After my father dashed out of the hut to fight on the front lines, I hesitated. My father had asked me to stay inside. That made sense for most children - I could certainly envision numerous three year olds trying to prove that they were powerful now that they had a spark, only to immediately get wiped out by the much stronger and more powerful monsters of this world. That being said, I wasn't exactly normal by this world's standards. I had two extra magic systems I could lean on to enhance my strength, and my stats were above average despite my 80% reduction in stats. While that probably wasn't that impressive in this world, since everyone had access to the System, I still suspected I was a decent combatant - though I was open to being wrong, as well.

With all of that in mind, I wasn't really enthused at the idea of sitting around while my father risked his life fighting against a horde of monsters. I didn' care how normal that was for this world - in the few days I had been conscious, my father had been nothing but kind and supportive. I wanted to make sure he didn't get hurt or killed on the battlefield. Unfortunately, it would be difficult for me to just hop into the battlefield and lend a hand. I was two years old. The difference between my height and physique and the proper defenders of the town would be blatantly obvious, and I suspected most other people would heartily agree with my father's belief that children had no place on a battlefield.

Was there a way that I could contribute to the battlefield without running into problems? If possible, a method where nobody would even know that I had taken action in the first place?

A moment later, I tried something new. First, I used my spatial sight to get a good view of the surrounding area. There was plenty of moisture in the air in this world, since there was thick snow everywhere, and so I didn't have a very hard time finding water to use my spatial sight with. I chose the highest spot I could reach with my essence, and then did my best to get a bird's eye view of where we had stopped.

True to what my father had said, the ember we had been following for all of the time had stopped moving. It was now hovering firmly in place, and as far as I could tell, the light and heat that emanated from it had dimmed for some reason. Previously, the ember had looked kind of like a miniature sun. Now, it looked more like a fire that had nearly gone out - rather than a blazing bonfire, it was barely maintaining its existence now.

I also quickly became aware of the fact that I felt colder than before. Even the essence-infused meal I had eaten recently wasn't enough to fully drive off the chill. The cold was especially prominent in my eyes. It almost seemed as if the cold was leeching into my body through my spatial sight, even though spatial sight had zero relation to my actual, physical eyeballs. I found that especially baffling, but gritted my teeth and bore with it. I had more important things to focus on, and the chill wasn't that bad - it was just unpleasant.

After confirming the state of the ember, I looked around. Our village bearing beast, as well as the other six that had been travelling with us, had also stopped. I also noticed that the village bearing beasts were starting to lower themselves towards the ground. To my surprise, I didn't notice the town tilting in any direction as our beast settled down to rest. If I hadn't been watching the entire thing from above, I wouldn't have even noticed that we were descending - the monster's movements were careful, practiced, and graceful enough that they didn't disturb any of the buildings, houses or inhabitants of the town.

Once the beast's back was close to the ground, the warriors of the town started hopping off. Much like my father, the warriors of the town were all unusually fast - even the people who carried no weapons and seemed to be mages. I also saw several people leading small hordes of monsters off the village-bearing beast. The variety and quantity of tamed monsters outnumbered the warriors of the village by about two to one. I couldn't help but marvel at how integrated monster taming seemed to be into our town's structure - it was obvious that the defense of the area might rely more on tamed beasts than human effort, at least as far as sheer numbers went.

I turned my attention to the other village bearing beasts, and saw similar sights from them. The warriors from each village bearing beast quickly headed towards the ember, before they gathered in a circle to talk. I counted about a thousand different warriors and two thousand monsters - far more than I had expected from our rather small set of towns. Sadly, I couldn't hear what they were saying, and my vision was too far away to read their lips. It seemed like most of them were running on routine, though. Seven men gathered in the center, barked out a few words at each other, and nodded in acknowledgement. Less than a minute later, they finished delivering orders to the warriors of the towns, and then people started to fan out and establish a defensive perimeter around the village bearing beasts and the ember.

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After fanning out and surrounding the village bearing beasts, several warriors, who I assumed to be scouts, made their way into the trees. I quickly lost sight of them as the left the clearing and disappeared into the dense jungle. I glanced around, but couldn't find any monsters. That was more than a little disappointing - I wanted to evaluate how strong the monsters of this world were. The tamed creatures used by our warriors were almost certainly altered by the [Tamer] spark, so they couldn't provide a good reference point. I needed to see a real wild monster to know how my abilities stacked up against the natives of this world.

I started to use my spatial sight to swap my viewing angle of our surroundings. I couldn't push the range of my vision beyond our little clearing, but I could still change the angle so that I could see around obstacles like trees and foliage.

I spent a few minutes observing our surroundings before I saw my first monster. Far above the village bearing beasts, near the canopy of the trees, I saw a large group of crystalline, blue-green spiders gliding their way across the tree tops. Their exoskeletons seemed to change color to blend in with their surroundings, almost like chameleons, which made them particularly hard to spot when I wasn't using my soul sight. Unlike regular spiders, it seemed that they could spit silk out of their mouths just as easily as they could extend silk out of their abdomens - and this silk was clearly magical. Every time a spider spit a strand of silk, essence guided it from one tree to another, turning each strand of silk into a pseudo-grappling hook.

They were at least three times as large as an adult man, and their fangs gleamed bright red. I had a strong suspicion that they were venomous, and that I would not like the results if one of the spiders bit my father, or any of the other defenders of the town. Most importantly, I noticed their speed. When I had first travelled to the temple with my father, I had already understood that this was a world with a System. As a result, the average power of the inhabitants of this world was very different from what I was used to.

Nowhere was this more clear than right now. The spiders were all around Grade 12-13 in speed. In other words, they were almost on par with the quiet spiders we had run into when we first tried to enter one of the inner districts of the Market and entered the spatial fair. These spiders didn't seem to be the top of the food chain, either - they seemed more accustomed to stealth and assassination tactics than up front assaults, meaning that their actual physical abilities were likely weaker than some other inhabitants of this world.

I shivered. If the spiders actually managed to get the drop on the villagers, things could be bad. Fortunately, I had noticed them. I wasn't about to let the other townsfolk face an ambush if I could help it.

I used my miniature portal ability from my first rune to open up a portal - but the distance was much, much longer than usual. I felt my absorption essence strain as I forced a portal open between my current position and one of the nearest spiders - but I spent a bit more absorption essence to tap into the concept of 'hope.' I hoped that the townsfolk would be safe. The townsfolk defending themselves also hoped to return alive. While my actions would also reduce the hope of the spider colony, this time, my actions were to create more hope than I destroyed. As a result, I could feel my actions empowering the eldritch half of me. The essence cost was still ridiculous - but it was more manageable than last time I had utilized the concept of hope.

With my portal open, I first hammered the spider scout with an extinguish, and then followed up by firing a few ice spikes through the portal. The creature went down before it had a chance to respond. The spider dropped from the trees with an earth-shatteringly loud thump. The warriors of the village all turned towards the spider that had fallen out of the sky, before looking upwards.

Then, the entire group of warriors mobilized as one, organizing themselves into a cohesive mass of combatants. Spells started to soar into the sky, and tamed monsters started to join the fray. Arrows and throwing weapons whistled through the air, and I relaxed. Once they were alerted, the reaction of the warriors from the town had been quite fast and well practiced.

I felt the eldritch half of my body grow slightly stronger - as if I had just exercised and eaten a pile of protein. I was sore and tired, because I had just wiped out most of my essence reserves - but I would grow stronger, if I had time to digest the fruits of my actions.

I ignored a System message set as I watched the battle for a few more moments, before to my surprise, I felt little shards of heat tunnel their way back through the portals I had opened and slide into my body. A moment later, I felt a wave of exhaustion hit me as my portals snapped shut. I had run out of essence, and couldn't contribute much more to the fight. Still, the surge of heat that had traveled through my portal and into my body confused me - for a moment, before I realized what had happened.

I had slain my first monsters in this world, and in addition to my market system notifications, I had also gained a few levels in this world. I had heard before that it was possible to harvest spark from monsters we had slain, or give the corpses over to craftsmen for their own use. Evidently, if I didn't try to avoid absorbing a monster's spark, my body would simply reach out and steal the sparks from anything I had killed - but at least for now, I was fine with that. I grinned, and popped open my Status screen. It was time to get the last missing details behind how this world's system worked.

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