Aurelie looked up at the stars. She couldn't get enough of them. New York, hell, most of the modern world didn't provide this clear view of the dazzling night skies. But her focus wasn't on the stars tonight. It was on the issue that she had realized earlier today. How far would she go to help her friends? She couldn't put her life in danger, or else she could easily die, especially in light of this world's eye-for-an-eye style of uncivilized justice. And if she died then she would never be able to see Zane again. But if she ran and hid while those she considered friends stood and fought, she would be a coward, the type of person she hated the most. Where did she draw the line? She had come up with multiple different types of answers during the day, but after carefully considering all of them, one stood out as the best choice. To measure herself against Zane. If she could go back, look him in the eye, and proudly relay every detail of her journey to him, then it would be fine. Even if she died, she would do it knowing he wouldn't hate her for it. Well, he would, but he would understand why she did as she did.

Aurelie stretched and got up, one of her most pressing concerns dealt with. She ate the rest of her snake stew, lugged the cauldron over to the waterfall pool, and carefully washed it, reminding herself to thank Mellana tomorrow. She then checked that her old clothes were dry, and packed them into her bag. She then went around picking up the trash and remnants of her presence from around the area where she had stayed, frowning when she realized that the empty Cheetos bag was nowhere to be found. Figuring the wind had blew it away, she shrugged and looked around. Spotless. Martha Stewart would be proud.

The reason for her sudden cleaning spurt was because of the fact that she was moving out tomorrow. All three of them had agreed that Aurelie should move into the village for the time being, so that she would be close at hand in case those from Meir Village made a move. They also agreed to keep the fact that she was from a different 'continent' to themselves, Aurelie doing so because she didn't want anyone to look into her story to closely, and Farn and Mellana doing it because they wanted to keep Aurelie's cultivation speed to themselves. They were still teenagers, and their pride wanted them to still be considered geniuses.

Having have had packed, Aurelie decided to try her hand at cultivation again. This time, the World Energy flowed into her at an exponentially slower pace, such that she could see why it took so long to get any significant amount of cultivation done. But she continued to suck the energy out of the air. She needed to be as strong as she could be, to give her life extra safety. This time, she wasn't bored, due to the fact she was multitasking. Usually, cultivators gathered all the energy they could and then laid their foundations. Making sure that the energy didn't contain any impurities was done by the cycle of the Cultivation Technique, and laying your foundations strengthened you in the future, both were equally important to becoming a powerful cultivator, and messing up either step could cripple them depending on the size of the mistake. But Aurelie was more than capable of splitting her considerable brainpower to do two different tasks, and if a problem arose in one, she could always stop doing the other and deal with it. And so she went, steadily gathering strength. She could have done it all night, but she already had things to do that night, ones that didn't have to do with cultivating.

Stopping after about three hours, she looked up at the sky. There was still about half of the night left, and she had a lot of things left to do. Firstly, she took out her three guns, disassembled them, cleaned the parts, then reassembled them. There shouldn't be any problems now. Then she put on her usual weaponry. Both daggers in ankle sheaths, both combat knives in her arm sheaths, a gun tucked into the waistband of her leggings, and her eight throwing knives. She had decorated both the knives and the sheath to make it hard to tell that they were knives. As always, she wore the eight as hairpins with the double purpose of holding her hair in a tight bun and to have easy access to them. She then donned the cloak and swiftly moved to go to Lejus Village. From there she followed the directions Farn had given her earlier that day and started to make her way to Meir Village.

'They will rue the day they made me their enemy,' she thought to herself with a grin. Because while Farn would be happy to win this fight, Aurelie would settle for nothing less than to completely cripple the village. And if her plan came to fruition, Lejus Village would lose no men while Meir Village would lose dozens. In fact, if things did end the way she planned, then there would be no fight at all, Meir's spirit too broken to even consider fighting Lejus Village.

~~~~~~~

Farn lay down on his bed with a sigh. Introducing who Aurelie was to his parents had proven to be one of the hardest things he had ever done. He would have had an easier time convincing them that the sky was brown than making them believe that Aurelie meant no harm to anyone. Half the time they had talked about the issue was used to berate him for giving the clan's most precious manual to a complete and total stranger or, worse, a spy for Meir. When he finally got them to listen to him, he had had to talk about how she had managed to kill a Metallic Snake and Red Crystal Rhino while only being his age and weaker than him. He'd then went into how she had lived in a remote area and lacked knowledge about cultivation. He had reinforced this by pointing out that he had needed to tell her about Enchanters and Alchemists.

But what finally made them sit up and pay attention was that she had killed the men sent after him. While it was true that stage surpassing challenges weren't rare, and the one from the lower stage winning wasn't any big news, the one from the lower stage completely dominating and killing off ten men and forcing someone four entire stages higher to run was completely unheard of. Then he told them the clincher: Aurelie hadn't used a drop of her cultivation, or even a Martial Technique, the whole time. The entire fight was done with only Aurelie's body strength. His parents had immediately went off into a corner to discuss the implications. They had agreed to let her stay with them, but had warned him that she was to have limited access to information until she had proven herself to be loyal to the village. 'Well,' Farn thought to himself, 'it could be worse. Hope she doesn't do anything suspicious.'