6 Dreams

Galahad went upstairs after talking with his dad to find his mother preparing the kitchen on the third floor. She had already set out the plates and was waiting on the roast in the wood burning oven.

The third floor was all wood, unlike the stonework of the first floor for safety reasons. Inside was a dining table and kitchen set up with a water pumped sink, oven, and pantry. Simplicity was common for Galahad's family.

His mother was currently sitting at the table, looking over a crystal plate that was much larger than the regular Karmic plate that he used. It was a tablet covered in rows and columns of various small numbers.

"Hey mum."

"Hey Gally, how was work today?" She asked while still tapping at the numbers on the tablet.

"Good, how was the shop?"

"Slow this morning, but very lively when someone tried walking out with a potion under her coat, had a bit of a laugh when the bottle detonated in her armpit. The potion was from the growth item shelf, but its concentrated potency only triggered extreme hair growth, you can imagine what happened after that." She snickered mischievously.

Galahad suppressed a laugh at the mental image he just conjured. He instead said, "I still think you should just hire security, it seems like a waste of products." Sometimes he was the only mature voice between him and his jesting mother.

His father, Derock Mystroff and mother, Sora Mystroff owned all four floors of the building. The first floor was the forge his father and brother worked on; his mother managed the shop on the second floor that sold a variety of goods; and the rest of the top two floors were simply a residency the family of four lived in.

All business decisions were made between his parents, even if they seemed to have issues with the results, they managed and learned. Luckily his mother was just as good with the finances as his father was with forging.

"Well my enchanting skills make security of the products a lot cheaper than hiring any official security team, and on the plus side, it's far more comical. Beside, if someone successfully nicked something from the shop, your father wouldn't exactly take that laying down."

Galahad nodded in agreement as he knew how short-tempered his father was with people who called his stout stature 'dwarfish.' The end of the conversation would result was tools hurtling at the victim, sometimes still doused with heavy fire. Someone successfully stealing would definitely have it worse.

It wasn't brought up any further as they heard his brother coming down the stairs of the fourth floor. Entering the kitchen was a spitting image of Galahad's father, just with a less aged face and no beard. His brown eyes then honed in on the door to the pantry with very intent.

"Hey Brett, dad is almost done making the parts to your light project thing."

"It's a non traditional lantern." He corrected while making a beeline for the pantry. He stuck his head inside until their mother looked up and saw what he was doing.

"Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes, you don't need to snoop for more food."

"Alright fine." He grumbled as he stepped away and sat at the table to wait.

His personality and physique both matched their father, while it seemed like Galahad was the male version of his mischievous mother.

Twenty minutes passed and their father arrived to the third floor with fresh cotton clothes and no smithing apron. He smelled strongly of soap and pine from using the forge showers.

Sora stood up and pecked Derock's cheek, "always my favorite part of the night is when you come up nice and clean." She said softly.

Derock flashed her an eyebrow wag with a suggestive face that caused Brett to suddenly lose his appetite.

Galahad and Brett both averted their eyes, they wish they didn't have to see this so often at home. They didn't even want to think of what happens when they aren't around the building.

Soon after, they were all sitting at the table with a large roasted bird in the center. It looked like a normal bird you'd see around, except this one had two heads and three wings on each side.

Sora motioned her hands to pull water out of the sink and it began to float in a fist-sized sphere a few inches above her palm. She focused her index and middle finger on the water, changing its shape into a ring. The ring slowly began to spin and kept gaining speed. The water was rotating so fast, it generated a little bit of wind around her arm.

She carefully brought the high speed wheel to the roast and it cut through like a hot knife in warm butter. Everyone took some slices and began to eat.

Like Galahad and Rosetta, Sora was a magician class with an assortment of skills. Her manipulation of water was named 'Pressure Jet.'

Despite the very dangerous water based saw his mother used, she wasn't an attack mage or support but actually an enchanter. Someone who could infuse a small mana imprintation onto an inanimate object, and that was how she prevent theft of products from the shop. She enchanted the bottles or items with a proximity array only she could remove, they'd activate if someone tried taking it out of the shop before paying.

Everyone was very busy eating and Derock was now using the crystal tablet, he appeared to be reading information sent from the capital.

"Huh, they still haven't figured out who or what's been mutilating the citizens at night in the capital. You'd think such a massive city would have better security to find such monsters."

"Oh Derock dear, don't read at the table. You'll have time later tonight, let us eat together for now."

Galahad's father looked up from the crystal screen and tossed it to the side.

"Sorry sorry, you're right. It's not often all four of us are here for dinner." The tablet landed on the extra chair at the table.

"It has to be a person though." Said Brett . "If a monster was intelligent enough to escape to the surface, I doubt it would stay near densely crowded areas of humans."

"Enough about the kingdom, your father says you have some good news to share with us?" Sora asked.

"Oh yeah!" Brett exclaimed as he remember the event from earlier that day. "I'm working on the last stages for my lantern and I leveled up in the process today."

Derock chuckled at his second son. "He didn't even realize it was happening because he was so busy running the grindstone. Alameer had to tell him when he finished sharpening a sword, his reaction was priceless."

"I was too busy doing a better job than you to notice, 'Boss.'" Brett retorted, giving air quotes to the title boss. Something he always refused to call his father in a serious situation.

Though not noticing that he leveled up was certainly odd. When someone rose a level, their body sends out a large pulse of energy that leaks out their body. The physical result is a bunch of yellow sparks exploding from their body in a very loud and flashy display.

The squabble between the two forgers went on until the whole roast nearly disappeared, half of which was consumed by Galahad himself.

Galahad leaned back to stretch out his abdomen. After the continuous usage of mana, the body becomes depleted of its more basic energy and nutrients, causing a huge build up in hunger. Now he was practically too full to move after eating so much.

After dinner, Galahad went up to the fourth floor of the building. The stairs led up to a central living room that contained some simple furnishing and light crystals on the walls. There were five doors on the walls around the central room as well. His parents' room was on the left, Brett's was on the opposite wall, and his room was on the right.

Galahad's room was cozy enough for him. It was composed of a wooden desk, chair, bed, nightstand, and a large window. Every morning the sun would rise through the window and bask the room in an orange glow.

Drowsiness was slowly taking affect when he arrived to the central room. Galahad trudged to his door as he felt the weight of last twenty-four hours crashing onto his body, plus his now very full stomach. When he opened his door, he just tossed his bag on his desk and fell asleep the moment his head hit the pillow.

*****

Galahad began to dream.

He was laying down under the same tree Trista found him earlier that day. When he sat up, he noticed the world was not green grass with a grey cloudy sky. Everything around him was colorless and contained only various shades of gray and black.

He stood up and saw he was not wearing his normal clothes, adventuring gear, or anything of that matter, he was stark naked.

'Not the first time I've dreamt of being in my birthday suit, although that's normally around the school." Galahad pondered.

A creaking noise behind him suddenly interrupted his thoughts. When he turned around, the tree was changing slightly right before. It was small at first, but it slowly grew at a rate that was somewhat noticeable.

'Huh, this is very surreal.'

Blue veins of light started emerging from the roots and spread up the base of the tree, after half a minute, the whole thing was giving off a blue glow that was constantly moving as the tree grew.

'That's…neat.' He wasn't sure what was happening, but at least it looked pretty.

A little pale orb began poking out of the tree trunk, then another popped up, and another…

A total of five popped up inside the tree and it went silent as the tree stopped growing.

'Wait ... is this supposed to be mine? Is this my skill tree?'

Galahad has heard from his old teacher, Mr. Thorne, that some adventurers would talk about having dreams involving their own skill trees. He started to get excited because if someone could consciously see inside themselves and find their trees, they can figure out ways to manipulate the tree to enhance their skills, combine them, or even just divert all the leveling into a single skill at a time.

'This is fantastic! If I can put everything into 'Healer's Tear,' or even figure out mana regeneration, then I can help keep everyone running even longer.' He was getting excited at the thought of manually changing the way he grew was incredible.

Galahad walked closer to the tree and saw the blue lights were pumping a higher concentration of what must have been mana into the orbs.

He brought his finger up to the orb and saw the blues streams gathering to his finger. He could feel the properties of the skill in front of him, it was his defense boosting tethers. He waved his finger across each orb to discover which ones they were. He stopped after figuring out the smallest orb was his newest skill, hastening step.

Galahad's excitement kept building up, 'I can't waited to figure this out. This could completely change the team dynamic.'

But, before Galahad could fully manipulate the mana into a single orb, he vision turned blurry for a moment. Then something stranger was happening to the already odd dream.

A portion of the tree had spontaneously caught fire, it silently spread along the side of the thin branches and started sparking very violently.

When Galahad stepped back from the fire, he could see that the fire was being fueled by the blue mana rising through the trees, making the flames worse.

Galahad tried to put his arms up to manipulate the mana away from the fire, but as soon as he did that, it only got worse.

The tree exploded to thousands of shards. Luckily the damage didn't seem to actually hurt Galahad, only the force of the blast affected him. He was launched a few yards away, laid out in the grass after bouncing a few times.

Fiery red sparks were floating in the air before getting snuffed out by the cold wind that blew them away.

'Well I hope that wasn't my actual skill tree.' He stood up and found no traces of the tree's mana anywhere. The tree was completely incinerated to black ashes and he could start feel the cold biting at him.

While shivering in the cold, he had one last thought. 'Guess I should see what Mr. Thorne thinks about this.' Then Galahad woke up.

The sun was now rising through his window, basking the whole room in bright yellow.