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"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"What organization?"

"The Illuminati."

Aiden laughed. "That’s what I told ’em, but…"

"But what?"

"They didn’t even believe that shit."

I laughed and covered my mouth. He looked surprised by his own words and looked away.

"What didn’t they believe? Isn’t that kinda their thing?"

"Oh, it is, but that’s what’s unbelievable. This guy I know looked at me and said, Aiden… why the hell would they do things secretly?"

I covered my face to hide my expression.

"And this guy’s a mobster by the way," Aiden added.

I lost it, snorting with laughter. "Seriously?"

"Yeah. Dude runs a gambling ring and everything."

I shook my head. "So why do you know him? No offense, but you don’t look like… a mobster."

"I… didn’t ask for it."

I looked around. "Well, that makes two of us."

He nodded, a look of satisfaction on his face.

"What, you think I came here by choice?"

"No… but some do."

"That must be one hell of a myth."

"Oh, it is. To some people, you’re on the run. Others think you were a spy that infiltrated Earth and returned home."

I smiled. "And what do you think?"

He looked away and swallowed. "I… don’t know. Not like this, that’s for sure."

"Is it the shirt?"

"It’s the shirt."

I looked at my Darwin t-shirt and looked away. "Well, I got some clothes in. So you might get what you’re expectin’ tomorrow."

Aiden and I laughed a few more times before I set up the ward over our tents and we went to bed. I doubted he slept. I probably wouldn’t have, either, if I weren’t doing mental shielding training. Time moved on.

The next morning, Kline pawed me awake and I got up to get out but stopped when I remembered that I had a guest. I pulled out my pocket mirror and cringed. My hair was jutting out in random directions like a poorly bailed block of hay, and my lack of makeup was more pronounced than ever. But let me tell you—my skin was fucking great. I could sell out and make a Neutragena commercial at that point. Fresh.

I smiled sardonically and fixed my hair, hoping that Elana wasn’t watching because I knew my idea of fixing myself up was like a half-assed excuse wrapped in a death wish.

Aiden was sitting out at the edge of the barrier when I went out, eyes bloodshot from sleep deprivation, studying Halten with a grave expression.

I did the same.

Halten was healed—but he wasn’t healthy. He was gritting his teeth and shifting around, as if in a battle with an unseen force.

"What’s wrong with him?" Aiden whispered.

"He has soul corruption," I said.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that malevolent beings are trying to hijack his body."

Aiden’s eyes widened in horror as he turned to me. "Malevolent souls?"

"Yeah." I pointed to the river. "From the river."

"We need to move him!"

"Excellent recommendation," I said dryly.

He paused and thought about it and his eyes darkened. There was no way that we could move a blue whale—Halten had to move himself. So he reconsidered.

"What’ll happen if they win?"

I swallowed nervously, feeling like the Grim Reaper. "He’ll lose his mind and turn against us."

He naturally panicked and I tried to ignore him as he followed me through the camp, subtly begging me for things that I didn’t have and couldn’t do. At some point, he gave up and stopped me with a pained expression.

"What can I do?" he asked.

I took a deep breath and turned to him. "You can give me some space. I’m a botany major, not a soul… fixer." I waved my hand to Halten. Aiden froze and looked away.

"Look. I’m trying to help, okay? And, as it turns out, being in a forest where everything will—get away from that—" I grabbed Aiden’s shirt and pulled him away from a purple-highlighted plant. "Kill you… you get good rewards just for breathing. So I’m going to see if I can’t figure out a solution and you’re going to sit right the fuck over there because it’s not a joke—everything will kill you here."

Aiden looked at the innocuous plant and then at the rocky shore, which was outside the forest and devoid of anything but miraculous healing water.

"Right…"

"Look. I don’t mean to be… a bitch, but… I’m lucky, okay? I survived a few things, got some good requests, and bought the right things to survive here. You… don’t have that. And if you walk into that forest—you’re gonna die. Okay? So just…" I exhaled and rubbed my forehead. "Stick out here. We’ll figure something out."

His face contorted into a twisted hellscape of pain and insecurity, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter, so I walked away to figure something out.

I watched him return to camp, and then rested my back against a tree, closing my eyes.

How am I gonna explain this? I thought hesitantly. I needed to learn from Brindle and Elana to save Halten, but I couldn’t do that around Aiden. And even if I could, I doubted that people could casually learn soul recovery elixirs within their first few months of integrating.

Hey, Lithco, I said in my thoughts. Can I interact with my patrons through my thoughts?

His pop-up left me relieved. It simply said, "Yes."

One problem down.

I went into my legacy tab and chose "Request a Lecture" to make a meeting with Brindle, leaving the following description:

"The River Guardian and one of the Bramble Guardians are suffering from soul corruption. The dragon ’Halten’ has been invaded by souls in the Diktyo River, and the River Guardian seems to be suffering from lignan bug attacks. The River Guardian calls Halten an "oathbreaker" for bringing me supplies, and that may be true, but she won’t trust me to help her unless I can heal Halten. They are a packaged deal.

I have a multi-day trip to get back to my alchemy station, and the migration is underfoot. Time is running low. Please let me know if you have a moment. If you do not, I will use requests to figure something out.

Your legacy holder, Mira Hill."

I sighed when I finished and then looked up into the swaying canopies on the unburnt side of the river and then kept going.

The first thing I did after returning was to figure out the advanced features of the Powerful Portable Ward. The ward looked like a tiki torch that was five feet tall with a large chamber at the top. There must have been space for fifty cores.

Give me the item details.

A pop-up gave me all the information that I needed.

—---

Name: Powerful Portal Ward Barrier

Grade: Platinum

Basic instructions: Add mana cores to the chamber and activate it by adding your own mana to the array on the side. The more mana you add, the larger it will become. The larger it is, the more mana to keep running. Likewise, the more attacks the barrier receives, the higher the mana expenditure becomes. The barrier will break once the mana in the cores can no longer meet the demands of the barrier.

Advanced Instructions: Enchant the key with a custom spell that acts as a key to enter and exit the barrier. Simply recite the chant by touching the barrier and you will be able to pass through it. You can obtain the lock once you learn how to create key enchantments.

Note: Enchantment creation is not provided as part of the instructions.

—---

I sighed as I read the screen. Lithco. Can a silver tutorial teach me key enchantments? The basic kind.

I got a gold and silver from making the Illyndra Elixir, so it wouldn’t put me out too far and I needed that barrier.

Lithco’s answer was refreshing. "Yes."

Then get out here.

A ray of light lit up in the skies and Lithco descended from the heavens with angel wings. He even had a tiny trumpet, but held it in a way that said, I’d rather die than fulfill this role.

I watched with bleary eyes until he was right next to me. Do you have to do this?

"Of course. If I don’t outdo myself, you might think that I’m a substitute for human interaction." He looked at Aiden.

I frowned. It’s not him. I like him, really. It’s just… We’re days from the alchemy station. I don’t have a clue how to help this dragon. And we’re about to get swarmed by beasts. I thought it was a miracle I got here without almost dying. How am I supposed to do this with him around? It’s just… bad timing.

Lithco pulled out a chair and patted down his legs and then smiled at me. "Mira. Just think about this for a second. The guy just rode a dragon into this forest from the heavens. And you really think this guy won’t be useful?"

My lips parted and I thought about it.

"Think about it. In the meantime…" Lithco rudely checked his silver pocket watch and tucked it back in his trouser pockets. "Let’s learn enchantments, shall we? Luckily, this’ll be easy."

I raised an eyebrow. "Easy?"

"Yes. It’s kinda like encryption. Once you open up the instructions again, it will give you a spell. Memorize the chant, then use a binding spell to overwrite it with different words. The combination of the two spells creates a key. It’ll be easy, so let’s get started."

It was not easy.

Learning how to make a key required me to activate a spell while chanting another spell, giving a different name for each word. So it sounded like, "Salka—Datura, estro—stramonium," on down the line until I finished the chant. If patting your head and rubbing your belly was difficult, this was like cracking your head in half with a hammer and then trying to solve a math problem.

"Hey."

Aiden’s voice suddenly broke my concentration mid-spell and I turned to him with a savage gaze. His face paled and he turned away. "Sorry!"

A pang of guilt overcame me and I sighed. "It’s okay. I was just about to take a break anyway."

He turned to me sheepishly. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to figure out…" I shook the portable ward in my hand. "How to use this thing."

"Didn’t you use it last night?"

"For us." I turned to Halten. "We need it to protect him while we’re gone."

"While we’re gone? You mean we’re leaving him?"

I tapped the ward against the ground a few times, holding my breath. Then I addressed him. "Yeah. If we need an elixir to do this, we’ll need to travel about a week. We’ll need to protect him until then."

"A week?" Aiden cried.

I rubbed my eyes and constrained myself before looking him in the eyes. "So what? You’d rather him die here?"

He folded his arms nervously and looked at Halten and back at me and then back at Halten.

"Is it the only way?"

"I suppose that I can leave you with a week’s food and water under the ward. But something tells me that you won’t want that."

"I wouldn’t… I was just coming here to ask what I could do…" He looked into the forest with a wrenched expression. "I’m basically worthless."

I rolled my eyes. "You just rode a dragon into this forest. You’re hardly useless."

His eyes widened. "Then what can I do?"

I closed my eyes, realizing that I was just blindly repeating Lithco’s words like a parrot without the slightest clue why he would be useful. Then I thought about it for exactly five seconds and came to an answer.

"Can you… like… tame these beasts? It would be much faster to ride animals back to the alchemy station."

His face paled and he looked at the massive pile of gigantic beast corpses that Kline had systematically piled up after extracting their cores.

"So no…" I said.

"N-No. I can. I think."

"What do you mean, ’you think?’ This isn’t something to leave to chance."

"N-No! I can. But I just… do you know how beast taming works?"

I shook my head. "No."

"It’s uh… like… business contracts. As a beast tamer, I can make deals with beasts. If one was injured, I could trade them a ride for healing, and then it would have to do it. If it doesn’t, it’ll mess up their soul or even kill them."

"Woah…" I said.

"Uh… yeah. It works, but… um. I don’t know if these beasts would even talk to me. If they have too much pride, they’d rather die. And to be honest, these aren’t bunnies here. Simple things aren’t going to cut it."

I nodded and thought about it for a few seconds before looking into his eyes.

"I’ve got some ideas."