Malo and Kai were bewildered by my order to attack the third evolution beasts, so the beasts struck first. Malo unsheathed his sword, but Kline was faster. He bit into a charging bear’s neck and threw it like a rag doll—an action that shifted the entire atmosphere of the battlefield. The beasts backed off at the surreal showcase of force, trying to process what had happened.

  My team was doing the same.

  “I suppose it’s not reasonable to expect people to attack this many beasts, so I’ll start,” I said, raising my hand. “Sina.”

  Sina emerged through the ground in a fog of bubbling smoke—illusionary storytelling that helped to explain what the beasts were looking at. She looked around, counting the enemies.

  I turned to Aiden. “Translate this.”

  A beast lunged before I could talk, but Sina shot forward, snapped onto its shoulder—and then erupted in flames. The attacker’s fur caught fire, and within seconds, it had burned through all the beast’s aura and down to the meat. Its eyes became infernos, and it quickly died.

  Malo stared at me in horror. He asked if I had kept something back—and the answer was yes.

  Most of it.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” I said, turning my wrist. Sina’s size ballooned, growing twice her size, then three times—four. She would’ve grown further, but she was pressing against the trees. The lurvine towered over the beasts, casting a shadow upon entities that thought they were large, but now seemed small and insignificant. “My name is Mira Hill, Fourth Grand Guardian of Areswood Forest. I am the confidant of Yakana, the spirit of this forest; I am the student of Reta, the Drokai who planted your ancestors here, and I hold the legacy of Brindle, the once Great Guardian of Areswood Forest. Even if you bring your entire packs and families and armies, it won’t make a difference. Now submit—or face the consequences.”

  Sina inhaled and released an ear-shattering roar.

  Despite our overwhelming show of force, being told to submit was too much for most of these alpha beasts to accept—so they charged.

  Not a moment later, Ryn and Dain shot out of nowhere, grabbing two charging beasts in their jaws. The two then grew rapidly. Dain crunched down, severing a beast’s spinal cord, while Ryn shook his head and threw one through a tree. The forest rang out with deafening cracks and the cries of the engineering team.

  Another beast shot spines at me, but a gigantic soul bear materialized, catching them in its stomach. A lizard creature shot a massive wind blade out of its mouth, nailing the bear. It lost its head—but no blood came out. Instead, its head just resprouted, it inhaled, and then roared, charging the lizard with an innate acceleration spell. It lifted its claws, and they shone with mana sharpening as it clawed down, cleaving the lizard into four sections.

  Sina rushed into the fray, proving she was real by lifting a two-ton gorilla in her jaws and snapping it in half. Two attacked her, but she erupted in flames, setting them ablaze.

  “Are you gonna… let me translate?” Aiden said, smiling warily.

  “That depends—will they listen?” I asked. “Or will they become emboldened when reinforcements arrive?” I looked up the mountain and saw dozens of large cats cresting the hill.

  Aiden smiled grimly. “They’ll hear you out. Whether they’ll abide is up to them.”

  “I see. Well, then I’ll talk.” I snapped my fingers, and all my soul beasts disappeared, leaving the third evolution beasts scrambling. I walked forward to face the beasts, making them back off. “Let’s try this again. My name is Mira, and I’m a grand guardian of this forest. This is Kline…”

  Kline stepped forward in panther form and then cloned himself, over and over and over again, until there were over fifty clones of Kline. He then released a collective roar with his bodies and rubbed them against the terrified beasts to prove he was real. At this point, he wasn’t acting like a big man—he was the big man—and every beast and member of my party had to recognize that.

  “He’s my guardian,” I finished. “Next month, we’ll be hunting fourth evolution beasts. To us, you’re just unlicked cubs in the wilderness.”

  Some of the beasts growled when Aiden translated those words through beast telepathy.

  “I won’t try to convince you to join me or to be my friend. I’ve already gone down that road with my kind and got burned—so I’m not going down that road with you. Instead, you have two options. You can make soul pacts with Aiden and join his army, or you can join mine.”

  I lifted my hand dramatically, and the beasts that died reformed. I had captured their neara at death, hovering it to the moment I would bring them back to life. They reformed—mind and memories and emotions intact. They roared and tried to attack me—but they suddenly froze, unable to move. Then, I clenched my fist, and their minds broke. They turned around on my silent order and turned to join my army.

  A cold chill passed through the beasts as they all recognized the nature of what had just happened. Then, I panned my cold gaze upon them.

  “Death is not an option.”

  2.

  Darna sat around the campfire that night in a state of surreal limbo, drifting off as if to relive and convince herself of what she had just seen. Over the last eight hours, a parade of beasts large enough to squash her with a footstep lined up to challenge Mira or create soul pacts with Aiden. Over a hundred didn’t show, but Mira ordered them to warn the others that if they didn’t make a pact in the next three days, she would hunt them down and eradicate them.

  Now, Aiden was sitting between massive alpha beasts, laughing with half of Darna’s engineering team while the other half stared into the fire, trying to avoid looking at the mountains of creatures stacked up around them. Massive beasts were eating half of the meat; Mira’s soul cooks were turning the rest into jerky. It was a bleak and confusing spectacle.

  As for Mira, she was sleeping with her head in Kai’s lap.

  Mira looked so… normal sleeping there. So vulnerable—but she wasn’t. Despite her being asleep, Kline was lying in front of Kai—and that cat was more terrifying than Mira.

  Darna didn’t even see Kline kill beasts. Few third evolution beasts could see him, either. He just disappeared, and then there’d be a devastating crash and blood would fly everywhere. Most creatures looked around for Kline after they saw a beast dead, and he’d just be… gone. It was eerie. Darna got the impression that he didn’t even need to show himself. She’d just have to watch as beasts flew around and exploded, as if by macabre telekinesis.

  Yet Kline was looking normal as well. He was curled up on Kai, grooming his paws.

  The only person who looked fazed by what happened was Tyler, but he didn’t look shocked—just depressed. He sat beside Malo near the fire, trying to speak but deciding not to repeatedly. When he did speak, Mort snorted in grim laughter at his chosen topic.

  “Am I ever going to catch up to her?” Tyler asked Malo. “Or should I just… try to be second?”

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  Malo smiled grimly. “I’ve seen the weakest overtake the strongest in my lifetime. But…” He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Tyler chuckled. “So you guy’s fight…?”

  “Was just what she learned in the first couple years she lived here,” Malo confirmed. “I doubt this is even how she fights. She was just letting her soul beasts… fight. She could’ve just sat there and done nothing.”

  Tyler chuckled again—this time, darker. He leaned back, staring into the swaying canopies. “But I can still be a badass, right?”

  “Dude, you are a badass,” Kai said, running his fingers through Mira’s hair. “She’s just special. That’s all.”

  “Special…” Mort muttered with a wide grin, darkness swirling in his eyes. “I…” He looked up when everyone turned to him. Having Mira’s entire team staring at him made Darna’s heart race. She wanted to apologize for him, but there was no need to do so.

  Mort smiled wryly. “Don’t take it the wrong way, it’s just… I’m a bit… shocked.”

  “You and me both, man,” Kai said. “That was a bit… intimidating.”

  Tyler and Aiden laughed.

  “That’s it?” Mort asked. “Just… intimidating?”

  “Yeah,” Kai said. “I mean… she’s a guardian of Areswood. What’d you expect? Us?”

  Mort’s eyes widened. “No, I… I guess I just didn’t get what being a guardian meant.”

  “Me either, apparently,” Tyler said. “I thought it just meant talking to fairies and whispering to dragons… or something.”

  “You mean you’ve never seen her fight?” Darna asked, looking between them.

  Tyler shook his head. “No.”

  “Then why’d you even… trust her to come here?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Because other people believe that she’s strong? It’s weird to put it like that, but you need to understand—Mira’s not a normal person. At least not to others. She’s more like… a myth. A… bedtime story. A boogie man. You see her riding dragons and dumping out jars of third evolution mana cores and think it’s all a conspiracy. Well, it turns out that it’s true.” He chuckled darkly. “It’s all true.”

  “And it’s pretty badass,” Kai said. “Isn’t it?”

  Tyler rolled his eyes. “You’re just saying that because you’re sleeping with her.”

  “Not quite.” Kai brushed a lock of hair behind her ear with a gentle smile. “You’re right, I would’ve said that no matter what. But… you know, it’s kinda cool we got these two on our side, isn’t it?”

  Kai patted Kline’s head. To Tyler’s apparent shock, Kline didn’t hiss or move. He just let it happen.

  “I mean…” Kai turned to Darna and Mort. Then, he looked around the forest underneath the pink and purple moons. “You’re glad they’re protecting you, right?”

  Those words took Darna’s breath away. For the last eight hours, she had viewed Mira as a god, the end result of the neophyte system. Darna was scared of her, intimidated—nervous. Mira’s power was taboo, and everyone in Darna’s team was too afraid to talk about it. Yet after a single sentence, their entire perception of Mira Hill had shifted. The team was in the midst of the most treacherous forest in perhaps the entire multiverse, and the cooks were processing fifty tons of third-evolution meat. Wasn’t it good that Mira was as terrifying as she was? It was something that Darna would have to think about.

  3.

  I never knew what it was like to be revered until the morning after the first round of soul pacts. Everyone starting cookfires stopped what they were doing and stared at me, as if waiting for me to speak. That was something I had become used to when I was acting as a leader, but these weren’t my people. They were just hired help, but they were treating me like their queen—afraid to say the wrong thing.

  “I have a question…” I said.

  “Yes?” Darna asked nervously.

  I looked between them. “Is no one concerned that Aiden has a new army of a hundred of those beasts?”

  “Hey, just because you’re scary doesn’t mean that you should drag me down with you!” Aiden said from inside his tent, earning a few chuckles.

  “You’re not scary? One of those beasts could wipe out half of Wraithwood, and you have a hundred. You don’t think that’s concerning?”

  Aiden poked his head out of the tent and saw the engineering team staring at him like they were me just ten seconds before. I smirked in triumph. He glowered at me. I flicked my hair and sat beside the fire. I felt Mort’s anxiety, so I turned to him directly. “Mort, right?”

  He swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “Sorry for not… communicating well. I know that was probably… terrifying. It’s just… how are you supposed to explain any of this?” I shrugged. “You can’t.”

  Mort smiled wryly. “Well, you got me there.” He paused and then he chuckled abruptly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s just… I guess it was just easier to view you as a god. When you’re all… normal it kinda ruins it.”

  “As a god?” I laughed, eyes drifting. “Oh, I guess you’ve never met a god. If you did, you’d know that they’re just like us. A bit eccentric. Definitely arrogant. But pretty much… human.”

  His eyes widened. “You’ve met a god?”

  I knitted my brows. “You don’t know? What’d the Oracle sell you to come here?”

  His eyes dimmed. “It offered us a lot. A gold request, unique questlines—soul meat. But I think that all of us are just excited to see a Jacksmore ruins in Areswood.”

  His team members nodded in agreement.

  “So when we heard that we’d be working with someone who created a settlement with a ninety-nine percent survival rate, I thought, Well? What are we waiting for? It wasn’t that complicated.”

  I blinked a few times. “So you know the history of this place?”

  “I know what you’re thinking: he knows how dangerous this place is, but then he bitched nonstop. But… come on. Not even scions would attempt to take on more than a few third evs where I’m from. What you were suggesting was just… insane.”

  I cocked my head in thought and said. “Huh…”

  “Huh, she says.” Kai kissed me on my cheek from behind. He then sat by the fire with a self-filling kettle to make tea.

  “Hey, it’s not like…” I looked around and blushed when I saw everyone’s faces.

  Aiden laughed and sat beside Kai. “Can I get some of that? It’s gonna be a long day.”

  Kai smiled and sighed in understanding. “I’m going to need a bigger kettle.”

  4.

  I expected challengers from the beasts watching our campsite from a nearby ridge, but none of them challenged me. Part of that was because those who gathered were willing to make contact with us, as opposed to those preparing for war. Another part was that I expanded Sina to the size of a fourth evolution colossus and had her rip out trees with her teeth. That told a powerful story of our strength—and none wanted to repeat the mistakes from the beasts that died the day before.

  Once Aiden started making fresh contracts, I looked down at him from Sina’s back. “Do you got this?” I looked at the beasts that he had made contracts with in exchange for meat, and God knows what else.

  Aiden nodded. “I do.”

  “Can you protect our team?”

  He smiled. “Why? You gonna do something crazy?”

  I smiled back. “Yeah, probably.”

  “Sure.”

  I waved to Darna and Mort. “I’ll be back in the afternoon. So keep put, okay?”

  Mort’s face paled as he looked up at a beast that looked like a mole but was fifteen feet standing, thirty across. “You sure it’ll be okay?” he asked nervously.

  “Yeah, it’ll be fine. Aiden’s the safe one, remember?” I winked and tried to ride off.

  “Mira!” Tyler yelled.

  I stopped and sighed. His eyes were pleading, so I nudged my head to Dain and Ryn to pick up Tyler and Malo. I then turned to Kai, who was also watching me, sword on his hip. “Stay here. If anyone gets nippy without me here, get some training in.” I turned to Aiden. “Just make sure it's one-on-one, okay?”

  Kai saluted upon Aiden’s approval, and then I left with Tyler and Malo, disappearing a few miles into the forest before I stopped holding back. I raised my hand, and over fifty third evolution beasts bubbled up from a deep fog spread across the ground cover. They all waited for my command.

  “Go to your friends, families, and packs and spread our ultimatum,” I ordered. “If any of them want to fight—bring them here.”