After Amilya stopped petting him, Niphru jumped back down, heading into the spare room and jumping into the chair there. As he curled up to sleep for the day, he considered what he wanted to do.
First on the list was to refine his control over his foxfire, which might let him get into school by giving him a way to write. It would also benefit his attempts at hunting. Second on the list was to try to produce two flames at once, or maintain a flame and illusion at the same time. This would allow him to hide himself and attack at the same time, making hunting much safer. Beyond that he wasn’t terribly certain and fell asleep while thinking about it.
He awoke a few times throughout the day due to new sounds, though he was able to get to sleep again rather quickly. He heard Amilya leaving the home at one point before falling back asleep, and another time he heard Dawn come in.
Eventually he woke up near evening, getting up and heading into the main room of the house. He saw Amilya doing something with a mana stone, and Dawn watching her. Deciding it was worth looking into, he sat down beside Dawn to watch as well.
Amilya kept a stream of mana going into the mana stone, but it seemed to carry some kind of pattern in it as well. After a few moments, the stone began to glow before she changed the stream of mana, causing it to dim again.
“That is how you form a basic light enchantment, feel free to practice with the smaller stones, Dawn, we can afford to have some accidents with them,” Amilya stated, before turning to Niphru, “I don’t think you will be ready to try enchanting anytime soon, however, as it requires a lot of practice with magic first, and we haven’t seen you use anything but your flame and illusion.”
“I didn’t understand any of what I was seeing anyways. How hard is it to learn to use magic?” Niphru responded.
“For most humans it is fairly difficult, though controlling enchantments is easy. For you though, I have no idea. Morris has been trying to teach Kel magic for several years now without success,” replied Amilya.
Dawn spoke up, “I’m sure he can learn it, it might just take a while. Kel too! They just think differently and need to come up with a different way of doing it.”
“That reminds me, I haven’t seen Morris for a few days, has he been out hunting?” Niphru questioned.
“Oh, we should have let you know shouldn’t we? Morris left to go back to the capital a few days ago when his golem-wagon was recharged. If you need to talk to him we can send letters back and forth but it takes several days,” Amilya responded.
“Ah, I see, no need to speak with him, I was just curious what happened to him,” Niphru replied, “anyways, I should get back to the forest and see if I can spot any other twisted beasts.”
“Make sure to come back safe!” exclaimed Dawn.
“As she said, be sure to be safe in your travels,” Amilya stated.
Niphru nodded to the two, then headed to the door, biting down on the bottom latch and pulling it open, then turning and repeating the process to close it as he left.
As he left, he began experimenting with his foxfire again, trying to make it as small as possible. While compressing it was exceedingly difficult, he did find that he could change the shape fairly easily, making it into a ribbon of flame as wide as his paw and nearly as long as he was.
While it was in this form, he found it easier to try to compress the front edge of it, but it was still far too wide to attempt to write with, so he would need to continue to work on it. This path of experimentation seemed to bring him much closer to getting it to work than before, however.
He headed to the forest, as he got closer to his former den he ran across a boar digging up some of the grass in the plains. Remembering how the humans tried to keep animals out of the plains, he tried to spook it with his foxfire. The boar, however, decided to charge the flame rather than flee from it, so he changed it into an illusion of a bear.
Niphru found himself surprised when the boar charged straight into and through his illusion. As it turned around, it faced towards him and began to charge again. He flipped his illusion back into a ball of flame and hurled it into the boar’s face as he leapt high over the charging swine.
The flame was thrown off course as he jumped, but still managed to clip the boar’s ears, setting each alight as it passed under him. As he fell towards the ground behind it, he swung his foxfire back the other way, catching the boar’s tail as well. The swine squealed in agony as it burned, wheeling around and charging again. Still recovering from his leap, Niphru hurled himself to the side, leaving his flame behind where he had been standing.
The boar plowed face-first into the flame, igniting its entire head, leading to panicked squealing and thrashing. By the time it had turned around again, the flames obscured its sight and hearing enough it couldn’t find where to charge anymore, instead throwing itself to the ground trying to extinguish the flames.
Naturally, Niphru wouldn’t allow it to stop the flames, moving his foxfire back over it any time it managed to extinguish a patch of flames. He also used the foxfire to extinguish the grass as it ignited, wanting to avoid spreading more fire. Unable to stand the flame, the boar soon expired, flopping to the ground one last time as its flesh burned off.
Without any other way to dispose of the body, Niphru simply kept burning it until there wasn’t anything left but bones, then continued on his way to explore the forest border. For tonight, his trip didn’t show any other animals outside the forest, nor any monsters within.
Niphru returned back to the village after completing his patrol, happy to think of it as his home now given that he could be with Dawn. Arriving back at their home, he headed inside, checking Dawn’s room and finding her asleep in bed. With a quick jump, he landed softly on the bed beside her, and curled up to sleep.
For the next several days, he spent the time fairly similarly. He would wake up and play with Dawn and the other kids outside until they had school, then focus on increasing control over his foxfire. Eventually he would tire, and sleep in the chair at home, then wake up in the evening and hunt for monsters in the forest, reporting any he couldn’t easily deal with himself. Once done with his patrol, he would then return home to sleep beside Dawn.
During those evenings, he managed to hunt down another snake, another monstrous fox, and even a bear, though he had to leave the bear behind and get help bringing it back.