There weren’t that many tasks for Rieren to attend to. At least, none that left a great impression on her after the first few times.

Things like rebuilding fortifications, helping to till the land, attending a training session of the guards, and even accompanying the Clanmistress on a meeting with some important trading magnate in Falstrom were all interesting events by themselves. But the shine of interest ran dull once Rieren had experienced them once.

That was good. After all her little tasks were completed, she could turn her attention back to what really mattered.

Cultivating.

Rieren wasn’t under any obligation to constantly help the Shatterlands and its people with menial work. In fact, now that she had no real contract, she had absolutely no need to continue helping with whatever basic assignment the Clanmistress or anyone else set her. She could turn her attention to other matters whenever she wanted.

It was just this pesky feeling of obligation that wouldn’t let her go. Rieren almost felt as though she was responsible for the Shatterlands somehow. As though, having helped save the region from certain destruction, she was now responsible for its upkeep.

After all, it wouldn’t have existed in its current state had it not been for her influence.

Thankfully, Rieren was good at shoving stray thoughts to the corner of her mind when needed. A part of her wanted to ask for permission to spend some time cultivating, as though she needed to get formal approval to spend gathering Essence for her advancement. Madness.

Nevertheless, the smart thing would be to coordinate. Not to make sure the Shatterlands wouldn’t direly miss Rieren’s expertise in things like stonemasonry, of course. It was more because she could optimize her cultivation with the help the Archnoble clans could provide, something she had intended to use before. Something she had already done, in a sense.

“You summoned me for my trees, Clanmistress?” Gorint Malloh asked.

He had been pulled into the little meeting between Rieren and Avathene after the former had related that she intended to spend some time cultivating. Thankfully, the Clanmistress hadn’t opposed the idea. In fact, as Rieren had been counting on, she had gone on to propose that the clans ought to help her reach her goals as quickly and efficiently as possible.

“You have raised the underwater ones, yes?” Avathene asked. She was reclining in a plush chair in her city office, having requisitioned a little domicile in the centre of Falstrom to run things with a more hands-on approach. “The trees that allow everyone to gather Essence at a faster rate and boost cultivation.”

“Ah, I see. Yes, I have done so.”

“Excellent. Please guide Rieren to the nearest ones when she is ready.”

Rieren coughed a little.

“And yes,” the Clanmistress added. “Join her in cultivating when you can. I only assume you are lagging behind, but you cannot continue progressing with your skills unless you cultivate as well. We don’t want another Mercion situation.”

Gorint Malloh’s fingers squeezed on their own as though he was missing his little flask. “Of course, Clanmistress.”

He did not end up joining Rieren. When she was ready, packed with some more supplies she had taken from the Stannerig stores, Malloh deposited her at one of the aforementioned trees within the city.

Gorint Malloh had established the tree at the edge of Falstrom, in a secluded field that wouldn’t be found easily by others. It was good to grant those who wished to cultivate some privacy, though of course, they would be sharing each other’s company. Something Rieren wasn’t really looking forward to.

Nevertheless, she decided to try it out anyway. If it became too uncomfortable, she could always leave and find her own optimizing routes. It wouldn’t be ideal, but she did have a decent backup plan.

The tree had grown quite large in the few short weeks it had been up. Its glimmering green leaves spread out in a wide canopy, the bark of its branches so slivery, it almost looked like metal in Rieren’s eyes. If she got close enough, she was sure she’d be able to see her own reflection. What an odd construct.

“I will leave you here, for now,” Gorint Malloh said.

Rieren had settled down to begin unpacking and start cultivating, though she spared him a brief glance. He had brought her here, after all. “The Clanmistress was correct, you know.”

“I am aware. Unfortunately, I have little time.”

“Why? Because you cannot keep your secret masters waiting any longer?”

Gorint Malloh hesitated just long enough for Rieren to know she had hit her mark. “The Clanmistress is quite busy, just like I aspire to be. An entire region won’t reestablish itself.”

“Nor will communications with the imperial court, even after we have officially shut them down.”

This time, he did pause to look back at her. His face was a stone mask. There was nothing Rieren could draw from it.

“What are you insinuating?” he asked.

“It was you, Gorint Malloh. You were a part of the whole effort to rebuild the broken relationship with the imperial court. I am aware.”

Malloh needed a moment to come up with a reply. “How?”

Despite the strange quaver in Rieren’s heart, she still found herself grinning. “I admit, I did not know. You just proved my conjectures correct.”

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Gorint Malloh stared at her as though she had gone mad. Then he cursed and turned around, slowly beginning to walk away. He didn’t turn back.

“You cannot hold onto the same vile hope,” Rieren said to his departing back. “Put your foolishness behind you and join us, Malloh. We must take a stand.”

If Malloh heard, he didn’t grace it with a reply. Eventually, he left the area entirely, leaving Rieren alone with her cultivation and a few other cultivators here and there.

She didn’t truly mind that Malloh had been part of the Shatterlands’ effort at getting back into the Emperor’s good graces. It made too much sense. After all, Gorint Malloh had shown that he had a vested interest in making sure the Shatterlands survived the apocalyptic monsters. But there were other facts surrounding his circumstance that one had to take proper note of.

The fact that he had somehow managed to insert himself alongside the most powerful person in the entirety of the Shatterlands, becoming essentially their right-hand man. First with Merolk, the Ordorian Clanmaster who had been killed by the Dreadflood, and now with Avathene. Though, reports suggested he had been more powerful under the previous Clanmaster.

Then there was the fact that, despite being one of the undesirables the Avatars were hunting, not a one of them had gone after Gorint Malloh.

Rieren had first-hand experience of how far the Avatars would go to apprehend their targets. She also had evidence that the Avatars weren’t just present in the Shatterlands, they were also active. Rieren had encountered not one, but two different ones here, not counting the one Kalvia had eventually subdued and had paraded around in the meeting.

Of course, that was before. Something told her there had to be others. They’d proven that they were adept at hiding among the general populace. Further proof suggested that the Avatars had been allowed to insert themselves into the Shatterlands by those in charge of the region.

All these interwoven connections made it clear that Gorint Malloh had a hand in all this. Things were too coincidental to be anything else.

Rieren could feel the frown trying to work out onto her face. That was the thing, wasn’t it? For all that the Clanmistress and all those in the Shatterlands had seemingly thrown in their lot with Kalvia as the future Empress—which meant going against the imperial court and its Avatars—who could say how genuine that was.

Even if she were inclined to trust Avathene, and even Gorint Malloh to a good extent, the Shatterlands had many in positions of power who could betray them.

Who might already be betraying them, beneath their very noses.

Rieren decided to put those thoughts out of her head for the time being. She had come here to focus on her cultivation. To get further along the Exalted realm. She needed to concentrate.

It had been… wait no, had it been over a year since she’d come back? That couldn’t be right.

She was distracted trying to calculate how long it had just been since she had taken her first step in this life. Over a month at Lionshard Sect, less than a week inside the dungeon beneath Lionshard mountain, then about a month and a half to reach the Shatterlands.

And then time got blurry. She knew she’d had to spend a few months cultivating. Then there was all the time in between when she’d been involved with everything going on in this region of the Elderlands. Running around with Mercion and Silomene, defending the Shatterlands, handling all the intrigues running loose…

Rieren decided that had to have taken up about another month or so. So all told, she had spent almost three-quarters of a year to reach the Exalted realm.

Time was a strange thing to consider. Three-quarters of a year in which the world had changed so much. If she’d still been the mortal she’d been born as, it would all seem as though everything had happened so quickly. Three-quarters of a year was nothing, especially from the perspective of immortality-seeking cultivators.

But it was the fact that all this had been performed by cultivators that it had been so fast. With little need for chores like constant nutrition and rest and all such mortal foibles, they had much more time to spend on things that truly mattered.

While Rieren reflected on the passage of time, she had begun to prepare for her cultivation. She pulled out another Inverted Essence Smoker. This would allow her to concentrate lightning-Aspected Essence around her. Her recent advancement allowed her to add another Aspect to her Domain, and lightning was her main target for now.

Batcat woke up with a large yawn and a heavy purr.

“Good morning, kitten,” Rieren said. “You have awoken just in time to note my happiness at the lack of preparation I will need to perform.”

This was true. Getting through the Exalted realm was going to take even longer than it had taken her to get through the Enlightened realm. Where each stage had taken a month or more in the previous realm, Rieren would be lucky if she could cover it in a year in this one.

There were methods of speeding up the process, of course. Malloh’s tree was going to help. She could already feel the Essence swirling thick and fast in the air.

Besides that, Rieren also had little things she was about to purchase from the System Shop to aid her advancement. It was a good thing the battle with the Dreadflood and all the Abyssals she had killed had allowed her to gain a great deal of Credits. As the saviour of the Shatterlands, the Archnoble clans had been beholden enough to give her a lot of Credits too.

With those, Rieren bought some Essence-dried Leaves. These were crunchy “leaves” of concentrated Essence. Smithing was a secondary class much like Rieren’s Enchanter, a profession one could specialize in where one gained proficiency in constructing things with Essence.

Essence-dried Leaves were one such creation of Smiths. One of their famous ones, in fact. It was a handy little chewable that, so long as a cultivator kept in their mouth, they could absorb and handle several times as much Essence as normal.

This of course depended on the grade of the Essence-dried leaves one obtained. With the Credits Rieren had, she could afford the most premium versions available.

She bit down on the thick oval of glimmering light-purple material. Essence’s colour, as seen by regular mortal visible spectrum, would depend on the Aspect it came along with. As Rieren had picked lightning Aspect, her concentrated leaf of Essence was a shade that reminded her of the first signs of dusk.

It was a shame her newest sense, electroreception, wasn’t going to work as well here. With all the lightning-Aspected Essence she was drawing to this specific location, all her senses were acting up too much. It was too unreliable in this circumstance.

Hopefully, not for long. She would finish gathering enough lightning-Aspected Essence to properly suffuse her Domain with it, and then she could switch back to regular Essence.

Rieren had already started cultivating. She’d performed some of her older tricks too, like pricking her skin with the acupuncture needles and burning some specific incense, all to assist in increasing her Essence-gathering rate even more. There was sadly no visual indicator for how much she needed to gather exactly—a criticism of the system itself, for her—but it would take a while.

Batcat had scampered off some time ago. In fact, time itself was becoming difficult to keep track of. It felt as though as soon as Rieren closed her eyes to focus and collect more Essence, expanding her elixir field from out beyond her Domain’s confines, several hours flashed by when she opened them again.

At one point, she found the sun had climbed barely from the position she had seen it when she had first closed her eyes. And then the sudden thought settled in. An entire day had passed between closing and opening her eyes.

She was perhaps getting a little too lost in her cultivation attempts.

This was to be expected, unfortunately. The Essence-dried Leaves had the unfortunate effect of concentrating Essene around the user to such a degree that it started affecting the very physical laws of the universe in the vicinity. This included interfering with the passage of time.

While Rieren was cultivating and gathering the Essence she needed, Batcat had finally returned from its wanderings. She exited her little trance to greet the cat properly, only to find that it wasn’t alone.

It had brought some visitors she had never met before.