No, Thank You

The growl caused the System to freeze, rooting himself more firmly to the branch he was already on.

Alec calmed his mind, causing his presence to fade slightly. Though it didn't do much, the monsters with lower intelligence would sometimes be fooled.

Hopefully, it had not yet discovered him and Bunbun.

Alec's breathing faded into something less discernible. It was shallower and even less audible as compared to before.

He didn't even dare to peek down to see if the monster had really spotted them or not.

The newest tree that he Awakened prodded him gently through their bond, doing a strange fluctuation.

Alec didn't comprehend.

The tree prodded him again, something more urgent seeping into their bond. The core stretched out to him, brushing against his magic.

Maybe…?

Alec channelled the energy of the tree he was sitting on, hoping it would work. Copying the magic from the core of the tree, he borrowed its life energy, spreading it over him and his bunny.

The threatening growls faded into something confused, where the monster plodded away with heavy footsteps.

Alec held in a breath. That had been close. He patted the tree's branch in thanks.

That had been enlightening. He didn't know he was able to do that. Did that mean that he was able to borrow Bunbun's core as well?

Actually, did Bunbun even have a core?

Alec picked up the docile bunny, brushing his fur. Alec spread his magic over the bunny, allowing it to permeate the bunny's body.

To his surprise, there really was a core inside. Alec was baffled.

He had done this before, when he had been confused about what was different between the objects he Awakened. He eventually came to the conclusion that it was because Bunbun and Javor were already living creatures, unlike those that he tried to Awaken in their home, but that had been proven wrong when he failed to Awaken other similarly living things as well.

Why was it that it was only now that he was able to sense the core inside his bunny when before there were no such results?

Was it because he didn't know about it? Or was it something else?

Alec thought back about what had changed in the past week or so.

Could it be something to do with his magic capacity? He had progressed a lot further than when he first came across Bunbun at the lakeside.

Though his progress was slow-going compared to his friends, he was still steadily plodding along. He was already at the late initiate stage in Elemental rankings, at the cusp of crossing into the transitional threshold.

Cyrus, Zacharias and Tatiana were already in the early peak stage, with Elias hovering at the late transitional stage.

Alec was the slowest, but that didn't mean he was giving up. Though, he couldn't help but think to himself that this body's compatibility with magic was really terrible. Granted, Brights were proclaimed to have a higher and more explosive growth rate as compared to the other Societypes, but Alec hadn't thought that it would have made so much of a difference even when they were only in the Elemental stage.

However, what puzzled him was that Alec wasn't the same as them. Theoretically, he should have been at least on par with their training speed, but he lagged behind so much that he was practically the stereotype of an Every.

Of course, this was the perfect chance to hide his Societype from the watchful eyes of the elders, but that didn't mean it didn't frustrate him.

Though his mother had done something to fudge the appraisal crystal's readings, that shouldn't have affected his body's latent potential, but he always struggled with increasing his magical capacity.

Alec huffed and stopped thinking about it for the time being.

He examined the core inside Bunbun but wasn't able to discern anything out of the ordinary. It reflected back to him the same way as the newly Awakened tree did.

There was nothing he could do now. Alec instinctively sensed that there should be more that he could do, but he couldn't do it because he didn't have enough magic.

How did he know, you might ask? Well, this was all based on his experience as a System, of course. Let's not talk about how Alec was a System that specialized in helping transmigrators pass into the next life.

In the System break room, there were always loud-mouthed Systems that would love to discuss, break down, and all-round gossip about the various events that occurred in the worlds that they were locked onto for the time being.

Common plot point number one, the Main Character is overlooked, stereotyped against, scolded, discriminated, etc.

Common plot point number two, the Main Character seems useless, but actually he's the strongest once he grows into his powers.

Common plot point number three, the Main Character's fiancée/fiancé disgraces them in front of a large crowd, triggering either a suicide that leads to a transmigrator taking over the body, or latent potential growth to explode.

Blah fucking blah. Alec's heard everything. After hearing the same stories over and over, even a complete moron would be able to pick up some common points.

In this case, since he was on a punishment by the Mainframe, his 'powers' were deemed 'useless' but most likely, it just took some time to grow, following common plot point number two. The Mainframe probably wasn't that heartless to its Systems, after all.

So, he just had to increase his magic capacity, and he *should* be able to find something he wasn't able to find before.

In the face of this knowledge, Alec didn't lose his cool and start hastily meditating or god forbid start doing the basic magic technique on the top of the tree like some Main Characters.

For one, he was pretty sure that he did not receive the Mainframe's blessings for plot armour, and that meant that if he was being a moron, he *would* die, and Alec did not want to die, thank you very much.

He still had some semblance of a brain to know that doing that in an area that was not secure would do him no favours. He had no intention of courting death like a Main Character with plot armour.

Just because they couldn't die didn't mean it didn't hurt. Alec did not want to trigger common plot point number four, Main Character runs from a beast/enemy that vastly outclasses them, falling down a ravine where certain death was imminent, only to emerge with a miraculous plant or sword.

Granted, they returned stronger, but they also made many dangerous decisions, and no fucking thank you, Alec was rather attached to his life at this point.

Though he had been torn at first about being so unceremoniously shoved into this life, he now treated it sort of like another job from the Mainframe, as well as partially like a vacation in a sense

Alec compared Bunbun and the tree's core, realizing that Bunbun's core was brighter and clearer, whereas the tree's was lacklustre, like it hadn't been polished before.

Alec attributed this to Bunbun having been Awakened earlier.

Now that the monster was gone, Alec jumped over to the next tree using the interconnecting branches.

Making himself comfortable, this time Alec wanted to try something different. Could he Awaken the tree in such a way that it was connected to the other tree?

With that thought in mind, Alec dropped and got to work. There were things he wanted to try before he went to sleep for the night.