“No, we can’t just cut off everything else and replace it,” Engineer Uzun said.

“Are you certain?” Chikere asked. “I’d keep my head of course. But if everything can work like this arm…”

“First of all, I have to stop you there. Because if you treat everything like you treat this arm, you’ll run into some real issues. Doctor Escarra and the rest of the team performed a miracle just to replace your arm… and frankly it’s another miracle that it held up here. You pushed this piece of technology to the very limits of what it could do without falling apart.”

“That’s how you’re supposed to use things,” Chikere said.

“No, it isn’t. Because trouble doesn’t come only at the breaking point. Unlike your own body, you might not feel it straining but-”

“I can feel it,” Chikere interrupted.

Uzun sighed. “Of course. And just like your flesh, you didn’t care if it collapsed.”

“I care,” Chikere objected. “Why do you think I’m here to be fixed?”

Uzun shook his head. “If you cared, you’d probably stop things before you took permanent injuries.”

“There was nothing I could do,” Chikere said defensively, “I was restrained.”

“Indeed,” Engineer Uzun replied. “From that point on, whatever you had to do to escape was necessary. But things didn’t have to get to that point, if your path had gone differently.”

Chikere frowned, “I don’t see how it could have. There was no possibility of me defeating that woman.”

“You could have not fought her. Not run off into enemy territory alone. That alone shows reckless disregard for the work of my colleagues in the lower realms. And a few who might be ascending soon, actually. In short… I don’t think we will be ‘repairing’ you.”

“Oh,” Chikere said. “I understand.”

-----

“No,” Grandmaster Sadiq said.

“But it’s easy! I’ll jump into the furnace or drain my blood into a bucket or whatever you need. And you can make a really good sword,” Chikere said. “It has to work… right?”

“In normal circumstances,” Sadiq said, “The life of a swordmaster offered willingly may indeed create a peerless sword. But what would be the point?”

“Well, then… Chidi would use it.”

“I don’t think he would,” Sadiq said. “And such a blade would likely be extremely… disobedient except to its intended recipient. Furthermore, for a blade to reach peerless power would require the life of a swordmaster. And you have already said that you are no longer one, correct?”

Chikere’s jaw dropped. “Oh no,” her head hung. “I’m no longer even worth anything as materials.”

Sadiq shrugged. “I wouldn’t say it quite like that. But it’s not untrue either. So until you regain your status and come back with the acquiescence of your apprentice, I won’t be forging you into a sword.”

So she couldn’t even die like she wanted. How unfortunate.

-----

On the floor in front of Chikere sat a carefully placed sword. She’d had to get it from someone else, because like a logical cultivator she’d brought everything she owned with her. After all, she was only supposed to be able to lose it all if she died. And to be fair, she’d lost everything relevant before anyone took away her storage bag. All it had was a pile of wealth and other garbage. But that money would have been convenient, currently.

She carefully reached forward with her left hand. Her fingers could barely tighten around the hilt. She shuffled one knee onto the sheath to keep it still as she drew the blade. She looked at it, reflecting her distorted face. This sword was… it was…

Her right hand moved almost without her permission. It was much more responsive than the rest of her body, so she didn’t really have time to stop it. Nor did she have the will. It snapped the sword in half, relieving the pressure in her stomach.

Chikere tossed the broken sword away with all her might, causing a twinge in several points along her arm and all along her left side as she moved. “Dammit!” the sword clanked off of the wall, not even causing a scratch. That was even worse than the pain. “I can’t even damage things any more.”

She looked down at the half blade by her side. It wasn’t a sword like this, but it was still sharp. But as a not-sword, it wasn’t so bad. She reached down for it, tracing her finger along its edge. It was certainly sharp. It easily drew blood with her simple motion.

Red liquid began to drip down, and she pointed towards the wall. Something pierced a hole in it. So, the question was… had that been a sword, or was it not? Because she honestly didn’t know. She only knew that using her own blood didn’t feel too bad. But also that it was weak. Like her. Far too weak. In her shame, she almost didn’t feel her apprentice approaching.

“Grandmaster-,” Chidi called out. But her glare interrupted him as he felt it. “Chikere. Breaking things and injuring yourself won’t help you.”

“How would you know?” Chikere asked.

“Because I learned from you. And you told me to only get injured with a reason.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“There might be a reason,” she said.

Chidi shook his head. “That makes it sound like you don’t have one. And coming up with one later… isn’t good enough. Come, you should focus on recovery.”

“I can’t. This is as good as it gets,” Chikere held up her barely functional arm. “And my energy was fully centered around swords, anyway. So like this, what can it even do?”

Chidi spread his arms wide. “I think that is what you should be finding out. You survived a battle with a powerful cultivator. Maybe the sword arts have rejected you, or perhaps you have rejected them. But I don’t believe the master who taught me would let things end there. Perhaps you will recover your affinity… or perhaps you are meant to seek out another path.” The younger man paused. “Not formations though. You sense energy just fine, but you’re too straightforward about how you like to manipulate it.”

-----

“Hello! Mister hippo!” Three Squeaks yelled at the river. A head turned towards him… and the thoughtless eyes disregarded him. Three Squeaks sighed. This was just another big hippo full of natural energy. Not one possessed of sapience. At least they didn’t want to eat him, and wouldn’t stomp or crunch him if he stayed out of their territory.

“Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell the difference?” the eagle Echoing Cry said from atop a nearby shrub. “Are you really just planning to scurry about yelling at them one by one?”

“Yes. Do you have a better plan?”

“You could fly and spot them from above,” Echoing Cry said. “If you could fly.”

“Not yet, unfortunately. Wanna carry me?”

“No thanks,” the eagle said. “You’re far too heavy to carry about if I don’t get to eat you.”

Three Squeaks snorted. “You know, we don’t have to foster the growth of those field mice…”

“Oh come on,” Echoing Cry cawed. “You know it was a joke.”

“Yeah, well, how about I eat you instead?” Three Squeaks said, opening his mouth wide. “Pretty sure I can digest bird flesh.”

“Fine, fine, I won’t mention it. But I still don’t see what you want from us. Besides not attacking you, which was probably going to be the case anyway with you all getting stronger.”

“We need to plan. To be stronger. Meerkats and warthogs aren’t enough. We’re not strong enough individually, or as a group, or all together. I saw a lion, you know.”

“Okay? You know lions don’t bother eating meerkats, right?”

“They could though. And with us having more natural energy, it might be worth it for us to try.”

“So stay pathetic.”

“Then we just get eaten by you. Or other eagles. Maybe even regular eagles,” Three Squeaks said. “And perhaps eventually we’ll become as strong as Anton. But in the many many years between now and then, we have to survive. So we build alliances. You’ll want our help too.”

“I still barely see how.”

“We can get into places you can’t. Catch snakes that come for your eggs. The warthogs can smash open rocks, even. And what if some… bigger eagles want to eat you? Can you beat them without help?”

“Maybe with a bow. Or… an ally carrying a bow.”

“Exactly!” Three Squeaks declared. “We’re not the only ones who can think. And we don’t have to settle for just surviving. Personally, I’d rather work together with everyone. Other meerkats are at the top of that list, but we can’t do everything. We can’t even make bows yet.” Though Anton was helping them develop their own crafting techniques. The simplest things involved shoring up the walls of their burrows so they could have larger chambers. But they were also developing other tools to supplement their own claws.

There were also plans to put stuff on the warthogs too. They could dig stuff up with their snouts and tusks, but they didn’t necessarily like getting their nose in the dirt. So nose guards. Anton had also mentioned armor, which involved finding things that were stronger than your own flesh and putting them in the way of injuries. Three Squeaks was going to get something made of lizard scales… once they could work out the methods. But they really needed tools, and tools to make tools, before they could do much else.

-----

Three Squeaks came upon Anton working with fire. That wasn’t abnormal, but usually it wasn’t so… intense. And he also didn’t usually do it in a hole in the ground. “What are you doing?” Three Squeaks asked.

“Smithing. Sort of,” Anton shrugged. “Since many of you practice the fire element, I’m testing to see at what level your natural energy will substitute for proper fuel. It’s probably a bit beyond you currently, and you’d have to make a forge,” he gestured around him to the hole in the ground covered in rocks and fancy dirt. “This might not be the best arrangement, however. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn from anyone who wasn’t already in an established environment. But all of you are figuring things out yourselves pretty fast anyway.” Anton stood and stretched, “Maybe you need less of this and more investment in body tempering. Eventually those claws of yours won’t be enough. Especially since they’re not really for slashing, but digging.”

“It’s a lot of work,” Three Squeaks said. “Spending many days to grow plants that we don’t always eat ourselves. But then… I eat bugs that eat the plants and I realize that it’s all worth it.”

Anton laughed, “That’s something we humans should do more of. Some of us can unnecessarily limit our diets. I’m glad you all aren’t too upset about your fields being eaten.”

“It makes tasty food. I can’t wait for the scorpions to grow big and juicy. But they have to eat other things that eat the plants. It’s less… fast?” Three Squeaks pondered. “For not as much more energy.”

“It is less efficient,” Anton agreed. “Though ultimately, it comes down to how much you can really eat. And how much energy you can handle. At least, with how things are going none of you meerkats are going hungry.”

“But then we have more children, and need more food,” Three Squeaks said. “Spring will be trouble.”

“That is where you have to learn restraint,” Anton said. “That’s something the Great Queen is surprisingly adept at, to be honest.”

If she wanted to, she could probably establish a new colony every week or two. And with the intelligence of the void ants and her mobility, they could have sown themselves all over the planet already. And maybe there were plans in place for such a thing eventually, but she had only actually established one small colony in the same section of forest as the leaf and stick bugs Anton had found.

More exposure to them had made Anton realize they weren’t two related groups, but rather they were somehow a single species that produced both fake leaves and stick forms, which was surprising as they were vastly different. Their communication abilities were still being studied, but Anton saw the intentionality of the two forms working together. The Great Queen was expecting to contact them first, as she would be… less alien, at least. And quite a bit closer to their own size. Though Anton couldn’t really say that void ants were really close to the stick creatures, despite technically being insects.

As for somewhat closer creatures… there were a few hippos. Powerful creatures, capable of eating huge swaths of plant matter in a short time. Three Squeaks hadn’t found the sapient ones yet, but he would soon. And it was better for him to put in the work than for Anton to simply point them out, especially since there wasn’t a rush.