[Xander – 12 years]

  I'm really lucky I got the leather from the Coxes before I left the Martinses earlier. The leather of an entire bull gave me plenty of leather to practice with before working on the more limited pocket hare leather. Without it, I would've needed to go to the store to buy some and I just want a break from talking to people right now.

  Learning to make stuff out of leather was a lot easier than I expected, though that's probably because I'm trying simpler things. It's just cutting and stitching or cutting and weaving, for the most part. Also applying enchantments, or fixing on clips or clasps.

  Now that I'm done practicing with the mindwave bull leather, I slip on the last bracelet I made. It's three cords of the pink-tinted leather woven tightly together in a braid. The only enchantments placed on it are my standard set for bracelets. The ones to ensure its longevity and prevent it from catching on stuff.

  Deciding on other effects was too difficult so I went with none.

  I move all of the mindwave leather scraps and items to the side, then pull out the pocket hare leather. The pure black leather is slightly stiff but not too stiff for me to work.

  For the pouch with expanded space, I want to go with one with stiffer sides and a flap to close it rather than one that just pulls shut. That means a more box-like shape, even if not a large one. A pouch that can be fixed onto a belt, so I'll need a clasp for it as well. I made sure to practice making pouches like this so that I could make this properly once I felt ready. Thanks to that, I don't make any mistakes when making the pouch.

  By the time I'm done making it, Greyson is trying to be sneaky while watching me. He's still outside of my work zone in the workshop, but he's right at the boundary to it. Rather than standing there, he's crouched down low enough to try and hide himself from me, but he's still high enough to see what I'm working on.

  On top of that, he's hiding beside one of the crates Grandpa Adrian left here, probably thinking I won't notice him. But I see him very much and him staring so much is annoying.

  "No, you can't have it," I look at Greyson. "It's mine. And it'd cost more than your allowance."

  Enchanting a backpack is one thing, creating this pouch was something else entirely. Just enchanting something which already exists is easy and takes me only a minute or two. At least, for the expansion enchantments. I needed to actually make the pouch on my own.

  It took me hunting a beast to create this pouch and my creations are worth a lot of money. Greyson can make his own expanded spaces whenever he wants. He does, too. If he wants me to do it for him, I'm going to charge him.

  Especially since I know he has zero issues with hunting stuff. I've seen him show up with monster parts and multipurpose chickens too many times not to. Acquiring the hide of a pocket hare shouldn't be too difficult for him.

  "How big is the pocket?" He comes out from his hiding spot. "I couldn't tell by watching."

  "Um…" I look at the pouch.

  The pouch is 3" deep, 2" long, and 1" deep. Not very large, but it worked well enough and the results were fantastic. The button for holding the pouch closed and the clip so that it can fit onto a belt are both made of an orichalcum alloy I made to be a dark grey. I wanted to make them black, but Grandpa Adrian's Guide to Making Aesthetic Crafts says that I should add accents like that.

  Don't make something entirely black, add something different, even if only slightly, and it'll improve the looks to others.

  That worked, too. It does look pretty good. The magics seem extremely stable as well, so I know it worked well.

  "What kind of leather is that?" Greyson asks. "You don't normally like working with things that are black so it's special, right?"

  "Pocket hare leather," I answer. "I caught it yesterday while hunting with Carter and his friends. They were drawn by a portal spell I'd cast and I wanted to see if I could use their hide for better spatial enchantments."

  "And?" Greyson asks. "How did it work? I don't think I could make a space like that bigger than maybe two or three feet at the widest part. It's too small to expand more with regular stuff. That's why I can only fit maybe two large griffins in my backpack."

  "My backpack's got a bigger space."

  "Well, yeah," he says. "But you're a god, so it's natural you can make bigger things. In fact, I'm fairly certain you can create an infinite space."

  "I'm not a god," I tell him. "I'm a mortal. And I can't make an infinite space. I don't think that's even possible for a mortal."

  "Well, yeah," he says. "I was referring to when you're in your divine form, not this mortal form. You've obviously limited yourself by reincarnating as a mortal."

  "I'm not a god," I repeat. "And the space inside is, um… big."

  "How big?"

  Bigger than the space in my backpack.

  "One hundred and forty-seven feet by ninety-eight feet by forty-nine feet."

  It seems like I was able to make it forty-nine feet on each side per inch of actual space. I've never managed such a ratio before, which confirms that using dimensional leather was a good idea for this. Adding in a stasis enchantment shrinks how big of a space I can expand something to. Such a big space means I can still do a decently-sized one with a stasis on it.

  "That's so big!" He bounces a little in his excitement. "Like… mega-big!"

  "Yeah," I nod. "Of course, I can make my backpack have a bigger space if I didn't include the stasis enchantment, but I don't have one on this. That would actually make this smaller. But since the original space is so small, the fact that it let me create a space that big is awesome. It's a lot more than I'd expected."

  I thought it might only double or triple the amount I could expand the space by. Allowing me to create one that large is insane. Using a material with the related magic in it naturally really changes things.

  "How much for some leather?" Greyson asks.

  Even with the hares being almost to my knees in height, I don't want to give up some of their leather to Greyson. I want to use it for making money and Greyson probably wouldn't use the pouch, anyway. He doesn't wear belts or stuff with belt loops very often.

  That means that giving him some would just be a waste, and I don't want to waste stuff. Especially not if it's something as precious as pocket hare leather. That's another reason to not make him an expanded spatial pocket with the leather as well.

  "A heavy force net with a ward against dimensional magics," I tell him. "If you drop that on a pocket hare, it won't be able to escape. The trick is dropping it on them before they escape. They're fast."

  "Awww… can't I buy some from you?"

  "Yes, but I don't want to sell you my leather."

  Greyson pouts some more, then goes over to his own work station to start making something. Probably a bomb, since he's feeling down.

  Yeah, the barrier on his bomb-making area just turned on so that's definitely a bomb he's working on. Greyson created it to shield the rest of the workshop in case of an accident. He doesn't want to ruin the other stuff he's making with an accident.

  I return to work and craft a pouch with a temporal stasis enchantment in addition to its expanded space. The actual pouch itself is the same size as the first one, but the expanded space is a lot smaller. Rather than forty-nine feet per inch, it's only twenty-one feet per inch. That's less than half of the rate for just the expanded space but still quite good.

  Better than the rate for the backpack.

  If I tweak the enchantments a little, I can make them even bigger. I didn't tell Greyson that I actually went with a more simple and safe enchantment formula. A smaller expansion means an easier time ensuring the enchantment is stable. Stability is important when practicing or testing something out. Failure to do that can lead to a lot of waste.

  Jumping straight to the most difficult version of making stuff is Greyson's thing, not mine. He has no issues wasting things but I don't like wasting stuff. Wasting materials is bad. That's why all of my practice pouches and bracelets will eventually have enchantments on them and get sold.

  The second spatial pouch has silvery markings on it. Runes that were necessary for its creation that I decided to make visible. I made sure to follow the directions in the book Grandpa Adrian gave me and didn't use the more crucial runes as the visible ones. These are actually just the runes which strengthen the durability of the pouch and extend its longevity.

  I turn the pouch over in my hands and examine it. All of the magics are stable and there are no issues. That's good. I fix the stasis expanded pouch and the normal expanded pouch onto my belt, on my right hip.

  No, no, no. That's bad. No extra things. But doing this will prove useful when hunting so I really should. I need to get used to it so it bothers me less, if that's possible. Yeah, no, I can't do that. I pull both of the pouches off and put them back down, then return to crafting with pocket hare leather.

  Rather than making another pouch with an improved formula, I give making a spatial pocket with the leather a try. Magic can be weird and odd about things. The hides came from creatures which make their own pocket dimensions to hop in and out of. That means they have an inherent trait of spatial magic.

  But there's a chance they also like spatial pockets. If that's true, then I'll be able to set one into it a lot more easily than simply expanding space.

  I don't need too much leather to try this with so I make a bracelet that's half an inch wide. As I set the spatial pocket enchantment into it, I figure out a little bit of how much it can handle being anchored to it.

  Not the full size I can anchor to it, just part of the full size. That's good enough for a test pocket, though.

  A cubic space thirteen feet on each side. An access enchantment allows me to put items inside and take them out. The pocket dimension takes up no physical space, so a weight-influencing spell isn't necessary to make it easy to carry around. Only the weight of the bracelet itself is felt no matter how much is put within.

  As I test the bracelet out, I confirm the magics work properly without any issues. No conflicts or interactions that would cause a problem. This is perfect, so I should try to make a bigger pocket next.

  "Hey, Xander?" Greyson says as he walks over, and I stop playing with the bracelet and look at him.

  He's carrying his new bomb. That means it's probably done and he wants me to join him. There's absolutely no way am I going to do that.

  "Yes, Greyson?"

  "Want to see this explode?" He asks. "I bought lots of watermelons earlier, so it'll be a really awesome explosion! And I made sure to affect the noise of it so it won't be too loud, which means you won't even get scared!"

  Your bombs scare me even without noise. Even more so after I learned about how having a lot of mana makes your body tougher and muscles stronger. My body is still adjusting to having as much mana as it does so I'm not as resilient as you.

  And you've blown your own jaw off before.

  "Um… no," I tell him. "I'm working on something right now and I don't want to watch an explosion."

  "Okay," he looks disappointed. "Whatcha working on? A magic bracelet?"

  "Yeah," I nod. "I saw your pocket space research a few weeks ago and figured out the rest of the spell, but I could only make smaller pockets. They also weren't too stable most of the time. That's why I wanted pocket hare hides after I learned about them.

  "And look!" I hold the bracelet up. "It works! There's a pocket space that's thirteen feet on each side and it's extremely stable! I'm going to try making a bigger one with a temporal stasis now."

  Greyson stares at the bracelet for several long moments. Is that confusion? I can't tell if that's confusion on him or not, so I show him me pulling out the cotton balls still inside of it.

  "MY WHOLE LIFE IS A FAILURE!" He wails, causing me to cover my ears. "NOOOO!"

  Greyson vanishes, though I can tell he's at the explosion zone. Within seconds, there's a big explosion outside, then I feel him teleporting away.

  And now he's in drama mode for some reason. What did I do to upset him? It can't be the bracelet since I know he likes it when I fix up his spells so that they cost less or more efficient. Especially the spatial ones. He loved it when he learned I cleaned up the teleporting spell, gravity-manipulating spell, and space-expanding enchantments.

  Well, I won't figure it out on my own. I probably wasn't even responsible, it could just be that Greyson was already upset by something and was trying to hold it off so he could make stuff.

  For my next attempt at the bracelet, I make the pocket dimension twenty-one feet on each side and have a temporal stasis. Making it this much bigger wasn't an experiment, though, which is why I knew it was fine. I could tell that thirteen feet was way too small compared to what the bracelets can actually hold.

  So much so that a temporal stasis pocket this size would most likely be fine. That was confirmed as I set the enchantment into the new bracelet, silvery runes decorating the band.

  All of the tests confirm that the bracelet is fine, so I make two more. Both of them have stasis pockets twenty-seven feet on each side attached to them. I store the first two bracelets away while slipping the second pair onto my left wrist, alongside the bracelet made from the mindwave bull leather.

  There we go! Three on the left, three on the right. I'd rather swap one bracelet on each wrist so that each wrist isn't fully the same thing, but I don't want to take off the friendship bracelets for that. It's not a necessary removal so my wishes won't come true if I do that.

  I clean up my workstation, then leave the warehouse and teleport home. When I enter the house, Dad's in the dining room, talking with Katie as she works on dinner.

  "Welcome back, Xander," Dad says as I walk over to him. "How'd your weekend go?"

  "It's gone good so far," I answer. "Can I hug you?"

  "You can," he says. I give him a hug, and he wraps an arm around me. "Katie's almost done with dinner, why don't you drop your stuff off and get ready? Then you can tell me about your weekend while we eat?"

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "Okay," I say.

  "Oh, and Xander?"

  "Yes, Dad?"

  "You've done very good this summer," he tells me. "The orphanage told me that you run away whenever you get too anxious or scared and it usually takes a few days to find you again. You've become pretty anxious and scared and overwhelmed quite a lot this summer, but you haven't run away at all.

  "Tiffany said they usually reward you for every three months you don't," he continues. "But with school coming up, I figured you're probably starting to feel anxious over that again. Especially since she said you usually run away a week or so before school begins. You haven't done that, and I'm proud of you."

  My face heats up. He's proud of me? It's been really hard not to run away at times, but if I run away, I won't get to keep living here. So I do my best not to. And he lets me go to the workshop a lot, and that helps me calm down.

  But there are definitely times I just want to disappear.

  "Because of that," he says. "I'd like to reward you with something, but a little extra money for a meal out like they did doesn't feel right. Why don't you think of something, and if I think it's reasonable, you can do it?"

  As long as it's reasonable? I can think of several possible things, but I don't know if any of them count as reasonable. Well, he'll probably consider a couple of them as reasonable, but there are two others that I'm sure he'll say aren't reasonable.

  "And if you're not sure between several choices," he adds. "You can make a list of things and we'll talk about them, okay?"

  "Okay," I say.

  "Now go get ready for dinner," he smiles. "After, there's a documentary I think you'll like."

  [Greyson – 10 years]

  "Uh… Dad?" Cal asks as he gets home from work. "Why is Greyson spread out on the floor, looking like he's feeling miserable?"

  Also face-down, because that's what boys like me deserve.

  "MY WHOLE LIFE IS A FAILURE!!!" I cry.

  "Yeah… that's all I've managed to get out of him," Dad says. "He's not causing a disruption, so I decided to just leave him until you got home. Would you mind?"

  "Yeah," Cal says. "Let me go get changed real quick, Greyson doesn't like the uniform."

  It looks too itchy.

  Cal returns after a couple of minutes and lies down beside me, though he's on his side and is looking at me. He's also got a little container of his star candies, which he opens up. He pulls one out and pushes it against my lips, and I let him put it in my mouth.

  Pineapple. A good one, too.

  "Why's your life a failure, Greyson?" Cal asks after it's dissolved. "What happened?"

  "MY WHOLE LIFE IS A TOTAL FAILURE!!!"

  "Yes, I know you're thinking that," Cal says. "What I want to know is why? Can you tell me, buddy? For another candy?"

  I sniffle. Telling him will only confirm that my whole life is a failure. But the candies are so good. I want another.

  "Okay."

  He puts another of the candies in my mouth. Peach this time.

  "So?" Cal asks once it finishes dissolving. "What happened?"

  "Xander already figured out the spatial pocket spell… and just from the first fragment and my notes on it," I say. "He may not have even looked at my notes, too. Why do I have to be friends with a god? Whyyyy?"

  "You've come up with many things he hasn't," Cal tells me. "I know this was a big one for you, though. Did you ask him how he managed to figure it out? I'm sure he'd be willing to give you his notes. That might help you the next time."

  "He doesn't write his notes down," I sniffle. "He just keeps them all up in his head. I can't enter his mind without his permission most of the time. Going in and eating dreams is okay, but other stuff doesn't work unless he lets me. That's why the hypnosis mostly failed. And it's why I can't just get the info from him."

  "Hypnosis?" Cal asks. "What hypnosis?"

  "Back when we first met," I sniffle again. "Xander had super awful nightmares that were made from his memories of what those abusive, sick people did to him. I know how to use actual magical hypnosis and offered to help him. I was going to make it so that when a nightmare came, he'd just dream of food instead. It kind of worked… but now, his nightmares are just of food abusing him. I couldn't get rid of the nightmares with my hypnosis."

  "Um, Greyson?" Cal asks.

  "Yeah?"

  "Didn't you just say that he gave you permission?" He asks. "Doesn't that mean you could enter his mind? So wouldn't that mean the hypnosis should have worked?"

  "Well… yeah," I say. "Back then, Xander had a lot less mana than me, too. But he was naturally semi resistant to it."

  "Even though he was weaker?" Cal asks.

  "Yeah," I say. "Since he's an even more powerful dreamsage than I am, his mind's natural resistance to mind magics is pretty powerful. He has to actually relax it to let me in, and he didn't do that back then. I didn't know it'd be an issue and thought it worked."

  "Ah."

  Cal seems at a loss for words for a few moments.

  "Greyson?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Why would you need to enter his mind to learn how he did it?" Cal asks. "Couldn't you just… ask him."

  "Oh, right."

  "Stay out of people's heads," he says. "That's illegal without permission. Even with it, you shouldn't mess about with someone's mind. You can cause serious damage doing that, which is why it's restricted by law. Don't make our great-grandfather angry with you."

  Grandfather Adrian would probably make me wear that evil outfit for a month if I messed with people's heads.

  "Greyson?" Dad says. "Are you feeling a little better?"

  "My whole life is still a failure," I say. "I couldn't figure it out with two fragments obtained from the universe and I'm the smartest mortal on the entire planet. By leagues."

  "You can't be smart in all areas," Cal says. "Xander seems to have a good affinity for dimensional magics while it seems like you're interested in it mostly for convenience. And haven't you said that Xander has an intuition when it comes to magic?"

  "Yeah… but it doesn't make me any less of a failure."

  "Want to know something you won't fail at?"

  "What?"

  "Making candy," he says. "Come on, let's get up and make some suckers."

  I'd rather not get up right now, but making suckers is fun, especially with Cal. They come out a lot better than when I make them by myself even though he doesn't do anything special that I can see. Chances are extremely high that he subconsciously uses magic to do something and that's why I can't replicate his recipes.

  We move to the kitchen and put on our candy-making aprons, then wash our hands and begin pulling out the ingredients.

  "Flats or rounds?" Cal asks.

  "Rounds," I answer. "I want to be able to put them fully in my mouth and just suck on them. They're suckers, not lickers."

  Cal snorts and grabs the molds for those and the bag of sticks. I make the sticks myself and they're high in quality but decompose easily if buried in soil.

  We begin making the suckers by dissolving sugar in water, then bringing it to a boil after ensuring there are no stray grains of sugar. Three separate saucepans of it, with one having a lot more than the other two do.

  Banana extract and yellow food coloring are added to the saucepan with the most liquid sugar. Blueberry extract is added to one of the smaller ones, and strawberry extract is added the other.

  We let the first two cool while the banana-flavored one continues to heat a little. Due to the higher quantity, it takes longer. In anticipation of this, we also started the bigger saucepan later than the others so that we have time to cool the others.

  Not that we cool them in a full batch. We cool them in small molds so that they create tiny nuggets. A smaller surface area lets them cool faster, so we don't have to wait too long for them to be ready.

  Those nuggets are then added in as we carefully pour the banana liquid candy into the spherical sucker molds.

  Cal pours and I push the sucker sticks into the molds. I really want to use my magic to speed up the cooling, but Cal stops me and has me help him clean the dishes.

  Then we make gummy bears! Making a bunch of different flavors of them takes up enough time that the suckers are done before we finish, and I put one in my mouth.

  "So?" Cal asks once we finish making candy. "How do you feel now?"

  "A lot better," I answer. "Thanks. I was being stupid earlier."

  "Just a little," he chuckles. "Why are you portioning the gummy bears into two containers in equal sizes?"

  I love Cal to death but he can be really dumb sometimes. The answer to his question should be obvious to anyone who's lived with me for almost eleven years.

  "One for me and one of the rest of you."

  "The suckers are all yours," Cal tells me. "Give us more gummy bears."

  "You can have an extra scoop."

  "No, Greyson," Cal snorts. "We get three-quarters. That's for all of us, not just you. You're getting an entire batch of suckers."

  "I made all of the food coloring and extracts we used," I say. "Therefore, I get more."

  "You're already getting more."

  "Not of the gummy bears."

  "You get a quarter of those."

  The chance of me being allowed to take half of them is slim.

  "A third."

  "Deal."

  That was his intention the entire time, wasn't it? How do I fall for it every time? I never do with anyone else.

  I finish portioning out everything and we clean up the kitchen, then Cal looks at Dad, who's still on the couch. Papa's there now, too, and they're snuggling a little while watching TV.

  "Travis spending the night at a friend's again?" Cal asks. "He used to never do that, something must've changed to make him want to."

  It's already past curfew – past nine PM. Travis should've been home awhile ago.

  "No," Dad answers. "He's late and we don't know where he is. He hasn't contacted us and won't answer the phone when we call."

  "What?" Cal asks. "That's not normal, Dad. Something's up. Have you tried-"

  "We're fairly certain Greyson would know if Travis got hurt," Papa says. "Or went missing. The fact that he's not reacting as if he did means that Travis is just running late. Considering he's thirteen, it may be just him being a teen and breaking curfew. It's also not that much past curfew, so we're going to hear his excuse before determining the punishment."

  Do they think I monitor everyone or something? Well, that's actually not a bad idea, I should do something to make it so I know if they get kidnapped or badly hurt. Why didn't I think of that before?

  "He's home," I say.

  "He is?" Dad asks.

  "Yeah," I answer. "He's about to reach the front door and is in a small panic."

  "The bear was back!" Travis exclaims as he bursts through the front door. "We avoided the two areas it was in before and it showed up elsewhere! We were on our way to get ice cream before heading home and the bear showed up! I would've called, except there's honey on my pocket and I didn't want to try and grab my phone with that! Wasn't sure if it'd work, anyway."

  "It should unless the honey got inside of it," I tell him. "Though if honey got into your pocket from the bear's attacks, it's entirely possible that it's covering the microphone or speaker, or may make it difficult to type without being cleaned. And cleaning it would be difficult. You have bits of balloon stuck to you."

  He's not soaked in honey, but he does have several large splatters of it, and it seems a balloon was dropped on his head by the way his hair is soaked and dripping with honey.

  "Yeah, I know," Travis groans. "Getting it out of my backpack last time was a pain in the butt."

  "I'll teach you the proper spell later," I say. "Dad, Papa, please grant me permission to deal with the balloon-throwing bear. It has attacked Travis twice and there is no telling when it might shift to more dangerous attacks."

  Dad and Papa stare at me.

  "If we deny you permission," Dad says. "You're just going to sneak out, aren't you?"

  "It is nine-fourteen," I say. "Therefore, only sixteen minutes until bedtime. I should be getting ready to go to bed soon. As much as I do not wish to go to bed late, I must ensure that my family is safe. With the bear active right now, this is the optimal time to deal with it. So yes, I'll sneak out."

  I don't normally sneak out when denied permission but this is an important and serious situation. The bear must be dealt with as soon as possible.

  "At least he's honest about that," Papa mutters.

  "Try not to damage anything," Dad says. "No causing problems for others."

  "Yes, sir!"

  I hurry to my room and change my outfit. This isn't bug-hunting so I don't want to put on the outfit for that. I'm also not going to get dirty like I do when messing with enchanting fluids and stuff so not that outfit, either. What should I wear for taking down the bear?

  Hm. It's a beast that throws water balloons. There's a 0% chance of me being struck but I should dress for the occasion. Swim trunks it is. After changing into those, I drink a mana potion just in case and ask Travis where he and his friends encountered the bear this time.

  The moment I appear in the exact location that Travis stated, a water balloon filled with honey hits me in the side of the head. Honey slowly flows down the side of my face, neck, and shoulder and I look to my right.

  Sitting not twenty feet from me is the biggest bear I've ever seen, even when I travel deep into true wilderness. It's nineteen feet to its shoulders while sitting down. He has dark brown fur with light and dark grey markings and pink irises, indicating that he's clearly magical.

  Well, I already knew he was since he's intelligent enough to fill water balloons with honey and escape notice. How he's getting the water balloons and where he's getting all of the honey from is a mystery, but also a sign of his intelligence.

  The even bigger mystery about the bear is how he nailed me with a balloon the moment I appeared. He has his left arm held against his chest, a large pile of full balloons resting on it. There just wasn't enough time for him to grab one and throw it at me the moment I appeared.

  Unless he's super fast. He must've done something to make the balloon fly quickly enough to hit me after he grabbed it. A physical enhancement spell alone wouldn't be enough for that, I don't think.

  I reach forward and freeze him in time… only to find him gone.

  Okay… that's new. While the spell is fairly new for me, I doubt there's anything on this planet other than Xander and our great-grandfather that should be able to escape it.

  Wait. I turn my head to see if he teleported somewhere close by and get nailed right in the face with another water balloon. I didn't even hear it moving! He must be using magic to conceal the sounds!

  I try to freeze him in time again, but he vanishes. I don't see him when I look around me but I doubt he's gone far. He's hit me with two balloons and knows I'm after him. With how quickly he's able to hit me… he must be using time magic of his own to accelerate the balloons.

  Though he must still be nearby. According to the last two incidents, he stuck to the same stretch of road for the entire day and even nailed a police cruiser with a balloon as it went by during the night. Which means he's definitely still nearby.

  I walk down the road, keeping alert for the bear. I'm halfway down it when a balloon strikes me in the back of my left leg.

  Just as I whip around, another balloon hits me right in the chest. The bear vanishes as I try to throw a spell at him.

  Found his hiding spot! I can just barely see him out of the corner of my vision!

  The moment I appear in the spot between two buildings he'd teleported to, a balloon strikes me in the left arm and the bear vanishes.

  It was a trap! This bear is way too smart!

  I continue my hunt, teleporting around the street, and every time I reappear, the bear nails me with a balloon somewhere. Anytime I go to react, he either hits me with another and teleports away or just teleports away. Even using the improved teleport spell Xander taught me isn't enough.

  This bear either has a monstrous amount of mana or he has a teleport just as mana-efficient as Xander's. I'm betting it's the latter as he's not actually using much magic outside of that and whatever he's doing to silence his movements and balloons. My attempts at using temporal magic to catch him use up way more mana than teleporting.

  "Agh!" I flop onto the ground on my back, thoroughly coated in honey and balloon pieces and completely drained of mana.

  The bear appears beside me with a very large water balloon held between its paws. It's bigger than my head and is almost completely clear, allowing me to see the golden honey within.

  I'm so drained, I don't even have the energy to move away as the bear drops the mega balloon on me. It slams onto my chest, honey splattering everywhere, then the bear waves and vanishes.

  I was nearly at full mana and ended up empty trying to catch that beast. Me. The third most powerful person on the planet. Yet I burned through nearly 3.4 million mana in an hour trying to catch a bear.

  And it was playing with me! Everything is wibbly-wobbly and hazy now and I feel dizzy and a little nauseous. Mana exhaustion for sure, especially with how tired I am. That could also come from it being way past my bedtime, but this feels different from how that normally feels.

  So it's definitely mana exhaustion.

  Jeez, it feels awful. I just want to fall asleep here, but I need to get home. Well, my limbs won't move. I guess I'm more exhausted than I thought. HRRRGH!

  Nope. They still won't move.

  After about a minute, a car pulls up close to me and stops. That looks like Cal's car… wait, that's Cal getting out of it, and he's holding a bottle of glowing blue potion. Is that a mana potion? Why does he have some?

  "Took this from your bag before I came," Cal says. "Something told me you might need it and after watching what happened… you're drained, aren't you?"

  I'm so glad I gave him access to my backpack, with limitations.

  Cal opens the bottle as he sits beside me, then helps me lift my head up and places the bottle to my lips. I drink the potion, soon recovering enough strength to grab the bottle and finish it off on my own.

  "Does this mean we need to contact our great-grandfather?" Cal asks. "If the bear can make you run out of mana, and use spatial magics, he's pretty dangerous, right?"

  "He can use time magics and mind magics, too," I sit up properly. "I couldn't feel his mind at all and he was definitely using temporal magics to cancel out my own while accelerating the balloons. Or at least some of mine. He may have even been predicting the future."

  Even with that, there's a high chance his spells were more efficient than mine. I wouldn't be surprised if he had less than a quarter the amount of mana than me. Not after learning just how much more efficient teleporting alone can be when all flaws from it were removed.

  Including ones I didn't even know existed.

  "Alright," Cal says once I've drained the bottle. "I'll see if we can get a message to our great-grandfather."

  "No," I say. "I want to catch him. Me. He's not dangerous yet… I just need to come up with a plan. A better plan. I'll analyze this battle and come up with countermeasures. In fact, I'm already doing that now, so it's time to-"

  "Time for you to clean yourself up and let me drive you home," Cal says firmly. "You can chase after the bear the next time he shows up. You need some sleep."

  "I will not be defeated!"

  "Greyson, it's past ten," he says. "Use your magic and scrub yourself off, then get in the car. And make sure you're dry this time."

  "I dried the seat off…"

  "Just make sure you're dry this time."

  "But the bear-"

  "Bested you already," he says. "And you're tired, so you'll not be able to think as clearly. You'll also have more time to formulate a plan for next time tomorrow."

  "All good points," I say. "But I'm not tired yet! I just need to get more mana potions and-"

  "If you're still awake by the time we get home," he says. "I'm sure Dad and Papa'll be fine with it. But you're already up past your bedtime, so I'm sure you're feeling anxious over that. And very, very tired."

  I sigh, but use magic to clean myself of all of the honey, then I get into the backseat of the car. Cal starts driving and by the time we reach the end of the street, my tiredness overtakes me and everything starts to darken. No matter how much I try to fight the sleepiness so that I can return to the street after drinking more mana potions, I fail this battle as well.