Bobo was clearly stronger than John now, at least on paper. Each successful hunt in the Ashenhaunt caves had nudged his stats higher, and the loops with the negative XP potion had quietly stacked those gains into something solid and lasting. Yet despite the numbers, he still walked half a step behind John, glancing up often as if expecting to be told he was still too fragile.

  After the stone repaired itself, the return to the underwater shelter felt like stepping from a harsh winter into a warm house. The familiar blue-lit dome rose around them, the eternal campfire crackling softly, the house exactly where they had left it. As the system confirmed entry, a faint Rest XP trickle already began seeping into Bobo’s bar again. John watched him pad slowly around the dome, shoulders tense, as if waiting to be scolded for something invisible.

  “Look at me,” John said gently.

  Bobo turned. John pulled up the pet window only they could see—the higher health, better stamina, the doubled and redoubled base stats from their loops. “These aren’t my stats,” John said. “They’re yours. You earned them. I’m not the stronger one here anymore, not in this body. That’s kind of the point.”

  Bobo shifted his weight, uncertain. “Still… scared,” he admitted. “Ashenhaunt rats… hurt if they hit. Big. Fast. If you weren’t there, I…” His voice trailed off.

  “And if you weren’t there, I’d be alone with a broken stone and a furious Dreadmaw,” John replied. “Strength isn’t about never being scared. It’s about moving anyway. You did that. Now we just make sure your power and your courage match.”

  He led Bobo toward the pot simmering by the fire—the Pot of Abundance, still dutifully refilling with inky negative XP potion every time it emptied. “Phase two of training,” John said. “We keep doing the loop: you rest here, gain XP, then drink, drop a level, keep the stats. But this time, we combine it with safer hunts. No more Ashenhaunt rats for a while.”

  Bobo’s ears perked. “Safer… hunts?”

  John nodded. “Outside the shelter, but close, the system keeps weaker monsters around village 105. Wyverns, here, are more like overgrown lizards with wings, gigantic in size, annoying, but softer than those cave rats. We use them as training dummies. You get to feel what it’s like to be the scary one again, just as when we started travelling away from here.”

  He let Bobo drink a measured dose of potion, watching the familiar flicker—level dropping, stats stubbornly staying at their improved values. Then they stepped through the watery wall and into the surrounding tunnels.

  The area around the shelter was different from the Peaks—less oppressive, more like a demi-plane built for trials. Thin-winged wyvernlings clung to stalactites or glided in lazy circles, snapping at each other over scraps. Their status windows marked them as low-level, Tier I, far below the beasts they had fled from before. These were no match for Bobo and John but Bobo had to feel again how powerful he actually was to regain his courage.

  “Rule’s the same,” John said. “But this time, I do even less. I’ll shield you if something goes wrong. Otherwise, you lead.”

  The first wyvern spotted them and dove with an indignant screech. Instead of flinching back, Bobo stepped forward, bone shard raised. John felt the surge of improved stats in the way the little creature moved—quicker footwork, surer balance, a sharper, cleaner strike when he sidestepped the clumsy lunge and raked his improvised weapon along the wyvern’s neck. It hit the ground thrashing, and Bobo finished it in an instant without being told.

  A subtle rush of XP answered, but it was very small as the creature was much weaker than John’s pet, and Bobo straightened, breathing fast but not panicked. “That… felt different,” he murmured.

  “That’s you fighting at your real strength,” John said. “Not the strength you think you’re allowed to have.”

  They fell into a rhythm: short bursts outside the shelter, picking off individual wyverns or tiny packs, Bobo at the front and John never needing to intervene. When Bobo’s level ticked up, they retreated to the dome, let Rest XP fill the bar further, then fed the loop again with another sip from the pot until his level dropped and his stats stayed inflated. Each cycle pushed the quiet, pale creature further from the fear-induced weakness stamped on his birth and closer to what he was becoming—a compact, efficient hunter built on patient grinding and hard lessons.

  After one such run, as they stepped back through the water wall and the shelter’s light washed over them, Bobo looked down at his small hands, then up at John. “I think…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “I think I can protect you. A little. Not just… be protected.”

  John’s smile this time reached his eyes. “Good. Because out there, in the Peaks, that’s exactly what we’ll need.” He ruffled the fur between Bobo’s ears. “You be ‘a little’ strong. I’ll be ‘a little’ clever. Together, that’s enough to cheat dragons and systems alike.”

  Bobo nodded, the old insecurity still lingering in his gaze—but now it had something new beside it: the dawning, cautious awareness that he really was stronger than the boy he followed, and that this strength had a purpose beyond surviving one more day.

  Bobo was incredibly strong and John was working on his pet’s courage—a rank C evolved hunter whose claws slayed giant wyverns as if they were parchment, his strikes carrying the precision and ferocity of a predator honed far beyond John's capabilities. Yet even with that overwhelming power, Bobo lingered half a step behind in the shelter's blue glow, eyes darting to the watery walls as if expecting the Ashenhaunt Peaks' horrors to crash through at any moment. The gigantified Venomspine Dreadmaw's shadow still haunted him, making his evolved form feel small despite the raw stats that dwarfed even John's unsealed parallel-world peaks.

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  When they finally slipped back through the shelter's dome—after days of skirmishes and training—John wasted no time. "You're not weak," he said firmly, pulling up Bobo's status window. Health pools that laughed at wyvern fire, strength metrics that could crumple steel, dexterity blurring into afterimages. "Peaks monsters shook you because they're wrong—too big, too endless. But here? You're the apex."

  Bobo shifted uneasily, claws flexing. "Still... feel small. What if—"

  "No what ifs." John guided him to the eternal campfire, where three Pots of Abundance bubbled: one with nutritious soup for stamina, another refilling the classic -1 XP brew for Bobo, and the third John's enhanced negative variant, tunable to drain precise XP amounts without wasting momentum. "We loop harder. Rest XP fills you, potion drops the level, stats stick. Then we hunt locals—wyverns near here are fodder compared to Peaks rats."

  Bobo drank deep from not his but John’s pot, the familiar tug hitting: level flicker down, gains locked in. His frame rippled subtly—muscles coiling tighter, eyes sharpening further. John watched the numbers freeze while the level declined, then nodded. "Out we go. You lead this time."

  The shelter's perimeter, in the forest, teemed with wyverns— parallel-world variants, scaly and snarling but no match for Ashenhaunt ferocity. Bobo exploded forward first, a white-blue streak. One wyvern dove; his claws sheared through wing membrane and spine in a single upward rake, body parting like wet cloth. Another pair lunged from a stalactite—Bobo twisted mid-air, slamming one into the wall with a tail whip that shattered ribs, then bisected the second mid-screech. Gore painted the stone, XP chiming softly as trivial gains stacked.

  John hung back, analyzing: "Faster pivot on the left—good. Don't overcommit after the kill." He flicked a Water Orb to scatter a distant flock, buying space, but Bobo needed none. The pet tore through six more in under a minute, hides splitting, bones crunching under paws that moved like living blades. Back inside, Rest XP ticked upward; potion looped it down. Repeat.

  Hours blurred into cycles. Bobo grew surer, less haunted—each wyvern a canvas proving his dominance, the Peaks' trauma fading against easy supremacy. "Stronger," he growled after a dozen kills, flexing bloodied claws. "Like... before. But better."

  John clapped his shoulder. "Peaks were a fluke. You're rank C for a reason. When we get back, we hit them smarter—with you as the fang." Bobo met his gaze, insecurity cracking into quiet fire, ready to reclaim what the Dreadmaw had stolen, his courage.

  After long trainings, John noticed the XP gains had flatlined. Wyverns near the shelter crumpled under Bobo's claws like foil, but their chimes barely nudged the bar—too trivial for a rank C predator at level 150. The parallel world's lesser beasts had hit their ceiling as training fodder.

  "Plateau," John said, tapping the frozen XP readout. Bobo flexed claws that could eviscerate drake packs, but his eyes still flickered with Peaks-born doubt. "Forest wyverns are snacks now. Ashenhaunt rats were barely worth the effort. We need bigger threats for real growth—or smarter loops."

  Bobo growled low, tail lashing. "Want... stronger prey. For you."

  John nodded, gesturing to the trio of bubbling Pots of Abundance. "Potion grind it is, then. Rest XP will help, but drinking a precise negative XP dose, dropping levels, stats locked higher will be the main strategy. Shelter mana regen lets me summon trial variants scaled to your cap. Peaks-grade Dreadmaws, but contained."

  They dove in. Bobo guzzled the negative experience brew—level flickering to 149, gains cemented. John channeled mana into his Summon Trial skill, spawning a white sub-space arena where gigantified Venomspines prowled at level 180 equivalents. Bobo exploded into it: claws rending spines like wet reeds, tail shattering jaws mid-lunge, Dexterity blurring him through venom sprays. A single alpha charged; he vaulted its back, Intelligence-guided strikes severing neural clusters before it could inflate.

  Sweat beaded on John as mana drained, but regen ticked it back. "Flank left—good! Willpower hold that stun!" He wove support: Aqua Bolts pinning limbs, Shield Barriers absorbing splash acid. Bobo dismantled the pack in minutes, XP surging meaningfully for the first time in days.

  The cycle repeated: rest in dome (XP trickle), potion drop, trial slaughter. Bobo's Health crept toward 19k, Stamina ballooned, raw power coiling like a storm. Bobo’s insecurity faded with each eviscerated facsimile—The Peaks trauma alchemized into fuel. By the loop's end, Bobo’s level stabilized at 151, caps teasing higher.

  John slumped against the house wall, grinning through exhaustion. "200's in sight.

  Bobo pressed his forehead to John's, rumbling deep. "Together. Always." His stats screamed apex; his loyalty, unbreakable.

  In the trial world, John pushed the boundaries of the system like never before, turning the underwater shelter into a relentless forge of power for Bobo. They had unlimited access to this pocket dimension—time dilated strangely here, stretching days into what felt like an eternity while the parallel world waited untouched and even more so the real world.

  The grind was merciless. John orchestrated endless cycles: Rest XP filled Bobo's bar in the shelter's dome, precise doses from the Pot of Abundance dropped his level while locking in stat gains, and John's summoned trials spawned escalating horrors—gigantified Venomspines, enormous wyvern swarms with individuals of higher levels than what they had encountered, even simulated Ashenhaunt alphas scaled to push rank C limits. Bobo tore through them with growing savagery, claws rending scales like silk, Dexterity weaving him through venom storms, Intelligence anticipating strikes before they landed. John supported from afar: mana-fueled barriers absorbing overruns, Aqua Bolts pinning flanks, tactical commands sharpening Bobo's instincts into precision murder.

  Months blurred into a year-plus odyssey. Bobo's frame evolved subtly—sleeker, denser muscle coiling beneath white-blue fur, eyes burning with predatory certainty. Plateaus shattered under potion exploits: level-up from trials, loop down to retain inflated stats, repeat. John's own capped power strained under the mana drain, but parallel-world freedom let him push quasi-mythic Water affinities to weave illusions and buffs that multiplied Bobo's output. Exhaustion clawed at them both, but shared glances—John's nod, Bobo's rumble of "More"—kept the fire lit.

  Finally, the cap cracked. Bobo's status gleamed, he had reached level 200.