While Maxine waited to fully recover, she sent out a few ravens to scout out for smaller groups amongst the four-horned kanzil forces, but even after she recovered the next day, her ravens hadn't found any group smaller than ten thousand. She saw no other choice than to cooperate with the students of Seton Academy during their training sessions, but they seemed to be on standby for some reason. 

On the plus side, her cultivation had increased to silver stage rank 7 for each of her cores. Life or death battles really are the best way to speed up cultivation. Still, I don't like getting wounded, but at least, I've gotten a step closer to completing my technique. So, what should I name it? Relentless Blades of the Hydra? No, that won't do at all. It's too literal. I will come up with something later. I'm not the best at naming. 

Maxine diverted her thoughts and sent out her spiritual sense out through the spiritual mark on Cassandra's pendant. She looked around and quickly realized Cassandra was standing infront of a four holographic projections. Supreme Commander Callent and his surviving minions did not look pleased as Cassandra was giving a report.

"... and that's the last I saw of her, sir," Cassandra said. Wow I can't believe my timing. I wonder how many times my luck will hold up.

"I'm just curious on one matter, commander," Supreme Commander Callent said, "Why did you not attempt to capture her when you had the chance?"

"She's proven herself to be stronger than I am on multiple occasions, sir. It would've been suicide," Cassandra said.

"Not everyone agrees with your assessment, commander, but for now, that reasoning will suffice," Supreme Commander Callent said, "However, next time, I insist that you gather the other gold core warriors in the area to capture this threat."

"I'm afraid that's no longer a possibility, sir," Cassandra replied.

"Explain," Supreme Commander Callent demanded.

"The offworlders seem to believe that there's a strong possibility that she's the daughter of someone called Poison Emperor Guan and they are very fearful of this man," Cassandra said calmly, "To top it off, she's supposedly something called an alchemist. So unless both of her identies are proven false, they will be actively hindering any attempts at her capture."

"That is a problem," Supreme Commander Callent admitted, "And you say this 'Elder Miyan' is stronger than anyone else on our world?" 

"Yes, sir. Elder Miyan's at least one hundred times more powerful than that four-armed bitch leading the invaders," Cassandra said calmly, "She wipe us and the invaders out by herself with minimal effort." One hundred times?! Now I wish Guan had included cultivation levels for the immortal stage and up. For all I know, there is a huge gap in power between gold stage and immortal stage. Although, I think it's a bit odd that he left that out when his notes mention that no one can have more than seven cores and the one person that managed to form that many was unbeatable. 

"Then what would you suggest we do?" Supreme Commander Callent asked, "Should we leave this Maxine alone and have her kill us one by one? Is it possible to assasinate her without them discovering it?"

"I wouldn't recommend that. If by some chance their elder discovered our actions, she would wipe us out to avoid dealing with possible reprocussions from this Guan character. However there is a simpler solution. All you have to do is avoid the front lines. Maxine only went after General Bertram due to the fact he came to a place where the fighting was the heaviest. Afterall, she did mention she was here to train and close combat seems to be her prefered form of training," Cassandra explained. Well, Cassandra's not actively coming after me, but she's not helping me either. She's only pushing for this supreme commander to avoid coming after me. And this is after I gifted her the ability to have kids again. You'd think she would consider me to be her best friend at the very least and not be willing to give up information on me. Then again, she was selected to be draconic warrior for her loyalty to their government, so I shouldn't be surprised. Still, it's not a good feeling to know how little my efforts to help her go to waste.

"Sound judgement, if she couldn't hunt us down with her 'pets,'" Supreme Commander Callent said.

"She doesn't appear to have many of them capable of infiltration, sir," Cassandra answered, "Thus, so long as you avoid her known active areas and the front lines, you shouldn't have any issues of her discovering your location. She just doesn't have the resources to track you or the others down in the short term."

"Excellent analysis," Supreme Commander Callent praised, "Return to your unit and continue defending that city. Reinforcements will be sent to you as soon as possible. May the fairies watch over you." After finishing speaking, the holograms shut down. Meanwhile Cassandra looked disappointed. He knows full well that his people were running experiments on fairies and yet he still says that statement. This just gives me another reason to hate his guts. 

Maxine quickly spread out her spiritual sense and looked for Sandra. She found her on top of the city's walls watching the four-horned kanzils in the distance for any activity. Sandra twitched as soon as Maxine's spiritual sense touched her. [Hello?] Sandra said cautiously.

[Hey, Sandra,] Maxine said in greeting, [Sorry about disappearing like that. I just didn't want to deal with the locals.]

[Maxine!] Sandra said with a hint of excitement in her tone, [I was wondering when you would contact me.]

[Yeah, sorry about not getting in touch with you sooner. I've been a bit busy,] Maxine answered, [Anyways, I wanted to see if you still wanted those healing potions. As I said before, I'm willing to trade for them. Still interested?]

[Yes, of course, I am,] Sandra answered, [But I want to ask you something. Who are your parents?] A test? Really? 

[Depends. If you are talking about the two that raised me, they are Johnathan and Claudia Levings. If not, you are talking about my biological parents: Poison Emperor Guan and Hellen Kavros,] Maxine answered, [Did that satisfy your curiosity?]

[Were the Levings good parents?] Sandra asked curiously.

[That's none of your business,] Maxine growled angrily.

[You even react like the real Maxine would, but still it's nearly impossible to know for sure if you are really her or not without a DNA test,] Sandra said regretfully, [If we hadn't encountered other Maxines as close as you are to the real thing, we would've been completely fooled by your display earlier. In fact, we were fooled for a short time until one of our members pointed out that the real Maxine never demonstrated the ability to transform into a Shadow Lord. It was always believed she only had her battleform. Still, I'm actually rather impressed you went to such an effort to pretend that your her. So, how many benefits did Guan give you to do this? Is that where your alchemy knowledge came from?] At least that mystery has been solved. It's nice to know daddy was the one that organized the other Maxine's to run around. It gave me some extra time to hide. Still, it's amazing how much effort he put into this to buy me that time. Still, I have no more intentions of hiding who I am. It's only a matter of months before I reach gold stage and no one aside from immortals will be able to restrain me. 

[I don't know what you're talking about,] Maxine replied.

[Fine, play it that way,] Sandra said in an amused tone, [Still, I think you should know the Shadow Lords will find out about you soon and will send one of their weaker warriors to confirm your identity. What they will do after that, I don't know.] 

[Thank your for the heads up,] Maxine replied, [Any idea when they will get here?]

[Due to the distance, it should take them three to four months once they have someone free to check you out. They've been overloaded with all of the other Maxines,] Sandra asked.

[Just curious,] Maxine replied. Well, time to speed up my training schedule. I need to be at least at the peak silver stage before they arrive. So, I need to gain one rank every fourty days if they send someone in the next few days. It will be hard, but I should be able to do it. Although, I could probably do it by tomorrow if I'm willing to go hydra in the middle of the four-horned kanzil forces, but that will be a last resort. I should be able to handle a gold rank two, three at most, shadow lord. If nothing else, I can go full hydra to chase them off and hopefully, I'll have enough control to avoid eating them. Watching myself do it once was enough of a psychological trauma..   

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

[Oh, that's good. For a second there, I thought you were afraid,] Sandra said, [It's not like the Shadow Lord leadership intends to capture you, even if you were the real Maxine. They learned a very harsh lesson when Poison Emperor Guan annihilated half of their leadership practically overnight after Maxine's death. Now if they found her, they would at most try to send one of their warriors around her age to court her, rather than take her by force. They learned the hard way no one messes with Poison Emperor Guan or his family. I guess there might still be a few shadow lords that feel like it's worth the risk, but I don't think they have many people above gold stage.] How informative. Still, that doesn't eliminate the danger to me.

[Umm, thanks for clearing that up,] Maxine replied, [So, how many healing potions do you guys need?]

[As many as you can spare,] Sandra said, [Are beast cores okay for payment?]

[Yes,] Maxine answered. If I recall correctly, five silver beast cores for one silver-tier healing potion is the correct exchange rate.

[Alright, when should we expect you?] Sandra asked.

[Sometime later today,] Maxine answered, [I will contact you again once I'm just about ready.]

[Alright, bye,] Sandra said before cutting off their spiritual sense connection. Well, that gives me some time to make the potions. I don't exactly have any herbs on me. 

Maxine contacted her Shadow Wolf Kings and ordered them to find any and all herbs related to healing. They are far more efficient at it than she is due to their keener sense of smell. All she had to do was send the proper scent for the herbs she was looking for to them via spiritual sense.

While she waited, she retrieved a gallon of four-horned kanzil blood and used her energies to force it to levitate infront of her in the shape of a ball. Now, how should I go about refining this into a pill. First off, I need to remove all of the unnecessary fluid. With a motion of her energies, she created a small flame and encased the bloody orb in her essence to avoid any odor from escaping. 

She slowly grilled the blood while mixing it to keep the heat evenly distributed and watched as it gradually shrank and changed colors. It shrank until it was just about the size of a cough drop and it developed a smooth surface. However it was sticky to the touch and felt slightly squishy like cooked meat. Not sure if this is a success or not. Well, one way to find out. 

Maxine tossed the cough drop sized pill into her mouth and swallowed without tasting it. She felt her stomach clench and her eyes widened in panic. She instantly shadow stepped to the nearest restroom and spent the next half hour violently voiding her bowels. Oh, god. I'm such a fucking idiot. I could've just used the black energies to annihilate everything I didn't want and solidified it. Why did I think that I could make it like everyone else does when I have my own alchemical method? Still, why didn't my biology protect me from the effects of that pill? Maybe my body didn't register it as a poison. It technically didn't do anything negative to me.

After Maxine cleaned herself up and rehydrating, she went back to trying to make the pill. This time however, she used her black half of her energies to annihilate the fluids and any dirt in the blood. Next, she looked for anything she didn't want in it using her spiritual sense, but didn't find anything. She next fored what was left of the blood into a small space compressing the blood cells and applied some heat in the form of a small flame to help bind them together. 

She was left with a blood red crystaline pill the size of a cough drop. She transformed into her battle form and swallowed the pill. She waited while feeling for anything off and felt like her stomach was full a few seconds later. She smiled to herself as she also sense the pill was producing energies that she could cultivate. Awesome, it seems I got it right this time. 

Unfortunately her joy quickly vanished as she felt another urge to use the restroom come over her. She quickly reverted back to her base form and shadow stepped back to the toilet she recently used. I missed something and I don't know what. I may need gold stage spiritual sense to figure it out. Either that or my approach to this is completely wrong. Hmm, now that I think about it, there are no nutritional pills, only potions. Perhaps if I treat this like making a specialized nutritional potion, it might come out with a different result, but that's for later. It seems my wolves are letting me know they found the ingredients for silver-tier healing potions.

Maxine retrieved a collection of medicinal herbs from her Shadow Wolves. However, the herbs were damaged by her wolves, but could still be used for alchemy. She estimated that there was enough from this batch to make ten healing potions.

She quickly got to work on them and had them finisher in less than an hour. She had plenty of experience making potions of this level and had figured out how to mass produce them. However pill making was a time consuming process.

Once she was done, she checked on Sandra, but they hadn't gotten living quarters just yet. So, she used this time to look around for anything else to occupy herself. Well, I could always send my raven back into that shielded facility. I bet there are a few things that might be useful to me if I do a thorough look aorund. 

It took one of her ravens a couple hours to infiltrate that facility again. The security measures in the facility had been increased, but the increased personel had just made it easier for her to explore the facility. She found dozens projects revolving around weaponry, but most of it was not that concerning. However one project made her somewhat nervous. 

A strange sensor went off when her raven entered the room. The scientists looked at an instrument panel and their faces paled. "She's sent one of her minions here!" one of them shouted and pointed at the guard, "Stay here! The beast is no doubt hiding in your shadow." Oh? They've found a way to track my constructs? That could be problematic. Although, I'm kind of impressed they've developed it so fast. Then again, I've provne to be very dangerous and made my intentions quite clear. That probably gave them plenty of incentive to develope that machine.

Maxine pulled her raven back to her own shadow through a small portal and checked on Sandra again. This time, the girl was resting in a lightly funished room and was looking at a datapad of some kind. Maxine couldn't tell what Sandra was looking at, but it didn't really matter to her. It was only a datapad and not a weapon.. 

Maxine reached out and contacted Sandra via spiritual sense, [Hey, Sandra. I've got ten healing potions. What did you want to trade for them?] Sandra jumped, but otherwise showed no reaction.

[You really need to work on not surprising people like that,] Sandra complained, [Anyways, I've got the beast cores ready. You can come whenever.] It's a good thing she has those beast cores to trade instead of Alliance currency. I can absorb the energies from them while in my battle form to accelerate the progress of my cultivation. 

[I'll take you up on that. Incoming,] Maxine said before creating bubbles of her energies both around herself and in the room that Sandra is in. She used shadow step to Sandra's room using this trick and dispelled the bubble of her energies. 

"That's really a useful ability," Sandra commented.

"It can be," Maxine agreed and retrieved the tend healing potions from her dimensional ring before laying them on a nearby table, "There, ten silter-tier healing potions as promised."

"And here are your beast cores," Sandra said as she touched a dimensional pouch at her waist and a little more than fifty silver beast cores appeared on the bed, "I hope you don't mind if I give a few to the other members of the Guardian Mothers. They helped pay for these potions."

"Not at all," Maxine said, "It's not like I'm selling you poison."

"That's true," Sandra agreed, "Do you want some tea?"

"No matter how much I would like to, I can't stay any longer. The locals have these rooms monitored," Maxine said apologetically as she turned, but immediately noticed that Sandra was looking at her ear. Huh? Why is she staring so intently at my ear? Is it full of ear wax or something?

"You really are her!" Sandra exclaimed. What now?!

"What are you talking about?" Maxine asked in a reserved tone.

"Your ears are exactly like Maxine's, so you must be her! I don't care how you deny it. No one can ever change their ears without it looking wrong and each person's ear has a unique shape. It's better than a finger print," Sandra explained excitedly and held up the datapad from before that showed a side view in her battleform with Maxine's ear in full view. Well, that's new. I never knew you could identify someone by their ears. Thanks alot for leaving that detail out, daddy. 

"I would prefer if you kept this to yourself," Maxine said firmly.

"I .. I don't think I will be able to keep this from the others," Sandra said apologetically.

"Can you keep quiet at least until that Shadow Lord shows up?" Maxine asked. 

"Yes, I can do that," Sandra said.

"Good," Maxine said, "Now I need to head out."

"Um, before you go, can you sign this?" Sandra asked like a nervous fan girl while holding out a picture of Maxine in a battle stance with a blade in each hand. Maxine sighed and quickly signed the corner of the picture and left the same way she came.

She originally didn't care if anyone found out that she was the real deal at this point. She would soon be strong enough to deal with nearly anyone below immortal stage, but at the time, she hadn't known what it felt like to have fan girls. It made her feel quite a bit more uncomfortable than horny teenage boys staring at her ass and breasts. Well, hindsight is twenty twenty. Now I have to deal with my fuck up. I could really use a bit of good news right now.

The good news arrived half an hour after Maxine managed to calm down enough to meditate. One of her wolves stumbled upon a rather large pack of two legged six foot tall reptiles, most of which were silver stage. If they didn't have quills sticking out of their backs, she would've thought they were a larger versions of velociraptors. Oh, thank you god. Those will do nicely to train my control over my full hydra form. Although, I'm not sure how much control I will be able to wrestle over it during this session, but this exercise should improve my cultivation to some extent regardless of how well I do.

Maxine stripped off all of her clothes and brought out her Shadow's Embrace armor. She created a portal a little more than a mile away from these strange quilled velociraptors. She ran towards the spot and while she prepared her mind to control her full hydra transformation, she stared at the beasts. It didn't take them long to scent her and start charging straight at her. It's now or never. She grit her teeth and transformed.