Whatever Mira did, it angered the entire forest. That’s how it felt, anyway. Felio had been terrified since the third evolution beasts roared and hollered all around them, and Mira was nowhere to be found. Or rather, Mira, her protector, was locked in her bathhouse when they attacked.

Cassain and her troop prepared to defend them with their lives, fearing death, circling the campsite with the lurvine—yelling at Felio to go inside. Yet Felio couldn’t move. She was terrified, trembling, and cold—frozen.

Then he came.

“Don’t worry,” Aiden said as he approached. He rubbed his hands together and shimmied his shoulders. “Son of a bitch. I knew I should’ve brought a better coat.”

“Are you really clowning?” Cassian hissed.

“Relax,” he said. “The lurvine can handle this—and we’ve got Kline in reserve.”

“Yes, but there’s an army of them!” another guard snapped. “Even if you can handle them, you can’t defend us on all sides.”

“She’s right,” Asail said. “And you can’t fight freely if you’re protecting people.”

Aiden groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Let me ask you something—what am I?”

Cassain turned to him. “A beast tamer.”

“Yeah, a beast tamer.” Aiden turned to the lurvines. “And what are these?”

Aiden closed his eyes, and all the lurvines erupted with power that made the pressure from the beasts around them pale by comparison. He was augmenting their power with a spell, and the whole army of approaching beasts retreated a few steps.

It wasn’t just that. The lurvine’s power was also significantly cleaner than when the guards saw them fight the Cackling Kings, indicating that Aiden had also tuned and refined their cores.

“Like…” Aiden yawned. “Do you really think I came here to do nothing all day? Guh. Whatever. Ryn. Vindicate me.”

The second smallest lurvine erupted in flames and then blitzed into the dark forest. The enemy beasts hiding in the darkness were suddenly illuminated by the flames, and when Ryn reached them, flames shot out in a chain reaction—engulfing beasts. She then flew forward, grabbed a beast twice her size by its throat, and ripped it out.

“Thank God something happened,” Aiden said. “I’ve been feeling like a leech.”

Beasts charged on all sides, and Kael howled, sending all but Sina rushing into the forest in a star formation. Their bodies were engulfed by flames as they bit, scratched, and clawed. Through it all, Kline stood in front of the bathhouse—protecting his partner with absolute strength of will.

It was a massacre—seven peak third evolution beasts, each augmented and refined by a powerful beast tamer—killed over thirty third-evolution beasts in five minutes.

Felio had never seen such a one-sided fight—even from Mira.

Felio turned and saw Aiden wearing a serious expression. For all his bravado and theatrics, he was actually focused—ensuring they were safe. It felt like she had noticed him for the first time.

2.

Mira remained in the bathhouse long after the fight, but judging by the way that Kline entered and exited every hour without a changed expression, Felio knew she was fine. Despite that, Cassian wasn’t thrilled.

“There’s a lot of soul force coming from that bathtub,” Cassain said at breakfast.

“The elixir’s in there, and that’s mostly neara, I think,” Felio said.

“No, I can see that just fine—there’s something else, too,” Cassain said. “It’s like she’s bathing with powerful beasts in there.”

“I noticed that, too,” Asail said.

“God, it’s ‘soulmancy,’” Aiden bent two fingers in a quotation mark gesture. “Get over it.”

The atmosphere shifted for the gloomy, and he rolled his eyes.

“Seriously,” he said. “Her soul core gives her ridiculous power. This meat gives everyone who eats it ridiculous power. That neara… those elixirs. There’s so much power in what you call soulmancy that it’s absurd. And we’re in a forest full of souls. Did you really think she wouldn’t utilize it while living here?”

Cassain looked away bitterly.

“Look, the grieves are coming,” Aiden said. “And you knew that.” He looked at Felio. “Your parents knew that. Everyone knew that. And Mira’s kind enough to avoid saying a word about it. So just accept the truth and stop prying. The more you question it, the less soulastically secure your deniability becomes. So just… chill.”

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Asail swallowed. “That’s true, but… The grieves destroy planets.”

“Weak planets,” Aiden said boldly. “They destroy weak planets. This planet has a tenth evolution god just chillin’ on a floating island in the Fifth Domain, and there’s a dozen other ninth evs surrounding her. Dronami is the highest exporter of beauty products on this side of the multiverse, it’s a powerhouse in information gathering, and there’s all sorts of other sketchy shit that must be happening to keep this place going because gods just gravitate here for seemingly no reason at all. It’s weak for resources, it’s cramped, there’s no space, and you can’t conquer galaxies. They’re just chillin’ here. You get how strange that is, right?”

Felio stopped drinking her tea, confused by Aiden’s foray into multiversal politics. The others were equally surprised.

“I’m a Claustra,” Aiden said. “An accidental Claustra, but a Claustra nonetheless. And because of that, I’ve been made privy to this place’s inner workings. And I can tell you that the grieves are coming, and they’re gonna find out real quick that they can’t just bully us around. Besides…”

He looked to the bathhouse where Mira was. “Mira can take care of herself.”

“Do you know something we don’t?” Asail asked.

“What’s there to know?” he asked. “You watched her kill off a mercenary core like it was nothing, right? After this… and that other elixir… y'all are screwed. A few more years of this and even Hadrian’ll look like a kitten to her—and it’ll be at least a few years for them to get here—if not twenty. By that point?” Aiden laughed. “Oh God. It’s all Brexton talks about.”

Felio didn’t see Mira kill the mercenaries, so she didn’t know how strong she really was. But now she had a new appreciation for Mira’s strength.

Aiden leaned back. “So just… chill. Let ’er do her thing. Stay in your room if you feel like she’s doin’ anything sketchy, and enjoy the rodeo. Worst case scenario, you have to live here till the grieves are gone. And seriously. Compared to Theovale, this place’s a dream.”

3.

The Helix of Annihilation made the Reaina elixir feel like a root canal in comparison. It was smooth and gentle till the end. I lived through Brindle’s memories, learned his magic, and then disappeared into illusionary worlds where I could practice them. Or at least I thought I could. There was real mana in my veins, but whether it was real magic or just a dream that connected magic pathways was unclear. I just disappeared into that active dream, walking the path of a soulmancer, experiencing Brindle’s world and his memories.

I could now understand why he told me to take a full liter if Yakana helped me. He knew that he had given me the key to survival within Kira’s soul. If Yakana trusted me enough to show me this gift, it meant that he could trust me, too.

I accepted his gift with gratitude, and when it ran out, I felt a deep urge to leave the water and sleep.

The water was crisp and clear, hovering with souls that were no longer screaming. In fact, they no longer held a form. They had just dissipated into a thin layer of soul fog.

Good night, I thought as I ran my finger through the mist.

I sucked all the souls into my fingertips, and when the sphere formed in my hand—it burst into a million prisms under my mana sight like shattered glass—drifting into the wind as raw mana.

Wait… I thought in horror. Did I just… harmonize them?

My body shivered with anxiety when I realized what I had done.

I just… deleted a soul… it’s real.

Brindle’s power—I had assimilated it. Or at least a portion of it.

I touched my chest and pulled out a ball of soul force. It was Kira. I broke her apart into aura and neara and then pieced her back together with absolute confidence.

No way…

I suddenly felt weak, and when I noticed Kline—his glittering eyes perked up. He hopped through the barrier and then paused when he realized how much emotion he was showing. He turned his nose sharply and tried to walk away, but I scooped him into my arms, still wet, as he yowled and cried.

“Oh, calm down, you baby,” I said. I dried us both with Dessicate and then put him down. “Let’s…” I yawned weakly. “Go to bed.”

At least, that’s what I wanted to do. When I walked out, my eyes trembled when I saw Cassain and the guards butchering over thirty massive beasts in the blistering cold.

“What the fuck…?”

4.

Felio recounted what happened to me as Aiden shrugged and drank from his flask.

“Stop treating it so lightly,” I said to him.

“Why?” he asked. “That’s what you do.”

“Well, I’m different,” I declared.

“Spoken like a true adult.” He took another drink.

It was a good point, so I sat in awkward silence, waiting for someone to ask what happened. No one did, so I offered it up.

“I killed a lotta third evolution beasts,” I said. “They must’ve teamed up when I was down again to finish me off.”

“I trust you,” Cassain said unconvincingly. “And even if there was a reason, I don’t want to know. All that matters is that we’re safe—and your lurvine ensured that.”

Aiden lifted his flask to me, and I understood; they saw the witchcraft and didn’t want to discuss it. I was thankful.

“Okay…” I said. “Let’s build ourselves a skinning hut. We don’t want to keep in the cold.”

I needed to learn how to extract neara from soul meat, so the huge influx was a boon. So I went outside and found the largest tree away from the camp and dug a cave into the trunk to block the wind. Then the lurvines dragged the beasts in, and we sat around like Eskimos in the snowstorm, butchering meat until we had huge stacks lined up in the natural refrigerator outside.

During that period, I went to my soul cooking skill and looked up how to extract neara, and when I read the description, my eyes deadened.

Well, obviously, I thought, as if the description was fundamental to the point of stupidity. It wasn’t until I extracted all the aura from a two-hundred-pound block of third-evolution meat in one rope, threading it with absurd speed, that I realized something was very wrong.

What the hell…

I then looked around to make sure no one was watching and then effortlessly pulled out the nearan types responsible for memories and emotions and threw them into the wind as if they were completely inconsequential.

This is so cheating…

“Is everything fine?” Felio asked. I was cleansing the meat before cutting and I suddenly stopped.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just that this’s gotten remarkably easier since taking that elixir.”

Everyone turned to me.

“I think I should be able to work on the neara,” I said. “So I’ll be leaving some meat aside to practice.”

Cassain’s ears perked up with curiosity. “What are you doing?”

“I’m saving the neara,” I explained. “Usually, you unwrap the external aura and then blend the neara because there’s memories and emotions wrapped in it. But with this much control, I should be able to remove only the memories and emotions, leaving the neara that supercharges your brain. Imagine… like. How do I put this? Imagine that Reaina Elixir. It’ll be like taking one of those every time you eat.”

The cave fell still, leaving nothing but the howling wind. I grinned.

“Trust me,” I said. “By the time you leave here, you’ll feel like a god.”