After Xuan ballooned his stomach on the best breakfast he'd ever had, he returned to the hideout of the Spirit Borns with a space flicker. The home he'd made for them wasn't too far from Elaneth. A minute or two's walk would lead one there.

Except, the earthen walls and such which he'd built were all but ruins now, with monkeys jumping around trees and snakes who'd dug giant holes and occupied the trees that the monkeys hadn't already claimed.

Sensing his arrival, all the beasts stirred up, even the bears who were taking a nice nap under the shade.

The first to arrive in front of him were Sar and the white snake.

"Greetings, my lord!" shouted both in unison.

"Well, let's go ahead and begin the treatment of you lot. But before that," he turned to the snake, its jade blue eyes containing a light that moved erratically. "You — I've decided a name for you. Do you want it?"

The snake couldn't seem to register his words. It went still; he gave her some time to process what he'd said.

"Your Majesty —"

"Lord," he interrupted.

"My lord, I'd be exxxtatic to receive a name from you!" She hissed out, her tongue coming through with much more intensity than normal.

He'd expected that response from her. To be honest, he was certain that if he hadn't asked her, she'd have asked him first instead.

"Well, your name from henceforth shall be Medusa."

The snake, with its slithering grace, lowered its head. "May thisss one ssshow my lord her gratitude in turn, like Luna?"

Like Luna — that last part almost seemed threatening in several ways.

"Ok, as long as it remains within boundaries —"

She jumped at him before he could finish and wrapped herself gently around him.

Damn it, she didn't even let me explain!

And like Luna, she too licked his face. It stung upon touch, like he'd been bitten by some red ants or something.

[Pain Resistance …successfully acquired]

[Poison Resistance …successfully acquired]

His face shifted toward her; he looked at her eyes. The snake, for whatever reason, blushed.

It was good that the system was generous to him. Otherwise he would've been put to bed right now.

"Medusa," he called.

"Yes, my master?" she said. He unwrapped himself from her in the meantime.

Master? Well, that worked too. He was comfortable enough with Demon calling him that all the time, so what was one more being.

He pointed a finger at her tongue. "Do not lick anyone willy-nilly. In fact, except for me, don't lick anyone else."

He had poison resistance now, so he would be safe — but the same couldn't be said about anyone else.

Who knows what would happen if a level two hundred snake with poison decided to lick a normal person.

Though, he wondered if he could use Demon to see how dangerous her poison was. He doubted it was harmless.

[Demon]

[Acknowledged, master. The data gathered from the samples of her saliva: her poison could be categorized as a B Class poison.]

How harmful is that?

Not like he understood this world's classes and such.

[A B class poison could melt even the bones of a human below level 50, and put a level one hundred warrior into an indefinite coma.]

He faced the snake with horror. And for some reason, her response was the reddening of her cheeks…

He shook his head. It was better not to dig deeper. First, though, he had some questions for them.

"So, care to explain what happened here while I was gone?"

Both of them looked away from him, and more importantly, from each other.

They'd certainly waged some territorial wars while he was away. He could see a clear line separating the building into two halves.

He'd really have to put each one of them under a strict hierarchy soon, otherwise they'd repeat the same situation back in the village.

He clapped his hands, making sure it attracted everyone's attention. "Everyone, form into a straight line — no pushing each other. We'll begin your treatment."

"Treatment?" asked a monkey, followed by its brothers.

Similar questions came from a bunch of them. But he really didn't think he'd be able to explain the procedure. Plus, it brought little benefit to them knowing about it at all. He'd done it to Luna and even Akupara, and not a single one of them had asked anything about it. Either they already instinctively understood what he'd done, or they didn't care.

In their case, it seemed they were more curious about the word 'treatment' itself than what it entailed.

He began with the queen of snakes, Medusa. Thankfully, her blushing had stopped — a snake blushing red looked really off.

First came the observation process. He looked over each and every part of her body. Her scales glowed with the sheen of metal's spirit particles, while her lungs, heart, and blood vessels consisted of spirit particles of water and wind. They didn't make up a hundred percent of the organs, but the concentration hovered around 5–10%.

The most particle-dense organ of hers — the single most particle-dense organ, in fact — was her inner gem.

Yes, she had one like that winged serpent too, except hers was still buried within the skin of her head.

It contains a good amount of particles.

The sensation this density aroused was not at all comparable to that of the winged serpent's head gem. He also wondered what would happen if he filled this gem of hers to the brim. He had enough particles in the ball he'd collected to fill a gem of her size a hundred times over.

Though, of course, he didn't know how that might affect her.

I should probably ask her about it once I'm done with this modification.

And so it began. He created the same three spheres, pulled and separated the three forces of their inner self: the corruption, the essence of stability, and the essence. Naturally, it was a name he'd come up with after seeing them for the first time. The 'essence' was basically an abstraction for the soul. In this naming sequence, it felt more self-explanatory — it would be helpful if someone, even one of the spirit borns, asked him what he was doing.

Though he wasn't sure their reaction would be anything less than horrified upon knowing.

Another point of fascination was how quickly the effects of the chaos crystals wore off right after pulling them out of the initial stasis.

"So, Medusa, tell me about this," he tapped on the spot beneath which the gem resided. "How would you feel if I filled it up?"

The snake's jaws slackened for a whole minute, to the point he started to wonder if the proposal was something bad — like when he'd asked Luna whether spirit borns could be eaten.

The snake eventually came through, lowering her head with grace. "I-I'd be more than glad if you do, massster."

"You would?" He looked at her with suspicion.

"Yes, my lord!" She shuffled her head toward the other snakes. "In fact, my children would too! We'd all be exxxtremely grateful if my massster completed our gem!"

That was not the kind of reaction he was expecting. Seeing how valuable the gem looked and how well hidden it was, he'd suspected it might be some sort of blasphemy amongst them for others to even know of it. He was even prepared to apologize for tapping it — he'd done it almost naturally; thanks to Luna's touchiness, he too was getting touchy.

"Well, if you're all okay with it, then I have no issue."

Again, he had enough spirit particles in his stash, and if he needed more, he could always break down some of the lesser spirits on his canopy and produce more particles.

Medusa immediately slithered to her children. "Everyone, come to master — he's going to help complete our journey!"

Journey?

"Seriously?" questioned one of the black snakes, to which another black snake snapped back.

"You dare question your master's capability!"

It didn't take long for all the snakes to fall into a single line, with Medusa at the head.

Xuan took a deep breath. Whatever was about to happen, he could only hope it didn't go sideways.

First, he had to call back the ball of spirit particles he'd transferred to his tree body through his soul's connection to it — his soul tunnel. Yes, that connection functioned much like a tunnel. Upon his call, the ball of particles blitzed through the tunnel, appearing in his hands with a crisp pop.

The spirit borns seemed to smell something. And just when their eyes landed on the ball in his hand, they went feral. Its appearance sent the whole vicinity into uproar, with the gentleman bear, Sar, being the first to approach him.

"Master, may I have some of that too?" he said with twinkling eyes.

If Xuan was bad at anything, it was refusing — and with puppy eyes like that directed at him, it was too much!

"Okay, fall into line, I guess…" The bear was gone before he even finished. He looked at the ball in his hands with suspicion. "Is this like some kind of drug for them or something?"

Xuan tapped on the place beneath which Medusa's gem rested.

[Activate Unique Spell [Spirit Lord]?]

Yes/No

"Yes."

He first absorbed all the particles within himself — this way, they became a bit more susceptible to his influence. Xuan pulled the particles within his will and into her gem. The snake's otherwise flexible body instantly perked up. He continued to pour in more essence as the gem itself began glowing with bluish white. After he'd completed filling it up, the snake finally relaxed — maybe a bit too relaxed.

"Medusa?"

Her body jerked, fell over, and coiled into herself.

He looked over at the other snakes, and they all didn't seem bothered at all. And based on her breathing, she didn't seem to be struggling either.

He called one of the older ones — easily fifty feet long and among the oldest.

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"Master, my queen has entered a state akin to hibernation after you've completed her journey."

Wait — why didn't his words hiss like Medusa's? Was that supposed to be unique to the queen or something?

And filling their gems up with spirit particles was their journey. The 'state of hibernation' implied nothing bad had happened to her.

But looking at where she'd fallen asleep, it was no place for the supposed queen of snakes to be sleeping.

He called Sarnoth. The hulking bear arrived with two others in tow.

"Sar, take Medusa to the building."

He thumped his chest. "At once, my lord." The bear crouched down and gently scooped up her coiled body with its large paws. Though she looked — and was — heavy, the bear made picking her up seem almost effortless.

He couldn't help but wonder if the powerlifters back on Earth could pick her up like that.

It didn't take more than a minute for Sar to go back to the building, place her there, and return.

"Anything else, my lord?"

Hmm. If he was being honest, there was. If the queen of snakes had gone to sleep after completing her journey, who was to say every other snake — and even the bears — wouldn't do the same?

"Well, do me a favor and stay here. There's probably going to be a lot more spirit borns falling asleep. Take them to the appropriate place to rest."

"As you say, my lord," said the bear, before proceeding to call on his followers and stand beside him.

He could've used space flicker, but that felt like a crude way to treat someone's sleeping body. It was also probably unwise to waste his mana now, since the special spell [Spirit Lord] was already consuming quite a bit per use. Plus, modifying them cost a decent amount of mana too, and he had a lot of them to modify.

Thus, he resumed his work and left the carrying to the bears.

Medusa had been both modified and given the needed amount of spirit particles, and now he was going to have to do the same for everyone else too.

And the line in front of him was long — more than a hundred beasts, including the birds that stood atop the trees with puffed-up plumage, as if they were some kind of aristocracy.

"Let's get this going!" he said, pumping himself up.

The process of modifying and filling them up with essence repeated itself over and over, and at the end of each one, a spirit born went into hibernation. This occurrence wasn't limited to the snakes — as he finished with them and began processing the osprey birds and monkeys, it continued to happen.

For the first time, sweat began accumulating on his brows and his breathing got slightly faster.

The bear looked at him with concern. "My lord, it's way too much — how about resting up for the day?" he offered.

Xuan shook his head. "No need. Only five more remain here — go ahead and call on Luna and Akupara, including their minions."

"B-But —"

"Don't worry, it's light work for me. Go and call them." He said with a reassuring smile.

His mana was almost more than half gone from using the mana-intensive spell [Spirit Lord] and performing the various tweaks to their bodies. But he felt confident he could complete the job by the end of the day.

["Ding" You have leveled up!]