Reading some more of his book, Van found out something else quite useful. “Let’s see… is this how you do it?” he closed his eyes and took on a meditative posture, soon it was like he was thousands of feet away looking down on his soul realm.

At first, he wondered what was so special about this, it was no different than when he normally just flew through the sky and looked down on everything. But after a while, he soon realized the key difference. Unlike when he had used his eyes, he could sense everything within a given radius, meaning nothing could hide from him, even if he wanted it to.

Using this new ability, he searched the temple for Ruby, and it was almost like he was right next to her. With a thought, he changed the direction of the viewing, then zoomed out to include everyone in the class she was taking.

At first, Ruby was a little too shy, or nervous, to join her classmates. After all, she had changed quite a bit since last time and so suddenly too. She was probably afraid of what kind of reaction she might receive. But the Anna teaching the class noticed she was hiding behind the door and called her, revealing to everyone the new blood sprite that was once a mosquito-kin.

Suffice to say, the class did not go far from there. Everyone was interested in the new yet familiar face that joined them. It became somewhat awkward when it was found out that it indeed was, the mosquito-kin they knew before, but different… questions were asked, and Van inwardly worried that he might have inadvertently stoked some fires of jealousy into the hearts of the other initiates.

Thankfully, Anna was able to calm the class down and get it back on track, much to his relief. He watched it for some longer, making sure nothing sudden happened, then moved on to other things, focusing his gaze around the temple complex, and then the town itself.

It was like he was a ghost or something like he was watching down like a god or player over an rts game of some sort. With a thought, he could open up display panels of everything and anything within his field of view. Gathering knowledge on the residents of his soul realm and finding out that some of his buildings were upgradable and more. He also came to the conclusion that this was not so much different than when he was on his throne, and that this technique was supposed to be used in tandem with it, or at least give him some access to the same feature, though on a smaller level since he still needed to go to his throne in order to properly do anything major to his soul realm.

After goofing around a bit and zooming in and out of things, he decided to go back to reading his book so as to have a deeper understanding of his soul realm and what else he could do. But as the hours passed away, he realized how late it was becoming and immediately left his room in a rush. He still had to talk to people and make those plans for the arrival of the advance party and for the proper evacuation of the forest and most of its residents.

Once outside he took to the air, and flew towards his castle, as he did, he used his newfound ability to peek on the happenings around his soul realm. Taking a peek towards Lyn’s domain, he was surprised to see how overcrowded it actually was. Normally when he passed through the area, he would head straight to her core and meet up with her. But that was through the housing district for the upper echelons of her hive, everywhere else was packed to the brim with fairies and insect-kin huddled in masses with thousands of workers doing their best to keep track of them all and feed them.

Looking away, he saw Venus back at one of the greenhouses, desperately trying to help plants grow and putting to work the many sprites and mandrakes under her command. Seeing her work so hard made him feel bad for calling for her when she was clearly so busy. Many of her followers looked very tired and exhausted, bags under their eyes as they tried to Convince a plant to grow and bear fruit.

“I’m going to have to figure out a way to help them… if I don’t… things could get really bad…” He then started looking around some more and noticed that some of his flowers had already begun to take root and sprout, his butterflies also started multiplying, taking the excess spiritual energy to form more of themselves. “Hmm… this gives me an idea…”

Once he was back in his throne room, he took his seat and opened up a few panels. “With all this spiritual energy, and the fact that I can create almost anything from it, perhaps I could make housing for all those refugees…” thinking about it some more, he then had a better idea. “Or… I could give Lyn some spiritual energy to use for herself, she probably would have a better idea of how to use it than I would.”

He then opened up a few more panels and saw that as the ruler of this soul realm he had control and absorbed all the spiritual energy that was produced. With a few clicks, he set it so that instead of taking all the spiritual energy produced, or at least so much of it he might as well be taking it all, he only took ninety percent, letting all his soul bonded keep ten percent production. As well as set it up for them to store up to a million units of spiritual energy before it gets shunted back to him.

Technically, by doing this, he greatly slowed down the growth of his soul realm, even a little amount of spiritual energy was a big deal… or it would have been if he wasn’t literally drowning in it… the amount of spiritual energy he earned was more than enough to cover the costs of upkeep and maintenance that his soul realm required. And by doing this, he individually made all his girls stronger in the long run and helped them take care of their own soul realm's growth, and found a new place to shunt all that excess energy.

“There… that should do it…” he thought rather proudly. “It should be some time before they reach the cap as well… now… to figure out how to help Venus…” thinking about it, he realized he was rather lax in gathering dirt from the outside, and considering how corrupt everything was right now, it may be difficult to get his hand on good soil.

Then he had an idea and began to form a new type of butterfly. He called over Ren to help as well and explained his idea, using what he learned from evolving Ruby from before.

“Hmm… that’s actually not a bad Idea… it would be costly, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. Just give me some time to work out the kinks.” The two then got to work on creating a special type of butterfly that carried with it a certain amount of power.

“Now… What exactly do you want to do with this butterfly?” Ren asked once they were nearing the end. “The idea of turning a spell matrix into an object isn’t an old one, but usually it is with attack spells. Like turning fireballs into fireflies and sending them to seek out your enemies. What are these supposed to do?”

“I was hoping to create butterflies that store a certain amount of energy and such. Then I would send them on their way to a few people, once they landed on the person in question, they would be absorbed and activate the rank-up spell. If the butterfly has enough energy for it, the person will rank up, if not, then at least they get a small powerup.” Van said, going further to explain his idea.

“Just figured it would be easier than just forming a line and having me work through a person one at a time. With this, I could simply give a command and send the butterflies out to do the task for me.” Van finished, sounding rather proud of the idea.

“I see, that’s not actually half bad. But it will be very costly, and I felt what you did, even if we are technically producing more spiritual energy than we know what to do with, that doesn’t mean we can just willy-nilly get rid of it all.” Ren said.

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“I know, but I want to be able to help Venus out somehow, and since we can’t really get more dirt, and growing real dirt will take too much time, I figured we can help her out by ranking some of her mandrakes up. Allowing them to become stronger and more useful, not to mention they all seem very tired, it could help them recover some of their energy.” Van said.

Ren thought about that, then nodded. “I suppose you do have a point. We do need their help if we want to be able to feed everyone. Even if being in a soul realm reduces one’s need to eat, it doesn't mean they can do entirely without sustenance. And since Venus and her kind are the bottlenecks in producing more foodstuff, empowering them would help us all…”

“...alright, just give me a few more minutes and I should be done.” Ren then started typing more quickly until he finished the coding for Van’s new type of butterfly. “Aaaaannnnd… done!” as he clicked enter and completed the last coding of the spell matrix.

“Thanks, Ren, appreciate it.” Van said.

“No problem, call me again if you need any more help,” Ren replied, leaving to go back to his job of helping administer the soul realm.

Van then started popping out a bunch more of the new types of butterflies, and with a thought, sent word to Venus that he was sending a small surprise her way. And that if she sees a bunch of butterflies, to let them in and touch her mandrakes.

Confused, Venus acknowledged Van’s orders. And an hour later, Van heard back from her, speaking excitedly about how most of her mandrakes ranked up from lesser to mid and from mid to greater and how this would really help them.

Van was happy that she was happy and asked her to from now on to take proper breaks and to make sure her mandrakes and other alraunes did so as well. With Venus promising, they will and continuing to thank him. After saying a while, he was able to close the connection and started his preparation to leave his soul realm.

But not before connecting with Lyn and his other bonded about what other plans they could make to help with the evacuation of the forest. Sharing what else he learned and so much more, including the fact that his parents were planning to burn the whole forest down, something he felt like he should have told them before when he first entered his soul realm but was too busy with a bunch of other things that distracted him.

Once he was in a group chat with everyone, he started asking important questions and seeing if there were other ways outside the forest. After a few talks, they conclude that they should just give a blanketed evacuation order to the whole forest and have everyone flee towards the edges of the forest and meet up at Van’s home.

“Are you sure your parents wouldn’t mind? Though I suppose it is the least they could do if they are going to burn down our homes…” Xenith said, after getting over the fact that the place she called home for most of her life was going to be burned down. Doing her best to not be mad and failing a little.

“And what are their plans for after they burn down our forest and take in all the refugees you can’t?” Amie asked, also sounding uncharacteristically peeved about the whole ordeal.

“Guys, it’s not Van’s fault they are burning down the forest! If anything it’s Saline's!” Lyn said, trying to come to Van’s rescue, though also greatly saddened about the fact that the forest was going to be set afire.

Amie sighed. “Don’t worry Lyn, we know that. If anything, we probably would have had to do it ourselves if they didn’t… I just don’t like the idea of having the decision taken away from us… those who lived here and called this place home… sorry…”

“Sorry Van… didn’t mean to make it sound like we were mad with you…” Xenith said, apologetically.

“It’s fine, I understand…” Van said, sharing in the sadness of feeling like losing something precious. He then explained about the advance party that was coming and the time frame they had to work with.

“Hmm… we’ll have to speed a few things up…” Lyn said thoughtfully, “but It should be doable considering we have been able to clear up a few more pathways out of the forest and towards the safe fairy gates that can be used.”

“Speaking of which… Does anyone else find it weird that the red knives activity has died down so much?” Xenith asked, looking worried. “Isn’t it odd that we haven’t been attacked by corrupted tendrils or bugs for the past few days now? I’ve even heard reports that some parts of the forest that have been normally blocked off by corruption, all of a sudden clear up overnight. That’s not normal… is it?”

“Hmm…” Amie said thoughtfully. “It could be because of the nutrients they require, that once they run, out they wither and die…?” sounding more like a question than an answer. “Perhaps something else is also fighting against the corruption of the red knives? Either way, we should use this opportunity to evacuate as many people as possible… and perhaps have a few more scouts keep an eye on red knife movement…” now also becoming a little paranoid.

Van was beginning to have a bad feeling about this, but couldn’t put his finger on why. True, the spread of corruption hasn’t been that bad lately, but that doesn’t mean it had to be because of something bad… right?

He sighed, “let's do that, keep an eye on the red knives and use this opportunity to evacuate as many people as possible.” Then after talking about a few more things, he decided to end things then and there. “Let’s end things here, we all have things to do, let’s get to them.” ending the call with them and taking the opportunity to just sit back and relax after saying his goodbyes.

“Ugh… this is so stressful… doesn’t help that I didn’t give my physical body the rest it needs, but now it seems I’ll be overworked again today.” which wasn’t entirely true since yesterday was a fairly slow day, not to mention it wasn’t that big of a deal for his real body to go a day without sleeping. After all, he is technically in a meditative state right now.

“Things are going to get busy from now on… maybe… maybe I should…” he shook his head, but then the idea came back to him. Lately, it’s been getting harder and harder to control his urges, and he has come to find out that he actually really enjoyed sex. Which was on his mind right now…

“It has been a while since I last did Isa… she’s probably feeling very lonely right now… maybe Gwen as well… Elena? Venus deserves a reward for all the hard work she’s been doing, she could use a break. Maybe even Ruby… it’s kinda a ritual now that I do all those I blood bind to myself after all…” Leaning back on his chair as he allowed all the thoughts of what he would do to them playing out in his mind. “Hmm…”

He was then violently shaken. At first, he thought it was just himself, trying to shake off all the perverted thoughts going through his head. But then another feeling of being shaken ran through his body, making him a little dizzy. “What the hell is going on! Wait… is someone shaking my body IRL? Don’t they know that’s dangerous!? What could it be that would cause them to do such a thing?”

Van closed his eyes and began to exit his soul realm to awake in the real world where a very worried Luna was looking at him. Her eyes were filled with worry and seemed desperate to wake him up. Once he did, he admonished her for simply not talking to him through his link, despite feeling some of her urgency.

“No time! You have to look outside! Quick!” Luna exclaimed, trying to pull him up now in a panic.

Van’s heart began to race, it wasn’t like Luna to be so openly fearful, and he wondered what had gotten her into such a tizzy. He allowed himself to be dragged outside the cabin and into the open ground, where he was turned around, pointed towards the thing that had gotten her all worked up.

Van’s face paled, it was a scene straight out of a nightmare. A large mound of moving flesh and corrupted tendrils were forming… something near the center of the forest. It was growing at a visible rate.

“Oh, My Gods… what in the several Hells is that!” Van exclaimed. “No wonder we have been seeing fewer sightings of corruption, they were all converging to make… whatever this thing was!” He immediately opened up a connection with all the girls he bonded with and began warning them of everything he was seeing for himself and to tell everyone they could. Not of course the civilians, but everyone of importance that hasn’t been bonded with him. To try and get the word out and hopefully together come with some sort of solution.

“Van… what do we do…” Luna asked worriedly.

“... there's nothing we can do… not about that… it’s growing too fast and is too big… we'll have to flee the forest as planned, and hope that our parents know what to do…” He said, not able to turn his gaze from the scene in front of him. “Did it mutate out of control after devouring all those mana orbs left over after all the villages and towns it swallowed up? How in the world did it come to this? I hope to the god's something can be done about this… I don’t even want to know what would happen if we couldn’t…”

Ethier way, Van could only stop and stare at the hideous mass of corruption growing in front of him, giving orders left and right, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and hoping that this wasn’t as bad as it seemed… though it seemed very… very bad…