Aaron was legitimately impressed at the king's generosity.

Some of it was just crumbs. What was the point of receiving protection from a kingdom that was already losing a war? Or free passage into royal installations when Aaron already had the right to investigate anyone anywhere?

However, sovereign territory free of trade barriers, and a third of Illyria's income every year weren't bad. It didn't even matter if the territory was in a rich land, for even a desert could turn into a paradise with the right formations.

The sprout also interested Aaron, but only a little. After all, he could create more of them at will. The king couldn't have known Aaron would be interested in it at all though. All evidence would instead point at him not caring about it at all, for he had created it — which the king had found somehow — then left.

The thing was, if Madam Selna had known the item had some value, so would the king. Therefore, this was the king's way of saying he wouldn't touch even the trash Aaron left behind unprotected, no matter how valuable it might be for him. Rather, he would do his best to protect Aaron's trash just on the off chance Aaron would be interested in it at a later date.

That, more than anything, mollified his heart. The tribute was acceptable, he decided. The king had earned back his right to live.

Accepting it now would also help him in the long run. Others would offend him sooner or later, and when the word of his mercy — for a price — spread, they would also try to offer him some tribute.

Still, Aaron would ask for a few more things. Nothing grand, but minor stuff the king could facilitate for Aaron's plans. It wouldn't do to look too soft, after all. People would see that as a weakness, and it would bring more trouble than good.

"Tell him I'll meet him as soon as I arrive at the capital," he told the messenger. "Let us meet in a private and discreet place in the palace, but his people should see me enter and leave."

The messenger nodded. "Yes, sir!"

"You may leave."

She immediately left toward the capital.

Lana laughed. "You are still just a royal duke of a minor kingdom, alright? My dad will not let me marry you. No, no, no, sir." Her voice was still drunk. "No, no, no."

He ignored her and walked to the military facilities. Lana used her special pillar of light spell to confirm his identity, and he walked to the well-protected bud. Metal walls surrounded it from ten feet away.

The plant was dying already.

Just as the places where he cultivated became only temporarily balanced, the sprout's life was also limited. Without being harvested and preserved correctly, the harmony within couldn't be maintained. Without that, it would die.

Interestingly, there was already an energy barrier surrounding it.

Back when Aaron had found the pups, the barrier had been deployed to protect the world. The bud had been pushing some Law fragments into the beasts, which caused an internal imbalance. There was a chance that imbalance might have caused the Divine Energy in the sprout to develop into a void zone. Therefore, the sprout had created a barrier to prevent the void zone from consuming the world.

Aaron hadn't been wrong, but now he realized that the barrier had been there even before the pups had arrived. It had another function he didn't know about, but the mystery was easily solved; he had access to Arcane Energy this time. A skill later, he found out the barrier's current goal.

The bud had no consciousness, but its genetic code "knew" it had a limited life and "wanted" to fulfill some purpose. Since the sprout was harmony incarnate, its purpose was related to that. The barrier would only open if two beings, compatible with two opposing elements, approached together. Then, the sprout would redeploy the barrier to protect the world in case something went wrong while baptizing the newcomers with Divine Energy.

Speaking of which, he needed to explain to Lana how that affected the wolf. He had chosen not to say anything until she recovered, but the proximity to the city wouldn't allow him to postpone it anymore. He would talk to her on the way to the capital.

But first, Aaron would harvest and use that sprout.

He easily destroyed the barrier by hitting its weak spots and approached the bud. Immediately, Divine Energy with traces of Earth Laws — the element he had absorbed used in his last level up — came out of the bud to envelop him.

He used his own Qi to fight it. Allowing that energy to enter him would leave his body extremely attuned to the Laws of the Earth. Cultivating Qi from other elements, which he wanted to do, would be absurdly difficult.

Divine Energy was much more powerful than Qi, but the bud had no mind of its own. Thanks to that, Aaron could defend himself, approach, grab the bud, and immediately swallow it.

The plant liquefied as soon as it entered his mouth. A moment later, the liquid turned into gas and then disappeared. Only the perfectly harmonized particle of Divine Energy remained.

Without the sprout to keep it in check, the energy expanded rapidly. The initial impact almost blew Aaron into bits.

But he survived, then sat in lotus position and fought for his life.

Mortal physics couldn't explain how a single particle of Divine Energy could expand into the multiple waves of energy that hit Aaron's body and soul with overwhelming violence. The sheer volume of it threatened to make him pop like a balloon. The power of it started melting his internal organs, which he quickly repaired with Qi.

All the Qi in the world wouldn't be enough to survive the onslaught for long though. Only his experience had made him confident in swallowing the sprout, for he knew what Divine Energy was.

He understood its fundamental nature, how it worked, why it did what it did. His Qi surrounded it, created mystical runes, and vibrated in the right frequency. Little by little, he calmed the energy. Step by step, he pushed the wave back into being a particle.

After a long while, he succeeded.

A particle of Divine Energy was now in the very center of his being. A sphere made of thousands of Qi-woven runes surrounded it. The symbols vibrated, and the particle vibrated with it. The particle vibrated, and his soul, and the air, and the ground for hundreds of miles vibrated with it.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he pushed the particle towards his dantian. It refused to move. He insisted.

It was an uphill battle. Each inch took all his focus. Each millimeter was a victory. To bring it to the center of his dantian, to the middle of his hurricanes of Qi and Arcane Energy, was a glorious triumph.

The hurricanes threatened to mix with the particle and diffuse it, but his runes prevented that. Not that they would be around forever. He had survived the preparations, now it was time to actually start using the energy.

He removed a few symbols from the sphere. Just a few. Three, to be exact.

The Divine Energy became highly unstable. It wanted to expand. It tried to expand. It couldn't. But it found the opening Aaron had purposefully left for it. A way for it to change slightly. A tiny opening only a little of its changed self could pass through, slowly.

Aaron needed that little diffused — yet pure — Divine Energy. He surrounded it with Qi and spread it throughout his dantian, body, spirit, soul, mind, and heart almost evenly.

Not perfectly evenly though, and this was important.

While his skills were as close to perfection as possible, he was still human, and thus imperfect by definition. Part of cultivating was about moving towards perfect immortality, but it shouldn't be done instantly. Those who improved too quickly what nature had created imperfect suffered a backlash from the universe itself, what was usually called tribulations.

Some steps in cultivation would require him to overcome tribulations, but it wasn't time yet. A tribulation at his current power level would be the end of him.

To prevent that, he focused on some places more than others in somewhat controlled randomness. He knew his dantian should receive more Divine Energy for his purposes, and so should his spirit. He was using that particle to allow him to cultivate three energies without limits on what level they could reach. That meant mostly a changed dantian and a stronger spirit, with pathways that could take that much energy of different kinds safely.

His body and soul also required only some minor refining for that, while his mind and heart required none. He still gave some energy to those though. Being imperfect was one thing, but too much imbalance could be lethal.

The process was very slow at first, and it only got even slower once about half the particle had been spent.

At that point, he started weaving the diluted Divine Energy into tiny runes. It wasn't a formation; his current self couldn't withstand the power of a formation fueled by Divine Energy. Yet, those symbols had vague meanings that resonated with the universe and changed slightly the way the Divine Energy interacted with him.

It was as if he was writing how things should be, and the universe made it so.

In his dantian, he wrote about expansion, overcoming limits, and increasing power. In his spirit, about withstanding pressure, resilience, and elasticity. In his body and soul, resistance, endurance, and unity. And in his mind and heart, he wrote nothing, for it wasn't necessary. He only pushed some raw Divine Energy into those.

And at last, six hours after he ate the sprout, a little after midnight, he finished.

His whole body ached. No, his entire being ached. The changes he had just undergone had been so fundamental, touching on the very basis of his existence, that though beneficial, they still took a toll.

He couldn't regenerate any energy at the moment. His energy control was suffering enough to make him unable to keep his internal hurricanes going, much less his active perception skill for over ten meters. His six senses were so impacted that he couldn't feel himself breathing. And his mind felt much slower than before, almost only as fast as an Inept's.

The symptoms would heal as the days passed, and he would be back to peak condition in three days. That's also when he would finally be able to reap the benefits of what he had just done and cultivate again, and they were great.

Not only would he be able to cultivate three energies at once with no level limit, but the wait between cultivation sessions would also depend on the weaker energy he had. The long waits for his Qi cultivation were over. He only needed to wait the little time to cultivate Arcane Energy again. And once that also became too slow, he could just add a third energy at a low level and decrease the wait once again.

Such outstanding results were unexpected. There had been some randomness to the process, but that was a little much. A quick analysis revealed the reason for that.

He was in a world almost completely devoid of Divine Energy, and his being was starving for it. When his body and soul were given a single particle, they absorbed it much better than a being in a place rich with Divine Energy would.

That was troubling. He was sure it would cause some trouble. From starvation to devouring energy and back to starvation, he would certainly find a hidden issue further in the road because of that.

But he would cross that bridge when he came to it.

For now, he was ecstatic with the results and let out a rare smile of pure bliss as he opened his eyes. He was dead tired and wanted nothing more than to sleep, but he wouldn't trust the king's goodwill so much yet. The strongest soldier he had detected had been only a Two Star cultivation, but now he wasn't sure if he could protect himself even from such weaklings.

Lana was sitting close by, playing with the wolf cub. Alys and the panther were laying beside her. Sometime during his cultivation, they had fallen to the ground.

Aaron stood up, picked up Alys and the panther under his arms because of his limited energy reserves, and ordered, "Let's go."

The sooner he got into a solid building in the city and set up some defensive formations, the better.

"Lana," Aaron said after they set up a bonfire for the night. "We must talk about the pups."

She looked at him with a frown and hugged her wolf protectively. "What about them?"

"They have been tempered by Divine Energy, which makes them technically Divine Beasts now," he explained. "Weak ones, but still. Thankful, people in this kingdom are most too weak or ignorant to realize it, but there's always a chance that someone recognizes them for what they are. And whoever does realize it will do everything in their power to seize the beasts."

"I'm not giving up on Tatou!" she almost yelled.

"Nor am I asking you to. But the only way to decrease people's interest in a wild Divine Beast is by making it... less wild."

She looked suspiciously at Aaron. "What do you mean?"

"A Soul Contract, of course."

"No! Absolutely not! I'll not make Tatou a slave!"

"Nor am I asking you to," he repeated. "Stop being so defensive and listen to me. I'm your Patriarch, girl, and I care for the members of my clan! Did I ever lead you astray even once?"

She seemed mollified by his words. Thankfully, she didn't bring up the fact that he wanted to kill her brother.

"Listen," he said. "There are many kinds of Soul Contracts. The one I propose is a breakable one. You'll promise to become a kind of pack leader to your beast—"

"Tatou has a name!" she interrupted.

"A pack leader to Tatou," Aaron rectified, "and in return, he'll promise to obey you. It's natural for wolves to obey the pack leader, so he won't feel like a slave. More importantly, he'll be able to break the contract any time he wants. He'll only be required to give you a one-day notice. Which is understandable for any contract."

She frowned deeply for a long time before replying. "But I'm not a Beast Tamer."

"I reckon people in this world require that class to make Soul Contracts?" he asked. It fit what the guard in Red City had asked him. She nodded. "No worries, I can make Soul Contracts even without it."

"I don't know..." she said.

"Lana, this is in Tatou's best interests too. It has bounded with you and wouldn't want to leave you. But without a contract, he might be kidnapped, and people might use mind skills to control him against his will. The Soul Contract will protect him. If you want to keep Tatou, you must be willing to make hard decisions to protect him, even if he might not understand it. It's like raising a child. Lastly, I repeat, he'll be able to break the contract if he wants. It's not slavery. This is the best for everyone involved."

"I..." she took a deep breath. "Alright."

He nodded. "Good."

She looked at him expectantly for a while, but after a long time without him moving, she frowned again.

"Sooooo?"

"So what?"

"Aren't you, you know, doing it?"

"I am. In three days. I'm not strong enough to bind souls together now." Not only was he in a weakened state, but Arcane Energy could also only affect the soul from the Two Star level onward.

"What?! You tease! Why did you make me decide now?!"

The panther had been lazily sleeping over Alys, but her yells woke it up. It stood up, approached the bonfire, and sat, looking at the cooking meat with a winging tail.

Aaron smiled, took a pork skew from the fire — he had a lot of pork in his rings — and used some Arcane Energy to cool it down before throwing it to the panther. It ate happily.

He turned back to Lana. "I talked about it now because you can only enter such a loose Soul Contract if you've truly accepted it. In three days, you'll either have grown used to the idea or will give it up. Just know that if you do, we'll either get rid of Tatou, or I'll make a contract with him instead. Carrying a wild Divine Beast around is a danger to my clan that I won't accept."

She sulked but said nothing.

The late emperor had been fascinated by Heroes. A sizeable chunk of the Thenor Empire's coffers had been poured into investigating and collecting stories about the otherworldly travelers. He had been particularly fixated on Heroes from a world called Earth.

To his credit, all that investment had produced great wisdom that had grown the empire into what it was today. Even now, the current emperor was still fond of the saying, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

That was the reason he got close to so many dangerous people instead of hiding from them. The World Dragon, the Hidden One, the World Diviner, he called them all friends. That last one was the most dangerous of them all in both his and his High Inquisitor's opinion.

The emperor had spent a lot of time trying to understand her class's true strengths and weaknesses. For instance, her most known weakness, the need to know the name of her divination target, was a lie. She did better if she knew the name of the target, but that wasn't required. He had seen her divine things about people he only barely told her about.

What he hadn't been sure of for a long time was whether she could lie. An ancient document he had procured stated that a World Diviner's greatest weakness was their physical inability to say any falsehoods. Thankfully, he had gotten a small lie from her two years ago, when she said his preferred consort was faithful to him, while he had seen her betray him with his own eyes.

Since then, he had caught enough lies from her to notice she always squinted her eyes when she lied. She pretended she was having trouble divining the subject, but she was just a lousy liar.

And just yesterday, she had lied to him again.

"Aaron Ironblood is of no concern as long as you don't anger him," she had said cautiously. "Recall all troops from Illyria Kingdom at once. But his redheaded companion will become a threat to your rule if she survives her current crisis. Kill her swiftly and give him a few gifts."

The emperor was astute and swiftly extracted the true meaning behind those words.

Aaron Ironblood was coming for blood, and it was best to tell the Imperial Garrison to focus on killing him while they purged the Kingdom of Illyria. If that failed, he should send someone decidedly stronger that he couldn't win against.

If that also failed, the girl was Plan B. The emperor would fawn over her and use some mind skills to brainwash her into becoming faithful to him. Then he would use her as a hostage against the Hero.

The emperor was also decisive, and Plan B was already coming to fruition. He looked at the redhead prostrating some distance away from his throne and smiled.

"Say, Miss Lind-Sanlere, how would you like to be adopted into the imperial family?"

She was so shocked she broke all protocols to look directly at him — or rather, at the shadows shrouding him — with wide eyes.

And the World Diviner claimed such a silly girl was a threat?!