Wraithwood Botanist

It's not an easy thing, poisoning a fourth evolution beast. In fact, it's not easy poisoning a third evolution beast or a second evolution beast because beasts have great noses—especially the supernatural beasts from Areswood Forest.

To poison a beast, you either have to stab them with the poison, soak them in it, ideally with a hurricane arrow, or mask the poison so well that even their "superhuman" (but for beasts) senses—like smell—is completely worthless. And the stronger the poison is, the more difficult this becomes.

And sometimes, even after mixing your poison with soap and squeezing it into golf ball-sized barbs to hide the smell, you're not convinced that'll work, so you do what's best instead—

Confuse the beast and try to feed it simultaneously.

How does this work?

Well, it starts with the prey—third evolution beasts.

It was confusing that I wasn't ready to fight a fourth evolution beast when I could fly around and turn third evolution beasts into mouse traps, but there we were, Kline in my arms, flying through the very top of the Fourth Ring, following Wood Wide Web, finding these beasts—a process that was quite difficult after I had culled most of the northwest population.

And for what?

Was I going to just chop up their limbs, cleanse their meat, and then throw it as an offering for a fourth evolution beast? Of course not.

That would scream trap—not confusion.

So, instead, we just wrangled them up.

I dropped Kline from the sky. He multiplied, and beat up the first asshole we saw. And when they were broken and bruised, I carefully stuck twenty of these barbs into its fur and left it with Kline.

I returned twenty minutes later, put a barb into the fur of a small second evolution creature I found, and then smashed it.

Death—instantly.

Suddenly, this intelligent creature understood that if it moved too fast, it would die. And it communicated the tale to the other beasts that joined it.

I became a cowboy and Kline the herding cat. Two days later, I managed to herd five third evolution beasts, all well-fed on soul meat and terrified to move too much because of the barbs in their fur.

Once they had all gathered, we made them move along the Diktyo like prisoners—en route to the Fifth Ring.

The closer we got, the more they slowed down and looked at Kline and the others.

It was clear that they recognized that death was coming, and they wanted to know whether Kline, the poison, or being eaten was the worse death. And when we turned a bend along the river and entered Harrowed Pass, the soul pressure shifted so dramatically that I could barely breathe. The beasts bucked in distress, and I looked around with bated breath.

The area we had been walking through previously was called Typhan's Gorge, which is a narrow passage that comes after you pass the Keliam River (where the crypt was) and continue past the mountain that's right above our area.

It was a gorgeous canyon with lush green plants growing up the towering walls cut between two mountains, but when we reached Harrowed Pass—

It was obvious.

It wasn't just obvious—it was mythical.

You take certain things for granted—like how ravines and gorges and canyons are all creations of water erosion. Some have foliage like ditches; others are curved walls of stone, always moving and twisting and curving slightly like rock does—

But not Harrowed Pass.

Harrowed Pass was a tunnel of obsidian that stretched for twenty miles. It was punched out of a mountain, so you could actually see where the mountain had curved up top before most of it had fallen to the ground due to erosion. Everything else was igneous rock where Yakana's arrow had melted through the mountain, turning everything to white-hot molten stone before cooling into charred rock and obsidian glass.

And it was not welcoming whatsoever.

There was crazed plant life within this monstrosity, and it was surrounded by crushing soul pressure that was utterly unnatural. It was like walking from a dry desert into a sauna and knowing that behind any one of the massive boulders that had fallen from the top of the mountain—now surrounded by strange, evolutionarily warped plant life—there could be beasts the size of houses that could run faster than a bullet train.

This was not what I imagined when I came to do this.

I was expecting mountains and hills and preparations—not half a mile of solid, unperturbed land before the first major rock to act as cover. Once I entered that tunnel—I was fresh meat.

Luckily, I wasn't going into that tunnel—the other creatures were.

"Alright, in you go," I said.

The beasts broke free and decided to rush Kline at the same time with an "I'll take you with me!" approach, but Kline teleported us far away, right before a piercing roar of toroks echoed in the forest behind us and made the beasts fall still.

These were my illusions, standing between the Fourth Ring and the Fifth, preventing my prey from turning and fleeing.

They weren't real, but they certainly sounded real. The sound grew deeper and deeper as the toroks approached, running on hands and legs, towering eighty feet tall with calcified masks. They turned the corner, saw these third evolution beasts—and roared.

These creatures suddenly didn't know that I was there, or Kline was there, or about the beasts in Harrowed Pass—they had been challenged by not one Torok but five.

They turned and ran right into Harrowed Pass as I watched, forming a poisoned hurricane arrow, just in case, flying and flapping in the sky with Kira's wings as I watched the chaos my illusions were creating.

These beasts ran and stumbled, and when one of them turned to fight the torok, I made its body invisible and showed the others the image of the torok ripping it in half and swallowing its blood. Absolutely gruesome work.

Something I had dreamed of and practiced.

These beasts ran faster and faster and faster until a confused fourth evolution creature walked out from behind a large boulder.

It was not as large as a torok.

In fact, it wasn't even half the size of a torok. It was probably twice the size of a rhino with large jaws like an alligator, despite having the general body of a Triceratops. And when it saw the stampeding crowd—it took a piss on my plan.

It didn't eat them. It didn't scratch them. It didn't even get near them. It just opened its mouth, and it released a blast of wind so savage that it ripped all five of the beasts to meat paste as the poison and blood flew right back at me.@@novelbin@@

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I instantly activated my personal ward—and let my battle instincts take over.

I suddenly remembered Brindle battling with soul guardians that he had made, summoning them, fighting somewhere between a Pokemon trainer and a necromancer. My mind became attuned to that, and I yelled, "Kira!"

Kira launched out of my chest, wings and all, allowing Kline and me to plummet thirty feet to the ground. To any sane human, watching me intentionally fall and release my hurricane arrow in a random direction to avoid landing on it would've seemed like the worst-case scenario—but it was inspired.

That blood wind carried terrifying amounts of poison, and Kira flew right into it. She let her body explode into a spider web to catch as much as possible before snapping back into human form as she flew through the pass.

The creature—who likely didn't even smell the poison when it obliterated the intruders—met her head-on.

The two collided before I even hit the ground.

My mind took a snapshot of it in Moxle Dilation.

Kira thrust out a sword a hundred meters away—and the beast ate her.

Just that fast.

Even in Moxle Dilation, I merely saw an after-blur as it snapped its massive jaws down.

I felt deep terror when I hit the ground. I probably would've twisted my ankle with the ground being so rough, but Kline teleported to the ground and jumped up to catch me. And then he teleported again, just in time to prevent this thing from eating us.

It moved a quarter-mile in five seconds, and Kline barely made it through a portal before it closed in. He immediately jumped into another portal, hoping to reenter the Fourth Ring, but the creature blocked off the path to the ring—even though we were so close.

Kline split his body into six and had all six fly into portals—but it was futile.

It teleported before Kline's next portal and slammed its paw into my little warrior, sending us both flying.

Or, at least partially. The attack should have killed us, but an invisible wall shot up just in time to absorb half the impact.

Not that I felt it mattered. I hit the ground so hard that rocks shattered on contact, and the impact took my breath away.

And this creature… it knew. It knew that I had poisoned it—not once but twice.

I lifted my head and my vision unblurred and I couldn't help but chuckle at its grimacing expression.

"You… like that?" I asked wearily. "You're slowing… because of some pretty terrible poison. But you know what's worse than poison?"

I created a fist under its gaze and flipped it the bird.

It roared—and then Kira reformed within the creature's stomach, shredding it with the gnarliest paper shredder of blades that my imagination could create as the poison kicked in. It hit the ground as I stood, wheezing and bucking, and then realized that its legs weren't working.

"I'll admit," I said, as I pulled out a container and filled it with Diktyo Water inside the pass—it was stronger. A lot stronger. Its medicinal properties would heal much more than second evolution poisons. The beast saw freshwater, and it tried to take it from me—but it tried to stand and failed.

"Don't worry," I said. "You'll be in it, soon."

Its eyes filled with panic as I put the container down.

"You know… that was a lot worse than I thought it would be. And I really mean a lot. If I had gone after you… whew. I'd be meat splatter right now. And if that poison wasn't the gnarliest shit I had ever even looked at… I'd be toast before I reached the ring's divide. But… life's just not fair, is it? Sometimes, you're born in a forest with plenty of food. Other times, you're born in a desert. And sometimes, you live your whole life dominating the forest, survive the toroks, claw your way up, and then take up shop in the attack site of someone with true power, and that man's cowardly friend's successor comes in to poison you and shred your insides with a lot of memories and tools and allies she barely earned."

Kira ripped out of its stomach and dissolved into pure soul force, allowing all the poison and blood on her to splash onto the ground as she sucked back into my body.

Then I used her to make an executioner's axe.

"But don't worry," I said. "You're about to feel so much bliss, you'll wonder why you tried so hard to live."

Its eyes widened in fear, and then I plunged the axe down, crushing its skull.

I flicked my hand and captured its core in one motion. I had Brindle's memories and partial experience now and could feel his power in my soul, but it still didn't mean I could handle it. My soul core churned out of control, and I gripped my chest.

"I need… to strengthen… my core." I said, transferring the soul into the water and shutting the container. "Don't you think…" I looked up. "Kyro?"

Kline was glowering at the little fairy as he sat on a tree branch.

Kyro took a swig from his flask and pointed at Kline. "Can you explain why he's growling at me? I just saved your life."

"He thinks you could've done more," I said. "He doesn't realize how weak you are."

"Hey!" Kyro said. "True as that may be, you don't have to put it so harshly."

I took deep breaths to calm my beating heart and said, "Kline, we gotta leave this ring."

Kline gave Kyro the stink eye and then pranced twenty steps into the Fourth Ring, then continued giving him the stink eye.

"Stop looking at me like that," Kyro said. "I know this is hard for you to believe, but I'm a demigod. I'm from the Seventh Ring. If I enter the Fifth Ring, I'll get minor magic back. Yay, we'll all still die." He took a drink and fluttered down from the branch as I mounted Kline.

"I know," I said. "I actually get it now."

"Yeah… about that," Kyro said. "Can you explain how you can move from struggling with Third Evolution soul gathering, to suddenly performing a flawless harmonization on a fourth evolution beast in… a few weeks?"

"Can you explain how the Drokai avoid detection so well?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"Then don't… whatever. Brindle gave me his memories. Well, up to the end of the war. He found you past The Crown, so I didn't see you."

Kyro's eyes widened to the size of saucers… or dimes or whatever. Tiny little shit.

"You're not joking," he said.

"Nope," I said. "My core is disturbingly malnourished, but after I visit Lake Nyralith and evolve my cores, I should be able to perform soulmancy. Or at least, a portion of it."

"Just like that?" he asked.

"Just like that…" I said. "Guess Brindle and Yakana are all in on me being a guardian. I can even navigate the Bramble."

Kyro gulped.

"Don't worry," I said. "I think something in Brindle's mind also fucked me up a bit. 'Cause I've been gardening the forest a bit and my viewpoints on…" I lifted my bucket and looked at the beast's corpse. "Are a bit heartless. Or just… apathetic? Anyway, the only thing I'm bothered about is losing the soul meat to the poison. It would've been a boon."

Kyro laughed and looked to the sky with watery eyes and said, "Please, for the love of whatever gods you believe in—don't become like Brindle."

I raised an eyebrow. "I thought you loved Brindle?"

"I also love Reta despite her being a heartless bitch who thoroughly traumatized me," Kyro said. He lifted his flask. "Like the drinking problem?"

He took a drink and shivered.

"So that's why you call her a witch…"

"Yeah," Kyro said. "That woman… She's a demon. A born killer. But she's also the main reason we've survived this long. So yeah, when Nythralis sent you a teacher, she sent you the best. A bit hard to work with these days, but the best."

I thought back to her creating the Misty Row with Brindle. "Yeah… she's something."

"Anyway…" He waved his hand back toward my house, and we walked on. Much of it was spent in silence, but he did say, "So how's your village?" and I told him. I asked, "Are you guys gonna visit? They can't talk about you," and he said, "We'll wait a few years."

I nodded. "That's wise."

"But I do want to meet Felio."

My eyes lit up, and then they dimmed, and I said, "No."

He furrowed his brow. "No?"

"Yeah, no. 'Cause once you meet her, you're always going to say, You should be more like Felio, and I'm going to hate my life."

"How strange. If you know I'm going to say that, don't you think that you should probably be more like…"

"Shut up," I said, and we walked on. Stay tuned for updates on My Virtual Library Empire

We were about four miles outside of the village when we finally stopped. I set my gear down, and Kyro asked, "Here?"

I nodded. "Here."

I dug a trench and lined it with Diktyo Water, and used one of Brindle's techniques to prevent the ground from absorbing the water before adding the soul water and binding the soul within the water.

"You really do have his memories…" Kyro said.

I nodded. "I do."

"How long is this going to take?" he asked.

"'Till fall," I said. "Yakana's soul is large yet thin. This soul is not only pure, but it has more aura and cleansed neara than miles of Yakana's soul. It should divert course and strain all of its resources to get here as quickly as possible."

Kyro's lips curved into a strange smile.

"Yeah," I said. "I know. Yakana will live, but that thing'll do substantial damage and potentially block out key communications for centuries."

Kyro's face turned grave.

"Yeah," I said. "This is the right thing to do. So just sit back and watch, and I'll show you something incredible."

Kyro scoffed. "You do get that I'm a soulmancer, right?"

"Well, then you'll watch someone with tens of millennia less experience do shit that you learned over millennia."

He frowned. "You're turning into a total bitch."

I chuckled and grinned and said, "Then you guys shouldn't've spoiled me so much. Memories. Teachers. Soul guardians. Elixirs. Guides. I've been eatin' from a golden spoon. The least I can do is show you that it was worth the investment."

Kyro smiled and lifted his flask. "But you don't have to be a bitch about it."

I laughed and nodded. I liked Kyro. I liked him a lot.

I finished building the soul well and stood and stretched. "Well, you're welcome to dinner whenever. But I gotta go."

"What are you doing now?" he asked.

"I'm going to use that flower we got from the Row," I said. "Elana's sent me god-class ingredients to turn it into an elixir of Immortality…" I paused and looked at him. "Tell Trant. I get you have a no-fly policy right now, but this might be the only chance he gets to see ingredients of the gods."