Her nictitating eyes scanned the surroundings while her spiritual awareness expanded out without restraint. Immediately, the relative 10 kilometers filled her mind. She took in the information before focusing on the nearest structure of interest which just happened to be the Reviarra estate.
Nausea and pain struck her once again forcing her to vomit. “Damn spatial rifts…”, she commented to herself. Sampling water from a stream nearby, she recovered her senses and solidified what strength she managed to bring into the lower realm.
The remaining day was spent on her recovery. As the sun fell below the horizon, the calm eyes of the woman flickered open with a renewed luster. She stretched her limbs and started moving towards the estate she discovered earlier.
The fragmented spiritual awareness that reached her master was barely existing. By the time the message was delivered, it only contained spatial coordinates and a broken message asking for backup with a sporadic mention of ‘her’.
Although her master was realistic and knew the chances were slim, he still sent backup under the assumption they found the missus. The woman couldn’t help but sigh to herself after seeing the master start preparing for his own trip.
Unlike her, his strength was too grand to directly descend into the lower realm. Without sufficient preparation, the realm could collapse while trying to reject the superior power invading it. Obviously, such a move was off limits.
The usual method was to divide a portion of the soul into a puppet and descend with that puppet. Such things were difficult to construct and her master was rather unique, making the puppet more difficult. Even so, there was a sense of eagerness in the woman at the thought of being able to meet a weaker version of her master.
A slight blush crept across her face at the idea of a mini boss showing up in front of her. She chuckled to herself before continuing her trip. By the time her legs stopped walking, she was already at the entrance of the Reviarra estate.
Two Knights stood at the entrance of the estate with another 12 to 20 patrolling nearby. The two men noticed the woman early on. She simply stood out too much from the norm. They increased their vigilance, but took no further actions. They soon knew the woman’s destination as she stopped in front of them.
Their gaze remained vigilant after hearing the foreign language come from the woman. Each Knight glanced at the other, however no one seemed to understand the woman’s tongue. She spoke again using a different language from before.
Clearly, the men failed to understand her. She only frowned and continued to try other languages. She finally chanced upon a dead language that was understood by the knights. To her surprise, the men smiled for a moment after realizing they had a means to communicate.
Although she, too, was relieved about the fallen language boundary, she was also somewhat surprised it was a dead language that worked. With this interaction alone, she realized this plane was even more backwater than expected.
“I’m searching for a shrimp about yay height. He probably looks like a spoiled noble and has a sharp tongue. The kid should have black hair, green eyes and bronze skin. Have you seen him?” The woman asked without much hope.
Although she had spatial coordinates, there was no guarantee they led to where An was staying at. Contrary to her expectations, the two knights revealed faces of curiosity. The description was a dead ringer for their Lady’s playmate, however few things were known about the boy.
He was something of an enigma for the Knights. Despite being so young, he had enough strength to train with the Knights on a near daily basis. Although sharp tongued, everyone knew the kid protected the Lady with his life. As for this woman? She might be his family.
“That’s similar to Sir Long.”, said one Knight. The other followed up a moment later. “Is this Lady a relative of Sir Long?” The woman felt her eyes twitch at the courteous speech. Regardless, hearing the name Long was enough for her to be reassured. At least, she was in the correct location.
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“Well, we’re family in a way. Can you notify the kid I’m here? Just tell him Dorothy came to visit.”
Her request was rather straightforward and the Knights didn’t have a reason to reject her. Despite that, their expressions clearly showed some hesitation. “Lady Dorothy, Lady Reviarra and Sir Long have both left for the capital. This servant’s afraid they won't be back for another two to three days.”, replied one of the Knights.
Dorothy fell into thought after hearing their response. She just arrived in the plane and had almost zero knowledge of the world. Chasing the idiot to an unknown location was rather unproductive. Rather, it would make more sense for her to just wait for his return.
“How’s the safety of this territory? Has anything bad happened recently?”, she asked the two men. Although they found the question somewhat strange, the two men didn’t see the harm of answering. “Arcgate is doing pretty well.The Lady brought a lot of prosperity here, so this servant would be bold enough to claim it’s doing better than most areas.”
She could tell from the expressions on the guards that they weren’t lying. Since nothing dramatic was occurring, then there was no reason to rush. She soon changed her plans. “Would you allow me to wait here until the kid returns?”
“This… Lady Dorothy, that’s not something this servant can decide. Please wait, this servant will deliver the message to Duchess Reviarra.”, replied one of the Knights. He then gave a small gesture before running to pass the message along.
At about the same time, Sol and her group were in the middle of their return trip. An was in the middle of guiding Sol in her cultivation when a sudden chill struck him. He visibly shivered and glanced around as if searching for the predator gazing at him.
Sol watched his antics with an amused face. “What’s the matter? Don’t tell me we’re surrounded by a bunch of cougars hunting you?”, she snidely commented. Who told him to be so callous in training her? She felt like she was tearing rocks from a cliff whenever asking him questions.
Even so, her gaze sharpened somewhat after noticing his spiritual awareness explode out. She soon followed after him and scoured the immediate region around them, but failed to notice anything. Withdrawing her awareness, she could only keep a questioning gaze on the boy.
An soon pulled his awareness back as well, however it was clear his attention was still elsewhere. It took him a few minutes to recover before realizing the girl’s gaze. “I felt like a rabbit under the gaze of a viper for a moment. No worries, it was only a momentary sensation. I’m sure everything’s fine.”
Sol dropped the matter and returned to cultivating. An finally started teaching Sol the progression for Assemblers. After stepping into the initial success in body refining, an Assembler’s body was strong enough to start collecting and storing magic from the environment. Those with initial success in any major realm start in the gaseous stage.
The gaseous stage is called so because the magic contained within the body, and in turn, their soul, is rather thin and free flowing. There’s simply not enough of it to reach a higher state. This state typically lasts for the first 1 to 3 soul refinements.
After the soul is strengthened enough during those refinements, it becomes strong enough to hold extremely dense quantities of magic which congeals inside the soul. Once the density reaches this point, the Assembler has officially stepped into the Liquid stage. The liquid stage lasts for typically another 3 refinements.
Eventually, the Assembler’s soul will become strong enough to solidify the magic inside itself. Assemblers reaching this stage are said to be at the Solid stage and just as the other stages, it also tends to require about 3 refinements to ascend the state.
In order for Sol to ascend the Apprentice Assembler Realm, she would have to travel through all 9 stages. Upon the 10th refinement, it’s no longer a matter of just refining the soul to be stronger, but using the dense accumulation of magic to purify the soul.
The purification will reset her back to the gaseous stage, however the quality of magic her soul attracts would be a qualitative and quantitative change. By repeating this cycle, Assemblers slowly reinforce their soul’s quality and quantity.
Sol’s eyes flickered with a fervent desire. She already heard from An that an Assembler's lifespan increases every successful refinement. Her soul was already bulging and ready for its first refinement. She closed her eyes once and started cycling The Unchained Queen Beast.
She kept the cultivation method up in her mind and studied it while it worked its magic. She still had no idea what each component of the model was responsible for, however she noticed portions of it rusting. Or rather than rusting, it might be more accurate to say that it was infected.
Despite her best efforts, her memory of the method was always being altered slightly with each cycle. She had long since forgotten the initial method. As everything was proceeding normally, Sol never bothered to bring it up to An as he already said the method evolving was natural and normal.