Chapter 461

Nick gasped as he snapped back to the physical world with a jolt.When he came to, back in the Crystal Forest, he was still kneeling in the dirt, his hand resting on the mastiff's head. The hound was watching him, neck tilted in quiet recognition, as a fragmented question echoed through their new bond.

Nick swallowed the lump in his throat. He understood now. Aleister had shattered Akas to save the spirit from total corruption, scattering the pieces across the frontier so the fae could never claim the whole. It was a desperate act of love by a young man pushed to the very edge of the world, who’d wanted to preserve something of his companion.

Unfortunately, the shattering had rent most memories asunder, so he was unlikely ever to get a complete picture. Perhaps, with time and growth, Akas could restore some of them. He still had many questions about the man, and hopefully, he’d find out more when the spirit had recovered.

"I know what happened," he said softly, patting the great beast. “I think I also know how to keep it from hurting you again.”

When he looked at the shifting spirit through , he could tell the alien curse of the fae was still there, a phantom scar buried deep within his soul, something that urged him toward viciousness and bayed for blood. But unlike a century ago, the corruption was no longer anchored.

The fae themselves had been eradicated from the Green Ocean during the dungeon’s destruction. The cataclysmic alchemical explosion that crystallized this very forest had washed away their ancient magic, erasing their presence from the land. The rot clinging to Akas was nothing more than a dead echo, a parasite that had lost its purpose.

It just needed to be excised.

For a moment, Nick considered going at it manually, trying to pry the cloying sickness from each fragment of memory, but then an idea struck him, and he smiled.

With great care, Nick drew on his new Fire Affinity, summoning a thread of cleansing heat.

Focusing on his desire to restore his familiar, he channeled the warmth down his arm and into the hound's core, drawing on the experience he had gained months earlier when he carefully untangled the lycanthropy curse from the newly turned wolves.

It was a delicate process, as he had to separate the healthy violet mana from the cloying sweetness of the rot without harming the underlying soul.

Nick worked methodically, letting the fire serve as a surgeon's scalpel. Slowly, he found the edges of the phantom scar, isolated the corrupted pathways, and incinerated them.

Akas shivered, leaning heavily into the touch as the last vestiges of its century-long agony were cauterized and sealed.

Eventually, his mana stabilized, glowing with renewed vibrancy.

It wasn’t quite healthy, not after being diminished for so long, but growth was now possible, and over time it would be restored.

“We serve... the Master,” Akas projected, sounding much more peaceful.

"You serve the House," Nick corrected gently, standing. "Keep the forest safe. Skim the excess power, grow strong, and tear apart anything that tries to claim these crystals. When the time comes, I will return to see how much you have grown.”

The mastiff bowed its head, turned, and padded silently through the quartz trees, its form dissolving into the ether.

Nick stood in the clearing for a long moment, listening to the wind’s quiet rustle and savoring the sense of closure. With this, the frontier was almost secure. The lingering ghosts of the past had been laid to rest, bound to serve and protect the future.

Seeing that they were done, Talbot stood up, stretching his front legs elegantly.

“A rather tragic tale, I suppose,” the Guardian Beast noted, his tone unusually gentle. “But with a fitting end. The mutt has a purpose again, and for a creature of the ether to lack one is a terrible thing.”

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"He is family, in a way," Nick said, turning back toward the town. "And we Crowleys take care of our own.”

They flew back over the Green Ocean as the first true light of dawn began to paint the sky above Floria, and the town stirred to life. Laborers headed to work, merchants opened their shutters, and the smell of fresh bread drifted from the bakeries.

Nick took a deep breath, looking at the thriving bastion of civilization they had built on the edge of the wild. The streets were clean, the walls sturdy, and the people moved with purpose rather than fear. He appreciated its stark beauty, the quiet triumph of order rising from chaos, without letting himself get lost in sentimentality. He had fought hard for this peace, but his work was far from over.

The anxiety from his mother's revelation had hardened into a cold resolve. Getting confirmation that reincarnation was real here, and not a freak accident, was troubling, especially because it seemed to carry a terrible connotation, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now.

His hand had been shown when he’d decided to give up stealth and save the Tower. Perhaps there might have been a way to keep his actions in the Sunlands hidden from the nobility, with only the Shadows knowing the truth, but Hone had taken that option from him when he’d begun summoning demons.

With the northern campaign looming, Nick decided to settle his mind by preparing for travel. He touched down just beyond the wall and headed toward the bustling merchant square.

They would need supplies for the road, and while he could easily outfit a small army from the manor's stores, Nick preferred to choose his own essentials.

His first stop was a trusted butcher—the one his mother used to sell her thunderhoof meat to—where he purchased several thick rolls of cured, spiced meats meant to last for weeks without spoiling, even without the benefits of a spatial ring.

"Lord Nicholas," the man said, hastily wiping his hands on his apron and bowing deeply. "It is an honor. Please accept the provisions as a gift. Your family has done so much for us.”

"I appreciate the sentiment, but no," Nick replied, placing the exact amount of silver coins on the wooden counter. "Take the payment, good man. You have a business to run.”

He repeated the process at the bakeries for hardtack and travel bread, and at the general store for enchanted rope, whetstones, and a few high-quality bedrolls. The merchants invariably tried to offer him steep discounts out of respect for his title, but Nick politely and firmly insisted on paying full price and vanished the goods into his spatial ring.

Floria thrived because House Crowley respected the value of labor, and he wasn't going to undermine that principle for a few coppers.

As he walked between the market stalls, Nick sketched out his plans for the immediate future.

Reaching the threshold of Prestige required twelve levels, but given that he was level eighty-eight, such a feat demanded an exponential amount of experience.

Hunting beasts in the Green Ocean would yield poor returns unless he made an expedition into its deepest reaches, and that would risk encountering ancient monsters he had no hope of defeating. To grow faster, he needed to clash with enemies at the upper bound of mortality, and in great numbers.

Toneburg, and the north in general, would provide exactly that. It was packed with high-tier knights, battle-mages, and seasoned commanders because of the war. While some would be friendly, he suspected that many others would not.

They would serve as his stepping stones. By systematically dismantling House Ultimer's elite forces, Nick calculated he could gain enough experience to push his level into the final stretch, all while refining his combat flow so that when the time came for his ascension, he would not be left bumbling.

He doubted that Ephor Ultimer would give him the time he’d need to get used to all his power after all.

Satisfied with a loose plan, Nick left the market and headed toward the town’s northeastern district, bypassing the new constructions where numerous workers and mages were working in unison, all bearing the sigils of one of the two merchant houses he’d asked for help.

Plumes of oddly colored smoke drifted from the chimney of a familiar building, and a strange smell filled the air, leaving a staticky feeling in the ether.

With curiosity, he opened the door to Ogden's alchemy shop, bypassing the public area to enter the backrooms.

Glass vials bubbled with strange liquids, dried herbs hung from the rafters in neat bundles, and the heat radiating from the central furnace was intense.

Rhea stood over a heavy-bottomed iron cauldron, her sleeves rolled up, wearing thick goggles to protect her eyes. She was in the zone, entirely absorbed in her craft.

Ogden sat in a high-backed wooden chair a few feet away, watching her with the unforgiving scrutiny of a master grading a final exam.

Nick stepped inside, letting the door close softly behind him so as not to break her concentration.

It quickly became clear that Rhea was in the final, volatile stages of distilling the Behemoth core. Her goal was to brew a conceptual solvent, a highly corrosive liquid designed to unravel physical and magical defenses.

They’d need it when it came time to breach the Ultimer estate. His trick with was unlikely to work against the wards cast by a Prestige-tier artificer, after all.

It was a perilous undertaking. Cores of that power were aggressive, and forcing their dense mana to liquefy was akin to trying to bottle a thunderstorm.

He’d know, considering that he’d barely been able to absorb a portion of the Basilisk’s.

The green sludge in the cauldron bubbled violently, hissing as it threatened to boil over the iron rim. The ambient mana in the shop spiked, a clear warning that the concoction was about to detonate.

"It is destabilizing," Ogden remarked flatly, not moving an inch to help her. “But if you try to force it down with sheer mana, it will blow the roof off my shop, and you will be scrubbing soot for a decade before I let you try anything more complex than a burn cure.”

Despite the impending doom, Rhea didn’t seem worried.

Instead of fighting the volatile brew with brute force, she reached for a small vial of chalky powder. She measured a minuscule pinch and dropped it directly into the bubbling sludge.

Only then did she cast a spell on it, using the powder as a catalyst to channel her magic without triggering a chain reaction.

gave Nick insight into the process, and he watched as the powder formed a temporary bridge between the conflicting energies within the cauldron.

Soon enough, the violent hissing ceased, and the sludge rapidly shifted from a bubbling green to a smooth liquid glowing a soft emerald.

Rhea let out a long, shaky breath, quickly lifting the cauldron from the heat and carefully pouring the solvent into a set of crystal flasks.

Though the show of alchemy was intriguing in its own right—and he had little doubt Rhea had gained some much-needed experience from it—it sparked a thought.

He had been trying to combine his elements by simply weaving them together with superior control, forcing them to cooperate. But elements naturally resisted one another. Fire sought to consume the air; water sought to drown the fire. Lightning did its own thing, not to mention kinetic and spiritual energies.

Alchemy circumvented that resistance by introducing an intermediary. A catalyst that temporarily altered the rules of engagement, enabling opposing forces to mix without destroying one another.