NukEncore couldn’t tell whether she was afraid everything would fall apart if they met in real life, or whether something else about the idea was bothering her. Her fingers brushed lightly over her sleeve before she made herself stop. She chose not to dwell on it for long and changed the subject instead.

As soon as they reached Robert’s smithy, the blacksmith gave them bad news.

"Haha! No idea where he is! If you players can’t find him anywhere, he might be inside the Light Tree’s dungeon, supervising someone!" Robert said, laughing as heartily as ever.

Martin nodded. "Yeah. That tracks."

"That’s possible?" NukEncore asked, one brow lifting in interest.

"Yep." Martin recalled how Rangar had explained the lore behind beasts in this world when he first acquired Ao Tenshin’s egg.

It was still a memory he looked back on warmly, especially now that he could spot a much larger Ao Tenshin swimming in the river by Robert’s smithy.

"Oh!" NukEncore exclaimed.

Chaosgraphy nodded. "I see. Since you have a beast and we already know the lore, he didn’t have to come out and explain it when I got my San Kumoe."

"Yeah," Martin said with a nod. "Anyway, let’s try finding him somewhere else. Thanks, Robert."

"No worries. Good luck!" Robert said with a smile, waving Martin’s party off.

It took them two hours to find Rangar, and even then, only by pure chance. They checked the obvious places first, then circled back through the hub, the area around the smithy, and the dungeon approach, only to keep missing him.

By the time he finally appeared out of nowhere in the Light Tree’s Hub, exactly like a player stepping out of the dungeon, Martin straightened at once and called out, unwilling to let the best newbie helper slip away.

Rangar turned toward them with an easy grin and a broad wave. "Your party keeps growing! Looking stacked already. It brings me joy to see you all doing so well! It won’t be long before you leave the Academy and start cleansing the world of monsters. I only hope you won’t waste time fighting each other."

"Really now? You didn’t hear about Martin defeating Thorn’Shield and taking his sword?" Chaosgraphy called out with a smirk.

Rangar nodded. "I heard... but it pains me to see players fighting each other when they could be joining forces against monsters. There’s no end to those creatures. They’re born from the dark!"

"The Light guides; the Dark consumes?" Martin asked, picking up on the hint of lore in Rangar’s words.

Rangar only smiled and moved on. "What do you need me for? What have you all come up with this time?"

NukEncore stepped forward at once, then lifted one hand and flexed her fingers inside her glove. "We want to extract skills and imprint them onto a shield and a pair of gloves."

"Hooo," Rangar exclaimed. "Since Martin has the Chef subclass, do you want to learn the Imprinter subclass? It sounds like exactly what you’re after."

"Imprinter?" NukEncore echoed.

Rangar nodded. "Yep. It lets you pull a skill from one item and settle it into another. But do not get too excited just yet. Not every item can hold every imprint, and the elder will have to judge whether your glove and Martin’s shield can take the change without twisting the skill into something useless."

It was a subclass that let someone take a skill from one item and imprint it onto another. Depending on the item’s construction and origin, the skill could change as it settled into its new vessel, though its core usually remained intact. The moment she heard that, NukEncore’s eyes lit up. Her whole posture sharpened, and she leaned forward half a step as if she could already see the answer in front of her. She looked ready to seize the chance before anyone else could say a word.

Chaosgraphy’s smile curved a little wider as she watched NukEncore lean in. "Oh, that got your attention fast."

NukEncore did not even look at her. "Of course it did. That is exactly what I needed."

"How serious," Chaosgraphy murmured, clearly entertained. "You really did drag him all this way for something that important."

"I want to learn it!" NukEncore shouted.

"Alright! Come with me. I’ll take you to the elder who specializes in it!"

"The elder?" NukEncore repeated, her eyes narrowing. Her chin lifted a little at once.

From what she had heard, the elders had not been particularly welcoming to Martin and Cassandra the last time they dealt with them. That made sense, given their standing, but NukEncore had status of her own.

"Let’s see how they welcome me," NukEncore said, a sharp little smile pulling at her mouth.

Martin glanced at her and almost smiled. She looked fully locked in now, proud, sharpened, and impossible to sway once she decided something truly mattered.

Beside him, Chaosgraphy gave a low, amused hum, as if she found that look on NukEncore especially enjoyable.

Rangar threw them an easy grin and motioned for them to follow. "Come on, then. This should be fun."

Following Rangar, the trio and their pets made their way through the Academy’s main thoroughfare, passing Samu’s Restaurant and the other familiar facilities along the way. They went deeper into the Academy until the headquarters of the elders came into view.

Thankfully, or perhaps not, that was not their destination.

Rangar led them farther north, out toward the quieter edge of the grounds where the elders kept their homes and private lands. The noise of the Academy thinned with every step until even the air seemed to settle. The houses there stood farther apart, each plot cleaner, older, and more deliberate than anything near the main paths, as though the land itself had been taught to respect whoever lived on it.

NukEncore’s gaze moved over the grounds, and her chin lifted little by little. Whatever irritation or unease she still carried sharpened into focus here instead of hesitation.

On one of those plots stood a small house that looked as though it had been carved from white bark and set there by hand, doing its quiet best to stand apart from everything around it.

"He lives here," Rangar said.