Morning sunlight filtered softly through the entrance of the cave as Traise slowly opened his eyes.
For a few seconds, he simply stared upward at the rough stone ceiling while his mind caught up to reality.
The previous night almost felt unreal now.
The bond.
The system windows.
Luna.
His eyes shifted toward the darker corner of the cave and immediately stopped.
A pair of glowing blue eyes stared back at him.
Traise nearly jerked upright before realizing the small fox was curled partially inside the shadows near the wall, her body difficult to fully focus on where darkness touched her fur.
Unlike the terrifying presence she carried at night, the morning light changed her appearance dramatically.
Portions of her coat now appeared more silver-gray than black beneath the sunlight spilling through the cave entrance, and the smoky shadow effect drifting around her body seemed thinner and weaker during the day.
Only her eyes remained exactly the same.
Bright.
Unnatural.
Almost luminous.
Luna blinked sleepily before lowering her head back onto her paws.
A strange warmth settled in Traise’s chest as he stared at her.
She stayed.
The bond was real.
For the first time since arriving in this world, he wasn’t alone anymore.
The realization lingered with him while he slowly gathered the supplies around the cave.
Luna eventually stretched lazily before slipping free from the shadows entirely and trotting over toward him.
Up close, the silver crescent markings around her eyes were even more noticeable in daylight, giving her an oddly elegant appearance despite the dangerous feeling she still carried naturally.
Traise crouched carefully and rubbed the top of her head.
“Morning to you, too.”
Instead of biting him this time, Luna simply leaned into the touch before swishing her tail against the ground.
That alone felt like progress.
As he packed his belongings together, his thoughts drifted back toward the reward from last night.
He had spent nearly an hour thinking over which skill to take from Luna before finally deciding.
Enhanced Agility.
Shadow Blend looked incredible, but it required mana, and his pathetic amount of ten already felt limiting enough.
Meanwhile, Enhanced Agility was passive, constantly active, and directly boosted survivability.
Besides, years of gaming had taught him one important rule.
Percentage boosts were terrifying later on.
A flat increase was good.
But a multiplier bonus was broken.
Traise stepped outside the cave and immediately regretted it.
The moment he began walking, his body nearly lurched forward harder than intended.
His eyes widened as he caught himself before stumbling face-first into the dirt.
“What the hell?”
Everything felt lighter.
Even normal walking almost felt like jogging now.
His feet moved with barely any effort at all, and every motion carried far more momentum than he expected.
Luna glanced up at him from nearby before letting out what sounded suspiciously like an amused chuff.
“Don’t laugh,” Traise muttered.
She absolutely was.
As they began carefully moving through the forest, Traise slowly started adjusting to the changes.
Luna alternated between trotting beside him and occasionally leaping effortlessly onto his shoulder, where she balanced with unnatural ease.
At other times, she simply vanished.
The first time it happened during daylight, Traise nearly panicked before realizing her presence still lingered nearby through the bond.
Looking down carefully, he noticed movement inside his own shadow.
“You can hide in my shadow, too?”
A soft feeling of satisfaction drifted back through the bond.
“That’s absurdly overpowered. I’m pretty sure I saw something like that on an old anime back on Earth.”
Not that he was complaining.
The bond between them remained strange but useful.
Luna couldn’t speak, at least not verbally, but emotions and vague intentions occasionally flowed through the connection between them.
Curiosity.
Hunger.
Playfulness.
Caution.
Most importantly, danger.
Several times while walking, Luna abruptly became alert before nudging his emotions toward unease.
Each time, Traise immediately changed direction without argument.
Considering she was apparently an Awakened creature, he trusted her instincts far more than his own.
That thought alone still bothered him.
Awakened.
Just how much stronger was that compared to Initiate Grade?
Traise still had absolutely no understanding of this world’s actual power structure.
For all he knew, Luna might secretly be stronger than everything else in the forest combined.
The fact that creatures apparently didn’t even display levels through Observation only confused him further.
Maybe levels were unique to him.
Or maybe humans.
Or maybe the system itself.
Either way, Luna clearly evolved differently than he did.
Curiosity eventually got the better of him.
“Alright,” Traise muttered while stepping into a relatively open stretch between the trees.
“Let’s test this properly.”
Luna immediately hopped off his shoulder.
Probably a smart decision.
Traise bent his knees slightly before taking off into a sprint.
The world blurred.
His eyes widened instantly as the forest rushed past faster than anything he’d ever experienced before.
Wind slammed against his face while his body practically flew over the uneven ground.
Then his gamer instincts kicked in.
Quickstep.
The burst of acceleration hit like a truck.
“Oh shi—”
CRACK.
A small tree could be seen toppling over in the distance.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Critical! You have taken 11 damage]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise slowly peeled himself off the tree trunk before collapsing backward into the dirt while blood poured heavily from his nose.
Luna stared at him silently from several feet away.
Then she sneezed.
Traise narrowed his eyes.
“You are never speaking about this.”
Another amused feeling drifted across the bond.
“Traitor.”
After painfully forcing his nose back into place and waiting several miserable minutes for Minor Regeneration to begin dulling the damage, Traise finally stood back up with a groan.
Enhanced Agility was absurd.
Unfortunately, his brain clearly hadn’t caught up to his body yet.
The rest of the morning became a gradual practice rather than reckless experimentation.
Traise focused on controlling his footing, balance, and acceleration while Luna moved effortlessly beside him like flowing water.
Every motion she made looked natural.
Meanwhile, he nearly died from a tree.
Twice.
By midday, they stopped near a small clearing surrounded by thick roots and stone.
Luna immediately perked up at the sight of meat coming out of his inventory, but Traise frowned slightly while counting what remained.
He was running low.
Feeding himself was already hard enough before adding an Awakened lunar fox into the equation.
Still, Luna had survived alone long before meeting him, so she clearly knew how to hunt for herself.
Probably far better than he could.
After eating, Traise climbed into a nearby tree to rest while Luna disappeared into the shadows below.
Even climbing felt dramatically easier now.
Between Advanced Climbing and Enhanced Agility, his body practically flew upward across the bark.
He focused inward while sitting against the branch, expecting the same cluttered collection of menus he had grown used to over the last several days.
Instead, the interface that appeared felt… cleaner somehow.
More organized.
The Upgrade System no longer looked like a collection of disconnected functions awkwardly stitched together.
Skills, abilities, attributes, and party information now flowed together naturally beneath unified categories, almost as if the system itself had evolved overnight alongside him.
Or maybe the system itself had upgraded somehow.
It was called The Upgrade System, after all.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[The Upgrade System]
User: Traise Axton
Party Members: 1
Grade: Initiate
Level: 4
XP: 1 / 65
Health: 31 / 31
Mana: 10 / 10
Speed: +40%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Attributes]
Strength: 17
Dexterity: 30
Intelligence: 12
Endurance: 16
Willpower: 14
Luck: ???
Free Attribute Points: 15
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Skills]
Mimic (Class – Special)
Class: Special
Type: Growth / Replication
Current Mimic Slots
2 / 3 Available
Current Mimic Skills:
Minor Regeneration
Class: Initiate Low
Type: Passive / Healing
Mastery: 38 / 100
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Beast Digestion
Class: Initiate Low
Quickstep
Class: Initiate Mid
Advanced Climbing
Class: Initiate Low
Enhanced Agility
Class: Awakened Low
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Abilities]
Observation
Class: Initiate
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared at the display for several seconds.
“Wait… thirty Dexterity?”
No wonder he felt like a rocket was strapped to his back.
Curious, he focused directly on the stat itself.
To his surprise, another window immediately expanded outward.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Dexterity]
Base: +17
Equipment: +5
Food Bonus: 0
Companion Bond: +5
Skill Bonuses: +3
Determines speed, agility, balance, precision, and reaction time.
Higher Dexterity improves movement, evasion, and combat fluidity.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise blinked several times while mentally doing the math.
“So Enhanced Agility really did boost the total value by percentage…”
That was ridiculous.
And incredibly useful.
His attention drifted toward his remaining free points almost immediately.
If speed kept him alive…
Then more speed meant less dying.
Simple logic.
Allocate 10 points to Dexterity.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Error.
Your current base stats cannot exceed 25.
Please increase your Grade to unlock your potential further.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise frowned immediately.
“That’s cheating.”
Still, the system probably had a point.
If there weren’t limits, he probably would have dumped every single point into Dexterity already.
And honestly?
That sounded incredibly stupid in hindsight.
He thought about how the previous window had mentioned base Dex at the start.
“Well… maxing it first still seems smart.”
Allocate 8 points to Dexterity.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Dexterity increased: 30 → 39]
[Your Dexterity has reached the peak of an Initiate]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise paused.
“Wait. Thirty-nine?”
He quickly reopened the Dexterity breakdown before realizing the bonus from Enhanced Agility had increased again due to the higher total value.
“I almost forgot the percentage scaling…”
A grin slowly spread across his face.
That was an added bonus!
He still had seven points left afterward, but now he hesitated.
Speed alone clearly wasn’t enough, considering he’d already lost a fight against a tree earlier.
After checking Intelligence next, however, his expression slowly changed.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Intelligence]
Determines learning speed, analysis, reaction time, understanding, and mana interaction.
Higher Intelligence improves mental processing and system comprehension.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Reaction time.
That explained a lot.
His body had become faster than his brain could properly process.
If his Intelligence increased, maybe he could actually control the ridiculous speed he now possessed.
He checked Endurance and Willpower afterward as well, before finally making his decision.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Endurance]
Determines Health, stamina, recovery, and physical resilience.
Higher Endurance allows the body to endure greater strain and damage.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Willpower]
Determines mental resistance, focus, determination, and emotional control.
Higher Willpower improves resistance against fear and mental pressure.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
After thinking quietly for nearly a full minute, Traise finally made up his mind as he nodded to himself.
Allocate 5 points to Intelligence.
[Intelligence increased: 13 → 18]
Allocate 2 points to Endurance.
[Endurance increased: 14 → 16]
The change hit almost immediately.
The world suddenly felt… sharper.
More defined.
His thoughts flowed faster while details around him became easier to process.
Leaves shifting in the wind.
The distant chirping of insects.
Luna moving through shadows beneath the tree.
Everything felt clearer somehow.
It was like upgrading from an old laptop to a supercomputer overnight.
Traise slowly exhaled while leaning back against the branch.
“This system is insane…”
Then another realization hit him.
The Party function!
He still hadn’t properly checked the new feature.
Focusing on the word beneath his name immediately opened another window.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Party]
Current Members: Luna (Companion)
Allows communication with other team members, even from a distance.
Distance allowed is determined by grade.
Current Distance (Initiate): 1km
[Shared Experience]
Though others may not level, they will find that aiding you still yields benefits.
Team members will progress faster through their grades and gain a deeper understanding of their own evolution paths while they remain in your party.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traise stared thoughtfully at the display.
So Luna didn’t level.
But she still benefited from helping him.
That almost sounded unfair.
Not that he intended to complain about free advantages.
Curious, Traise focused mentally through the bond.
Luna.
A flicker of recognition immediately answered him from somewhere nearby.
Then, less than ten seconds later, a tiny black blur erupted upward from his own shadow before landing neatly beside him on the branch.
Luna rubbed against his shoulder happily while faint satisfaction drifted across the bond.
Traise laughed softly despite himself.
“Okay… that’s actually an impressive entrance.”
Luna tilted her head proudly before suddenly hopping down from the branch and landing lightly on the forest floor below.
She turned back toward him, glowing blue eyes fixed directly on his face while her tail swished back and forth excitedly.
Then she crouched low.
Traise blinked.
“Oh, so you want to race, do you?”
A sharp feeling of confidence immediately pulsed through the bond.
Traise snorted while climbing down from the tree.
“You know, most people start friendships with conversations. Not attempted murder and speed competitions.”
Luna gave another impatient flick of her tail.
She seemed eager to test her new human.
The moment Traise reached the ground, she darted several feet away before stopping again, clearly waiting for him.
A grin slowly spread across his face.
“Alright then.”
Traise lowered himself slightly into a runner’s stance while activating Quickstep in preparation.
Across from him, Luna lowered herself as well, her body already beginning to blur around the edges as shadows gathered faintly beneath her paws.
Traise looked toward the distant stretch of forest ahead of them and smirked.
“On three.”