I grinned as we finished stacking all the boring books on politics and law onto the table. My memory of their contents had been thoroughly tested. When I focused I could answer any question Torill asked me. It helped that we were alone, I could think so much more clearly when I didn't have too many distractions.

When Torill sat me down and brought out the Atlas a juvenile part of me considered making a run for it. I had to remind myself that it was very important to know the lay of the land. I had paged through it before, sure, but I hadn't studied it.

My ears perked up when she also picked up a bestiary from another bookcase. My tail squirmed against the side of my leg as I watched my petite mate carrying two books that were the size of small children like they were nothing. I still had to fight off the urge to offer to help her. I knew she didn't need it, and wouldn't appreciate it.

We spent very little time going over the nearby area. Instead she had me familiarize myself with the part of the kingdom that was situated in tier two and three mana zones. For every area she opened the bestiary to show me both the most common, and most dangerous monsters that I could meet.

I was very interested to see that the higher tier areas had creatures that seemed to be overtly magical in nature. Gryphons and drakes began to show up in the tier three zones, among other things. I stared at their entries with greed in my heart, I really wanted their forms.

There were a few interesting things in the tier two area as well, the cockatrice and a species of fox that had an innate ability to weave complex illusion. Those two, along with a few other creatures started to make me look forward to leaving Brightwood.

I considered how soon I'd be able to find these creatures that seemed to have jumped right out of a story book. A part of me hungered for all the interesting new forms that were out there.

"I'm pretty tough, but you are making it hard to breathe."

I loosened my grip on Torill. "Sorry."

I looked down at the woman who was taking so much time to make sure I was as prepared as possible to leave her. It suddenly grew a little hard to breathe.

"I think I need to go for a walk, I'll be back in time for dinner."

"Okay Angel, I'm sure all this studying can get tiresome. I'll see you when you get back."

I didn't go for a walk, that didn't seem to be enough. The minute I was out of the hall, I shifted and flew. I needed to be alone. I didn't want to be alone.

I landed in my grove, I didn't remember the flight. My eyes were wet, which was interesting, I didn't know sky terrors could cry.

At some point in my reading, I'd found out that normal people began to find it hard to exist in tier one areas once they reached level 250. When I asked about it, I was told that there were a few ways people managed to live down tier.

The easiest of which was wearing a suppression collar, they even made fancy ones that only drained you down to a certain level. Parents who wanted to give their children a safer childhood used these frequently. I wasn't surprised to find out that it was quite normal to send children away to lower tier zones to level after they had some training if they were given a combat class.

You could invest in a small fortune in mana crystals from your area and carry them with you. The crystals would lose their charge quickly, but if you only had to spend a week or two in the area it was doable for the rich.

The System also rarely gave out class skills that negated the sickness experienced when the energy in your body was denser than the energy around you. That was what Torill was expecting, the System knew her contract, and would almost certainly make sure she was able to complete it.

None of the options would work for me. I was already feeling like the mana I was eating lacked substance. I had a feeling that if I wanted to stay past 250 I would need higher tier mana crystals by the cartload. There was no way I could afford that, even if I went on paid hunts every day, I'd asked.

I knew I would have to leave eventually, I even made sure to keep reminding myself of it. But thinking about doing it soon, probably within the month. Very likely just after I fought the mana beast. It put a deadline on it.

It made it real in a way it hadn't been before.

I laid on the branch of one of my trees, feeling the hum of mana moving through it. It seemed to take after me. I could feel it breathe in the local mana, and breathe it back out stripped of its element. They would probably have made the environment very uncomfortable for me if they didn't also seem to call elemental mana to themselves and hold it there. It made the area more dense with the stuff than usual.

I was thrown out of my sulk when I realized how much of a fool I had been with the death cores. These trees would have eaten them just fine, they were living mana purifiers. Now that they'd had time to process the excessive amount of life mana I used when they came into being, I could feel all sorts of mana stored in their wooden bodies.

I thought about how you could theoretically plant them near a death zone to slowly erode it, they probably wouldn't even attract the attention of the undead. The way they stored their mana made them look like they were of the element that they ate.

I would have to tell Torill about them, I wouldn't have time to spread the word myself. These trees could be very useful. I'd learned that death mana wasn't the only kind that could cause problems when it gathered.

The purified mana would pick up new elements eventually. But I'd noticed that it tended to very quickly disperse, spreading out like an uncompressed gas when I released it into the air in any quantity. Elemental mana wanted to gather near things that resonated with it.

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It seemed that my trees and I resonated with everything. I wouldn't mind resonating a bit less with some mana types myself. Death was the worst, but fire wasn't the most pleasant thing to eat.

I realized that I was trying to distract myself from the reason I had gone off to be alone. That was probably fine. I looked towards home, and got depressed again thinking about how that word felt. I would have to get used to it. Torill said that in young worlds with variable mana density, moving as you leveled was the norm.

The only people who grew old in low tier zones were people who fought their classes. I thought about Hoyt, he was an older gentleman. I wondered why he was so low level. I probably wouldn't see him again. Maybe I could write him a letter, he helped me out, I should thank him.

I thought about the other people in the adventurers guild. They had all seemed to be unhappy with their classes for one reason or another. I wondered if they would experience a leveling boom now that some of their problems were fixed.

How would Brightwood cope if all the remaining Adventurers outleveled the area? At a level a day, which was possible if you pushed it, all of them would be gone in less than a year.

I sent a prayer asking, since I had no one else to ask.

Belua's presence flooded me, I felt her embrace. She didn't answer my question right away.

"Oh, my child, such sadness. I sometimes forget how young you are. You will still see her in my realm, and you will never be alone. Your companion will certainly wake before you have to move on. They have been going through rather extensive changes. I'm afraid that your leveling speed has complicated the process for the poor dear as they are still linked to you."

I had been wondering what was taking so long, it had been days since they went to sleep.

"I don't want you to worry, but a certain admin has been checking in regularly with the poor thing. Apparently they made some choices that have sparked some interest from the lazy bastard."

Not Randy then, I asked who, and she wouldn't tell me. The only other admin I knew even a little bit about was Hash.

"You should probably stop thinking about that one, child. Dealing with him can either be the best thing that ever happened to you, or a curse. I regret that I had the misfortune to contact him when I petitioned the System for aid with you."

I was happy how it worked out, though that was mostly because he brought in someone else to help. I had a feeling that if he had to handle me himself I would be in a much worse place. But knowing the right person for the job, and bringing them in spoke well of him in my mind. Even if he seemed to be a bit of an ass. I wondered if thinking too hard about him would draw his attention or something.

"Thinking about a god adds to their Legend. Thoughts that carry Concepts that conflict with their authorities feel like gnats. Some gods do their very best to limit the growth of heretics, because the stronger you become, the more Conceptual strength you hold."

Hash was a competent asshole, I doubted that was something he'd think of as heretical.

"You are likely correct, it's still best not to have too clear of a picture of him in your mind. Let us drop the subject. Neither one of us is in any position to do anything more than weather his attention if he points it at us."

I heard a laugh that was both quiet and booming in the back of my mind. There was no feeling of presence, just the sound of laughter. Followed by words that sounded like that were being spoken into my ear, "That girl's a riot, don't worry kid, I think you and your companion are interesting. I like interesting things. I wanna see what kind of god you make."

I froze. Belua had started talking about how Brightwood would likely be downgraded from a town to a village before too long, but I was drastically overestimating how quickly people like Alexander, Janus, and Martin were likely to level. Apparently Samuel was frozen, and banking levels until he found someone to take his place or the Brightwood chapter was disolved. Nefen would be in a similar position when he hit 250. Guildmasters were not permitted to leave without a viable replacement, and they had none.

It was like she had forgotten all about Hash.

"Yeah kid, I'm gonna have to go ahead and do one little thing to you, you understand. You're banned from talking about me to anyone but your companion. Well, you can talk all you want! No one who hasn't also had my personal attention can hear you. So… maybe that fragment of Randy? It seems pretty complete. Maybe I should wake it up so we can compare notes, one fragment to another."

I didn't know what to think about him leaving a fragment with me. I also wondered if he was going to be talking to me often. I also had a few questions for him about his System.

I heard a laugh. "No, kid we're not doing that. Too much audience interaction will ruin the show. I'll tell you what, if you have an issue with the System's fixes for all the errors you cause, you can pray to me real hard. I might tell you why I chose what I did, but only if I think it'll be entertaining."

He really was something. I felt like I should probably be glad that he didn't want to interfere with his entertainment too much.

"Damn straight. Now I won't make you forget about this, your soul's fucked up enough already. But I'd love it if you just pretended it didn't happen. Don't worry about your little buddy by the way, I'm building them a custom little System all their own. It's been a fun little project. If it works out the way I think it'll be ready to present for evaluation as an addition to the base System in a few centuries. Soul companions might help reduce the contractor dropout rate by as much as point one percent. The guys will eat that shit up, maybe they'll get off my ass about being lazy."

I lifted a lip. The words soul companion did not make it sound like Thorn had chosen to live their own life like I'd hoped they would have the freedom to do. It sounded a lot like they had bound themselves tighter. I wanted to know if it was even safe to be bound to someone with a soul as "fucked up" as mine.

"It's safe enough. And I'm done, I wanna watch you figure out the soul companion thing on your own. Now do you have any fucking idea how tiring it is for a fragment like me to empower your dumb ass with parallel thinking? Pay attention to the lady."

My full attention snapped to Belua, our conversation was winding down. I remembered the whole thing like I had been taking part in it without another voice in my head at the same time.

Mostly she reassured me that everything would be okay. She said the Concepts she was sending me towards might help me more than she anticipated, but wouldn't elaborate. I wasn't really pleased to be left in the dark, but she assured me that they were on the list that I had given her.

She also told me that she was waiting for my guild leaders to return before she sent me off because she wanted me to be able to tell them that Torill and I might be gone for over a week. She wished she could have the boys come with us as well, but it would be too dangerous. Apparently there was a debuff that the monster had that would be a problem if there were more people.

I asked plenty of questions, but she wouldn't answer anything about the target beyond that. She said that she would tell us when we were on our way. It did not fill me with confidence. I sighed and looked at what I could see of the sky through the branches of my tree, wishing the System had a built-in clock.

5:45 pm

I blinked, the numbers disappeared. The System apparently did indeed have a clock. I would have loved to know why it never popped up before.

"You have a clock? Strange, I have that disabled globally. I must have turned it on for you when I altered your settings. If you don't tell anyone, I'll leave it."

I had a feeling that someone overrode her settings. I shivered, my feathers stood on end, and I let out a hiss. So much for no audience participation. Belua, of course, didn't seem to notice my strange response.

I shook my head, there wasn't anything I could do about the Hash situation. Like Belua had said, all I could do was weather whatever his attention brought.

There was nothing quite like finding out that an unpredictable entity had taken an interest in you to knock you out of a sulk. I looked back on my little emotional breakdown and was disappointed with myself. I had plenty of experience with being alone and moving on from relationships in Angela's life. It shouldn't be such a big deal. I didn't understand why I was having a hard time.

There wasn't any point in dwelling on it. I wasn't sure when sunset would be, but I had a feeling Samuel and Nefen would be returning to the guild soon. So I thanked Belua for letting me keep the clock, and headed home.