The following days Maxine kept on discovering that she was developing more and more strange mannerisms and behaviors as she slowly absorbed the fragmented soul within her. Some of the changes were minor at first and she barely noticed. However they were becoming more and more pronounced.
Maxine often found herself dressing up in a cute outfit and putting on some of her mother's cosmetics. That didn't bother her as much as she thought it would, once she discovered that she prefered to look beautiful. However when she found herself craving things such as chocolate and other sweet things, she knew it was just the original Maxine's sweet tooth kicking in. It became hard to resist the urge to gorge herself on those things. Her speech patterns hadn't changed, but she assumed it was because the original Maxine hadn't talked much in the first place. Among the numerous changes, there were two that she found great difficulty adapting to.
The first one being a strong repulsion to the sight and smell of anything containing alcohol and anyone who drank it. She didn't really mind this one at first, since she never really drank much in her past life to begin with. However when she had caught Amanda drinking some wine, she had stopped talking to her for a week and explained why only after Amanda's repeated attempts to gain an explaination for her silence.
The second one was a strong distrust of men in general that was slowly changing to outright fear. She avoided talking to them or even letting them get close to her. She knew that she may even become violent if any were to touch her. It wasn't that surprising when she thought about it. The original Maxine had been beaten by her father for years and it would have been miraculous if she hadn't formed some sort of adversion to men. However she needed to curb her fear before it turned into a full-blown phobia. It would make her future plans difficult since the majority of survivor groups were led by men and she might need to trade for supplies later. She needed at least to be able to talk to them. The only way she could think of was through talking to men. Male teachers seemed the safest choice in that regard, since she only needed to ask questions on the classes they taught. Her method helped some, but didn't completely eliminated this growing fear of men.
However, she pushed all other thoughts and wants aside when it was time for Emily's essence core to form. Maxine decided to help Emily at the one place she thought would have the fewest essence detectors aimed at it and that was at General McKenzy's home. It took all of her skill to monitor Emily's essence core and keep her essence fluxuations from leaking out. Emily's essence core had formed perfectly as far as Maxine could tell and she discovered Emily possessed a very rare elemental attribute known as divine. Maxine could hardly contain her joy at the time. That attribute excelled at defense and healing. Sadly it's combat ability was barely average. However, it would mean that Emily would be perfectly suited for a support role rather than a combative one. The revelation that Emily had an essence attribute meant that Emily would have awoken to her essence even without Maxine's intervention.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
During the days that Maxine spent with Emily and Amanda, Maxine discovered Amanda's power was growing. She was clearly practicing Maxine's cultivation method. While Amanda had been distracted by a piece of jewelry, Maxine had scanned her core with her spiritual sense and found out just how strong she was. She was at Copper rank 4 while Maxine was at copper rank 5 at the time. It was surprising Amanda could use do so much with so little essence. Her level of mastery using what essence she had must be superb. Amanda's example motivated Maxine to minimize the ammount of wasted essence in her own techniques.
It was now thursday May 17th, the last day of school. Maxine had reached Copper rank 7 and Emily was at Copper rank 6. Both of them would rank up in the next five days. Maxine had some difficulty the past few weeks teaching Emily how to use her spiritual sense, but it was to be expected. It was similar to teaching the blind to paint or the deaf to write music. However, Emily eventually got it and got proficient in it's use very quickly.
Maxine still had a problem when it came to convincing her two friends to join her and escape the essence beast horde that will soon arrive. She had thought long and hard about that very topic. She come up with only one option that had even a tiny chance of working and that was to tell them what she knew was coming. The problem was that it could easily backfire on her, especially if she used an upcoming event as proof of her prophetic ability. After that, Amanda might go straight to the general with it and Maxine would immediately be put under heavy guard. Making it nearly impossible to leave afterwards, but she had to take that risk. Surviving with just her mother would be very difficult and she knew very well that she wouldn't last long in that situation. It wouldn't even matter if she was in the iron stage. All it would take is one moment of inattention from her mother while Maxine slept and they would both die.
Maxine resolved to tell them both during their next girl's day out, preferably while they were sitting down. She was hoping that her fears are unwarranted. However the logical part of herself was screaming at her that she is being irrational, but she didn't care. She had to convince her friends to run with her. If nothing else, she needed to warn them of what was coming.
What frightened her the most wasn't the copper or even the bronze stage beasts, but it was the leader that every essence beast horde had. It was a beast that could withstand heavy weapons fire as if it were nothing more than a heavy rain and tear apart tanks as if they were made of paper. It was the same beast that gave Maxine nightmares. It was an iron stage Terror Bear.