Meira slept as her eyes rapidly darted around below her eyelids, having a nightmare. She felt like she had been thrown deep underwater and had constant suffocating pressure on her. At the same time, she felt like she heard the raised voices of others. She tried to escape and swim away in her dream, but she only kept getting pressed further and further down into the deep and overwhelming darkness.

Finally, the pressure lessened, and she began floating upwards towards the sunlight. Meira felt relaxed and comfortable as she slept comfortably for the first time in a while - the last time being when she was knocked out by the previous divine visit. She had many odd dreams during her rest, and everything kind of blended together… but they were generally good dreams.

After having been deep in slumber for several hours, her mind finally stirred as she woke up. She opened her eyes and saw she was lying on the bed in her bedroom. She looked to the side and saw Grand Elder Duskleaf sitting at her small desk, looking in one of her notebooks. Meira turned her head back to the ceiling and sighed. Yeah, she was definitely still dreaming. With that thought, she closed her eyes again, but it didn’t work. She felt the pressure. An unsettling emotion. Her eyes shot open again as she stared to the side again, meeting the eyes of the Grand Elder.

They stared at each other for a bit as Meira tried to comprehend what was happening. She was only thrown out of her stupor when the door to the room opened after a knock. She abruptly sat up in the bed as her Master entered with a smile.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said casually with a smile. “Sorry about the lack of notice I was returning, but in my defense, I also didn’t know those two would invade my living room.”

“I am sitting right here,” the Grand Elder grunted before turning to Meira herself. She sat there frozen and tried to comprehend what was happening as he spoke. “Our first lesson will definitely be regarding proper categorization and organization of information and general note-taking.”

The god held up some of her papers, and she spotted the diagrams she had made for her friends. Meira then remembered she had been on her way to meet them before passing out… not that it mattered with what else was currently happening. She wasn’t even sure if she should answer him or if that would be disrespectful. She just nodded, unsure how to act.

“Liven up, girl,” the Grand Elder said loudly. “I am not going to teach an unresponsive statue anything. Focus and get over here to make sense of this utter mess you call a notebook.””

Meira nodded and quickly got off the bed before the words properly registered. She was confused as she realized and asked out loud on accident: “Teach?”

Jake had attended many classes in university during his studying days and, of course, gone through well over a decade of mandatory school. He had thousands of lessons overall with kids and adults of all ages. Hundreds of teachers.

But this lesson had to be the most awkward and weirdest by far.

The teacher was overqualified, while the primary student was overly-receptive to the point of being non-receptive due to pure nervousness. Jake quickly just became an observer as he found the scene of the alchemy god teaching the poor elf novice far more entertaining than he should.

Duskleaf and Villy had made it clear early on that they would have no impact on Jake’s learning method as neither would ever be able to fully understand how he best absorbed information. Jake was a very instinctive learner and had to learn by doing to fully digest anything, but when he did things, he also caught on quickly. That didn’t mean he got nothing out of reading or being told what to do, just that it wouldn’t “click” properly in his mind before he actually saw – and more importantly felt – theory working in practice.

Meira was far more typical in the learning department. She did best with a varied approach to learning and was totally fine just reading and being told something. Naturally, she also needed some practical experience, and luckily – or unluckily if you considered the emotional damage – she had gone through plenty of “learning” with her body. She had built up her resistance to poisons through a long period of exposure where she had to learn to control her own energies to survive, and through this had also gotten to know her own body very well. Knowing her own body’s metaphysical shape had then served as a gateway to also comprehend those of other creatures.

However, Meira had something far more valuable than something experience or teachers could teach her. She had a powerful survival instinct. Jake had noticed it after interacting with her so much that her entire mentality was about survival and doing all she could to keep living a relatively “safe” life. It was odd in some ways. Jake wanted power to be free and do what he wanted and was willing to die on his journey, while Meira wanted to desperately avoid death by gaining power.

Of course, it was natural to not want to die. It was the most basic of all instincts and a primary driver for many to try and get stronger. Each evolution offered a massive boost in lifespan and natural treasures, and created products that increased longevity were incredibly popular and expensive. Many even turned to becoming vampires or undead to live just a little longer… not to mention the entire concept behind the Holy Church and the Holyland.

Meira was not like those who just wanted to live as long as possible. Her instinct was all about immediate survival. To survive till the next day. The next week. Next month. She took it one step at a time, and her long-term plans now revolved around Jake being satisfied with what she was doing. While it was maybe a bit cruel, Jake wanted her to keep this mentality. It had an air of desperation, and for Meira, desperation led to dedication.

Though he would also be a bit encouraging… and maybe even give her some work to get some practical experience. Currently, she was just doing a bit of gardening here and there for him, but he knew she wanted to do more.

“Duskleaf, there is quite a big crossover between the metaphysical constructs of beasts and Beastcores, right?” Jake asked the god as he had just gotten done correcting a very nervous Meira.

“Beastcores are ultimately just remnant Records of a beast as well as a portion of their energy, so yes, one can say that,” the god nodded. “I assume you are considering its link to core refinement. Core refinement is essentially trying to construct a metaphysical framework within the core to allow it to house and store more Records with the core itself as the base. That is why you had such a profound effect on the Sylphian hawk when you made her. You created a catalyst that housed many of your Records. Though that was only possible due to the Malefic Viper’s Poison triggering and stabilizing it using the Records of the Viper. If not, you would have probably broken the ritual.”

Jake nodded, having already realized these things far earlier. He then turned to Meira. “What would you say to assist in a project of mine? The goal is to create a Pollendust Bee Queen variant, and to do that, I have a lot of cores gathered. To use them properly, I will need to have them all refined. Trust me, I have a lot of them.”

That was something Duskleaf had told him during their talk while having beers. Jake had just gone off the ritual with Sylphie and thought that having as many cores as possible would be best, but the alchemy god had shut that down hard. While there was some value in quantity, the biggest challenge was to make all the cores properly work together.

As mentioned then each contained Records and energy. Simply trying to smash it all together in a massive ritual would only result in disaster, so you needed to do something else. You needed to make sure that each core would complement and not conflict with one another.

One had to remember that when Sylphie was born, only a single Beastcore had been used, and the rest were orbs from elementals. Elemental orbs were quite a bit different to Beastcores as the orbs were pretty much pure mana with no Records that could conflict, so as long as they were all of the same affinity, things tended to be fine.

So, for the ritual to go well, Jake needed to refine every single core to ensure they would resonate. He already had a good start as each core was from the same kind of insect, and he wanted to use the cores to empower an insect. This removed a lot of conflict in Records already, but each termite had still been slightly different from another, making refinement a necessity.

There was also the option of first filtering out all the Records from the cores and only using the energy – something that you often did when using cores while concocting – but that wasn’t what Jake wanted. After all, he wanted to improve the Records of the Bee Queen to get a variant.

Meira looked at Jake with a bit of confusion as she stuttered. “I… I am not sure I will be of much use…”

Duskleaf also threw him a questioning look and sent telepathically: “I fully understand if you don’t want to spend time refining so many cores, but there are many far more qualified to assist you in the process than she.”

Jake heard him but was already determined as he talked to Meira. “I want you to help. Don’t misunderstand, I just think you will be the best because I don’t plan on you doing it in any usual way. It will be coupled with presence resistance training.”

Meira looked confused as he had yet to bring up the idea of resistance training yet, but Duskleaf opened his eyes in realization. “You plan on infusing the Records of presence resistance into the cores to give it to the Bee Queen and thus resonate better with the Records of your Bloodline while also hopefully granting the Queen an innate resistance? Smart to not only seek to implement the concept of resistance but the process in which it is granted.”

“Bingo,” Jake agreed. Okay, that wasn’t precisely what he had in mind. He had only hoped to maybe give the Queen some increases to aura resistance like Sylphie had if he combined the two by having Meira refine cores during resistance training, but Duskleaf made it clear his idea was even better than he first thought.

Poor Meira still looked a bit confused as she mustered up her courage to talk. “I… I have no experience in core refinement…”

She spoke in a tiny voice as if scared she would get scolded. However, Jake just shook his head. “No problem, I didn’t expect you to. Also, this request is outside of your usual lessons, all of which I still expect you to keep up with. This is just if you have leftover time as we will have to do the resistance training anyway.”

Meira nodded, but Jake noticed something. He had believed he missaw earlier, but Meira seemed to slightly shudder every time one of them mentioned resistance training. Jake quickly understood as he reassured her.

“This resistance training we are talking about is resistance to presences such as the presence of gods. Duskleaf here is trying really hard to suppress himself, and yet it is still clearly affecting you. I can help you train to be far less influenced,” Jake explained to her with a relaxed smile.

He saw her nervousness reduce slightly, but she was still afraid. Oh well, it will be a bit unpleasant, so I can’t lie and say it will be a walk in the park either. Better she is relieved at it being not as bad as expected than lower her expectations so much she gets a rude surprise.

“I will do my best!” she finally answered with determination.

Jake smiled. “I know you will. And there is no rush; we won’t get started yet. You need to first learn and practice core refinement, and I have a few matters to handle before the cores can even be used.”

Meira confirmed she understood with yet another nod but quickly looked nervous again. Seemingly having gotten some more confidence, she spoke once more: “Uhm… before the esteemed Grand Elder and the Malefic One graced us with their presences, I was on the way to visit some of those I study with… my friends…”

Jake opened his eyes wide as he had to know more. He had no idea Meira had any friends. Okay, that came out very wrong, but he had no idea she had any people she would actively call friends. “Oh, friends? Well, that is nice to hear. So that is why you copied things down from the books to show your friends?”

She nodded and quietly spoke. “I know it is Master’s boo-“

Jake stared her down for using the M-word.

“My Lord’s books… I apologize for overstepping and not ask if I was allowed to copy anything,“ she said while bowing.

“I was going to say that if you want to look over some books together, you have my permission to ask them over and just look at the library,” Jake shrugged. It was Meira’s home too, and he wasn’t going to tell her she couldn’t even have friends over.

Duskleaf shook his head a bit as he spoke: “Master stocked the library with quite a few tomes not commonly available and-“

“Duskleaf,” Jake interrupted him. “That word is banned in my house.”

“I have been calling him that since I was a mortal,” Duskleaf protested.

“Well, social norms develop, and things that were acceptable in the past become frowned upon. More importantly, this is my house and my rules, so no M-word,” Jake said, adding on with telepathy. “I also don’t want to make Meira think it is okay. You know, she may begin taking after you.”

“You don’t want the elf girl to take after a god? One of the best alchemists in existence?” Duskleaf countered.

“Oh, she can definitely take those parts, just not the one where she uses banned words,” Jake shut it down with a grin.

Duskleaf grumbled something about Jake being lucky he had seniority as Villy’s friend, as he seemed to agree. “What I was trying to say is that the Malefic One put books in your library not to be handed out mindlessly.”

“I understand that,” Jake answered, inwardly celebrating his minor victory. “Which is why they will have to come by and look at them in the library.”

“Acceptable,” Duskleaf sighed. He shook his head and turned to Meira again. “Now, where were we… also, Jake, are you joining in?”

Jake shook his head. “Nah, I got something else to deal with right now.”

“Oh?” Duskleaf raised an eyebrow.

Jake just shrugged. “Yeah, so apparently, a big fight is going on inside my Soulspace, and I should probably check it out.”