The mana pulse of Black Cherry bloomed into an imagination in his head. A forced imagination. In this reality of his brain, he saw a woman with a set of pitch black horns coiling back, scales of the same color draped over her physique like a skin suit. With mounds of flesh on her chest, and a long lizardly tail behind her.

She appeared like a dragonoid he'd seen back in his gaming days. Except that her eyes were deep crimson, with a hue of red coming through them.

In fact, now that he looked closer, this hue of red was wafting off her scales too.

"Is this your avatar?" he sent back, he was below his tree body, exchanging pulses. "Are you planning on descending?"

That would be bad news. Red Cedar had specifically warned him not to have her descend. But if she herself decided to descend without asking him, he didn't really think he could do much in that case. Also, how had she made the image of her avatar before even descending? Her avatar also clearly looked female, not gender neutral like him. Though, granted, he looked kinda feminine too.

A reply came from her.

"Yes! Also, how dare you descend and *not* send back the video of your avatar?! Hmph!"

Right, that was indeed a mistake on his part. He wasn't sorry though, considering the events that had unfolded one after the other right as he descended. He hadn't even gotten around to getting a good feel for all the spells he'd gained, or modifying the spirit born. Much less remembering to send her a video of himself.

Though, he kinda *didn't* want to send a video of himself. Like, he looked almost similar to a female — well, maybe a bit more than almost. But that justified his reasons all the more.

Hell, even that summoner called me by the pronoun of 'she' instead of 'he'.

He was also trying his best to not think about the lack of his lower parts. A very critical organ of his had been stolen from him!

Anyway, he'd already shown himself to the villagers, so showing his avatar to his sister wasn't anything much — yep! He'd have to get used to this feminine-looking body. It wasn't like he was female; he had no gender! So certainly there wasn't anything to be ashamed of!

So, he took a T-pose and sent it to Black Cherry, alongside a very strict letter demanding that she tell him if she knew how to customize the avatars. If she had known and hadn't told him intentionally —

Yeah, he'd build this village up into a kingdom, and destroy hers in turn, and restrict monsters from ever getting close to her!

Per usual, she was taking her sweet time to reply. Instead of wasting days waiting, he flickered to the village square.

"She'd probably reply soon, considering the threats I've attached to that pulse."

In front of him, and even around, construction of the housing was going on at full scale.

"Yeah, over there — make that roof a little denser, also mix more wood essence in there," said one of the turtle men to a much younger-looking turtle.

A kid walked up to the turtle man, circling around him, before going towards his back and tapping on his shell.

"Why incorporate wood essence into earth, mister turtle?"

The turtle man turned around with an uncomfortable face. But as he began answering the kid, his expression began easing.

"Well, boy, you see, incorporating wood essence onto a roof made of earth would make it more resilient without adding extra weight! Wood also doesn't mean only wood, but leaves too!"

The man continued explaining to the boy with enthusiasm. Xuan still felt odd at how the turtle men were the only race of the spirit borns who could speak in elven tongue, and how their vocal cords didn't affect their speech at all.

The work of construction was going smoothly, with earthen walls rising on four sides, forming into an egg-shaped dome. The whole thing looked a lot like an igloo — an igloo of earth, with a floor of stone.

Xuan walked around the village. The igloos of earth were almost completed for the most part, with only a few remaining whose roofs were still being erected.

It boggled his mind as to how quickly the whole field of the village, with broken houses of wood and stone everywhere, had been largely cleaned up and replaced.

The villagers whose houses were completed were already settling back in, with kids even drawing on the pristine walls.

"Good evening, Lord Xuan," a shout came from a woman from across the open stone kitchen. It was pretty close to the central building.

The rest of them followed behind her. "Good Evening, Lord Xuan!" They screamed in unison.

Xuan looked at their enthusiasm. Only a kitchen — a communal one — had been built, and that alone seemed to have brightened up their mood.

He smiled in turn, trying to match their brightness. "Good evening, everyone. Can't wait for the food you all are making."

And that had everyone jumping with joy, and Xuan took the chaos as his opening to get away. He hadn't lied; he really was looking forward to having his first dinner in a long while, instead of photosynthesizing his way through it.

He took a look back at the communal kitchen. It was fully furnished with all kinds of kitchen appliances, with large spatula ladles made of ivory-looking stone. And the intensity with which the women there used all of them was like a cooking competition. They appeared light-handed too.

"Lord Xuan is so pretty!" said one of the women with her hands on her cheeks.

He really shouldn't have heard that.

"No, he's more cute than pretty!" argued another.

He should definitely produce some spell to stop his hearing someday.

"Hmph, y'all must be blind," came a particularly old lady. "He's neither pretty nor cute, he's handsome!"

That made his sinking heart rise up like some dolphin. But he noticed she wanted to add something, with her cheeks going flush like the other two. Sensing imminent danger, he flickered out and away.

He stumbled into the front of the central building, which was previously a beautiful tent and had now been turned into a beautiful stone tent. Breathing a sigh of relief, he activated his mana sense. The signatures of ten beings came clear, with different colored hues to their auras. Those colors showed their affinity.

"They're probably talking about what to do with Raynair."

The man was still stuck in his box. A fate quite humiliating for someone of his caliber, which was exactly why he screamed and cursed every time he was let to speak during interrogation. Apparently, the man wanted to capture all these beasts so he could go ahead and challenge the Grand Tower — something Xuan knew very little about and cared even less for.

All he really wanted was to live a comfortable and peaceful life here, while building the kind of village both he and Elhem wanted.

Otherwise, who was to say some far-away supreme being's battle aftershocks wouldn't cause his village to get destroyed.

He went forward to push on the door, only for the door of fine white stone to slide away. On the other side stood Akupara.

"Welcome, my Lord," he said, gesturing him in.

Suppressing the weird feeling which arose from such respectful manners from everyone, he went in. But this time, before the elders could greet him first, he greeted them first instead.

Which had every one of them chaotically standing up and shouting back greetings in turn.

Xuan gave an evil laugh internally before sitting on his chair. Or should he say a throne?

He turned to Akupara.

"Who's responsible for doing this to my fine chair?"

Akupara stepped forward, bowing his head as if he would offer praise or something.

Really, this was so unnecessary. His plain and simple wooden chair had now been decorated and even modified into some pseudo-throne.

He wanted to say something, but on second thought, it was better not to complain. It had been done to please him, after all.

He suppressed his sigh. "Good work," he said to the turtle before sitting down.

After the sounds of the elders sitting back down faded, the room returned to silence.

This time, to the left of him stood Akupara, and to the right stood Elhelm.

"You two, please go and take a seat."

"B-But, my Lord…" They stopped midway as he gestured them to their seats.

It was better this way. Experientially speaking, both of them were older than him. It didn't feel right to keep them standing the whole time while he spoke.

"So," he leaned in, "what's the agenda here? Have you guys decided on what to do with Raynair?"

The room gave a collective nod. Xuan leaned back on the chair. It felt good to know that the bastard would finally face punishment. Though, if he could have his way, he'd probably give the man a lifetime sentence in that box. That felt better than the death sentence.

"We've decided to subject him to the most vicious punishment that our elven tradition has."

"Oho, what's that?"

Elhelm took a breath before speaking its name. "The punishment is referred to as 'Life Replacement Execution.'"

Xuan nodded his head — he'd understood nothing from that name. Thus, he asked for the only thing a person with curiosities would.

"Do call me when you begin it."

"Absolutely, my lord. We will be conducting it exactly two days from now."

All the elders were full of smiles as they discussed how exciting it would be to watch, and so on. Except for Naevhara and Slynera — they looked rather disturbed.

He wondered why.

He also had something to ask, which would probably ruin this happy mood of everyone.

"The spirit borns — do you guys also wish to punish them?"

The question landed heavy, with Akupara in particular tensing up. It was a matter he had wanted to bring up sooner. The moment he'd gotten into the village he'd wished to ask this, but thanks to Akupara mixing with everyone so quickly, and his sister's call, he hadn't been able to. Now, though, was as good a time as any.

It was Slynera whom the whole table looked to for answers. Her face remained stoic even while facing the attention of everyone present. Even facing the attention of a level three hundred former monster, she didn't show a flicker of change in her expression.

"I don't believe there's any question to be answered. Forgive me for the blunt statement, but I believe my lord doesn't know of our history."

Her words made him reflexively tilt his head. Their history — that wasn't true, though. Based on his talks with Elhem, he knew quite a bit of their history as lesser elves.

She seemed to catch his confusion. She gave a small cough, her cheeks flushed.

"My apologies, I should have been more thorough in my words." She looked back at the table. From the expressions of everyone, they too seemed equally confused. "I meant the culture of us elves in general, not us in particular — the lesser of our kind."

Every elder in the room, with the sole exception of Akupara and him, breathed in relief at the clarification. He gave Slynera a nod, confirming that he indeed had no idea about that side of their history.

Rovan jumped to his feet at this confirmation. "Let this one explain the matter to Lord Xuan, Chief," he said to Slynera. She gave him a gentle nod.

"My lord, we elves have roamed Cadia since the passing of the Ancient Ancestors and the end of dreaming. The elves — the true elves — for most of Cadia's history have lived in harmony with nature and the guardians of it: the spirit borns." He looked at Akupara, giving him a small nod. "What you might not know about us, mainly because of our current state, is that we are the children of higher beings who too were spirit borns."

That made things click into place. They were the children of spirit borns. And considering how the beasts had taken so easily to him and obeyed him, it was probably because his vassal too fell into that category of spirit borns.

So it all boiled down to whether the descendants of spirit borns would be killing their ancestors as punishment for things they did while not in their right minds. To the modern him, that still seemed like a yes.

But Rovan had more to expand on. "The forces of corruption have changed this relationship of ours. Since the ancestors — the pure ones — could, with time, fall to it and come to harm us."

It was from here that Rovan sat back down, gesturing for Chief Slynera to finish the explanation. He supposed it was done as a show of respect.

"Since the spirit borns can be corrupted into insanity — no disrespect to Elder Akupara." She looked to check if he was taking offense, to which Akupara gave a warm smile, gesturing for her to continue. She gave him a nod. "To protect our culture and relationship with the other spirit borns, our ancestors decided to name the corrupted ones as monsters, the mildly corrupted spirit borns as beasts, and the spirit borns who retained their sanity and clarity as spirit borns."

She crouched down, pulling up a thick-looking book with polished dark wood as its cover. She placed her hands over it.

"Thus, according to our elven law of old, as was erected by the high king — spirit borns cannot be blamed for the crimes of their monster counterpart."