I returned to Rall’s Fort the same night of the hunt, holding a pack of fourth-evolution meat on my back. I was prepared to save Tyler’s team from a horde. It turned out that it wasn’t a problem. Aiden had third-evolution beasts prowling the perimeter like prehistoric guard dogs, as the excavation team worked around the clock to repair the systems.

  I walked into the building, and Tyler yelled, “Mira! Come see this!”

  I followed Tyler through an elegant building. Inside, I found that the small building was actually a single mansion, with dozens of rooms, kitchens, and social areas. There was also a grand bedroom, bathrooms, and a swimming pool inside, albeit one that was nearly black with algae. There was just one thing off with the scene—

  Everything was massive. The smallest Jacksmore women must have been eight feet tall to justify the size of the furniture.

  “Isn’t that crazy?” Tyler said. “I feel like a Persian prince just looking at the bed.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Well, someone’ll be.”

  “Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that…”

  “No. As cool as it’d be to live here, there’s someone who would pay a hundred trillion in raw resources to put a ten-year lease on this as a summer home. And all that money is going to go to you.”

  I punched his chest lightly, and his dim eyes lit up again.

  “We’re going to have all sales in the form of resources,” I said. “So you’ll be able to shop online for literally anything, including convenience robots and whatever you want. So stop thinking about ancient alien stuff, and start thinking about new alien stuff. You got the universe in your hand.”

  Tyler responded with a cheesy grin. “Did I ever say I wanted to live here? This place sucks. You’d need to use a stool to do anything; their furniture is gaudy, and it’s generally creepy.”

  “You’re shameless.”

  “Indeed… that said…”

  I frowned.

  “I do want one of the robots,” Tyler pleaded. “I really want a robot. For posterity, of course.”

  “The robots?”

  “Yeah. The translation system calls them warframes. It’s the name for the mecha robots that advanced civilizations use. These ones are really cool.”

  “Show me.”

  I followed him outside and to another building that was far more secure. The team was working on the building, and after saying hi briefly, they went back to work, almost vibrating with excitement. Tyler led me through two corridors and down a flight of stairs. We went through three access doors as well, and still hadn’t seen the robot.

  “You asked that them to put down literally everything until they found the robots, didn’t you?” I asked dryly.

  “This is my city,” Tyler deadpanned. “I need to know if there’s weapons of mass destruction underneath it… and how cool they are.”

  My eyes deadened, but he pushed on with a grin as he put his hand on the last door. It lit up, and with a shush hiss, the door opened, revealing a massive warehouse. Once I saw what was inside, I was floored, too. There were indeed warframes, but they weren’t the classic Gundams we watched on cartoons as children; they looked closer to spiders, with tanky bodies and flexible movement systems. Most had been damaged in some way, but a few were pristine.

  “That’s wild…” I said.

  “Yeah. Completely useless, but come on… can I have one?”

  I sighed. “If you can run this place well, yes, I’ll give one to you. But if you run around gawking over robots instead of doing your job… I’ll sell it and use the money to hire people.”

  Tyler ignored the threat and hugged me. “You’re the best sis!”

  I chuckled and ruffled his hair. “Now get to work.”

  “I’ll put off unlocking them, but you need to check it out when they’re done,” Tyler said as we returned outside. It was almost evening, and the cooks sat around the campfire cooking food.

  The guard beasts were lying outside the wall, hoping to get some. I had something better.

  I opened a bag of fourth-generation meat that Trant’s cooks had already processed. The moment the sealing bag unleashed its fragrance, the area fell still.

  I walked into the center of them.

  “You’re my new wraiths, huh?” I asked.

  Massive beasts circled Kline and me, silently, rabid yet forcing themselves to be docile.

  “If so, allow me to let you taste what we offer you.”

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  I gave them all a piece and then watched them convulse and struggle to handle the profound power within the small strips of jerky I gave them.

  “If you’re struggling with that, you have centuries and countless battles to go before you can walk through that next ring. Or… you can stick with me. Choose wisely.”

  I left them and returned to the camp, where I sat beside the fire, listening to the day’s events and projects with Kline curled in my lap. It was a nice respite.

  “Are you going back tomorrow?” Aiden asked.

  I shook my head. “No. I’ll be focused on this.” I slapped the backpack of fourth-evolution meat I brought back from Hellfine.

  “Eating?” Tyler asked.

  “Processing,” I said. “Turns out, Kline and I have the strength to fight the beasts, but we’re lacking the oomph to leave the mountain, so our only goal is to evolve our soul cores.”

  The group thought I was joking, but the next day, Kline and I sat in front of a skillet as I threaded and cleansed fourth-evolution meat. Despite the cuts being the size of bacon bits, I was sweating profusely. Kline wasn’t processing the meat directly, but using his aura and neara processing techniques to eat small pieces raw. The power was so great that one of those bacon-bit-sized pieces, if not processed, would likely make a human without a core explode, and possibly kill a second evolution.

  Tyler didn’t get that until I ate a few of them at once as a demonstration, and my whole body started to tremble.

  “How many thirds do you have to eat before you can fight one of those things?” he asked.

  “Thousands,” I replied. “At least for most things, anyway.”

  It took centuries to ascend between the rings, making life in Areswood a lucky game of king of the hill, where the strongest beast is a minnow on the other side of the domain. Those who weren’t born in an upper ring but chose to ascend and survived held more power than I could imagine. I had only meat from ring-borns and third-evolutions in the Fifth Ring, on a section of the mountain that was culled regularly by the Drokai. I was still not strong enough to fight the real threats that came out near the Crown in the Sixth Ring.

  I knew that, so I kept eating.

  By the end of the first week, Kline and I had processed two pounds of meat. By the end of the second, we had processed ten. Then, it went to twenty. Fifty. Two hundred. Soon, I was bringing back a thousand pounds of meat with us at a time, and feeding small pieces to our guard dogs while we ate.

  As we were preparing, Malo made an announcement.

  “I’m ready to evolve,” he said.

  “Good,” I said, giving him a pure sunrise core and a series of cleansing elixirs. “I wish you luck.”

  Malo had spent a gold request to obtain evolution techniques up to the fourth evolution, and had the best cleansing elixirs obtainable, at least in the first three domains. So when he disappeared, he was in good hands. He left for three days, and Tyler thought he was dead, but when he returned, it was like a reckoning. He came out radiating a thrilling sense of power that made my eyes glitter, and filled the others with dread.

  “Let’s fight,” I said—and we did.

  It was no holds barred now. It was a real duel. I summoned my horde to provide distance as I shot multi-shot lasers from Nymbral at him. They were blinding, but he could see through Divine Eyes with his eyes shut, so he rushed around, creating arcing strikes that buckled the ground, leaving fissures in their wake.

  Expansion was a powerful tool that repeated amplification properties. When a person struck, it absorbed external mana as fuel, then repeated the attack and amplified it to expand its power.

  Due to that property, he could destroy the area with vicious might. Kline and I could handle him together, but his ability to send sprawling arcs of void magic that deleted the atmosphere was too nerve-racking to fight. I also couldn’t freeze out his techniques anymore. I could lower and destabilize them, but beyond that, we were fighting normally.

  I was glad he made a soul pact to not harm us—otherwise, I’d have to put him down. I gave him power before I was ready. However, since he had that strong pact, he was an extension of my strength, and I was thrilled about it.

  Such was the natures of leading armies.

  Every morning, after Tyler’s training, he, Kline, and I would spar, honing our skills before I returned to threading meat for my soul core.

  Time flew on like that. By the end of the second month of summer, I was consuming full steaks of fourth-evolution meat and processing a hundred pounds a day, a massive amount that meant nothing considering the lizard I killed was two hundred tons. So I kicked up the regimen, keeping pace until I could thread five hundred pounds a day. Throughout it all, I fed meat to Malo and the guard beasts, building their strength as the rest ate third-evolution meat and built their strength.

  In our minds, power wasn’t everything—but having it was. So we focused our efforts as the team systematically hacked through the Jacksmore technology.

  And in the blink of an eye, it was over.

  “Malo,” I said. “Aiden’s beasts can guard this place. So, I’ll need you to oversee the third-evolutions in Wraithwood. Can you do that?”

  Malo nodded. “As you wish.”

  “What about me?” Tyler asked.

  “You’re staying here. I’ll be bringing Sarah and your friends back. I’ll need this place renovated by next summer. So we’ll be sending you an army of contractors. Trigan’s handling the details.”

  Tyler nodded nervously. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  I clapped his shoulder and returned to Wraithwood, finding that throughout the summer, over twenty people had become third-evolution entities. They weren’t half as powerful as Malo, but they were so powerful that their status had become unstable and awkward. So I lined them up and had them stare down Malo, who made even the strongest of them look like freshly born cubs.

  Malo spoke sternly. “If any of you thought that you were entitled to privileges, you’re wrong. You’re not entitled to anything. If anything, you’re to be under more scrutiny until the people trust you to use their power for them, instead of yourselves. The coup left scars and challenges—and you will face that head-on. Those who do will obtain privileges; those who don’t will face consequences. Do you understand?”

  The soldiers yelled, “Yes, sir!” as I walked away with Trigan.

  “Explain this year’s harvest,” I said.

  “We’re sending five hundred soldiers to Rall’s Fort, as well as three hundred contractors and eager business people,” Trigan said. “We’re importing another thousand, most of which are specialized individuals that I’ll be training to run Wraithwood when I go to the fort.”

  “Good man. Train them well and get the fort into shape. And get a marketer. We’re going to trade Jacksmore property in exchange for the best talent in the universe. So we need that place to look like a summer vacation spot in the promotional videos.”

  Trigan smiled. “I know the exact person we need.”