The next few days of Seth's life were simple. Once he had regained enough energy, he set about preparing his body for the inevitable battles that were to come.

Following the instructional holographic training regimes created by the knowledge in his journal, Seth honed his body in a multitude of different ways.

He spent most of his time with a selection of martial art katas, slowly performing a series of moves and adjusting his body when the holographic overlay would show his errors. If anyone was watching, he'd simply look like one of the many elderly people who would perform tai chi in the parks.

Since he had lost his spear along with his arm, he didn't have any reason to continue with spear training. He had sent out one of his puppets to go look for his discarded arm, but it was long gone.

Outside of the store, there was nothing left but piles of blood and wreckages of vehicles. Neither the fire breathing raven nor the corpses of the friends he had lost were there, most likely devoured by the multitude of roaming creatures that had passed by or picked apart by scavengers.

Yet the most irritating part of not being able to retrieve his weapon was not the time he seemingly wasted training with the spear, he could always find a new one of those and continue where he left off.

No, the annoyance came with the fact that he had to learn how to fight again from the ground up with only one arm. He couldn't exactly block with an arm he didn't have, now could he?

While it wasn't impossible, it was taking some getting used to, especially since it was his dominant arm that he lost.

So, instead of lamenting what was lost, he worked hard to improve what remained to make up for it. Thankfully, he wasn't the first fighter in human history to be down an appendage. There had been many before him, and he expected even more after him given the chaotic nature of this world, and Bob had thankfully downloaded everything to do with fighting. Including the styles of such fighters.

But it wasn't just martial arts that he trained his body with, he also had to build back up his strength. He couldn't stay a stick insect forever.

Seth spent many hours performing a variety of muscle building and flexibility based exercises, even when his body screamed at him for just an hour of rest, he pushed through until he had completed everything that he needed to do.

There was no room for weakness or laziness anymore, not when it could lead to his death. He had teetered on the edge of the mortal coil once before, and he did not intend to return any time soon.

Thankfully he had the Spirit Animal and Bob to assist in his training. While Seth would spend hours at a time cooped up in the nest room, the two assistants would go out to secure vital food and water.

Bob continued with his hunting, luring many creatures into the department store while he hid in plain sight amongst the crowds of featureless and lifeless faces. Only striking when the creature was at its most vulnerable.

He made an eerily good assassin. Unless the beasts could see souls, they had no way to detect that Bob was even alive. He didn't breathe, didn't give off a heat signature and his natural state was to be completely frozen for weeks, months and even years at a time. So remaining perfectly still for a mere few moments as he waited for prey to walk into his path was child's play.

The Spirit Animal, on the other hand, commanded a group composed of mannequins and frankensteined skeletons to scavenge from the surrounding stores. Armed solely with backpacks they had 'borrowed' from the clothing store, they meticulously combed through the stores looking for anything of use. The best part was, the Spirit Animal itself didn't have to go with them to control them, but it did have a limit on its 'transmission' distance.

Before they had left, Seth had loaded the Spirit Animal up with an assortment of basic scavenging movements, mostly composed of basic things such as picking up different objects from a variety of heights.

It was odd having to teach such simplistic things to his 'sub-brain' but he simply thought of it as programming robots. Even the most common actions had to be typed in at least once, and on any occasion that they stumbled across something that didn't meet their programming, Seth would simply take over for a second.

He would pick it up for them, the Spirit Animal would learn and it never asked again.

While slightly tedious and a bit ridiculous at the amount of hand holding he needed to do to begin with, as time went on the 'sub-brain' learned more and could act on its own for longer.

But, even if it was slightly annoying, the puppets were simply too good at scavenging under the command of the Spirit Animal. They were ignored by many things for the same reason that Bob was overlooked and, in the rare instances that they were attacked, Seth instructed the Spirit Animal to simply disconnect from the puppet and have it play dead until the creature moved on.

They hardly lingered when they found out the puppets had no meat on their bones, for the ones that even had bones. While sometimes they lost some of the gathered supplies, Seth was not going to risk a repeat of the fire breather incident even if it meant losing some twinkies… No matter how good they were.

At nights, when Seth would sleep cuddled up with Omelette, Bob and the Spirit Animal would train each other. Bob had access to the journal as well as the training hologram and, whilst it wasn't as effective as Seth directly programming the movements, the Spirit Animal was capable of programming in its own moves if it had someone to teach it. All it took was the patented technique of trial and error.

That was how they lived, drowning themselves in routine, for just under a week.

***

Bob strolled into the nest room, dragging a corpse behind him like always, before depositing his most recent kill next to Seth, who was sitting in front of a small, blue candle light as he roasted some meat.

The candlelight in question emanated from an ancient style oil lamp, which looked much like a gravy boat with the end of the spout on fire. Oddly enough, the body of the lamp contained neither oil nor gravy. It was completely empty of any discernible fuel source, yet the flame continued to burn without a single concern.

This was the [Life Lantern], the other Requital that he had earned. He could only assume this one came from the fire breather although he didn't remember hearing the announcement for it. Then again, he had been a teeny bit occupied screaming in soul wrenching agony to notice, so he was sure he could be forgiven for missing it.

The flame of the lamp never went out, even when smothered completely or doused in water, the name gave Seth a hint as to what it was connected to. It wasn't burning up his life force to keep itself going, instead it seemed more representative of his state of being as it grew larger as his health improved with the training. For now, since he was still weakened and only beginning to get better, it was still small.

He could also create separate flames in the air to light up the room, but that's all the flames would do. No matter what they wouldn't burn anything or spread no matter what it came into contact with. It couldn't even harm creatures and felt cool to the touch, yet strangely it could still cook meat. That was about the only thing it could affect.

Turning his attention to the corpse Bob had brought in, he could see that it was humanoid in nature, and most likely in origin. It had chalk white skin, bar for the blood stains, with dagger-like claws on its fingers and even its toes. Its head slumped to the side in a way that could only be possible if its neck had been broken, so there was no reason to guess how Bob had killed it.

It reminded Seth of the Vitruvian Ghoul he had once faced, except this one only had one set of appendages instead of two. It was also more muscular, disturbingly so, as if it had spent the last week devouring nothing but body builders, protein and copious amounts of steroids.

"They are getting more frequent."

Bob's monotonous voice echoed through the room. He wasn't getting much better at mimicking human speech. While he had learned a few different languages, concepts such as sarcasm still eluded the poor man.

"I know… It's the scent. The raven's scent was faint but it was still there, but it's been too long since they've been around. Omelette has gotten bigger yet he's still too small to be considered a threat. This is free real estate now."

He lifted Omelette onto his shoulder, before reaching forward and touching the body of the gravy boat lamp, letting it dissolve into ink and climb its way back up his finger to take its place as a tattoo once again.

"We can't stay any longer. Time to fly the nest little guy."

Omelette let out a chirp of excitement, spinning around and swishing his tail. He was excited to finally see the outside world.