The nearby guards all clap at the completion of Peter’s re-telling of their kingdom’s founding. He turns and bows to the crowd, and it is a crowd. At some point, the nearby people had all come over to listen.

Jason shakes his head and sighs, “That was a delightful story. Though it looks like that was enough time for Lily to finish up.”

Down below what had been a four hundred strong swarm is now reduced to only a few stragglers running away as Lily hops around a carpet of gore.

Courtney raises an eyebrow, “Well, that’s a bit more disturbing than usual.”

Rosha nods, “Yeah, we don’t exactly leave a smaller body count, but her energized fur really does a number on them. That would be annoying to clean up without magic. Though I have to guess going by how they dealt with the swarms last night they must have some method of cleaning this nonsense up.”

Peter scratches the back of his neck, “That went quicker than I thought. She really put them through the meat grinder down there. Anyway, we can head off now and we better get going before one of the other swarms around the wall come by to see what’s up.”

No one else really has anything to add, so they move a bit further down the wall to avoid the mess and jump off. Jason tries to be fancy and run down the wall, but his movement skill isn’t quite to that point and he has to hop off after the first couple steps.

With everyone on the ground, Lily finishes her victory dance and hops over towards Jason. As she approaches Jason has a bit of a forced smile, “Hey Lily, you got a little something on you.”

Lily stops and looks over her shoulder and yep, just a bit of blood. Or rather, quite a lot of mess all over her body. Literally using her fur as a weapon doesn’t exactly keep it clean. Lily snorts and pumps all her Energy into her fur, not just on her body but everywhere. Charged, it all stands on end as she huddles down.

Then with a flash the Energy discharges outwards from her body, pushing all the blood and gore off. The explosion isn’t too powerful so the others don’t get splattered, but it was definitely unexpected. All clean, Lily hops the rest of the way to Jason and jumps right into the harness.

Peter sighs, “I guess she has been watching you fight. Welp, let’s move on out. There are more swarms to fight out there. We’re doing good so far and I think it is time to kick it up a notch.”

Jason nods, “Fair enough, I’ll just check what Lily has gained from that fight. Seeing as she hasn’t gained too many stat points in the past beyond leveling, it should be too bad of a haul. [System, show me Lily’s gains from the fight].”

{3[SP] Toughness converted to 3[Base] Toughness}

As the group moves out Courtney gestures at Lily, “I did some research last night. Problem with Lily is the fact she is a companion.”

Jason looks up from the blue screen, “How do you mean?”

Courtney shrugs, “Everyone knows how a pet works. There are people who specialize in raising pets to very specific standards. Honestly, there has to be. After a certain point, even if combat pets aren’t the most popular, the non-combat options are way too useful. Who wouldn’t want a small tortoise that spawns drinkable water if you can’t do that yourself?”

“Companions on the other hand have much looser rules. Mainly because the thing that separates a pet and a companion is that companions are sapient. This means it can be anything from basically a pet, but sapient all the way up to just another person. And speaking of being able to have just another person as a companion, this includes both locals and travellers.”

“Through some weird formula the System judges where your companion is along that spectrum and gives you different features. Lily is currently closer to the pet side of things as evident by the fact that you can give her experience. Besides that, there isn’t much else we can figure out at the moment because she can’t talk to us. After all, how are we supposed to know if she can turn off the automatic placement of stat points from leveling? About the only thing I can tell you is to try and think commands at her. Apparently with a close enough bond and some work you can talk to a companion through thought.”

Rosha and Jason both stop and turn to Courtney. Peter notices something is odd and is about to ask when Courtney waves him away and explains, “We have some traveller business to talk about.” Peter shrugs and continues forward to scout around some, leaving the others to whatever important matters need to talk about.

The other two both try to speak at once but Courtney shooshes them, “Wait till he is further away.”

They stand there and wait until Peter has left sight. As one Rosha and Jason turn back towards Courtney. She looks away and brushes some stray hair behind her ear. Jason squints at her, “So, what’s this about being able to talk mind to mind? Mostly certain the main byline for full immersion VR was it can’t ever read your mind, Ever.”

Courtney fake coughs, “Welllll, it can’t. The VR pods read the signals off your nerves. The most troublesome part of this is between the brain and eyes because the connection is so tight. Don’t ask me how they got that working, it just does. Think mad science and you would be shockingly close. Very few people can understand it, even after learning all the parts of it. Only a handful of people in the world currently can make the mental leap to connect all the parts together.”

“Those few people have of course tried to work on the holy grail of a mind reading device ever since the mechanics for immersion were ironed out. The ones in the more public sector have had no success and from what the family has found out the secret government research isn’t doing any better. So that’s the end of the story. Our technology cannot read your mind.”

Akhier

Thank you for reading! Next two chapters are free on my Patreon ( 220 and 221 ), five chapters beyond that for only a dollar, and many more for five dollars (two chapters release a week at this tier).