Michel was an efficient and redoubtable diviner. He already had proven himself in combat enough for everyone to know.

But Michel wasn't feeling comfortable with leadership and though divination did help brutally sort most problems, he was self-conscious that he might have crossed the line, especially with Moana. As a mind-reader, emotionally hitting at vulnerabilities out of ease to get her to behave was brutally effective but hardly healthy.

In other words, Michel strongly abhorred leadership and would turn into a tyrant if forced onto him. Something the man was deeply aware of and did not want a repeat.

As for Moana, getting orders from someone else had changed her perspective on the matter, especially as Michel had not fawned over in excuse after pushing her too hard. Nope. He was the silent type, quietly showing he was sorry and then moving on. Which also helped put Sophia's own behavior in a new light. So all in all: Moana's incident was now closed. Yeah~

It was one less torn in her side.

And that's concluded Michel's 'need to talk' conversation.

Now was the real deal.

"Okay, Guys!" She called out for everyone in the common room and waited for all of them to be done with their business and join up.

"The trip had been fine. I found a place to relocate." She used her prestidigitation to give them a bird view of the site, before showing them how she got there. "But we are going to face some challenges, even on the safest road." And so she shifted her usage of prestidigitation to show them in action miniature of the alien beasts she encountered. Paolo and Michel already knew about those, but Lono and Moana didn't. She silently kept the prestidigitation for the best of a quarter before concluding: "And that still a non-exhaustive list. Needless to say: nothing too challenging, especially compared to the spiders, but still very much hostile. So take your time preparing: I'm getting a nap and off we go."

And then, she did as she promised and went for a well-deserved nap.

★☆★

It was nice being back all together with the team after three days apart.

But to devise the route they would now be taking toward their future temporary home base, she had to scout ahead as she was the only one that could do it in relative safety. However that safety net didn't hold when she had to take a break from singing, for whatever reason. Although to be honest, it was never true singing but more of a continuous hum.

But still, there were moments she needed to stop and she had not found a way to start humming in her sleep, though that would have been super cool. Instead, since gravity wasn't a thing here and tree tops carried no extra protection anymore, she tried to camouflage and bury herself in the dirt itself.

But now, she was back within the group and so, back to being human. And so after her nap, she took a shower and then got herself prepared for the trip back on her track.

"Everyone is ready?" She politely asked once she had joined everyone.

And everyone nodded or thumbed up.

"Then off we go! I'm going to define the rules straight off the bat. We are going to take the shortest route, as in the one that would make you do the least effort, this includes the kilometers we will have to make but also the monsters we might or hopefully might not, encounter on that route. We are going to take several detours to avoid threats we don't want to deal with, especially pack animals, as well as other hazards that are just too weird to properly explain.

So we are going to keep going as fast as we can. This forest doesn't have leaves and broken branches on the floor so there is a way to be stealthy, even on all four, even without my weavesinging. What we want is to avoid disturbing the local fauna and bribe it into letting us go whenever possible. I have plenty of bait for predators that would rather take their prize than fight, although some must still be intimidated against trying to do both. Then, they are the fighters, and I would tell you whenever we encounter one. But some fights are simply not worth fighting, so if I ask you to run, you spread out and regroup at the last point we had a break at, or our resting area if no such breakpoint exist at the time.

If you die here, the team will have no choice but to wait for you, at our resting area closest to your deathbed. And possibly for weeks, so just don't. If you need a break, ask for a break. We need to be at the top of our game for the next two days, but I would not mind making it three if that could ensure we all make it all right. Good?"

They nodded, all-knowing she made the trip in half that time. But she had made her point clear: safety over speed. Speed here was merely a tool to help them survive. But in that environment, it wasn't about missing speed but missing control of their speed. She had mostly learned herself by imitation: by seeing how animals in zero gravity adapted to it and implementing it, she had indeed gained in efficiency, but though she had learned in grossly that amount of time, that wasn't something she could teach in a single day.

And so they went at their own pace with no more pressure than potential wildlife waiting to ambush them if they were to take the wrong turn or cross the wrong path at the wrong hour.

As even in space, with no clear day and night cycle, those species had somehow adapted their own cycle instead, and somewhat harmonized with each other due to their relationship of prey and predators. As Predators wanted to be the most active when their prey were out. And the prey were willing to leave the safety of their den only when they thought it was safe to be outside. Needless to say, both had to be convinced they were right and yet, mostly wrong or a balance would have never struck. And yet it did.

The dominant environment was triphasic, as it underwent three active and inactive phases per twenty-four hours, in relative sync. It wasn't true of the entire forest.

But still, that allowed them to pass through without disturbing the local fauna, which Sophia was grateful about.

The less they had to fight, the faster they would be and the fresher they would be when a fight would ultimately happen anyway.

"What's up?" Paolo asked as they were crawling at about the same length.

"Want to see something cool? She asked back and started using a live tree trunk to gain extra speed.

"Is that really safe?" Paolo asked doubtful.

"No risk of fall injuries here. But the wood isn't always as solid as it looks and the real trouble is to dose your strength, so you can reach the next tree, without crashing down into it, and then secure your grasp on it so you can do it all over again."

"And How fast can you do like this?" Paolo asked again.

"About thrice as fast, "Sophia replied honestly. "I plan to teach all of you. But it has its own risks and relocating took precedence. As I said: better safe and slow than sorry as it's definitely not a stealth move."

It was a move perfect to take advantage of their bipedal body and build up a lot of speed crazy fast. However, in zero gravity, it was the sort of thing that was easy to start but impossible to stop.

"Make sense." Paolo nodded. "And so, that's what you've been doing for the past three days? Humming while jumping from tree to tree?"

"And a lot of observation too." Sophia pointed out. "That's the drawback of responsibility and agency. I had to make absolutely sure I wasn't leading you into a trap."

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

"And no one is going to call you on it if you accidentally do," Paolo observed. "You saved my life, thrice. You came to Michel's help when he was having a bad time. And the Twin are grateful for taking them in, especially after Lono's near-death experience with that spider. Everyone makes mistakes and no one would feel any less of you for it."

After that, Sophia had let the conversation die out, mulling it over.

What was good leadership anyway? And how could she make sure that the decision she was making were indeed for the best?

She kept essentially following her intuition.

And though completely irrational, she had the guts feeling that moving on, even at a slower pace, was better and that something terrible might happen otherwise.

She did not know why, but that ring they were in was more peaceful than the spider hellholes that came before. And that pattern broke every rule the tutorial seems to have been working with. Unless it was all an illusion and something terrible was about to happen, like a seasonal station cataclysm or whatever.

Anyway, it was driving her nuts: knowing that the expected challenge for this floor section wasn't there. And so it had to be elsewhere, lurking.

From the third floor onward, every floor had felt like a giant puzzle waiting to be solved. And this floor... they had barely started running it that it had been starting to drop hints of its bigger picture like crazy.

Until the big reveal of the armillary sphere, as Moana put it.

And Sophia had not the faintest idea what to make of this information. How would that translate into puzzles and challenges for this floor? How exactly was it supposedly testing the adaptability of the human race this time around? And more importantly for her: how could she get herself and her team prepared for whatever the system would be throwing their way?

★☆★

The next few weeks had been roughly the same: they safely reached their destination within two days, then Sophia taught them tree jumping and helped set up camp before going on another scouting mission alone for another three days, before returning and getting them on the road, again, and again, until Sophia finally discovered the next junction point of the station.

This time, it had taken her 23 days to find the crossing point. It had involved a lot of time waste, of back-and-forth, and detours. But everyone was alive and fine so she counted that as a victory.

"Please be that ring spider-free and jungle-free." She preyed to the safe corridor, before turning back to announce the news as fast as she could.

And she made it in less than three hours.

"Okay, Guys! Great news! It would be our last trip through this wretched jungle." She announced.

And silent incredulity responded to it until everyone finally processed the information fully and exploded in cheers.

"We did it!" Paolo exclaimed.

"Indeed, we are about to be done with that ring and closer to that station center," Michel confirmed, still reserved but sharing general enthusiasm. "By the way, how many more rings do you think that's going to take?"

"I don't know for sure but at least as many as we already did, since we aren't nearly at the halfway point," Sophia admitted.

And if the fourth ring wasn't nearly the halfway point towards their goals, then they would clearly not be done in eight, the system's favorite numeral, and so, it had to be something else instead, probably not ten, but maybe 12 or gods-may-help-them, more.

"So long that there is no spider, I'm happy with anything," Lono commented, not sharing their enthusiasm but not willing to break the fun. For him, this side of the ring, entirely free of spiders had been a breather. But no one could tell for sure what the next ring might entail.

And so they started packing their things once again in order to reach that junction point before setting up for the night.

The trip had been quiet despite the excitement as no one wanted to get pointlessly injured so close to the finish line.

And then they made it and started to push through to the next ring. While it would be unreasonable to cross the line while overtired, they all wanted to know what would be awaiting them here. And so they kept pushing until they finally saw it.

"Yep. We can still see the sun. The spiders are gonna hate it here," Lono commented first, visibly relieved.

"And there is still vegetation, so we are not back on another waste ring either," Paolo completed, appreciatively.

And indeed, this time it wasn't a densely forested ring that awaited them, but more of a pasture with a large variety of alien herbivores ruminating happily in their spot under the sun.

"Hum. Miirik? Remember you told me you wanted to leave a certain option on the table? Can I call for it tonight?" Prince asked.

"Sure. Let me break the news to everyone to get prepared for the night." She immediately agreed, which triggered a reaction from the tressym in return:

"That's it. You are not going to ask me why?"

"I'm assuming that's personal and not completely rational as all matters of feelings are. And you owe me no explanation so I'm not going to push it. Unless you want to speak about it, that's it?"

"I do need to talk a lot," The tressym chuckled. "But in this case, it's pretty simple: I spend too much time indoors on that ring. And I would rather not have a repeat on this ring if we can help it."

"No more than eight hours at a time?" Sophia proposed.

"That would be great." The winged cat confirmed, his wings flapping erratically.

And so they were finally done with the fourth ring.

★☆★

That night had been awful. Not because it was truly that bad, but because they had never got used to it earlier, as anyone else on that floor would have to, from the very first night.

It helped put into perspective how truly unfair the Chained Chest reward was to everyone else.

But Sophia had decided very early on to monopolize every resource that could increase her own survivability and she wasn't going to change it anyway.

Still, that kept raising the stakes, as Prince had promised.

If they were to miss out on one chain chest... she would probably get so mad that she could hardly picture it.

And they only got a third of them yet. How would that feel when they got way more?

But now was not the time.

They were done with the night and so it was time to explore the ring vicinity instead.

This time again, they were spider colonies safely nested behind the shadow of the pasture. But they seemed less densely webbed than the ring before.

There was also less densely packed vegetation and grass covering the entire floating ground at every angle. But no visible roots this time to stabilize the ground. So the ring might be more peaceful if a bit shaky.

"So, what's the plan?" Michel asked.

"We start climbing. We try to avoid bothering the grasseaters and their predators. We try to be nicer with Prince cause we really need his shelter. And we keep pushing." Sophia summarized.

Michel simply nodded.

And less than fifteen minutes later, they were on their way, before making the big jump from the junction point to the nearest floating patch of grass. But the hardest part was still the reception. There was no slowing done once in the air, or so very little that it felt negligible. And if someone got their jump wrong, or failed to secure properly on impact, the team had to go fish for them.

Which helped put into the limelight this ring fauna's unique adaption:

Those herbivores had definitely non-avian talons, which they used primarily as an anchor. But conversely, they lacked the horn that one would except for such herd animals, relying on their four deadly talons instead. So though placid, the herbivores here were not to be messed with. Cause a stampede would be a literal butchery at their expense.

And so, Sophia swore never to bother the peaceful creature. Gaining a few meters wasn't worth risking their life.

And yet, that seemingly concealed deadliness was still not enough of the fifth floor, in Sophia's opinion. And so she kept looking for more threats and especially, the herbivores predators. Which turned out to be a bird-like creature. It was highly surprising the first time they saw it: a massive flock of small birds, harassing and killing prey several thousands of times over their own size.

"Any ideas about how to deal with those?" She asked, "Anyone?"

"Aside from shields?" Lono asked back. "Those things look nasty and for one, I would be happy to have it on my back while looking at the floor.

"Trying to hide in the tall grass?" Paolo proposed. "Raptor birds can see from far away but are less likely to attack in the tall grass."

"Reflecting surfaces." Moana proposed too. "I don't know here but it kept killing tons of birds back on Earth. It might be worth a shot."

And that was even a good suggestion. And one that was easily replicated with prestidigitation.

"Michel, Paolo, and I should start taking turns spamming prestidigitation as a deterrent." Sophia immediately approved.

She didn't care about those birds' lives. Only not to be eaten alive by them.

"You are overthinking too much." Prince pointed out. "90% of my diet is birds. I know the kind. They will play tough until I kill a fair share of them. And then, they are gonna stop and I'm going to be the one giving into the chase. It's going to be good exercise and everyone is going to be happy, except the birds, that's it."

"I'm going to trust your words on it," Sophia conceded. "But we are still pulling up the anti-aerial protections, just in case. Better safe than sorry."

"To be fair, I wasn't on any active part of protection duties before. So I'm still pretty green." Prince admitted. "But I promise that by the end of today, no bird is gonna show up and attack any of you anymore. I'm going to ensure to leave a lasting impression on them. The only issue is: I might scare the herbivores too at first so it's going to be a balancing act until they understand that I'm good news for them."

And so, that concluded their primary exploration of their new ring.