Beastforged Bond

The rest of the day and the following one passed before we truly realized how much time had slipped by. I didn’t even think about training as we talked almost exclusively about the Grand Camp.

Hours into our stories, the topic shifted from our first encounter with the Caldera in the Giant Forest to a subject I would have much rather never broached: the Outsider Wars.

As far as the news on Nexus went, humanity supposedly didn’t have to fear the Outsiders and their forces. The armies were said to have eliminated the largest aggregations of Outsiders near the Bastions. However, videos spreading across the less frequented forums hinted at something else entirely. We might not have been on the losing side, but snippets of skirmishes that had been uploaded showed that the Council’s casualty reports were wrong.

Peter Zerog defended the Council’s actions, saying they were merely trying to protect mankind’s sanity. That they were ensuring the masses wouldn’t panic and worsen the situation further. Still, it felt wrong to be lied to. That sentiment was shared online. The public was not a fan of the situation; they were angry, and for good reason.

Not only had the existence of other races been kept a secret, but those same races now hated us as well. The Council tried to salvage the situation, but public outrage forced them to take a step back and acknowledge their mistakes. Official reports went so far as to share information about the Outsiders we were not at war with, alongside explanations for their aggression.

The reports were interesting and surprisingly informative. If only they could be trusted. Reading the file regarding the Caldera tribes made my blood boil.

“Those pieces of hagshit,” I cursed, sitting at the breakfast table with my parents and the Zerogs.

“Adam!” Mom hissed, while Daniel glanced over at my watch’s screen.

“The Caldera are highly intelligent Outsiders possessing superior physical strength and distinctive abilities, which can typically be identified by their skin coloration and the hue of their veins. While they may appear trustworthy at first glance, such impressions are misleading and should not be relied upon. Caldera society is fundamentally martial in nature, and its members readily engage in combat, even in defiance of established treaties. The conflict with the Caldera originated when they launched an unprovoked attack on our envoys during diplomatic negotiations,” Daniel quoted from the report before snorting. “Yeah, fuck them. I don’t know if you can trust anything the Council’s saying at this point. That’s bad. Really bad.”

He shook his head and returned to his own screen.

Mom still glared at me, but Dad opened the official report on the Caldera as well.

“Almost everything you mentioned about the Caldera yesterday seems accurate, if we leave out the part where they supposedly break treaties,” Dad said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “Rather than honorable martial artists, they’re described as outright murderers. As despicable as it is, it makes sense. The public isn’t meant to feel pity for their enemies. There’s not supposed to be any room for doubt.”

It was propaganda. Maybe not the obvious kind, but that didn’t change its nature. Propaganda was still propaganda.

“At least they can’t hide as much as before,” Peter Zerog grumbled.

He took the Council’s secrecy regarding other races the hardest. Like most of the public, Daniel’s father hadn’t known about Outsiders at all. Despite being part of a powerful family, neither he nor his wife had learned about them until half a year ago. That surprised me. After meeting Merlin Zerog at the Grand Camp and listening to him and the other Instructors casually discuss Outsiders during our journey there a year ago, I’d assumed every major household knew about the races roaming Razarn.

I had been wrong, which only deepened my curiosity about how the Council had managed to keep it all a secret for so long,or why they had chosen to tell us cadets aboard the flying ship.

Putting aside my doubts and frustration, I moved on to other reports. Nexus’ forums were overflowing with threads about the wars, though reading them only made me feel worse. Still, I wanted to stay up to date, and the Council’s official releases felt less trustworthy than anonymous forum posts. That alone was absurd.

Spending the morning buried in more bullshittery than I’d endured throughout the entire previous year, I managed to extract a few useful details. For one, three Bastions were currently in an emergency state. Their armies were actively engaged with the forces of the Fithar Alliance and what reports estimated to be hundreds of Bakurean squadrons. The latter avoided engaging legions of Blessed that were too powerful for them to handle, instead targeting smaller groups of Hunters and Adventurers who had to leave the Bastions to earn a living and resupply the younger generation with Soulkin.

That was bad news, especially since the army had failed to eliminate the Bakurean. Only a third of their squads had been destroyed over the past week, leaving two-thirds wreaking havoc throughout the Zones surrounding the Bastions. They didn’t just kill Hunters and Adventurers. They crippled the Bastions’ livelihoods and effectively isolated them.

The more I read, the more I despised the situation. The Grandmasters and Rulers were reportedly busy dealing with Outsider powerhouses, but that left one pressing question: did we even have enough Rulers left to protect our Bastions? Especially after several had already been killed, Ruler Saphira included.

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Our Bastion was safe for now, but an Outsider had been sighted in one of the nearby Forbidden Zones. They appeared to be nothing more than scouts, but scouts rarely operated without an army close behind.

The Bastions, once meant to shield us from the outside world, now felt more like cages. Prisons, even.

Leaving the protection of the dome had never been more dangerous, yet no one could promise the residents the safety they once enjoyed. No one knew what the future held – not for certain –, and that uncertainty was far more frightening than facing a known threat head-on.

What a mess.

***

The first week back home passed in the blink of an eye, even though I barely accomplished anything. Honestly, it felt like I’d done something gravely wrong by lingering at home, avoiding anything that could be considered truly useful.

It was such a huge contrast to the rest of my life that it felt just… wrong. But how could I hate resting? Nobody hated resting.

Still, I made sure to keep my body and mind at their peak. All I avoided was using Mindbreaker Shell to crush my mind or spending several hours and an enormous amount of ether on Fortress. Both techniques were great, but they were just too draining, and I definitely needed some time off.

Mom agreed readily, and even Daniel’s mother joined her friend, saying I worked hard enough. I was pretty sure their impression of “time off” was not the same as mine. Surely, in their opinion, several-hour-long workouts and two-hour-long World refinement sessions were not part of rest. Weird, right?

Anyway, I accepted their comments, thanked them for their opinion, and disagreed with them from the bottom of my heart. Instead of pushing my body to the brink of collapsing, I spent twice my regular workout time training with Daniel and spending time with him. Once the workout was complete, I refined my World slowly and thoroughly. That had to count for something. No strain. No rush. Just relaxing.

I tried to read a little as well, but in between spending time with my parents, the Zerogs, and, of course, my Soulkins, it was hard to find the time to work through Kazriel’s library. Finding time to spend with Volix in private was also quite the challenge with all the bustle in the Zerog estate.

Marlin Zerog had moved into the estate. At least, that was what Butler Steve and Daniel’s sister said. Yes, his sister had returned as well. I expected things to have changed a little after seeing her again–the Grand Camp had changed me, after all–but the only time I saw her since then ended rather poorly.

For some reason, she seemed to dislike me and glared at me with a look that promised pain if I dared to utter a single word. Hence, I said nothing other than a quiet “Good morning” when I met her in the hallway on the way to breakfast. Even then, I only greeted her once before disappearing from her sight, escaping a glare that felt like certain death.

Other than that weird encounter, everything was great. Even the Outsider sightings had diminished following the cadets’ return from the Grand Camp.

Relieved, I got to focus on the World Tree sapling. If there had been anything to work with. The acorn rested in the World, occupying one measly soul energy unit. It wouldn’t accept more than that either. Since Volix ate soul energy, consuming roughly three units and a lot of ether for every unit it occupied, I considered the World Tree sapling’s condition to be similar. However, that wasn’t the case.

It could neither be fed nor accessed. A part of the World Tree was inside the acorn but it didn’t feel that way at times.

For the last week, I’d checked on the sapling every day–morning, noon, afternoon, and evening–and nothing had changed. The sapling didn’t even provide any traits, let alone Gates. It hadn’t bloomed, and it didn’t look like it would root and grow anytime soon. In a way, that transformed the mighty sapling of the World Tree into a regular acorn. Thyria’s presence was lodged deep within it, no more than a fraction of a fraction of her consciousness, but that was probably for the best.

Thyria’s presence was so faint that I retained full control of everything. That included the Gates bursting with the dense ether mass found in the World Tree’s domicile.

In all the stress and confusion of the events that occurred in the World Tree’s hall, I had completely forgotten about the Gates I’d flooded to distract myself from the fear and anxiety that crept up my spine and into my mind when I met the crazy Thyria.

For all that mattered, the events of that day, as well as the question of how I ended up in her isolated domicile, were still confusing. Just about everything I learned that day was.

Outsiders is not exactly a misnomer. The other races are actually not from Razarn. That had been the most logical new thing I learned that day, and it was easy to comprehend. Then again, it wasn’t difficult to understand that the Devourer was dangerous either. I had yet to crack Volix to make him spit out more facts about the Devourer and its Spawns, but that was an issue for another day.

So was just about everything revolving around the Pact. As far as I could tell, the Pact protected humans just as much as it was meant to protect the Spirit’s Voices. More creatures, maybe even races, could be part of the Pact and therefore protected in the name of the Primal Spirit, but I highly doubted I’d have a problem with that, as long as nobody else broke the Pact.

Back to the Gates: I’d grown considerably. The remaining 2-Star Blazing Gates had been filled to the brim within minutes. The real gains, however, were the 3-Star Blazing Gates. In all the stress and confusion, I’d managed to pump enough ether into two 3-Star Gates, leaving me with no more than three 3-Star Earthen and Blazing Gates.

Considering that 3-Star Gates were actually only Gates materialized from the bond with an Evolved beast, my achievements were not particularly great. That only changed with one particular information – my Gates were massive. As far as I could tell, my remaining 3-Star Gates were the size of regular Unblemished (4-Star) Gates, or larger.

I could leverage that. I should have leveraged it even more than I already had. Maximize my gains.

That would have been the rational thing to do.

But to do that, I had to figure out how much stronger I had grown in my absence.

That screamed for a rematch with Daniel!