Liya went against her orders not to interact with Shen before one Earth year had passed, but those orders came from an assumption that was no longer true: that she would lose her safety if she interfered with humanity.

Observers couldn't interfere, but as with many rules that mainly had political consequences, it wasn't enforced by the Guardian System. Someone needed to witness her actions and make a formal complaint against her. No Observers were around to do that any longer, though, and Liya doubted the Human Maiden would be stupid enough to betray her.

The girl had shown enough acumen, and whether she tried to snitch on Liya would test her intelligence in multiple ways. Plans always failed in the Alliance. An unknown actor was always plotting against you, and their sneak attacks succeeded when you least expected it.

The dead Observers, for instance, certainly hadn't expected to die like that in this world.

Marzia Martino's plans of counting on Feng Shen had failed, and now she would need to adapt while proving she knew better than acting against the much more powerful being who had foiled her plans. If she couldn't do even that much, she wouldn't last a single Standard year after Earth opened up to the rest of the Alliance, even as controlled as that access would be.

Similar tests were going for Alicia Winter and Sai Mallik.

The girl was too dependent on Feng Shen. She needed to understand that she was her own person and acquire the power to survive while Shen wasn't around. The distance would be good for her.

The guard was on the opposite end of the spectrum. He seemed ready to jump ships for the supposed safety of his family. That would be a great mistake. Being part of a strong force brought enemies, but it still provided more protection than the alternative. Of all the parties on Earth at the moment, only joining the Chinese Empress—and having her sincerely help—was arguably safer than being on Feng Shen's side. The third human D-rank was even more of a single-minded battle junkie than Feng Shen and didn't care for allies at all.

Staying away from Feng Shen would help Sai see the truth. Or not. From what she had seen, he was a bit on the stupid side, having trouble discerning between fiction and reality.

Liya was indirectly helping Shen's closest allies, yet she doubted her charge would ever accept that.

Unlike what she had taught Shen, the actual first lesson given to young drow was that they would be betrayed. Children were lied to by those they trusted the most. Then, they were taught to trust and obey the Triarchy above all else. That took a long time and effort, but it was worth it.

Feng Shen would likely never learn to trust Liya again. His anger burned brighter than she had anticipated at Marzia's "death." Or maybe it was actually his hurt ego speaking. He had promised to protect the Human Maiden, and Liya had pretended to kill the girl right before him. The honor he talked about so much likely couldn't accept that, though she saw it as nothing more than arrogance under a different name, a weakness to exploit.

After she dismembered him, he built weak and stupid limbs of qi and tried to attack her.

It was so...

...pathetic.

She couldn't think of another word to describe it, and it was a testament to her charge's incompetence how that adjective repeatedly came to her mind as she thought of him.

The drow didn't mask their feelings, but they also weren't consumed by it. Liya had screamed in pain as she absorbed the power of the Receptacles of Hope but kept her sanity as she fought to assimilate the energy without dying. Feng Shen, on the other hand, became a stupid berserker.

That was his second most glaring weakness.

"I never worked with qi before," Liya said as the idiot approached, "but from what I saw of you using it, I'm willing to bet my right arm that it's more effective to reattach your limbs instead of creating and using new ones from qi."

She used her domain to cut his qi limbs off too. The shock on his face revealed no one had ever forcibly cut his connection to his energy.

"Do as I said," she commanded as he started falling. "No point in wasting time teaching you how to fight using energy limbs before you learn how to use your actual limbs."

His eyes told her that he would refuse and instead do something stupid. Yet, he didn't act immediately. He would take a long while to do something he had already decided to do.

That was his most glaring fault: overthinking.

Even now, consumed by emotions, he considered too many things before acting. He seemed terrified of making mistakes, which significantly decreased his effectiveness. She wouldn't be surprised if he ever let an enemy live for longer than needed just because he decided to retreat to think instead of attacking. An enemy might even escape because of that.

Liya guessed he had grown up without going through meaningful personal strife. He hadn't dealt with regrets, so he feared them. The way he had apologized to humankind for what he had done under Valentina's orders and told Alicia he didn't deserve her were evidence enough.

Thinking before acting was often a good idea, but overthinking was a habit Liya would beat out of him—as she had done to nine other drow.

The tricky part was not letting him realize what she was doing. She needed him furious to fuel his obsession while learning how not to get controlled by it. He couldn't be given enough time to think of anything else but how to strike her down—and how to get good enough to accomplish that—or he might find out his anger was based on a lie before he was ready for the big reveal.

She waited for him to overthink things until, at long last, he decided to act.

It had taken him about 0.004 seconds to decide on doing precisely what Liya had guessed he would do. That was long enough to cover sixty yards at his top speed.

Liya could barely believe someone would give their enemies so much breathing room.

"Buy healing—" Shen started saying.

He would rather buy healing crystals to regrow his limbs than use the ones nearby as she had ordered. He was being stubborn just for the sake of it.

A slap from her domain shattered all his teeth, cut his tongue off, scrapped his vocal cords, and made him dazed for an instant.

"You're not allowed to use the Guardian System unless I explicitly say so," Liya said when his mind recovered.

He was being way too wasteful with his AP. He was like a spoiled high elf who had never wanted for something and didn't understand the value of money after leaving their home.

"Our time is limited," she continued, "but I would rather kill you than skip the basics."

Liya saw in his eyes that he almost told her to kill him then. But he held his tongue. That was good; the training wouldn't work if he didn't fear she would act on her threats.

She kept saying, "I'll teach you the way I want, and there's nothing you can do to change that. The sooner you understand that the faster you can actually start learning something."

Her words fell on deaf ears. He started mouthing a new request to the system, trying once more to buy a healing crystal.

Liya sighed. Cultural gap. Any drow knew better than to be too obstinate in the face of overwhelming power—or at least knew better than to show it. They would bid their time instead. But the idiot was too proud for that.

She would have to give him something.

She slapped him again to make him dazed and not complete the transaction, then conceded an offer, "One week. Try my methods for one week. If you see no value in them, you can revert to being a stupid pigheaded idiot, and I can continue to waste my time slapping you down."

That gave him pause. Liya could tell he almost refused, but he bowed down at last. His anger only increased, though, and she smiled at that.

If nothing else, she could always count on his anger, it seemed.

Begrudgingly, slowly, Feng Shen pushed his qi out of his body until it touched the severed limbs and pulled them. He put them in their places. The system would take a few minutes to heal them, but he could use his qi to move the limbs for now anyway.

"Good boy," she said provocatively, and he almost burst from anger. "Now, let's see your unharmed combat capabilities. Attack me to the best of your ability."

Liya had analyzed her charge before, but not closely. She had believed it would be almost a year before training him, so she had thought he would've had time to grow. Now she had to actually pay attention to his fighting style to find out exactly how bad of a fighter he was.

To be fair, Feng Shen was a gem in the rough. Many powerful forces would want him to join them or kill him to prevent him from entering enemy forces.

Yet, the Drow Maiden had received elite training and accepted nothing less than the best.

Liya sighed as Feng Shen approached and punched her as if he thought his arm was a spear. He even interposed an energy spear on the limb.

Having a weapon-based core Concept in his Path, as she guessed was the case, was no excuse for acting like a clumsy weapon himself.

She had so much work ahead of her.

Liya dodged and blocked Feng Shen's attacks repeatedly. First, he used qi against her. Then, after almost exhausting it, he mostly used his stats.

Nothing worked, of course.

He limited his power to save stamina, likely to waste her time because she had repeated how valuable it was. Such a cunning way of petty vengeance was almost commendable, though ultimately useless. It only prolonged his suffering. She was waiting for his stamina to reach rock bottom to go to the next phase.

And at last, hours later, he was all but emptied out.

She kicked him after dodging an attack, and he fell to the ground, breathing haggardly. He could stand up, but it would use up the last of his stamina, so he would wait a few seconds before doing so.

"I already knew you're all but useless," Liya said, "but I hoped you had learned something in the rift. It seems all you learned was how to injure your soul to kill a D-rank. Is that your Path? The Path of Needless Sacrifices? Maybe the Path of Stupid Decisions? Wait, I got it. The Path of Pathetic Attacks."

The anger in the tired Shen's eyes sparked brighter. He hated offenses to his Path and being called pathetic the most.

"You have no idea—" he started while standing up, but a slap threw his sweaty body back on the ground.

She was starting to feel bad at the seemingly needless violence, but the boy just didn't learn proper deference to a being much more powerful than him. One would think his experience with "Valentina" would've taught him better, but no, arrogance was obviously part of his Path.

His actions made sense, in a way. He was human, so he couldn't shut up about his opinions. That made their warmongering among themselves more relatable. If Liya had grown up as a human, she would also rather explode the world into a beautiful radioactive mushroom cloud than suffer her race.

"Don't ever get off topic when answering a question of mine," she admonished. "Also, don't assume you can tell me something that I would care about. I won't learn anything important from you, pathetic boy. Don't waste our time."

He didn't bark back this time. She almost sighed in relief. At least he understood his weakness after he was struck down enough times.

"I've seen enough of your moves, if I can call them that," Liya continued. "Now, cultivate. I need to see how spectacularly you plan on failing on that, too."

Feng Shen might not realize it, but he had grown used to his pure body over the last few hours. Now he was ready to find his inner balance again—though, of course, she wouldn't allow him to give up on his anger for her.

"Ah," she said almost absentmindedly, "and I would really appreciate it if you could just cultivate, nothing else. Not that I have any way of checking that. Alliance law prevents me from reading your mind. I would never go against the law to find out if you're doing anything other than cultivating while I waste my precious time on you. Oh, but I might randomly strike you for no good reason. Don't mind that, and just keep pretending to focus on cultivating— I mean, keep doing what I can only assume will be your best! I'm sure nothing bad will happen to you."

Liya indeed wouldn't read his mind, but she would thoroughly analyze his body and soul for any signs of his mind deviating from cultivation.

The subpar method of analysis would end up with her sometimes striking at the wrong time, but she doubted she would ever miss when he started getting off track. He was too crude a True Path Walker and couldn't hide his emotions well. Her misses would keep him guessing and keep the flame of hatred alive.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked.

The boy had been baffled by her command to cultivate, which was the same as telling him to improve himself. Did he actually think she was torturing him because she had nothing else to do? That this wasn't an actual training regimen?

Liya smiled.

If so, her plan was going exactly as expected.