It takes Raika approximately fifteen hours to reach a level she considers baseline. For all that she still has a trump card up her sleeve with her Reactor, her resource pools are drained nearly dry. Nearly empty of Qi, no more flesh than a particularly tall humanoid, and a heavy cost to her inner world’s mass all leave her at a level she hasn’t experienced in months. She refuses to leave before she’s rested, and to her surprise, the quasi-centaur obliges. The Pale Thresher gets twitchy, but then seems to settle into an air of almost perfect quiet, like a statue.

Fucked up rabbit, that is.

In that time, Jin shows her some of his nearly-completed sculpts, and Many-Grasping mostly stops having a panic attack (or going into heat?) at the sight of the two insanely powerful divine beasts right outside their camp. Li Shu, once Raika was sure that they were safe from her new “allies”, told her of the things she saw, the two strangers that she’d managed to hide them from.

Raika’s not sure that Li Shu really gets how impressive that is. Even to her senses, the array she’s crafted around the cave entrance blends almost seamlessly, redirecting Qi away and into itself in almost perfect balance, and she can only barely tell that there was anyone else here. For the amount of power that Li Shu saw, their control must be incredible, even if Raika is better at sensing Qi and Intent than she is death-energy like from Wraiths.

She does not for a moment doubt Li Shu’s word. If Li Shu says that she saw something, then Raika absolutely trusts it to be the truth or a lead into the truth.

Fifteen hours is a long time. She spends most of them sleeping, and letting her Mind and Body recover, letting her Heart work. She burned through a lot. And then wasted even more by being in a half-dead state, abandoning most of her flesh blindly. Even with her abilities, she can’t just spawn a few tons of flesh at will.

Well… she can. But not without spending the much rarer resource inside her. The conversion rate of mass and energy from her inner world to her biology is… fine? Better than most of her conversion rates, anyways. But she has a limit to what she can store, and using too much not only restricts the space that the Heart can use, but also has a non-zero chance of disrupting something or causing damage from its loss. It’s an emergency technique, not something she should rely on consistently.

She isn’t recovered to her former levels by the time she wakes up. Far from it. That would probably take days at least. But with a good night of rest, the makeshift Qi circuits she’s set up have enough time to have generated just enough Qi to allow for a sub-mind.

From there, it gets easier. With two brains, the Mind helps the Body to shape more circuits, and the process gets exponential quickly. While she doesn’t have much Qi to infuse into said circuits, she has enough to start generating more over time, and some left over to increase her biomass again.

She’s drained, tired, weakened.

It feels great.

It’s a terrible time for it. There are major threats right here, and apparently other factions getting too close for comfort already, and people she has to protect… but fuck, if there isn’t something that feeds her about feeling tired again. She feels alive in an all new way.

She decided someone would die, and then expressed herself, without limit or reservation, fully and completely to that end. She let herself go free, threw her whole being into an endeavor, and won.

The fact that it was a member of the Feng clan? A little added sweetness, the initial spark that lit the flame, but her being doesn’t sing at the kill. She didn’t know the woman, didn’t even speak to her. She was a target, responsible for terrible things, and a part of the problem that needs removing, one that Raika does not regret acting on. Even the fact that Raika fought a Warrior realm master, a truly powerful member of an evolution beyond lesser cultivators, doesn’t feel half as important as how fully she pushed herself. The fact that she won… yeah, that part’s outright delicious, she admits. But it isn’t what makes her feel so refreshed right now.

She has grown. She is strong. She is more herself than she has ever been.

Onwards and upwards.

Raika tastes from their Intent the growing restlessness in her allies. Not enough time to grow so big that she can create her inner spaces again, but enough that she can grow her full body large enough to carry everyone. Not her strider form- too attention grabbing. She elects for a six-legged body, the musculature a mix of wolf and panther, with three very long tails for counterbalancing and a wide back.

They move out not long after.

Question. Location?

The Pale Thresher doesn’t reply, seeming to not even consider her worth looking at, but the centaur-beastblood smiles as they run.

“No need for that, if it will put your companions at ease. I understand that the deeper colors can be hard to interpret for weaker creatures.”

He gives a nod to Li Shu, Jin, and Many-Grasping on her back.

“We head for Singheart, one of the tribes of the Many and All. From there, we check on our territories, and show you the path to the Pack.”

Raika quirks an eyebrow, the expression strange on an inhuman skull. “That’s it?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

He shrugs, the movement equally strange as his lower body launches him from vine to tree and back again, all of them moving fast enough for the root-canyons and the blooming life within them to blur at their passing. “That’s it. You slew a base of Invaders, and did so quickly and without burning down a Tallwood. While I’m sure the Pack would love to have you, we have no reason to force you into service now that we have determined you are neither mindless beast nor trick of perception.”

Raika launches herself off another perch, the armored plate on her back staying almost gyroscopically still as her tails counterbalance and all six limbs launch her forward. “You’re willing to let a stranger who can kill a Warrior realm cultivator just leave, then?”

“If we didn’t, you would seek to bargain or slay us, and both have cost. Not all is of the Pack. Its members come and go, and only now, with the mightiest Supreme Beasts in many generations, does it grow so naturally. If you do choose to join, there are some rules, but no one will stop or save you if you decide to cause trouble for someone or wander off. If you wish it, you are free to conquer a territory for yourself, and so long as you do not disrupt the balance of the world around you, none would interfere that did not have interest there before.

“You are strong. It is the right of the strong to do as they will.”

Raika hears Li Shu think on that for a moment, and then frowns. “But… what if their will is to harm others? Or to take advantage and subvert things?”

“Such is their right. As it is the right of any who might seek to kill them for it. If both refuse to retreat, then there is battle, and the winner is proven stronger, and can do as they will.”

“But that just means that the strong can abuse or unbalance things as much as they want. What about people who are weaker? There are tribes, so doesn’t that imply that-”

“Some who are strong choose to protect. Some who are weak band together to become strong. Always, there is a flow of things. As the world changes, so do we change and respond to it in turn. And what is the alternative, little human? To create shackles on the strong? To shape things into permanence without strength?”

Raika can feel Li Shu preparing a response, her breath starting to get a bit heated, and cuts in before the conversation devolves.

“You mentioned that the weak band together. So community is also a strength?”

The centaur looks at her and snorts, as if she’s just said something idiotic. “Of course. Strength of tooth and claw is only one form. There is strength of symbiosis, of survival, of family. To be strong isn’t just to be violent- if it were, I would look a lot more like our traveling companion there.”

Raika does not need to form an eye to look at the Pale Thresher to sense the wave of Killing Intent it releases at being mentioned. It emanates from it, a desire and decision to kill so strong that some of the birds and beasts they pass fall unconscious in a sphere around it.

And then the Intent is gone, vanished like it never was. The beast returns to what seems to be its only state outside of that all-encompassing Killing Intent; total neutrality.

“To be strong is to be free, and to be free is to be strong. The only method of strength that cannot be borne is strength which leaves nothing behind that can grow.”

Again, a burst of Intent from the Thresher, louder this time. A large mammal-thing, crouched and bowed beneath heavy leaves at their passage, goes limp as its heart stops.

The centaur huffs. “Though I suppose even to this rule, there is debate.”

“So you’re both part of this Pack, then? An alliance?”

“Mmh. The strong aiding the strong. The strength of force, added to by the strength of cooperation. The advance of the Invaders has made such needs only more necessary, and there are none so blind amongst the Many and All that cannot adapt to the truth of things.”

Another pulse of killing intent.

“Amongst the Many and All… and others.”

The Intent fades.

Raika idly forms a fresh set of eyes, rolling in their sockets to focus in on the Pale Thresher. Idly, she wonders how she’d do in a fight with it.

It stops moving.

Everything around it becomes perfectly still, in a way that Raika doesn’t quite follow. Like Dao, but not quite, and molded by Intent, either way. A Truth? It stops, standing in midair on nothing at all, and turns to face her.

It does not look humanoid. It does not look like a beastkin of lupin and lepus. It looks like paper, wrapped over the shell of something that doesn’t quite fit, so that all the crinkles and angles make it look real.

Raika is partially recovered. Enough not to feel powerless, or entirely drained. She’s pretty sure she could put up a fight against the centaurian Divine Beast, and maybe a few of the others that went their own ways when she was escorted by these two out. She might even put up a better fight than last time against Dances-Between-Layers.

Raika prepares everything she has to build a shell around her allies, to launch them far, far away. If she uses the entirety of her inner world, she should generate enough Qi, spontaneous regeneration and True Flame to use the Dao of the Gun to get them far enough away. She’s not sure if she can create enough padding, or a proper shell, fast enough for that, though. All she can hope for is that they survive the landing.

There's no room for anything else.

She stares into a being she does not understand, with Truth that echoes louder than even the Killing Intent it transmitted earlier.

She doesn’t know what that Truth is, but she knows for a certainty that her friends have a better chance of surviving being shot out of a gun than being here one second longer.

And then the centaur steps in front of her.

He does not stand on thin air, instead making platforms of Qi with either masterful control or some sort of technique. He does not express even the slightest hint of Intent, or radiate any sort of power or technique. He just stands there, still.

Raika doesn’t move. She stays so perfectly still that her heart stops beating, that her blood stills in her veins, until only her Truth sustains her existence.

The Pale Thresher doesn’t say anything. It looks at them through eyes that exist only for decoration, through a body that exists only to hold it.

And then it turns, and pushes itself forward again, falling from its static place in the air to land on a vine and jump forward.

The centaur lets out a long, slow breath.

“While I admire your audacity, most people think twice before showing off the kind of Intent you had towards a thing like that.”

Raika shudders, her heartbeat resuming and her brains getting fresh oxygen at last. She feels her traveling companions shaking, Li Shu already turning to help Many-Grasping, who has fallen and started to twitch.

Only Jin seems mostly intact out of all of them- and he vomits, failing to react to that fact for a moment. Like he didn’t even notice at first, until it chokes his airway.

He spits, gasping, gagging.

“What… what was that?” he asks.

“That was the Pale Thresher.”

Raika stands there, perfectly still. She forms a bubble, a sort of cocoon, around the platform on her back, and forcefully reabsorbs her allies away from that thing. It’s uncomfortable, straining her body which doesn’t yet have the spatial distortion or biomass to do as she did on the dead sands.

She can’t help but grin wide, adrenaline burning through her in a delayed reaction to the threat of death.

Fun.

She is strong. She is stronger than ever before.

Now, to climb.