The hotel offered a decent breakfast the next morning at daybreak, consisting of congee and preserved vegetables, after which uncle and niece were on their way.

In the Jeep, Jun continued the education of his niece.

"Our first stop is the Anhui guard station, after which we're going dark. I've brought a full set of Optic-Camo for you on loan and some survival basics. Hai tells me he brought you a set of self-preserving intimates, yes?"

Gwen thought she heard wrong at first; then, she remembered her father's questionable gift. Her friends had roasted her over the incident.

"Yes."

"Good, I am similarly provisioned. We can't leave behind anything that might attract predators."

"Right." Gwen kept her eyes on the road. She still had it in the original box.

The freeway from Hangzhou was a narrow and tapered stretch of bitumen in a significant state of disrepair. Gwen was beginning to see why her uncle bought his army Jeep, not some cosy sedan. Even with the lifted suspension, the patches of water and erratic vegetation made for a teeth-chattering experience.

"Hangzhou is the last Frontier city of its size this far west from Shanghai," Jun noted Gwen's dismay at the road's growing dilapidation. "This far out, it's not uncommon to see Demi-humans and Magical Creatures. Huangshan would have been perfect for a Barrier, though the PLA never got to penetrate that far. The Yinglong keeps to itself, and we have to respect its boundaries by keeping to ours. A Shielding Station would disrupt that unspoken agreement."

"So what happens when Magical Monsters sneak in?"

"More like saunter in, right through the glaring gap between Nanking and Hangzhou," Jun chuckled. "We have two battalions stationed in Anhui, including three mid-tier Mage-Flights on rotation tours. If the Yinglong empties the Three Heavenly Peaks one day and comes roaring... well, you were in Sydney, you get the idea."

"Would it be better or worse?"

"Worse, Hangzhou has no Tower, much less Magus Shultz. That man is a world wonder when it comes to Strategic-Class Artillery," Jun confessed more candidly than Gwen liked to admit. "Assuming the Hangzhou Frontier holds up for twenty-four hours, the PLA or the Pudong Tower could Teleport to its aid. The PLA Tower was built for Mythic-class engagements. Its superstructure can provision up to two thousand active Mages up to the rank of Magi. The Dragon is as good as a pile of priceless ingredients."

"You make it sound painless," Gwen regarded her uncle, watching the passing scenery refract from his cool aviators.

"Nothing's that easy, of course. Four million NoMs are living in Hangzhou. Maybe half will survive an attack of that scale. As for moving the Superstructure, Hangzhou will semi-permanently entertain the PLA Tower for the next decade."

"Would the city ever recover?"

"Sure. Two or three decades? It will be shorter if we can migrate citizens over from Shanghai. But you know what won't recover? The Yinglong. It'll be gone for good. Forever. Humanity can finally expand the Anhui Frontier. Terraform it into an Orange Zone. The resources alone are going to keep Shanghai going for a decade."

"But that's not going to happen."

"Of course. A pyrrhic defence against a Yinglong is a necessary act of survival. Attacking a Yinglong while it's in its lair? I don't think we have enough Mages in Shanghai to invest in a conflict of that magnitude. Assuming we fight all out against the Yinglong and its children, Total War and all that, I'd say we'll be down anywhere between a thousand rank-and-file Mages, a hundred or so Maguses, and at least a few Magisters."

"That's-"

"Potentially a whole generation wiped out," Jun reiterated the devastation. "Sure, we'll be fine for now. Dead Dragon and all. What about the next calamity? Suddenly, there's a generational gap. Shanghai is missing a hundred Maguses! That means potential Magisters! Maybe a Meister! Then there's the lost potential that at least one-fiftieth of those acolytes would have survived to become something greater. That's why humanity cannot persist in protracted wars. Humanity neither possesses the lifespan nor the personnel. Without the rank-and-file, how do we keep the Demi-humans out?"

"Does Hangzhou have a Magical Creature problem? In Australia, they're a constant menace. Most of the military budget is spent on Purging the east coast; that and the Saurian tribes up in Queensland."

"It's done seasonally here. We'll be heading through the lowlands, where it's spawning time. As for types, in South-East China, we get all sorts. Mermen from the ocean, Mountain Merfolk from the Changjiang, cannibalistic little River-gobs that swarm; its the diverse geography."

"Are the ones here as strong as our Mermen?"

"Not inland, and especially not individually. Only the South Pacific can throw up Siege and Titan-class threats. The River-folk are more like vermin, impressive when they reach a critical mass. Habitually, they're the Dragon-kin's primary food—."

The Jeep struck a patch of caked mud. Gwen had to hold onto the rails to endure the crumbling, half-solid silt. Her uncle continued unabated, enjoying the rough ride.

"—the main problem is how long it takes for them to mature. That's why we have to keep purging the local population. It's endless. How long do you suppose it takes to train a Mage to the right tier of magic?"

"Ten Years?" Gwen replied very carefully. "Well, 'twenty' from birth?"

"More like thirty, if we're talking about mastery of a single School of Magic. Most Mages are capped around tier 5, give and take. THIRTY YEARS Gwen, to produce a Mage capable of holding their own. There's another caveat; how many of us are Combat Mages?"

Gwen shook her head, feeling the moisture of the lowland clings to her hair. A stink of decay in the air hinted at swampland and stagnant water.

"Ten to one in tier 1 cities. A little over five to one on the Frontier."

"Oh?"

"How long do you think it takes to pop out a combat-ready Water Gob?"

"Six?" Gwen seemed to recall good sized Barramundi took that long to mature.

"Three," Jun remarked. "They're fish. They spawn, meaning broods are usually ten to twenty thousand per; once per annum. At around two years, your average water-imp is fully functional. For a Riven Water-Priest, the rarer variants take longer, just under a decade. They don't have institutional guidance either; Merfolk magic is innate. The egg-heads at the academy think it's an evolutionary trait or some form of endemic memory ingrained in the bloodline."

"T-Ten thousand?! How are we not swamped with fish-faced mermen?!" Gwen started alarmingly. She could believe it if it were the ocean, for the Pacific was a big place, far deeper and wider than any terrestrial landscape.

"One, we Purge annually. Two, the tribes are cannibalistic. Three, they're food—for Dragon-kin and us. Caught between a rock and a hard place," Jun chuckled. "Remember that 'famous' Vinegar Fish? Now you know why it's so tender."

"You mean..."

"Well, as I said, it's spawning season."

Gwen first felt ill, then she felt guilty, followed by remorse. It was a Man-eat-Fish versus Dragon-eat-Fish in a _"Hey! That's my fish!"_ world.

The car rocked again, shaking her from her thoughts. They were entering a sort of lowland floodplain. The road itself was inundated by patches of water left by episodic showers.

Just as uncle and niece came to a lull in their conversation, a cacophony of commotion came from beyond the hill. From the sound and the mana signature, it felt like Evocation was being used.

"Is there a fight ahead of us?" Gwen asked.

"Yeah, sounds like they're in the thick of it, at least one Evoker. Not uncommon along this stretch of the road. The Merfolk need food for their young, and humans are growing copious amounts of food."

Jun slowed the Jeep to a halt. The engine plinked beside an algae-covered milestone.

"We'll proceed on foot," Jun commanded with casual confidence. "Your call. Show me what you can do."

"Yessir!" Gwen deployed her Familiars. "Caliban! Ariel! Invisible Familiar! Invisible Familiar!"

Watching the marten and the void-worm fade from sight, her uncle whistled.

"That is an evil spell." Jun listened for the sound of Caliban's slithering. "Well, lead the way."

The two made it over the crest, gliding above the ground via their flight spells, bypassing the mud and grime. A battleline of human soldiers pushing against a swarm of amphibian frogmen came into view.

"URRGH'ug! Kreee!"

The most salient spectacle in the chaotic melee below was a frog giant the size of a water buffalo. Conversely, the unfortunate victim of the frogmen's ambush was precisely one buffalo. From the looks of it, the frog things were trying to get away with their loot of flesh when the human patrol caught them red-handed.

"A Frogger-alpha," Jun remarked. "Big bastard. The smaller ones are Spawllings."

"Really?" Gwen turned to the frogs, pondering how the swarm managed to cross the road, evading the traffic. Three dozen of its spawns accompanied the great brute, tadpole-men covered with mucus armour, carrying bladed reeds on poles that reminded her of a half-pike.

To Gwen's astonishment, the Human unit fighting the frog-folk were NoMs backed by two Mages. One of the casters was an Abjurer, while the other Gwen guessed to be an Evoker-Transmuter.

NoMs, equipped with armaments! Gwen felt taken back. It was the first time Gwen had seen Chinese NoMs fighting Magical Creatures. The infantry looked to be armed with staves enchanted for elemental damage. With a command, the pole extended and retracted. Whenever the head struck an enemy, the pole weapon sent out a brilliant burst of deadly energy from the business end.

"A Frontier Militia, likely from the local agricultural garrison."

"No wands?" In Sydney, the Militia all used range weapons.

Jun said nothing. Instead, he folded his arms, waiting for her to act.

Gwen studied the battle below. The Merfolk were retreating, but neither side had casualties. The sticks wielded by the Militia were having a hard time penetrating the mucus of the amphibian men, while the van-sized frog-giant kept the Merfolk battle line from crumbling by holding off the two Mages. Occasionally, it spat a glob of viscous-white glue, disrupting the battleline.

Despite being outnumbered, the Militia was doing well. The Abjurer, in particular, was keeping his men safe with timely Shields. It was ten against thirty, but thanks to what Gwen assumed were buffs from the Transmuter, the NoMs held their positions.

"Do they even need my help?" Gwen entreated her uncle.

Jun crossed his arms. His expression was unreadable.

Gwen turned back to the scene. "Alright then. _Here I go_."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"Shield!" Rurong Peng wondered if his sergeant had a plan other than trying to grind the Merfolk's morale, hoping that the frogmen ran out of stamina before they ran out of mana.

The squad was doing well, perhaps better than he had anticipated.

When they had arrived and disembarked, no one vomited, and no one complained. The men formed, made two rows, and awaited their buffs.

They found the frog-folk raiding party not far from the location described by their first intelligence report. A local farmer had been accosted while taking his buffalo out to forage; he fled, abandoning his charge to inform the garrison of the raiding party.

When it was clear to the frogmen that they could not escape from their quarry, they attacked.

Li's squad fell into formation with Rurong at its centre and the sergeant himself hovering behind them, forming a V-wedge.

With the melee joined, Rurong's work began in earnest. The attacks from the smaller of the Merfolk were not difficult to deflect. It was the big bastard duelling sergeant Li that took out his mana by the increments, pulverising his Shields one by one.

His sergeant was doing well, gouging chunks of its Demi-human flesh with fire. As for the NoMs, they performed better than last; prior, half had fled during their first engagement against a Mud Salamander.

Sergeant Li flittered backwards, drifting through the air as another globular of glue flew overhead. Rurong altered the projectile's path with a deflection Shield. Still, the viscous liquid adhered to the Earthen crust, remaining in midair until Rurong could be sure no unfortunate NoM was going to get caught below. The extra second was vexatious, Rorong complained, a waste of mana.

"Careful," his sergeant advised via Message. Rurong hailed back an affirmative.

"Scorching Ray!" Sergeant Li let loose his favourite spell, blasting three beams of fire into the Frog-spawn's hide, turning a chunk of its flesh into char as the surrounding mucus boiled, sending up a great stink smelling of rotten reeds and fish.

Before the sergeant could load up another, the giant frog-man reared up on its hindquarters, rising to almost four meters in height.

"Cao!" Rurong swore. He had seen the ability before in similar creatures but hadn't accounted for the frog to possess enough of its bile still to execute the AOE.

'GLUUUARRRRGH!'

A torrent of sticky liquid poured forth from the frog's lips in a viscus, semi-circle arc.

"Shield!"

"Earthen Wall!"

Rurong was very proud of his simultaneous casting. It was a staple ability of the Abjuration school.

The conjured wall caught half of the viscous vomit while his Shield prevented the NoM closest to the strike zone from becoming enmeshed.

The same could not be said of Three NoMs further down the battle line.

"Curse your ancestors!" Rurong growled. "Sarge!"

"Hold it steady!" Sergeant Li shouted back. "Cover me! I'll try to cut them loose."

Not even Enhanced Strength was enough to allow the NoMs to escape the suddenly solidifying gloop. Furthermore, a mild acid within the creature's phlegm immediately began its terrible work.

"Cao, it burns!"

"Don't come! I think it's poisonous!"

"Save me! Sarge! Save me! ARRRRRGH!"

Rurong felt a cluster of annoyance clench in his chest. The NoMs were drilled not to panic. Mass panic would impact morale and could lead to a rout. Without the platoon holding down the little fuckers, how could he and Li focus on fighting the big bastard?

Sensing the Abjurer's preoccupation, the amphibian giant launched an attack, unrolling a corkscrew, arm-thick length of pink flesh from its mouth to snare one of the hapless NoMs.

"No! Please help me! I don't want to die!"

It was L04, the coward of the bunch, always the first to panic.

Rurong swore under his breath; he felt no compulsion to risk his sergeant's safety to preserve the useless meat bag. Even if L04 returned safely, the _Er-bi_ would be whipped within an inch of his life for failing to maintain discipline and endangering the platoon. The Commander had reiterated that it was best for useless conscripts to be weeded out naturally. He had called it Social Darwinism, a term coined by an old English Magi who studied Magical Beasts, theorising that natural selection made Wildland Creatures superior combatants.

"Caliban! Onslaught!"

"Ariel! Ball Lightning!"

A shrill female voice echoed across the clearing.

Rurong whipped his head toward the voice's source. He spied two human silhouettes floating above the steep rise.

_Mages? Senior ones at that!_ Rurong's heart grew glad.

His hypothesis was soon answered by screaming orbs of crackling cobalt striking three frogmen quickly. The self-seeking bolts sizzled the thick mucus on contact, then burst into a hysterical brilliance, resulting in an eruption of flesh, amphibian gore, and snot.

The startling ultra-violence forced a pause in the combat, followed by an even lull of silence as an enormously hideous humanoid toad materialised from thin air.

_A Gila?_ Rurong had graduated from technical college and thus knew the likeness of Hengsha Dungeon's signature Monster. From the icy prickling of imminent death engendering in his spine, Rurong knew he might be in deep shit.

A wave of revulsion and vertigo permeated the battlefield with the Death-Gila at its epicentre. The NoMs fell backwards, a few becoming violently ill; others screamed insensibly; L04 became incontinent.

_Shit! Cao!_ Rurong looked toward his sergeant, whose expression was ashen, suggesting he was likewise affected by the Death-Gila's necrotic Aura.

The sudden appearance of the three-meter amphibian also smote the Merfolk. The lesser ones fell to the floor and began to thrash and convulse, while the larger ones turned to flee. Their giant leader appeared as though it was facing down a cobra. It halted where it stood, its haunches frozen, too terrified to move.

"Sarge! Now's our chance!"

"Corporal! Get back! Get everyone back now!"

The sergeant's response flipped a switch in Rorong's head.

What if these were ROGUE Mages? Rurong's hope grew dire.

"Back! F03! S04! Get back! C11, you take point! MOVE YOUR ASSES!"

The NoMs, as tradition, were too terrified to obey.

“CAONIMA! You bastards want to die! SHABI! MOVE IT!”

With Rurong's abuse ringing in their ears, the NoMs came to; the first was F03, then S04. Finally, the others began to mobilise. "FORMATION! FOR MAO'S SAKE! FUCKING SPELL FODDER! STAY IN FORMATION!"

_The idiots!_ Rurong growled, wishing he could dispatch one to motivate the others. Supposedly, during Mao's unification campaign, the Commissariat system worked wonders to encourage the NoMs. When a squad failed to exercise order or delayed the speed of a battlefield manoeuvre, the presiding officer could execute the slowest member, thereby saving the rest of the team from annihilation.

Heedless of the humans panicking, the Death-Gila began to move.

Terrified, the Frogger-alpha spat a globe of sticky residue toward it.

What would the Gila do?!

Rurong couldn't look away. He had heard that the Death Gila could use Necromantic magic, enfeebling the enemy before tearing it apart.

Without even slowing, the Death Gila opened its maw.

_A Death Beam?!_ Rurong's heart hammered at his throat.

In one swift motion, the Gila caught the spitball in its mouth-pouch, swallowing it wholesale.

Rurong vomited a little in his mouth.

"Caliban can perform complex actions independent of my commands," Gwen explained carefully to Jun; she had no desire for her uncle to be surprised in their dragon-poaching journey. "It leaps, jumps, uses abilities; Caliban even attacks and retreats via its own volition."

"Yet it's not a _Spirit_." Jun tapped his chin. "How curious."

Gwen located three more targets; she made the mental image in her mind and then executed the necessary somatic components to activate her newest incantation.

"Ball Lightning!"

Three orbs flew from Ariel, some hundred-odd meters away, seeking their targets. Ariel itself was busy mauling a frog spawn with gleeful bloodlust.

"Why aren't we exterminating them?" She asked.

"The Merfolk possess low-cunning," Jun observed Caliban moving in on the adult alpha. "You should leave the small ones to tell the tale. An overwhelming force always discourages the tribe from sending out larger raiding parties. This way, they're encouraged to raid their own."

Meanwhile, Caliban's claws dug into the giant Frogger's torso with a terrific force, vivisecting the creature in a horrific onslaught, cutting through its exterior without apparent effort.

"Did you figure out how Caliban gathers morphic forms yet?"

"No." Gwen shook her head. "I thought it just took whatever it ate at first, but now that I think of it, it probably has something to do with Affinity, preference, or Cores."

"Speaking of Cores." Jun took her hand. "Let's test that hypothesis. _Come!_ "

One Dimension Door later, the two of them were face to face with the dying Frogger. In its final moments, the Merfolk-alpha recognised the origin of the creature that had been its undoing. Its intelligent eyes bulged with hate and despair just as Caliban raised a bladed appendage and dashed its brains out, forcing a tennis-ball-sized eyeball to pop from its socket.

Jun stood casually beside the corpse as its assorted organs failed. The creature was almost three hundred kilograms of flesh and bone, and its amphibian offal died sequentially, gurgling and popping as spleens ruptured and vessels deflated.

"Ariel, Caliban!"

Gwen retrieved her familiars.

Jun dug through the body, kicking it apart with his combat boots. With a triumphant expression, he retrieved a small core the size of a fist with Mage Hand.

"Unimpressive, tier 3 at best," remarked the Ash Mage disappointedly upon closer inspection. "Elements' all muddled up too."

As uncle and niece picked about the body for potential loot, the Abjurer and Transmuter approached them. By now, it was self-evident that they were on the same side.

"Sir!" The Transmuter saluted. "Sergeant Li, Anhui 22nd Militia, may I petition that you identify yourself?"

The Abjurer fell into step behind his superior officer. Behind them, the troop of frightened but unharmed NoMs regarded the duo with dreadful expressions, clutching their staves with white-knuckled fear. A few of them were covered in their own sick. One man stayed away from the rest, his pants heavy with toxic cargo.

Jun returned a salute. Gwen bowed, then smiled.

The men relaxed, then tensed up when they recalled the mountainous carcass was her accomplishment.

"Jun Song. Captain. _Internal Security._ "

"The Ash Bringer?!" The sergeant raised an eyebrow. A moment later, recognition dawned.

"Captain Jun?!" His Abjurer companion was beside himself. PLA propaganda made a strong impression. "S-Sir! Can I have your autograph?!"

"Corporal!" Sergeant Li snapped at his subordinate.

"It's no trouble." Jun materialised a scrapbook. "Your name?"

"Rurong Peng! Sir! The boys won't believe it!"

Jun wrote something nice for the young man, signed the page, and then neatly tore it from the book.

"Thank you, Sir!"

"You did well, Rurong." Jun patted the man on the shoulder. "We need more men like yourself and Sergeant Li."

"It's our duty!" Li beamed, his eyes strangely moist with gladness.

Gwen watched the proceedings with great interest, marvelling at her uncle's charisma.

"May I inquire as to the young Miss?" Li turned to Gwen apologetically.

"My niece. We're in Anhui for business," Jun replied cryptically. "I know the protocol. Here are our Passes."

"Of course, Sir. Sorry for asking," Sergeant Li apologised. He checked their Passes, then respectfully returned the tablet. "May we be dismissed?"

"You may, Sergeant."

"Thank you, Captain, Miss Song."

"Sir! Ma'am!" Rurong saluted both of them.

"Sergeant. Corporal."

"Bye!" Gwen bid the Militia goodbye.

"That went well," Gwen commented to Jun, wondering if she 'did good' enough to receive a pat on the shoulder.

"I am frankly impressed." Jun regarded his niece in a new light, patting her shoulder. "Caliban held his own against a tier 5 Monster without endangering others. So Ariel can displace and extend the range of your Evocation, hmm? Very useful indeed."

"Thank you, Sir!" Gwen mimicked the militiamen, knocking her heels as she touched her fingers to her forehead.

Jun laughed.

"Good, keep your spirit up," he replied ominously. "We'll be trying our luck with the quasi-dragon spawn soon. They're going to be tough customers."

"A real challenge, Uncle?"

"Naturally." Jun nodded. "The ones we're after are immune to Lightning. Besides, the dragon-kin possesses universal magic resistance. The purer the bloodline, the harder to score a clean hit. We'll visit the local garrison to check in, after which we'll proceed on foot. Hopefully, you'll get your first taste of dragon flesh by tomorrow night!"

Gwen nodded her head, her eyes full of eagerness.

_Dragon-spawns!_

Eaten like free-range chicken!


Jun chose the scenic route, venturing off-road into a patrol trail to acquaint Gwen with the particulars of the local geography.

"Look up," he told her as they moved through the valley, where occasionally a glimpse of the 'Yellow' mountain could be seen in the distance, surrounded by clouds and obscured by mist. "The peak you're now seeing is the Lotus Peak, about 1864m from base to tip. That's where the Yinglong has its lair. Behind it, just visible, is the Celestial Peak, about 1800m. There could be something else living there, but we haven't seen it."

"There's a third rise out of sight, the Bright Peak, aka Guanghua Peak, verily the moniker used for the Fudan Towers. Together, the three peaks form a natural leyline called the Three Heavenly Reaches. The locals suspect an open tear into an Elemental Plane exists somewhere in-between because the volumetric thickness of Elemental Air is visible even with the naked eye—look."

Gwen looked.

It was true what her uncle said.

When she squinted against the sun, she saw the tropospheric cloud banks. In streams and eddies, they swirled and traversed from peak to peak as if moulded by some unseen hand.

As they approached a tree line, Jun slowed the Jeep to a stop.

"This is the unspoken natural boundary; marked by the Dragon-Pine. Back before the PLA left Anhui, they used to call it the 'Welcoming Pine.'"

"I can guess why the name changed."

"Yep, the Yinglong wasn't very welcoming, at least not to the PLA." Jun chuckled. He turned the Jeep around and began to retrace their route. Gwen had no idea how her uncle could navigate using nothing but his head. They would have driven off a cliff if she had been the one performing the orienteering.

"You know what's the most famous produce here in Anhui?"

"Lumber?"

"I wish." Jun slowed the Jeep, then turned into another fire trail. "It's tea. The best green tea in South China. It's called the Maofeng Cha, the Tea of Fur Peak. That name had also changed, by the way."

"Oh?" Gwen was the sort of girl who drank fancy, fashionable fruit tea.

"We call it Dragon-Peak Tea now. The main plantation is within the Dragon's territory, and we trade them for it."

"Sounds better than _furry_ tea." Gwen grinned, wondering if her uncle was in on the joke. "Does the dragon tend to the tea?"

"Hahaha." Jun laughed. "I don't know if the Dragon is rubbing the tea trees or dribbling its Dragon juice into the ground or what, but you'll see what I mean once we get back to Hangzhou. There are only a few select places that sell them. Anyway, the circulating currents of Elemental Air up on the Three Heavenly Peaks means the place is permanently clouded. The cloud coverage is good, perfect for hiding. Once we're over the thirteen hundred mark, there's very little visibility past twenty to thirty-odd meters unless a freakish gust clears the bank."

"A Sea of Clouds," Gwen returned, thinking of Casper David Frederich's Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Would she be Gwen above the Sea of Clouds? Indeed, the vista above was of sufficient sublimity to stir the Romantic soul. Maybe there was a Lumen recorder she could buy or borrow from the base. In all her time flitting from one magical place to another, she hadn't thought about taking any pictures. After all, without Insta or Facebook, what was the point?

What was curious, however, was that the mountain was dark-granite, emerald pine, blue sky and white cloud. There wasn't a spec of yellow to be seen.

"I've been thinking for a while, Uncle," Gwen interjected on Jun's geography lesson. "Why is it called the Yellow Mountain? There's nothing yellow here, not even mustard."

"It's a wordplay. It's said to be the birthplace of the first Sage-King, the Huang Emperor. The word 'yellow' and 'Huang' are homophones. Huangshan is also where the forging of the Pill of Immortality took place, so the name caught on. As for how the moniker spread, we have the Sage Li-Bai, the Jade-Lotus Wanderer himself, to blame."

"Who's Li-Bai?"

Jun cleared his throat, slowing the Jeep until they faced the mountain and the Sea of Clouds.

_"Thirty-six immortal peaks,_

_Their blades touch heaven._

_Morning sun strikes the darkening trees,_

_Here in this sky-mountain realm._

_Men of Han! Raise your mien!_

_A thousand springs and autumns,_

_The cranes have come and gone._

_Far off, I spy a travelling swordsman,_

_Plucking clouds from the stone crevice."_

Uncle and niece sat in the now silent Jeep, watching the clouds descend the distant mountaintops. The breeze was temperate and pleasant, dispelling the oppressive humidity of summer. Wild and thrilling birdsong filtered through the trees, joined by the chirping of cicadas. Leave rustled, diffusing a minty scent of pine wax.

After an indeterminate passage of poetic silence, Jun restarted the engine.

"Welcome to Huangshan." He beamed at Gwen. "Let's go."

The duo reached the Anhui garrison by late afternoon.

The garrison commander had gotten wind from his returning soldiers that the Ash Bringer himself was in the area and would likely visit them. In anticipation, he had set up a tremendous banquet.

Jun thanked the commander for his hospitality, then bid Gwen join him and the garrison's unisex Officer Corp for dinner. Upon arrival, they had been given generous accommodations in the officer's quarters. Wanting to make an impression, Gwen changed into something semi-formal, taking her uncle's advice that all the men and women they were liaising with would wear their dress uniforms.

The banquet itself kicked into gear once Jun arrived. He wore his Army Captain uniform, though his clandestine rank within Internal Security would likely place him at the same level as the base's commander, if not higher.

The next morning, the two were back in their hiking garbs, ready to roll out. Jun had acquired an updated map for their perusal. He had consulted the garrison's Rangers, updating his knowledge on the local fauna, their whereabouts, and the current occupation of the Yinglong.

"No sighting for two months and three weeks so far," the Ranger Sergeant enlightened the pair. "If it's not sleeping—that's how Dragons cultivate—but it is safe to assume the Lord Dragon isn't active."

Jun thanked the man, then called for Gwen. He left the Jeep with the quartermaster, after which the pair embarked on foot. There were no trails into the Three Heavenly Peaks, much less the Sea of Clouds. Aided by Expeditious Retreat and Enhanced Constitution, the pair had to bushwack and trek through the shrubland, using the scenery above and Jun's Compass as orientation.

Though forty-something, Jun remained at peak physical condition. Gwen, meanwhile, was buoyed by her good physique, her Druidic Essence, her youth and the stolen vitality of her hapless victims.

"You hike like an Army Ranger." Jun was sweating when they reached the tree lines at 1100 meters above sea level, appearing embarrassed that Gwen appeared more refreshed than exhausted. "Alright, equipment check. No more fun and games after this point. Discovery by the Yinglong could be life or death."

"I understand."

"Here, take these." True to form, Jun had thought of everything. Gwen's uncle produced all the necessary Magic Items for their "poaching" adventure from his Large Storage Ring, appropriated from the Internal Security quartermaster.

One Optic-Camouflage Cloak, full size.

One pair of Soundless Boots.

One Hide Presence bodysuit, reinforced.

"I know you've got Habitat and potions, so I forwent those. Babulya informs me that you're able to use Teleportation beacons now?"

"Yes, uncle."

"Good. You're our Translocator from here on out."

"I am? But you Dimension Doored us earlier."

Jun tapped his wristwatch.

"Allenberg's Portable Translocator. Usable three times per day. Takes HDMs as well, though the rearming process is rather fiddly."

"You're not a Conjurer, uncle?" Gwen had assumed that Jun was a Transmuter-Conjurer.

"I dabble here and there," Jun smirked. "Nothing like your legitimate Schools of Magic. My major School is Evocation. Transmutation is my secondary school. I also know most of the utility low-tier spells from Conjuration, Abjuration, Illusion and Necromancy."

"Wow, that must have taken a while." She thought about her Schools of Magic. Her methodology was cheating the system. She counted the number of Schools her uncle knew against her own: Conjuration, Abjuration, Illusion and Necromancy...'

When she looked up at Jun, she caught her uncle grinning.

_NECROMANCY?!_

Her tongue became caught on a barb-wire snare. Her uncle was visibly trying to keep a straight face. _Was it a joke?_ The cavalier manner in which Jun had dropped the truth bomb seemed to suggest that Ash Bringer was not joking. If it was true, Jun was now sharing something extraordinarily intimate and delicate. They were now crossing a dangerous threshold of faith.

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The trust which Jun delivered made her feel shameful. She had refrained from informing her uncle of many things: Almudj's possession, Henry Kilroy, Elizabeth Sobel, and the ultimate secret that she was a twin-souled cross-dimensional migrant thrust across space and time to usurp his niece's body.

A little alarmed, Gwen tested the waters for buoyancy. Far more accustomed to the crumbs of intimacy, Jun's generosity frightened her, setting her mind on edge.

"I must have misheard."

"I don't think so. I mean what I said."

"Seriously though, _Necromancy_?"

"It's an old family secret. A necessity. I suppose my father wouldn't have told you, and it seems Hai never shared that secret. His selfish instinct for self-preservation astounds me sometimes. But to answer your question, YES. _Necromancy_."

If knowledge could induce vertigo, then that was what Gwen was feeling.

"Can you clarify?" Gwen demanded reflexively. "Sorry, Uncle, it's just a lot to take in... in a place and time like this."

Jun pulled out his half of the Kirin Amulet.

"You activate this—" he met her hazel orbs with his charcoal irises. "—with Necromancy. That's our Clan's secret."

Gwen couldn't help feeling that Guo would jump out from behind a pine tree and start screaming at her. Her brother was using the Amulet, was he not?

"S-should you be telling me this? Does this mean Percy…"

So Percy's a bloody _Necromancer_?!

"Oh yes." When Jun saw that she was beginning to hyperventilate, he gave her a confident smile. "Let me stop you there. Don't fret! The magic may be Necromantic, but it isn't a spell to raise the dead. There's nothing overtly illicit about it other than the political."

"Oh, that makes it _all better_ ," Gwen replied with unintended sarcasm; she was still trying to catch her wits from escaping through her ears.

"Watch."

Jun produced the Core they had seized from the Frogger Alpha.

"Ready? Stand back. A little further. A little more. There you go. Normally, the rite is much more subtle. I am going to show you the full extent of it to vindicate its reputation."

Gwen nodded, her eyes as wide open as humanly possible. Necromancy! Now that she had calmed herself, she could rationalise that it wasn't so bad. Magister Lee had gone on and on about this. To think he was mocking her Clan as well.

Her fright stemmed more from social stigma from the indoctrined learning that 'Necromantic Magic' was the worst thing to have ever happened to the human race. But this was her uncle.

"Drain Life!"

There was a sudden dimming of the sunlight surrounding Jun, as though something invisible had distorted the spectrum. The area around Jun's feet turned instantly to decay, with every living thing within half a meter radius turned to Elemental Ash.

The Frogger Core cracked.

Gwen could feel a presence, a palpable life force akin to her Druidic Essence, escape from the misshapen orb and enter Jun's body. Her uncle took the life force without blinking, then casually stowed the remains.

"Drain Life, the staple spell of the Necromantic school. The transference of the life energy of another to empower one's Negative-affinity incantations. Though considered Necromancy, it's perhaps truer to say that it's a form of latent biomancy. In conjunction with the Kirin Amulet, the Necromantic infusion of Drain Life syphons drained Essence, living or Undead, into the Kirin stone as pure Essence. I can draw forth this purified Essence to fuel my casting. Though my ash is more volatile than your Void, I can remain combat-active for a long time. My single longest bout of combat was 14,000 VMI's worth of continuous spell-casting, all thanks to the stored Essence I had collected. That battle made me famous. Did you know that?"

"I didn't." Gwen stared at the Kirin Amulet, thinking of Percy's other half. "I want to hear it, though."

Gods, 14,000 VMI worth of spells? That must have been some battle! She was surprised there wasn't a book about it.

"I am surprised you haven't heard it. Another time then," Jun teased her. "All I can tell you now is that I managed to spend six years' worth of accumulated essence in twenty-two hours of continuous combat."

"The Kirin Amulet—" Gwen cut in, suddenly sad now that she knew the truth. "I gave mine up."

"I don't know about that." Her uncle smirked.

"Is it possible to make an Amulet?" Gwen pulled her eyes away from the dazzling presence of the solution to all her problems. "Are there Kirins here we can kill?"

"No! Kirins are near Mythic Class!" Jun battered away her romantic fantasy.

"Not to mention, if we did possess a core, where are you going to find an Enchanter of antiquity at the 8th tier, versed in the old magic of the Song Dynasty?"

Oh..."

Magister Wen was said to be close to 8, but Gwen could hardly trust the knowledge-crazed academic, not to mention her less than pure interest. Her Opa was at tier 6, but the wizened oldie was unlikely to progress any higher in his craft. In fact, with the onset of dotage, his proficiency would slip rather than grow.

"Maybe with CCs?"

"Impossible." Jun shook his head. "A world-class Enchanter would be needed, one that is Chinese and well-versed in ancient magic. You can't tell anyone of this at any rate, else the greatest secret of our Clan would be known to outsiders. The MSS Secretary and the Ash Bringer, _Necromancers_? Gwen, we wouldn't have enough heads for the CCP to chop! What would happen to grandmother if either of us carelessly blabbed?"

"Does the CCP know?"

"Maybe, maybe not." Jun shrugged. "I've been told no, at any rate. The rite of the Kirin's Blessing remains an heirloom secret."

"But you just told me."

"Indeed, I've told a member of my family, a dear member."

Gwen hesitated. The taste in her mouth was bittersweet.

"Gwen," Jun leaned inward, his presence looming over her. Her uncle's closeness made her flush with a strange heat. She had never confronted a family member who opened their heart. She forced herself to face Jun's paternal gaze, feeling abashed by how differently they felt. Internally, her thirty-something spirit clashed with the teenage oxytocins firing away inside the hemisphere of her brain.

When Jun spoke again, it was with absolute sincerity.

"If and when I am no longe—"

Her uncle's fatalistic words splashed over her feverous rapture like a bucket of ice-cold water.

"No. No. NO. NO," Gwen heard herself say. "I don't want that. Ever."

"Let me finish- Gwen, I am a soldier. A good soldier doesn't die in a retirement home. In the probable event that I perform the ultimate service in Mao's name, I have instructed in my will that the Kirin Amulet will go to you."

Gwen felt sick.

She felt a sudden and grotesque loathing for the Kirin Stone. She wanted to pull it from Jun's neck and dash it against some rocks or launch it into the sky and consume it with a Void Bolt.

"Don't say that!" The voice that issued from her lips felt not her own. Her eyes flashed angrily; her breath came in rags. "Fuck the Amulet! I'll stick to Consume. I'll eat every bloody one of my foes: man, woman, Dragon or otherwise. I don't need it!"

Jun touched a hand to her quivering cheeks.

"I have no children. I want it to go to you."

"You don't know that!" Gwen interjected. "Maybe there's something you haven't tried. The Elves might have something. Wen said they have Druids! I've got Druidic Essence! I can consult with Almudj, a mythic being! If and when it wakes up! If it can bring life to the dead clay of Australia, it can help you conceive children! Hell, ask Dad for one! He's probably got bastards everywhere!"

Gwen could barely breathe. _How did it come to this?_ They were just about to enter the forest, then Jun made a joke about Necromancy, and then it wasn't a joke; how the hell did they arrive at this morbid bullshit fucked up conversation!?

Her uncle brushed a lock of wayward hair from her face, one that had fallen out of place in her excitement.

"My affinity is 7, almost 8, and I don't even have a Spirit," Jun interrupted his naive fantasy. "I cannot have children because the Ashen Mana has made me its vessel. With a touch, I can turn even the Undead to ash. Not even the greatest Necromancy can raise what I have laid to rest. That is why I am the Hero of the Northern Campaign. Gwen, you see, oblivion and I, we're old chums. We've walked side by side for far too long. I am not a man capable of bringing life. That was the price I paid for power. There is balance in all things, Gwen. A man such as I cannot be greedy. Else the ash would bring calamity to everyone I love."

"Uncle…"

Gwen touched her chin. Her cheeks were wet.

_Was she crying?_ Jesus Christ, she scolded herself. My internal chemistry must be a hot mess.

She opened her mouth to speak, to find soothing assurances, only to discover herself in the rare circumstance of being lost for words. Her estrangement from her old-world family had meant that never had she entertained the possibility of a loved one being consigned to the Void, never to be seen again.

"Uncle, I…" Caliban swallowed her tongue.

She watched Jun's calloused hands move from her face, mesmerised by his slow, articulate fingers.

Suddenly, in a swift gesture, Jun pinched her nose.

"Uncle!" Gwen protested, her adult soul feeling bruised and ashamed.

It was as though a spell had been broken.

"Nobody is dying! You silly goose of a girl!" her uncle chastised her. "Such morbid thinking! I am going to live for a long while yet! So will you, and so will father and mother! Hai's going to have another child. You're going to have a baby sibling. You will have children one day too. We'll be four generations sitting at the banquet table!"

Gwen stared at her uncle, stunned by the sudden change in tone.

"Why should anyone be dying? I am hale and healthy thanks to the Kirin Stone. Your biometrics are fine as well, far better than mine. Caliban is doing God's work, or at least the work of some deity-like power that resides in the Void. Some dark, old God, maybe, who knows? You have a balancing force, Gwen, which makes you precious. My Path is not for you."

"A dark power, you say? An old God?" Gwen scoffed, thinking of Caliban.

With her sentimentally dashed, she felt at a loss.

She felt a little hurt.

_Why couldn't Jun play the doting father for a little longer?_ She was feeling it! She was _really_ feeling it! It was warm, fuzzy, sour, sweet, and bitter all at once! Just a little longer would have sealed up something that had been leaking since she left home at the age of sixteen.

Gwen sighed; instead of an internal retreat, she felt an ill humour rising to the fore, a reflexive response to the blues.

"Uncle, there IS a God in the Void. What if I told you his name is _Yog-Sothoth? The Hungry One? The Lurker at the Threshold?_ "

Jun's expression became earnest because he couldn't tell whether Gwen was serious.

In response, Gwen opened her arms and raised her hands to encompass the vista of the mountains, just as Jun had done the day before when reciting Li-Bai.

" _Great is HE, the protoplasmic flesh that flowed blackly outward to join together and form that eldritch, hideous horror from outer space, that spawn of the blankness of primal time, that tentacled amorphous monster—the noxious one—who froths as first slime in nuclear chaos beyond the nethermost outposts of Void and time!_

_"Lä! Yog-Sothoth!"_

_"Lä! He who lurks in the Dark!"_

"Mao!" Jun's expression transformed into a mask of concern. "Great Leader's Ghost! Are you serious?"

Gwen kept her face serious for as long as she could. When her uncle's severity proved too much, she burst into laughter.

Jun joined in nervously, carefully studying Gwen's face for signs of madness. When Gwen met his scepticism, she doubled over with a joy that was half-choked laughter. Only when she became almost blue in the face did Jun perceive that her jest was genuine.

"Oh, Uncle..."

Gwen wiped away ambivalent tears. Her makeup was ruined.

But the time for the feeling was over. Up ahead was the imminent business of the tree line and a sojourn in the Sea of Clouds.

"I'll be changing into the suit. No peeking."

Jun scoffed.

"Wouldn't dream of it. You're too skinny anyway. What's there to see?"

Gwen snorted derisively at her uncle. She seized her boots, cloak and bodysuit, then loudly rustled her clothes to inform her uncle that she was slipping out of one gear and into another.

Jun kept his eyes on the horizon, meditating.

"Yog-Sothoth," he mumbled to himself, mincing her joke. "The Lurker, the spawn of blankness… blackness? Darkness? The toxic one..."


The military-issue bodysuit from the PLA was a wonder compared to the mass-produced variety rationed to Gwen by the Melbourne Tower.

Its Hide Presence Enchantment soaked up all scent and sweat, was resistant to heat and cold, and helped her skin breathe through its porous fabric. The suit was semi-plated and magically fitted, protecting her bosoms and abdomen. It possessed a stocky collar made from Magi-tech, with a slot for inserting raw or processed HDM crystals.

When she asked her uncle to check her equipment, Jun's reaction gave Gwen a smug thrill, knowing she had paid him back for that _too-skinny_ remark.

"It's American." Jun noticed her fiddling with the artificer's tag. "Only the States make stuff like this. They're known for it."

The Soundless Boots were of Chinese construct, a copy of the Elven variety known to deaden all sound of the wearer's passage. A fashionista at heart, she noticed that despite its parallel magical qualities, the boots were hideously tailored.

"The CCP tried its best." Jun shrugged. "For now, our Manufactoriums can only copy, not create."

The Optic-Camouflage Cloak was the last layer, a Japanese creation. The tag read "Sumitomo Heavy Industries", sporting a four-diamond petal flower as a logo. __

With the cloak activated, Gwen and Jun could spot one another due to an inherent design included in the product. To outsiders, they appeared as grass, stone, bark, foliage, and all but invisible when remaining still.

"Keep Caliban and Ariel out," Jun advised. "Apply your Invisibility spell. Get them used to the woods. Ariel should have a scent like most of the creatures here. As for Caliban, I suppose we should be glad it's scentless."

"I'll get it to roll around and pick up the ambient odour," Gwen suggested. A presence without scent was just as notable to the right pair of olfactory organs.

"Sure, we'll be taking some time to get acquainted with the landscape and the fauna."

The party of four moved out.

Soon, an adorable marten, a Spawn of Yog-Sothoth, the Ash Bringer and the Girl who eats lined up at the tree line formerly known as 'Welcoming Pine'.

Jun bunched a fist, raising it beside his ear.

Gwen halted, holding her breath. It wasn't necessary, but she didn't know that. Her first foray into a Purple Zone had her walking on tippy-toes as soon as they stepped past the first set of gnarly trees.

The visibility within the mountain was horrendous. The massive cloud bank that moved and shifted with the currents from the Elemental Plane of Air sent down mist and gust almost ceaselessly, pelting the duo with light showers of pine needles.

After the first three hours and fifteen-odd kilometres, Gwen understood precisely why the magical equipment was essential.

It was the micro-climate.

The region's flora consisted mainly of Pinus and Strobus, punctuated by the occasional Magnolia and interrupted by unexpected groves of enormous bamboo. The conifers did not grow straight but burst from granite outcroppings, twisting and turning like the proverbial dragon until finally erupting into waxy umbrellas of dark jade.

Whenever a wayward gust stirred the leaves, a shower of pelting pine needles fell upon uncle and niece, sliding from their durability-enhanced cloaks in glistening sheets. When the rain passed through the region, it filled the surrounding area with a freezing mist that chilled the bone. Yet, walking through the muggy fog was a warm, wet, and bedraggled affair. Had they not been wearing their American-made bodysuits, the alternating heat of the stifling summer and the cold bursts from the Elemental Plane of Air would have sapped their mortal bodies before long.

Another hour in, they heard the crashing sound of ponderous lumbering.

Their first victim arrived, crawling on all fours.

A goanna?!

No, Gwen corrected herself. A pangolin. A draconic pangolin.

"Check it," Jun commanded.

Gwen incanted a Detect Magic, relying on the suit's Enchantments to muffle her sound and movement.

The pangolin was six meters long and just over two metres tall. It didn't look particularly ferocious, though the scales on its back suggested an imperviousness to physical assaults. In the zoology of Gwen's old world, pangolins protected themselves by curling into impenetrable balls. In the cryptozoology of this world, Gwen felt she could assume an educated guess of the same. Indicatively, the ridges on its scales inferred a draconic origin, though it was visually evident that the thing was more pangolin than thorny-drake.

The element that radiated from the creature was a dull ochre.

"Earthen," Gwen passed along the silent Message, their devices operating via LOS and radius.

"Care for first blood, or let it pass?"

Gwen considered Jun's offer. The creature looked reasonably powerful. Maybe Caliban could pick up a new form? Her Void-worm already possessed a lizard-amphibian body morph, not to mention Caliban was primarily immune to physical damage, presuming infinite access to vitality. Having armour plating on Caliban was akin to adding nipples to a bat suit.

"It's alright." Gwen felt no desire to kill gluttonously.

They allowed the creature to pass.

"Let's see where it's going," Jun suggested. To the experienced survivalist, creatures like these did not roam without reason. "Follow my lead."

As a novice tracker, Gwen could only do her best. Her agility and natural fitness, combined with purpose-made Magical Items, however, more than made up for her inexperience. Their quarry, likewise, was supremely confident in its safety, paying no heed to Gwen's potential blunders.

The duo pursued the Draconic pangolin for half a kilometre until it stopped.

A buzzing sound that had been barely audible before grew louder as they climbed. Soon, the winged thrum grew to encompass every audible spectrum as the duo came within visible distance of the pangolin's prize.

The bee hive—at least that's what it resembled—was enormous; it hung three meters tall from zenith to nadir, hanging from the side of a pine tree with such weight that its growth had yielded to the unwelcome burden. Bees the width and size of two of Gwen's fingers caught sight of the pangolin. Within several seconds, they began to swarm.

"We're in luck." Jun motioned with a glance. "Wildland Sting-blossoms. Their honey is good enough to extend your life and restore youth. There's the queen inside as well. That's what the pangolin wants. We should gather the honey. One portion can be for my mother, and the others you can use as gifts. It's a fairly sought-after youth elixir for women."

"Sounds good. Anything for Babulya! So, do we keep watch for now?"

"For now, yes. We must intercept it before it eats the queen when the time comes."

"Are we saving the Queen?" Gwen hadn't figured Jun for an entomological conservationist.

"… You're going to eat it." Jun was likely smiling underneath the cowl.

Meanwhile, the pangolin languishingly strolled toward the nest, possessing no consideration for the thousand or so bees swarming its face, eyes, and nose.

"Armoured eyeballs?" Gwen marvelled at the resilience of the creature.

"Probably immune to poison too, Draconic-constitution."

The pangolin stood on its rear two legs, climbed the nest, and began to pound away at the shell-case exterior. Chunks of sticky honey fell from the nest in golden globs, filling the air with sickly sweetness. Watching the spectacle, Gwen felt nostalgic for the running commentary of a certain British Naturalist.

"Hmm, this is not good."

Jun urged Gwen to remain hidden. He pointed a finger upward.

The pangolin's efforts continued unabated.

A rustling sound came from a tree top.

The two looked up to see a feathered silhouette outlined against the mist-diffused sky. Gwen adjusted her magic. It took a great deal of concentration to focus Detection spells in a place like this.

"Another predator!" she informed her uncle, her voice eager and hungry.

"Good for us, but wait and see," Jun advised. "We need to ground it with Void or Ash; it's likely highly resistant to Lightning. It's interested in the nest, likely the queen itself."

Jun's hypothesis proved correct.

The pangolin also noted the intruder. It turned to the bird-like creature and began to bark.

The bird ignored it. As far as it was concerned, the terrestrial-bound pangolin was harmless.

What a waste of a Draconic bloodline, Gwen grumbled. At least have a Dragon breath or something. How unimpressive.

Without a reply from the bird-thing, the pangolin returned to the nest and continued digging. By now, the bees were in a frenzy. Had Gwen not seen the process, she would have thought the pangolin was naturally armoured with a buzzing layer of living chitin.

"It's making a move. Get ready. Lightning Sphere on the bees. Avoid the nest. Void on the pangolin. Go for the eyes. I'll clip the flyer."

"Yes, Uncle."

The avian silhouette began to move.

When the bird creature came into view, Gwen realised it was a winged lizard. The spectacle of the chimeric creature was as strange as it was awe-inspiring. The scales were rainbow-hued, a dark oily obsidian with a petrol sheen. Its wings were like the Macaw's, a brilliant emerald and vibrant orange burst with just a touch of cobalt at the tip.

It swooped for the exposed queen.

_Splat!_

To their surprise, the pangolin was waiting for it.

_Clever bastard!_ Gwen's lips parted in surprise. The stupid-looking, ponderous pangolin launched a glob of honey toward its assailant! The delicious golden liquid caught the lizard entirely by surprise, smacking it face first and crashing it against the ground.

Suddenly, the bees that had made their new nest on the pangolin's hide found a new target.

"Good God!" Gwen grimaced. The lizard was instantly carpeted in bees with stings the size of surgical needles. She didn't need to be a biologist to know that the rainbow-bird-lizard did NOT have armoured eyes.

_"Huuu huuu huuu…"_

The pangolin laughed. IT WAS LAUGHING!

FUCK, Gwen thanked the Gods for her uncle. It was fucking intelligent! The fucking thing was sapient! What did that mean?

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"Well, that kicks it up a tier or two." Jun seemed relieved they had waited as well. "We're swapping targets. I am on the Pangolin. You take care of the bees. As for the Queen, you'll have to retrieve it by hand. Use your Void Skin; your gear should be elementally-shifted."

The pangolin turned back to the hive.

"Ashen Spear!"

A bolt of white ash struck the creature's head, hitting it just below the right eye. There was a sickening crunch as the armour plating crumbled, filling its head with negative energy.

The pangolin slumped, losing all interest in the nest. The unique attribute of the Plane of desolation and destruction sapped its will. It turned around apathetically, uncaring of what had penetrated its scaly dermis. It wanted to flee, but its instincts were brutally suppressed.

"Ashen Smite!"

Blasts of necrotic fire, burning invisibly, consumed its limbs until only stumps remained. The pangolin fell onto its belly, barely bothering to move, patiently awaiting death.

Gwen, meanwhile, stepped into the open, clad in midnight.

She moved like tenebrous ink, her feminine figure shifting with the alien articulation of ferrofluid. A frenzied swarm left the lizard and assaulted her as she approached. When the bees made contact, a sizzling sound of corrosion signalled the futility of the insect's actions. Gwen's Void skin wasn't enough to stop Lulan's blows, but it was perfect against swarms.

After the first two hundred bee-kamikazes, Gwen could feel her vitality stores beginning to falter. These were large and heavy insects, and they kept on coming relentlessly. The good news was that she had future provisions in the form of a lizard and a limbless pangolin.

She reached the nest, crushing mounds of half-consumed bee corpses underfoot.

There it was, the _queen_. It was easily distinguishable by its golden buttocks, aflame with whatever insects passed for hair.

Jesus Christ, Gwen felt her skin crawl. The bee monarch was the length of her forearm! She reached out with a blackened arm as the buzzing intensified. The dive-bombing of the bees continued, covering the floor with carcasses.

"Erect a half-dome Shield, keep the workers at bay, then eat the queen. Snap off the abdomen. That's where the important parts are," Jun compelled her.

Gwen knew her uncle meant _eating_ in the literal sense.

The queen writhed in her hand, its abdomen curled suddenly; a pale-white egg ejaculated from its ovipositor. The creature's compound eyes regarded Gwen's Void-smothered, featureless mien with insectile eyes begging for mercy. She could let it go, but this wasn't that sort of adventure. She wasn't here to Disney Princess. Gwen was here to eat.

"Shield!"

Gwen retreated the portion of Void Skin protecting her face.

_Goodbye! Sweet sanity! Fare thee well, noble queen!_

She took her supplement like a bitter pill. The queen was stingless, but it was too large for her mouth. Gwen had to take it in recurring bites.

The insect died, hopefully without pain. In her mouth, the innards exploded, filling the cavern of her mouth with the thankful scent of royal honey. She munched and munched, dreaming of deep-fried soft-shell crabs with salt and pepper.

Gwen must have drunk about a litre of water as they waited for the bees to disperse.

When finally, the last bee wandered off and the two collated their loot.

Jun stowed a dozen portions of the honey, ate a length of honeycomb, and then cleansed the area with ash.

Her Familiars gluttonously polished off the remaining molasses, with Ariel stuffing its mouth pouches full of the sticky liquid as Caliban took up entire slabs: dirt, bee and all, sliding whole lattices into its bottomless maw.

"Let's test your hypothesis." Jun checked their misty surroundings. Visibility remained poor. "Time for a Lightning-affinity boost."

"Caliban, enough playing. It's time to work!" Gwen called for her pet.

Caliban came slithering forth, slathered with honey.

The winged lizard, disappointingly, turned out to be a unique species. Lacking the resilience of the dragon-kin, it had unfortunately perished in the bee's assault, having had its eyes and soft parts pumped full of venom.

Jun flipped the thing over. He sliced it open only to find a shattered core of no value.

"Well, that's a shame," he apologised. "Maybe we should have moved sooner."

Beside the corpse of the winged lizard, the pangolin watched the two humans without emotion or distress. Until the Negative Energy drain from Jun's Ash faded, it would remain utterly indifferent, disinterested in anything and everything.

When Gwen touched her hand to the pangolin's snout, it merely regarded her with deadened orbs awaiting death.

"Uncle, this is the effect of all Ash attacks?"

Gwen couldn't help but be curious, thinking of the Huashan Elder whom Jun's Disintegrate had struck. He seemed to have lost all will to live.

"Indeed." Jun inclined his chin in affirmation. "As one of the four Negative Quasi-elementals, Ash removes an individual's seven passions and six desires. I would have been deadened to the world were it not for the Kirin Amulet. Ash users are comparable with Void Mages, though our malady tends to be of the mind rather than the body."

"Are there others like you, Uncle? Ash Mages, I mean."

"Oh yes," Jun answered. "The ones who survive have all found ways to deal with the side effects, one way or another. Unlike Void Mages, we have an abundance of time. An insensible, uncaring Ash Mage can still be studied. They make excellent specimens, considering how little they care about their wellbeing."

The two hid for another half an hour, waiting for more scavengers.

"Right, I guess nothing interesting is going to show up. Let's finish up. Not bad for our first day. At least we found a Draconic-Something."

Gwen regarded the Draconic pangolin. The creature watched its captors.

"Steel your resolve, Gwen." Jun gave her a prod on the shoulder. "This thing escapes. We're both going to be hunted until we get back to Shanghai."

"Sorry, big guy," Gwen apologised to the pangolin. "Caliban, you're up."

Her serpent performed its terrible duty, starting at the tail. Inch by inch, like a python working its way up the body of a saltwater croc, her creature slid its victim into its gullet. Empathically, Gwen could feel that Caliban was enjoining its meal very much.

When finally only the head of the pangolin remained, it suddenly appeared to have regained some of its lost lucidity. The Ashen mana must have worn off.

A sudden look of fear and desperation entered its eyes.

_"TAILUEN VE!"_

An enormous sound emerged from its lips, echoing through the mist and bouncing off the trees.

_IT CAN SPEAK?!_ Gwen's mind grew blank.

"Kill it now!" Jun commanded.

_"FOO! SIA KIN WI-"_

"Caliban!" Gwen jolted her familiar with a shot of vitality.

Caliban convulsed, and the engorged body of the Void serpent expanded suddenly outward, then violently contracted. The motion was enough to pull the rest of the pangolin into Caliban's maw.

"Bad luck." Jun pulled the cloak over his head. "Dismiss Caliban. Cloak up. We got to get moving. Send Ariel out to scent up the place."

Caliban's carapace clicked shut.

"What did it say?"

Her uncle shook his head. Maybe the man knew, but he said nothing.

Receiving no confirmation from her uncle, Gwen dismissed her Void-worm and her gluttonous Ariel.

She activated her cloak.

The vitality hit came a moment later. On the Nephres-index, she would register it as a six, just enough to keep her disabled but conscious.

"I'll need about 5 minutes," Gwen spat out between clenched teeth, her face turning the colour of beetroot as waves of vitality battered her Astral and Physical Body. "The life force of this thing is enormous!"

Her uncle laid her beside him and covered the both of them with his optic cloak, forming the shape of a lichen-covered boulder.

Ariel helped by dashing here and there, leaving its scent to confuse potential pursuers. As a creature of Air and Positive energy, Ariel's trail of lightning residue would hide the presence of its human masters. When the marten was half a kilometre away, Gwen retrieved her familiar. She couldn't move, but she could do that, at least.

Uncle and niece thus waited, Gwen's breath coming in quick bouts.

The answer to their opportunistic ambush arrived as a thunderous swooping. A vast shadow covered the area of the now ravaged nest, after which a serpentine drake alighted. Gwen couldn't help but stare despite the pangolin's Draconic Essence pouring in, sending her mind into a euphoria-induced tailspin.

The intruder hovered midair with the grace of a falling feather, its wings churning not wind but Elemental Air itself. It then landed tail first, balancing its overlong frame before touching down, at which point the length of its rear legs coiled to take the weight of its body.

An Amphiptere? No, Jun ran the strangely shaped creature through his internal bestiary. A Wyvern. The Amphiptere did not possess any limbs and resembled more so a winged serpent. This thing had two pairs of hind legs and bat wings that could be folded to support the fore of its body.

As for Gwen, what she found alarming wasn't so much the size of the creature nor its imposing presence.

It was that the Draconic Wyvern was a mount.

The rider looked like a bona fide Dragon-kin, a rare offspring between a humanoid and a dragon. Invariably, these dragon-men were the result of females coupling with Draconic beings. Unlike the egg-producing reptilian partners, mammalian creatures rarely, if ever, survived the child-bearing agony of gestating a child far more substantial, powerful and more demanding than that which the mother's physiology could bear.

How could a womb of warm flesh survive a child of teeth and claws? How does a mortal mother provide the necessary essence and nutrients for an offspring who would outlive its birther by magnitudes measured in centuries?

The alternative was likewise unthinkable. A dragon kind, subjecting itself to be impregnated by a lesser creature? Absurdity!

The Draconic humanoid stood just over three meters, with iridescent scales more serpentine than draconic. That was expected, for the Yinglong was a creature of the air. Only terrestrial Dragons favoured heavy plating. The thing's face had a casual sophistication, a smooth reptilian head ending in an elegant snout. As for whether it was male or female, it was impossible to tell.

Gwen tried to stifle her convulsions, her chest rising and falling violently. Furrowing his brows, Jun gently placed a hand onto her diaphragm, then channelled into her channels a sliver of Ash-tainted mana.

Beneath her uncle's calloused hand, Gwen felt her interminable sensations abruptly cease.

Such was the power of the Ash Mage, an assault that was both mental and physical, peerless against any sentient creature capable of longing and agitation. Once she was calm, Jun lifted his hand from her abdomen and cupped her mouth, reminding Gwen to remain still.

No more than fifty paces from where they took the guise of granite boulders, the pearlescent dragon-kin was rubbing the ashen mixture of dirt, honey, and dead insects between its scaly fingers. Its eyes were glowing with what Jun could only assume to be Divination magic.

Unlike Humans, Dragons attained abilities with age and bloodline and could train in almost any form of magic. Be it Human Spellcraft or Demi-human, they were the apex existence in a world of creatures immeasurably more powerful than humanity. Were it not for the Draconic races' loathing of each other and their few numbers, the world would have turned into the Dragons' plaything.

As for their optic obfuscation, her uncle was confident in the Japanese artificer's craft. When static, the Transmutation Enchantment transformed the surface layer into lichen and stone; it was only in motion that Illusion came into play, exposing the wearer to keen eyes and low-level Divinations.

"I smell human equipment," The wyvern spoke through rows of dagger teeth. "Ayxin, you see anything?"

Her uncle translated the speech into Common through their Message devices. His had come equipped with a Ghost-spec Ioun Stone.

"Si keefum munthrek equip, Ayxin, re wux ocuirir??"

Comparatively, Gwen's ears registered a syllabic string of what sounded like Cantonese mixed with tongue clicks and a hacking cough. Unable to comprehend their new circumstance, she closed her eyes and focused on circulating her new-found Draconic vitality.

"We lost one of our young ones. I think it was Angkar-Molis; this is his domain."

"Bah, a weakling of no import."

The one who scoffed was the wyvern. Tyrian-purple scales covered its tree-trunk, serpentine neck. On its massive head, over its eye ridge, a few bright cobalt feathers jutted from its horned crest, giving it a refined dignity. Its eyes were hungry and cruel, a single reptilian slit that scanned its surroundings hungrily, a dark gash amidst the sky-blue iris.

A _Thunder Wyvern_ , Jun noted apprehensively. A mature adult, likely sitting between tier 9 and 10.

The creature was the jackpot Jun and Gwen had sought, though they had no hopes for its subdual. Her uncle whispered that they would be evenly matched, but he was confident he would eventually win out if he liberally consumed the stowed essence in the Amulet.

"The Queen's gone." The pearlescent one called Ayxin kicked what remained of the bee's nest. "Lots of human magic residue here. I don't know, though. Something's not right. Angkar's a resilient child. I would have expected more collateral damage."

"He was a pup." The wyvern cocked his head arrogantly. Jun's translation wasn't exact, but it worked. "Now likely someone's armour."

"Don't be like that." The humanoid Dragon-kin gave his mount a cold look.

The two wanted to linger for longer, checking the area, but a shift in the wind meant the region would soon be smothered by fog and mist. Watching the haze thicken, the two made one last round through the site.

"Let's return to the peak," the pearlescent one advised.

The humanoid dragon-kin mounted the wyvern without a word. The pair took flight amidst a great bell beat of bat-like wings twenty meters from tip to tip.

"Gwen, keep meditating. Don't move." Her uncle whispered.

After a few minutes, they heard beating wings pounding the air above their heads.

The wyvern snorted.

"See? Told you. So much for that prized head of yours."

"… Shut up, Golos."

The sound of wingbeats faded once the wyvern reached the necessary altitude, where it caught a slipstream of Elemental Air.

Her uncle's arms stirred.

"Hee hee, the mind of a Dragon is formidable, but a man's mind is far more suitable to ploys and schemes. As creatures of absolute power, it was difficult for the dragons to position themselves from the perspective of the meek. Remember that, Gwen."

Underneath him, Gwen raised her head and shoulders, putting herself onto her elbows.

"How do you feel?" Jun asked.

"Wonderful." Gwen met her uncle's eyes. "Uncle. I am feeling on _top of the world._ "


Jun suggested they penetrate deeper into the Yinglong's territory before extracting to an outer region to lay low; it would both throw off their pursuers' expectations and provide opportunities to Consume higher-order lifeforms.

"Resource raids are the norm here," Jun explained to Gwen as she stretched, too full of energy to remain static and standing. "There are no resonance crystals between here and Hefei, the capital of the Anhui Frontier, or any surrounding regions. When tensions are high, it's a free for all."

"That means we won't cause a stir?"

"No, not if we remain discrete. There should be thousands of beasts like the one you just Consumed. So long as we avoid the pure-bloods, like that talking duo, I doubt the Yinglong would care." Jun inspected Gwen's gear again. The next portion of their poaching adventure would be doubly more dangerous, and any equipment failure would result in mission failure. "Let's find a place to rest for the night. You still need to process the Queen's latent life-essence."

At the mention of the poor insect, Gwen forced down her priceless cargo even as the revolting remembrance threatened to expel the Queen's mangled carcass. Soft-shell crab, Gwen told herself, nori-avocado wrapped in sushi rice from Sushi Hub down on George St.

"It'll do you good." Jun watched her throat bobble. "A creature capable of spawning tens of thousands of younglings almost indefinitely until its death, imagine the primal essence contained in something like that!"

Gwen would prefer _not_ to imagine anything.

As night fell, the temperature dropped considerably. Even sheltered by their bodysuits, Gwen felt a chill permeating her skin.

The two reached a sheltered outcrop and then employed Transmutation magic to form an isolated one-meter escarpment unreachable by creatures without considerable arboreal or flying capabilities.

Gwen set up her Portable Habitat, then laid down a Lightning-based Faithful Hound. The subtle mana signature would not seem out of place, giving them plenty of warning to buff up before clearing out.

Once inside, the duo finally relaxed. The need for constant vigilance had niece and uncle walking on a tightrope all day.

Gwen freed her Familiars into the living room. She had grown accustomed to their presence. Caliban coiled up under the coffee table to contemplate its next meal while Ariel raced around the Habitat in a frenzy, scenting every inch of its new abode.

"Can you cook?" Jun checked the pantry and the cooler, finding both empty. Kusu had meticulously cleaned the cottage before returning it to Gwen. "I've got military rations if you can't."

Gwen produced a small mountain of Korean Instant-Noodles and a dozen cans of Spam.

Jun regarded the volume of 'food' presented in front of them.

"Military rations it is. We'll hunt and forage something edible tomorrow."

Gwen hadn't wanted to trouble Jun with domestic duty, but her woeful home economics prevented her from exercising feminine bewitcheries. She could strut, she could kick ass, and she could talk, but _cook_? Neither of her life in either world was equipped for culinary craftsmanship. She forgot to turn off a boiling pot of pasta water once. Two hours later, the plastic on the lid caught fire. She became henceforth known by her neighbours as the woman who could set water on fire.

"Go freshen up. Run a Cleansing cube over your gear." Jun then ran a hand across the length of the table and produced a dozen silvery packets without labels.

"Those are?" Gwen eyed the bars.

"Military rations," Jun announced. "Tonight, we're having Aurok Stroganoff, Shandong Chicken, Coconut Rice, and Custard Pudding."

Oh. My. God. Gwen glanced at her mountain of Spam. There exist ready-to-eat Military Rations that could be heated up with magic and immediately consumed. _What the hell am I doing?_ Why didn't anyone teach this at the University?

"It'll take a few minutes to plate them, go. I'll find us cutlery."

Gwen retreated from the living room, feeling better that Jun didn't have to waste more time.

Perhaps a little inconsiderately, she took the main bedroom without thinking. Once inside, she unhooked the cloak from her neck, inspected the fabric for damage, and tucked it on a wall hanger. The bodysuit was harder to remove. Even with the zipper down, a contortionist's level of flexibility was required to disrobe.

Would it be too much to ask her uncle? God, that would be awkward.

Suddenly, she slapped herself on the forehead.

An ingenious _Mage Hand_ solved her problem, allowing her second skin to be productively peeled.

She turned to the mirror doors of the built-in cupboard to inspect her post-draconic Consumption body.

No tail.

No horns.

No scales.

To her hypercritical eyes, her unusually pallid complexion appeared to have acquired a warmer hue; she slowly twirled, arching her neck, inspecting any nooks and crannies for scaly growth. Very carefully, she studied her eyes. The most evident change to a Mage's physiology almost always began with the irises.

Like her flushed dermis, her amber-speckled emerald irises appeared warmer. Gwen wondered if there was something particular about Draconic Essence that paralleled the effect of Druidic Essence.

Satisfied, she took a long shower.

Her Decanter of Infinite Water had been left in the Habitat some time ago, providing the place with hot and cold water. Gwen towelled off, then slipped something comfy. She exited.

Outside, Jun had finished making food.

On her plate was a strange collection of multi-coloured gloop.

There was a brown one.

And an orange one.

And a white one.

A small dish held what looked like cold custard.

There was no fork and no knife.

A spoon had been placed next to her plate.

Just one.

Gwen looked around, bewildered by the lack of solids.

What the hell was this? She checked the oven. Was there food in there waiting to be heated up? Where was the Auroch Stroganoff Shandong Chicken? Don't tell her the gloop was—

_Click!_

The door to the secondary bathroom opened. Jun emerged with wet hair.

"Dig in if you're hungry!" Jun indicated to her plate, a second towel hung over one shoulder.

"Sorry, Uncle, I didn't mean to take the main bedroom."

For a few seconds, Gwen forgot all about the un-food.

Where her Father had an arguably well-formed masculine frame, Jun's looked like something chiselled out of marble and then put into a museum. Even with a t-shirt, his skin was stretched taut across every detail like an anatomic model of human musculature.

He had no scars, which was a shock. Then again, knowing their babulya was close at hand, it was unlikely the _good_ son would be without cosmetic care.

_SNAP!_

Gwen looked down.

She had snapped her wooden spoon.

"That's some impressive grip strength. Did the Draconic Essence increase your physical abilities?" Her uncle studied her. "You're growing up quite quickly."

After a half-laugh, a new spoon was proffered by her uncle, who watched Gwen with amusement.

The matter then turned to dinner.

"Let's dig in!"

Her worst fears came true. Indeed, the gelatinous gruel was the military rations; it was real food, powdered, remixed with purified water, and filled with nutrition and vitality. But for a girl who had spent the last six months eating herself to death in one of the most food-obsessed cities in the world, it was torture.

After dinner, Jun placed his elbow on the table.

"Wrestle me," His dark eyes gleamed. "I want to see if you've got stronger."

Gwen obliged by taking her uncle's hand.

The two seesawed back and forth, with Jun gauging her strength.

"Pretty strong," He remarked. "Stronger than your average male Cadet, I'd say."

"Do you think this strength is permanent?" Gwen enquired. What if she became incredibly strong? A semi-permanent Enhanced Ability could do wonders. "Would I become stronger the more Draconic Essence I consume?"

"Maybe, you might experience some physical changes, though. You did say your Cleric Aura came and went when Nephres' vitality was spent, right?"

Gwen nodded.

"Well, you have to understand the distinction between Vitality and Essence," Jun commented. "Vitality is the life force, an abstract concept we don't understand. Only experts like Mother have insight into how it manifests independently like a resource. On the other hand, I can tell you about Essence."

Gwen touched the space between her collarbones, where her amulet had once sat.

"Magister Wen said that my Druidic Essence is an arcane-compound spell shaped by a Mythic being's will and intent."

"And she's right. Though in my experience, I favour an older, more obsolete term. It's the _soul_ of a being."

"The soul." Gwen felt a few goosebumps engender. She thought of Mark Chandler's ghostly sister. Her insane screaming went on and on.

"Or something like it. As we know, Essence is neither mana, vitality, nor element. If so, what could it be?"

Gwen had no answer to that.

"Well, no use worrying. Just letting you know how it is. You're human. Nephres Zalaam was human. That sapient Draconian was certainly not a human being. When you take in so much alien _Essence_ , there are bound to be some changes. I mean, didn't Almudj's Essence change your physiology?"

What if she OD'ed on Dragon juice? Gwen wondered. Am I going to start hoarding gold and kidnapping young maidens? Having Elvia to herself in a castle wasn't too bad. She could invite her friends, build a Tower, and have a slumber party.

"As for your strength, I'd wager it's not permanent. It's a nice temporary buff, though. I am interested to see how long you can keep it. In prolonged conflicts, an ability to acquire certain traits could trivialise certain disadvantages and obstacles. Oh yes, speaking of morphic essences, can Caliban turn into a pangolin yet? That would be something!"

Gwen called for her serpent.

"Can you do it? Caliban?" Gwen focused on the image of the pangolin they had seen earlier. "Do the pangolin?"

"Shaa?" Caliban rolled onto its belly and wiggled.

"Caliban! Pangolin!" Gwen pictured the creature ponderously moving through the woods.

"Shaa?! Shaa!" Caliban performed a bellyflop. The feeling she got from their Empathic Link was that it understood.

"Hurrrrughk!"

Its carapace contracted.

_Thunk!_

Caliban regurgitated a jagged, egg-like shard of crystal in burnt amber. The pangolin Core.

"Oh, very nice!" Jun retrieved the Core and scraped away the grey goo. After a moment, he disappointingly shook his head. "No Spirit. Sorry."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"No worries," Gwen dismissed her uncle's unrealistic expectations. Most people struggled to see a Core, much less a Spirited Core.

"Still, it is worth quite a bit." Jun hefted the crystal in his hand. "Tier 5 core like this, Draconic lineage—25,000 HDMs? More if there's the right buyer. It would probably make an incredible Elemental Bangle for the right Earthen Mage. More funds for University?"

"Surely, you'll take a cut, Uncle."

"What am I going to do with crystals?" Jun scoffed. "Is this a bribe?"

"No…"

"I am a government official and an officer of Internal Security." Jun tossed her the Core. "It'll do me no good. For a man in my position, austerity is security. You know a girl from the House of M, right?"

Gwen nodded.

"Problem solved. Do that thing you do, and _shout_ me a few fancy dinners if you feel bad about it."

Gwen bit her lower lip thoughtfully.

Caliban wagged its tail, expecting praise for doing the 'pangolin'. Still caught up in her contemplation, its Master retrieved it bodily, then gave it a mighty squeeze. Caliban exerted a squeal of gleeful pleasure as its carapace split, oozing a joyful grey goo.

"Eeee!" Ariel raised a paw in protest; it received Gwen's apology in the form of a belly rub.

Caliban objected and hissed at Ariel. Its brother had done nothing today! It deserved nothing! The marten nipped the serpent in return.

"No!" Gwen scolded both of them. "Down! Hand! Roll over! Kisses!"

She ran through the routine Chen had taught her. Nightly discipline was not to be missed, and she had already skipped a few nights thanks to their travel time. For a Creature Mage, obedience from Familiars must be active and subliminal.

Jun watched his niece toy with her creatures. "You know, it's strange that you would treat your Familiars with such familiarity. In our doctrine, most Conjurers saw Familiars as little more than phenomena manifested from the spell of the same name. Those in the PLA especially often used Familiars as spell-fodder."

"They're my babies," Gwen grinned.

Jun shrugged. Then sat on the couch. Gwen soon joined him. There was no Vid-Cast and no fireplace, but the antics of the two Familiars provided plenty of entertainment.

_Was this what a family was like?_ Gwen wondered. She thought of Hai, of the girls that Hai dated and more than often left in tears. She did not want to think about her mother.

Her uncle turned to regard her. Gwen grew strangely aware that she was a young woman, a lonely one. Watching her uncle's gentleness, Gwen reminded herself that she was Hai's daughter, not his. "Are you alright, uncle?"

"I am fine," Jun murmured, averting her curious gaze. The man studied the ceiling for a moment, then patted her head. "Sleep early. You've got a Queen Bee to digest. Remember, we're leaving at first light."

" _Father._ "

The all-powerful presence of the Yinglong atop Lotus Peak shrouded the Draconic Palace with miasma and mana, illusion and obfuscation, making its location impossible to scry even with the most powerful of Divination magic.

"Speak."

"Angkar is dead, Father. His presence is gone."

An eye opened within the uncertain mist, enormous, almost the size of Ayxin's torso.

"Angkar…"

"The Earthen child, Father. He was born two decades ago, blessed by the permeation of your Essence into our land."

The Yinglong exhaled a stream of vapour.

"Father?"

The single-slit pupil within Yinglong's eye made Ayxin shiver. What emotion was engendered there? Not even after two centuries could Ayxin tell. He had arrived to serve his Father at the behest of his Clan, but that had been a lifetime ago. He didn't even know if his relatives still existed. Likely not, as humans were woefully short-lived. The world had changed drastically since then; the Humans world especially had transformed more abruptly in the last fifty years than it had for the previous five hundred.

The silence proved too oppressive for Ayxin to bear.

"He was weak, Father, but he was one of us. Another decade and he would have gained the ability to metamorph himself. You need to—"

The white-jade palace, an enormous cavern of granite smoothed out by the wind until it was pearlescent and achingly beautiful, shook as Ayxin's Father extended a limb.

An eagle's claw with serpent's scales, adorned by brilliant cobalt-emerald peacock feathers, solidified from the mist, its foreclaw as tall as Ayxin himself.

Ayxin knelt to kiss the claw, then prostrated himself.

"Please admonish me for presuming your wishes, Father."

"You will assume your original form until the culprits are brought before me for questioning. One wonders what it is about the matriarchal lineage that you loathe."

An ill-humoured punishment. Ayxin tried not to let the displeasure reach his, or as it were—her face. A true spawn of the Yinglong, Ayxin could change her gender at will. Both forms had advantages and disadvantages, though as their Father preferred the male form, so did all of his children. Therefore, assuming the female form showed others that Ayxin was in disfavour. It further attracted unwanted attention from the lower ranks, especially those whose intelligence was tied to their mortal lineage. When Ayxin was a wyrmling, she had spent decades as a female. There had been yearly contests to _woo_ her, as the humans would put it, a futile endeavour which gave Ayxin a feeling of ambivalence. Dragons were wanton by nature, though Ayxin had found no one worthy to bear her brood.

"If it pleases you, Father."

Outside, Golos was waiting for her. He was surprised to see Ayxin in her fairer humanoid form.

The Thunder Wyvern was one of the foremost powerful creatures within her Father's demesne, though his intelligence made him a blunt instrument.

"You looking to lay?" Golos tilted its head, mocking her.

Ayxin's response was glacial.

"I am right here," Golos smirked with teeth. "I told you we should have stayed put. Angkar was a snivelling fool, the heavens will not rain for his passing, and the earth will not shake. He was an insect, nothing more."

Ayxin gnashed her pearly teeth. Her siblings felt nothing for each other. If so, why was she bothered? Was it because of the lesser half of her heritage? Was that why she was prone to these sentimentalities?

"We're going on patrol!" Ayxin declared annoyedly. She would have to give Golos another sound thrashing if he tried anything. Her half-brother combined the worst of Draconic chimaeras: the savagery and impulse of the lascivious Thunder Wyvern and the prideful, compulsive desire of the Winged Dragon.

"I am hungry," Golos complained.

Ayxin sighed.

She looked toward the palace, where her Father had slumbered since immemorial. Before Ayxin was born, her mother...

The pearlescent dragon-kin shook her head, swallowing her all too human feelings.

She had wondered about Father's original mate, the first of her line. But all that was left was the dusty dowry, an Emperor's tithe, a time-faded silkscreen painting composed before the humans learned to recreate personages realistically. Ayxin's name was also unique amongst her siblings, consisting of a human syllable in place of the draconic tongue. "Ay" was Draconic for _air_. Its homophone meant "love". The second syllable, " _Xin"_ , derived from the Human language, read as "prosperity"; it was formed from three pictograms for "gold", though according to her Father, the archaic phonic was " _xùn_ "— meaning vessel.

_So she was a vessel of air?_ Or was her name a phonic for love and prosperity? Or maybe, she was a _Lover's Vessel?_

That possibility was too crude and morbid to entertain.

"I could do with a dozen goats," Golos reminded his half-sibling. In Golos' mind, she spent far too much time thinking and far too little time eating and doing what came naturally to dragons. "Maybe a carp. Think Ryxi dares to complain?"

Ignoring the wyvern's grievances, Ayxin mounted her half-brother. She dug her claws into his flanks, striking sparks from the azure scales. Golos grunted, then lifted into the air. Once he reached a viable altitude, his wings unfurled, running their full length, bristling with bright feathers. For the spawns closest to their progenitor's bloodline, reptilian scales and bright plumage featured prominently.

Finding the Humans would be difficult, assuming they had not retreated. They were diminutive beings, their presence almost negligible.

She would return to Angkars' demise and try her best to retrace any tracks.

Uncle and niece were up just before the first light.

Gwen hadn't slept a wink, though she was abuzz with energy.

True to Jun's prediction, her body had begun to absorb the vitality held captive within the Queen Bee. She could feel her Druidic Essence activate mote by mote, multiplying rapidly until its primal fecundity was spent. Sweating profusely and unable to sleep, Gwen sat on the bed and meditated until the alarm went off.

"You're looking refreshed," Jun pointed out.

Gwen told him about her swell of Druidic Essence.

"Good," her uncle congratulated her. "We should not forsake any potential paths you could take to master your Void abilities."

Gwen thanked her uncle. "Where do we go from here?"

"We head towards Lotus Peak. The higher we go, the more likely we will find something with lightning as its base element. We'll camp out until we can capture something, ideally several things, then immediately retreat for the outer regions. Luck pending, we'll be here a week, maybe two."

"What if those intelligent dragon-kin finds us? Do we fight them?"

"We can negotiate, or we can escape. At worst, you'll be activating your contingency beacon. Don't worry about me if that happens. Unless the Yinglong shows up, nothing will prevent me from making a bolt for it. They'll give up pursuit once we're south of the Dragon Pine."

The two emerged into the sickly daylight of the permanently overcast mountain, ready to move on.

Transmuted Flight was out of the question. It ruined the Transmutation function of their Optic-Cloaks, and the magic left a jet stream of mana distinct to Humans.

By mid-morning, Gwen and Jun penetrated the Sea of Clouds.

True to its name, the cloud sea circled the three peaks of Huangshan like a cat, enveloping the granite tops and its draconic-silhouetted pine trees like a shroud. Occasionally, the two caught glimpses of blue sky, affirming their orientation via revelatory confirmations of Lotus Peak. Most of the time, the misty haze made orientation difficult.

When the peak came into view again, Gwen felt slivers of ice stabbing her spine.

"I think the Yinglong is up there," she noted to her uncle. "My Divination is acting all funny."

"We're here to avoid it," he assured her. "Don't stare at the Peak too intently or anything. Let's not tempt fate."

More than once, they almost ran headfirst into the local fauna. The first time it was a harmless mountain goat. When they hid and made their observations, they could see that it had claws for feet and that its teeth were tooled to rend flesh. Not knowing if it was a part of a herd, they left it alone.

The next monster to encounter them wasn't so lucky.

The duo's first victim was a bird creature, a mere head shorter than Gwen from head to tail.

While Ariel distracted it with lightning sparks, Caliban snuck up in its spider form, made invisible by her new spell, and ambushed the creature by pinning it into a tree with its fore-limbs. The bird was then pulled, kicking, flapping and screeching into the Void-spider's all-consuming secondary maw.

The commotion meant that they had to relocate. Carrying Gwen on his back, Jun pushed upward for another kilometre, then turned downhill for another two before moving up again, forming a zig-zag trail as the duo made for the Lotus Peak. She recovered a minute later, citing that the bird, for all its pretty plumage, was lacklustre on all accounts.

When the sun reached its zenith, the duo arrived at the saddle of Lotus Peak.

"Let's get a lay of the land first. Pass me the map."

Jun produced a Divination-enhanced compass, a device that unscrambled the influence of leyline interference. Gwen watched and listened as Jun marked out three locations. A Sky Lake where magical creatures frequented, a grove that looked to be a prime nesting, and a gorge where Mermen were reported to have lightning-based abilities.

Now that they were above an altitude where less hardy plants could grow, the pine coverage thinned, making progress easier thanks to the hard granite underfoot. Newly vitalised with the pangolin's Essence, Gwen made easy progress, outpacing even Jun, who became out of breath after an almost sixty-degree climb that lasted forty minutes.

"Okay, take a break." Her uncle regarded her with a critical eye. She had leapt from rock to rock like a mountain goat. "I am an old man, you know? Have some decency for the elderly."

Gwen laughed, berating her uncle for his dishonesty.

Jun elected to self-buff, reinforcing himself with Enhanced abilities from the Transmutation school before they continued.

The Sky Lake came into view an hour later after the two ate their military ration of nutritious un-food. From a distance, the "Billabong", as Gwen would know it, was formed between two outcroppings that created a wide wedge. One end appeared to have been dammed by fallen debris from a shattered crag, suggesting that the lake was likely made intentionally rather than naturally formed. Drawing on her recollection of National Geographic, Gwen knew that Huangshan lacked the altitude for glaciers, adding to her suspicion that the lake was a thing of design.

The two remained cloaked and hidden as they surveyed their new hunting ground.

Besides the watering hole were various creatures, each bearing a hint of Draconic ancestry.

Goats the likeness of those Gwen had seen before roved in herds of a dozen and more. From a further edge of the lake, predatory fauna such as Owl-faced Bears warily watched the roving herd of omnivorous goats. The larger of the Owl-faced Bears particularly caught Jun's fancy, who noted its pelt could be converted into elemental-resistant battle armour.

"The Americans prefer their Golem Plates, but us traditionalists always value mobility and flexibility," her Ash Bringer remarked, the ethos of his achievements speaking for themselves.

The Owl-faced Bear they eyed was of the Asia-major species, more agile than stocky, reaching a little over the size of a full-grown man and weighing half a ton. The Draconic variant retained their hawkish facial features and cumbersome body, though their reptilian claws looked formidable.

"Look over there." Jun pointed. "Draconic-macaques."

_Goats and Macaques!_ Gwen's eyes widened at the sight of what she first thought was a dozen harmless fur balls hanging from trees. Now that she could adequately put into perspective what she was seeing, the damned things were numberless. They were so numerous that the enormous, heaven-piercing metasequoia beside the lake was drooping with the weight of their bodies!

"I think we're in luck." Jun's voice turned hopeful, pointing to a herd of snow-white deer led by a massive stag. "Check those out."

Gwen activated her Detect Magic, distinguishing that those were indeed Lightning-based creatures. The stag looked a little like a Kirin, with jutting antlers, a draconic face, scales covering most of the body, and hooves like jewels.

"Beautiful," she uttered, feeling a pang of guilt.

"Don't dwell on it," Jun reminded her. "Just one herd of those things could take out an entire season's crops. That hoard of monkeys could probably dismantle half of Hangzhou."

"There's something in the water as well." Gwen registered the peculiar refraction. "The surface is brimming with motes of Lightning."

Just as Gwen began to doubt her eyes, one of the goats approached the tranquil edge of the lake. It watched the surface warily, then, with great deliberation and care, began to lap.

To Gwen's eyes, the motes of lightning instantly condensed. The goat rose into the air as though stepping on invisible stones. It had made it a dozen meters when the water's surface exploded, revealing the head of a fish-cum-serpent creature with a cumbersome, armoured head, saliently characterised by two whiskers.

A Magical Carp! One whose dumb-founded expression was almost comical.

A jolt of Tyrian-purple lighting lashed the goat from the whiskers, paralysing it midair. With another powerful swish of its tail, the nine-meter odd creature lunged into the air as though swimming through water, took the goat in distended lips, and then dove back into the lake.

"A Dragon Carp!" Jun placed a hand on Gwen's shoulder. "That's no lake! It's a pool of condensed elemental mana! We're in luck!"

Uncle and niece spent the next hour marking down the traits and habits of fauna they could observe.

"We can start by isolating the smaller creatures. As for the larger ones, caution before action. We need to doubly affirm their numbers, intelligence, social groups, allies and enemies. One strike—that's all the chance we're getting each time. We take our prey and leave no traces. The more discreet our poaching, the more shots we can get at Core-harvesting. Hopefully, one of them would retain a Lightning spirit."

"Alright, Uncle." Gwen turned to the map and studied it carefully. The updated map was overlayed with keys and guides, with colour-coded annotations for all the different creatures, their routes and territories.

"If you want some meat tonight, though." Jun grinned. "I doubt anyone would miss one of those goats."