After eating breakfast, Maxine had spent a full hour to created 29 Shadow Wolves and one shadow clone using the bronze essence cores that she got from the bandits. Her shadow clone was almost a mirror copy of herself down to the cellular level. If someone ignored the fact that it was eminating a bronze rank 5 aura, they would think it was her. After she was done eliminating that bandit stronghold, she could use it as a decoy later. However she wasn't going to attack that place just yet. It was daytime in the shadow world. She wanted to do a night attack as she wasn't confident that she could beat that many bandits if all of them were awake and alert. Hence she decided to get everything she needed to do done in the morning. 

Maxine worked on the bow some more by removing some of the marrow in the bones that made up the bow. It was a slow process and she could only remove a small ammount of it at a time. However the more she removed the smaller the bow got. When she was about to exhaust all of her essence, she had gotten around half of the marrow out of the bow. It was now about 5 feet long. She promptly put it back into the dimensional pouch. She put the pouch inside of her bra inbetween her breasts. It didn't feel right to leave all of her wealth laying around her house. Maxine looked at the time and still had a few hours before lunch and decided to go visit her mother early today. She had a few things to talk about with her anyways.

Maxine brought Silky with her as always to see her mother. When they got to her mother's hosptial room, she was looking alot better today. Maxine was quite happy to see that.

"Well this is a surprise," her mother said, "I wasn't expecting you until after lunch." 

"Yeah, I know," Maxine answered, "I wanted to talk with you about a couple things."

"Such as?" her mother asked.

"Well for one, Silky needs a bed of her own," Maxine said.

"But I like sleeping with mama," Silky announced.

"I know Silky, but you need a bed of your own," Maxine said.

"She is right, Silky. Little girls need their own beds," her mother agreed.

"Fine," Silky pouted as she folded her arms. Maxine thought Silky looked adorable.

"What was the other thing you wanted to talk about with me?" her mother asked. Maxine felt somewhat uncomfortable, but she knew that she couldn't go out to hang out with Patrick and company without telling her mother.

"Some of my friends want to me to hang hang out with them on thursday next week. Is that okay?" Maxine asked. A strange smile spread across her mother's face.

"Of course you can hang out with your friends," her mother said, "I hope I can meet these new friends of yours soon." Maxine was confused for a moment until she realized the words she used hinted that she had friends other than Emily and Amanda when she used the words 'some of my friends.'

"I will. Thanks mom," Maxine said.

"Your welcome," her mother said, "Now tell me about these new friends of yours." Maxine understood her mother's curiosity. The Maxine of the past wasn't a very social person and didn't possess friends. Her mother was probably worried about Maxine picking the wrong kind of friends.

Maxine carefully told her mother about Patrick. She could tell her mother was rather surprised and happy at the same time. Maxine knew her mother had been worried that she wasn't even going to try to socialize with boys. Maxine had told her mother that they had first met when Maxine was acting as a tag along with Amanda on one of her jobs for General McKenzy and the other meet up when Maxine had taken Silky to get a thorough check up by some doctors.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Maxine continued talking about Patrick and mentioned several times that he already had a girlfriend. Oddly enough her mother gave Maxine a thoughtful look whenever Maxine mentioned Meagan. After awhile, her mother teased her that Maxine sounded jealous of Meagan. Maxine ignored her mother's teasing and started to talk about Maxwell and Jack instead. Unfortunately she couldn't tell her mother much beyond their appearances since she technically hasn't met them yet in this timeline.

After that, Maxine gossiped about random things with her mother, but that didn't keep them occupied long. Maxine suggested they watch the television until lunch came around. Her mother agreed and asked her to pick out a show to watch. Maxine made certain that what she picked was child friendly. 

After her mother's lunch arrived, Maxine said goodbye and went back home since she didn't dare take Silky to the hospital cafeteria. It would be far to expensive to buy a meal large enough to satisfy Silky's tremendous apetite and Maxine didn't have that much spare cash on her. However if they were using essence cores as currency, she would have more than enough, but that kind of economy was not going to appear for quite some time from what she could tell.

When they got home, Maxine started making Silky some lunch that mostly consisted of meat from essence beasts. Silky ate other foods, but as often as she did meat. Maxine knew that Silky would eat what she needed since most other beastkin she had encountered did the same thing and were extremely healthy. 

While Silky was eating, the raven that Maxine put on sentinel duty tried to get her attention. She looked through the raven's eyes and saw that there was a large group of people approaching. However they did not look like bandits. They looked like the injured survivors from a bandit raid. Most likely from one of the other villages that were attacked. Maxine looked closer and noticed that more than half of them were children. The villagers ran over and helped them into their village. It was clear that they were taking those people in. Maxine stopped looking through that raven's eyes.

Maxine cleaned up after lunch and waited until after dinner before she checked on the shadow world again. It wasn't dark yet, but she still wanted to go there to cultivate. She ordered the shadow clone that she made earlier to create a portal and left her cell phone with it. Maxine didn't want to miss an important call as brought Silky with her to the shadow world because she was planning on being gone for awhile. She also wanted Silky to try and learn the language of the villagers since she learned so quickly. Silky might even be able to learn some fabric making techniques from them as well.

However Maxine didn't send Silky right away and had her play with the Shadow Wolves while she cultivated. Her rate of cultivation skyrocketed compared to how it was on Earth, but unlike when she absorbed massive ammounts of essence from essence cores, she felt no pain. In fact it felt wonderful, but she knew that she still had to be careful since she wasn't completely certain that her core was fine. Her spiritual sense was constantly monitoring her essence core and didn't let up on her vigilence during the entire time she was cultivating. Fortunately there were no problems.

When Maxine opened her eyes as she finished cultivating, she saw that it was now dark out. She had gotten ten days worth of cultivation in one session. This place is amazing for cultivation. It's slightly slower than using a bronze essence core a day on Earth. 

Maxine noticed that Silky was napping while leaning up against her a couple copper stage Shadow Wolves. She brushed Silky's hair with her fingers and silently checked on the villagers with her spiritual sense. Many of the newcomers were camped outside in tents and most of them were asleep. However there was a village girl wandering around the tents making certain everyone was comfortable. It was the same girl that Maxine had saved from being raped yesterday.

Silky woke up and had walked up behind Maxine. Maxine told Silky to stay in the cave and ordered all of her copper stage Shadow Wolves to protect Silky. Maxine had the bronze stage ones to follow her as she ran down to the village. The girl was about to enter a cottage when Maxine reached the village. Maxine cleared her throat to get the girl's attention before removing all of the food and water from inside her dimensional pouch. Fortunately all of the food was in leather bags so that none of it was contaminated by being put on the ground. She had wanted to give this food to the villagers anyways and right now they desperately needed it due to the recent additions to the village. The girl was rightfully startled as Maxine gave her a smile and wave before running towards the bandit stronghold. Maxine knew that she would have to be very careful in her assault tonight even with the aide of forty bronze stage Shadow Wolves.