The glowing weasel had already left. Rieren had caught it transforming into a fish as it jumped into a pond, and now she saw it jumping out at the end and turning into a pigeon to fly off.

Rieren followed its general direction to where the messenger Spirit Beasts rested. She had to walk across the courtyard to do so. With the procession long gone, most of the disciples and villagers had retreated to their original business, but there were still enough of them that Rieren felt many eyes upon her.

Back in her last life, Rieren hadn’t needed to be wary of others to this extent. She’d been unimportant at the beginning, and that lack of standing had allowed her great freedom to go unnoticed in many situations. Of course, it seemed such a blessing compared to her current situation.

Now, every eye could be a potential enemy. Most of the others knew her far she had risen in the Sect in the previous timeline. Perhaps many of them had even deduced that, unlike them, she had survived the Sect’s destruction as well. It was an undoubted fact that Rieren was the one who had benefited the most in the apocalypse.

If they were smart, they would suspect that she would intend to do so this time as well.

At the foot of the stairs, she was stopped by a couple of guards who crossed their spears to bar her passage. A disciple would have been allowed to go further inside the Sect, but they knew she wasn’t one yet. There was no Avalien to grant her easy entry this time.

But it was no problem. Rieren pulled out the letter from Elder Olg and showed the guards the seal at the bottom.

Taking a moment to confirm the letter and the seal’s legitimacy, they allowed her to pass on. Throughout the entire process, they had kept their faces carefully neutral. Maybe the Sect was paying more attention to the guards’ temperaments than Amalyse had thought. These ones certainly didn’t seem as hostile as some of the ones the outside had.

Rieren climbed the main central staircase for a few flights, but before she reached the Sect Leader’s tower, she turned to her left. A short walk through two other buildings led her to a rocky outcropping that jutted over the mountainside. The Sect’s Sprit menagerie stood alone here, a small building with a large, artificial hole in the roof.

“What business do you have here?” the custodian Elder, a short man with gleaming spectacles, asked. He was bent over a parchment, scribbling furiously. “Already missing your folks back home?”

Rieren pulled out the letter with the seal again. “Official Sect business, Elder Gulit.”

The Elder looked up and blinked at her rapidly. “Oh, Rieren! I was not… uh, allow me to see that.” He checked the seal, giving the letter a quick perusal as well. “Yes, everything seems in order. Please go ahead.”

She took the letter with the seal back. “Thank you, Elder.”

“It is good to see you again, Rieren,” the Elder said with a smile as she passed.

Rieren stopped. When one began living somewhere new, it was beneficial to find a place where they could find some peace and solace. A spot away from the regular humdrum and various sources of stress.

Sure, Rieren had her little waterfall where she cultivated and centred herself. But every time she had come to the menagerie to deliver a message—Elder Olg had liked to employ her as a sort of clerk at times—she had found excuses to linger.

Even now, she wished she could stay a while. There was a soothing presence emanating from the magical Spirit Beasts who called this little building home. A calm air of affability. The fact that the glowing creatures allowed her to pet them without cease only made her stay longer than she felt she ought to.

Rieren stroked the back of a blue-white parrot. The bird arched its back in pleasure. “It is good to be back, Elder.”

It also helped that Elder Gulit, while not exactly a very affable and personable individual, had a soft spot for anyone who got along with his Spirit Beasts.

“Can I have some paper to write on, Elder?” Rieren asked. “I must reply to Elder Olg urgently.”

“Of course.”

Elder Gulit found Rieren a spare parchment, then provided her with a quill and a bottle of ink. She found a flat surface upon which to hold the page down, then began writing.

“Elder Olg,” she wrote. “With due respect, I must decline the invitation for personal reasons. However, I wish to reiterate that I am willing to assist with the Sect’s endeavours to teach disciples about the system, with proper remuneration, of course.

“If you are hesitant about credentials, you may wish to confirm our last exchange of information regarding the reconstruction of classes. Should you be able to verify it, you will find that I was correct. As further evidence of my knowledge, here is one more tidbit that you may or may not know already.

“The stats that the system provides you with acts upon your output. That is to way, it does not affect or change your state of being. For instance, raising your Body stat does not raise your inherent strength and speed. It allows your hits to land harder and your movement to cover more ground in the same amount of time.

“In other words, you may think of them as multipliers to your regular output. Punching exerts a force. Normally, it is a force we can bear. But increasing the stats raise the force that is generated, and this generation—along with the subsequent recoil—tears through our bodies if it has not been trained to deal with it.

“As you know, the use of increased stats causes great strain on the body, strain that can cause permanent, debilitating damage unless proper cultivation has been performed. Had you not discovered already, now you know why there is a mismatch in what the stats allow us to perform and what our bodies can withstand.

“I hope this proves that I can still be trusted to provide knowledge regarding the system.”

Rieren signed the letter, then added the seal at the bottom. She folded it into a neat scroll. Elder Gulit helped her locate the same messenger who had sent her Elder Olg’s missive, and she sent off the pigeon.

She felt momentarily guilty at rousing it from its slumber, but it was best to use the same Spirit Beast. All she had to do was utter Elder Olg’s name. These messenger Spirit Beasts could find their target no matter where they were.

With that taken care of, she took her leave from the menagerie and headed out. Elder Olg’s letter had mentioned that instruction would be beginning soon. Now that she had received an invitation, perhaps it was time for her to move into the Sect officially.

But as Rieren headed out, intending to head downstairs and back to the encampment, she met the very persons she had sought to avoid.

Essalina was sauntering forward, one hand on the hilt of her sword, the pieces of her armour clinking as she walked. “Well, well, well. What do we have here?”

Tension spiked through the air at her sudden appearance. The immediate response from Rieren’s suddenly panicking mind was to prevent any sort of confrontation. Running back to the menagerie was likely the easiest way to do that. Essalina wouldn’t dare pull anything in front of an Elder of Lionshard Sect, where Rieren was a disciple.

She stomped on the impulse. Rieren had to prioritize the calm, rational side of her mind, and a moment of clear thought proved that she wasn’t in any true danger here.

“Were you skulking around to ambush me?” Rieren asked, regaining her composure as Essalina approached.

A quick look around showed there wasn’t anyone nearby. No patrolling guards, no wandering disciples. They were alone. Essalina hadn’t been using Essence either, or Rieren would have sensed it. That made things easier for Essalina to pull something, if that was her intention.

But the older woman scowled at Rieren’s question. Her reply took some time in coming. She couldn’t exactly admit that Rieren was correct, but at the same time, explaining why she was here in truth wouldn’t do. After all, that would be giving in to Rieren.

“My business is my own, girl,” Essalina said.

“As is mine, of which, I have more to attend to. Unfortunately, I have little time to waste, so—”

Essalina had walked straight up to Rieren as their conversation had gone on, and now she came to a pause in front of her, blocking her path forward. “For someone so powerless, you are surprisingly brazen. Unless you’re simply proficient at hiding your fear.”

“What would I have to fear?”

Essalina pulled a single fingerbreadth of her blade out of its sheath, staring straight into Rieren’s eyes. The darkness there seemed depthless. “Why, me of course.”

“And what could you possibly do to me?”

“Kill you.” She shook her head in annoyance, as though Rieren was being purposefully obtuse. “The only reason you stand is because of my grace.”

“The only reason you are yet to pull more of that sword out is because you are here as a guest of the Sect. You cannot harm me.”

“You think far too much of yourself.”

“No, I simply know how things work. For one, violating guest rights by murdering someone under the Sect’s protection will deal a harsh blow to the cooperation that the Emperor himself is pushing for. The Arteroth clan cannot afford offending him. For another, your own reputation would plummet into the Abyss if you killed someone as weak and powerless as me.”

Essalina stared at Rieren for a while, her eyes growing darker by the moment, before she quickly turned away with a curse muttered under her breath. “All I truly want is for you to survive to the day I can carve you up. You may be free from me, for the time being, but I doubt all your enemies will hold such forbearance.”

She had a point there. Even setting aside all the mortals and cultivators Rieren had enraged in her previous life in her bulldozing climb to the peak of power, the gods certainly had no intention of holding to the same concerns that afflicted those in the Mortal realm.

What use did they have for honour and justice when their sheer strength and capabilities were so far beyond even those who could claim to be the closest to them?

But the true matter of concern here was how much Essalina actually knew. She might hold suspicions regarding certain things, but she couldn’t have known about how far Rieren had truly climbed. The Sect had been destroyed after Essalina’s death, and it was some time afterwards that Rieren had emerged with a new identity.

There had been two distinct halves of Rieren’s life. One associated with the Sect, and one that involved her ascendancy to the Celestial Realm, and thankfully, the overlapping character in both halves had just been herself.

This strange instance of everyone recalling memories of the past had thrown things for a loop, however. Rieren might have known and interacted with different people in each half of her life, but those same people might have known different people in each half as well. The web of connections was far vaster than anything Rieren could fully comprehend.

In other words, she couldn’t relax even for a moment. Anyone could know anything.

“If you care so much,” Rieren said. “I hope you will kill these enemies if you ever come across them.”

Essalina laughed mirthlessly. “You want me to do your work for you? Just so my vengeance isn’t stolen from me?”

“Vengeance is quite passe. I would think of it more as saving the future of your reputation. After all, if I am killed by someone other than you, how would you ever be able to deny that I was always the greater one among us.” Rieren smiled. “Really, if you look at it, my enemies are your enemies just as much, if not more so.”

This time, Essalina’s laugh did hold a trace of humour. “One day, when I cut off your head, I’ll see if I can enchant it to keep you speaking.”

And with that, she brushed past Rieren and headed down the stairs. A strange direction. As far as Rieren was aware, all guests in the Sect stayed on the fourth level, two levels higher than where she was at the moment.

That direction suggested Essalina had business elsewhere in the Sect. Business not with someone who stayed in the higher levels, like the Sect Leader, the Elders, and their other guests. Curious.

As much as Rieren wished to investigated, doing so now, in broad daylight, wasn’t going to be best idea. Instead, she headed back towards the encampment.

One last farewell before she returned to the Sect permanently.