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I used my mind to remove her blindfold and saw two beautiful eyes staring at me intently. Kira cocked her head quizzically, and I cried out, stumbling backward.

She smirked smugly and then offered her hand.

"Not a person my ass…" I whispered as I let her help me up. It was a very surreal situation that left me emotionally conflicted. Then I thought about the fact that I was supposed to be able to use her, and I imagined her punching the air.

She did.

"This’s so fucking cool," I said.

Kira flicked her hair like a diva and turned away before shooting me a sassy glance.

"Don’t tell me this is my inner personality…" I said, dead-toned and lifeless.

Kira huffed silently, putting her hands on her hips.

"No, there’s nothing wrong with you being like this," I said. "It’s a problem that I’m… oh whatever."

I tried to create a combat knife out of aura again, and while I could create a general shape like with mana sharpening, I couldn’t make the blade.

"Knew it… Kira. Fuse with me for a second."

Kira’s aura snapped back into my body without the slightest sass. It felt natural, comfortable even.

I presented my palm to dead air and imagined my datura plant, and it grew on my palm before my very eyes.

"This isn’t just a guardian…" I whispered. "She’s intelligent clay."

I clenched my hand, imagining her hand overlaid on my mind, and it wrapped around the plant. I could feel it like it was a real plant.

"This is insane…" I muttered. "She’s actually an extension of my body…"

Kline had returned and was watching me closely.

"Turned out, I’m not super talented," I said. "I’m getting help. Meet Kira."

Kira separated from my body, blindfold returned. Then she took one look at Kline and clasped her hands over her chest, rushing up and kneeling to love Kline. He hissed and clawed at her hand and was shocked when his claws found purchase. She cried silently, and puffed out her cheeks and then reached to pick him up. He was confused, so she managed to scoop him up as he wiggled to break free.

"That’s more like it," I giggled as Kline struggled. "She’s part of me, Kline. The intense parts."

He zagged back and forth to avoid her, but found her shockingly nimble and difficult to outmaneuver.

"This’s my love for you!" I called out.

Kline hissed and jumped out of the tree again, warping into the woods. Kira watched in a stupor and then fell on her knees dramatically.

"Oh, girl," I said. "We’ll get along."

She turned and smiled this wonderfully genuine smile.

"Sorry to ask, but do you think you can help me level this floor? I’m shockingly inept."

Kira nodded, waved her hand, and a blade of aura sheared straight through the floor, sending wood shavings flying everywhere.

"Wow…" It occurred to me that Kira had about fifty thousand years of muscle memory stored up and was fully independent. This was the power of a legendary gift.

"Okay… Well, I’m going to figure out the lighting situation so I stop feeling so worthless. Can you handle this?"

Kira gave me a, Seriously? Don’t lump me in with your incompetent ass. look.

"Oh no you didn’t," I said sharply.

She wiggled her shoulders and continued.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or complain, so I compromised by huffing and setting to work.

2.

It turned out that lighting would be the easiest aspect of building my home. I just had to enchant a simple mana core, and a second evolution core would supply light for the rest of time. The question was which core I should use, as the color of the core determined the color.

I had blue, green, and yellow, and while yellow was the obvious choice, I had a strange fascination with using a blue core to have a Hollywood crime syndicate vibe.

I had a dozen after the Diktyo River massacre, when third evolution migrators attacked Halten, but I still ended up using the torok’s core to be as badass as possible.

I grinned when it was set up. "I think this’s wildest thing I’ve ever done."

Then I frowned.

"I’ll need to thread it soon." I rarely took off my backpack after the trauma of it getting stolen the first day, and that carried over to most things. Leaving my torok core at my home unattended was out of the question. "I’ll switch it for another tomorrow…"

I checked to make sure there was a suitable blue core in my collection and then nodded to myself.

I was feeling surprisingly weak when I finished the light, so I sat down on a section of smoothed floor. "Why am I feeling so tired…" I whispered.

I turned and found that Kira had almost buffed the entire floor into an even circle, and was now smoothing the walls. It was as if she was crazed, OCD, and desperate to complete it.

"Yep… that’s me," I chuckled, eyes drooping, nodding off.

Kira abruptly turned to me in panic, glancing between me and the unfinished wall a few times desperately before bursting into a ball of soul mist. It was strange, but the next moment, all that soul force flowed into my body, renewing my vitality. It was then that I realized that I was a shriveled grape en route to being an empty husk from overusing her.

"Duly noted…" I laughed, closing my eyes. "I’ll need to do some testing."

Kline came in and pawed at me worriedly. I petted him aimlessly to let him know I was okay, then drifted into sleep.

I woke twelve hours later and learned from my mistake the day before. This time, when I summoned Kira—because obviously—I had her finish the floor, then released her until after lunch, when I ate torok meat to replenish my aura. Then, I had her buffer the walls while I practiced mana control.

I felt like a bum letting my soul guardian do the skilled portions of the labor, but what was the point of having a legendary soul guardian if I didn’t use her?

To be honest, the only reason I didn’t lounge around completely was because she showed off her marvelous skills and gave me the smuggest look imaginable, visibly judging my poor mana control. Every time it happened, it rekindled my passion to learn as I brooded over her attitude.

Despite the sass, Kira was marvelous. After only two days, I had a room the size of a studio apartment, perfectly circular with smoothed walls and a beautiful grooved floor. The ceiling was satisfying as well.

It was heaven.

I put my hands on my hips and nodded. "Thanks, Kira… Now onto the chimney."

Creating a chimney was strangely difficult. Chimneys are built upward because smoke rises, and they’re easy to build with bricks stacked in a rectangle. But I was in a tree, so building up was impossible.

I thought about creating a diagonal chimney, but after spending a gold request on a ventilation system blueprint pack—something critical for building an alchemy lab—I learned that a diagonal chimney would be a disaster because it would be difficult to create waterproofing systems.

Chimneys had a cap, like an umbrella to prevent water from pulling through, in addition to weep holes for draining water that enter the chimney, and a crown that protects the masonry from water. All of these things would be extremely difficult to make with a diagonal chimney, and without them, water would enter my home like a water slide.

No thanks.

So instead, I had Kira fly me thirty feet up the tree, and I chopped a large cave into it with my machete. Once I could stand, Kira partially fused with my body, helping me to drill thirty feet down with an aura lathe.

Kira then changed her size into a thinner form and jumped down the hole like a spelunker, drilling weep holes and using clay to create drainage channels. She returned an hour later, and I sat down exhausted, feeling extra useless.

That night, I carved a chimney cap to prevent water from getting in, which looked similar to Chinese pagodas from the times of spears and emperors.

It… sucked.

So Kira made a new one, followed by creating a crown with wood and clay to waterproof it.

A few days later, Kline and the lurvine took their smaller forms and gathered around the fireplace as I cooked a stew with meat my little hunters had brought back to camp.

It was wonderful.

The next order of business was the table, counter, bed, and shower situation. I thought about it for a while before getting a strange idea: instead of creating tables to put on the floor, we could drill down deeper into the floor deeper, leaving the wood in the place where we wanted the furniture.

This was possible because I thought that a treehouse wasn’t a treehouse if it wasn’t elevated, so I built five feet up. Now, we drilled four feet down, leaving a large cylinder in the center to act as a table, and counters on every wall, making one extra wide for my "bed."

Once we hollowed the area under the counters out, we had a perfect table and location for a bed.

It was beautiful.

I high-fived Kira and put the heating array I got from the temporary shelter right into the center of the table, creating a heating source that wouldn’t burn down the house.

I finished by putting a magical cot and new sleeping bag I traded for during the Harvest onto the bed cut out, and I finally had a home.

It was beautiful, too, filled with smooth grains with spiraling age lines lumber is known for.

If I were still in Colorado, such a home would go for two million in a town like Aspen or Breckenridge. What a surreal place to live.

I then got to work with preparation for winter. I salted and smoked torok jerky while the lurvines lounged around in the "living room" in their fluffy little fox forms, sneaking glances at me—waiting for me to drop scraps.

No matter how big or prideful canines are, they’re always the same. Kline thought the same, strutting with an air of superiority while he waited for dinner—then demanding twice as much.

Little shit.

I loved them all, getting to know them intimately as the trees changed colors and fell.

We developed a little routine after the home was done. I started my day by snuggling with Kline. After a modest breakfast, we would thread our torok cores for an hour before Kline snuck off to practice the new skills he got during the harvest in secret, and I went on hikes, training with Kira on clear days, and picking mushrooms on days following the rain.

It was amazing to fuse with her body. I could move far faster, and if I hit the ground, she was like a shield. I could make my body larger like I was piloting a tiny mech robot.

And my wings…

I could create wings.

But I couldn’t use wings.

Believe me, I tried every day, and I got better, but it’s impossible to understand how unequipped humans are for flight. It was like having two more hands that you’ve never used before. Then, once you got used to it, you needed to learn significant control and overcome the fear of falling. And if that wasn’t enough, I was in a forest with canopies that blocked flight.

What I needed was an open field to practice, and I vowed to find one in the spring.

Time passed on like that, and before long, the air was chilly, the plants were dead, and I found myself huddled in my new home at the onset of winter.

I had very few ingredients for alchemy or botany purposes, and my home, now sporting a small kitchen furnished with a stove and equipment I got in the Big Bag ’o Tools, was functionally set for winter.

So, I decided to bundle up and live the good life.

Those days were remarkably boring, but they were also gratifying. To practice my mana shaping, I used a mana lathe to carve chairs for the table, creating one for each member of my family. The first twenty came out terribly, but after I asked Kira to teach me, she showed me techniques as I carved, and soon I was creating subpar furniture on my own. It wasn’t much, but it was great progress.

And it was fun. Every night was a new day for training, threading, reading, and cooking, and I got all the cuddles I wanted from eight fluffy animals. It was comfortable.

And yet…

That sense of loneliness I returned, and I found myself pulling up my gods’ tribute requirements to find a reason to bring them in, but no dice.

Brindle’s tribute said: "Fight the harvesters, should their actions indicate war on the forest." That wasn’t surprising. He fluctuated from thoughtful to ambivalent toward me, and I wasn’t sure that there was any familiarity between us. He was hard to figure out.

Elana was different—very different. And after I was finished researching the plants she wanted for her tribute, I decided I didn’t want to speak to her until necessary—if ever again.