Cold metal encased Ursel’s wrists. She did not mind the feeling itself, and might have found it comforting in other scenarios. However, the suppression of her cultivation abilities was not pleasant. It wasn’t that she felt she was in danger- the clan was around her and Tirto would also keep her safe. It was simply how they restricted her from doing what she wanted. Ursel didn’t have a clan she was going to run or anything important like that, her purpose simply being to do what she wanted. Something important, hopefully. And there wasn’t anything more important to her than saving Melanthina right now.

And the manacles were stopping her from doing that. Her spiritual energy would not listen to her, her muscles could not break them. Ursel only just barely remembered the path back to where they were- and further and she was afraid she would lose it. Even falling asleep where they had set up for a rest might have her lose that.

Ursel rubbed her wrists raw- an impressive result considering her skin was augmented by Diamond Defense- but she couldn’t get her wrists out. She almost wished she were younger again, so she would have been small enough.

If only she were stronger, she could have protected Melanthina. And herself, because she understood her siblings cared for her just as much. But she wasn’t. She was only a single step from the Soul Expansion Phase, but it was the most difficult one.

Unable to do anything externally, Ursel’s thoughts drifted inward. Deep inside, beyond where the manacles could affect her.

Her consciousness fell into the sea of spiritual totems, almost by accident. Bored, she idly wandered past various earth totems. Her browsing had no meaning to it. She’d ended up in the third layer, which had nothing that interested her anymore. She’d chosen one of them in the Spiritual Collection Phase, which was considered a good but not stellar option for someone of her ‘status’. Her second was from the fourth layer, somewhat stronger. They would not grow as easily as her father’s totems- all of which were nearing the power of the fifth layer now- but they would still develop somewhat as she moved from Phase to Phase.

The fifth layer. That was what she planned to pick her next totem from. There were so many choices. A grand mountain. An extensive forest. A body made of stone. The concepts of earthquakes and landslides themselves.

Ursel came back to her body, sweating. The exertion of staying on the fifth layer was still difficult, even if she only browsed familiar earth totems. All of them seemed good, but somehow… insufficient. She understood that growth came one step at a time, but she didn’t feel strong enough. Even on a simple training excursion, she had been insufficient.

She dove back into the sea, as deep as she could go. She pulled herself to any earth totem, looking for anything that might help her. A totem to cultivate a body as hard as diamonds but flexible? Too slow. A range of mountains? Useless if she couldn’t deal with her current problems. The great momentum of a rock falling from the edge of the sky? A meteor wouldn’t do her any good here, if she couldn’t build up anything. And without access to spiritual energy.

She was jerked back to her body, trembling. Diving back in immediately was more strenuous. She was supposed to get used to things a little bit at a time, and rest in between. And she did that.

Ursel took deep breaths to steady herself. She’d caught just a glimpse of something that promised to solve her current conundrum. She didn’t stop to think about whether it would be good for anything else. She wouldn’t regret anything even if it lost usefulness later regardless.

She dove back in, past the fourth layer… and past the fifth. She didn’t even consciously realize how deep she had gone. She found her way back to her prize, covering the infinite and yet nonexistent distance to her chosen totem in a single moment.

She reached out to the unassuming totem. It was a plant type. It wasn’t a forest or a massive world spanning tree. It was just some scraggly roots growing in a crack in a rock. Nothing that seemed as if it should fit with any of the others. But this was what she wanted right now.

Ursel reached out, pulling the totem into her. She expected to feel the roots, but what she felt was her being the boulder. Roots grew into her, slowly straining against her, then cracking her apart.

She coughed up a mouthful of blood. It seemed too much for her. Or maybe it was incompatible with her two stone totems- she hadn’t been to the Viridia Wildlands until after she reached Foundation Phase and chose her second totem.

Ursel lay her head on the stone of the tunnel. She had a pillow and bedroll, but she’d wiggled out of it. They were too comfortable and were going to lull her to sleep. And she couldn’t sleep now.

But could she do anything else? Ursel wriggled, straining her arms against the manacles. Why did Aydan have to do that? Yes, she was going to run off at the earliest opportunity if she didn’t have them, but it was still unfair! She could only gather the tiniest amount of spiritual energy, and adding that to her muscles couldn’t hope to break them.

And what was worse was her gut hurt. No, it was deeper than that. It was her dantian, only metaphysically in the same location. She hadn’t damaged it by attempting to bind a totem beyond her, had she?

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Of course she had. How stupid.

Her consciousness sunk into her dantian, where mighty boulders were cracked, the ground split. She could feel the damage throughout. But she also felt something else, deeper.

A scraggly, pathetic looking plant. A few leaves sticking out of a crack in the rocks below, with thin roots reaching for anything they could find to provide nutrients.

Ursel didn’t think, after that. Instead, she just channeled her internal power through that, trusting in her understanding of its properties. A tiny amount of spiritual energy slipped out of her, not even worth it for the manacles to bother negating. It pushed against the manacles around her wrists, damaging nothing but not fading away either. Ursel pushed, and her power snapped, causing no damage.

No, that wasn’t how it was supposed to be done. She had to be patient. Just not too patient.

She slowly dredged up more energy, pushing it back into position and straining against her restraints. It was difficult to hold her spiritual energy in such pressure, but she kept it up. Nothing seemed to be happening… then there was a slight pop.

The left manacle was open. With one arm free, her spiritual energy was slightly more free to flow, and Ursel reached over to the other. It took another few minutes of squishing her fingers in there and pushing against the manacle, but it too came apart.

She felt so free, her own energy once more listening to her. She looked around for her club- realizing she’d thrown it away in an attempt to get a chance to follow. Maybe not her best move. But she’d be heading that way to get it back anyway.

She carefully climbed to her feet, remembering everything Melanthina had tried to teach her about stealth. The best she remembered was to not make noise- she could manage that easily enough on stone- and to just not be where people were looking. Or sensing. The latter of which was quite difficult with some of the adults watching the edge of the camp.

But she was lucky. Asih Mulyani was probably the weakest of the leaders, not yet having stepped into the Consolidated Soul Phase. And she was in the direction Ursel wanted to go. What was more, she was air element. And earth overcame air. Though Ursel was pretty unclear how that would help her in a situation of stealth.

She managed to get to the tunnel she wanted to go down before the woman noticed anything. “... Ursel?”

Ursel turned and ran. Her feet thudded against the stone, propelling her forward. She felt a strange surge of energy as she ran, doing her best to outpace her pursuer. She vaguely managed it for a while, but while she might be decent at sprints Asih was certainly going to catch up to Ursel eventually, even with her hesitation to immediately give chase. So Ursel looked for somewhere to hide.

The best she could do was pick out a nice large stalagmite and slip behind it, doing her very best to blend in with the earth energy in the area. There were a few tense moments where Asih got closer and closer, and then she was three meters away. Ursel held her breath, unwilling to move even a muscle. Then Asih continued down the tunnel at a fast pace.

Ursel waited a moment and then stepped out from behind the stone right into Tirto. She stepped back, raising her fists. “I’m not going to let you stop me.”

“Ursel,” Tirto said. “This is foolish, you know that?”

“I know that. But I can’t just leave our sister like that! And even without my weapon I bet I can beat you one-on-one!” Ursel had to stop herself from actually shouting, or Asih might hear her and turn around.

Tirto also kept his voice to a loud whisper. “I know. I’m not going to try to stop you. I’ll go with you.”

“You?” Ursel asked. “Always-cautious Tirto?”

“She’s my sister too, you know,” Tirto said. “Now let’s hurry before someone else gives chase or Asih turns back.”

-----

Aydan was lucky. He found Ursel’s club only a few twists and turns away, down a few hundred meters of mostly vertical tunnel. When it had come to a particular place it had stuck into the wall and maintained its position, standing out from the surroundings by its higher earth energy as an enchanted piece of equipment.

That had taken only a short time… and now he had the more difficult and frankly more important task. He hadn’t gotten a clear sense of where Melanthina fell, and the tunnels split often. Sometimes they recombined, but Aydan could only return to the initial location and pick a route that seemed likely by half letting himself fall. He controlled his descent, which might throw things off but he couldn’t be certain of how Melanthina had reacted. He only knew that his path definitely carried himself deeper.

He did his best to reach out for traces of darkness energy. Unfortunately, without any actual combat those would be sparse at best. He thought he sensed tiny wisps of energy, but that could have been him fooling himself with what he wanted. He had no choice but to pick something though. Some path. He couldn’t just let his grand-niece be presumed dead- even if she hadn’t been the young lady of the Tenebach clan, he would not give up on family.

-----

How long had it been? The adults seemed to have a sense of time, but maybe they’d just been going with the flow. Melanthina… knew she wasn’t all that far from being an adult. And it probably didn’t matter how many days it had been. She was hungry, having eaten a half dozen ‘meals’ of stupid rations. She really should have carried more herself. She had a storage bag with plenty of room. Even if she had somehow overfilled it with treasures, tossing out some food would have been fine. But it was too late to change her choices now.

Her stomach grumbled. Raw dire bat was starting to sound like a pretty good deal. Certainly more appetizing than whatever squid was ahead of her, lurking in a pool. Melanthina would rather avoid it, but it was the only water she’d seen recently, her waterskin having been emptied a day ago. Or maybe it was just hours? She really should have had more things to store water. Just filling up her storage bag seemed… problematic, however.

In the end, even as she was chewing on it, she was still unclear if raw squid was edible. It was certainly difficult to consume, rubbery and squishy at the same time. She ultimately used her knife to slice it into pieces she could just swallow whole. Then she moved to take a nap. If after that her stomach didn’t protest too much and the remaining squid didn’t seem to have gone bad, she would force herself to eat more.