowed."

[3llaDraws]: did u see my fanart

"What's fanart?"

Chat's initial explanation makes no sense to me. Why would someone make art of someone else for free? When I commission Ms. Rachel for art, it's so she gets paid for her work (I don't mention that I hire her to chat, that's not their business).

I didn't know it was her I commissioned for the chat stickers, but she let me know who she was when I commissioned her again for the stickers for the server. That really explains why her art style matched the chat stickers for Sig and the others so well.

Once I get confused, chat explains that it's art that fans of content creators make of content creators they watch, completely for free. It's not something which can be used to sell stuff, it's just stuff they do to show their enjoyment of a creators content. That still confuses me, but it seems to make sense to all of them.

[3llaDraws]: u should look at mine

"Don't tell me what to do," I tell her, but I check her profile to see if the art's on there. "And don't draw me like that! Don't ever draw me unless I'm in long-sleeves, pants, and either socks or shoes! And only socks if it makes sense for the scene! Don't do that and you're banned! You're banned for telling me to look at your art and for it being like that!"

She drew me in a short-sleeved shirt which buttons up, but is completely unbuttoned. It's of Sig, Lexi, and me overlooking the ocean from near spawn and they're both in beach clothes, too. But I'll never ever ever ever wear an outfit like that. Ever. No, no, no! Too much skin. Too much skin. Too much skin.

"Xander?" Mom startles me from the doorway, but I can't look at her. Can't look at her. Can't look at her. "I'm going to come in, alright?"

I can't answer. Can't answer. Can't answer.

Mom enters the office and walks around the desk, then sets down a big ice cream sundae. It's vanilla ice cream with some strawberry and some blueberry ice cream, caramel sauce, blueberry sauce, strawberry sauce, sprinkles, gummy bears, banana slices, and chopped nuts. A spoon is already set into it, and she sets down some napkins as well.

"I switched it over to an intermission when you started melting down," she tells me. "And told chat you'll be back when you're ready, or that the stream may end here. It's okay to take some time to calm down, okay?"

Mom waits for a few more seconds, then leaves. I try to look at the ice cream, but I can't move my eyes. I barely noticed what was on it when Mom had it briefly closer to my face. I don't know why she put it so close.

The ice cream's going to melt. A spell will fix that. But I can't cast spells. So it's going to melt. It's going to melt. It's going to melt.

I'm not sure how long it takes to even try, but I manage to grab the spoon after a few attempts, then start eating the ice cream. I move the bowl to a more comfortable position for me to get ice cream from, then resume the stream.

It's past time to log onto the server, so I log onto it and do more work on the farm. Lexi greets me, but I can't respond so I don't.

Most of the underground areas for the farms are done but I don't feel like working on those to finish what's not. I also don't want to decorate with trees and plants right now. Can't muster up the effort.

So instead, I go to the island where I started setting up the vegetable farm. It only has potatoes and wheat growing on it right now, so I add in some more farm plots and additional layers to the ones already here. The layers of farms just repeat the things from the original layer, while the new ones with layers have lettuce, garlic, bell peppers, onions, carrots, and tomatoes.

Then, I return to my home and work on its garden a little more. It has a few flowers in it, and I'm glad I learned how to make it so that multiple flowers occupy the same block. Lexi was doing that for the buildings at spawn, and it looks a lot better than a single lonely flower which doesn't even take up most of the block.

What I work on today is adding in a small herb garden to it, then I find a good spot to build a sugar farm. That takes me to another island rather than the one with the other farms on it. Those take up a decent amount of space and I want to keep them all separate since there isn't enough room to have everything all on one island.

There's sugarcane and sugar beets for me to plant, and I make plots of each. I get most of that done before it's nearly time to end stream.

"Thanks for watching," I tell my chat. "Also, I won't be streaming on Friday. I'm planning on going on a field trip to the zoo. Tomorrow should still be my baking stream as usual. Should be, but it might change.

"Um… anything else?" I try to think. "For the XSL SMP, don't try and bother people to find out who's joining. But I will say that for the new players, there will be two Kenzibri, two British, and three Swedish joining. We're adding a third language to the mix, and that'll make three of each nation when excluding me. And we are excluding me, because the others are all doing lore."

Which will make it nine players who are performing lore, plus me.

[GarbledGargle]: do u speak Swedish?

"Oh!" I say. "You talked for something other than asking if I'm a black belt during my baking streams. Yeah, I know Swedish. It's a long story, but my birth dad is Swedish. Well, technically, he's half-Kenzibri, but his mom is Swedish. She's the sun dragon who uses sunlight magic for them when the winter nights are really long. I've thought about asking Grandpa Adrian if he could find out if she'd be willing to meet me so I could ask her about her sunlight magic."

Chat seems really confused by that, but Grandpa Adrian told me that would happen if others heard me talk about my ancestry like this, so it doesn't surprise me. He also said there would be a lot of disbelief.

I'm not lying, but normal people apparently struggle to understand things like this.

"And my mom's mom is from the Kingdom of Britain," I say. "She's from one of its islands. So because of stuff I'm not gonna say 'cause y'all are already being disbelieving, I do know all three languages. I also know French and Japanese, but we're just gonna stick to these three languages for now for the server. I wanted it to be three of each nation when excluding me."

And I'm excluding me because my last human ancestor isn't even from Earth and the magical creatures who are the non-human types of people for Earth don't really abide by the same nations.

For example, there are sun dragons all over earth. My grandma is the queen of them. There are phoenixes all over Earth. My grandpa is the king of them. There are unicorns all over Earth. My other grandma is the queen of them.

Therefore, my nationality could be considered to be Earth, but that's not actually a nation so it's not.

It's confusing and I agree with Grandpa Adrian that I shouldn't try to figure out how it works.

"Oh," I say. "Also, I've added some staff to the server. Three of them will be playing NPCs, so you'll see them interacting with the other players. Maybe me sometimes. The reason they're NPCs rather than players is because they won't stream content. There might be lore videos they put out from time to time, but I don't know if that's actually going to be a thing or not."

They asked me about doing that if the lore for the server itself would be augmented by them doing a lore video from the admin side of things. I'm not sure how that would work, but decided it was okay. They are under strict instructions not to interfere with the lore of the players, only add to it, so I can't imagine what they'd need that for.

But I figured it might be okay to give permission just in case there's something I can't think of. They are all adults, after all. They probably thought of stuff I haven't and won't just from inexperience.

"The others are admins who won't play an NPC unless necessary. Their jobs are to monitor the server to make sure all of its rules are being followed, and if the server crashes or there's an issue, it's taken care of quickly, and other stuff. One of them is actually being paid to create short videos from all of our plays on the server rather than monitoring and fixing and stuff like that. Snippets of interesting things which happened during the streams, for example.

"There are additional social media feeds for that, by the way," I let my chat know. "You can find them all linked in the feed for the server. This is another thing we're testing with XansonTV, having a server have a social media feed and then having sub-feeds for sharing clips of the members.

"It's separated into two types," I say. "Lore feeds, and player-by-player feeds. If something is a lore feed, it'll also be in the feeds for the players focused on for it. Otherwise, it'll just be in the player-specific feeds. They said they should be able to have the videos up within a day or two, depending on the content they have to go through."

I could just let the AI do this, but it's better to let a person because the AI probably wouldn't pick the stuff people are interested in. It doesn't have enough experience yet, I don't think, while a person would. This will also help the AI learn how to know what's good to pick for it.

[EleanorMakes]: they're being paid to do that?

"Who's being paid?" I ask. "The admins? Yeah. All of the staff are being paid to work on the server. Why wouldn't they? It's work and they have to take time out of their day to do it. They have to abide by rules, monitor people, not reveal information they ain't allowed to, and so on. It's not like they'd be doing it just for fun, like the content creators are. So they've got employment contracts and I'm paying them all."

Why would I ask people to do work like this and not pay them for it? That's just wrong.

"That's actually what part of the earnings from the server's merch is for," I say. "Anything with a player or NPC on it will have seventy-percent of the profit get split between the ones involved. So a poster of just Seb's server character would have seventy percent of its profit – what we get paid – entirely on his own. A poster of Seb's server character getting startled by the Manager would have them each get thirty-five percent of the profit.

"The other thirty percent," I continue. "Goes to paying for expenses relating to the server, including commissioning new art for the new merch and paying the staff. The earnings they get from their share of the seventy-percent, for the ones who'll have NPC roles, won't count as part of their pay. That's extra. And whatever the merch doesn't cover for the staff's pay, I'm making up for with my own money."

I have more than enough funds to do that and I'm okay with spending that on making sure the server has staff to keep everything running properly, make sure everyone is behaving, and to add in some NPCs for the players to interact with.

Grandpa Adrian helped me find the staff, since Dad wasn't sure how to go about it for a game server. Not all of the staff members have experience with something like this… but Grandpa Adrian suggested those two anyway and I didn't want to argue with him.

Arguing with adults is Very Bad. This is especially true if said adult is Grandpa Adrian. He can wipe out solar systems own his own and I don't want to find out what sort of punishment he'd come up with for me if I tried to tell him "no" to hiring those two.

As for Mom playing the Manager… that's not what I expected when she told me she could come up with something to play into Sig's and Lexi's lore while giving them another way to earn money. I didn't have any expectations, really, but that's definitely not something I thought of. Sig found her startling him really funny, though, so I guess it's okay.

"Anyway," I tell my chat. "I'm going to log off now. Bye."

I end the stream, then go into my room and change. While it's normally when I'd take a nap before heading over to Sig's to hang out with everyone there, I'm not feeling like I'll fall sleep. I'm tired, I can just tell I won't fall asleep.

So I change into sweatpants and a different long-sleeved shirt, then pull on a hoodie and locate my shoes. A few minutes later, I step inside of the greenhouse, which is warm enough I put the hoodie into one of my bracelets.

Berry told me yesterday that some of the crops were ready, and I even had Greyson test some of them while we were both at the workshop. I haven't been in here since any of the crops finished growing, though, and I want to take a look around.

"Hey, Xander!" Berry greets me, waving one of his arms at me. "Don't you normally nap right now?"

Since he's in the greenhouse right now, he's in his shrub form. He prefers it over his human form, so he sticks to it most of the time when in here. He also sleeps in here despite Dad giving him a room, but he does say it's because the bed isn't comfortable to sleep on in his real form.

Sleeping on it in his human form would be a better idea than in his real form. It's not made for that kind of body and I'm not sure how he was trying to sleep on it, but he might squish his berries.

There are three grown which he's left visible rather than hiding within his foliage. They would definitely squish if he laid down on them.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Though maybe he tried sleeping on it standing up? That's how he sleeps in here, since that's how that body is designed.

Oh. Did he try sleeping on the bed standing up in human form? Silly shrub.

"Yeah," I answer. "But I don't think I can at the moment, so I decided to come see how the stuff was doing. It looks really grown in."

Most of the crops he had his shrubs plant look full and ready to harvest in this section, which matches up with what he told me yesterday.

"Yeah!" He bounces a little, his leaves shaking. "That magic fertilizer you gave us worked great! Everything has either fully grown in now or is close to it. Wanna see?"

"Yeah."

Berry starts walking and I follow him. I get to try some of the stuff straight off the plants, though I let the shrubs pick them for me. That way, I get the best ones and don't mess anything up by accident.

I don't have time to check out everything in the greenhouse since there's a lot of different plants between its different sections, but I like how it is now.

"I've already given Lady Katie some of the produce," Berry tells me as we walk back towards the entrance. "You probably had some with your breakfast and lunch."

"So that's why they tasted so good, then."

I could tell they were magical to start with even before I bit into them, but the fruits and vegetables in the meals I've already eaten today really tasted good. That's because they were super fresh, picked at the best time, and was magical. Also because the plants are healthy and happy. There was also some with dinner last night, so he probably gave her stuff yesterday, too.

"Yeah," he says. "And it's a good thing you built that stasis box so big, because we definitely have extra."

The stasis box he's referring to is probably the one for storing the crops grown in here once they're harvested. Anything there isn't room for in the kitchen and other places. There's another stasis box meant for transporting food from here to the house.

"Why do you say that?" I ask.

"Because even just what's been harvested already is a lot," he says. "Since you wanted a variety of things, there's more growing than you'll eat even with your appetite. But we aren't going to set things up for just one plant, so there's quite a bit. The weekly harvest could probably feed you several times over."

"Oh," I look in the stasis box, which just looks like a black box with a door on the front. "That's… just from what's been harvested? In how long?"

"Since yesterday afternoon."

"That's… a lot."

"Yeah."

If that's just one day's worth of harvest, and the greenhouse will produce food all year, and this isn't even everything which grows, just that which was ready already… we'll have a lot more than we can use.

What else can I do with it? Some will go to Greyson and Cal, and I'll give some to Adam. But even that won't be enough to get rid of the excess. We'll have more than enough to feed me all throughout the year now by a lot.

[Sig – 13 years]

"Hey, Xander!" I greet him at the door and immediately shiver. "Brr!"

Xander's wearing a hoodie, as he has been whenever he's facing the outdoors or is actually outdoors now. Even with knowing and using magic to keep his body warm or cool depending on the weather, he still dresses like it's winter when it's cold.

Not that it's an issue, and he looks cute no matter what he wears.

"Why'd you answer in just shorts?" He asks as he enters, and the door closes without either of us touching it. "You wouldn't get as cold if you put on a hoodie and sweats, like me."

That was telekinesis, and he definitely just tried to subtly apply warmer air around my body for a few moments so that I'd not be cold from that flash of it. Since he's not mentioning it, I won't, either.

"It's just for a minute!" I answer. "Come on! We're all downstairs!"

"But we aren't?"

"I mean, that's where the others are and where we're hanging out."

"Oh."

We head downstairs to the basement, where Connor has Sam in a headlock and Isaac is pelting him with mini marshmallows using a rubber band.

"I'm not joining that," Xander says.

"Hi, Xander!" Sam waves to him. "Aunt Rachel baked cookies for us today!"

She did that during my stream and I had no idea. I did smell cookies, but didn't think anything of it because I was too focused on the chat, the construction, and my pizza and root beer float.

"I brought fruit and veggie platters."

Xander puts a platter of fruit and a platter of veggies on the table, then he puts down a small, woven basket filled with berries. They're light grey in color and have a mesh cover over their top.

"Don't things not spill in your bracelets?" I ask. "How come the berries have a top? The platters don't."

Which makes it weird that the berries do.

"The berries float."

"They… float?"

"Yeah," Xander nods. "If they're not attached to something or held down, they'll start floating away. They won't go very far, but they'll still start floating off. Oh. And don't eat more than twenty-five of them in an hour."

"How come?" Isaac asks.

"To be careful."

"Careful of what?" I ask. "Do they make you float?"

"If you eat around forty of them too close together, yeah," Xander nods. "It's in about an hour, so eating no more than twenty-five is safer."

"So it's not a hard rule," I say. "Just a recommendation?"

"Yeah," Xander answers. "That way, you don't go all floaty. They're used in certain materials to make them weigh less, or to let it be picked up more easily when the stuff inside is heavy. But they taste good, too."

"And I bet you know how to prevent yourself from floating if you eat too many?"

"Yeah," he answers. "And I wouldn't put them out as a snack if I wasn't sure I couldn't stop it in case one of you forgets and eats too many."

"What's the floating like?" Sam asks.

"Depends on how many you eat," Xander answers. "And you'll come back down after a little bit, too. The berries have gravity magic and it sort of makes it so you kind of just float around, but you don't go too high."

"Gravity magic?" I ask. "Not air magic?"

"You don't need air magic to fly," Xander says. "That can be flight magic on its own. Gravity magic's a type of spatial magic, so I wanted them because that means they'll have a better taste to me, since I'm an inherent spatial mage, and all. And they do taste good."

"That's cool!" I say.

"Is Ms. Rachel working?" He asks. "I have something I wanted to give her."

It's cookies or some other baked treat, isn't it?

"Yeah!" I answer. "But she'll be okay with it if you knock on her door! If it's what I think it is, she'll be happy to have it while she works!"

Xander thinks for a few moments, then nods a little in a way that he says he can understand that. He definitely has cookies for her.

Xander heads upstairs while Sam continues to break free from Connor's headlock, and Isaac returns to pelting them with marshmallows. They probably want to wait until Xander comes back down to try the berries so they can tell him what they think right when they eat them but me?

"Whoa!" I exclaim. "They really do make you float!"

My friends look over at me as I find myself slowly starting to flip. Somehow, the three of them didn't notice my ascension.

Half of the berries in the container caused me to float about two feet off of the ground, though I've pulled my legs up so I'm not actually that close. It seems like it's based on where my center of balance is, and my feet were what were two feet off of the ground.

I pulled my feet up because it's put me nearly up to the ceiling and I thought that would bring me back down. Nope. I'm still up here. Did they make me float even more? Now I don't want to try putting my feet down, in case that shoves me up into the ceiling.

"Hold on," I try to reorient myself. "This is so weird. It feels like I'm weightless. Ack! I can't figure out how to stop the spin! Hi, Aunt Rachel! Look! I can fly!"

Xander and Aunt Rachel came back down together and Aunt Rachel is staring at me with wide eyes.

"That's floating," Xander says. "Not flying. Flying is different. Did I forget to tell you that they make you float if you eat too many of them too fast?"

"Nope!" I answer. "I just wanted to see what it was like!"

"The rest are escaping."

So it seems. They're not flying as much as I am, but I guess that's because their effect is weaker individually. Though I would think it would be a lot stronger, since they were able to lift me up and I weigh a lot more.

"Can you make sure he lands safely?" Aunt Rachel seems pale. "If he falls from that height, he'll hit his head against the coffee table."

"The effect fades slowly," Xander tells her. "So he won't drop, just lower down. And he's sturdy enough due to his mana capacity that he'll just get a bruise and probably a headache, but not need medical attention."

That sounds more like Xander reassuring himself that I'll be fine rather than attempting to let Aunt Rachel know.

Oh, crap. Right. Xander has a fear of heights. Even if he's gotten better about it and can even fly on his own, that's when he's in control of the spell. Seeing one of his friends floating in the air with no control over it and very obviously not in control of his movements is probably making him panic.

Also, crap. This is actually really high, now that I'm paying attention. How sure is he that I wouldn't crack my head on the coffee table if I fell?

"Now that you're here, though," I say. "It's hangout time! Can you let me down?"

"Yeah," Xander quickly answers, and I find myself sitting on the ground before he's even finished that word. "I think I forgot to let Luke know about the floating effect, but he'll probably be fine. I got distracted because Parker was back."

Parker left for somewhere?

"Parker was back?" I ask. "Did he take a mid-semester vacation?"

"No," Xander says. "He got really sick before the school year began and had to be in a hospital. But he's apparently back now, and I guess he and Luke are friends again since he was hanging out with Luke and Seph. I gave Luke some of the extra fruit, too. There's a lot. We might need to reduce some of the plot sizes. Though maybe it'll be good to store them for while we're waiting for new growth, on the stuff which has to get replanted? But it really is a lot right now."

"Parker got sick?" Sam asks. "I mean, we weren't really friends with him, but he always seemed really healthy to us."

"Yeah," Xander shrugs. "I don't know what he got sick with, I just know he was in the hospital 'cause he got sick. Um. Ms. Rachel? You said you wanted to tell Sig something."

That sounds like he's trying to make sure that us talking doesn't cause her to forget why she came with him.

"Right," she says. "I misjudged how much food we've got left, so don't worry about cooking tonight, alright? I'll go shopping while you're at fitness tomorrow, unless you want to come with me. Then I'll go once you get back."

"Alright!" I say. "We doing leftover pizza, then?"

"Yeah," she chuckles. "Wanted to let you know now in case I forget later."

"Okay!" I say. "I wanna go with you!"

"Okay," she says. "Have fun, boys."

She heads back upstairs, and I look at the basket again.

"How many should I eat if I just want to float with my body halfway between the ceiling and floor?" I ask Xander.

"Didn't you say you wanted down?"

"For later!"

Xander glances at the berry basket, and I get the feeling it'll leave with him. He looks at Connor, Sam, and Isaac for a moment before looking at me.

"This isn't a wrestling-the-rest-of-the-time hangout, is it?" He asks.

"Nope!" Connor says. "We were just goofing around until you got back!"

Now that Xander's here, we switch to playing the zombie shooter we play as a group. Xander still doesn't feel comfortable having the controller, but we manage to talk him into being the player for about five minutes. As usual, he's not very good at it, either.

The whole point of this is just more for fun than actually trying to progress, but it still starts to upset him when he dies.

"You're not used to it," Isaac tells him. "Once you play it more, you'll do better. It's like any skill! Just gotta play more to get better!"

"World of Myst is better," Xander mumbles, though I'm probably the only one who can hear him since I'm the only one right beside him.

Probably because he can play a lot more casually and doesn't have to worry about dying with the way he plays. A game where someone can play the way they want without having to stress over things definitely seems more his style.

I take over the controls from Xander since he doesn't want to play anymore, then we return to gaming until it's time for everyone else to leave.

"See you tomorrow!" I tell Xander when we hug goodbye.

"Bye," he rubs his head against my shoulder for a moment.

I'm not going to complain about that, but what was that about?

Xander leaves, then I return to the basement and see that Xander did, indeed, take the leftover berries with him when he left.

Even if he left behind the rest of the fruit… and three boxes of treats. I didn't even see him do that, but we're all getting used to it. There were probably bags next to the backpacks for the others, too. Bags rather than boxes because they'll fit more easily. He'd probably give them more than he does when he does this, except their backpacks can only fit so much into them.

"Alright!" I stretch a little. "Pizza time!"

[Sig – 13 years]

Mr. Roger watches as I swirl the glitter inside the clear, inflatable ball. The purpose of this exercise is for me to show him my progress on a skill. Rather than the glitter all swirling in one direction, I'm swirling it in two different directions. The top half is rotating clockwise while the lower half is rotating counterclockwise.

This can be done with two different spells, and I do have enough skill to cast two separate spells at once, with some effort and extra cost. What I'm doing now is different from that, however.

Rather than casting two separate spells to make the opposite rotations occur, I'm casting one spell which rotates the air differently on the top from the bottom. Mr. Roger assigned me this as practice last week and it's so difficult to do. It takes my total concentration to keep the two halves rotating opposite to each other in the spell.

"Eight seconds," Mr. Roger says once I lose control and the glitter drops. "Not bad. How often do you practice?"

"I did that on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday," I tell him. "Just for a little bit, not enough to drain myself. I do rotations in one direction, then in the other, then both, then rest for a few minutes before trying again. Do that three or four times total, since you mentioned practicing is like with muscles and you shouldn't do more than three or four sets. But I do practice rotations at other times, too."

I know that's not what he meant, but I decided to go with that for the plan. Going for more than that in any one exercise makes me start to stop focusing on it and that just messes me up. I think it's some sort of mental fatigue from doing the same thing over and over again, but I'm not sure.

"That's a good plan," he tells me. "And the effort shows. Keep it up, and you should be able to manage it effectively indefinitely within a few months."

By that, he means until I run out of mana, not actually indefinitely. Apparently, regularly practicing a spell properly can bring someone to ease of casting within a few months. Most people with magical bloodlines focus on spells relating to their own bloodline as it's easier for them and they come more naturally to them.

At least, when it comes to basic magics. More advanced magics can take someone years to bring to casting-ease rather than months. Xander's an exception, but that's because he can actually see what he's doing wrong and fix it.

Despite that, even he practices mana control. That's why the Xanson Tech practice orbs exist, after all.

"Are you still practicing with your mana control orbs?" He asks.

This question always comes up after I show him my progress from the homework he assigned, so I know it's not because of reading my mind or anything.

"Every day," I confirm. "Well, school days. I do it for a bit after I get back from the fitness sessions at Xander's."

"Good, good," he says. "Okay, show me the rest of your spells."

Not literally all of my spells, just the ones he's taught me so far. I run through all of them, then he has me practice a few of them with some advice he gives.

"That's it for today," Mr. Roger tells me. "No new spell for tonight, just practice the ones you already know."

"Alright," I say. "Can I ask you something?"

"Go ahead."

"Do you actually care if your students are honest?" I ask. "You ask me how much I practice and stuff, and I'm sure you ask your other students those, too. But you can't know if they're honest or not, right?"

Mr. Roger chuckles.

"You know how Xander can tell if someone's lying?"

"It's an advanced form of empathy, right?" I ask. "One which is focused specifically on lie-detection?"

"No," he answers. "Though it can be, depending on the bloodline. But what Xander has is a mind magic which directly determines truth or lie rather than basing it on the emotions of those sensed. And it's something he inherited from my sister's side of the family."

"Your… sister?"

"Yes," he chuckles. "His paternal grandmother is one of my sisters."

"Xander says his dad's mom is a sun dragon."

"The queen of them," Mr. Roger says. "To be precise. And yes, I'm a sun dragon as well. I like watching hatchlings and fledglings grow, which is why I do these lessons. As for the shop, well, I like interacting with humanity and this gives me a good way to do so. This is something I've done in various countries across the world, though I ended up liking this area, and the main dragon who lives here doesn't mind."

"Main dragon?"

"Yes," he nods. "The dragon of Dragon Falls. He's lived here for about a thousand years now, and he's fairly friendly. You won't find his waterfall without permission as he's concealed it with spatial and other magics, but it's what the town's named after. And most of us don't mind living close to others. We have territories, but we're fine with them overlapping and we're fine with other dragons entering and even living in them for awhile."

That is so weird, and definitely not like what dragons in stories are. The only reason I'm believing him about him being a dragon is because he definitely knows I'll ask Xander later, and Xander will definitely know.

Especially since I doubt Mr. Roger would tell me that he's Xander's… relative in some form, if Xander didn't already know as well. I'll have to look up what a grandma's brother is to his sister's grandchildren.

"Back to our topic of the lie-detection," he says. "That's a magic inherent to all dragons. I'll let a student know I'm aware they're lying and not to do it again. If they do, then there's no point in continuing the lessons. If they're going to lie about practicing, it's to try and cover up the fact that they aren't practicing. Those who don't practice while taking my lessons shouldn't waste my time."

"Ah," I say. "Well, it's a good thing I've not been lying or planning on it!"

"Indeed," he chuckles. "Anyway, the time is up, so why don't you get going? I'm sure you've got stuff you'd like to do before bed tonight."

"Yup!" I answer. "The MMO I'm playing is releasing a new expansion tomorrow, so I wanna get the last quest I've still got left to finish done before then!"

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