The air was getting chilly when I finished the Helix of Annihilation, and the dry and breezy mornings wrapped my body with goosebumps. I shivered and remembered how much I hated the cold. Last year, I didn’t think too much about it. I was so busy surviving and building and just living to care, but I had gotten spoiled with Felio and Aiden there. Not only did I have people around me but civilization was taking root.

Outside my home, Cassain and the other guards had successfully built the framework of a building, focusing on a small portion only. Unlike on Earth, the people here had enormous strength and could heave pillars by hand—though they didn’t need to with anti-gravity magic. Earth magic leveled the ground and formed stone tiles and flooring, magic lifted pillars, sword techniques cut trees into even planks. It all happened so fast.

“When you’re waging war, it’s easier to build cities to establish supply lines than it is to constantly ship between outposts,” Asail had explained one day after I toured the construction site. “So pretty much every soldier knows how to build. I’ve probably built… twenty cities.”

“Oh…” I replied in wonder. Then we continued chatting.

As we did, I learned that Viridia was vastly larger than Earth, with more people in the First Domain than Earth itself, so when people wanted to outflank their enemy, they just built strategic cities in poorly documented areas to commence their assault. And since aura and neara prevented the breakdown of a human body, soldiers lived a long time and battles moved slowly, methodically, and without a sense of urgency. That meant Cassain and the guards, who had been recruited to the family for their strength and prowess, had built full cities that swelled with populations larger than Fort Collins during wartime. Thus, between their experience and magic, they had laid the foundation of a building that would take a year in only a month, but with only two weeks left, they were now building furniture, temporary walls, and beds to serve us in the winter, as Felio planned to stay over quite often.

It all felt so civil and normal, so I had gotten lazy with my training and instincts and started complaining about the cold.

But now, as I felt it on my skin, I realized I had to finish what I was doing before I could take the elixir, as it could debilitate me for days or even weeks.

I should finish his house…

I had created everyone’s house but Aiden’s. He was living in a guest room, which worked, but I wanted to do something special for him, but I didn’t know what. Now, I had no choice.

So I set to work with a certain concept in mind, pulling out my wings and mana drill to practice as I worked. A week later, owing mostly to Kira’s endless prowess and the help of two of the guards, I finished his lodgings, completing the last thing I needed to do before I moved on.

I clapped my hands once and examined my work with a satisfied expression and smile, standing beside Kira, who had her hands on her hips.

“You wanna tell him?” I asked.

Kira grinned and merged with me, and we rapped on Aiden’s bearskin door. He called out to his pets, shuffling around, saying, “One minute! Don’t open the door!” as bunnies screeched their terrible dying screech birds fluttered around. Once he finished chastising his creatures, he opened the door and said, “Hurry in.”

Aiden’s demeanor was… interesting. His actions were purely practical, practiced, and professional as if he were a zoo keeper. But his charm was gone, and his appearance was odd. It was only once I saw him in regular clothing that I realized that he had been wearing fine-tailored outfits all this time, even in a forest, and now, he was slouching around in mortal wear, a weary look on his face.

Or maybe that wasn’t fair. It occurred to me then that he looked normal. The shift in his mood, tone, and personality was natural, not a deterioration like Kyro or a slothful demeanor like Reta. He wasn’t particularly happy or smiling, but he wasn’t sad like Malo. He was just… Aiden. The real Aiden.

“Sorry about my appearance,” he said with a tinge of self-consciousness. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.” He looked around for his flask, patting his pockets with growing despair.

“You don’t need that shit to speak to me,” I said.

“Oh, trust me,” he said. “I do.”

I scoffed. “Are you saying you need booze to suffer me?”

He froze and looked at me with horror in his eyes, and then he looked away. “Look. Come back in five minutes. I’ll be normal.”

“This is normal,” I said, forcing myself in and sitting down defiantly. Two cats and a dog smelled me, curious about Kline’s scent, then looked to the door. Kline must’ve sensed them through Mana or Soul Sense that he had been found and pushed himself in, not even disguising himself. He strutted up dominantly, reminding these slutty cats not to whore themselves on my shins, or there would be consequences. It was cute—and a bit concerning.

Layla, one of the female cats, had been eyeing him like a god, but now she looked afraid. Animals might dig men that scared them, but I didn’t like it, so I hissed out a “Play nice,” and his strutting tail drooped. He snorted at the dog and bunnies and cats and jumped into my lap.

Aiden, who had panicked only a moment before, had this… amused smile on his lips… and it was gentle and pure.

This was Aiden.

“Save the booze,” I said. “I came here to tell you that your place is ready.” I glanced up and saw a snake curled around a branch, watching Aiden’s cockatiel. The snake was likely under some type of contract not to kill the bird, but that didn’t stop it from wanting to do so, and the cockatiel was still wary. This wasn’t a place for pets—it was too small.

Aiden snapped out of his gentle demeanor and looked away. “This is so awkward,” he grumbled. “How am I supposed to get into character when I already fucked up.”

“I knew it,” I said. “You’re pretending.”

“No, I’m practicing. And you told me to do that.”

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I smiled guiltily.

“Besides, things are better this way.” He found his flask on his bed stand, and when he shook it, I could tell it was completely full.

He hasn’t drank it today… I opened my guide and saw it was almost five. That’s a relief.

He took a swig and turned to me with this charming smile. Yet the awkwardness of trying to change suddenly broke loose, and he smiled wryly.

“Can we just go?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “Come check it out.”

I led him to his new home, which was in the outer circle, away from the original homes I had built. It seemed intentionally out of the way, but when I opened the door, he saw why.

“No way…”

The house was a birdcage of sorts. It had a ceiling, but it was designed with metal hinges that rotated, so when I pulled a string, it opened up, exposing a vast open space with fifty-foot vaulted ceilings filled with thick perches like tree trunks. There was a pole that rose to the right where a snake could climb up to a set of branches and then bird perches on the other side.

There were also built-in dog and cat houses, wood cages for birds, and pens for the bunnies—

—and far more than necessary. That way, he could get more.

There was even a massive den that took up a fourth of the space for the lurvines, complete with a bed that he could sleep in.

“For cuddling while you sleep,” I said.

He laughed. “Are you joking right now?”

“Nope,” I said.

“You didn’t need to…” He swallowed back his words, afraid to look ungrateful.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “It’s quick work when your guardian can fly, and you only need to carve things. The only real work was handling the hinges, ventilation, and plumbing, and you can thank Cassain and the others for all of that.”

He walked around, sliding his hands on the countertops, examining the fridge that had cooling arrays in it, already stocked with meat and snacks. He checked out the bathroom with a comically large tub in proportion to the room, fit for bathing pets. There was even a water bath for the birds.

“Do you like it?” I asked.

His eyes glistened a bit, and he looked away. “You know…” He tried to say something quirky but fell flat and said: “First off… I love it. I…” He paused again. “It’s almost surreal… it’s like… you captured everything I could ever want…” He laughed again and looked away. “Jesus… It’s just…”

“Spit it out,” I said, laughing after.

“I just… It just seems ridiculous. You almost read my mind and… I know nothing about you.”

“I love plants,” I said. “And alchemy. Hikes. Kline…” I turned and found Kline rolling around my ankles. “Food.”

He smiled slightly. “Guess I did know all that… It’s just… there’s more. A lot more. Obviously… You can’t just claim to be a gardener at this point.”

I prepared to say something my mind was telling me to, but I held back and said. “Maybe one day.”

“One day what?” he asked.

I opened up the flap of the door, letting Kline out. “I’m going to be brain dead for a few days, so if you need me or want to say something or… pretty much anything… just don’t.”

I closed the door and visited Felio and Cassian in the new guard building, letting them know I was disappearing, then I walked to my meditation chamber and set out enormous amounts of food and a bowl with a self-filling water array, preparing for a long grind.

“Can you guys watch over me?” I asked.

Kline rolled his eyes but then saw Sina nodding “reluctantly,” and he glowered at her.

“I know you can handle it alone,” I said. “But if there’s a disturbance and you need to leave, she’ll protect me.”

Sina snorted and looked away, displeased that I was talking down to her. But when Kline looked to the door, I sent her a glance that said, Play along. You know how he is, and she perked up. Kline didn’t fail to notice. He pretended that he didn’t.

“Thanks, you two.” I left out the love you, but I kissed my finger and booped Kline’s nose, making him wrinkle his snout and paw at himself. Then he turned and lay down as I set up my portable ward and pulled out the Reaina Elixir that I got from Reasan.

I wonder if I should take this first… I wondered. According to Lithco, the elixir built up the physical brain so that the nearan channels could develop fully.

This is a vessel supplement, he had explained. Just as mana channels flow through your physical body, and they will be disrupted if your body is hurt, nearan channels move through your physical brain. By building the brain and body directly, you improve the environment your channels move through.

I studied the tiny vial carefully. It seems as relevant as it gets.

“Hey Lithco,” I said. “Should I take this before the Helix of Annihilation?”

“Oh hoh,” he said, melting through a wall as if it was a space portal. “I was wondering if you were going to continue treating the legacies’ gifts as trash.”

“Are there a lot of good things?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes. “If you think I’m going to save you the time it takes to look at them, you’re mistaken. My job is to build you up, not make you lazy.”

I smiled wryly. “Can you at least tell me if there’s anything applicable to this situation?”

He thought about it. “No. Nearan elixirs and their supplements are very rare because the beasts aren’t strong enough to justify it.”

“I see… once I do this, should I practice Mental Shielding?”

He gave me a damning expression. “Didn’t you just hear me chastise you?”

“Didn’t you sell me a diamond Mental Shielding skill?” I sassed.

He frowned.

I smirked.

He folded because it was his job to.

“Yes,” he said. “But only the first stage. That elixir is going to open up the floodgates on your brain and all your sensations will be heightened. If you overdo it, your concentration will shatter and you can hurt yourself.”

I nodded. “Then I’ll begin.”

I popped the cork on the vial and gulped down the contents and let me tell you—it was a terrible experience. Imagine someone cranked up the volume on absolutely everything, and not only were you getting blasted the loudest setting in your earphones, but you could also see the grooves on your wood wall and taste stray dust. I could also feel the ground so intimately that it was uncomfortable, and I wanted to shift around. It was just like the second stage of Mental Shielding training but natural, and for that reason, I forgot to activate the actual training. When I finally remembered, I was already on the rise with the drug, so when I used it, the effect was devastating.

I was blasted at all angles by sounds that were too loud for my normal senses, so it felt like someone put a pot over my head and started slamming it with a hammer, and my sensations and tastes exploded. My mind scrambled and waved and circled around, swimming and yanking out of the water.

It was terrible.

So I did what I usually did in those situations—I activated Mental Shielding, the skill rather than the practicing.

In an instant, I understood the true nature of the spell because I had heightened awareness of it. The spell made the sensations drift through my mind, passing by me and going into a distant void where they slowly disappeared. The best way to explain it was as if you screamed into a long cave; at first, it was loud and overbearing, but after a few echoes, it drifted into nothingness.

Or maybe not.

The spell normally just dampened the stimuli around me, but under the effects of the elixir, I realized that the dampening was just pushing it further into my mind. By contrast, under this heightened awareness, I realized that I could just take all those noises and sensations and…

Make them disappear.

It’s hard to understand just how different this is from a normal mortal experience. After practicing with each of my sensations individually and then combining them, practicing making them disappear altogether, my mind itself went into a distant void that those who practiced meditation dreamed of.

Nirvana.

Or perhaps—

—harmonization.

There was nothing in that void. It was complete, empty, and mind mind was empty as well, until I got a lingering thought that infected my mind like a virus.

Neara…

In that expanse, I tried to summon my nearan network, and it suddenly appeared before me as an illusion or hallucination, just like when I was connected to that strange fungus a week prior. I could suddenly see wisps of neara moving in complex networks, and I could move them—and when I moved them, strange and wonderful and sometimes terrible things started to happen.