Half an hour passed before the Teryls finally released her. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the Teryls; they’d saved her life, but they’d also been the ones to put her into that state to begin with. She decided that she was neutral towards them- not that it mattered, since it wasn’t like she could actually hurt the Teryls.

Thankfully, they allowed her to leave peacefully. She began her trek towards Cavern 1 moving significantly slower than she had before due to all the damage she’d taken, and there was far too much downtime. She couldn’t allow herself to get lost in her misery again.

She’d already considered all of the information the System had exposed, meaning that she’d need to figure out something else to distract herself with.

“Any suggestions?” She asked the System; after all, it seemed to know her better than even she did.

Practice your control over your Ether; it is one of the only methods you have to become stronger without combat. The System told her.

The Ether lurking within her cells seemed more potent than before when she focused on it, but not fully recovered. There was still a tiny hint of dullness to the glow of the many particles.

For a few minutes, she became entranced in simply feeling the Ether in her body. She was pulled out of it when she accidentally bumped against the sides of the tunnel. A few seconds later, she peered back into the particles of Ether, but this time, she realized something.

‘How am I even seeing the particles?’ She wondered. They were inside of her body, after all. The moment she thought about it, she realized that she could see the insides of her entire body- it was just that she’d always been so entranced by the beauty of the Ether that she’d never noticed.

To begin with, she pulled her attention away from the Ether in her body and back to the material world. She couldn’t perceive the particles of Ether lurking within her blood cells, but the moment that she wanted to, it was all in her mind. She realized that she could not only feel and see within her body, but also smell, taste and hear when she pushed for it… and she also couldn’t help but notice that her perception of her internals was spotty. She couldn’t perceive several parts of her body, and she soon realized that the thing all of these parts had in common was a lack of Ether in the vicinity.

She tried to push away her perception of all but a single particle of Ether, but it was difficult to both try to perceive her Ether and not… in fact, it felt borderline impossible.

She tried futilely for minutes and minutes, before trying something else. Rather than try to perceive and not perceive her Ether simultaneously, she returned to the material world to refresh her perception of everything and then focused on only perceiving a single particle of Ether.

It worked after only a little bit of effort, and she finally unveiled how she was able to see her own insides. The particle of Ether seemed to create a small sphere of sense around it. She could feel, hear, see, smell and taste everything within a few cells of a particle, including the particle itself.

At first, she questioned the purpose of this strange sphere of senses, but quickly realized that it was so she could know where to direct the Ether to.

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Now that her focus wasn’t spread out across tens of thousands of minute particles, she also realized something else; that the Ether particles were, as their name might imply, ethereal. The particles were each the size of a blood cell, but they passed through her body on several occasions. It was weird; they were clearly affected by parts of her body, but not at all affected by others, and she couldn’t determine why or how.

Eventually, after many minutes of brainstorming, she asked the System.

“What determines the Ether particles’ ability to move through things?” She asked it.

The deciding factor is whether it is necessary to staying within your do- Before she could read further, the word was replaced …within your body. The Ether particles simply desire to remain with you, and so they do not pass through what is necessary to remain where they are.

She realized then that the particles of Ether were alive. They had wants and desires, and while they were not even remotely complex, it still meant that they could act independently. Ultimately, her Greater Path was reliant on the fickle desires of cell-sized particles.

They’d not betrayed her yet, and so she clacked her mandibles in disagreement with herself. She had no reason to regret her choices. The particles of Ether were not her mindless slaves; that was fine. It meant that she only had to gently guide them towards what she wanted them to do, leaving her more room to do other things.

‘…The problem with that is that I have plenty of mental capacity for simple combat. More direct control over the Ether would be nice.’ She thought to herself, and soon had an idea. Before she tried it, though, she wanted to have a better understanding of how the Ether particles obeyed her commands- ‘Requests,’ she corrected.

Focusing back in on the same particle of Ether she’d focused on earlier, she pushed a simple series of instructions onto the particle; she wanted it to move towards a random nearby muscle and reinforce it. She watched as the cell-sized particle abandoned the vein it had decided to plant itself in and slid through her body until it arrived at the muscle she’d chosen and pushed itself inside. It was similar to how it had simply phased through her body moments ago, but, for lack of a better word, was more forceful.

She watched the ethereal cell dim more and more as the seconds passed, feeling no noticeable gain in the muscle she’d chosen. The single particle of Ether was too small to do anything significant, apparently, and so she told it to stop wasting its power.

Slowly, it drifted towards an artery and then simply let itself be pushed down the stream, phasing through the occasional blood cell that moved through it.

A few seconds later, she decided to go through with her plan. Rather than push instructions onto it, she instead decided to ask it a question.

‘Will you-‘ She stopped. She’d been about to ask it if she could simply control it, but… that felt far too similar to what she’d done with her subordinates. Moreover, gaining the ability to forcefully control the Ether particle wouldn’t tangibly help her at all- it would only help soothe her paranoia.

She eventually decided to ask the System about how to use the Ether more efficiently. She understood it better now, but she’d made no progress on efficiency… mostly because she hadn’t practiced that yet, because she was afraid to waste the power of her Ether particles when she might need them later.

“System-” She began, but it cut her off almost instantly. I am busy. Unless it is urgent, I request that you leave me be.

‘…Fine.’

Since the System didn’t want to deal with her right now and she wasn’t willing to waste the power of the Ether, she opened her Evolutionary Status. It was identical to last time, but her eyes were drawn to something she’d previously ignored.

Beseech Lower Queen Andromeda for a name?

Beseech Lower Queen Burhun for a name?

Almost certainly, they would decline to name her once more, but it wasn’t like she had anything better to do with her time. She started with Lower Queen Andromeda, who seemed to like her more than Burhun, who’s Commendation she only had due to having assimilated it from another.

Unlike before, she wasn’t declined immediately, giving her a bit of hope. An entire minute passed, and only then did the response finally come.