Verest flew through the air, finally waving his hand as mana returned to a calmer state, leaving him alone, standing in the air.

"The battle is over, your grace." he said, a slight smile on his lips.

"I do think so, Mr Verest." Althea replied, giving him a smile in return. If Verest had continued, she might have to give up. There was only so much in her bag of tricks. The Adept was just much more experienced than her.

"A good battle, your grace." Verest said. "Now, I will take your leave. I am sure there is much for you to attend before the coming of the beast tide."

"There is indeed, Mr. Verest." she replied. "I thank you for your aid, I have gained a lot from our fight."

Althea walked away, waiting, hoping for her core to breakthrough. But the core remained silent. No, that was not true. The core remained firmly in the sixth stage. The mana was there, waiting to help her breakthrough.

But the core refused to accept it, take it within her and refine it into her own. The mana she had just used in this battle was lost to nature, she would have to cultivate to get it back. Not like how refined mana returned to the core naturally. Now what was she going to do?

The answer seemed to be to wait, and learn to practice her skills. How the core reacted was mysterious, and had a certain degree of randomness. There were people, usually rich scions, that had broken through to Journeyman a week after turning eighteen. The core required minimal skill from them.

There were even small clans and sects that specialized in these manuals, relying on them to produce a bunch of Journeyman. A lot of army manuals followed this path too. There wasn't a huge con to this. The person would simply have to spend longer in the Journeyman stage.

The average person did not break through the Journeyman stage at all. The difficulty of cultivation increased exponentially with each stage. The Novice stage needed merely mana. The Apprentice stage was just mana and practicing skills. The Journeyman stage required one to understand one's manual, and its intent.

The Master stage required one to understand oneself. The Adept stage required one to prove one's ambitions. Or something like that. Althea wasn't too sure about the last one. The requirements were just feelings. And varied in difficulty from person to person.

A particular person could find the Journeyman stage very easy, but the Master could stump them for a hundred years. That was the randomness of cultivation that had irritated a lot of people.

But she was rambling. The core hadn't broken through. That was a fact. Althea already knew that either way, she would have to put more effort in the Journeyman stage, solidifying her foundation so to speak. The stages built on each other, and if you slacked in one, you had to work harder in another. Or stop progressing.

Now she had to see to the defense plans of the city, modify plans as more beast hordes emerged, and see what other random stuff life threw at her.

sc

Three days passed since her fight with Verest. The beast hordes increased in frequency, making her almost regret calling the army back. There was a lot of tension in the county, and not a little grievance. The villages were handling the hordes that emerged, but there had been deaths. And deaths made people upset.

The deaths were also a reminder that the world was not safe anymore. That the county was under great peril. There had been a lot of discontent over the curfew and closing of city doors. The guard still allowed refugees or any person that had just been on the road in, but there was no going out. The intent was to reduce travel between cities to the minimum.

Now that people actually saw, and believed that traveling between cities could kill them. But they were still angry. Angry that the beasts weren't dealt with. The few foreign merchants kept telling people about how other nobles charged at the enemy and killed them, and how she was a coward for staying inside a city.

The complaints had mixed responses. There were a lot of soldiers in the city, and even if many weren't native, they were still respected. After all, Diery was a farming country, most people in Deadre's walls had family outside, family that might be dead without the army.

And there was still that fact that the reserves could be called up to fight if there was a frontal attack. So there was a mix of opinions, and a whole lot of fear going around.

Commander Ner stepped into her study looking at the new reports with worry.

"What is it, Commander? Has the beast tide finally appeared?" Althea said.

"No, Countess. The beast hordes have multiplied beyond what we expected them to. The villages are facing more hordes than they should. And scouts report that a huge amount of hordes are going into the forest instead of coming out like they usually would." Commander Ner replied.

Althea frowned. "Is it because of the mana?"

"Perhaps. I still can't tell what is happening." he replied. "Has the Emperor said anything?"

Althea shook her head. "No, he agrees that the mana has increased too much. The rate of increase in the ambient mana is triple that of before. If this continues, we will be at normal rates of mana, for the Empire that is, by the end of this month."

"So something has changed." Commander Ner said, looking at the documents helplessly. "I cannot tell you what is going on, your grace. The hordes are going back into a predator's territory, mana is increasing as if someone has pushed chemicals into it, and the fortress has its own troubles."

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Althea's ears perked.

"What chemicals? And I am unaware of any troubles the fortress is having." she said.

Commander Ner shook her head. "The Zun Empire once tried to shove strange metals and their compounds into humans to see how they reacted. The compounds are called chemicals. As for the fortress, I do not know. The entire thing is hush-hush, the General is directly reporting to the Bern march."

Althea clenched her fist. The Bern march. Hiding information even at this hour. Were they really that dumb, or just being especially stubborn?

"Steward Ven, could you please contact the Marquis?" she asked. Asking the Empress would probably be a better idea, but fuck that. The last few days had not been easy on her. Every death weighed on her mind. And so did the fact that there was a threat out there, growing at rates that she could not hope to match, ready to destroy her new home.

If the Marchioness wanted to play politics, and secrecy at this moment, then she could too. The march needed to be reminded that she was the higher ranking noble here. The march could not act with impunity anymore. The army guarding the fortress might be theirs, but the city right behind it was still hers.

The Marquis' frowning face appeared on the orb, looking quite peeved. "Countess, it is twenty-three hours."

"I know." Althea simply stated. "The county is facing a beast tide. A leader does not get to sleep when her people are dying. And she does not know why."

The Marquis' face showed his puzzlement. "The beasts are hardly secret, they can be dealt with easily enough-"

Althea began laughing. Just lost it on the Marquis' face. "Oh? Can they? Tell me, Marquis, what is the strength of the beasts? Can you explain the growth rate of mana? Can you explain why most hordes head right back into a predator's territory? And-" Althea's voice lowered into an overly stressed whisper. "Can you tell me why the Northern Fortress is suppressing news at this moment?"

The Marquis paused, his eyes widening more and more with each word that she spoke.

"The hordes… can you show me the numbers, Countess?" he asked.

"Can you tell me what is happening in the Northern Fortress then? Can I still rely on the Fortress to protect Sentinal? Do I need to intervene?" she asked.

The Marquis hesitated. "The Northern Fortress is not under any threat at the moment. The fortress has merely detected unusual movement of the beasts in the region."

"The movement of beasts into the forests between Sentinal and Deadre?" she asked.

The Marquis nodded. "Yes, the beasts are weak, below the Journeyman stage, but there are quite a few of them. The phenomenon is confusing."

"Why is that?" she asked. Althea had her own suspicions, but there were things that did not match up.

"A powerful, sapient Adept stage beast. A beast king." the Marquis stage. Althea nodded.

"But even Master and Journeyman beasts would move if that was the case. And none of the hordes would dare reject. The call of a beast king is final, if you refuse, the king will attack and kill the entire horde." she said. The Beast King portion of her education was thick, they were one of the most likely factors behind beast tides. Althea had already considered and removed that possibility.

The Marquis nodded again. "I have already ordered the Northern Fortress to keep an eye out for sings of a beast king, it would match what is happening."

"But the scale and location are wrong." Althea noted. "A beast king would cause a huge mana accumulation, the kind that would alarm the Emperor. Not this accumulation that hasn't even pushed the county into normalcy."

"Yes, exactly." the Marquis said.

"Now, can the fortress please keep me in the loop? I am the ranking noble here, Marquis Bern. I have a responsibility to defend Diery, regardless of my power." she said. "I need information to know where and how to act."

"I will have it arranged." the Marquis replied finally.

The call cut off, and Althea sagged onto her chair. There was a need for more scouts and surveys. Why wouldn't this just end?

sc

Six days had passed since her battle with Verest. The core was still refusing to let her into Apprentice 7. The Steward had taken to helping her train, pressuring her using his power to influence mana so she would have to try harder to use her skills. Practicing her mana had been somewhat therapeutic for her, letting her vent her anger as the deaths piled up. A few hundred people had died from beast attacks in the past six weeks.

The suggestion that the army be deployed again had been brought up. But it was quickly shot down. Even the village heads refused. The families of the victims grieved, but the village defenders saw what was happening. The hordes retreating into the forest was not much of a secret anymore. The atmosphere in the county was tense.

The past three days had been stressful, people living in fear that a loved one had died. Or the beasts hiding in the forests had finally decided to attack. A lot of people had sent people to the cities, but Althea had put a quick stop to that. Traveling was not safe, dozens had died trying that on the first day. And they had people at the Apprentice stage among them.

Even rural villages had walls now, and warning signals. The human race could be very improvisational at times.

But what troubled her was the map in front of her. A map that, as usual, did not make sense. The areas around Sentinal and Deadre were packed with hordes. There were over a hundred between the two cities, larger than most beast tides. But Marile, that city did not seem to have any around it. Althea had specifically asked scouts to explore deeper into the forests than they normally did. Of the twenty-five scouts that left, only one had returned. Twenty-five late Apprentice stage scouts. The best she had. Just one remained. And the news was not good. The place was packed with beasts he said, hundreds, thousands occupied the trees. The forest was filled far beyond what it would normally contain.

"What happened, sis?" Leo asked her. The poor boy had realized the tense atmosphere, and was asking what was happening. Althea then had to make the decision to tell him, or keep him in the dark. In the end, she told him.

"Why are there so many circles here?" he asked, pointing at the forests around Marile.

"The circles are beast hordes." she said.

"But they overlap." he stated.

"Yes, they do." Althea said, sounding upset. Two beast hordes rarely shared space, let alone so many. This was… Althea wanted to lift the map and throw it somewhere. The Empress had assured her that the county would not fall. But they would not charge into the forests. The political thing aside, the situation was too chaotic and unknown.

The Empire could not bear to lose a single one of the Emperor's guards. Not with war brewing in the continent. Even the royal family only had about fifty Master stage cultivators that they could order around.

"Will they not attack Marile?" Leo asked.

That was the question, wasn't it? Why were the hordes not attacking Marile? But that brought her to a question that she had asked herself the answer. What if they did? What if this strange tide of unknown strength attacked the county's city of trade? A city with the least defenses?

Now if only she had an answer to that problem.