Jasmine shouted back into the hut, "Master! Your dad brought back a big lizard."

"Already?" Stella called from inside. Trudging out of the hut, she yawned and looked at the dead beast with some surprise. "That was faster than I expected. How did the hunt go?"

"Pretty good. Once I arrived at Ironclad town, I was lucky I didn't have to wait long for the monster to appear. Though in my haste to down the beast and reduce casualties, I might have caused trouble for you."

Stella narrowed her eyes at his trunk, "What did you do?"

"I might have accidentally started a cult of demon-worshiping mortals who believed I am a dark god who came to save them."

Stella slowly nodded, "Right... I thought something like that might happen."

"What is that supposed to mean."

Stella shrugged, "I didn't even need to see your fight to guess how they came to such a conclusion... despite your best intentions, all of your techniques and ways of using them come across in a certain way that could lead to such a misunderstanding. If anything, I am surprised this didn't happen sooner."

"I feel oddly insulted," Ashlock grumbled, "Sure, some of my techniques are a little sinister, but to call me a dark god feels a little..."

"Master, what are you talking about?" Jasmine asked with big eyes as she looked up at Stella and tugged a little on her sleeve.

"Mhm?" Stella glanced down at her Disciple with a smile, "I am talking telepathically with Tree. It seems he started a cult by accident. Don't you agree he fits the theme of a dark god quite well?"

Jasmine looked at Ashlock's towering truck, the wyvern still bound in black vines covered in thorns, and then finally back at Stella, "Yes."

"Don't agree with her!" Ashlock sighed. "She didn't even hesitate..."

Stella walked over to the wyvern corpse, laughing and with a dagger in hand. "Good answer, Jasmine, now come help your Master."

Jasmine scampered after her Master and eyed the shifting thorn-covered vines and dead wyvern with concern.

"What do you need my help with?"

Stella stood before the corpse and read a parchment in her hand. After triple-checking it, she nodded and pocketed it in her spatial ring. "To complete the mission, I need a wyvern scale, tooth, and eye to prove it's death. The pavilion will independently verify with Ironclad town if the wyvern threatening them is also gone." Stella glanced over her shoulder, "Could you pick a wyvern scale for your Master? Make sure it's in good condition."

"O-Okay," Jasmine approached the wyvern and touched its dark green scales. "It's beautiful," Jasmine muttered as she ran her fingertips along the scales, tracing the bumps and drips in each one, "I thought all monsters were scary, but this one is cool."

Stella watched her Disciple with a light smile tugging at her lips.

Jasmine's hand fell to her side, and she turned around. "Master, I feel bad for the monster." She watched Stella's reaction intently. "Is that wrong?"

Stella shook her head and patted Jasmine on the head. "It's a naive view, perhaps, but not a wrong one. Why do you feel bad for it?"

"You asked me to pick which scale is best, but every one of its scales is so intertwined that taking one out would ruin it."

Stella looked at the wyvern from head to tail and nodded. "You're right. It would ruin its majesty. But my dear Disciple, I can't complete my mission and advance in rank if I don't tear one off and show it to the pavilion. You understand that, right?"

Jasmine looked at her feet. "So you killed this majestic wyvern for a mission? It feels like such a waste. It could have grown into an even cooler dragon one day if given the time."

Stella crouched before Jasmine and put a hand on her shoulder. "You're right. One day, it could have become a majestic dragon lording over the skies, but we robbed it of that future to progress our own. That's just how things are sometimes. The strongest are the ones that decide the fate of others."

"It still feels unfair."

"Life's not fair," Stella said seriously. "The sooner you learn and accept this truth, the easier your life will become. Sometimes, you will have to kill others to live or leave those you love behind to survive. Life is full of difficult choices that you will have to face and decide for yourself how to deal with them. Think back to Slymere. Your family was caught up in a fight that had nothing to do with you, right? What happened?"

"Dad almost died," Jasmine mumbled.

"He should have died, but Tree saved him. If not for our intervention, there's a good chance all three of you would be dead, and you would have never become a cultivator. But what about the other families of Slymere that didn't get saved because we just so happened to be focused on you three at the time? Is it fair you survived, and they died?"

Jasmine slowly looked up and locked eyes with Stella. "No..."

"See? Life isn't fair, but there are ways we can prevent being bullied by the world and our fate." Stella gestured to the wyvern with her chin. "This fella got greedy. He would still be alive if he had devoured a few mortals and then moved on to another feeding ground. Instead, he earned the ire of the mine owner and had a bounty placed on his head. It would have been fine if he was a Nascent Soul Realm dragon, but he is a weak wyvern, so his fate was sealed. Do you understand the lesson I am giving Disciple?"

Jasmine nodded. "Don't attract unnecessary attention or be so strong it doesn't matter."

"You're so smart!" Stella ruffled her hair. "Now, do you think you could pick a scale for me?"

Jasmine nodded and meticulously inspected every scale within her reach as the wyvern's corpse towered over her, casting a looming shadow.

While she did that, Ashlock had analyzed the metal flower he had taken from the fissure. It was called an Ironclad Rose, likely the reason behind the town's name. Expending some Qi, he created a grove on the mountain ridge and would inform Sebastian and Ryker about it later.

"This one," Jasmine said eventually, pointing at the dark green wyvern scale before her.

Stella smiled. "Good choice, Jasmine. Why don't you try and pull it free?"

"Okay," Jasmine wrapped her fingers around the scale's edges and tried to pull. She grunted as her muscles strained and her face reddened. Green-tinted Qi wreathed her arms and legs as she put her whole back into it, but the scale refused to loosen. With one final pull, she lost her grip and fell on her back, panting. "I give up." Spreading out her arms like a starfish, she glanced over to Stella. "Sorry, Master, it's impossible."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Stella shook her head with a laugh, "Nothing's impossible, Jasmine." With that, Stella walked over and effortlessly pulled free the scale with one finger as if it were some loose wallpaper and waved it over her Disciple. "See?"

Jasmine pouted. "I loosened it for you."

"Uh huh," Stella smirked, "If you say so."

"Stella, could you stop showing off and hurry up with the harvesting? I can't hold back my hunger forever, you know." Ashlock said, half joking. He was itching to see what absorbing the wind affinity soul would do, and this wyvern corpse was making his vines water.

"Oh, my bad, Tree." Stella deposited the scale into her spatial ring and jumped up onto the wyvern's back. She walked along its spine to its head and crouched next to its eye. "Wakey wakey wyvern," Stella forced its eyelids apart and plunged her hands in with a crazed grin. Using telekinesis to keep it together, she removed the wyvern's eye, which looked like a blood-filled jelly ball, and stowed it away. Burning away the eye juices on her hands with soul flames, she hopped down to its mouth.

Jasmine watched all of this from the floor in horror. In seconds, her face had shifted from bright red to ghostly white.

Unaware of her Disciple's expressions, Stella picked out a random tooth the size of Jasmine and easily ripped it free. It was stored away in a flash of silver, and the harvest was complete. "Okay, Tree, all done. Enjoy your meal."

"Thanks." Ashlock didn't hold back and began to devour the corpse. Digestive fluids were secreted from his vines, dissolving the thick scales and tough flesh with a hiss. There were also the sounds of bones cracking as the vines tightened their grip.

"Isn't it time you returned home for dinner, Jasmine?" Stella asked the girl.

She slowly nodded. "Yes... though I have lost my appetite."

"Why?" Stella tilted her head. "It's not good for a growing girl like you to skip out on meals. Go home and make sure to eat a lot."

"Okay..." Jasmine got up, and on wobbly legs, she walked past the dissolving wyvern and jumped down into the ethereal root tunnel that led to Nox near her home.

"Poor girl." Stella shook her head as she went to sit on the bench. "Reduced to such a state after trying to free a wyvern scale."

"I'm not sure if that was the root of the problem..." Ashlock replied.

"What is then?" Stella asked sweetly.

"You looked rather insane while taking the wyvern apart. Maybe you scared her." Ashlock suggested.

Stella snorted and waved him off. "I have no idea what you are talking about. If anything, your way of eating is likely the reason."

"What, no way!"

"Then we can agree to disagree," Stella said, lying horizontally on the bench and closing her eyes. 'I'm going to grab some rest. Today was too much for me."

"Wait before you sleep. What did Jasmine want to speak to you about?" Ashlock asked.

"Oh, she said she still didn't know what affinity to pick and wanted to experience some more things to give her ideas." Stella looked up at his canopy with a smile. "I am glad she is putting so much thought into it. I will have her speak more with Elaine and maybe show her some things like alchemy to see if that interests her."

"Good idea."

"Mhm," Stella hummed in agreement as she closed her eyes again and started breathing softly after a few minutes.

"Have a good sleep," Ashlock muttered to himself as he had already withdrawn his presence from her mind. The sun was setting, so he would also sleep soon under the nine moons. But first, he needed to deal with the system message that had appeared in his mind.

[Absorb Wind Star Core for Inner World? If so, you will gain no Sacrificial Credits]

"No sacrificial credits? Hmm, I suppose that makes sense since all the Qi I absorb will be going toward my Inner World."

Ashlock accepted the prompt and looked within his own soul at the cloud of untamed Qi, which the system called a Chaos Nebula. Once he fed it the required Star Cores and Sacrifical Credits, it should form into an Inner World.

He watched as wind Qi flowed through his roots and into his soul, but instead of being transformed into spatial Qi and joining his Qi reserves, the wind Qi phased through his soul unchanged and mingled with the Chaos Nebula. With the introduction of wind Qi, the previously static cloud of untamed Qi began rotating inside his soul and gaining speed until it turned into a full-on storm.

His system was then updated.

[Requirements to turn Chaos Nebula into an Inner World:

3429 / 10000 Sacrificial Credits

0 / 1 Absorbed Fire Star Cores

0 / 1 Absorbed Water Star Cores

0 / 1 Absorbed Earth Star Cores

1 / 1 Absorbed Wind Star Cores

0 / 1 Absorbed Metal Star Cores]

[Rewards upon formation of the Inner World:

You will ascend to the Nascent Soul Realm.

The System will be upgraded with new features.

{Transpiration of Heaven and Chaos [B]} will be upgraded.

Your attacks will carry the weight of your Inner World behind them, and your rate of cultivation will increase the more you develop your Inner World]

"One down, four to go. Not bad. The others shouldn't be too hard to come by. The bigger concern is the sacrificial credits," Ashlock mused. "The monster farm has been netting me a few hundred credits a day, so it's only a matter of time, but it's still far too slow."

Luckily, he had a solution. Using telekinesis, he floated up a parchment lying near his root and read the list. It was the bounties and missions that Stella had written out for him. A lot offered really crappy pay, which is likely why they had been left unclaimed by other bounty hunters. But he didn't care about that. Some of them had details regarding locations with lots of monsters, and they also gave him a good reason to break into and assassinate the elders of other families in Nightshade City.

"I will complete some of these tomorrow, but now it's time for sleep." Ashlock activated {Nocturnal Genesis}, and he entered the dreamscape. Looking up at the moons, as usual, one was lit with a purple glow while the others were dull. "So it has nothing to do with my Inner World then. How can I get the other moons to change their affinity?"

A mystery for another time.

Glancing over to the north, he saw Nox in her field of white flowers. Under her canopy was her shadow dryad looking up at the sky in the dreamscape while a shadowy hand rested on her bark.

"Enjoying the view?"

Nox seemed startled as she looked around, "Ashlock?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Oh, hello," Nox's shadow waved in his direction, "Did you need something from me?"

"Nothing in particular, I just came to check on you. Have you got anything to tell me?" Ashlock yawned. It was so relaxing and pleasant in the dreamscape that the weight of sleep was heavy and warm. He felt ready to drift off.

Nox's shadow looked down the mountainside where Ashfallen City was in the real world. "I do have some concerns. I know I was only tasked with protecting this place from our enemies, but there is a lot of civil unrest in the city. I fear if things go on, a war is more likely to start from within."

"Really?" Ashlock paused, "I thought the Redclaws were handling it."

"They are trying their best but are outnumbered thousands to one. The mortals fear to raise concerns with the cultivators, and the cultivators don't know how to deal with mortal disputes except with violence or money." Nox's shadow lowered her head, "Gangs have already started to form, bullying others for their share of the free food and selling it in bulk to Darklight City."

Ashlock didn't understand. He had saved these people and given them free food and shelter, and he even sent the Redclaws to police the city, so where had it gone wrong?

"I have even protected a few mortals from being kidnapped on this mountainside as they are nearby enough for me to send my shadow fiends after them," Nox continued, "But from what I can tell, the situation is far worse down in the old mines. I can even sense some Qi types other than fire Qi that might be escaping the senses of the Redclaws."

"So rogue cultivators have finally started moving in under my nose..."

Ashlock realized his fears had come to fruition. A freshly formed city of a hundred thousand people was bound to breed a darker side. The question was, how should he fix this issue? He had the power to turn the city into a paradise or hell. He could come in with a heavy hand or turn a blind eye. With so many options, was there a correct solution?

"Thank you for telling me this, Nox. I haven't given the city the attention it deserves recently, and you have given me a lot to think about."

Nox's shadow bowed. "I am just happy to have been a help, and if you don't mind me asking, how is my sister?"

"Being well taken care of," Ashlock assured her, "Duskwalker will soon rise once more under the banner of the Ashfallen Sect. In fact, Stella will be killing Albis Lunarshade tomorrow."

"That's a relief, Evelyn will finally be free from that monster." Nox's shadow leaned against her bark, gazing at the nine moons. "I would love to meet Evelyn again one day and say I'm sorry for forcing that fate onto her."

Ashlock hummed in agreement, "That day may come sooner than you think."