It was nearly 1:30 AM when I pushed open the door to Ichiha’s shop. At first, I was surprised it was even unlocked. I didn’t expect to see Ichiha, Irisa, and Kokan sitting behind the counter playing tic-tac-toe in matching comfortable-looking robes. “Why are you guys still up?” I asked. 

“After you left, I realized you didn’t have a key to the shop,” Kokan replied. He pointed to a key on the counter. “It wouldn’t do for us to lock up when you don’t have a way to get in. Where have you been?” 

“It’s in our best interest that I refrain from saying anything. Sekh,” I called for my companion and walked to the side for her to walk through. The smell of feces and other bodily fluids was very present on her shoulders, and crusty brown flakes covered her front and back. 

“No... No... Mila, tell me you didn’t—” Irisa stammered and stood up so fast her stool fell over. She and Ichiha were shocked at seeing Niva’s awful state. Kokan adverted his gaze and asked for an explanation. I refused to give one, citing that telling them would make them accomplices to something I could neither confirm nor deny.  

“Killing a Soul Warrior is a grave offense, even for someone as rotten as Noelia. But I will not say you were wrong to do so. Life is not something everyone deserves to keep. I wished you would’ve told us so we could have planned ahead, but we can work with this,” Kokan said, figuring it out as we walked up the stairs to the kitchen and living room. Ichiha went ahead of us to prepare some towels and other stuff, and Irisa locked the door and talked to Tilde about what happened.  

“Sorry, gotta listen to the boss on this one,” the fairy replied. “She has a good point.” 

“I can say this,” I said. “They just left Niva stewing in her own shit. Are half-breeds really looked down upon? It’s like no one saw her as a person.” 

“It depends on the country, but generally? That’s just how it goes. In a place like Cridia, Niva probably won’t even be seen as a person. But in Aquanis? She’ll be as free as you and I. Still, it doesn’t help that she was a slave—much less the slave of a Soul Warrior like Bitchy McBitch Face,” Tilde answered. 

Irisa pipped up and asked if it was possible to track Niva because she was given to someone important like Noelia, and Tilde nodded. But before panic reared its ugly head, Tilde explained [Status Cloak] and how it could affect Niva. The problem was that she needed to be awake and alert. 

That still gives us about 24 hours, at the least. It all depends on how Gloria responds to not feeling Noelia’s mana. Or even if she can do it.  

Instead of being a witness, I helped Kokan and Ichiha clean Niva’s war-torn body. Her powdered blue skin was easy on the eyes, but the vicious wounds clashed hard against something that looked so innocent. At least she was smelling a little better. Irisa ran to get a towel to place on the couch, and together, we ferried Niva to it and sat her down. Her stumps had stray skin grossly spewing over the wounds, which were thankfully cauterized.  

Unfortunately, whoever did it had done a shit job with little care for the patient. Kokan took care of it, though, by cutting off about a quarter inch of arm and leg from Niva’s nubs. After heating the flat side of a large knife, he proceeded to re-cauterize the wounds and sear the flesh into closing. The smell of burning flesh permeated the room. 

It was...delicious. 

While Irisa cleaned the knife and helped her father tend to the newly cauterized nubs, Ichiha and I diagnosed our patient with [Analysis].  

She had the following injuries. 

• Blindness from mono-eye degeneration. 
• Fractured ribs 
• Her ears were hanging down and barely remained connected via a piece of bloody flesh. 
• Blunt force trauma to her head, knees, crotch, and arms. 

• Foot suffering from necrosis. 
• The tissue around her arm and leg was necrotic, leading them to just fall off her body at the slightest touch. 
• The infected skin around her crotch came from a sexual disease. The scabbed-over claw marks were someone’s attempt at ‘getting rid’ of it. 
• The crimson rashes came from a type of aphrodisiac, which left behind scars as well because it was applied with a sharp knife.  
• She carried a high fever while suffering from something like dysentery. 

• Hundreds of scars on her chest, legs, arms, and back. 
• Only a quarter of her teeth remained in her mouth. 

To top it off, she had a severe case of potion dependency because she was forced to drink them as often as others drank water. Only an elixir could affect her, but the effects would be minuscule. 

Ichiha said she needed a detox, but Kokan argued Niva wouldn’t survive. Irisa whined and told her father she didn’t want Niva to die while cleaning around the blisters.  

“Neither do we, sweetheart,” Kokan replied. I spoke and said her HP drained by half just in the time it took to get home. 

At this point, Niva was as clean as she’d ever get. The dirty towels nearby were filthy, bloody, and covered in bodily fluids and dead, burnt skin.  Kokan lifted those up and placed them in a clothes basket in his room, returning with a couple of tools. 

He looked at Niva’s remaining foot, which was completely necrotic, and said it couldn’t be saved. Before using a saw designed to cut bone, he crushed some green and white herbs in a mortar and pestle, then added a hint of water and stirred with a brush. With that, he brushed it on Niva’s tongue and explained it was a pain reliever made from silver grass and verde shrooms.  

I watched as Kokan placed the sharp teeth of the saw an inch above where the black ended. He sawed away. With his strength and Niva’s weakened bone, it took literal seconds to do the deed. No one knew what to do with the foot, so I volunteered to swallow it with a boar head hand. 

If that was disgusting, no one tried to let it show because the patient came first. After cauterizing the new wound, Kokan took his pliers and plucked the rest of Niva’s diseased teeth, which I soon disposed of. Her gums were left bleeding, so he applied a little bit more of the pain reliever to them.  

Next on the agenda was actually bandaging her. I used Noelia’s money to buy every bandage in the shop, which shocked the onis. I explained it wasn’t mine and decided to pay them for the amputation and teeth removal. Ichiha and Irisa gathered bandages and some weak, generic ointment they had. With extreme care, they started to dress the wounds. When it came to her eye, they were better safe than sorry and placed a patch over it until they were finished taking care of the cuts and scrapes around it. Niva’s ‘dead spots’-- the places where her scales were violently ripped out—were bloody and pulsed like a heart. With time, that would end, and it would be nothing more than a spot of flesh that carried no feeling. 

Her back, though, was where the longest wounds were. Some even spanned the length of her neck to her hips. By the time everything was securely wrapped, Niva looked like an Egyptian mummy. 

Next, Kokan took some needle and thread and sutured her ears back to her head while applying more pain medicine.  

I didn’t know how effective that would be. Honestly, I didn’t think the ears could be saved. 

Ichiha retrieved a soft blanket and pillow that wouldn’t stick to the bandages’ material. “I’m sorry, but her broken ribs will be dangerous.” I asked why. “Most of the time, you can recover without surgery if you take it easy and slow. But Niva? Depending on how she reacts when she wakes up, we could be looking at a punctured lung.” 

Irisa asked her mom a few more questions about broken ribs while she lifted Niva’s head slightly for the pillow, and Kokan turned to me. In the morning, he said he’d give me a list of ingredients to make the detox, salves, eye drops, and cream that would do most of the heavy lifting. As for Niva’s teeth? They needed time to heal, so any dentures would have to wait at least two months. Potentially three, which would probably be the case with Niva. Her tail could potentially regenerate on its own when she was healthy enough, but the scales were less likely to come back. It wasn’t impossible, but I shouldn’t count on it happening before the feeling was lost in her dead spots.  

In short, the recovery process was going to be lengthy and grueling. 

Since we couldn’t do much else, it didn’t make sense to stand around wastefully. After getting a cloth to lay over Niva, Ichiha and Kokan hugged Irisa and me goodnight. Before they returned to their room, they turned their patient to her side because they didn’t want her to choke on her own blood.  

Niva occupied Irisa’s couch, but the oni said the floor was fine. While she prepared her sleeping area, she looked dejected. Her yellow eyes took sharp glances my way for a fraction of a second. Yeah, she probably wanted me to offer my bed, but I wasn’t comfortable with that. 

At least, not now. I did like her, though. She was an amazing friend and a wonderful person to be around.  

Maybe I need a few more weeks… 

“Mila?” she suddenly said, breaking me from the prison of my thoughts.  

“Yeah?” 

“Why didn’t you tell me about this? I was okay when you left, but the hours came and went, and you still weren’t here. Dad had to hold me back from rushing off to find you because I thought you weren’t coming back.” 

I professed my apologies twice over but held my ground. There was no way I was going to make this family—a family, mind you, that accepted me as a chimera, a beast that was feared the world over, an accessory to my crime. A crime, I might add, that put me straight on Gloria’s shit list if she found out. There was a chance Gloria couldn’t track Niva. When I used [Analysis] on her, I didn’t see anything like a tracking status effect, and [Analysis] put [Scan] or a Scan Stone to shame. 

Guess I was a fool. Bringing Niva home would automatically get them roped into it. Yeah, that was stupid of me. But we should be fine. 

“So… It’s because you care about us?” Irisa asked. Her face held a smile that was a bit playful. It seemed she wasn’t angry.  

“Yes. Ichiha, Kokan, you… You’ve done so much for me that I didn’t want to put you in danger. No one saw us bring Niva inside, and once she wakes up, I can mask her mana. I don’t know if she can track her, but I’m not about to play fast and loose with something like this.” 

Reading minds and scanning memories existed in the world, and I doubt that power was exclusive to Tilde. Gloria would have the means to fuck my mind right open. If the night didn’t end in Noelia’s death and she escaped, I feared that was the route awaiting me. Granted, I had a contingency plan called 'Turn my Wrath to 100’ to get me out of it, but that, thankfully, wasn’t needed.   

We stood there in a simple hug until the sleepiness was too much to ignore. I softly rubbed her back.  Her strength was weak, and instead of just removing her hands, she slid them up my back, down my shoulders, and stopped when her fingers were in my palms. Even for being so muscular and tall, she was surprisingly soft in all the right areas. She looked down, went red in the horns, and let go.  

But I didn’t want that. I caressed her fingers after grabbing them, and Irisa’s smile became prettier. We just stood there, connected by our hands, until she yawned a second time and decided it was time to lay down.  

“Goodnight, Mila,” she whispered as she pulled the blanket to her stomach and rolled to her side.  

“Night. I’ll see you in the morning,” I replied, returning to my room.     

“You know, this is the part where you say some crude erotic remark,” I told Tilde when the door shut behind me. The fairy flew as if she was drunk, but I knew she was totally exhausted to the point where she struggled to keep her eyes open. I couldn’t fault her since she took a beating when I trained with Sekh and Kokan. For me, the pain mostly vanished when I healed myself, but the discomfort often lingered around her fairy-sized body for far longer. Her wings slowed to a crawl, and I caught her before she slammed into the ground. I laid her in her little bed on the dresser. After stripping naked, I climbed under the covers of my bed. A quick check of my map’s satellite mode told me Sekh was drying off. I looked to the left and saw her armor, which was still in good shape. The only marks were from our training, and I couldn’t hit hard enough to deal any substantial damage. 

Minutes later, Sekh emerged from the bathroom naked as the day she was born. Her clothes were bundled in her arms, and after putting them off to the side, she joined me in bed. She nestled right on my shoulder, turned to her side, and wrapped her arms around me.  

We remained silent for a while, though it wasn’t like we had nothing to talk about. But sometimes, silence was a virtue too many people took for granted. I used that moment to reflect upon Sekh’s hair. When we met, it was touching her shoulders. “it’s getting long, isn’t it?”  

“My hair? Should I cut it?” 

“I won’t make that decision, but I will say it looks cute on you.” 

“Then I’ll keep growing it out. I don’t know if I’ll continue until it’s as long as yours, but…I’m happy you like it.” I asked why, and Sekh said she always wore it short. She was always jumping from fight to fight in her mad rush to become the Dark Lord of Tyranny. Like hell she would give her opponents any leverage. The last thing she wanted was someone to grab her hair and yank her down if she was fighting against a group.  And yeah, that was understandable, but this wasn’t then. It was now. She’d never be in a position where her beautiful hair was a detriment. I just wouldn’t allow it.  

Sekh sighed, and I gingerly rubbed her back and asked what was wrong. It turned out she spent the entire time psyching herself for a fight. “Noelia would have been an excellent opportunity to test my strength against a Soul Warrior,” she said, sounding slightly dejected. She was awfully cute when she pouted. 

 “Don’t be upset. There’ll be plenty of Soul Warriors for you to kill in the future.” 

“Your enemies will fall before you, my liege. I won’t allow any to escape with their lives.” 

“Mmnn… That’s a good girl,” I whispered, rubbing her back. She purred at my bare touch while I gave Sekh the rundown on everything affecting Niva. From her infections to broken bones, Sekh patiently listened. 

“If she was enduring to outlive Noelia, what reason does she have left to fend off death?” 

“I’ll simply give her one,” I replied. “I bet she harbors a grudge against Gloria.” 

“What about her wounds? Even a spirit summoner cannot fight with her injuries.” 

“There must be a way to regenerate her limbs. If not, I’ll make her a pair of prosthetics so she can at least walk. Her spirits can see for her, but I suppose talking about it is moot.” 

I was rubbing Sekh’s head when she asked something. “Do you want her to die?”  

“I don’t know… Getting revenge is the basis of my decision-making. Even if it gets me there a hair quicker. I want Niva to recover because that’s another body to fight, and I won’t turn my nose at someone with her potential. But I’m not going to lose sleep if she croaks. But enough about her. Let me apologize. It must’ve been rough to carry her.” 

Sekh said it was no trouble, but my focus was on apologizing for the smell. “Don’t be,” Sekh said, looking up at me with her beautiful silver eyes. She gazed deeply at mine. 

“Is there anything you want?” I explained that I found Noelia’s money stashed in a satchel. “There are at least 50 gold coins in there. I don’t know how much that is, but I figured we could do something nice with it. So, anything on your mind?” 

“Really? You’re letting me pick? But you’ve already given me so much.” 

“I know, but I’m asking if there’s anything else. Just let me reward the beautiful woman staring up at me, okay?” Sekh blushed hard, then licked my lips with loving tenderness.” 

“It would be rude to continue denying it, yes?” I nodded. “In that case… Can we go by the butcher?” 

“Of course. What else?” 

“There’s more?” It dawned on me that this was probably the first time Sekh was given a chance to pick out exactly what she wanted. Yes, she picked out her clothes when we first moved in with Irisa and her mom, but this was different.  

“Yep.” 

“I don’t really know. Can you cook the meat for me?” 

“Are you sure? Ichiha’s a better chef.” 

“But she isn’t you. I want to eat your cooking.” 

Hearing her say that caused my heart to skip another beat. I told her I loved her, she said it back, and we remained as we were until sleep took us.  

---

Irisa, her parents, Sekh, Tilde, and I were chowing on some baked bread Ichiha had prepared when Kokan handed me a list. Niva was still unconscious, but things hadn’t turned for the worst. 

If I found a couple more bandages, I needed to pick those up as well. But did I? I asked if silk could be used as a substitute, and his eyes lit up. Kokan was a knowledgeable man. I’d already known that from when we met, but his mind was far past that.  

He jumped from his chair and ran for his fishing pole. I didn’t notice it before, but it looked like a regular rod and reel from my world. Obviously, it wasn’t as advanced or made out of reinforced carbon fiber, but the wood it was carved from gave it a warm aura of hospitality. After slotting an empty spool, I let loose a little webbing from the tip of my index finger.  

He fished it backwards through the first eye of the rod and wrapped it around the spool. Slowly, he turned the reel. The spool turned, taking more webbing from my finger, and the rest was up to him. Kokan said he could whip a bandage up in just a couple of minutes, so once he had my spider silk, he was ready to go. My only job was to keep my hand elevated and transfiguration stable, which was easy enough. I wanted a challenge, so I asked Irisa to fetch her rod. 

This was my first time concentrating on maintaining two different sources of transfigurations. But I had grown as a chimera, so it wasn’t too bad after I’d gotten used to it. My biomass drained faster, so I devoured my plate and asked Sekh to get me a second helping of bread.  

“Wow… Mila, your webs are so pretty,” Irisa said. She ogled how they seemingly shined in the early morning sunlight from the nearby window. “You can change the tensile strength, right? If they’re good for fishing, you could make some money by selling them.” 

“That sounds cool. Huh, I wonder if there’s a way to infuse my webs? Maybe with fire to make them red? Or water or ice to give them a blue hue? Kokan, is that possible?” 

“It is,” replied Kokan. He said there was crimson silk enchanted with [Fire Immunity], which came from spiders that lived near and in the heart of a volcano. It was exorbitantly expensive because immunity-type skills were the pinnacle of elemental defense. 

That's something I need to get.  

While the father and daughter spun my webs, I looked at my ‘shopping’ list.  After searching and marking them, I discovered everything I needed was at a place I knew very well.  

I guess it’s a good thing the Barclay’s store raised prices to take advantage of a Holy Lord’s purse. 

Suddenly, my hand was illuminated in an ethereal glow. Holy and Dark Mana materialized and swirled around it.  

Tilde hopped up and danced around the table. “Yes!!! Yes!!!! It’s finally time!!!! I’ve been waiting forever!!!!” She ran to the hand occupied with bread, punched it out of my grip, and aimed my fingers towards the plate.  

[Biological AI] has been activated within [Hermes Trismegistus] 

New Skill: [Biological AI] 

Biological AI? Wait, what’s that feeling? Hmm… Focus on it.  

I narrowed my eyes and tried to pinpoint the mysterious urge. My fingers felt tingly and warm, and five beams of rainbow mana radiated from their tips. An image materialized from the ground up. It was about nine inches tall, resembling a multicolored pillar of stone. I tried to touch the object, but my fingers passed right through it. Was it a ghost? 

Or a hologram? 

I turned to Tilde, who was too busy hopping up and down with a gigantic smile. When she finally calmed down enough to answer the obvious question, she went further than that. Apparently, [Biological AI] was what it said. It was an AI—more accurately, an organic AI that lived within the core of [Hermes Trismegistus]. As of right now, it was just in its barest state of being—almost like a newborn babe.  

“I know you’re familiar with machine-learning, so this is basically that. The ole AI here needs —well, it’s not a need as much as a preference—to access your memories because you have 20 years' worth of data sitting in that noggin of yours.” 

“Uhh... Machine-learning? AI? Data? My head’s spinning in circles...” Irisa said. She was totally lost, so I answered her questions and explained the things neither she nor her parents knew. A little prompt appeared in my vision, asking me to share my memories with the AI. I was hesitant, but Tilde said the AI would increase all aspects of [Hermes Trismegistus]. With hesitance, I gave permission and waited for something awful...that never came. The colorful stone pillar just slightly jiggled and wiggled. 

“Alright, now remove all of the waypoints you have set, and ask the AI to search for silver grass.” 

“How do I do that?” I asked Tilde.  

She slapped her forehead with her tiny palms and heavily sighed. “Just. Ask. It.” 

“Uhh... AI, remove my waypoints and search for silver grass...?” I turned to the hologram. For fifteen minutes, there was complete silence before a robotic voice radiated from the hologram.  

“The data as requested, my lord.” Its tone was flat and uninspired, but my map displayed every source of silver grass in the indexed areas. I played around and filtered it down to Ria, then wanted the AI to search in a radius of 1.4 miles around me. It took some time for my request to be processed, but it worked.  

Then a tidbit snuck into my mind. “Display the data,” I said.  

“The data as displayed, my lord,” spoke the AI. Suddenly, another hologram appeared before it, and it was on my map.  

Only everyone else could see it as well. If you looked at Kokan, it’d seem as if he’d swung for the stars and scored an intergalactic home run. His thick horns nearly started to sweat when he turned to me in a shaky voice.  

“This… This—Mila, this—Frankly, this is incredible!” he stammered. “I believed you when you told me about this, but seeing it in person...” I asked the AI to switch to satellite mode of my current location, and about fifty seconds later… 

There it was… 

A floating window, like what you’d see on a computer if you were looking at a satellite map, yet it showed me Irisa’s kitchen. They all glanced down upon themselves while looking at themselves, creating a weird out-of-body experience. Irisa nearly tripped over her feet, Ichiha grabbed the table to remain standing, and Kokan marveled. I wanted a change of scenery, so I told it to go to the store where Erin Barclay worked, and after another minute or two, there she was. 

The violet tail forcefully danced around from false bravado. It was early in the morning, yet the store was slam full of busybodies who wanted to get a head start, and she was the sole worker. She sped up and down the stairs to the various floors while enduring abuse from over-entitled customers.  

“You see how it took a while to carry out your commands?” I nodded at Tilde and told the AI to stop displaying the data. “That’s because it’s as dumb as a ten-pound sack of stupid. As of right now, that is.” 

“If it came from you, then aren’t you just insulting yourself?” Sekh asked.  

“Shut it, Big Tits! That’s not important. But this is. The more you use it, the smarter it becomes. And it has no limit, just to let you know. Eventually, that holographic pillar will shatter once it is of sufficient intellect. What does it leave behind? My pretty lips will never tell. Hehe!”