After returning from the arcade with Adonis, Ethan and Elara sat with Tasha, having some tea. Clarissa, his aunt, joined them from her nap, embarrassing Ethan with stories from when he was young.

Elara was loving it, constantly chuckling silently.

Then Lila and Maren returned home not long after, and Ethan was in for a massive shock.

Maren was in her high school uniform, reminding him just how much she had grown. Lila was also in a uniform of sorts, but it was one that made his heart skip a beat...

"You’re a cop?!"

She smirked.

"Lila Reed. NYPD, badge number 5471."

Ethan recoiled dramatically.

"Stay back! I’m reformed now!"

She reached for imaginary cuffs.

"As an officer of the law, even family isn’t safe."

"Hey! I’m an upstanding citizen!"

They both laughed.

And despite the shock, Ethan felt proud that she had grown so much and found a job with purpose. Though he couldn’t help but feel that her career choice had something to do with him and Mark.

Not that it mattered.

He hung around for a while longer, eating a nice, warm dinner together. It was warm and wholesome, with Mark calling in while running his bar, sounding relieved and happy.

But once again, Ethan eventually stood up.

"I’ve gotta head out."

They protested, but let him go with Elara following closely behind him.

Heading back to the Black Howl, he greeted Mark before heading down to the basement that he called home. Instead of drinking the night away like previously, Ethan had other plans. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

But before returning to the tower, he summoned all of his beasts, using Beast Mend on them, focusing on Wolfy, who was still recovering.

Elara silently watched him do so in awe.

Then, once he was done, he turned to her.

"I sleep for a long time, so no need to think I’m dying, okay?"

She nodded, her face flushing red as she recalled what had happened earlier when she was trying to wake him. But curiously, she could see that Ethan was tense as he lay on the ground and closed his eyes.

Once again, he reached out to interact with something only he could see, then he suddenly conked out.

’Yeah, he really is an odd one,’ was all Elara thought to herself before following suit.

-

Just like that, two weeks passed.

Time blurred into a strange rhythm, one that revolved around the Tower, training, and something Ethan hadn’t experienced in years: routine.

He hadn’t quite managed to stick to his original plan of clearing one floor per night, but he had come close - close enough that he couldn’t really complain.

The D Tier floors were massive, far larger than anything he had dealt with before, and traversing them alone took hours. Add in combat, experimentation, and the occasional need to rest mid-run, and it was no surprise that things took longer than expected.

Still, he progressed steadily and relentlessly.

Outside the Tower, life didn’t stop either, with Elara constantly by his side.

At first, her presence had felt unusual - someone almost always within arm’s reach, silent, observant, and unnervingly close.

But now?

It had become normal, comforting, even.

Ethan was very good at adapting, and so was Elara, both syncing with each other.

She had grown used to his strange sleep patterns, no longer panicking when he collapsed for hours on end, unmoving and unresponsive like a corpse. Unlike the first time when she panicked, she simply watched over him and trusted that he would wake up.

Elara had also grown close to Mark’s family, perhaps even more than Ethan had.

Where he carried hesitation, old guilt, and emotional distance, Elara approached them with simple sincerity. She brought small gifts whenever they visited: snacks, trinkets, things she thought they might like.

She didn’t speak, but her actions spoke clearly enough.

And they welcomed her warmly and completely, unlike anyone else had in her life, which she appreciated more than she could ever express.

Ethan noticed it and was glad.

"She likes them more than me," he muttered one evening, watching her laugh silently as Adonis showed her something on his tablet.

Mark snorted beside him.

"Can you blame her?"

"Fair enough."

Over those two weeks, Ethan also learned more about her.

It wasn’t much, but it was more than before.

Elara still kept most of her past locked away, hidden behind quiet expressions and brief, carefully chosen words typed onto her phone.

He didn’t push either.

’Everyone has their past and secrets.’

He wasn’t exactly an open book himself.

If she wanted to tell him, she would, and if she didn’t, that was fine too.

What he did learn, however, was far more important.

Her power was growing day by day.

Through constant training, trial and error, and sheer stubborn persistence, Elara had improved her control over that strange red energy within her. According to her own estimate, the entity inside her was allowing her access to roughly ten percent of its power.

And even that put her somewhere around a B Rank.

"Ten percent," Ethan repeated one day, staring at her. "That’s ridiculous."

He couldn’t even imagine what ten times that amount of power looked like. If he thought about it in terms of stats, it was literally unbelievable, since it would be like the difference between the base stats of an untitled and an S Rank.

Though there were nuances and that didn’t account for skills.

She simply shrugged, a determined look in her red eyes.

Elara was still far from mastering it.

Compared to that terrifying, overwhelming power he had witnessed before, she still had a long way to go. She also couldn’t replicate that teleportation-like movement yet.

But she could do other things.

Small beams of energy, physical augmentation, and explosive bursts of force that turned even her weakest punches into something dangerous - that was her current arsenal.

Compared to where she had been before?

It was night and day.

Meanwhile, Ethan himself had changed and improved just as quickly over the past two weeks, or perhaps even faster...