His excitement quickly spreads to those waiting in line, especially when they notice the changes in him. He gained a few inches in height and also gained some muscle mass and those are just the obvious changes. Now the rest of the beasts can't wait for their turn and the next one steps up as soon as the first moves aside.

Even though each one only takes a couple of minutes, it's still going to take a while. A couple of hours later I have gotten through over half of the waiting beasts. Unfortunately, I end up running out of sacred power at that point.

"Alger, I am out of power. The rest are going to have to wait until after I have gotten some rest."

Alger barks at the rest of the beasts and their faces immediately show disappointment. However, they disperse with just a little grumbling and Alger invites me to join the elders for dinner. I am not exactly excited to eat their food, but I don't want to be rude to them.

When the food is brought out it is carried by a bunch of female beasts, the first I have seen. The food itself is fairly simple, consisting of some half cooked meat and a variety of mushrooms. The meat is decent and the mushrooms have interesting flavors, but weird textures.

There is no conversation during the meal, everyone just sits and focuses on their food. Once I am done eating one of the women leads me to a room that contains nothing but a bed. When I am alone I pull some food out of my pouch to eat before entering meditation.

In the morning I eat in my room before heading down to the council room. Instead of joining the elders for breakfast I start helping the remaining warriors evolve. After the warriors, come the mages, they are not as excited about the evolution.

It is understandable, contrary to the warriors the mages will have to start their learning over from scratch. While the physical boosts from evolution are nice, that is a lot of work. I am fairly sure some of the mages decided that it wasn't worth it even though their cores are maxed out.

Compared to the almost hundred warriors, there are only twenty or so mages. Everything goes fine, until I get to the fifth mage, when I scan him I find an anomaly. Like the others his core is maxed out, what is weird is there is some kind of pouch or sack around his core.

Instead of messing with it just now I motion for him to go sit at the table. Then I continue with the remaining fifteen mages, all of which are perfectly normal. Once everyone else is done I walk over to the table and scan the mage again to confirm what I saw the first time.

"Alger, I'm going to need you to translate for me."

Alger says "Sure, what's wrong?"

So I explain to Alger what I found, but he looks confused by the time I am done explaining. So instead of trying to translate what I said he teaches the language spell to the mage. Then I get to explain to the mage exactly what I found and that I can't be sure what will happen.

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Despite the risks the mage decides to go ahead with the evolution, which suits me just fine. So I channel my sacred power to break the block and start the evolution. Then I continuously scan to watch what happens to both the core and the sack around it.

To my surprise, the core moves out of the sack as it evolves, but the sack remains. It still contains mana even after the core has upgraded, meaning this mage has mana and sacred power. I can barely believe my eyes, this may just be a way for me to get mana back!

Even once the evolution is completed, the sack is still there and still has mana in it. The mage says he feels fine and he can still cast spells, only his mana is much less now. I have to fight the temptation to remove the sack from his body and try implanting it in my own.

Instead I work on memorizing how the sack is constructed, so I can try to make one. It isn't solid like a core would be, so the mage does not have two cores. The elders still haven't decided if they want to evolve, so I leave them arguing and return to my room.

"Seronia, can I have permission to experiment?"

Seronia says "What are you going to do this time?"

"Well, I just found a mage with a mutation. If I can duplicate it I will be able to have mana again. I think."

Seronia makes me wait while she tracks down the mage and takes a look for herself. After she examines the mage Seronia gives me permission to experiment, but only if she observes. So I immediately sit down and try to recreate the sack inside my own body.

Unfortunately, every attempt I make fails, even though I duplicate the sack exactly. No matter what I try, as soon as I stop using power to hold the sack in place it falls apart. I even switch to trying to create the elven organ, like I did for Myria, but get the same result.

Seronia says "I'm sorry, Ash. It looks like this is something you can't do without life force."

"Any chance you could give me enough life force to experiment with?"

Seronia says "Sorry, no. That would mess with Krenocia's power."

"Yeah, let's not kill me. I guess this just won't work."

Seronia says "Sorry, Ash."

After Seronia's presence fades I meditate for a while to recover my spent sacred power. As I meditate I find myself thinking back to Myria's new heart and how I got it. I was able to pull all of the rabbit beast's life force to the heart and remove it.

In theory that should mean I can take the life force from any living thing, sort of like a vampire. Now I find myself wondering, if I can steal life force, can I use it to create the organs. First I need to see if I can actually steal life force and keep it inside my body.

Ending my meditation I head downstairs, planning to go looking for some spiders. However, when I get downstairs I find that it is fairly chaotic because my people have arrived. Even though they are obviously on their best behavior, Kechara and Asuna are causing quite the stir.

Kechara says "Hello, father!"

Asuna says "Daddy!"

They both rush over to me, causing the warriors to grip their weapons. Luckily, the elders keep control of the situation, even though they themselves look nervous. When everyone sees me petting the two of them, they relax a bit, but still look wary.

Myria says "These guys don't seem very happy to see us."

Alger says "Please forgive them. You are our first visitors other than Ash."

"It's fine. Everyone is just a little nervous, it will pass. How did things go up top?"

Myria says "Everything went well. We killed several hundred spiders. The trap worked perfectly, the worker spiders fell for it."

Kitara says "Over a hundred of the work spiders died. Afterwards we destroyed all the corpses."

"Good! How did the search for weapons go?"

Myria says "Decent, we found around a thousand weapons."

"Hand them over to the elders, that should help the people accept you."

With a nod Myria steps forward and from the backpack she is carrying she starts taking out weapons. As she piles them in front of the elders the eyes of every warrior go wide. Some of the warriors even start drooling as they stare at the pile of weapons.