Eve toweled off from her nightly shower ritual. Kudzu had managed to create a sort of plant-pump hybrid fed into the water tank while also cleaning it. She still used her inventory on the tank religiously to clean it as well, but so far, no sign of algae or anything like it had shown up in her shower. It actually felt as if the water was cleaner than from back on Earth.

Dinner had been a fun adventure of trying to cook as fast as the hungry army of fluffy doom’s maws could consume it. Without a doubt, her food supply was taking a noticeable hit. She wasn’t too worried yet, because winter was on the way. Once she got confirmation from Kudzu that there was nothing except fish, monster fish, monster frogs, and no strange other things in the lake, then Operation Winter-Kill would kick-off. It was a big lake, like the Great Lakes back home. She quickly took a glance at her Status, confirming the change the System had done to allow her to power level herself.

Race: Human

Class: Celestial Scholar

Level: 24

Health: 700/700 (7 HPs regen)

Mana: 2,100/2,100 (2,100 MPs regen)

Stats: Str 70, Dex 70, Con 70, Wis 210, Int 210

Free Stats: 0

Skills:

Paperweight I

Origami Ascension I

Celestial’s Five Senses

Spells:

Domain of Celestial Paper I

Mental Traits:

Celestial Mind

Physical Traits:

Ascendant’s Physique

Celestial Body

Ascendant’s Physique must be either stronger or unique enough for Celestial Body not to consume the Trait. Eve thought. The rising cost of buying things with Skill or Spell slots indicates that the System is starting to treat me like others. An investment that can gift great returns, just not a Chosen One.

Eve had gained a big boost at the start, and there was no denying it. However, she could clearly see the writing on the wall. Early advantages were being developed into her Meta, where she specialized in various things to get stronger. Domain of Paper I was the bedrock that built her Wizardess Tower, from which she would rule eternal with her army of furry servants!

Granted, it might be hard for an onlooker to know that they were Eve’s servants instead of the opposite. However, she had faith that anyone with common sense could see the true nature of things. She was clearly in command of this place and in no way utterly enchanted by cuddly things!

Five years with the Pack was a good call on Shadow and Light’s part. Eve thought. I can’t wait till they can communicate more effectively with me. My gut said go for it, and Celestial Mind backed it up, so I pulled the trigger on taking their help. What are five years to someone who doesn’t age anymore?

Snuggling into bed, her covers were quickly taken over by puppies of all shapes, sizes, and Elements. Shadow and Light took the coveted spot by her shoulders on paper pillows that felt softer than the originals. Eve’s mastery of the manipulation of her paper continued to increase. It was once simply liquid-proof and able to cut; it now could do so much more.

While she had never taken to engineering as her father had hoped, she still remembered quite a few lessons on basic things. Her most crucial issue right now was finding a way to generate electricity if the solar panels failed. The next was to figure out a way to duplicate the stovetop. Currently, it was just barely enough for everyone to eat. If the Pack would join her fluff army full time, she needed a bigger cooking top for meals when they combined Dens. Then there were smaller issues like figuring out lightbulb replacements, shower repair components, and more. She could really go for a motorcycle because even though she could fly, it was only fast in short bursts at the moment.

Eve drifted off to sleep, surrounded by warm bodies and dreaming of paper motorcycles.

The next couple of days were a blur of training her combat style and perfecting her sniper methods. Her daily ritual consisted of showering, feeding everyone, practicing combat, lunch, more combat, dinner, and a shower before bed. It was calming, bringing to mind the routine that military training had given her many years back in basic training.

Reaching the goal of point one second for KP Diamond creation and shooting was easy. Doing it to more than one round was harder, and splitting her mind with Celestial Mind played a big part. Her diamond shield-form with glass paper became instinctive, and training with Kudzu allowed her to link her Celestial’s Five Senses to the shield.

Adding the same camouflage technique to the shield that she could use personally on her body took a large amount of effort. In a similar vein learning to add weight to her bullets to raise lethality took time to grasp. When bullets were light for so long from her memory on Earth, being able to make quarter-ton bullets that obliterated massive trees was harder than normal.

Eventually, at the end of the week, the Pack finally arrived in full force-carrying everything required to stay with her. Eve modified her combat practice to split between combat before lunch and construction after lunch. With the assistance of the Pack’s more adept Element of Earth users, Eve was able to expand her housing, adding rooms using a combination of paper, elemental earth-mud goop, and vine supports. She originally lived in the small house, and her new house became a sprawling complex filled with mice, wolves, puppies, Kudzu vines, a sparrow of annoying predilections, and Eve herself. With her bedroom and kitchen as the center, the place ballooned outwards, housing everyone within the limits of her Domain of Paper I. The kitchen was expanded to a more circular setup and the wolves helped copy her stovetop cooking setup. Hence, she had four more in the cardinal directions to work with.

In terms of training, in her paper's Utility aspect, nothing beats cooking for just under a hundred hungry teeth-filled canine maws. Eve wasn’t surprised at all when an entire section of the house was dedicated to preparing for new arrivals in the Pack to be born. While she still didn’t have chicken legs to carry her house, Kudzu was the primary means of transportation now. After long discussions of possible repercussions for the noble’s death with the Pack's elders, it was decided to head deeper into the forest after Operation Winter-Kill.

Eve listened to the older wolves' advice, who explained that she would want to wait to allocate her free stat points. It was calmly explained that higher ambient mana could provide strange blessings when allocating stats. It was rare and depended on how closely aligned a person was with the location they arrived at.

The next couple of weeks were a blur of training and preparation. As the first gust of winter approached with a freezing touch, Kudzu had finally informed her that the trees around them were Forest Titans, essentially sleeping giants.

“Can you communicate with them, Kudzu?” Eve asked upon hearing the news.

“I’m not sure. We are in a truce at the moment. I don’t encroach on their territory, and they don’t encroach on mine.” Kudzu said, vines waving emphatically as she stared at the trees outside her interrupted practice session.

“Follow me with your vines.” Eve said, walking towards the nearest tree a short distance away. Her senses tingled when she came within a hand’s length of the massive tree. Eve said, “Ask them what they would want in return for harvesting enough trees to speed up Operation Winter-Kill.” She stood as Kudzu spoke a language that seemed filled with long pauses. Celestial Mind told her that it would take a very long time to decipher the language, so she didn’t bother learning it.

After a long, slow, practically one-sided conversation, Eve explained her need for massive amounts of paper to the trees. In return for promising not to damage the roots and feed many killed creatures from the Operation to the forest floor. The Titans gave the go-ahead to harvest trees, allowing her to form a vast supply of paper in short order.

The basics behind Operation Winter-Kill had never changed from the start. As soon as winter started setting in, ice began covering the lake slowly. Eve sped the process by planting the Isa Rune in a large grid formation in several sections over time as the ice slowly grew thicker. By the time she was done and the end of the month approached, the massive lake had a titanic frozen lid, almost five meters thick.

Since there was no chance for the lake's creatures to escape, Eve set her diabolical Operation into motion. She cut a small sliver in the ice and dropped several hundred pieces of paper with the Isa Rune into the lake water. From there, section by section, she froze the entire lake into one giant ice cube. It was heavy work that crushed the soul, and the final section she froze was filled with despairing creatures. All of them had desperately attempted to escape the frozen tomb she created.

None managed to make it out alive.

The real work started after she finished freezing the lake with her Isa-Rune papers. Slowly with increasing speed as she grew used to it, Eve hovered over the lake with her diamond shield-form chopping massive blocks of ice out of the lake. The ice was split, the frozen creatures stored in her inventory, and the water returned to the lake in a simple assembly line process utilizing the Puppy Pack and the adult wolves. Elemental wolves were a fantastic workforce, taking treats in the form of deliciously cooked fish as motivation.

It took almost half of the winter season before they finished the massive task. Eve was informed that seasons could last longer than what she was familiar with on Earth as the ambient mana rose. With the Operation's completion, everyone who had helped gained a good amount of levels, with Eve topping out at fifty-one total gained as the mastermind behind the plan.

There were small moments after Operation Winter-Kill was done where she had trouble seeing the frozen corpses beneath the ice in massive numbers. She consoled herself with the power gained from her actions. The more powerful she was, the better she could keep her people safe.

Once the process had been finished and the water restored, Eve took care to place a few fish varieties that had been saved for just this occasion by Kudzu back into the water. It might take a long time to re-populate the lake completely. Still, with Kudzu contributing various plants and no competition for the fish, Eve felt it was highly likely they would succeed in recovering given time.

Looking at her Status when the Pack finally decided to move deeper at the Operation’s end helped her center her world.

Race: Human

Class: Celestial Scholar

Level: 75

Health: 1,210/1,210 (12.1 HPs regen)

Mana: 3,630/3,630 (3,630 MPs regen)

Stats: Str 121, Dex 121, Con 121, Wis 363, Int 363

Free Stats: 255

Skills:

Paperweight I (1%)

Origami Ascension I (1%)

Celestial’s Five Senses (52%)

Spells:

Domain of Celestial Paper I (73%)

Mental Traits:

Celestial Mind (94%)

Physical Traits:

Ascendant’s Physique (5%)

Celestial Body (94%)

I will grow stronger and given enough time, and there is nothing, Dragon, Myth, or Gods that will stand between me and going home. Eve thought. Balancing the physical stats with the mental ones has only left a little over two-hundred-fifty to work with.

Learning that her Celestial Limited Skills, Domain, and Traits couldn't level up without specific requirements had been a rude awakening. The Pack had informed her that she would need the increase of ambient mana, along with other requirements such as raising her Level to the third Class Evolution, among other things.

"At least there is a path forward for me." Eve murmured as she turned to make dinner for her fluffy army of doom.