“No…no.” Edward moaned. “It’s wasted.” He growled at the…thing in the containment cylinder. It was a body, with golden hair and perfect features, but it was practically lifeless. If the spell circles inscribed in the device weren’t working, the thing inside wouldn’t even breathe, and its heart wouldn’t beat. 

“The sample is too identical to the original…” he muttered. On the desk behind him, a pen wrote on a notebook by itself, transcribing his words. The tool was an old one, but it was perfectly calibrated to his voice and mannerisms, meaning that it wouldn’t mishear his words, or substitute them for the wrong ones, making a cogent sentence to an unintelligible one. 

The body inside the preservation cylinder was that of a four or five-year-old girl, grown from one of the droplets given to him by his grandson. The first droplet he used up trying to access the shard. It had worked, too, for a long moment. The energy inherent in the blood resonated with the shard, but the process of opening its secrets took too long. The blood ran out of whatever energy was within it and the resonance ended. 

He had limited options to pursue as long as he didn’t actually have the woman in his hands, and one of those options turned out to be a bust. Of course, he knew there was a high likelihood of failure to clone, though he half hoped that she had not manifested her Domain yet. But failure meant that she either had or was so close to that step that it didn’t matter much. The Immutable Truths of Reality ensured that every Domain holder was unique, and the only use of that thing inside the cylinder was as a backup body. 

Clone incarnations were different from backups, of course. One was completely without an Anima, while the other had a sliver animating it. The Davar woman’s clone in front of his was bereft of Anima, but…

Hmm, if her current body died, there was a chance that her freed Anima would latch on to this one. Ah, but what about the limits of distance?

Was her Anima and Domain strong enough to latch on to a body more than five hundred leagues away? Dare he risk possibly losing the key to a gamble? It turned out that subduing the woman was much harder than expected, and perhaps it would require either his efforts or the empire’s Guardian…but moving himself or the other would be unwise. The gods only knew who lay hidden waiting for him to leave himself vulnerable. After all, there was a reason he’d fled to the hinterlands to build up his base of power. 

The Bresian Republic wasn’t completely cut off from greater civilisation, and it would only take a single unlucky moment to fail. Yes, he had his backup body, but it wasn’t as if there was a lack of techniques that killed the Anima completely. Every advantage has a countermeasure…

Well, it would be a waste to scrap the clone body now. And on the off chance that the woman died within range, then he would have the advantage. Hmm, but what are the chances she might possess this body remotely? 

She wasn’t an Archmagus, and even then, one such as he would need to physically touch the vessel to infuse a split-off fragment into it. So he judged the chances were slim to none, and if he did put protections in place, then the chance of her Anima taking over the body should hers die also drop down to nil. Well, some containment spell circles would do. 

Then…off to the next options. He still had three droplets of blood, and three chances to find a way to open the shard’s secrets through it. Still, he would not be remiss in seeking the original. 

He cast a communication spell to exhort his grandson. “Find her and bring her to me!”

___________

The first caravan of supplies turned out to be an uneventful affair. Yuriko spent most of it on overwatch from the skies above, while half of her students had joined, the rest remained in the fortress. Well, Sofia, Juliette, and the wolfkin boys played at being caravan guards anyway. 

“Played at” since it was Yuriko who took out the threats. However, it was mainly because those threats were Chaos beasts moving towards the fortress rather than aiming for the caravan itself. 

“There they are again,” Yuriko muttered as she prepped her pebbles to shoot the Chaos Beasts down. These looked like horses, though they had three horns lined up in a row, and necks that were about twice as long as a regular horse. There were about a dozen of them galloping southwest, and each of the creatures gave off a whiff of Chaos from their breaths. They were also a couple of leagues away.

Yuriko was just under the clouds, roughly four longstrides above the ground. She was sure her students and the caravan didn’t know she was up here since they had not been informed anyway. Two leagues were far beyond the maximum range she’d ever tried before, and that was with a Plasma Caster that used bolts that were barely affected by the winds and gravity. A pebble might be affected by both depending on how much Animus she invested into them. 

Then again, it wasn’t as if she had limited storage now. She hadn’t expanded her external storage by much simply because she didn’t have techniques that used up that many lumens. Her normal regeneration rate was pretty good in the Chaos Sea or the planes, but it was practically nonexistent here. However, she was able to convert Radiant energy to Animus pretty easily, even if it wasn’t very efficient, and since she regenerated Radiant energy by the thousands of motes every second, she never had to worry about running out of Animus ever again. 

Hmmm, perhaps she should focus on techniques to use that aspect of hers, huh? Yuriko blinked and chuckled to herself. She’d been too preoccupied with the shiny new toy that was Arcanas Weaving lately. It was mostly because that discipline had a clear roadmap. Animus techniques, beyond the shared basics, were deeply personal after all, and while they were much better compared to any spell, why should she try to invent a new way to build a carriage when there was already a working model and blueprint she could just as easily follow? Arcana Weaving’s disadvantage was that excessive Chaos destabilised the spells, so it was unlikely she’d be able to use them in the Chaos Sea. But since she could do Chaos Shaping instead, and pattern it after the spells she knew, it would hardly be a problem. 

She held a pebble over her palm and infused it with Radiant energy. She built an Animus construct around it to hold the energy as well as to give it a more aerodynamic shape. More Animus meant more Radiant energy could be held in the pebble without melting it to goo…

Once she sunk nearly two hundred lumens and an equal amount of motes, she aimed at the lead Chaos beast and let loose. 

Wsst! Boom!

The pebble slammed against the leading tri-horn and exploded in its chest. It, and the one next to it turned to ashes as they were consumed by Radiant flame. Yuriko frowned, somewhat disappointed by the size of the explosion which was barely three paces across. 

“Are the ambient Elemental energies interfering with both Radiant energy and Animus?” She mused. “Or is it a failure of my design?”

She was somewhat leaning towards the latter since the structure was hasty work, but she did expect the explosion to be bigger. Hmmm. Perhaps the Animus interfered with the Radiant? Or she needed to adjust the structures. She had opted to just wrap the Animus around the pebble with the Radiant energy contained in between. 

Perhaps she should imbed a spell into the pebble instead. Or maybe with the Animus technique? Her previous efforts weren’t all that good since they interfered with each other. Elemental energies, other than Radiant, which she wasn’t sure was classified in the same family anyway, interfered with her Animus. Well, it was either her Animus shifted towards becoming the Elemental energy she channelled, or it diffused into ambient Chaos which then reacted badly with the ambient Elemental energy. 

Ambient Chaos did funny things in this environment. No, actually, Animus that degraded to ambient Chaos carried traces of its origin, which then affected the Elemental energies. Her degraded Animus tended to combust into Radiant flares fairly easily, especially if it was daytime. If it happened in the open, then there wasn’t a problem, but if the ambient Chaos had seeped into something, such as a wall of a building, or a support pillar… which then combusted to Radiant and consumed everything else around it… 

Granted, the chances of that happening were minuscule, but the amount of Animus Yuriko held within her was prodigious. Animus that was locked into a form, such as her sunblades, didn’t degrade to ambient Chaos, thankfully, but was consumed by her Radiant energy. 

Yuriko shook her head as her thoughts ran far afield. The tri-horns had panicked and changed directions, though a couple at the back broke away from the pack entirely. Yuriko shot them with the next pebble, this one still Animus and Radiant laced, but she shaped the Animus into little spikes. The blast resulted in two dead tri-horns that were riddled with holes and burn marks. She finished off the herd afterwards with basic bullets that simply penetrated, but her last pebble contained a trace of her Terror Mien, latched on to an Intimidation spell. Er, she wasn’t sure if it was the spell or her Mien that caused the tri-horn to keel over and die…

Afterwards, the rest of the run was quiet. She observed her proteges accomplishing their mission, and watched what was unloaded, which had not been food, but war materiel as well as other commercial and industrial reagents. Then, the caravan was loaded with passengers and other goods to bring back to Bresia, though the latter was woefully few. The return trip took just as long, but soon enough, they returned to Greyith. 

Over the next few weeks, Yuriko spent her time on overwatch or part of the Chaos Beast extermination force. The Ishodirians had not sortied from the outposts, but they had been causing the overflows. They were also clearly able to direct the beasts, even if that control was tenuous and basic. 

The Season of Air slowly marched towards its end, with little changes other than the storms and the beginning of cold. Greyith Strip was thankfully somewhat warm and was not beset by extreme cold. It was sometimes unbearably humid, especially when there was a storm over the horizon. 

Constant practice and meditation had her usage of Will and Intent improve, but she was frustrated by the slowness. She was nowhere near the limit of her Stage and also unaware of where that limit was. It changed depending on the Ancient, apparently, so Damien’s memories weren’t able to give her any precise numbers. 

Her Anima reach had only grown by a couple of paces, and she blamed the lack of worthwhile challenges for the slow growth. She was able to add another strand of consciousness to her arsenal and was able to maintain another sunblade into her maximum sustained use beyond what her Anima reach would normally progress. She assimilated more memories and honed her Will against their encroachment, but she still felt it was slow. Climbing towards Manifestation might take longer than advancing from Actualisation to Transformation… No, it would take longer…the memories were clear. It might take a few more years, or forever if she got stuck. If only she could gain enlightenment…

But flashes of insight were hard to come by when all she did was the same thing over and over again. 

Thus, the Season of Air came to a close and the hostilities cooled with the frozen winds. Yuriko had been a bit nonchalant about the coming Celestial Refraction as she recalled how the last one had brought her into the dreamscape and into another realm entirely.

But when that day came, she was surprised at what happened. The familiar absolute darkness did not arrive. Instead, the skies burst into brilliant, multi-coloured hues, which then shaped into distinct figures. 

Humanoid figures that suddenly seemed as if they were staring straight at her.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep