I had to admit, the Sylvan Guard had a pretty incredible animal nursery near the bottom of the tree, where they raised everything from horses to messenger birds to strange kangaroo-like magical creatures they apparently used as scouts and trap detectors.

  Each type of animal was segregated, with little pens full of animals of the same age, where they could play and work off their boundless energy. They even had a small grazing area for the young horses.

  I felt pretty good leaving Galia in their hands. Unfortunately, the next several hours proved that we weren’t out of the woods yet, as our tenders fruitlessly attempted to feed our new friend. Keyword being attempted.

  Galia had no problem drinking—she happily lapped up the water she was fed—but she refused to touch any of the vast array of foods presented to her. We tried everything from vegetables and fruits to meat and even bread and cheeses.

  We tried large pieces, small edible chunks, and we even tried cooking the food to see if that would whet Galia’s appetite.

  Nothing even tempted her, and any attempt to force-feed her was met with stubborn refusal, even when I was the one trying. It seemed our mysterious avian friend had quite the personality—even as a newborn. I shuddered to imagine what she’d be like when she grew up. Or how large she’d end up being, for that matter.

  She’d never get there if she couldn’t eat, though.

  In the end, the tenders relented, retrieving her egg and scooping up the yolk inside. That, Galia devoured happily, but everyone knew it was nothing more than a stopgap measure.

  With no more of the yolk, Galia began to visibly weaken. Her appetite was voracious, and without the energy it provided, her innocent curiosity from before disappeared. She no longer even tried walking around, content instead to lie in place, unmoving.

  “We may have to force her to eat at some point, regardless of the fuss she puts up,” one of the tenders told us.

  Aerion shot them a death glare.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman said, “but if we don’t, Galia will die. She’ll eventually starve. Please consider it.”

  “What sort of food is in that yolk?” Aerion asked me after the tender had left.

  “I couldn’t say,” I admitted. “I know next to nothing about animal physiology, let alone their dietary preferences. Hell, we don’t even know what Galia is. If these tenders can’t figure it out, there’s little chance I can.”

  I had, of course, tried to read Galia’s Status Screen, in case there was anything useful there.

  It seemed, however, that the System was having a moment, because it initially showed me Rocky’s unhelpful Status Screen for an instant before a slew of System error messages replaced it. Those had then disappeared, and when I tried to access Galia’s stats now, it just showed me my own Status page.

  Almost like the System had gotten confused, thinking Galia and I were one and the same. Nor would it let me Initialize her. I kept getting ‘Champion has already been Initialized’ error messages when I tried. Which told me there was at least some part of the System that considered Galia its own entity.

  Just that she was somehow a rule-breaking entity it was clearly never designed to handle.

  Cosmo, what the hell have you done now?

  I had so many questions for the next time we met.

  “You don’t have any idea?” Aerion pressed. “Nothing from your world, or those games you play?”

  I laughed. “If only. I was never into animal husbandry simulators, unfortunately. I drew the line with farming sims.”

  But then I stopped as a sudden thought occurred to me.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  “What is it?” Aerion asked, noticing the change in my expression.

  “No, it’s nothing. Just—one sec,” I said, moving to what remained of Galia’s black egg. “I just want to check something.”

  I peered inside, at the goop’s residue. The tenders had scraped up everything they could, but a little remained.

  “Something’s been bothering me. You know how eggs usually have yolk in them, right?”

  “Yes?” Aerion said. “It’s nourishment for the chick while it’s still inside.”

  “Right,” I said, looking at the goop that was inside the egg. That part looked about right. But there was something else too—something I’d noticed in passing earlier but hadn’t really paid attention to.

  Despite every instinct in my body telling me not to, I scraped what was left of the goop, searching, and my fingers came away wet with a thick, syrupy substance. I ignored that because there was something else there. Something that had caught my eye earlier, but that I’d never really paid attention to.

  “Is that… glass?” Aerion asked, staring at my fingers.

  “Glass,” I echoed. “Or something else that reflects light in a similar way.”

  Not wanting to waste the precious substance, I walked back to the cozy cradle they were keeping Galia in. She had several pieces of cloth and straw cushioning the bottom of her little bed, with several stuffed toys placed around to make her more at home, though she hadn’t touched a single one.

  The second I entered the room, Galia’s head perked up and she opened her mouth in anticipation, and she didn’t hesitate even for a moment before diving in, happily licking up every last drop.

  “You think it’s the yolk?” Aerion asked. “Or those glass fragments?”

  “I don’t think it’s glass, Aerion,” I said, reluctantly reaching into my inventory to bring out the soul crystal we’d looted from the obsidian dragon’s body.

  I’d never wanted to be so right and so wrong before.

  Galia’s reaction was instant, jumping into the air to claw at the crystal as if her previous lethargy was all a lie.

  “Whoa there,” I laughed as she failed and jumped again, relentlessly trying to snatch it from my hand. “This is for you, don’t worry.”

  I slowly lowered the crystal into her cradle, and she chomped down… without much success. The crystal was far too big and durable for her tiny, undeveloped teeth to bite into.

  She didn’t seem to care one bit, though, doggedly attempting to chip away at its surface to no avail.

  It was the most adorable thing in the world, and both Aerion and I watched on longer than we should’ve as the poor thing tried and failed to consume it.

  “All right, that’s enough teasing,” Aerion said, lightly pushing my arm. “We need a mortar and pestle to break it down for her.”

  “Only if you take it out of her cradle,” I said, not wishing to face the little bird’s look of despair as we snatched it out of her tiny talons.

  Aerion sighed, doing the deed with great reluctance. Despite plenty of soothing, Galia remained firmly stuck to the crystal as Aerion lifted it away, forcing her to tear the tiny creature from it to get it free.

  It wasn’t despair that Galia flashed Aerion, but pure, unbridled hatred.

  Coming from such a tiny creature, though, she only ended up looking cute.

  The black crystal now free, I followed Rogar’s example when enchanting Light of the Fearless, pounding it down until the crystals more or less resembled the flakes found inside Galia’s egg. I stopped there, just in case grinding it to a powder removed its nutritional value, as was the case with vegetables and fruits.

  That seemed to do the trick. Galia gorged herself on nearly half the crystal before falling back into what I assumed was a food coma, her belly visibly larger than before.

  “Well… on the bright side, we found what she likes to eat,” I said.

  “And on the not-so-bright side?” Aerion asked.

  “If this melonhead really only eats Soul Crystals, she’s gonna bankrupt us,” I replied with a bitter smile.

  “Sorry?” Aerion asked. “Melonhead?”

  “Her name,” I said, smirking. “It’s a type of melon back where I come from.”

  “You are not calling her that!” Aerion huffed.

  I shrugged. “Better than Rocky, right?”

  Aerion let out a long breath, giving me a look of pure disgust.

  I just grinned.

  “We can simply find her Foundation-level soul crystals,” Aerion said, moving right along as though our conversation never happened. My grin didn’t fade. If anything, it only got wider.

  “Sure, they’re a dime a dozen, and we have plenty of cash. But while that might work for now, if my guess is anywhere close to the mark, Galia will want higher and higher-level soul crystals as she grows. And if I’m not wrong—”

  “She’ll need those in order to rank up,” Aerion said, frowning. “That could be a problem.”

  “Tell me abou—”

  Galia burped a burp full of happiness, letting out a cute little puff of smoke.

  Wait. A puff of smoke?

  And before I even had a chance to digest this development, Galia, our cute little newborn bird, spontaneously burst into flames, incinerating her cradle and starting a blaze that rapidly consumed the room.