Maxine slowly woke up in her bed and as usual, Silky was sleeping on top of her. No matter how hard Maxine tried to teach Silky not to sneak into bed with her, Silky would still be laying on top of Maxine every morning. It was troublesome, but not something that Maxine couldn't tolerate. However right as she was going to wake up Silky, Maxine felt something cool on her right wrist. She lifted her arm to see what it was and saw that it was the golden bracelet. WHAT?! She didn't remember taking it out of her dimensional pouch last night and she had even made certain that Silky knew not to play with it either. Maxine became extremely nervous as she grabbed the dimensional pouch that was under her pillow and shoved the golden bracelet back into it. That was more than just alittle creepy.

Maxine woke up Silky and got ready for the day. She wanted to go looking around in the shadow world today. However she wasn't going to leave Silky with nothing to do like she did last time. Maxine was going to try and widen the cave entrance, so that Silky could join her. It wasn't good for Silky to remain stationary for too long. If that wasn't possible, Maxine would just give her something to read or play a game with her Shadow Wolves. 

As soon as they entered through the portal to the shadow world, Maxine tried to widen the cave opening as she had planned. The rock broke apart with only alittle difficulty. She tried to make it look like had widened naturally, but wasn't able to do it. Instead it looked like a wild beast had widened the opening, which suited her just fine. After making certain it was wide enough for Silky to pass through it, Maxine brought Silky out of the cave. Silky voiced that she found this place odd since it had no color. Maxine sympathized since it was slightly jarring if someone hadn't seen something like this before.

Maxine covertly checked on the village with her spiritual sense while she was here. The villagers were doing much better than before. The majority of the villagers were able to walk around on their own and only a handful of them were bedridden due to their injuries. However it saddened her when she saw a small child missing a leg. She noticed that there was a crude statue in the town square that wasn't there before. It had Maxine's basic shape and didn't look finished yet. Well that's one way to thank me. Would have prefered medicinal herbs though. Silky noticed the statue as well and asked about why they built it. Maxine told Silky how she had saved alot of the villagers and it was their way of showing their gratitude. However Maxine was determined not to interfer with their lives any more than necessary.

Maxine took Silky hunting for bronze ranked essence beasts. She was curious at how well Silky could fight against something just as strong as she is, but decided against it. She didn't want Silky to get hurt fighting something by herself because Maxine wasn't able to block an attack from hitting Silky in time. Maxine quickly summoned her Shadow Wolves to assist in the hunt. It would be best if Silky learned how to fight in cooperation in a team rather than by herself. The Shadow Wolves were able to track down a few essence beast which Maxine and Silky quickly dispatched. It was a trial to keep Silky from devouring the essence cores that they harvasted from the essence beasts. They managed to get twelve copper and six bronze essence cores from hunting only half an hour.

However during the most recent scuffle, several trees in the surrounding area got badly damaged. However one of those trees only had a single cut in it and that cut was leaking blood-red sap out of it. That immediately caught Maxines attention. She quickly looked at the leaf and branch configuration of the damaged tree. IT'S TROLLS BLOOD! Maxine took out a water bottle from her dimensional pouch and emptied it onto the ground. She brought it up to the wounded tree and collected the sap. Silky looked on with curiosity as Maxine slowly collected the tree sap. 

"Mama, why are you collecting that red tree sap?" Silky asked.

"This sap is special and really rare. It's called 'Troll's Blood Sap.' If a tablespoon of this is consumed, it can can regrow an entire arm or leg," Maxine answered, "However it takes awhile to work depending on how much nutrition and/or essence the consumer can procure. Also you have to make sure that it's actually comes from the right kind of tree. Otherwise you may end up consuming a deadly poison instead." It was a small miracle that she found this stuff. Mostly because the Troll's Blood Trees are almost indistinguishable from cottonwood trees and they don't typically grow within one hundred miles of each other. The only way to find such a tree is by pure chance and now that she had found one she was going to place multiple spiritual sense marks on it. However she still had to make certain that it was Troll's Blood sap and not something unique to this world. 

"Cool," Silky said with eyes filled with fascination. I see Silky has learned a new word. Maxine stroked Silky's head with her free hand. 

Maxine managed to gather two doses of the Troll's Blood sap, but she still needed to test it. After a few minutes she found another bronze stage essence beast and pinned it down with shadow tendrils. She hacked off one of it's limbs and fed it a dose of the Troll's Blood. It's limb was visibly regrowing. A smile spread across Maxine's lips. She decapitated the essence beast and collected it's core. Maxine made a mental note to get a sap collector later. She had wished that she had found some of this stuff in the previous time line, but it had only been discovered a year before her death. 

Maxine was about to go back to hunting with Silky when one of her Shadow Wolves still at the cave signaled her that someone was approaching. Maxine used her spiritual sense to investigate and found three villagers were approaching it. They appeared to be following some of Maxine's old tracks from a few days ago. She hadn't exactly been careful about hiding her trail. Against a veteran tracker, it wouldn't have mattered anyways if she had hidden any of her tracks. They would still be able to track her even if she didn't leave much for them to follow. However it didn't appear like they meant her any harm, but appearances could be decieving.

Maxine got Silky to follow her back to the cave. They got there ahead of the villagers following her trail, but not by much. Maxine didn't know how long they would watch the cave once they arrived and also she didn't want to reveal the existence of the portal. It would make things more complicated than they had to be. However when Silky tried to follow Maxine into the cave, she seemed to hit an invisible barrier. Maxine found this bizarre. Who the hell put this barrier up? And why didn't it affect me? Maxine didin't have time to think about it as she reach outside of the barrier and grabbed a hold of Silky's wrist. She tried pulling Silky through, but that didn't work either. At her wits end, she tried coating Silky in her shadow essence and for some reason that allowed Maxine to pull Silky into the cave. After Silky was inside of the cave, Maxine saw the villagers in the distance and it was clear that they had seen either Silky or herself as they increased their pace. She heard a few excited shouts. Maxine pulled Silky towards the portal. Fortunately the villagers had encountered the same barrier that had kept Silky from entering. 

Before Maxine and Silky could enter the portal and return home, one of the villagers said something. It was about this cave being the resting place of the fallen goddess and that Maxine must be a priestess or descendant of the fallen goddess in order for her to enter it. They took several steps back before bowing towards the cave and heading back to the village. 

After the villagers were some distance away, Maxine looked towards the remains of the woman beneith her portal. Maxine understood that she must have been the fallen goddess, but she was curious as to why they thought she was a descendant of that woman. Out of curiosity Maxine scanned the villagers as they walked towards the village. The one that was in charge had some medicinal herbs on him. Oh, so they were going to give me some herbs. Now I feel alittle silly for reacting the way I did. Maxine shrugged and saw no point in going back out to hunt in the shadow world since she had already gotten quite the harvast. However she intended to go back to the village tomorrow and use the Troll's Blood Sap on that small boy that was missing his leg. She hated seeing a child suffer like that. Without further ado, Maxine gently pulled Silky along and went into the portal.  

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

As soon as she saw that she was back in her room, Maxine used her essence to clean both her clothes as well as Silky's and checked her cellphone for any missed calls. There was one that she had missed. It had been Emily and she had left Maxine a voicemail.. A smile spread across Maxine's face and she played the voicemail message that Emily left her. Emily wanted to eat lunch together. Maxine was only too happy to oblige and called Emily back telling her that she would be there in roughly an hour. She got changed into a cuter set of clothes and took Silky with her to see Emily.

They arrived at Emily's house at the time Maxine had said they would. As Maxine knocked on the front door, it had occured to her that Silky had never been here before. Nor had she actually met General McKenzy, whom opened the door. Silky appeared to enjoy every bit of this new situation as she followed Maxine inside the house. Unfortunately it wasn't easy to take Silky out to eat with them since she couldn't fit in a car, so they decided to cook something. Silky went to the other room to watch TV with General McKenzy while Emily and Maxine cooked. They had decided on an egg salad. 

While they peeled the boiled eggs, Maxine looked observed Emily out of the corner of her eye. Emily kept giving Maxine short glances and seemed nervous about something. Maxine knew that Emily wanted to say something and even knew the contents of what she wanted to say. However Maxine didn't want to rush Emily. 

The eggs were almost all peeled by the time Emily spoke, "Maxine, I told Maxwell that you are my girlfriend. I did it without thinking about how you felt about me. I am sorry. I..." Maxine had raised her hand and put her index finger over Emily's mouth to silence her.

"I am not angry. In fact I wanted to find out if you wanted to be my girlfriend," Maxine said while she smiled at Emily.

"Really?" Emily asked hopefully.

"Yes," Maxine answered.

Emily was blushing slightly as she said, "I almost thought you were going to kiss me again instead of saying that." Maxine thought that Emily almost sounded disappointed. 

"I can remedy that if you want," Maxine said with a mischievious smile.

"You really shouldn't. My grandpa has a clear line of sight on us. He has been watching us the whole time," Emily said softly. Maxine glanced over her shoulder. General McKenzy did indeed have a clear line of sight on them and was watching them. He didn't appear to have a happy expression on his face either. I can sympathize with that look. I would have the same expression if my only grand daughter prefered the company of other girls. Although he sort of deserves it after all the shit he has put me through.

"Looks like you are right," Maxine said as she shrugged and started to cut up the boiled eggs, "Now we better hurry up and put this food on the table before your grandpa starts to think we are flirting." They quickly finished up the egg salad and put them onto some bread to make egg salad sandwiches. It was a satisfying meal. Unfortunately Maxine couldn't stay much longer since she still had to go visit her mother at the hospital. There was a bit of good news though. Last time she was there her mother had just started to go through physical therapy. 

Emily insisted on going with Maxine and Silky to the hospital. Maxine didn't mind at all. She wanted to spend as much time as she could with Emily. However Emily still wasn't used to the fact that she could run faster than most cars and had General McKenzy drive her there. Maxine got to the hospital ahead of Emily and went to her mother's room with Silky. When they got to the room, it was empty. Mom must be at physical therapy. I guess I will see how good Silky is at reading while I wait. 

Maxine looked around for a moment to make sure no one was nearby and retrieved a book from her dimensional pouch. The title on it was 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' Maxine thought it would be a great choice for Silky to read since Silky loved to eat chocolate and thus far Silky has shown to have a fourth grade reading level as well. This particular book should be a good way to test her reading level. Maxine had Silky read to her for awhile. Silky had read twelve pages before Emily arrived. Emily sat down next to Maxine and they listened to Silky read out loud. Maxine thought she saw Emily glance down at Maxine's hands for a moment, but wasn't certain of it.  

When her mother arrived from physical therapy, Maxine could feel her mother's eyes glance curiously at Maxine's right wrist as a nurse helped her get back into the hospital bed. First Emily and now mom have looked at my wrist. What are they looking at? Maxine looked down and saw the golden bracelet on her wrist. She had no idea how it had gotten there. She was concerned, but not afraid. Mostly because she felt no hostility from it. 

After the nurse left, Maxine reached for the bracelet to put it back into her dimensional pouch. However before she could grab ahold of it, she felt a weak spiritual sense connect to her mind. A woman's voice was transmitted through it, "I am sorry for scaring you, but I need the essence that you unconsiously emanate in order maintain my existence. Unfortunately that requires physical contact." So that orb inside the golden bracelet was the soul of an essence cultivator. 

Maxine replied angrily using her own spiritual sense, "You could have asked before forcing yourself onto my wrist."

"I would have asked this morning, but I had just woken up at the time. I am not even certain how the bracelet I am inside ended up on your wrist in the first place. You put me into your storage device before I could process where I was. By the time you opened it back up, my soul was about to disapate due to lack of essence," the woman's voice replied, "It was either take a chance that I would anger you or die." That made some sense to Maxine. The woman no longer possessed a body to sustain her soul and was forced to become a parasite in order to survive. However what bothered her was that she didn't need to do that in the shadow world. Maybe the essence on Earth is too thin for it to sustain her.

"I may not like it, but I understand," Maxine said, "What's your name anyways?"

"Hellen, or at least that's the closest translation of my name that I can come up with," the woman's voice said, "I am the wife of Poison Emperor Guan. He will reward you greatly if you give this bracelet to him and lead him to my body." A reward huh? I doubt that. He will more than likely be pissed off that I robbed his dead wife's grave, but that might be diminished greatly when he finds out that her soul is bound to this bracelet. However with a name like Poison Emperor, he is probably just an evil bastard that will kill me regardless of what I say or do and with my luck he is probably even more powerful than she was before she died. FUCK! I should have left this damn thing where I found it. It's too bad that I can't just put the golden bracelet back in her grave. If he finds her still inside of the bracelet later, she could tell him how I left her there to die. Now that would definitely piss him off. It's best that I hold onto this thing for now and get as much information as I can from her about the disposition of her husband. Maybe, he isn't as evil as I fear. She also might know the method on how to breakthrough into the stage beyond iron stage.

"Okay, Hellen. I will let you stay on my wrist and I need to explain why I have been quiet this whole time to everyone around me," Maxine said using her spiritual sense, "But before I do, I have one question. Who the hell is Poison Emperor Guan and how do I find him?" So I can stay as far away from him as I can until I know that he isn't going to kill me.

"How do you not know the protector of your world?" Hellen said curiously through her spiritual sense, "There are traces of his immortal level essence in the air. Although it is odd that those traces appear to be around fourteen Earth years old." Maxine rememberd the first essence cultivators appeared alittle more than thirteen years ago and she knew that regardless how how careful an essence cultivator was they would still emanate at least some essence. It felt as if something clicked into place inside of her mind. It was HIM! He is the reason Earth is like this! THAT BASTARD!!!