Though the Archcrafter from the Armeau family might have second tier cantae more intense than any of theirs, his soulhome was a simple building. After examining it with Nauda, Theo suspected that he had one room for strength and another for a lethal technique. No matter how nice the silvery stone that formed the building might be, it didn't have much room for other techniques.

So when they followed after him into the forest, he stood no chance of piercing Fiyu's stealth technique. Theo remained alert for allies at first, then relaxed as it became clear that this was a lesser noble, assigned to harvesting duty. When he reached a large pile of fallen wood, he began to pull it into the wagon, grumbling to himself.

"He's here to harvest sublime materials?" Nauda watched him with a continually more skeptical expression. "He didn't need to take the villagers' wagon for that."

"Is this a wild forest?" Fiyu asked. "Can we gather materials as well?"

Theo shook his head. "Based on how everyone else has stayed out of it, I'm guessing that this forest belongs to the Armeau family. If they're in control of the city court, they're powerful enough that they don't need to build a wall or guard it too carefully: the threat of punishment will keep out everyone else."

Nauda looked like she'd need some time to swallow that, but Fiyu nodded as if she understood and continued examining the environment. "It does not seem like a very fertile region."

"No, I think it's just well-harvested. They probably send people like him out to gather up anything that's useful, then store it in the Armeau family vault. That makes sense for his soulhome: strong enough to go unchallenged, but unimportant enough to be given an errand like this."

"If we are taking materials from a wealthy and unkind family, then I propose we steal." Fiyu apparently took to theft faster than he'd expected, but her sudden enthusiasm pulled Nauda out of her sour mood. Staying together within Fiyu's stealth technique, they set to work.

First, they determined that the fallen wood the noble was gathering wasn't valuable enough to be worth stealing. Though technically a sublime material, it had no advantage over the hearthtree wood that they had in abundance from Tatian.

Deeper within the forest, however, they might find more valuable materials. So they soon left the Archcrafter to his menial labor and ventured to take what they could. Though the vast majority of the trees weren't made of sublime wood, and many beds of plants showed signs of heavy harvesting, it seemed certain that there would be more that had been overlooked.

Their work was disappointing for some time, the only sublime materials available a few sticks that must have fallen during previous harvests. They did stumble across a tree with bright golden apples hanging from its boughs, but they were clearly unripe. At their peak, he thought they would have been a solid sublime food, but at the moment taking them would be nothing but sabotage.

"Oh!" Fiyu gasped and moved forward, forcing all of them to scramble to stay inside her shadowy bubble. Theo couldn't tell what she'd seen using his eyes, but he immediately reached out with his soulcrafter senses and realized that one tree was not like the others.

Amid the sea of silvery trunks and leaves, one tree shimmered with the same colors... because its trunk reflected like a mirror. As they got closer, he could tell that the leaves were actually duller than the others, but the bark shone like the clearest mirror he'd ever seen. More importantly, the reflective bark felt extremely potent, not for generating cantae but for resisting it. Given that, he could see how it might escape harvesting, as only Fiyu's observation technique allowed her to identify it from so far away.

"Can we take this, Jake?" Fiyu raised her fingers almost to the surface and looked back at him hopefully. "I believe that this would be valuable for me. Perhaps for you as well!"

Nauda frowned and peered at the trunk herself. "I'm not feeling much cantae from it, but..." She extended a hand and emitted a very small bolt of cantae, which promptly reflected off the tree without leaving a scratch. "Ah, I understand."

"Yes, you see its value. It could be used to reinforce buildings, and might resist weaker cantae, but I believe it could be far more effective within my soulhome."

"I think we can risk taking it," Theo said, "but be careful. We can't make too much noise while we're here or leave evidence that could be tied back to us."

"Yes, Jake. I will be careful."

Harvesting the mirror-like bark - which Theo strongly suspected would be translated as mirrorbark in his mind - proved to be more difficult than it looked. It reflected all weak cantae, and though Fiyu was able to overcome it with her bladed knife, the mirror blackened and curled away from her hand. In the end they resorted to brute force, which came down to Nauda using her staff to break the surface enough to peel the bark away.

There wasn't much room to work, so Theo stayed away, on the lookout for guards or other sublime materials. He was a bit disappointed so far, though not really surprised. Deuxan had a strong grip on all of its sublime materials in the habitable regions, which prompted a pang of nostalgia as he thought about material hunting with Brigana.

"Why do we hate that tree?" Senka popped up beside him without warning, tugging at his pants. "Is it a fumpet?"

"Do you know what sublime materials are?"

"Senka doesn't know!"

"Well, they're... is it worth explaining?" He regarded her irritably, knowing that he was mostly frustrated by the lack of results and not caring. "Actually, how old are you?"

"Senka is sporping old!"

"I guess it was too much to hope you'd give a number. We're looking for special materials like that tree bark. Just stay quiet and don't attract any attention."

"Shiny rocks? Senka can find shiny rocks!" She promptly skipped to the tree and tried to put one of the smaller shards in her mouth. Nauda hastened to stop her, a step too slow, but Senka spat it out a moment later and began to wander off, passing outside the bubble of Fiyu's technique.

Theo grumbled under his breath and went in pursuit - though the chance of anyone seeing them was low, there was no sense taking unnecessary risks. The little brat moved over the ground with surprising speed, snuffling like an animal. Before he could manage to grab her, she suddenly headbutted the ground.

"Here! Here! Senka smells a shiny rock!"

Part of him nearly grabbed her by the mouth and took her back, but that was the old man in him. Theo examined the ground, which appeared ordinary enough, and decided that he had nothing to lose. As he began to dig into the soft soil with his hands, he eyed Senka, wondering if this was some sort of childish trick. She did seem to be watching him, but then his hands touched something much harder.

Working quickly, Theo uncovered a small lump. Once he got it out, it proved to be a mushroom, though it was much heavier than any normal mushroom and cobalt blue once he brushed the dirt off. Most of all, he could feel the cantae flowing from it in considerable quantities for a simple sublime food. Not as warm as flamefruit, but it had a-

Without warning, Senka snatched it from his hand and bit into it. For a moment he feared that she was going to suck the whole thing into her soulhome, but there was absolutely no soulcrafting movement from within her: she really did just bite into it with teeth alone.

A moment later Senka declared "This tastes blooky!" and dropped it back onto the ground. Though Theo wasn't inclined to eat that one now that it had her slobber all over it, he found himself looking at the little creature again. Perhaps she had some sort of natural sense for cantae, or simply an excellent sense of smell...

"Senka, is this the shiny rock you were talking about?"

"Yup! But it's blook."

"You, uh, realize that this isn't a rock."

She gave him an odd stare. "Shiny."

Rubbing his eyes with one hand, Theo decided to just roll with it. "Can you help us find more shiny rocks like this?"

"Okay! Senka will help!"

With that, she scurried off into the woods, though she took a curving path around the tree where the others worked. Soon enough, she identified another point for him to dig, and he wasn't surprised to find another sublime mushroom. They seemed to be somewhat rare, and he couldn't ever guess their locations by vision or cantae senses, but Senka sniffed them out with little difficulty.

It was the first non-annoying thing she'd done, so perhaps his good deed saving her hadn't been repaid with misery after all. Though he still disliked how she ran about dog-like, he reflected that her antics hadn't actually gotten them into any major trouble. During the fight with the demons she'd stayed out of the way, and she'd shut up during the confrontation with the Archcrafter. Perhaps she had some sort of animal survival instinct.

By the time Fiyu and Nauda had finished with the tree, he'd uncovered several dozen of the mushrooms. When he returned to the others, he distributed them evenly and they promptly ate the evidence of their theft - the mushrooms weren't bad at all, even a bit dirty, but he could imagine their use in fine cuisine.

Meanwhile, Fiyu had shattered a significant amount of mirrorbark into herself but left some pieces for him. It might have been invaluable to his old light-based soulhome blueprint, but he took it anyway because he could probably think of something. Nauda didn't think it could be useful for her, so they divided the rest between them.

When they finished, the tree had been utterly stripped of bark, looking oddly pale in the metallic forest. They retraced their steps, removing evidence of their passage wherever they could. Within his soulhome, Theo threw all the sticks and other junk materials into the singularity in his central chamber, consuming them forever.

Just as they were about to leave, Nauda took a deep breath, staring at something behind him. Fiyu had gone utterly still, almost as if she'd seen a predator, but hadn't tried to use any cantae. Since they gave him no indication, Theo turned very slowly to look.

A creature resembling a deer stood between the trees, staring at them with unnatural stillness. The fact that it could see through Fiyu's shroud proved that it was a sublime beast, if the rainbow shimmer of its antlers wasn't enough. His eyes cataloged the delicate body and dappled gray coat, but it was the antlers that kept drawing his attention, clearly flowing with powerful cantae.

None of them moved after he turned, he barely even breathed, but suddenly the deer turned and darted away, vanishing into the forest without a sound. Once it was gone, he heard exhalations from the other two.

"It looked like a prey animal," Fiyu said softly, "but the horns were very sharp."

Theo could only nod. "You remember the Archcrafter talking about a special hunt? I have a feeling I know what they were hunting."

"Should we go after it?" Nauda asked. "It runs fast, but if we set a trap..."

"I... think we'd better not. What we've taken so far will probably go unnoticed, and I doubt the Armeau family really cares about it. But that beast... I have a feeling they'd punish anyone who dared to touch them. We could probably sell the antlers in another world, but it's not worth the risk."

"I believe we have enough." Fiyu came to stand beside them and renewed the shroud. "I think the city of Anguedan might be a difficult place, but perhaps we have put off our visit for long enough?"

He just nodded, which was answer enough. They left the Armeau family forest with new treasures in tow, but he had a feeling they wouldn't find any other sublime materials so easily.