Aurelie lay on her back, arms folded under her head, relaxing after her workout. She was amazed at the changes that had taken place three days ago. She was stronger, faster, had more stamina, healed faster, and she even felt smarter, if that was possible. It was as though every aspect of her body had been upgraded, improved by several hundredfold. The effects of cultivation were amazing, far more potent than she imagined they would be, to the point that she had embarrassed herself after she had stopped.

Aurelie watched Mellana and Farn stagger off towards their homes, slightly bemused at their reactions. She sat there for a while longer, poking the little ball of energy in her abdomen with childish amazement.

Eventually, though, she decided she should go eat, then sleep. Putting her hands on the floor, she pushed off the ground to stand. But the amount of force she used- a normal amount, as far as she was concerned- sent her flying into a tree.

“What the…?” She mumbled, looking down at herself, then at the ground. Gingerly, she got up. However, ‘gingerly’ still sent her tumbling face first into another tree. She pushed off the tree, but in her frustration used a bit more force than she usually would. As her usual force seemed to send her tumbling, using even more than that sent her flying all the way to the other side of the clearing and straight through yet another tree.

And so it went, Aurelie using varying amounts of force to figure out how gentle she had to be to get on her feet, and sending herself crashing more times than she cared to count.

Luckily, though, she eventually found her feet and relaxed. This whole cultivation thing was a bit more trouble than she expected. She would need to find a way to readjust to her strength. Thinking of ways she could train herself into her previous state of complete control of herself, she took a step. She knew that it was too early to celebrate her success of getting up when her foot went straight through the ground, creating a clear footprint in the ground. This surprised her so much she jumped back, and that sent her at least twenty feet into the sky and a good ten feet back. She crashed into every tree branch on the way down, then lay at the bottom of a tree, dazed. Slowly, her expression changed to one of determination, and she blew a stray strand of hair off her face, eyes narrowed.

She. Would. Get. This.

And get it she had. It had taken her the whole first day, a lot of flying around, and a very serious battle with the forest, but she finally figured out how much strength to use when doing things. It took her the other two days and more flying around and tree fighting for the new level of strength to become her default level of strength. When she asked Farn and Mellana if she would have to regularly do this, they had told her that the only reason she had to do this now was because of her sudden spike in strength. Normally, the change was so gradual, the body knew what level of strength was required for normal everyday things.

That day, after realizing that she was apparently cultivating too fast, she thought about the reason. The fact that she could easily sense the World Energy was because Earth had none of it, so the difference in the atmosphere stood out sharply to her. It would be stranger if she hadn't immediately sensed it.

The answer to her speed of cultivation was a bit tougher, but she came up with an answer for that too. Diffusion. There was no World Energy in her body, so when she opened her senses and invited it in, it rushed into her. On the other hand, the denizens of this world were exposed to that energy everyday, and their parents were also cultivators. They were born with a bit of World Energy within them, and absorbed a bit more everyday. So, while they had to absorb less to gain a rank, they had to work harder get the energy into them. She had less of that problem, because all her energy went into the little ball, and wasn't soaked into her body. But now she could feel the subtle currents entering her, nourishing her body, even more so when she tired herself out. She could already tell that by tomorrow at the latest she would have a normal speed of cultivation, and that the only difference between her and other kids her age would be her looks. Cultivating would just speed up the process of becoming normal. She had also read the rest of the manual that Farn had given her, and was now practicing making her Spiritual Energy (which was what World Energy that had been absorbed was called) do as she said.

Afterwards, she took a bath. This time she carefully washed the clothes that she had been wearing for the past week, which were now caked in mud, blood, and other things she had no desire to know. She hadn't been able to do so before due to not having other clothes to wear while those clothes were drying. But with Mellana's clothes, she now could. Done with bathing, laying her foundations, and not hungry, she waited for Farn and Mellana to come. Now was the time that the two usually came. These days, due to having an additional, and better, teacher named Mellana, Aurelie had now learnt grammar and sentence structure. The only difference between her and the others in terms of language was her harsh accent, but that could be explained as being from a different region.

An hour later, Farn and Mellana hadn't shown up. Aurelie frowned. They were way too late. Could something have happened? While thinking about all the different possibilities, which included Voldemort and the Joker (hey, she was in a whole different world, who knew? Certainly not her.), she grabbed Mellana's cloak, tied her hair in a tight bun so that no strands would escape, stabbed the bun with the decorative sheaths of her throwing knives which were designed to look like hairpins, then pulled up the hood. She looked at her reflection in the waterfall pool on her way to the village, satisfied to note that no one would be able to tell that she wasn't a normal person. Then she proceeded to the village.

Farn had told her how to get to Lejus Village in case she had to tell him something in an emergency. She walked quickly, breaking into a run as she heard the clang of metal clashing. A little way before the fight, she stopped and scaled a tree, then jumped from tree to tree until she was directly above the fighting.

Farn and Mellana were back to back in the center of a ring of at least ten different guys. There were several dead and dying bodies around them, which they'd arranged as roadblocks, so that they wouldn't have to face too many people at once. Many of those they were fighting had injuries. But they did too, and exhaustion shone on both of their faces, whereas their attackers were exhilarated and angry. It was obvious Farn and Mellana were going to lose.

Quickly and quietly, Aurelie climbed down the tree she had leapt to and waited in the shadows for a moment to make sure no one had seen her, as well as to plan her attack and take off her cloak. It didn't matter if they saw her. All of them were going to die anyway. She took a deep breath, clearing her mind.

Then she moved.