[ Your Ecologist Tier 1 Utility Skill [Verdant Toolset] leveled up to Adept level]

[All your Ecologist Tier 1 Skills have reached Adept level]

[Your Ecologist Archetype leveled up to Adept level]

[Your Awareness leveled up to Adept level]

[Your Endurance has received a boost from your Adept level Ecologist Archetype]

[All Archetypes at your Class Tier have reached Adept level]

[Your UNDEFINED Tier 1 Class has leveled up to Adept]

[Congratulations! You will receive a choice of advancement]

[Select one of the following]

[True Rune]

[Skill Point]

[Class Trait]

Evelyn let a deep sigh of relief. Part of her had expected that she would receive a kill notification.

Which of course, was an absurd thought; not even in her wildest dreams, even with all the extra help received, could a Tier 1 like Evelyn be close to killing a Tier 4 like Kornos. She was letting fear reign over her heart. It wasn't like her at all to lose her cool like that.

If they were going to survive this, Evelyn needed to get a hold of her new, increased emotions.

She put an ear to Kornos back and focused her Awareness. Closing her eyes, she concentrated her sense of hearing, looking for a heartbeat until she found it. Kornos was alive, just unconscious.

"Thank you for not dying on me, big guy."

Now the question remained: was Doctor Crowley out of Kornos, or would she have to run away from him the moment he woke up?

Evelyn moved the dragon wings out of the way and inspected his back and the terrible scars that disfigured it, the remains of the Overbloom tattoo it once had in what remained of healthy skin.

Whatever ink or other method had been used to tattoo him in the past was still visible, even on the dragon scales that had grown recently. There was the tip of the broken spear and little bits of flowers and vines around it that would have surrounded the whole thing. Otherwise, it was pretty unrecognizable as Overbloom's symbol.

She tried to find a pattern in the scars, but they were more brutal than premeditated, like one would expect surgical scars to be. The mark of claws and fury was evident, even after many years of healing. Pushing her improved Awareness, Evelyn failed to recognize any kind of runutronic pattern at all in the scars; they were far too chaotic.

Either her Awareness wasn't up to par to find a secret design in the scarred skin, even after getting it to Adept, or she had made an error of judgment. There had been a clear blue glow coming from his back, just like from his eyes, while directly connected to him. But how? If the way it worked was the same as with the scarflock, then the scars should have been the answer.

What was she not seeing?

Suddenly, Evelyn felt a soft touch on her back followed by a pinch at the base of her nape. She snapped around to see who or what it was, but there was nothing behind her. Confused, she touched her back, finding no sign of anything strange.

"What was...?" She started asking as she passed her human fingers behind her neck, looking at Kornos' back at the same time.

In the same place that she had felt small fingers pinch her, at the base of his nape, the tip of a broken spear tattoo remained undamaged by scars.

Evelyn realized the terrible truth at that moment. The scars weren't a sign of Crowley putting runitronics inside him. They were a sign that Kornos had noticed something was wrong at some point, and just like a wild animal trying to get rid of a parasite, he had tried to claw it out.

The scars weren't the source of Crowley's control. Somehow, the true source of the puppet strings came from the most ironic and insulting place possible.

It was the Overbloom tattoo.

Evelyn didn't waste any time. She was recovering mana bit by bit, but it wouldn't be enough to make cable vines to restrain Kornos again. If she failed once more, the one who would awaken wouldn't be her friend and mentor.

The knife was too deep into his body to be of use. She tried pulling it at full force with both arms, but it didn't move an inch. Whatever it had done, had at least managed to knock him out, giving her some time to find the real answer.

"How do I remove a tattoo if I can't damage his skin beyond his regeneration? Wait... the rest of the back didn't regenerate. Why is that?"

Evelyn's mind was in a race against the ticking of the clock. A soft growl escaped Kornos' lips, indicating he was near to waking up. Her time to save him was running out.

She put her hands to her head, focusing on all her lessons, revising every little detail that could give her the solution.

"Regeneration comes from Endurance." She started to recite, as she had been taught. "As long as you have some boost of mana to it, you will be able to heal with time. Better Endurance means better stamina and regeneration, as well as physical resistance to damage. I have access to Endurance because it's the secondary Stat to my Ecologist Archetype. That's because it's assigned to Awareness as its primary, though it could be the other way."

Kornos moved an ear, his growls getting louder bit by bit.

"A Classer gets Stats from their Archetypes. Chimeras get them from monster Aspects. So, what Aspect does Kornos have boosting his Endurance? The dragon Aspect gave him scales and wings. Those feel like Endurance based Aspect Skills, but it's too recent. He wouldn't have had it back then. So even if he had something else boosting his Endurance, he didn't have a specific Aspect assigned to it, just like I don't have an Archetype on it right now."

A big, clawed finger started twitching on the mutant's hand.

"Come on, Evelyn, think! He has the manticore, sphinx, and griffin Aspects. Which one would boost his Endurance? Sphinx is on his Awareness, I'm sure of it. He can always tell when someone is lying, and he is killer with riddles. The manticore must be on his Strength and the griffon on Dexterity, then. So which one would have boosted Endurance as secondary before he got the dragon Aspect?"

A sphinx is a monster of high wisdom and intelligence. Kornos was big and strong, but he was far from being stupid. He had been capable of unearthing an ancient temple, researching a lost religion, and discovering an entire power system. The King Chimera was actually a very smart man, often underestimated due to his powerful physique. That led her to believe the sphinx was boosting his Intellect as a secondary Stat.

A manticore was a predator monster, savage and fast. It would boost Strength and Dexterity for sure, but it was assigned to Strength, given how lion-like Kornos' body had always looked.

Then there was the griffin, a monster that is part lion and part bird. It had been a popular mount before the invention of flying runitronic vehicles. That meant Dexterity. But it could also fly for a very long time across vast distances, against the most terrible weather.

That was Endurance.

So what did the griffon give to Kornos' body? He had no bird legs to speak of, which only made sense; a griffin's hind legs are lion legs.

Evelyn looked down at the feathery tail on the chimera, now longer and closer to a dragon's, but covered in feathers nonetheless.

Kornos' claws had been capable of nullifying his own Endurance enough to leave permanent scars. His Strength had an Aspect directly assigned, but his Endurance was just boosted as a secondary Stat by the griffin.

So that meant that the Strength of the manticore Aspect, already at Tier 4, would overcome his Endurance, boosted as secondary by the Tier 4 griffin Aspect and the assigned Tier 2 Aspect of the dragon.

Evelyn would not be able to move one of his heavy arms or push his claws to pierce the scaled skin with enough power to tear all of it out. Could another part of his body, mutated by the manticore Aspect, work instead?

She went to his tail and quickly started to part the feathers at the tip, looking for something she knew would be there. On the tip of it, hidden by a lump of griffin feathers, there was a small scorpion sting, filled with a powerful manticore's acidic venom.

Just as Kornos started to move, Evelyn took the tail and plunged the manticore stinger right into the tattoo fragment.

A roar of pain came out of Kornos' mouth as his eyes opened wide. The mutant screamed as his eyes flickered blue. Crowley was still there.

But he would not be for much longer, as the acidic venom on his own stinger made short work of his tough skin, consuming the spearhead of Overbloom's symbol and with it, the last remaining part of whatever it was that Crowley had used to control him.

Evelyn shuddered in relief as the blue disappeared from the eyes of Kornos, and he fell to his knees, breathing heavy as he grimaced in pain. With a wet and disgusting sound, he took his own tail stinger from his neck, acid venom still dripping from its tip, sizzling on the metal floor as it touched it. The feathers moved to cover it again, hiding it from view until it was needed again.

"Kornos?" She asked, grasping the metalwood staff. "Is that you?"

The King Chimera got up slowly, standing tall.

"Yeah, little pup." Said Kornos. "It's me. You saved me."

Evelyn rushed to him and hugged him as hard as she could, sobbing even harder, as she could never do as a little girl with stunted emotions.

"Don't you ever scare me like that again." She managed to say between sobs.

He almost hugged her back, but hesitated before pulling her away. Confused, Evelyn noticed there was something strange in his facial expression.

Shame.

"What's wrong? We are so close, Kornos. Crowley must be around here somewhere. Now that you are free from his control, you can take him easily. He may be high Tier, but he's a runicron. He can do nothing against you in direct combat!"

But the chimera didn't show the same degree of positivity as she did.

"My mind has been cleared. I remember now." He said, both his lion ears and his tail were down. "The things I've done."

"Don't worry about that big guy, you didn't hurt me, see?" She said, trying to cheer him up by showing him she had no wounds."It wasn't your fault, and besides, we did it! We are here in the underground lab. Now let's finish this, defeat that bastard, get Alice back to her body, and bury this cursed place."

Kornos stayed silent and started to walk away. Looking in that direction, even though there was no light, Evelyn could see that there was an exit tunnel. For them, it was the entrance to the enemy base.

A place of pain and evil. Where who knows how many innocent people had suffered experimentation and horrific surgeries. Were the scarflock made down there too?

Evelyn followed suit behind him, worried about his somber and dark demeanor. There was no more blue glow in his eyes or back, now that the Overbloom tattoo had been completely erased, but something had profoundly changed in him.

They went down a partially collapsed tunnel until they reached a big circular blast door with a runitronic panel beside it for access. The soft glow of mana showed a numeric pad to input an entry code to unlock the door. The door itself was covered in dirt and grime, too much to make out what was on it, though Evelyn noticed there was definitely something there.

"I may be able to use [Pulse Link] on that panel to open the door for us. I just need a moment to recover some more mana." Said Evelyn, feeling the accumulated tiredness of the multiple fights in the same day without rest.

"There's no need," Kornos said, his voice barely a grumble.

Then he went to the panel and, without doubting for a second, entered the correct number code, confirmed by an approving beeping sound from the panel.

And the blast door started to slowly open. Some dirt fell off, showing part of some sort of logo under it, though it was hard to make out yet.

"Kornos, how did you know the password?" Evelyn asked apprehensively, making extra sure there was no blue glow at all in his back or coming from his back.

"Because", he said, not daring to look at her, "I've been here before."

"What do you mean you've been here before? When?"

He didn't answer directly, first taking his big hand and scraping the dirt from the blast door as it opened with a screeching sound that echoed down the tunnel they had just came from.

As he removed the dirt that covered the logo, Evelyn's world flipped on its head, and her stomach sank deeper than the dark tunnel they were in.

"When I helped your mother build it."

On the blast door, there was a broken spear, surrounded by vines and flowers.

"This place wasn't from some unknown organization that went under our radar, much less Eva's. Nothing ever escaped that woman. This place isn't just some research lab. It was our base of operations. This was Overbloom's Headquarters. Eva Anima owned this place. And she was responsible for everything that happened here. We all were. All the terrible things done in the name of the dream."

Evelyn gave a step back, shaking her head in denial. "No... No! You are lying! My mother saved me from this place! She rescued me from those people, from Doctor Crowley! She would never be involved in the things that happened here! She would never allow what they did to all those other children and me!"

Kornos turned back to look her in the eye. His dragon eyes were filled with tears.

"I'm so sorry, Evelyn. But she was. Because it was part of her dream. The one we all agreed to fight for. She may have regretted letting things get out of control in the end, but... No. She didn't just allow it. She ordered it."

The blast door opened entirely into darkness. Lights started to activate, illuminating the interior. Kornos entered, and after some hesitation, Evelyn did too.

They were at the top of some stairs, with an open view of an enormous chamber slowly coming to life. To say it was huge would have been a disservice, as it extended for what could be miles around them. It was more akin to a cavern than something that should have been made by the hand of man, but the solid metal plaques that made the walls and floors indicated otherwise.

But it wasn't the size of the place they were entering that caught her attention. It was what was inside it.

At first, she thought she was looking at a colossal serpent, but her Awareness let her focus beyond her surprise to what she was seeing to know it for what it actually was.

A root.

A white tree root.

Almost exactly like the ones from the tree in their home at the Last Glade.

Only, instead of being thin and frail, small enough for Evelyn to close her hand around it, this one was bigger than all of the Menagerie.

It had been carved open at several places, where big metal pipes were connected to it and into the walls, deeper into the facility.

In some sections of it not covered by metal clasps the size of a building, there seemed to be stone ruins, partially embedded into the knots of the root itself.

They looked like... houses. And their construction was eerily familiar.

"What is that?" She asked with reverence and awe.

"That, Evelyn, is the last fragment of a very special tree that remains in this world." He said, coming closer to her. "One that has existed for a very long time. Or so did reveal my research into these ruins."

"Your research...?"

Evelyn grabbed Kornos' arm and squeezed it hard. She was feeling lost and vulnerable. She had expected to have a fight against monsters and evil scientists, not see her entire worldview questioned.

"Please, make me understand. I beg you. What is this place? What were you doing here? And what did they do to me? If you knew all this, then why did you never say anything?" Evelyn put her forehead against him, seeking any comfort whatsoever. Her head was spinning, and she felt weak at the knees. Her breathing was out of rythm and her heart was throbbing in pain.

"I didn't remember it. They made sure I wouldn't." He answered in a growl, his big hands crushing the railing on the stairs as his muscles bulged in pure anger. "This was where the dream of Overbloom was truly born and also... where it was shot in the head by the flower of ambition and hubris."

"Enough poetry, Kornos! I want the truth already!" She demanded, hitting him with her runitronic arm in the ribs, to which he didn't even flinch.

The mutant nodded, more to himself than to her, as he searched for the right words.

"Things weren't bad from the start. We were really trying to help. The seven of us founders, we got together after the war and created the group. Then we found those interested in our cause and what we could offer. Supporters who gave us resources and appropriate political connections. Doctor Crowley was one of such people. He was the head of the Chromantorium, one of the Three Metal Sages, the only Tier 5 runicrons in Neo Vorath. Alice arranged the meeting, and from there, he was a fervent and very vocal supporter of what we were trying to do. As the Sage of Embodiment, he was, of course, profoundly interested."

"I already know who he is! You and Alice have told me about him for years; you wouldn't shut up about how great and wonderful he was! Can you even imagine how I feel now that I remember who he is? All those times you talked about him, I could feel part of me recoil in disgust, but I never knew why. My memories were just..."

"Lost in the mist? Out of focus? I know. That was one of Eva's powers."

Evelyn looked up at him, squeezing his big arm hard.

"...What?" She asked incredulously. "Are you saying my mother used mental manipulation on me? Was my time with her... fake? No, I refuse to believe that!"

"She couldn't erase or change memories, but she could make it harder to remember things. So no, what you can remember is not fake. She could confound and obfuscate memories, not destroy them."

"But why...? Why did she do that to me? To you?"

"Because I couldn't stay. Overbloom was turning into something I didn't agree with anymore. I was too blind for too long, too obsessed with learning more about a lost past, to find a magical solution to all the injustices and mysteries of the present. So much so that I didn't think about the future until it was too late."

"And Alice? Did she...?"

Kornos closed his eyes in mourning for those gone.

"No. She was too busy with Lucretia, so she stayed away from here for a considerable amount of time. For that reason, she let things fall more and more into Doctor Crowley's hands. The research on the root, the project... everything. He progressively went from outside supporter to head researcher. And we were more than happy with it, how could we not be? He was bringing in so much help, so many resources, connections, credits... We couldn't believe our luck!" He bitterly admitted.

"He aided me personally in discovering the Chimera system. He presented our case to the Tetracrown personally, talked about the benefits of having a trifecta of powers instead of just two. Thanks to that, Chimeras were finally recognized as real and given legal treatment as system holders. That was one of our biggest victories. He... he was the one who gave me my title. He told me... all groups of people need a leader. Even Chimeras. So why not a King for them?"

"But how could Alice not remember this place? Did my mother use that power on her, too?"

"Most likely, just as she did with me, when we decided to leave Overbloom. Alice's reasons may have been different from mine, but Eva could not risk her talking about things she didn't want to be known. Not if she wanted to avoid direct interference from the Tetracrown noble houses."

"I can't believe this... Then, what does that mean for me? What did they do to me? What do I have to do with this giant root?"

"We found this place by studying another temple site, where we found that broken spear. The one from the photo. It guided us to a complex underground cave system that extended throughout all of Old Vorath. We believed it had been excavated by the roots of a giant tree in the distant past, one that no longer existed, gone without a trace. So we kept digging and exploring until we found the last surviving root. Then our research began. What was this tree? Why were there buildings attached to it? Who was this Goddess the old murals kept showing?"

"Your Goddess? The one you pray to?"

"That's right. There are ruins of this old civilization everywhere, most of them underground, where the roots would have been. But then we used it to answer the big question: where was the tree before? And that led us to the point where all the root cave systems converged. The one where we determined was the coordinate zero for it. Which our research showed also corresponded with the absolute center where Neo Vorath City started to grow."

Evelyn's mind went to the obvious conclusion.

"Zero Point. That's why named District Zero's new capital that way. It's right where the tree used to be, isn't it? And now..." She gasped, understanding dawning on her face.

Where most of Zero Point once stood, there was now only the central abyss. A huge hole in the earth where the capital had sunk in the Day of Ruin. Just after she killed her mother.

"I see you get it now. At some point in history, the tree died or was cut down. I could never find the answer to that. Maybe they built over where the stump would have been, and it rotted into nothing, or there was some sort of landside that hid it before that. I don't know what it was, but while the land looked fine on the surface, it remained hollow underneath. And we still build a city over it. We were promised it would hold. That it would be fine. But we just looked the other way because our research was being funded, or we were being given or promised noble titles and lands, or our people were finally getting full citizen rights, or the dream looked brighter than ever."

He was silent for a moment before he seemed to come to a decision.

"There's something you must see. It's on one of the buildings on the tree root, the bigger one, over there. And he will be there too. I'm sure of it." He pointed towards one of the places with the most machines connected in the immense tree root. A metal structure had been built in that section, big enough to contain its own research facility. "Would you trust me to take you there?" He asked, hesitantly, as if he expected her to reject him.

"I've done terrible things in the name of good. Things unforgivable. I numbed myself to what was happening to the group we founded with good intentions, to what Doctor Crowley and his associates were doing to it, because... it was easy to justify. Every little thing we let go made the next one easier to digest. I got out when I couldn't stomach what happened to Lucretia, but I was just being a coward. Eva didn't betray me and used her powers to hide this. I asked her to use them on me. I... I wanted to run away. To go back to when things were simpler. To just have a little garden and help a small community of people. Menagerie is my penitence. All those people lost everything because I couldn't face Doctor Crowley or snap Eva out of her obsession in time. I'm... a monster."

Evelyn looked him directly in the eye. This was a man haunted by regrets, pain, and bad choices. One who had known betrayal of those he trusted the most. Who had looked the other way in favor of helping his people get a better life than just expendable soldiers for the nobles to throw at monsters to get new lands and resources, until one of the two problems solved itself. To know more about the world and his place in it. All for a dream of Overbloom. Where a city of metal and magic could find its roots again, to unite progress with tradition, technology with nature, and avoid the worst-case scenario.

But in doing so, that's exactly what happened. Millions died out of trust for Overblooms' dream, unbeknownst to how deep the rot had infected the flower of hope.

What she saw in him was not a monster. Just a man who had made mistakes.

And who was she to judge him? She who had murdered her own adoptive mother? She, who had lied about it and still did to this day, out of fear of being hated by the only people she loved?

To ask if Eva Anima had been a good or bad person was pointless. Had she saved Evelyn out of regret and shame instead of out of heroism as Evelyn had believed for so long?

The answer to that eluded her, though this revelation had made her mother far more human to her. The truth was, Eva had been the only mother Evelyn could remember.

Her memories of Earth were extremely spotty at best. No family, no friends, just random information, feelings, moments, places, and people that meant nothing to her personally.

This was her real life for all that she cared. Which meant Eva Anima had been her real mother. Which meant Alice and Kornos were her family now.

And Evelyn Anima would never turn her back on family.

"I don't know if you are more like a big brother, a father, or just a big hairy uncle, but you were the right kind of man to take care of a lost little girl who just had her world destroyed before her eyes. You gave me a home after the end of the world and taught me how to be strong in all the truer ways. I'm a better person for having you in my life. I could never hate you. We make our choices and try to live our lives the best we can with them. If you repent from running away, if you truly believe yourself a coward, then be the brave man I believe you to be. Face your fears and the truth. And I promise you, I will do the same. We are together on this. The three of us. No matter what."

Kornos cried and nodded after she was done, dropping big tears on her black hair, but she didn't mind.

"I swear. I will never run away again." Kornos promised solemnly, a big hand over his heart. "On my Core and my pride, which I will never sell cheap again."

After those words, Evelyn was taken on his big arms, and they took off on route towards the facility over the root.

To know the truth about her origins.

And face the real monster of their story, once and for all.