“-and then you had an orgy and came back here the next day…” Kella said, making sure she heard everything right, already feeling a migraine coming on after everyone explained themselves for the past hour. She had to take a moment to mentally step back, rubbing the bridge of her nose, trying to calm herself down.

In the end, she sighed, knowing there was not much she could say or do after the matter but still turned crossed eyes on Van and the group. “Next time, think a little before you set off a coup d'etat and then end it, all in one day… other than that… glad to see you're okay…” looking between Van and Lyn.

“Now though… we have to figure out how we are going to deal with all these refugees… even with the supplies they brought, I’m not sure we can feed them all for more than a week, tops.” now looking worriedly over a few notes on the table of their food situation. “You were lucky enough that you didn’t run into anything while on your way back. But the forest isn’t as it used to be, we can’t just forage or hunt for the things we lack or expect to be able to go out again without something going wrong that will bite us in the ass.” flipping over a few maps that were updated with new spread areas of the red knives infection.

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Van said somewhat solemnly. “I… actually believe one week is more than enough…” Kella looked over at him wondering what he was talking about.

Van took a deep breath, but he had already thought about this for a while now. “I think it’s time we make one last run and go home… save a few more… then get out of here. I’m not going to be obstinate about this any more. You're right, we can’t stay here any longer, and we shouldn’t either. For now, let's save what few we can then go home. Once there we can figure out how to take care of them until we can find a new home for them. We could maybe even use them to repopulate the forest when… if… we can clear this place of infection. What do you say?”

Kella stared at him for a moment, to really let what he said sink in before slowly nodding in agreement. “Smartest thing you said since this whole mess started. I would much prefer we leave now… but if you agree that you just need one last rescue attempt, I will abide by it. So long as this time you stay at the fort, or bring me…” her eyes narrowed. “I won’t allow you to get into any more trouble or throw yourself into any more danger if I can help it. Understand?”

Van nodded, not enjoying the feeling of still being treated like a child, but unable to do anything else about it. He knew if he wanted to, he could order her to do what he wanted her to do, but he also knew that she was just trying to do her job of keeping him as safe as possible and that he had admittedly been reckless for a while now.

After talking it out for a bit more, the two parted ways, Kella to go over a few more sheets of paper and Van to sit and meditate back at his tent so as to talk with Lyn and Xenith who no doubt were talking about how to get to the wasp’s home city. He also had to talk with Gloria about the fairies and insect-kin that were going to settle in, and what villages were nearby that they could hit for refugees.

Doing just that, he entered his tent, ignored Luna and Agnès who were twirling around in their embrace. And focused on settling down his mind and focusing inward until he felt himself slowly drift into his soul realm. He just hoped that Luna didn’t try anything too perverted to his body while he was away.

Opening his eyes, he was met with a strange sight… for the first time ever, it looked like his soul realm was actually somewhat full. Or at least the forest part of it, as most of the fairies decided to obviously move there. He was somewhat worried that there might not be enough room for everyone. Something he will have to talk to Lyn and Gloria about, to see if they can do anything to spread out the forest more quickly or to better set things up so as to let more people in per square meter.

Flying over the great blueish tree, he quickly flew down and landed where he would normally find Lyn and the other fairies. Once there, he was greeted by a few aides who then escorted him inside the tree and through a few hallways until he ended up in what looked like a throne room of sorts, with a large table with Lyn at the head. Gloria, Amie, and Xenith were already in serious discussion with her and each other, no doubt about figuring out a way to save the wasp horde up north.

“Ah! Van! Please sit down.” Lyn said, taking notice of him and offering a seat.

Van did so and explained why he was here and told them the time limit they had of one week.

“That complicates things…” Gloria said with a thrown. “That’s nowhere near the time we need to evacuate everyone.”

“But he does have a point…” Amie said though she didn’t look happy about it. “The longer we stay here, the more dangerous it becomes. If we don’t leave now, we may not be able to save those we have already.” already feeling the weight of being the high queen of her house.

Gloria all too well knew the stress that her daughter must be going through and gently gave her a comforting hand in response. To which Amie appreciated.

“Wait… what does that mean for me? My mother? My family!?” Xenith asked, now very worried about her tribe's future.

“Perhaps we can use these… fairy gates to get them around?” Van asked, not sure how that all worked out.

Lyn shook her head. “All the gates that lead to wasp-controlled territories have been shut down. And even if you got them activated again, there's a limit to how many you can take through them at a time. Not to mention the cooldown between uses and the red knives that might have infected the trees. We wouldn’t know which gate would be safe to use until we used it.”

“How far is the wasp horde domain anyway?” Van asked, now a little worried.

“It’s all the way to the north…” Xenith explained. “At least that’s where our major cities are. It would take weeks to get there… time we won’t have…”

“I also… came to some worrying news…” Gloria said, speaking up. “Scouts report that the red knives might be mutating. It could get even worse than it already is if we stay here any longer.”

“Maybe we can use Van’s portal?” Amie said thoughtfully. “It’s not too dissimilar to a fairy gate, maybe we can hook it up to the rest of the portal network and use it to transfer all the fairies and wasps directly into Van’s soul realm? After all, it uses a focal core, so it should be possible with our engineers.” making Xenith look somewhat hopeful.

Van paled. He did not know the reason, but a shiver went up and down his spine at the thought of all those portals connected directly to his soul realm, even if only temporary. Just the idea of it filled him with dread.

“But again. We can’t know which gate is infected and which is not, for all we know, we could be allowing the red knives to enter into the soul realm directly. Which could KILL VAN!” Lyn said, shutting down the idea much to Van’s relief.

“I also don’t think I can handle all those portals connected to me,” Van spoke up. “Just the thought alone was enough to fill me with dread. No matter how strong my soul realm is, I fear I might break under the weight of it all.”

Which got a few nods of understanding and then silence as the group began to get a little depressed since all their brainstorming got nowhere.

“What if…” Van began to speak up again, drawing the eyes of everyone. “What if…” now feeling all those eyes on him, making him a little nervous. “We draw a map of all the nearby fairy portals closest to the fort? Then figure out which gates are closest to the refugees we need to save?”

Then an idea formed in his head. “We may not be able to directly connect my portal to the fairy gates… but that doesn’t mean we can’t use it to supercharge one of the gates to keep it open for longer and allow for bigger loads to pass through. I’m pretty sure if I asked Ren, he would know what to do.”

Lyn looked a little happy now that they had some sort of plan that looked possible. Already bringing out a map of the surroundings onto the table. “That’s not a bad idea! If we can just keep one of the gates open and have all the other fairy gates connect to it, we may just be able to save thousands if not tens of thousands in just a few short days! We just need to figure out which gate to use…”

Everyone then looked over the map, Gloria and Amie pointing out gates nearby that they could use and Xenith pointing out a few gates near the capital that the wasp horde keeps an eye on just in case anyone tried to use them. Soon the map was filled with markers of fairy gate locations.

“Now we just need to figure out which gates are infected…” Lyn said, mulling over the map. “We could try to test each gate separately… but that will take a while…”

“Why don’t we also map out the infection?” Van asked, drawing everyone's attention. “There has to be a few places where the red knives were first set off, if we can then from there, figure out its rate of growth with what we know now. We can figure out which way it’s spreading and how fast. Overlay that data with this map, and we can figure out which gates are safe to use, mostly safe to use and which are probably not safe to use.”

The group looked impressed with the idea and already Lyn and Amie were giving out orders to have a scouting party to check things out as well as a few aids to bring in any and all relevant information about what places they already knew were taken over by the red knives.

About an hour later, they were looking over the map with a new idea of how things were going. Obviously, the reddest parts on the map were in the ever-shifting border between the horde and the alliance. But there were a few other places that seemed like they were set off in, such as places that defected to the horde or places deeper into the forest, where they could spread out and hit more villages. Mostly insect-kin villages.

The edges of the forest were still fine though, as the majority of the bombs that set the red knives off were closer to the center and the fighting. Another good news was that it seemed that the red knives couldn’t cross water, at least for the moment. Several places showed that to be the case, where its expansion considerably slowed when nearing rivers, and completely stopped when reaching large bodies of water.

Xenith then pointed to a few places on the map. “It seems we don’t need to worry about the villages on the outskirts too much. They should see the red knives coming a mile away, plenty of time for them to evacuate. As for here…” now pointing to the area near the wasp horde. “It seems the safest places to gate to would be further back. The closest gates to the capital would be here, and here.” pointing to a few more places on the map.

“And the closest gate to our fort is here, about half a day's travel from us,” Lyn added, pointing to the map herself.

“We are already almost at full capacity as it is though…” Amie said, looking concerned, “and we will have to make a safe travel route between not only this gate to us but that gate to the capital where the empress is. Can we really evacuate an entire city, plus whatever villages and towns that are still in need of help?”

“Unfortunately… I agree…” Van said, “Maybe if it was only for a few days I can handle that much, but the food and space would be another thing entirely… then there will be trying to figure out where to put them all afterward…”

The group then started to talk about the logistics of trying to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people through the gates and into the soul realm. The talks continued on for some hours, not really getting anywhere. It wasn’t until near the end of the day that they had some semblance of an idea of how to carry out their task that they decided to call it a day.

After that they parted ways to get some rest, Van leaving to look for Ren to talk about everything that was discussed and to ask him a few of his own questions as well.

Flying over to his castle, he saw Ren busy at work next to his throne, tapping at a few things. Clearly concentrating at the task at hand, no doubt still busy with trying to figure out how to take care of this new influx of people.

Van notified him of his presence and waited for Ren to finish on whatever task he was doing.

“Phew…” Ren said, not even a minute later. “Thanks for waiting, you have no idea how hard it is to calculate all that. Try balancing what food stores we have with a few tens of thousands of new mouths, plus the need to displace all that extra spiritual energy from their soul realms and you get quite the headache,” he said, making a motion to wipe off a bead of sweat from his brow. “So then, how can I help you?”

Van explained what was going on and what was the plan at the moment.

Ren frowned. “That's… going to be difficult… and not just because of the mouths you have to feed. There is a limit to how many souls you can have in your soul realm Van. Adding too much can make it pop, and you're still technically suffering and recovering from that last troll attack. I’m not sure you should be playing hero…” looking worried.

“Is there anything you can do?” Van asked, looking concerned.

“Well… there is maybe something…” Ren said, thinking it over. “If we can shrink down your soul realm again, we can make it more stable. Though not by much… We can also try adding another vassal. That is to say, soul bond another person who is willing to take on the burden of all those people with you.”

“You saw how when you bonded with Agnès it added a whole new island right?” Ren asked. “Well… as the new island becomes incorporated into your soul realm, it will make it stronger and help support your soul. Unfortunately, just like all the girls before you, it will require someone who is willing to completely devote themselves to you. Tie their very soul to yours, you’ve been lucky enough so far, but I’m not sure even Kella would be willing to do that, and Isa is a bit too weak. Maybe Gwen? Venus is also a good pick, but they are also both too weak.” now falling into deep thought.

“We were also talking about connecting the fairy gates directly to my soul realm using the focal core? Would that work?” Van asked, not asking because he wanted to do it but because his curiosity made him.

Ren shivered, shaken from his thoughts. “NO! Don’t… do that…” now glaring a little at Van. “You might be able to last a few minutes. But you would literally be tearing holes the size of craters in your soul realm. Dozens of them! Not even you could survive something like that. You're a few millennia too early to start taking risks like that! Understand!” making it clear his stance on the matter.

Van looked relieved that his instinct was right. “Okay, good…” nodding with what Ren said.

Ren sighed. “Look, just give me some time to figure out how we are going to accept a few hundred thousand, if not millions, refugees…” looking over at his screen once more but now opening a few more tabs. “If you want to help, figure out who you can soul bond with, or meditate to help stabilize and increase the strength of your soul realm the old fashion way. Whichever works for you.” already his attention being taken away by the new task at hand.

Van sighed, feeling a little down that there didn’t seem much else he could do. “Alright, I’ll stick around for a bit, maybe meet up with Anna and Cassandra before leaving.” turning around to go.

“WAIT!” Ren shouted, now giving Van his full attention, looking like a lightbulb went off in his head.

Van turned back with a surprised look, wondering what Ren was going to say.

“You can increase the strength of your soul by increasing the number of followers you have!” Ren, looking more like he was recalling something he just forgot. “Not to mention, followers have less of an impact on your soul realm than guests do… not to mention, just like how Lyn is soul bonded to you, all her followers through her have their spiritual impact also lessened.”

“Van, what you need to do is simply bond with the leader of all these refugees, or at least someone, or two, who is the leader of the majority of them. By doing so, their spiritual impact on your soul realm will be lessened considerably, meaning less pressure! The same with followers of your faith! They acclimatize their soul to yours, making it easier for your soul to process and accept as a part of its own!” Ren then went off on a bunch of other things that went over Van’s head.

But in the end, Van got the gist of it. He wasn’t so sure about just soul-bonding whoever was the leader of whatever majority there was. But at least it was a start on a solution. After going through a few more things. Van parted to get a good night's rest. Tomorrow will be busy after all.