It was the second day on the road, and Buster was bored out of his enormous, floppy-eared mind.

  The caravan had settled into a slow, predictable rhythm. Wagon wheels creaked, hooves clopped, Pixie had already discovered and rolled in five different piles of forest-scented disaster, and Moose had entered his hundred-yard silent perimeter patrol mode.

  Buster watched Ethan as he sat on a crate, legs stretched out in front of him, carefully working with copper bits and pieces. He was running tests—two different kinds.

  First, Ethan would gather nine copper bits in his palm—far below the system's natural threshold for merging—and shove mana into them. Just enough to replace what was missing. The soft amber glow of the bits would intensify, pulse once, and finally snap into a proper copper piece: a sharp little tetrahedron with a darker, steadier glow and faint glowing runes along its edges.

  Then Ethan would switch to the second method. This time, just one copper bit. Ethan would hold it in his hand and shove a much larger amount of mana into it—trying to see if he could substitute the missing nine bits purely with magic. This whole test was just to see if brute force and big mana could replace doing it the smart way. Spoiler: it couldn't. It worked, but the glow was harsher. The merge was slower. The cost was higher.

  After each test, Ethan would go quiet, watching his mana bar tick downward, then rise again. He tried to keep track of the numbers in his head—efficiency, cost per piece, recovery rates, control thresholds.

  Buster thought Ethan was saving mana doing it the first way. The method where Ethan held nine bits in his hand and only had to cover the gap. That one cost way less. Buster was completely sure. He did all of the calculations, and he knew why.

  The more mana Ethan had in his pool, the faster it came back. Buster had noticed it days ago. When Ethan was nearly full, his regen ticked up like crazy. But when Ethan dropped low—really low—he practically stalled out. It was like the system punished him for emptying the tank.

  And a single copper piece didn’t cost that much. Not like the platinum bit. That had nearly killed him. These were small. Controlled. Just enough to test and learn the system safely.

  So now Ethan was testing that theory, over and over.

  Nine bits and a little mana, or one bit and a lot?

  After each test, Ethan would pause and recalculate mentally, tracking exactly how much mana each method consumed. Buster knew what he was trying to figure out. Which method was more efficient?

  Buster didn’t care. Not really.

  Except he did care.

  Because Ethan was doing math.

  Ethan kept muttering under his breath between merges. "Why does the rate keep shifting? It’s fast sometimes, then suddenly slows down even though I’m doing the same thing. That doesn’t make sense. Nothing about it makes sense. Maybe the dice are interfering somehow? Or it’s all just random noise?"”

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  Buster felt the numbers click into place in his brain. He tried to ignore them.

  He failed.

  If Ethan’s regen rate scales with the percentage of MP he has left, and his pool is 1420... then at 90% he’s regenerating like—UGH NO.

  Buster glared at the sky.

  I hate math.

  He’d said it out loud a dozen times since they’d arrived in this world. It had become his brand. His battle cry. His way of letting everyone know that, unlike the others, he wasn’t getting sucked into all this menu math—no, wait. Number sorcery. Yeah. That sounded worse.

  And yet...

  He could feel the truth. In numbers. In balance. In ratios. He liked when they added up. He liked the click of an equation finishing itself.

  And now, thanks to this stupid copper bit merging Ethan kept messing with, Buster couldn’t stop calculating.

  Ethan’s mana recharge rate wasn’t flat. It scaled—curved upward the closer Ethan stayed to full. Less efficient near empty. More efficient near full. There was probably a curve to it. A slope. Buster could see it in his head.

  He groaned.

  “I hate this.”

  Ethan turned. “Huh?”

  “NOTHING!” Buster barked. “I HATE MATH.”

  He did not hate math.

  Later that evening, as the caravan was settling into camp and Ethan was once again trying to "figure out" the mana regeneration patterns aloud, Buster couldn’t take it anymore.

  He exploded.

  “IT’S BECAUSE YOU STILL HAVE A LOT OF MANA LEFT. OKAY? If you’re at like 90%, you regen 90% faster. If you’re almost empty, it crawls. You want it back faster? Don’t spend it all, dummy!”

  The whole camp went silent.

  Ethan blinked. “...That makes sense.”

  “Accurate,” Moose said.

  “You did a big smart!” Pixie shouted.

  Buster stood there, frozen, tail stiff, face slowly twisting into horror.

  “Wait—no! I didn’t mean to—shut up!”

  He turned away, ears flattened in embarrassment, looking for somewhere to escape the sudden attention.

  Moose cleared his throat. “Are you going to say it?”

  “Say what?” Buster growled.

  Pixie jumped up on a rock like she was presenting a champion.

  “He loves math! Buster loves maaaaath!”

  Buster flopped dramatically onto his side.

  “Fine. I love math. I love the numbers. The clean lines. The way regen scales. I love it all. Are you happy?”

  “We know,” Ethan and Moose said in perfect unison, while Pixie nodded vigorously and Amelia tilted her head with what could only be described as a smug expression.

  “So happy!” Pixie beamed.

  “We knew,” Moose added.

  Ethan smiled quietly. “Yeah. We all knew, big guy.”

  Buster covered his eyes with one paw. “This changes nothing.”

  Ethan pulled out another handful of copper bits and gently set them on the ground between them. “Want to help me with something useful? I’ve been tracking how much mana it takes to merge them without going full ten. Trying to find the sweet spot where I can do it without risking burnout.”

  Buster pretended to look disinterested, but his eyes kept darting to the bits. After a moment, he sighed heavily.

  “...You’re measuring wrong. You need at least two decimal places if you’re going to calculate the optimal efficiency curve properly.”

  And just like that, Buster—the Pack’s strongest, grumpiest bruiser—became their secret math wizard.

  He never forgave them for knowing.

  But he never stopped calculating, either.

  And he definitely never stopped loving it.