Naem disappeared from the window and Lexie felt the pressure in the atmosphere ease. It was strange that she barely even noticed it when she talked to him, only now that he was gone. She thought about it briefly, pushing her chair back to rise. She went downstairs and heard the door shut behind Aiden. A second later, it opened up again.

"Litchie? What are you doing here?"

When she got to the base of the stairs, Aiden had a complex look on his face as he contemplated Naem's presence in his doorway. He didn't seem happy but he wasn't exactly mad either.

He was more perplexed. Especially when Lexie came down the stairs and said, "Naem said he was waiting for you."

"You were?"

Naem regarded Lexie. Lexie had a feeling that he didn't want her to tell her dad about how long he'd been there, but Lexie wasn't about to hide that from Aiden. In case the Eldritch Lord was up to no good, she wanted to warn him.

"He was at my window," she said and Aiden's expression became alarmed.

"The door did not allow me entrance," Naem said. "Neither did the windows. Did you change the lock-out mechanism?"

"Of course. You don't just walk into people's homes, Naem."

"You've never had a problem with me walking into your abode before."

"I didn't have a child then," he said and Aiden glanced at Lexie again. It was like he expected her to start freaking out at any moment, but frankly, now that Lexie had had two conversations with Naem, she wasn't as terrified of him. The fear and discomfort still tightened her muscles and sped up her heart whenever he showed up, but she was starting to get better at separating those physiological responses from real terror.

Lexie simply blinked at her father. "Is he staying for dinner?"

"No," Aiden responded. He didn't look happier about the fact that Lexie wasn't scared. He looked like there was a puzzle in his mind that he was quickly trying to work out. "He'll be gone soon okay, honey?"

He was saying it to comfort her, but Lexie didn't necessarily need Naem to leave on her account. "Are you sure? Because I think he wanted some more cookies."

"Less airier this time." Naem finally spoke up.

"Naem…" Aiden pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let's go talk in my room. Lexie, do you mind waiting a bit for dinner?"

"Yeah, that's fine. We can also order in if you want. Maybe some pizza. Mushroom?"

"I prefer pepperoni." Naem piped in, to which Aiden responded, "You're not staying for dinner."

"I honestly don't mind if he does," she said.

"I do," Aiden said and firmly gestured Naem up the stairs. Naem gave a clipped nod and continued in. He met Lexie's gaze as he passed by, but Lexie remembered the thing about not looking into his eyes for too long, so kept her eyes trained on his neck instead.

As her father crossed her path, he dropped and brushed a kiss on her cheek.

"I'll be right back, alright?" he said and she nodded as well.

After they left, Lexie went back up the stairs to continue working on the teleportation card. However, she couldn't focus. She couldn't stop thinking about what Naem said, about her never being able to create cards like <Out of Sight>, much less healing cards. Aiden had told her the same thing. So far, no one believed in her goals, even her father who always encouraged her no matter what. He'd warned her that it would probably be impossible, all because of some stupid system with arbitrary rules that didn't make sense.

The system might have been created to keep people safe, but the way Lexie saw it, that wasn't the case now. There were plenty of unsafe skills that it allowed others to use. There were people shooting fireballs from their hands, making weapons with their mana.

But cards were restricted from causing even half that damage. Maybe because card magic was for beginners, but it would be easy enough to separate beginner cards from advanced cards so that reasoning didn't make sense either.

It just felt like the system didn't want cards to be powerful for reasons she could not totally understand. Her welcome manual had said that she was pre-affixed as a card user because of an unmet quota. If they wanted more card users, then why make cards such a weak skill set? Why limit the effectiveness, and effectively punish those who were good at making them?

Maybe the system hadn't expected her to be as skilled as she was at making cards. Maybe it hadn't expected her to bend the rules so many times, to be so good at pathways. Instead of adjusting to her skill level and trusting her not to burn out, it simply stuck by the rules that barely made sense in the first place.

If this was how it was going to be, then why had she been pre-awakened as [Hero] in the first place? Was it all a cosmic joke? Was she the subject of an experiment gone wrong, the system trying to figure out what would happen if it made the most ridiculous combination ever?

Was that her purpose, the one Tate had mentioned? To be a stupid guinea pig who rebelled against the status quo?

Just as Tate's purpose might be to earn power as mundane, something that was also probably a futile task.

The thought of being manipulated that way made her angry.

Maybe that was the point of their presence here. To break the rules and see what would happen.

It might be a worthwhile cause if the system would just get out of her way.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.

Aiden opened it and stuck his head in. "Are you okay, honeybee?"

"Yeah," she said, tiredly. "Just struggling with making a card. I think I'm getting the hang of how to find the intent, but I'm struggling because the system won't let me make high-powered cards even with the generator."

"Yeah." He sighed. "I thought that might be the case."

Lexie looked down at her fingers, gripping the pen. "Naem said that I would probably never be able to make something like the <Out of Sight> card. He said it was impossible at my level because I'm only a C-Rank and I wouldn't have been able to use mana at all if my affinity weren't so high."

Emotion had her swallowing thickly, a bitter taste in her mouth that she tried to get rid of. She fought the shake in her voice as she continued speaking. "I mean, he's probably right. You said you burned out from making that card, and you have a huge well of mana. Meanwhile, I probably have just tiny, useless, trickles of it."

"Oh, sweetie." He walked in and shut the door behind him and Lexie was embarrassed to note that she was close to tears.

Aiden picked her up like he did when she was a kid and this time she didn't protest. She tucked her head into his neck and wrapped her arms around it. A tear rolled down her cheek, followed by another and another. But she managed to not make a sound. It was such a stupid thing to cry about, being a C-rank mana user. Some people had no mana at all, and there were mundane people who wouldn't get half the opportunity she was offered. She was an S-Rank scholar too, a rare level 7 beginner.

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Yet she was sad that she wasn't as good at magic as a man who had been termed the most powerful mage in the word.

Imagine how Tate feels, a thought slithered in her mind. At least you have mana and intellect points. He has none of that. He doesn't have family here either, or I assume not because he never talks about them. He's probably all alone. And that's why he feels like he has to do what he's doing.

After a few minutes of wallowing, Lexie pulled back and wiped her face. She didn't know what to say now. She was a little embarrassed that she had cried in front of her dad like a child, and she had left snot on his shirt. She tugged down the hem of her sweatshirt and tried to wipe it off dutifully while her father chuckled, amused at her shame.

"How about we take a break, huh?" he said kindly. "Today let's watch TV together at dinner. Or even better, let's go on a walk before the pizza gets here. It's been a while since we've done that, right?"

Lexie wanted to keep studying but that probably wasn't healthy for her right now. She could acknowledge that she needed a break and she wasn't in a good emotional space to continue.

"That would be nice." She kicked her feet to be put down and when he obliged, she held his hand. He led her downstairs and outside listening to the sounds of the night, the chirping birds, and the crickets.

As they walked, Lexie opened her system screen and saw she had messages from both Xena and Dewie. She would read it later. Right now she wanted to focus on her dad.

They walked in silence, enjoying the evening breeze, the overcast dewy atmosphere, and the scent of fresh grass. A random howl of a wolf punctuated the silence and reminded her of Max's friend.

"Oh by the way did you know that Max's dungeon partner is a shifter?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I thought shapeshifting was no longer allowed," she asked.

"It is, it's just one of those things that are heavily regulated, like necromancy. Out and out unrestricted shapeshifting is a nono but certain types of shapeshifting are allowed."

"How does that work?"

"For example, with wolf shifters. Only members of a certain Noble Family can shift into wolves. They attained the skill from the Fae and have passed it down through generations. The system doesn't grant the class to people outside of the family, per the contract that the family has with the Fae. Being able to shift properly also involves rigorous and specific training that the general public isn't privy to. I think Bane even had to live with wolves at some point."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. He told me that he had to sleep with wolves as a child. It's pretty dangerous."

"As a child? The system lets them do dangerous things like that?"

"Mhm. As I mentioned, the Fae have very specific deals with those families and everything is controlled to make it as safe as possible. A lot of the forbidden skills were like that too, another one being mind control. It used to be allowed, just restricted to the Mindmeister family, until the Patriarch became a villain. Then he was eliminated and the skill was removed from the system." Lexie's father gave her a sidelong look. "Remember Monty Ward? The hero you said asked you all those questions?"

Lexie nodded. She'd told her father last summer about the Monty incident and he'd been furious. He'd also ensured that her training involved intense pathway resistance exercises to make her less susceptible to manipulation like that.

"Monty Ward was really Monty Mindmeister. He changed his name to avoid association with his family, but his father's the reason we no longer have that skill in the system."

"But Monty is also…"

"His skill isn't true mind control. It's adjacent enough to be useful but not powerful enough to be a real threat like his father was. Nevertheless, he needed to be observed. He was given the option of working for the association where his powers can be monitored, or losing them forever."

"So they let him use it and manipulate people's emotions as long as he's a [Hero]?"

"Within reason," he said with a smile at Lexie's disgruntled look.

Good to know. So certain noble families had separate deals with the Fae that exempted them from certain limitations.

"Did our family have a deal with the Fae?" Lexie asked curiously. The name Sparrowfoot was an old noble name she knew, and though Aiden rarely spoke about his family, she knew enough to know that his father was an old Baron from a family that had lost most of its fortune.

"Not to my knowledge," Aiden said.

They'd walked far enough that they were happening upon the lake's edge now and saw Terry and Glinda coming from the hiking trail in the opposite direction.

"Hey my little banana," Terry greeted, beaming at Lexie. "What are the two of you up to?"

"Hey, Terry," Lexie said. "We're just taking a walk."

"So were we," Glinda said. "Until we ran into that loon, Frank. He's going crazy trying to convince everyone that he saw a demon wandering around munching on banana bread of all things."

Aiden and Lexie shared a guilty look.

"Yeah," Aiden responded with nervous laughter. "Crazy indeed."

"Anyway, we know he's insane, but we decided not to risk it because he insisted our souls would get snatched up if we continued. I have mahjong in the morning so I can't afford any soul-snatching shenanigans right now."

Aiden chuckled. "Thanks for the warning. We'll just hang around here then."

"See ya," they said and continued back to their home.

"What did you and Naem talk about?" Lexie asked as the sisters got far enough away.

"Not much. I just told him that he couldn't come to visit anymore. We'll meet somewhere else from now on."

"What are you meeting him for?"

Aiden fell silent and in the moonlight, his expression was shielded.

"Is he helping you figure out how to break the Tilling bands?" she asked and Aiden jerked around to her in shock.

Lexie was only half-serious, but Aiden's reaction showed her that she was right.

She raised an eyebrow, indignant. "You're flagrantly breaking the rules but I'm not supposed to? How's that fair?"

He bit his lip but he didn't try to deny it. "I'm an adult. You're a child." He stared at the two moons, peeking out from dark blue shadows streaked with slivers of reddish-orange. "Things are getting more confusing and more dangerous, especially with the dungeon mystery not entirely solved. I need to protect us."

I want to protect us too. Lexie pressed her lips together and clenched her teeth.

She would figure out a way around her card and mana limitations. She had to.

"What do you think about mana potions?" Lexie asked Isaac the next time she spoke to him. She was in Old Moulding with her Uncle who was chatting with his guild at Bane's house, not too far away. He'd assigned Lenny, Wes (Shaved Head), and Oliver (Curly Top) to watch over Lexie while she was at The Genius Bar. Her former would-be kidnappers were now lounging on a threadbare couch while Isaac tinkered with some mechs.

"The ones that make your heart explode?" Isaac responded.

"Yup. That one."

"I think they're a really good way to mess up your pathways and end up dead," he said.

"Yeah." Lexie was ninety-nine percent sure that was the case. But for some reason, the idea of using them still lingered in her mind.

"Although…"

"Although?" She perked up again.

Isaac shook his head. "Never mind."

"Oh come on, don't do that. You know how much I hate it."

He grinned.

"I think what he's talking about," Oliver said, "Is that there were rumors of a man who was experimenting with mana potions that work and don't completely mess up your insides. He even experimented on a guy, who ended up having his B-Rank skill explode up to like an S-Rank or something. It didn't show on the system but in real life, the guy became crazy powerful out of nowhere. He turned out to be a real piece of work and started bombing places with GLITCH so he got taken out by the [Heroes]."

Lexie frowned. "Wait, are you talking about a guy called Mouse?"

"Yeah. You know him?"

"Uh yeah..." Small world. Lexie remembered her father mentioning that Mouse didn't use to have such great abilities. He'd also said Mouse used to be smaller too. Did the mana potion give him a height boost as well?

Nice.

But that was beside the point. According to what Oliver was saying, the potions had improved his capacity by severalfold. That was exactly what Lexie needed.

But on the other hand, anyone who worked with Mouse was probably not a good person.

"I've heard his stuff works," Wes said. "It's just that he's very selective about who he takes on."

"Is he a criminal?"

"Nah. He's a decent guy, I think."

She turned to Isaac. "No offense but I'd rather hear what you think about him."

"Offense taken," Wes said and Oliver snickered.

"Well, what he's doing is illegal," Isaac pointed out. "But if what you're asking is whether he has a criminal history…not to my knowledge. He's just…"

"Just what?"

Isaac visibly ran through the options in his mind before he settled on, "An odd duck."

Lexie wondered what he meant by that, and Isaac added, "For the record, I'm not endorsing this guy, neither do I think it's a good idea, in general, to try to increase your mana using potions."

"Right," she said. As tempting as it was, Lexie knew that was probably the wrong path to take. It was dangerous and even if she got her mana increased, there was still the problem of bypassing the system restrictions. She guessed she could use Naem for that, but then she would probably have to sign a contract with him, which she didn't want to do.

But then she thought about Aiden and how much he was risking to keep her safe...

Was it selfish of her not to do the same for him?

"What do you guys know about contracts with the Eldritch?" she asked.

It felt like the air in the room ceased.

"You're trying to sell your soul to them?" Isaac asked.

"No, just curious."

"Well, they're demons so..."

"Not really." But she figured they didn't know much about that so she let the topic drop. "So this potion guy, say I wanted to meet him..."

"You shouldn't want to meet him," Isaac gave her a warning look. "It's really not a good idea."

"The Finder knows him," Wes said earning himself a glare from Isaac.

"The same Finder who you haven't introduced me to yet?" Lexie asked.

Isaac sighed. "Yeah, sorry. He's dragging his feet on the meeting. I'll let him know the next time he's here–"

The door opened just as Isaac was talkingand they all turned in unison to find a new customer at the entryway.

Or at least they'd thought it was a customer.

But it was Tate.

Lexie stared at him. Tate stared back at her, in confusion and annoyance.

Lexie was confused too until Isaac said, "Oh hey T. We were just talking about you."

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