Weeks passed, and things had settled into a new normal.

  Ember was learning to live without her late owner. And after weeks of living among other humans and interacting with so many different personalities, she had been craving for more. So she made sure she would spend at least three hours every day doing just that, along with two hours of physical training, spending the rest of her time training her magic or speaking with Merida, who was going through her own struggle adapting to the new normal.

  The doll would spend hours on end contemplating the world around her, sometimes spending several minutes staring at specific trees, patches of snow, or clouds. It did not help either that now that they were on their own, Merida had dropped the illusion revealing her permanently blank smiling face and dead beady eyes, looking effectively absent and lifeless.

  The only real change that happened during that time had been Ember's steady progress in learning new cantrips combinations and repeatedly relearning her old ones.

  She experimented a lot with sensory cantrips, trying to find something better to replace the three she had been using so far. Especially Mind Tracking, which she felt was too situational a cantrip to deserve a permanent slot, and Akashic Whisper, which felt more like an obligatory cantrip rather than a useful one.

  But in the end, all she found were synesthetic cantrips changing her ability to perceive the world around her like Blind Sense. Or specialized variants of cantrips she already had, like Akashic Sleuth. This new compound cantrip was completing Mind Tracking by allowing her to find out what her target did in a particular location by studying perturbation in the ambient primordial essence instead of where they went next by tracking their specific magic signature.

  So, in the end, she just replaced her Mind Tracking cantrip with the Disarming Tail Wagging she wanted and proceed training that cantrip on every human she encountered, subtly convincing them with critical effectiveness to spend some minutes of their precious time playing Frisbee with her instead of whatever they had in mind.

  She also experimented on other cantrips, especially the least useful ones, including some of Merida's suggestions but to no avail. Nothing was quite as good as she already had or too specialized for simpler needs. After all, she just wanted to balance her cantrip between sensory, utility, offense, and defense, using the most useful ones for each slot she had.

  Not counting Akashic Sight, which she had for free so long she kept the Akashic Knack specialization, Akashic Whisper was still her most useful sensory cantrip, allowing her to perceive any sentient creatures within the cantrip radius without fail. She already felt like she had the best possible defense and attack cantrip and felt like she could not afford to lose them even temporarily by experimenting on those. Though she already confirmed with sensory composite cantrip that those, too, could be recombined to create even weirder variants. And finally, she was currently satisfied with the sheer utility of disarming wagging tail and had yet to find a better utility combination to replace it.

  Seeing her diligently work to advance her magic, Merida informed her that there were 45 secondary cantrips and 990 tertiary ones she could make out of the 10 primaries she knew so far, not accounting for the fact she still had 22 primary cantrips yet to uncover.

  But a canine body apparently had hundreds of organs or combinations of organs that might be valid targets for a magic of one kind or another. So, though Merida tried to drop off a few hints, she either could not understand them or did not know what to make of them. Though she did know that the answer should be somewhere right in the middle section of her body, as she had unlocked none from her lungs or her gutts so far, she had no idea what she was missing, holding her back from her next breakthrough.

  Not wanting to see her friend lose her spirit again at the lack of actual progression, Merida had promised to help her breakthrough to the next tier instead while also warning her it wasn't the right season yet and that they would have to wait until spring to gather the necessary materials, whatever it might be.

  And so they were on the eve of the final update, waiting in the garden for that very moment Merida anticipated the most. Ember stayed with her companion only to humor her, turning the whole thing into some of their bonding moment.

  'So, how long do you think it might be?' Ember asked for the penultimate time, running through the clearing to keep her body temperature while Merida looked at the stars intently — as if she could divine some answers from their slow motions in the night sky.

  Merida had also dropped using illusion to talk too, which somewhat buggered Ember too, compared to humans' incessant blabbering, which made her late owner feel like a weirdo, now that she thought about it, always so silent unless she precisely needed to communicate something. She had not been so different compared to Merida, which was also a puppet of few words, except when magic was involved.

  'What about pollution and that cradle thing? I don't get it,' Ember reacted as she finished reading.

  Again, she understood every word, but none of those made sense to her.

  'Merida?' Ember called immediately upon receiving the second, unexpected notification.

  'That’s it?' Ember asked. 'Your answer is "I have no idea"?'

  'Is there any demerit to accepting it?' Ember asked, prudent.

  'Why the hell would the system want me to protect squirrels?' Ember asked again, dumbfounded.

  'Sound far-fetched,' Ember mumbled, unconvinced. 'Even if it were true, I would understand protecting baby squirrels, but adults?'

  'So, immediate restrictions on what I can and can't do for plausible benefits in the future?' Ember summarised, feeling like it wasn't worth it. She lived in the present and could not care less about some distant future she could not envision.

  'Come again?'

  'How stronger and faster are we speaking?'

  That made the offer deviously tempting. She did not know about strength, but her speed under Balanced Mind was already something else. She had no frame of reference, so twice that was insane and beyond comprehension.

  'Are you telling me I'm actually slow?' Ember barked, indignant.

  'So I'm slow AND weak.' Ember pouted.

  Deciding that the pros outweighed the cons, Ember finally accepted the mission.

  'Merida, why do I feel like I got scammed?'

  Ember was feeling terrible about this, mainly cause the system did not give her any detail of what might happen if she failed.

  'So what I'm supposed to be doing?' Ember asked, unsure what to do with this new information.

  'So, same as every day except I'm supposed to recruit them? It's not like I can go out and tell them: Hey, let's improve Cascadia together. What do you say? I can't talk. So how can I possibly do that?' Ember started ranting before Merida interrupted her.