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"So what?" Elana asked, "you could split your focus? If I had you would be chasing after new spells and cheap herbs right now."

"Yeah, that’s exactly what I would be doing! I don’t have a home, Elana. I don’t have weapons!"

"You don’t have anything," Elana said chillingly.

I froze and stared at a woman whose aura had turned to dry ice, freezing lungs with a mere glance.

"You couldn’t even use a domain. Tell me, Mira. What would’ve happened if beasts chased you into the Greenhouse? Hmmm? What would’ve happened if you ran into a third ev and it targeted your blood with a spell? Hmmm?"

I put my back against the alchemy station’s countertop, gripping my arms.

"What you needed was training—real training," Elana said. "And that’s what we did, was it not? How much did you improve your magical control learning Separation? That allows you to use spells. How much have you threaded your core? That increases your range. How much have you refined your soul force? That makes you resistant to magic and amplifies the power of your attacks. Mira…"

My skin tingled with electricity, and I looked up. Elana was looking at me earnestly.

"I’m a god. I got here through violence and power—not by obsessing over elixirs." Elana glanced at the Illyndra Elixir and back at me. "And I got that power by focusing on the right things. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Because if you ever imply that I would waste your time again, I will show you the cliff." Elana scoffed and folded her arms, exercising restraint as if she were dealing with a foreign dignitary that she couldn’t abuse.

"Yes… Elana. I’m just scared."

"Don’t be," Elana said, flicking her wrist. "These creatures are nothing but a training exercise. They’re inconvenient, but they’ll be good for you. The real problem’s the Harvest. Hundreds of skilled neophytes are swarming this forest, and they all have a decade or more experience. Magic—ranged attacks—tactics. And a lot of these cretins think you’re a brand new neophyte that’s living off berries in a cave somewhere. They’re bound to attack you. Do you understand?"

My lungs felt like lead, and my spine ached. Everything suddenly felt a lot more serious. "Yes…" I said.

"Good. Take the next week and collect your tribute. Stock up on creations, create a catalyst and thread your core. I want it threaded to saturation. By month’s end, I need you evolved."

I nodded. "Then what?"

"There’s a technique—simple yet effective. It’s called Guided Arrow. I want you to practice that with your acceleration technique—and that’s all. I want you to master two spells until you can face all of the harvesters, if necessary."

"All… of them?"

"All of them. You don’t become a god by being able to kill a hundred of your enemies, Mira. Not a thousand—not a million. You become a god by being able to kill all of them—no matter how many there are. Do you understand?"

I shivered, feeling anxious frost forming on my skin.

"Do you understand?" Elana repeated coldly.

I nodded. "I do."

Elana looked satisfied at my serious reaction. "Good. Now straighten your hair. Every knot is an argument to attack you."

She blinked out of existence, leaving me alone.

I stood there for about twenty minutes until Kline meowed, breaking me from my neverending labyrinth of self-reflection and terror. I looked down at him. His eyes were determined, confident—murderous.

While I wasn’t certain whether my old-world morals and sentimentalities would allow me to kill another human, my little warrior didn’t have that problem. If someone attacked, he would massacre them without distinction. I was lucky.

As for myself, I wasn’t particularly opposed to that. I was deeply bothered by the fact that killing people didn’t bother me as I thought it should have. But that’s just what happens when you massacre over a thousand beasts in two months, constantly risking your life. It changes you.

I nodded at Kline. "I know…" Then I looked away. "I’ll get stronger, too. We need to prepare for everything."

With those words, I retrieved the pocket mirror I kept to flag down planes in survival situations and looked at myself. My hair was disgusting and matted. I used Purify, and all the dirt fell out like a waterfall. The fact that Elana didn’t say something was a testament to her seriousness.

Smiling grimly, I fixed my hair. It was time to prepare for the horde.

2.

Brexton whistled as he watched Aiden flying around on Halten like a pro. Aiden needed to be bolted onto the vraxle’s scales just a month before. Now, he was riding on a harness, doing sensory switching drills at high speed. They were in sync, going through obstacles, diving and biting and roaring in the skies.

Brexton gripped the wood post fence that he was sitting on, reveling in the small breeze. He was actually getting tan this year. Everything was backward—and he was surprisingly okay with that.

Everen suddenly climbed over the fence in his newly tailored clothing and sat down beside him.

"Rare to see you ’round these parts," Brexton remarked. "I thought you’d let me run your business forever."

Everen’s face hardened as he watched Aiden soaring in the sky. "No. I was just studying up."

"On what."

"How to rip your lungs out if you ever fuck me like that again."

Brexton smiled. He got paid to provide protection, consulting, and connections for Everen to operate a business selling anything Mira gave Aiden—and couldn’t profit from sales made. Therefore, Brexton built trust with Aiden by negotiating a crippling deal that pushed Everen’s profit margin to the stressing point—for a very long time. It also prevented leveraging Aiden or the business to generate revenue outside of the direct sale of goods. In one night, Brexton made it impossible for Everen to take advantage of Aiden—

—that was his job.

"No offense, Everen, but if I wanted to strangle you with your intestines, it would take a platinum request and a prayer to prevent it," Brexton said. "Your face tells me you learned that."

Everen stayed silent, watching Aiden soar through the sky. His attitude said, We’ll see about that.

He would see about that.

"When do you think he’ll fly?" Everen asked.

"A week," Brexton said.

"Have you convinced him to make contact?"

To profit, Aiden had to actually make contact with Mira, not just air-drop supplies. By doing that, he could negotiate deals and get "tips" in the form of resources. I’ll bring you stuff regularly if you pay me well.

It was a complex thing, considering that Aiden and Halten both needed to agree long-term, and neither of them had done so—especially the wyvern. Despite that—

"You could say that," Brexton said about convincing Aiden to make a contract.

"What does that mean?"

Brexton grinned and looked at Everen with full confidence. "I’ve made a contract with him—he has to."

3.

The next week flew by in a flash. I spent most of it foraging for ingredients—a violent undertaking considering that most of the ingredients were outside the barrier.

On the first day, we ran from spider-like creatures the size of dinner plates—and killed dozens of poisonous beasts that looked like peacocks. On the second, Kline had to chop down dozens of trees to slow down a boar-like tank that plowed through everything but boulders with ease.

We started eating in trees to prevent sneak attacks and started taking the long way to maintain the high ground.

By the third day, we had collected enough plants to take a day to start stockpiling elixirs. I created antifungal balms and creams and then made antitoxins in the form of elixirs. I did the same for mana restoration elixirs meant to provide mana boosts and health elixirs that were applied topically to cleanse and heal wounds. It was quantity over quality.

The fourth day brought us back to the forest, where we killed a basilisk that shot poison in spurts. I kept it busy by using Moxle Dilation to avoid its blasts while Kline snuck up behind it. Once he was ready, he released two Phantom Claws to the back of its head and pounced on its spine with Sharp Bite, ripping out the core.

He was getting strong—real strong. I could barely stand near him once he enacted his ethereal body—and that was a good thing.

I held the dead basilisk’s fang into a large bottle while Kline squeezed the gland, capturing venom to make antitoxins. Then, we celebrated by returning and cooking snake meat, building our soul power to new heights.

Kline nudged the basilisk’s core to me with his nose. It was a vibrant turquoise core that resembled the one I threaded with Yakana. It was almost time to evolve. I treated him with more meat in exchange and spent that night threading. I woke up the next morning feverish with cold sweats and Kline made me sit in the bed until I drank Diktyo water.

I drank it, and it eased up, but it couldn’t solve all my problems. It still required half a day for my mana channels to recover from the strain from the night before. But I pushed on, eating the basilisk meat and making potions and more balms until nightfall, where I practiced my mental shielding.

The sixth day is when things turned serious. Kline and I visited a beast den to collect the driftrise root I needed for a catalyst and almost suffered serious injury when beasts the size of squirrels jumped on mushrooms that exploded with spores while we were harvesting the root.

We immediately grabbed the root and left, forcing Diktyo water and antifungals into our system—and promptly emptied all our organs. We survived.

Day seven finally yielded results. I had collected all the tribute after a two-hour hike and Elana smiled in satisfaction to see the rainbow of multicolored herbs and berries and roots and leaves and moss. It was still unprocessed and required preservatives for the fruits, but she promised to guide me through that.

"You did it," Elana said. She looked at Kline. "You too."

Kline’s eyes widened when Elana addressed and accepted him, and he ended up puffing out his chest with so much pride that I giggled. He was a big man, and I couldn’t help but pick him up like a normal house cat at that moment, making him yowl with the sharpness of a buzz saw.

I released him, and he blinked away, watching twenty feet away because he knew that I could run damn fast now.

Elana let us finish and then smirked. "Okay. Let’s process these."

Elana pulled out bowls and duplicated the berries and other ingredients. Then, she performed each step while I followed her in real time, benefiting greatly from the time pressure.

One after the other, I sealed all the ingredients and stacked them up. Tribute was complete.

"That’s it?" I asked skeptically. There was a backpack worth of jars and preservation chambers. It was hard to believe that everything I got from Elana was captured in a backpack of raw ingredients. She didn’t even want an elixir or something sensitive to travel.

"That’s it," she confirmed. "For this year. It changes, and what I can ask you increases as you get stronger. This’s just what you could get… with reasonable certainty."

I smiled grimly.

"Well? Do you want your reward?"

"You’re spoiling me."

"I’ll take it out on you when you’re stronger."

"Great…" I chuckled and looked at the ground, smiling brightly. "So? What’s the reward?"

Elana picked up the driftrise root, a purple root that was marbled with off-white blotches. "This root makes you more sensitive to mana. It’s like the Lumidran Awakening Elixir, but it doesn’t have hallucinogenic elements."

"I see… so what is evolution, anyway?"

"Just a chant."

"Wait. That’s it?"

"That’s it." Elana saw my face and decided to add, "It’s just a spell to expand your core. That’s all."

"And is that… free?" I asked.

Elana raised an eyebrow. "For you."

"No…" I looked at Kline, who stared at me in frustration.

Elana picked it up. "That’s right…"

"Hey, Lithco. What’s going on with evolutions?"

A pop-up answered me. "Once you decide to evolve, I give everyone a quest to get an evolution spell. You’ve already passed the qualification and can earn the highest—which is gold for the first. Elana will certainly give you more than that."

"No…" I said. "What about Kline?"

Lithco’s answer shocked me. "I don’t know."

I looked at Kline and knelt down, feeling my heart pound. "Did you speak to Yakana?"

Kline nodded without hesitation.

A thin smile crept onto my lips, and I looked at Elana. "Is your evolution chant better than Yakana’s?"

Elana frowned. "He’s real?"

"He’s real."

"And he taught you how to thread your core?"

"Yes."

Her face twisted into a taut smile. "I can’t speak for their evolution technique, but…" She looked at Kline’s core with narrowed eyes and thought about it for a while. "I’ll trust your judgment."

Yakana it is, I thought. I tried to do my best to maintain a poker face, but Elana saw right through it. Despite that, she remained cool and retained her penetrating gaze. It calmed my pounding heart.

"Listen, Mira. This is a defining moment in your life. With a foundation like this, even tenth evolution godhood isn’t off the table. So, if Yakana can bring you the best evolution—do it. If you’re not confident—come to me. Whatever you do, take this moment seriously and do whatever you can to establish a strong core. You will need it for the horde—and you’ll definitely need it for the harvest."

Humid air curled in my lungs, and clenching my fingers yielded no traction.

Elana’s eyes sharpened further. "Whatever it takes, Mira. Whatever it takes. Do you understand?"

I nodded.

"Good." Elana helped me perform a cold water extraction on the driftrise root with the Diktyo River water and then oversaw me using Essence extraction to pull out the magical elements. Lastly, I used Separation to remove the root and put it into a jar. I had my catalyst.

"Don’t get complacent," Elana said as I looked at it.

I nodded. "I won’t."

Elana smiled thinly and said her goodbyes. I then packed as many elixirs as I could in my backpack, buried all our tribute preservation chambers in a twenty-foot hole to protect them, bundled hundreds of pounds of dried meat, helped Kline climb them into a tree, and then ate dinner under the setting sun, threading cores beside the fire until morning.

We packed up camp before sunrise, shivering from the mist, and turned south toward the Bramble. The horde was coming. Beasts were swarming the Diktyo River now that the lignan bugs were gone, and the Harvest was on the horizon. Danger awaited us everywhere. Despite all of that, I was excited—truly excited—preparing to face the world head-on and seize my destiny by force if necessary.

I began my hike.