Kestra staggered to her feet when she felt the worst of her fear shakes had passed. For the first time, she was in her private realm.

There was a perfumed quality to the air, a combination of the growing plants and the rich soil. It calmed her, and the reassurance that the enraged Metal Elemental couldn't just waltz in calmed her a lot more.

Since she was here, maybe for a while, depending on what happened out in the First Horizon, Kestra decided it was more than time to set up her laboratory. She had arrived near her mana well, which also meant near the newly sprouted Five-Seed Brumi tree. She paused to use her Organic Assay on the nascent tree, smiling at the sense of health that came back.

When she looked up, the Nature Sprite was shyly watching her. She bowed to him, but didn't force any other kind of interaction on him. She went to the tower and the side building she was pretty sure was meant to be an alchemy workshop. There she brought out all the tools she had purchased from the reward shop. Ralouf had created stone benches and shelves.

This was, if she understood the revelations she had parsed to make the realm, a specially prepared part of her soul. Space, dimensions, time: these were not immutable constants within the space of a soul. The preparation had made it so that others could bring their mana, their physicality, into her realm without affecting her soul, but that it was very much her , at the most essential level, also meant that she exerted a vast degree of control over all that existed here.

"Inspri?" she asked.

«Yes, Master?» the sprite responded through the bond that linked them.

After witnessing the Elementals shed sprites, binding them to her mana, and then reviewing the revelations during her sleep, Kestra felt more and more comfortable that Inspri was in many ways an autonomous part of herself. She still wasn't going to let the Inventory Sprite read from the tome of revelations, but she wasn't as hesitant to trust the connection between them.

"Let's review the skills of the Ten Horizons. I'm mostly interested in the ones that have to do with rune craft."

«What are runes?» Inspri asked.

"The explanation I was given, so mark this as a secondary mortal source from … You know, I'm getting tired of saying my home realm. It's not home anymore, now is it? What's a good referential title? … The gods are important, but they had regions of greater influence and lesser … We only knew of a single continent, but how distinct is that? … Naming a realm is difficult! … We grew through skills, not kills. I think I've got it. Inspri, if I give you a tentative title, how easily will it be to update should a better name come to me later?"

«Quite, Master. What name would you like me to use?»

"The Realm of Mastery through Harmony, and we'll call it Moh for short-hand reference. We were born to Moh."

«Yes, Master,» Inspri said.

"So, where was I? Oh, yes. Rune craft! On Moh, I was told that at the highest levels, a Master Rune Crafter carved mana itself, but to start out, there were symbols given to the mortals by Kizamel in their aspect as the god of Magic. Carve the symbol correctly and fill it with the right mana-reactive mixtures, and you had a magical rune. String the runes together correctly and you had runic enchantments. It's a very formulaic way of imbuing specific spells into objects."

«Then our current knowledge bank indicates the best analog would be Formations. These are associated with smithing, and must be laid into prepared plates. The various types of metals used in the plates raise or lower the durability and effectiveness of the formations etched into them. The etching is a kind of mana-based calligraphy.»

"Did we get anything from the Reward Store that would start us on learning enough about formations to form the skill?"

«No? We did gain information about how to form the Calligraphy skill, though. You need to be on one of the Horizons or inside an attached dungeon for the Living Scrolls to recognize your skill gains.»

"Really?" Kestra asked, skeptical as she thought of how those same blue screens had identified her personal realms.

«The interfacing reports that the World Seed would have to be integrated into the realm, at which point it would be taken away, and your personal realms collapsed to prevent anomalies.»

"Never do that!" Kestra squawked. "And you can talk with the blue screens?"

«As your servitor, I am permitted an information-only interface. Only information you may query will be provided to me.»

That was less terrifying. "What information have you been querying?"

«Only that needful to answer specific questions you pose me,» Inspri answered, sounding meeker.

"Well, I am now tasking you to receive any and all information available to you and add it to the knowledge bank. Furthermore, volunteer more information like that!"

«Yes, Master!»

Kestra was about to poke some more, but she felt a ripple through her mana. It was weird, but she let it go and headed toward the master anchor stele.

Ralouf's shoulders uncurled and he broke into a relieved grin when he spotted her. In two quick strides, he crossed the distance between them and hugged her. "Oh, blessing of the ancestors! You're safe!" Then his hand moved to her shoulders and he leaned back to peer at her, the warmth of his magic sliding over her. "You are well? You didn't discorporate and reform just now?"

"I don't think so? I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm fine. Is everything with Nicada calmed down?"

That soured Ralouf's expression. "The Elementals called Tribunal upon her head. They've all been removed to the Tribunal Realm until judgment is rendered."

Kestra nodded carefully. "Is it safe to return to the First Horizon, then?"

"No. Nicada tore up the balance of Metal for ten kilometers, at least, and the other Elementals did their own damage while subduing her. Yorgin's moving the portable anchor to a less disturbed location. He will come for us when it's in a safe location. By the by, the teleportation cost is quite minimal."

"Why?" Kestra blurted out. She shook her head. "I mean, did I actually do something wrong? By this realm's Etiquette, I mean. Or is she just one of those envious souls?"

Ralouf sighed, his hands dropping away. "I think it is as you say: she has an envious soul. It is the dark side of the ambition of the Metal hearted."

It was Kestra's turn to make a study of Ralouf. "You're attracted to her, aren't you?"

He looked away, sagging around the corners, his hands dropping to his sides. "At first, and maybe a bit lingering. She's fixated too much on developing a yang cultivation pairing, so there's nothing much for me to hope for. At first, she was after Yorgin, but when they met Vostler, she switched her quarry.

"We were all at Hozinzi's centennial banquet when the notice of the Divine Seed appeared, and Vostler was so eager to find the Seed. He's, well, quite innocent in many ways, and Yorgin enjoys his enthusiasm. Yorgin and I, we've been friends for … a great time now, and then Nicada inserted herself in our party."

Ralouf shrugged then as if to say she knew the rest.

She hugged him. "That's a bad set up."

He took the hug. After a moment, he straightened up, his gaze sweeping around and ending pointed at the outbuilding she had come from.

"Settling in?"

"Come and I'll show you," she said. "So, is it the mana that's all torn up, or the metal like toxins in the air?"

"It's as much both as neither," he said. "Yorgin's Environmental Bubble is the only reason either of us stayed aware during the fight. Even I can't easily endure the churned up mess out there."

"I'm going to see if I can look out through the anchor. If I can, I might have an idea of how to ease up the worst of it."

"Are you a god in hiding, then?" Ralouf said.

"I'm not from around here," she reminded him before plopping down and groping about in her mana.

Regardless of Ralouf's warning, Kestra still wasn't prepared for the blighting. Yorgin had returned to his serpent form, balancing the stele between his horns, and even at that he had to move with care.

"Yorgin? Can you hear me?" Kestra asked.

"I hear you," he answered. "You ssspeak through the anchor, yesss?"

"Yes," she answered. "I'm not going to come through, but can you put the anchor outside of your bub-- sphere?"

He chuckled without humor. "Yesss, but it may be corroded," he warned.

"Okay, keep that one with you then, but stop for a moment."

He did, long enough for Kestra to push through a second anchor. It appeared next to the first, which meant it showed up in a precarious perch from which it fell to the ground.

"Okay, keep on. I'm going to try to work through the other stele to shut the more toxic of this stuff to deep storage, and let the mana seed eat as much of the stirred up mana as it can gulp through the steles," she announced.

"Deep ssstorage?" Yorgin asked, but Kestra didn't answer. He continued on, and as soon as the stele was exposed to the destruction, she set to work, shunting the draw of the stele to a third she had set in beside her World Seed.

The World Seed stirred, and the conduit between the two steles shifted, cut off from the master anchor and the other steles. Kestra could only describe what she then witnessed as the World Seed eating the blighting.

The open conduit had a second effect, allowing the Living Scrolls of the Ten Horizons to once again interact with Kestra and the occupants of her personal realm. Yorgin had covered another quarter kilometer over the ten minutes it took the blue screens to flash at Kestra.

[COMPLETED] Quest: Grow Your Mana Well II

Requirements: Grow your mana well to High Base Grade

Rewards:

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well III

EXP: 10,000

Quest: Grow Your Mana Well III

Requirements: Grow your mana well to Low Foundation Grade

Rewards:

‎ Foundation Mana Stone Generator Seed

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well IIII

EXP: 50,000

The walls of the cage-rooms containing Graemire and the other Elementals before the Tribunal clarified. All of the Arbiters wore severe expressions. The Awakened xieshi reopened the proceedings by striking the gong with his leather-padded mallet.

Nosnali's voice rang out. "This Tribunal has reviewed the damage caused to the First Horizon. Though passing Divines have already begun the needful steps to restore balance, the damage has been, if anything, understated by those before the Tribunal. We do not believe this was a deliberate mitigation of the truth. We find Divine Elemental Nicada in violation of the Righteous Oath's prohibition to cause extreme damage the Horizons. We find Divine Elemental Vostler innocent of charges of excessive harm in the pursuit of restraining Divine Elemental Nicada. We find Emperor of Wood Graemire, Divine Elemental Eilith, Divine Elemental Ambrose, and Divine Elemental Vostler Righteous in their actions to suppress Divine Elemental Nicada.

"As punishment, Divine Elemental Nicada will be stripped of her cultivation. That power will be used to offset the holding of this Tribunal, to quickly form a new Mana Seed, and to return her to an Elemental Seed, which will then be fed to the new Mana Seed to rapidly mature it into a new Realm-bound dungeon, whose purpose will be the cleansing of the befouled lands.

"So rules this Tribunal of the Ten Realms."

The xieshi rang the gong once more.

The Tribunal of the Ten Horizons has rendered Judgment

Divine Elemental of Metal Nicada has been judged guilty of befouling the First Horizon in violation of the Oath Divine Righteousness. As punishment, the Violator has been stripped of cultivation, returned to an Elemental Seed, and shall be fed to Mana Seed being placed in the befoulment to establish a Realm-bound dungeon for the purpose of cleaning the befoulment.

While the land remains befouled, any who attempt to reach this emplaced Dungeon Core shall be stripped of their cultivation and their Elemental Core or their Mana Apertures shall be crippled.

You are being teleported from the Tribunal

You will be returned to the area from which you were teleported to the Tribunal.

Barely a heartbeat passed and the screaming horror of the desolated lands tore at Graemire. He reflexively shifted into the form of his azure dragon and frantically began to cast about for those who had remained behind.

"--there? Are you there? Come on, you can't all of have destroyed these blasted little talking things!"

The voice came from an odd prickle of mana in his larger form. It took Graemire's scattered thoughts a moment to recall the communication devices Kestra had had them acquire, and which Ralouf had adapted so that they might bind them to their mana.

"Yorgin?" Graemire asked, back through that bit of mana. "Where are you?"

"I think about most of the way out of the mire. I saw the declaration. Your little potential's got quite a few tricks up her sleeve. She and Ralouf are safe in her realm, and I'm carrying the first of her anchors out of here. Ral says she showed him how to talk through the anchors, and she's concentrating on using a second one of the anchors to purge what she's calling 'blight'. Have to say, it's an appropriate name for what I'm seeing. Oh, Ralouf says if you open your map I can use this thing to flash where I am to you."

They quickly coordinated and converged on their companion. As they flew, they spotted an odd vortex of blight -- it really was an accurate description of the sheer wrongness of the land -- disappearing into a stele that looked very similar to the portable anchor Kestra had produced that morning.

The old snake looked worse for wear, and Graemire plucked the anchor from him. "To safety, now!" he ordered, his glare encompassing Eilith and Ambrose, too.

They didn't even respond, practically diving through the anchor into Kestra's realm.

A few minutes later, Graemire passed through the far edge of the blighted lands. He saw a village, perhaps only two kilometers farther, and he wondered with deep grief how many had died, struck down for an Elemental's tantrum.

He set down the anchor, then began to spend his cultivation to establish a containment barrier. Water would be better suited, but he would not ask of Eilith to diminish herself. His Wood would be enough, especially with a newly bound dungeon to eat away at the heart of the blight.

He ignored the notices that flashed for his attention. He might very well become the smallest Emperor of Wood to ever live, but he would live, and his Enlightenment could not be stripped from him.

Kestra ate when food was put in front of her, but despite that the World Seed had taken over control of the conduit, that conduit still ran through her. The sheer scale of what was passing from the First Horizon to her overwhelmed all but the most instinctive of her needs.

Afterward, the others told her she was nearly catatonic like that for three days, then slept for another. Three days was how long it took for a mana seed to be planted at the site of the bush house Graemire had made for their camp, and for it to mature into a dungeon core.

At that point, her World Seed returned to dormancy. The stele through which her World Seed was still consuming blight remained, and Kestra had no intention of retrieving it before the blight was all gone.

Graemire had come to her realm once more, and he and the other Elementals were all busy. In the time while her World Seed was active, her personal realm had expanded to a width of five kilometers, complete with newly formed stone, ores, soil, waters, air, and plants. The little Ore Sprite was ecstatic to be overwhelmed with coalescing the new metals into deposits.

There were also mana-born creatures appearing in her new woods, birds claiming her skies, and fish in her waters. They were all smaller than her fist, and none of them were magical despite being mana-born, yet all of them answered to her sprites and to her, and they tended to her woods as naturally as the Nature Sprite.

All of that she discovered after reading her notices.

[COMPLETED] Quest: Grow Your Mana Well III

Requirements: Grow your mana well to Low Foundation Grade

Rewards:

‎ Foundation Mana Stone Generator Seed

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well IIII

EXP: 50,000

[COMPLETED] Quest: Grow Your Mana Well IIII

Requirements: Grow your mana well to Middle Foundation Grade

Rewards:

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well V

EXP: 50,000

Level Up!

You have reached the next level. You gain 5 boosts to distribute across your statistics.

[COMPLETED] Quest: Grow Your Mana Well V

Requirements: Grow your mana well to High Foundation Grade

Rewards:

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well VI

EXP: 50,000

Level Up!

You have reached the next level. You gain 5 boosts to distribute across your statistics.

[COMPLETED] Quest: Grow Your Mana Well VI

Requirements: Grow your mana well to Low Earth Grade

Rewards:

‎ Earth Mana Stone Generator Seed

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well VII

EXP: 500,000

Quest: Grow Your Mana Well VII

Requirements: Grow your mana well to Middle Earth Grade

Rewards:

‎ Quest: Grow Your Mana Well VIII

EXP: 500,000

Level Up!

You have reached the next level. You gain 5 boosts to distribute across your statistics.

Level Up!

You have reached the next level. You gain 5 boosts to distribute across your statistics.

Congratulations!

You have significantly aided in containing befoulment in the land of the Ten Horizons!

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Rewards:

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Title: Harmonious

1,000,000 Challenge Points

Scroll: Reward Store (Consumable)

EXP: 1,000,000

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

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Harmonious

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

You have made a significant contribution to the harmony of the Ten Horizons.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

The elements of the Ten Horizons respond more favorably to you.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Those were followed by five more level up notices.

She applied her boosts right away, not wanting to have that waiting for her. She opted to get the Enhanced title for her Agility, Mana, and Mana Recovery, which also advanced a certain quest chain.

[COMPLETED] Quest: Mana Cultivation III

Requirements: Reach Solid Mana Cultivation Stage

Rewards:

‎ +5 Mana

EXP: 50,000

Quest: Mana Cultivation IIII

Requirements: Condense 5 Solid Mana Drops

Rewards:

‎ +10 Mana

EXP: 100,000

Her profile looked ridiculous to her own eyes.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

PROFILE

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

NAME : Kestra Boom-Smiter

LEVEL : 49

EXP : 176,643 / 240,100

RACE : Human

TITLES :

‎ Transmigrator

‎ Dungeon Hunter

‎ Enhanced Strength

‎ Enhanced Agility

‎ Heighten Stamina

‎ Heighten Stamina Recovery

‎ Enhanced Mana

‎ Enhanced Mana Recovery

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

BOOSTS: 3 / 285

STRENGTH: (7+10) + 58 = 75

AGILITY: (10+10) + 50 = 70

STAMINA: (8+5) + 37 = 50 [750]

STAMINA RECOVERY: (8+5) + 37 = 50 [5.0/s]

MANA: (10+25) + 50 = 85 [850]

MANA RECOVERY: (10+10) + 50 = 70 [56.0/s]

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

OPEN APERTURES: 8

TEMPERING STEPS: (0) Untempered

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Inspri had already planted the seeds for the generators, but the three were sharing the original output conduit from her mana well. It was a matter of moments for Kestra to grow that conduit, increasing the output going to Inspri's domain. With her much higher Mana Manipulation skill, Kestra estimated the total conduit sent over around ten mana per second.

Inspri had divided the output equally when the different seeds were added. The Foundation Mana Stone Generator Seed took 33,000 mana to mature, and had already done so, producing mana stones that were three centimeters in diameter. The Earth Mana Stone Generator Seed would need 144,000 mana to mature.

Kestra had Inspri readjust the output distribution. She didn't want any more than one mana per second going to the Base generator, and was happy to spend two mana per second for the Foundation generator, which left seven mana per second for the Earth generator. By her rough calculations, that would net her 17 Base stones, 15 Foundation stones, and 16 Earth stones per day after the last generator matured.

She hoped that would help sustain her Divine guests. Graemire in particular felt … gaunt to whatever proprioception operated through her personal realm.