After Charlemagne calmed enough to be let out of his timeout, he reappeared in his handler’s office. The strange being waved four or five appendages in his direction without looking, its many eyes all directed toward the glowing rectangle. Whatever it was, the creature was clearly fascinated by it, occasionally giggling as it caressed the item.

  “Well, that was rather uncalled for and a waste of valuable time - both yours and mine,” his handler sniffed. “I hope that you’ve got it all out of your system. That’s system with a small ‘s’ by the way, I’m not talking about anything related to the System. And no, it was not a pun, just a clarification.”

  The creature stopped and turned two eyes toward Charlemagne, as if daring him to disagree. When the rooster remained silent, his handler once again sniffed and continued.

  “That display was uncouth to say the least. Please do not let it happen again, or I might not be in the mood to help you further, bets or no bets. Now, ask the System to display the ‘Shop Menu’ and agree to pay the associated cost, so we can get this show on the road.”

  Anxious to see his newest set of possible rewards, the rooster overlooked his hander’s impertinence. He asked the Squiggles to show him this “Shop Menu”.

  After agreeing to the cost, Charlemagne expected to have a set of choices similar to those he had received from conquering the Individual Battle Simulation. Instead, the Squiggles hijacked his optic nerves in order to overlay the Menu over his normal vision. His head whirled as option after option scrolled past, leaving him no time to comprehend what was being offered before the next appeared. Moving his head did nothing but make him slightly dizzy. Frustrated, the rooster let out a squawk. The overwhelming text vanished immediately, and a short announcement appeared instead.

  It was still too fast, and Charlemagne ended up in timeout again.

  When he reappeared, the rooster ignored his handler’s renewed chiding and immediately went back to work, once again having to pay one Shop Point for remote access. After asking the Squiggles for help several times, he finally managed to get them to show him the items available for purchase in several broad categories.

  When he asked the Squiggles to display the available Skills, his headache returned as thousands of possibilities presented themselves. Everything from “Functional Immortality” to “Microwave Cookery” was available for purchase. There were strange symbols next to each Skill, which took Charlemagne an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure out represented the cost associated with each Skill. Thankfully, the Squiggles were quite helpful by hiding Skills that were too expensive, but, unfortunately, “Functional Immortality” was beyond his current means. Still, the rooster was still left with far more options than he knew what to do with.

  Despite his mounting decision fatigue, Charlemagne took his time and reminded himself to remain patient. After a few tries, he was successful in asking the Squiggles to narrow down his options. The rooster was specifically looking for Skills that would enhance his Ember Core, which meant that only mana-based, fire-based, or radiation-based Skills would be acceptable. Of these, there were only a handful:

  The rooster quickly discounted Lead-lined and Mutation Resistance. Both of these Skills, per the Squiggles, would provide additional protection against radiation damage in slightly different ways, but Charlemagne had no need to fear the mysterious energy. After some consideration, he also excluded Wings of Fire. He already possessed wings that worked perfectly well, so there was no need to spend any of his Shop Points on fake ones. Even if he thought they might be fun to try out.

  Having made up his mind, he first purchased the two mana-based Skills, hoping that they would trigger an upgrade to his Ember Core, despite having been told just how unlikely that was.

  Here was the moment of truth. The rooster accepted the Squiggles request and waited for a change. As if understanding that he needed reassurance, the Squiggles sent another message not long after.

  Annoyed, Charlemagne went ahead and purchased the second Skill.

  The rooster assented to this as well, waiting with bated breath for the next message from the Squiggles informing him that he had once again done something noteworthy. As he did, he experimentally moved some of his mana around within his body. It was hard to tell, but things seemed somewhat easier with the two Skills incorporated, allowing him to expend less mental effort to achieve the same results. Trying out his newest Skills kept him busy for a few minutes, long enough that whatever transformation should have already started, if it was going to. Then the Squiggles returned again.

  Charlemagne managed to avoid another timeout, but it was a close thing.

  Refocusing on spending his Shop Points, he continued his spending spree, buying Flame Physique Skill next. As soon as he did, a warm, tingling sensation arose right by the base of his tail before spreading to the rest of his skin. Microscopic mana channels snaked out from the two lobes of the rooster’s uropygial gland, allowing the oily secretions produced there to be evenly distributed across Charlemagne’s body, where it lay dormant between his dermis and his subcutaneous layer. Another pulse of mana raised the temperature of the oily substance, causing Charlemagne’s skin to puff out momentarily before the Skill once again activated, projecting a thin layer of mana over the epidermis that counteracted the expansionary forces. Charlemagne now had the means to survive the vacuum of space should he ever lose or replace the Fop’s Raiment.

  Charlemagne let out a triumphant crow and immediately agreed to the Squiggles’ request. There was a short delay, which felt like an eternity to the expectant rooster. Then his body once again began to adjust. The sensation started as a tingling feeling all over his body as his Ember Shield flared to maximum power, causing the rooster’s handler to startle and look his way. Keeping one eye on Charlemagne, it turned its other eyes back to the glowing rectangle before barking out a sharp laugh.

  “Well, this is certainly going to be a show. I was hoping that you’d find Flame Physique, but the stupid rules here wouldn’t…wouldn’t…arghh! At any rate, you better buckle up. Thank goodness you just maxed out your Pain Resistance Skill, or this would be even worse. Good luck, by the way…I’m rooting for you to retain your sanity. Well, I mean…you know, what little there was to begin with.”

  The other creature broke off into unintelligible muttering as Charlemagne focused his attention back to his body. The tingling had progressed to a mild burning sensation as Charlemagne’s Ember Core beat rapidly, sending scalding hot fluid churning through his Veins of Lava and into the thin sheet of super pressurized oil that now coated his body thanks to Flame Physique. His Ember Shield spell began to contract toward his body, bypassing the rooster’s feathers entirely. This created a strange sandwich effect with Charlemagne’s skin stuck in between his Veins of Lava and his Ember shield, both of which continued to pump huge amounts of heat into the rooster’s outer layers.

  Despite his mastery of Pyro and other fire-based techniques, Charlemagne was not completely immune to heat. As his internal temperature spiked, the rooster’s powerful Durability was eventually overwhelmed and nerves all over his body began to protest the rising heat. It was particularly bad inside the rooster’s beak beneath the keratin layer, where a layer of skin fed by blood vessels separated the outer layer of dead material from the living bone beneath. The trigeminal nerve branches that innervated the area were particularly sensitive to temperature. In other words, Charlemagne felt like his face was on fire.

  The rooster began to panic as burning sensation continued to intensify, running around and slamming his face against whatever surface he could reach. The buildup of heat and pressure within his beak quickly reached unbearable levels, causing him to squawk in agony.

  “Stop ruining the furniture and the floor. You’re going to get put into another timeout,” the rooster’s handler warned. But Charlemagne didn’t hear it, nor did the System consider his panic to be worthy of punishment. In short order, the entire room was trashed except for the portion that was protected by the force field. There were holes in the walls and floors, pieces of smashed furniture everywhere, and even several deep gouges in the ceiling.

  “Seriously, cut it out!” the weird being yelled.

  Suddenly, Charlemagne stopped and looked toward his handler. The being breathed a sigh of relief before pulling out a brown ball that looked like it was made of wax and shoving it into an orifice directly on top of the cylinder that made up its head.

  “Thank you, I was starting to get…”

  The outer portion of Charlemagne’s beak exploded outward with the speed and force of a medium-caliber bullet, slamming into the invisible shield that protected the creature’s workspace before exploding into a cloud of near invisible particulates. A crack like a gunshot followed immediately after, once again causing the rooster’s handler to flinch.

  Charlemagne sighed in relief. Not only had his Meditation Skill kicked on, thanks to Battle Meditation, but the agonizing pressure within his beak had been also released. The burning sensation he felt in his face diminished to a bearable level, allowing the rooster to refocus on what was going on inside his body. His Ember Core was still pounding, pushing more and more of its stored mana into the Veins of Lava Skill. His Ember Shield had finished its contraction, drawing close enough that it could draw both heat and mana directly from the oily layer beneath the skin. As those two Skills reached equilibrium, Veins of Lava used the power still flooding in to expand both its reach and potency, creating new channels throughout Charlemagne’s body while reinforcing existing ones.

  The agony caused by Veins of Lava reforging his insides was far more intense than what Charlemagne had just suffered. Panic rose inside him once again, and the dim memory of how he had resolved a similar overload in the past caused him to open his mouth.

  “Hey!” his handler shouted. “No no no no no! Don’t do that!”

  The pain climaxed as a ball of mana began to form just outside Charlemagne’s wide-open mouth, different from any he had formed before. For one thing, its normal bluish color flecked with yellow was missing. Instead, this swirling ball of power was a deep, almost black purple tinged with flecks of vibrant gold. The amount of power contained within the attack was also noteworthy.

  “That…that’s impossible,” the creature shouted as it waved its appendages wildly. “You’re going to kill yourself! You might even kill me! Shut it down, shut it down now!”

  The rooster dimly heard the admonishment through the haze of pain and power that had seized his entire being. His mana was being poured out like water into the still-growing attack. He felt dizzy and weak, like his very life force was being pulled out too, and his legs buckled under the strain as his bones and tendons supported weight that they were never made to hold. Even the heat trapped beneath his skin threatened to explode outwards as the comforting pressure provided by the Ember Shield Skill evaporated. And still the ball of mana continued to grow as it drank Charlemagne’s power to the dregs.

  “Bawk,” he complained as his eyes rolled back and he dropped toward the floor. The world went completely black before he hit the ground.