I feel my awareness before I feel myself awaking.

It’s still dark. There's a tiny body next to me.

No.

Not a body, but a blob.

Slowly growing, attempting to be subtle. My awareness caught it at the size of a large beetle.

I stop myself from awakening fully, somehow being able to control that in this state. I know that if I actually awake from his sleep, my body rhythms will change and the moment will be lost.

Continues to grow, little by little. Small, microscopic beads roll into this block, making it larger and larger. This slow transition happens over the course of hours, producing virtually no movement of the bed.

Grows and grows until it's the size of a person. The only difference is, they grew into a little spoon position.

In this half state between awake and sleeping, I can barely sense judging stares of the other two of the hero group. However, they do not stop her. I get the feeling this is something would be quite dangerous for them, if they tried to interject.

As I lay there, she snuggles and deeper into my unknowing embrace.

Only one thought crosses my mind, as this happens.

I have to stop this before this becomes something that is normalized for her.

In some ways, this could be viewed as cute. However, eventually she will become too powerful. If I don't build on the right things early on, it's possible she could turn down a dark path. And it might become too difficult to stop her then.

There's no consent to what she's doing now.

… Even though she is super comfortable to hold.

Seriously, it is better than petting a cat’s belly. And there’s no feeling like petting a cat belly.

The moment I decide to fully wake up, I can feel her break into many pieces, dissipating as if like a gas.

Slowly, methodically, I sit up from the bed, gazing around the room.

Both Ru Ning and Tai Ye mentally look away. Guiltily.

As they do so, I look for Dana. The true culprit.

I find her beside Mei Lin, having added the rest of her body to the one that was being cuddled. Clearly attempting to hide away. To avoid the situation.

To catch her attention, I do something I rarely do with the three of them, or any of my tamed creatures. I speak aloud.

“Dana.”

I can practically see the ripple (shiver) go through her blobby body.

Mei Lin almost stirs from her sleep, but releases Dana from her grip, turning to the other side.

I speak again, with a little less gravity in my voice.

“Dana. I know what you did. Could you come over here for a moment?”

There is a pause, and then a soundless rolling toward me. She has left the original part of her back with Mei Lin, and has moved the section that was laying next to me, back over here.

I open my arms a bit and reach over to grab her body, bringing it over to my lap. She’s big and heavy. Easy for me to carry, though.

I now switch over to mental speech, directing it solely at her.

“I’m not going to lecture you on consent or anything like that. You already know enough about it to make the right decision.”

I pause and think on my next words, making sure not to exaggerate them.

“You also already know the type of person I am and what I value. All I’ll say, I don’t think I would want to be around someone who disregards the wishes of others and uses them for their own.

“I know you can be better than this. There are much better ways to approach things like this. Harder, and maybe less successful. But better for all parties involved.”

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I can feel the equivalent of tears welling up from her.

It's quiet, but I can clearly hear it resonate in my mind. A voice full of shame and regret.

“im sorry”

I say nothing for a bit. But I let my heart doing my speaking for me. They carry over thoughts of forgiveness, but also warning. That this is one thing that is very important to me. A deal breaker.

“I forgive you.”

I wait a half breath before continuing.

“Would you like me to hold you for a bit, as I sleep?”

There's another pause before I hear an answer in the negative. A wish to think on my words a bit more.

I nod, before laying down to fall asleep.

There's a bit of disappointment in my heart, as I really wanted to enjoy the feeling of her soft body, as weird as that sounds. She’s like a body pillow. Mei Lin looks to be in heavenly bliss over there.

The next morning, I wake up with no issues for the rest of the night.

Dana learned her lesson from our talk yesterday. From what I can tell, she and the other two had a deep conversation as well, that I don't dive too much into, but can feel that they agreed to keep each other in check. To make sure that each of them stays on the straight and narrow and keeping each other accountable.

With today being a busy day, I talked briefly with the three of them, enjoying their company, and not bringing up anything about last night, as it has already been dealt with.

Instead, I used the opportunity to ask their advice on how they would approach today's foray.

Their thoughts, particularly Dana and Ru Ning’s, is that it may be quite a while before we see a response, as they do an investigation on what the true source of the issue is.

They believe any of the higher ups of the guys I had the rats take down will probably be cautious that there is a higher force doing this.

Thus, they don’t want to escalate the issue by sending in the REAL cultivators, if not necessary. While real cultivators would be able to easily crush any number of rats, escalating this into a war is the last thing any of them wants.

If that happens, it will cause the sect to crack down everywhere, while likely leaving the rats alone anyway, because they are healing people and doing their job for them.

… As long as the inference isn’t dropped that the rats’ owners are doing it because the sect couldn’t do it.

For the higher ups of these local bad guys, discovering the source and working that contact is going to be their best bet.

The hero group's recommendation for me is to continue the healing, but to focus more of my energy towards my personal safety and keeping up the appearance of normal action. Only by doing so will I be able to deceive them.

Her ultimate thought, though, is that they were already figuring out that one potential connection might be a perspective sect member that has come into the city and their master.

This is most likely because of the timing of the attacks/healing. Not only that, but it will be someone who can manipulate team creatures, mostly remotely.

My and their worries, is that these higher ups will assume that the only person who has been shown to be able to have that ability is me, via the spiders and Gong.

The healing aspect will also be an issue. They’ll want to know how the rats can do that, as from the ones that have been captured/dissected, there’s nothing to be found.

I don’t really have an answer to that just yet.

I’ll probably use alchemy as an excuse. There are ways to make rats into healing conduits, using some nearly untraceable qi-based methods. Those are obviously far above my ability and skill level.

There are also ways to have their intelligence boosted and able to decide based on users' will via taming methods. Also, beyond my Qi abilities.

However, there are still ways to emulate the effects on a smaller level. These methods are possible without Qi and are difficult, but not impossible. It would be much easier to implement on a large scale. The formulas also could switch in common ingredients after multiple layers of distilling and reversing into new chemical ingredients. Technically, that means availability wouldn’t be an issue.

… but it’s a long shot either way.

The only other alternative is a rat demi human doing the same thing using their racial connection. And the alchemy part could fill in the rest.

They will eventually discover the truth. They’ll likely assume I had some secret backing in the city. Which I might have to drop hints of when questioned.

It will help explain if I get captured, the sheer number of things I will attempt to entice to save me.

Which reminds me. My best option for the worst-case scenario is to drop all my healing, tames, and scanning, to send out a pulse to all nearby high level spirit beasts and attempt to form a contract with them.

It could work… but I don’t know at what cost. Dealing with powerful individuals like that is beyond dangerous.

All the contracts I’ve made so far have been extremely favorable to me, because I raised them to sapience. Others… could have frightening terms with them doing what they want afterward. And the fact that they would be stronger because of it wouldn’t help if I need to fight them once the deal was done.

My mind turns away from this frightening train of thoughts and back to the current situation.

The hero group believes the truth will probably only come to light when I'm in the middle of the exams. By then, it should be too late. From the things they've heard and discovered, I should be relatively safe within the sect. Even with this level of information, it only amounts to rumors in front of the sect.

They won’t care about what I’ve done, as long as they can exploit it to their benefit themselves. All else can be swept away. Not the best situation for me, but not the worst.

With their recommendations fresh in my mind, I move on to Mei Lin and talk to her for a bit. I once again let her know to stay inside until I come back, or until the carriage is ready to leave. If anything happens, I'll meet her at the beginning testing location. I stress that it's very important that she stays with the tamed creatures.

Though it may speed up the findings of the group that's now hunting me, it at least will give her time and protection to get to the sect.

The hero group and my scan also assure me that these types of groups like to hit the person directly and hard. At least, at first.

With this in mind, I head out to the markets to make some purchases. Starting a new day.