Soon enough, things had settled down right at the end of the month for RWBY, JNPR, and Memnol, as the final days of the month went by without incident, Memnol hadn't even gone back to The Dragon Continent, figuring he should 'Let the Grimm population recover a little' on one hand, meaning giving it maybe the rest of the week or so, but on the other hand he also figured he should finish up Velvet's dress, look into some above-ground 'genuine' employment, and perhaps consider what he was going to wear to the dance as well. Sure, it was still around 5 months away, but it rarely hurt to consider.

It worked too, indeed Memnol had been able to keep himself suitably busy through the week between the dressmaking, which he had finished up and presented in private to a suitably impressed and approving Team CFVY, picking back up a few spells in Control Weather, which does precisely as the name implies, Temporal Stasis which we have spoken of and seen before, and Thunderlance which would give him a very potent force weapon that hit better not by physical strength, but with what he used for casting, in his case intelligence, and finally of course, Whitley's lessons.

The whole rest of that week for Whitley was spent solely on improving his recall of the implanted knowledge, until on Friday when Memnol was satisfied that Whitley could continue improving it with time and had an acceptable delay as it was, and before leaving announced that they would be working on other, more tactile skills next week, namely "Wine pouring, steak and general food cutting, basic improvised ballroom dancing, handshakes, bows, and other physical greetings, and finishing with an overview in creating physical mnemonics next Friday."

Whitley very quickly realized that his new tutor ramped things up much more quickly than his previous ones.

Of course, once the week was over, and the new month in, then Memnol got back to hunting Grimm, having decided on going out until he killed an even 1,000 after the session with Whitley. With constant teleportation and Frostfell-ing, it only took him a bit under an hour, after which he of course nested the Thought Bottles down, now fully ready for some research development, and growth. Well, after one other matter on Saturday.

On Saturday, May 2nd, at roughly seven in the morning, before many of the residents of the Azure homeless shelter had even left to search for work, a purpose, or whatever else they sought, a rather tall old man walked in, leaning on his equally tall wooden walking stick. Of course, this apparently human man was in fact just Memnol under a magical disguise, courtesy of the Veil spell he cast on himself after waking up. Within a half-hour the 'old man', who just went by 'Mr. Nhym' was allowed to start volunteering, helping serve food and such. It took around an hour and a half for many to realize that the pot of stew he served from, while a touch blander than usual, never seemed to run out, nobody else catching when Memnol would ever so quietly whisper the command word for Create Food and Water under his breath, since he had his previously named Amulet of Creation on him as well, though hidden both by the Veil spell and under his normal clothes.

Then, when meals weren't being served, 'Mr. Nhym' would be helping out in minor ways, cleaning around, teaching some organization skills or mild life lessons, and such. Finally, near the end of the day, when the shelter was full and near everyone was finishing with the dinner dishes, one Mrs. Oceania Azure, at the behest of 'Mr. Nhym', called everyone to gather around him.

'Mr. Nhym', Memnol rather, directed a few people somewhat closer, and in the end when nobody was more than 15 feet from him at most, or 30 feet from anyone else, he said, his voice disguised as well, "Before I leave, I was hoping you'd all let me use my Semblance before I leave. One last good deed for an old man, before I disappear on you, you see."

Then, before anyone could really ask about that, 'Mr. Nhym' held his 'walking stick', Loom beneath the illusion, with both hands, quickly whispered something that nobody really heard, though everyone there felt, and just as soon vanished, Memnol having cast one of his Silent Greater Teleports to leave.

After a few moments, one person whispered, "It's just me."

Mrs. Azure, who was standing just as shocked as everyone else at his disappearance, said to the man, "Sorry?"

The man looked her in the eye and said, "I mean, It's just me," he tapped his head, "In here. Finally alone."

Mrs. Azure, now remembering the details of the man said in even more shock, "You mean, the other personalities?"

"Gone. Everything feels whole again, no more cracks in my head. It's so quiet."

Soon enough, someone else mentioned that their joints weren't aching anymore, then another that they weren't feeling the withdrawal they had been a few moments ago, so many more saying that so many diseases and such that ailed them, some since birth, were just gone. One with no longer greyed eyes, as it took a moment for some to notice, said that the doctors told him it would be physically impossible for him to get his vision back after that dust accident half a year ago, but there he was moments later, joyously proclaiming "Three fingers! Seven! Four! You're not even holding any up! You were a brunette this whole time?!".

So on and so on it went for the residents of the Azure homeless shelter. Oceania used the time they celebrated to get in contact with the news, who said they'd send a person immediately. Although when they asked for the man's name, she had to pause before saying, "Suede O. Nyhm. In hindsight, I really should have noticed that earlier."

Back in Beacon, after having dismissed the Veil spell and returned the amulet to the IAs on construction duty, Memnol felt glad at having gotten his Good deed for the month out of the way already, and figured he could keep that persona for future months as well.

That had gotten him thinking on disguises however, as it dawned on him that he looked much too distinctive now to go without much of a disguise from there on. Well, the Robe of the Archmagi had most of that covered, a black hooded robe was always a classic disguise, but he did still need some kind of mask. With a few teleports, two Limited Wishes to duplicate the Disguise Self and Resistance needed, and about seven minutes of real-time in the Crunch Zone later, and Memnol had put the earlier broken mirrors into decent use making a Mirror Mask. It was a rather rounded mask that protected against gaze effects, like those of medusas or gorgons, sight-based spells, and to Memnol the best effect of it, even if it was nearly always just psychological, it only showed anyone looking at it a reflection of their own face. He tucked the mask away into his haversack for the moment, ready for tomorrow.

For now, he would spend the rest of the night going over his current plan many times and, failing to find any new important flaws, at least ones he could figure to fix, started on forwards. Starting at, where else, Step 1; Put his growth towards advancing his Ulitharid side's Psionic capabilities, then rest for the night. Due to the small details of the new interactions between his magic and psionics from the mantle, it wouldn't improve how much psionic energy he could use to augment any single power nor the force of his spells, but eventually reaching the highest-end powers would be rewarding enough he thought.

That and he figured he wouldn't quite go down the path of the Wyrm Wizard quite yet until he actually had a dragon to speak with. Although if all went to plan, and the Epic Spell he would be researching in the crunch zones panned out, as well as the supporting Epic Spell of course, then he would in time. Roughly a few days plus however long the materials took to get, after he reached that step at least.

For now, it being a fresh new Sunday, it was time for Step 2; Confirm the existence or once existence of earth elementals, preferably Elder earth elementals, but at the least any kind of earth elemental. Memnol stepped out from his Magnificent Mansion early in the morning at roughly a quarter past 6 and checked his compass as it whirled around, once Memnol specified he wanted the nearest once-dwelling of an Elder Earth Elemental, eventually settling in a single direction, confirming in the same way he had with the waterveiled assassin.

He did make note of the sort-of oddity, in that so far two out of two cases of checking the existence of a rather specific elemental from his original world proved successful. Now that it was on Memnol's mind, he also checked for the lairs of a few specific variations, and low and behold, the crystal, amethyst, emerald, topaz, and sapphire variations of dragon had all existed at some point, at the least.

"There's certainly something odd about this, but I don't have the faintest idea just what that is or could be." Memnol thought, "Oh well. The origins behind this don't assist me right now, just the confirmations, so I'll have to look into that later."

Elsewhere, the only two members of our three, four if you were to count CRDL, teams of relative importance that had woken up by now were Jaune and Pyrrha, Pyrrha having lately pulled Jaune into her morning exercise routine, in part for the obvious physical reasons, in part for the mental aspects of sticking to the routine, and though Pyrrha wouldn't say it quite yet, so they could just have some extra time together.

Next up for Memnol was Part 3, with some immediate benefit once done, though also seeming the least within his control; Form a rapport with a Giant Crocodile. Yes, that does indeed seem like a non-sequitur so great as to induce physical whiplash. To explain why: it is majorly to do with later parts of the plan. As to how: He had reached a rather relative milestone in his growth, and so had decided to gain the capacity to form a Wild Cohort bond, similar to the Animal Companion bond of the Druid, though the bond isn't quite as potent as if Memnol were a true Druid, assuming he were solely a druid up to this point at least. Regardless, that wouldn't apply, so back to the matter at hand- Crocodile befriending.

For Memnol it was a simple affair to check the compass for the nearest current dwelling of a Giant Crocodile, which by the direction was the Dragon Continent, of all places. From there it was simple enough to get some meat for the crocodile, and come out one White Fang grunt's wallet contents richer too.

Memnol had soon put on his mask, closed up the robe, pulled the hood up, left behind the War Wizard Cloak since that would've messed up the disguise just slightly, teleported in in a matter of a few teleports, and cleared up the local Grimm horde of 26 Beowulves with a single Black Blade of Disaster which he kept up, just dodging and teleporting out of the way of any beowulves that tried to hit him. As for what Black Blade of Disaster is, for those not knowing as it has been mentioned a few times, it was a relatively simple-ish spell in effect. The spell made a sword-shaped Planar Rift, perfectly black, leading to the first part of the name, and every single time the blade struck something, it was equivalent to a Disintegrate, and it could do this once every few seconds so long as the caster kept up concentration, leading to the second part of the name. Memnol could keep it up for about 3 minutes, getting a solid thirty-one hits in, spread out or concentrated as needed.

Once that was handled, Memnol went back to a more notable matter, to him at least, and soon spotted an actually rather well hidden Giant Croc among the algae, driftwood, and swamp water. His main concern now was one he had never thought he'd have before.

How, exactly, does one form a rapport, a close genuine bond, with a Crocodile? A creature of next to no intellect, and barely much of a sense of self. Sure, he now had the capacity to have that Druid-esque bond, but actually forming it in the first place would be its own sort of challenge.

For now, he just went to the trees, sitting down on a sturdy branch facing the almost-lake, but certainly not a pond, that the giant crocodile inhabited, and after making clear eye contact with the crocodile, pulled out from his bag of holding an arm, and just an arm. Taking his dagger he cut off some of the meat, and tossed it over in front of the crocodile.

Memnol, not having much else of an idea but occasionally tossing some meat over to the croc, just sat in the tree for a long while. In fact, the rest of the day.

For all of Memnol's skills at hiding himself, one of the areas he was quite deficient in was spotting hiding creatures himself, which was how he most certainly hadn't noticed, some four hours and two fully filleted limbs in, a small jellyfish-esque Grimm float towards him, ever so quietly yet dutifully observing from some foliage.

Each day, after Whitley's tutoring on weekdays of course, this routine would continue, Memnol would get some meat from a White Fang base, return to the croc pond, where after the fourth day the croc would be dutifully waiting by that same edge or just arriving soon after Memnol did, and the same Grimm would remain watching.

A week after the first arrival, on Sunday the tenth to be precise, two things happened, leading to a third. Firstly, after waking up, Memnol noted that if he so wanted for some reason, he could acquire a new familiar now. Far later in the day, he was informed that Roman and Neo had finally gotten twenty rats and twenty properly sized trees.

This lead to him over the course of the first half of next week, between classes mainly, through quite a number of Limited Wishes, 60 to be precise, to both Awaken the trees to sentience and to hold them and the rats utterly still before fusing them, now left with 20 rather small trees, all with internal skeletal systems. Memnol of course went ahead and paralyzed them all again of course, with the aid of another 20 Limited Wishes. Then after rather specifically researching Command Undead, Feeblemind, False Life, and Dominate Monster, the last of which he had rather been missing, he finally got to the reason behind his need for those skeleton-ed trees.

To make them into rather special kinds of creature called "Living Zombies", with a ritual requiring those four spells, some materials provided by Perfected Polymorph, six hours each, shortened to 12 real-time minutes each by Crunch Zone, and as mentioned repeatedly, a corporeal non-undead subject with a skeletal system. Memnol wanted trees because those didn't have maximum ages, but he needed to add the skeletons himself, as he had clearly done. As to why Memnol would go to all this effort?

Each Living Zombie someone creates halves the rate at which they age, at an exponentially stacking rate. One for half, two for a quarter, three for an eighth, and so on. For Memnol, he had often wanted to make them before, but knew that they'd just be hunted down, but now, he felt rather emboldened in his ability to keep them hidden and maintained. Of course, the main tradeoff is that any one caster can only have so many at a time, not even mentioning the ritual requirements, and normally needing to replace the living zombies, since they still aged at their normal rate.

Memnol could have twenty, at the moment, leaving him to age at a rate of 1, over 2 to the 20th power. By his own math, assuming the worse case that his new body was jumped ahead to the Ulitharid standard for young adult age at 20 years into his life- Well, before this otherwise rather innocuous Thursday he would've only had around 250 more years to go by the average Ulitharid lifespan, quite nice by any regular standards, but one could always want more.

Now he had around 262 Million and 440 Thousand years left, as long as he kept those trees safe.

Exponentiation is a potent force, to say very little. So, with his mortality safely delayed by quite the while, even the faintest concern for how long crocodile bonding would take promptly got the hint and left posthaste.

A few days beyond that however, on Sunday the seventeenth, was when 'the butterfly beat its wings', as one might say.

A splash of water from an arm hitting the water in front of the crocodile was soon followed by a crunch of snapping bones.

This was a now familiar enough order of sounds for Memnol, but in this case it was followed by, of all things, a woman's voice some ways behind him and to the right, and slightly under given that he remained in the tree.

She said, "Well aren't you an oddity, and almost rude if you weren't so oblivious. I came over to greet someone else around here, but rather than try to say hello when I've been standing here for a good few minutes, instead you decide that you'd rather keep tossing human limbs to a crocodile."

This was said without any disgust however, no revulsion, or even real irritation, at most some mild exasperation.

Memnol looked over and saw a figure, a touch under 3 feet shorter than him at around 5'10", also hidden by a black hooded robe, although their mask was a Grimm styled mask. A quick look over with his Vatic Gaze, as had become habit, revealed a result quite similar to what he got just six weeks ago when checking Ozpin.

Memnol chuckled and said as he came down from the tree, "Well, my apologies then, Mrs. or Ms…?"

She replied, "Ms. Black Cloak, for now."

Memnol said, "Ms. Black Cloak, then, I had simply not been expecting company, beyond my scaled acquaintance, and if you will pardon some pedanticism, they're technically faunus limbs." After a brief pause, Memnol chuckled and said, "I suppose I'll be Mr. Mirror Mask, then, although if you will let slip again in this case some mild joking petulance," He said the next part with a deliberate mild whine, "I must admit I was hoping to be Mr. Black Cloak, but now that would imply marriage or other relation. Hmph."

Ms. Black Cloak said, "What, afraid of cooties but not crocodiles?"

Memnol said, completely dry, "Yes."

A brief pause, before a light laugh escaped them both, and Ms. Black Cloak said, "So you're a comedian then?"

Memnol said, "No, not by vocation nor passion nor ambition."

Ms. Black Cloak said, "And those would be?"

Memnol said, "By vocation, currently in training, though in the past I was a mixture of Devil's advocate, consultant, solicitor, lawyer, contract specialist, and assassin."

Ms. Black Cloak said, "Moderately impressive for one man, if not as much given that most of those mean the same thing. By passion, then?"

Memnol said, "My passion always has been, is, and always will be magic, as a Wizard."

A shift in the air seemed to happen, and a long pause occurred.

Then, Ms. Black Cloak said, "You seriously believe in magic?"

Memnol said, "I know you're capable of it as well, I have a way to tell, of course, by magic itself. If I may ask, would you perhaps be one of the maidens?"

Ms. Black Cloak said immediately, "A maiden? As in, from the fairy tale?"

Memnol said, "Firstly, pretending ignorance doesn't suit you, Ms. Black Cloak, and Secondly, I'm afraid I've never gotten around to hearing any fairy tales."

Ms. Black Cloak said, "Really now? Where in the kingdoms were you from that you've never heard even one of the more popular fairy tales?"

Memnol said, "Quite outside of the kingdoms, actually. A rather complicated little village, though it no longer exists to my knowledge."

Ms. Black Cloak said, "Well, normally this is where I'd give some condolences for the Grimm, right?"

Memnol chuckled and said, "The Grimm would've left at least some smattering of wreckage or ruins if it were them. But leaving that aside, I take it you do know of these fairy tales?"

Ms. Black Cloak had a slight rustle among their robes, as though they held back a bit of a laugh, and said, "Oh, very well. I practically grew up on them, you see."

Memnol said, "Then perhaps we can strike a trade?"

Ms. Black Cloak said, "Oh, of what kind?"

Memnol said, "Stories for stories, I think, regardless of their lengths. Each of us would give a story the other doesn't know. In your case, the fairy tales, and I had been thinking of giving stories of a more, theological nature."

Ms. Black Cloak said, "Oh, are you a devout man? Revere the gods?"

Memnol laughed rather heartily, and said, "No, not particularly. Not remotely towards all of them at least. Absolutely not the locally believed brother pair. How about this," He paused, and with just a matter of will and soul, Silently Wished twice, for a pair of folding chairs of all things. Well made, comfortable to sit in, and made of mithral of all materials, but still ostensibly folding chairs, "We can both take a seat while I tell the first story, and then we can decide if we'll continue with our deal, yes?"

After they both sat down, Memnol said, "Although, I do feel like there is something just slightly missing."

Ms. Black Cloak shook her head slightly, by the sway of the hood and mask, and gestured her hands around, causing a number of things; a heavy controlled wind to break away and collect into a pile a plentiful number of twigs and a few logs from some ways away, this pile being put into a now barren patch of just dirt surrounded by rocks, also magically pulled over into the circle, and that being left rather damp by some water also pulled through the air from the lake, and it all ignited with a small thing of flame hopping into the center.

Memnol said, "Quite nice, and you are quite correct. Now that it is all correct and proper, I believe it's time for a fitting story given our circumstances."

Memnol leaned in towards the now campfire, with Ms. Black Cloak on the other side, and said, "Let me tell you the tale of Vecna, The Whispered One to many, and one of the few gods to earn my respect."

Ms. Black Cloak said, with some mild condescension, "Oh, what made them so different from the other gods?"

Memnol said, with an unseen smile, "Vecna wasn't always a god, he earned it."

With Ms. Black Cloak's clearly undivided attention, by the way the Grimm mask snapped over, Memnol began the story of a once-man king surpassing his mortality, his grievous betrayal, and the net of secrets and lies that tied his church together.