For better or for worse, it turned out Shayma’s parents had headed out into the woods with a couple weeks worth of supplies. They were adventurers, so it made sense, but Shayma wasn’t at a level that it was safe for her to go out into the main wilderness of Wildwood. Plus, even if she wanted to find her parents it wasn’t quite important enough to register to [Seeker], so it would be almost impossible to find them. We’d just have to wait until they came back.

More Classers and the other fourth-tiers arrived throughout the following days. Monat eventually set a schedule where all the teleports were done in the evenings, leaving the mornings and afternoons free for Shayma to venture out into the borderlands with Annit and Keri. They couldn’t go far, of course, but it at least gave Shayma and Keri some proper experience.

The Theurge fellow came through two days after Yamal. Liril was a slight, stiff-backed man with a poor attempt at a moustache and a thinning beard, not to mention half-bald and refusing to admit it. Despite that, he moved like the planet itself would make way for him, and there was always a living flame about him. Usually just lapping at the hem of his robe, but sometimes it climbed up to sit on his shoulders. Once it even perched on his bald spot until he noticed it.

Like Yamal, he concluded there was something incredibly powerful beneath their feet. Which there was, but it wasn’t me. My core and the sphere of doom around it was off in the mountain, and the only thing below them was Ansae. I wasn't sure whether I should be amused or embarrassed, but it was probably too late to [Ward] her. Hopefully she didn’t notice them noticing her and take offense. She’d already demonstrated an impressive ability to see right through solid rock, but for the most part she was napping, sprawled in her chair and snoring.

Another few days later The Hurricane arrived, and she was nothing like the other two fourth-tiers. For one, she was tiny, even smaller than Iniri. In fact, I heard Iniri mention to Cheya that it was nice actually having someone shorter than her around. The overlay told me her race was Mystic-Blood Demihuman, which didn’t mean much to me but probably explained her size and the thoroughly aqua-colored hair.

She was also incredibly loud, maybe as a result of her being mostly wind-Affinity, and she laughed about everything. Then there was the pole that she hauled around that was twice as tall as she was that absolutely blazed with storm Affinity. I’d at least outgrown such things hurting me simply by being nearby, but I didn’t look forward to her actually using the thing. Fortunately she only perched on it, instead of standing like a normal person, or occasionally surfed it through the air.

But beyond the initial amusement I didn’t pay her overly much attention. I had something much more important to play with. Tree seeds!

Apparently the Wildwood Tree itself didn’t bear fruit but once a century at most, so I was out of luck for viable seeds there, but there were lesser plants with significant wind affinity that thrived in the forest below. Even if they didn’t actually float, they supposedly at least generated wind about them. Shayma had purchased a number of those just before she sent another letter to Iniri, who seemed rather nonplussed that I’d spent one of my remaining normal Source gems on horticulture.

But I planted a little grove off to the side of the village and connected it to my mana dynamo, as well as seeding the place thickly with green chrystheniums.

Alaer Tree discovered.

Even if they didn’t float, I was pretty sure I could get something I was missing from them. Plus they did look pretty nifty, with funnel shaped leaves on long, flexible stems, each one flying like a tiny kite. After about a day they’d grown enough that I was starting to regret putting them all together, as they were starting to form the beginnings of a cyclone about them, the wind circling and carrying bits of leaves and grass in the air.

But when the cyclone sucked up some of the chrystheniums, I got what I was looking for, a new specimen with broad grey petals that, like the tree’s leaves, was tethered and flew on the breeze.

Lofty Chrysthenium discovered. Creates air currents.

Ever since Shayma had met Annit I’d realized I had a big hole in my Source stockpile, and that was the wind Affinity. Since I could derive new Affinities from old ones, having an additional and fundamental one like that was sure to vastly expand my offerings. Not that I was sure what to do with them yet - the Primal versions were so potent that I couldn’t trust Classers with them. Though I’d have to liquidate one or two of them eventually since I didn’t seem to be able to make the normal version anymore.

Maybe I should try trading with one of the fourth-tiers. They were already monstrously powerful, so making it even worse wouldn’t be too big a difference. And of course, there was Ansae. I didn’t know what her hoard was like, but maybe she’d be interested in one of them. Or one of each Affinity. Dragons liked matched sets, right? Either way I’d have to wait for Shayma to get back, so I experimented.

Lofty and Blue (or rather, water) flowers seeded Storm and Kinetic versions, the former of which actually did float, bobbing around the ceiling until they rooted themselves up there, spawning little clouds to drizzle on the grove and occasionally grounding tiny lightning bolts into the faux sky they were anchored to. The kinetic variation sat in place but spun like its namesake, the petals rotating about the stem.

I was looking at a combinatorial explosion, really. I hadn’t properly explored mashing together some of the weirder ones, like Darkness or Crystalline, simply because it seemed they needed a close mana link to ‘crossbreed,’ and I hadn’t figured out how to make it work. Probably I had missed something obvious, like when I’d not been circulating the mana before.

But playing with flowers wasn’t all I did. The arrival of the fourth-tiers and some of their casual displays of power, without even properly invoking their Skills, made me realize that I still didn’t have enough in the way of defenses. In fact, I couldn’t think of any single thing I could do to actually stop a determined Classer of that level on its own. Which meant I’d have to soften them up and chip away at them over time.

The first step was to turn my surface domain into a minefield.

I didn’t have black-powder explosives or anything really nifty, but I did have the steam-pressure bombs that I could pepper about just under the surface. With no chance of accidentally exploding on anyone I didn’t want, either, since they were manually controlled with no other trigger. They might not do much to a fourth-tier but it’d at least annoy them and force them to deal with the threat they represented to any softer targets about.

Then I did something I really should have done a long while ago and just replaced the tunnel to the surface with a teleporter. Oh, the tunnel still existed, at least from the surface, but it didn’t go anywhere interesting. Just very, very long loops that I packed full of pressure-cutter and lava and steam traps, and for the heck of it a few hydraulic crusher blocks.

I did have a reasoning behind leaving a tunnel entrance, in spite of not using it anymore, which was that it’d guide invaders or guests onto a predictable path. Having no entrance just invited people to start moving earth. The change confused my guests for a little bit, even though I had Shayma send a letter through.

It was getting to the point where I was going to need to set up more mana dynamos, or improve the ones I had. I’d been carving away chambers inside the mountain for just such an eventuality but it was weird to need them so soon when I thought I had plenty of space. Apparently I was never going to really get on top of my mana needs.

At least the present I was trying to put together for Shayma was proceeding apace. I just had to wait and let the Source gems grow. Everything seemed to be fine, until I caught sight of what was coming up from the river.