Gi drifted down from the top of the mountain slowly after the Assembly. He assumed the Angelic Mice would try and strike at him, but they wouldn't be able to put their full force behind it. Despite their seemingly non-combat focus, Gi didn't hesitate to assume that they had something nasty up their sleeve. The difference between a Sky Clan and a Ground Clan was stark.

Preparing for the Angelic Mice Clan's attack and Gi's own goals had the same answer though - more power.

He wanted to finish the stage before he took on the Spiked Eagles and made his ascent as a Sky Clan Progenitor. He believed it was possible, but he looked at his still remaining tasks.

* Rule of Law - Establish a governing set of laws for your clan with an appropriate reward system

* Expanded Foundation - Gain 30 levels

* Power - Complete a Dungeon Run

The thirty levels landed almost perfectly for him to be able to get it done. For a monster that pushed to the cap in the Adolescent Stage, it would require a thousand Soul Orbs and twenty thousand Body Orbs. An impossible amount in any short time frame. For Gi though, he'd completed the stage at level ten, making the goal much more achievable.

All he needed was fourteen hundred Soul Orbs to reach it and he had over double that from the back-to-back Clan fights. His single handed massacre of the Illusor Clan provided most of it.

Gi picked up his speed, banking for the Bazaar. He swam over the heads of monsters that were finally coming out now that the dry season had begun. The monsters that ran their shops seemed even more loud and boisterous than usual. He missed the free rein that his clan had during the monsoon season, but the liveliness of the Bazaar was distracting in a good way.

He activated [Concealing Light] as he made his way towards the tavern where Galvina stayed. After flying the rest of the way, he dropped in front of the old dark wood of the tavern that was built directly into the mountain, turning [Concealing Light] back off.

The Octopus looking bartender gestured towards the back room as soon as Gi came in. He nodded and headed towards the back, but the realization that it would be difficult to hide his movements hit hard. They may not have thought much of the new Ground Clan who'd taken out the other newest Ground Clan, but after he'd killed three?

Everyone would know what he was up to.

He wrapped his knuckle on the door and Galvina's irritated shout drew him in. She sat nursing a cup of cider while she stared sullenly at a rock in the center of the table.

"Bad time?" Gi asked.

"I suppose it is." She laughed like there was some private joke he missed, but she didn't explain and Gi didn't want to ask.

"Two Ground Clans down. I'm here for the promised payment."

She eyed him strangely before shrugging to herself and pulling a robe out of a ring on her finger. His [Expanded Pocket] ability wasn't special to the Elites of the Demon Empire, but if his inferences from Galvina were to be believed, they were far beyond him at this point anyways.

Gi took the robe into his hands and felt the fabric between his fingers. The robe he'd taken from the Ice Mage in his first Dungeon run had been blue. The ones provided by the clan were almost always grey, though they took what they could get. This one was a deep rich black. It wasn't just a black monolith of fabric though. Gold embroidery shone near the cuff, collar, and skirt. Its shine seemed a little more than simple gold and it made him wonder if that was where the enchantment lay.

Robe of Demonsteel - A robe that has been enchanted with the properties of demon steel.

"What's demon steel?" He asked after the item detail popped up.

"Demons with a full Knot drop demon steel when they die. It's typically used as armor and then enchanted afterwards, but it's possible to take its qualities and enchant them into an object that might not normally make sense."

"Like a robe."

"Like a robe," Galvina agreed. "Even in this form, it will be far tougher than steel. Oh, it's also ludicrously expensive as there's only a few hundred items made of demon steel in the entire empire. If you sell it or lose it, I'll kill you myself."

Gi looked to the robe with a new appreciation. "This seems like a bigger payment than I expected for offing a few clans. What's the catch?"

"The catch is that I'm running out of time and you're my closest resource to actually conquering Igna."

"Running out of time until what?"

Galvina sighed, rubbing her hands across her face. "If I tell you, you'll do something stupid."

"Then tell me how much time we have."

"I can't. I don't know."

"Then how the hell do you know that you're running out of time?" Gi's tone had gotten a little heated and it caused Galvina's own anger to spark. She shot to her feet and yelled right in his face.

"Stop asking me so many fucking questions. You work for me. You're my subject and I'll tell you whatever the fuck I want."

The two of them stared at each other. Gi wasn't willing to back down and neither was she. Functionally, they were on the same side so this argument was fruitless, but both of them had their pride - the pride of nobles.

"If you had any resource you needed, how long would it take you to conquer Igna?"

"And by that you mean kill the Queen and her Fighting Drakes? There have to be tens of thousands of them. I'd need to push stages, raise monsters, have allies, and gain levels to increase my power. A few years at least? I haven't done the math."

"That's not good enough. You've got six months."

"Only a season? That's impossible. I won't kill myself or my clan just to meet your needs. We don't even have a hundred otters after our last attack."

"Then recruit other monsters. The more population, the higher the spawn rate."

Gi hadn't really realized that was possible, but the Coastal Goblins had already joined their clan so it made sense. That would have been a good method to use during the last season... "Even still, we won't get tens of thousands of otters in time and even if we do, the average otter won't be a match for a Fighting Drake without levels and that requires Soul Orbs. We'd have to take out several Sky Clans just to have a shot and that would eat into our population."

Galvina was growing increasingly more agitated. She started gripping her hair in her fingers and growled. "Fine. I can provide an opportunity in six months. It will make it realistic." She stood back up and jabbed her finger into his chest. "You just make sure you're prepared."

Before Gi could argue more with her, she stormed out of the room. For a moment, he regretted teaming up with someone so unstable, but then he looked back down at the robe in hands. Maybe it was worth it after all...

He slipped off his other robe and pulled on the Robe of Demon Steel. Despite it being just as light physically as his old robe, it had a weight to it. It felt like what he assumed Samba felt like when he put on his half plate. It was like being inside a fortress that would protect him from any danger.

Gi stepped out of the room and was almost bulled over by Galvina coming back in and she was dragging the half dressed Troll waiter by his crotch. She glared at Gi. "Get the fuck out."

He wasn't interested in seeing her fuck nor was he interested in talking to her more. She'd mentioned providing an opportunity in six months. If it was something reasonable, he'd take it. Otherwise, he'd need to be strong enough to take her down. That put him back on his plan to complete the stage and take out the Spiked Eagles.

Leaving the tavern, Gi made his way back down to the Encampment. The other members of the clan were already having lunch. From the smell, it was Tiria's kelp stew. He followed his nose until he came to an open space in front of the kelp forest.

Most of his clan sat around sipping their soup out of simple bowls of carved rock. Unlike their normally playful behavior, they were all quiet and looking solemnly towards the kelp forest. Gi followed their gazes and his [Twilight Eyes] made it easy to pick out the dark mounds beneath the base of the kelp trees. Each of them had a net laid across it to ensure the bodies didn't float up.

Tiria walked over to him and handed him a bowl before standing beside him and sipping on her own.

"The clan's quiet," Gi said.

She nodded. "Before you got here, Chum and the others decided to call this Ancestor Stew. With our dead being buried beneath the kelp, they thought it made sense so they are showing their appreciation for those they've lost."

"Mmm," Gi said in acknowledgement. The clan was mourning their losses while he was plotting out more ways for them to die. For a brief moment, he felt conflicted, but then his Heart hardened. They were his clan and he'd see them on the path to greatness no matter the cost.

"We need to start recruiting other monsters into our clan so we can increase our spawn rate. We'll need to find the optimal ratio for how many clan members to keep at each Encampment as well."

She seemed surprise by his sudden subject change, but she took it in stride. "Of course. I can manage that."

Before they could talk more, Wax and Wane bounded up then, not having been eating with the team. "Boss, Boss!" the two of them called in alternating rhythm.

"Is something wrong?" The twins weren't often excited. The closest they ever got was gushing over their cat which Gi didn't know where that creature had come from.

"No, everything is... excellent!" They shoved two slips of paper into his hands. "We've been working on mapping out the different Aether types over the last season. We just finished the final test for Light!"

Gi examined the papers in his hand. A series of circles with various lines connecting them. He looked for an interaction that he was familiar with and found Water pointing to both Light and Earth. The line between them showed that Water "diffused" Light. He understood the interaction with his old [Divine Bolt] in the lake, but what would it mean for Water to diffuse Earth?

"What do you mean by diffused here?"

"That's a great question!" Wax started before Wane cut in. "That's what got us curious once we started to see the wild Aether in the world." The two of them leaned over and started pointing at the sheet of paper before explaining in their alternating manner.

"We originally thought that it weakened them, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Water diffuses both Light and Earth, but only Earth actually gets weaker. Why is that? Because it spreads out the Aether of that element. So for your light attack, it didn't actually get weaker, it just made it less accurate."

Wax cut in. "And less concentrated."

"Which one could argue is weaker," Wane added.

"But for the Earth element that spreading out interrupts its structure actually making it weaker overall! Fascinating, right?"

The two of them looked at him with almost bright, doe-like eyes. Back when Gi was Richard, he'd seen developers like them before. A lot of devs just clocked in, did their work, and left. They were fine. Others breathed code and they'd read articles and do side projects in their spare time for years. Those people were irreplaceable and every time they got a new kick, they'd come yammer to him just like this.

"It is fascinating," Gi said, but it just gave him one question. "How does Light affect Earth? I don't see them connecting between the two sheets."

The two of them leaned close, checking between the two sheets before pulling out a notebook. "Test twenty-two and test forty three. Earth empowers Light and Light empowers Earth. They make each other stronger."

Gi scratched his head. "So if I used a Light attack against someone with an Earth attuned Constitution, what would that do? Make my attack stronger and their defense against my attack stronger?"

The two stared at each other almost as if they were communicating telepathically. "In our smaller test cases with wild Aether, yes, that is correct. However, we noticed during the Dungeon that Light also empowers Fire and when the two came in contact, it somewhat exploded. So it might do that."

Gi had fought off one of the Spiked Eagles once. His attack had seemed to do the amount of damage he expected, but was that because the jobbie's defense was just that much less than his attacks? He didn't have the clearest memory since he'd been hanging upside down at the time by his feet after using Poe's tongue as a rope, but maybe the twins could help?

He explained it as best he could to them and the two thought hard, swapping glances back and forth before responding. "It's possible that you were just stronger and that it didn't get empowered enough by your attack to prevent the damage that you wanted done. Another possibility is that it had a corrupted body."

"Like your own Constitutions," Gi said.

"Yes, less weaknesses but also less strengths."

"I need more information," Gi said and the twins nodded. As their conversation came to an end, Gi realized that both Tiria and several members of the clan had been watching their discussion, but the few clan members averted their eyes when he glanced at them. Gi held up the papers. "Can I keep this?"

The twins each gave the sign of the Mother. "Of course, Boss."

"We can make another copy from our notes."

Gi nodded then pointed back to Tiria. "Recruit more monsters."

She promised she would and then Gi headed off towards the Encampment Crystal. He hadn't used it since just before the attack and he was surprised to find it had a platform made out of red rock behind it. It took him a moment to realize that this was the beginnings of the statue to Danna.

Tiria must have prioritized it after the battle and this was all they'd gotten done today. He considered tearing it apart, but he let the emotion drain out of him. He didn't have space for that anymore. He was a Progenitor now.

Not Richard.