“I understand that I am to play a role in the recovery of our comrade, Codename Butcher, to a combat-ready state. I regret to see that he is not here with us, but I understand that the risk of his manifestation given his less-than-stable condition would pose a liability. I only have one request.”

“What might that be, soldier?” Zel smiled, deciding to play along with the weapon spirit.

He smiled back with his eyes, appreciative of the gesture: “Thundergod Number Eight; the Stormbloom’s Blazing Thundergod. It agrees with me more than the others. I believe it would be beneficial to our combat performance if you channeled it through me.”

“I will see to it,” she nodded.

Without speaking another word, Thundercannon’s spirit saluted once more and dispersed.

There were no further incidents between that moment and Zel’s return to Oasis City with the fully-empowered talismans and bindings in tow. She carried them around her waist, their magic too potent and unstable to store in her Tablet. Several gigantic trees were being dragged towards the city, and the Boreans were repairing the damage which Eisengeist had caused at an utterly stunning rate. More and more it sunk in why Boreans were on another level as a people; it was their work ethic. Everything got one hundred percent; be it honor, battle, craftsmanship, or insane, malicious plotting.

She arrived just in time to see the first Exile Caravan depart for the Long Road South. A long, long train, boarded by hundreds of people, and well-supplied at that. It was clearly intended to actually reach whatever far-off destination was its aim, not to send its passengers to their deaths in the cold.

No, those who were wanted dead had simply been killed wherever they could be found, with the manhunts still ongoing even now.

The near constant draw of attention towards her had barely changed since her she’d left for the Spirit Grove, the impact of her arrival right alongside the Revenant King still resonating through the city. Disappointingly, none dared to approach her and issue a challenge; even a friendly one. Zel could feel that a fair number of Oasis City’s stronger individuals actively considered challenging her, but the overarching circumstances forestalled them. She supposed it was at least nice in the sense that there stood no setbacks between her and Eldartha.

The ripples of her actions had grown into waves, and Zelsys couldn’t help but smile. Victor’s growth, Zef’s gun upgrades and new ammunition, even Rikke as a new sect member, she had foreseen the possibility of such events in one way or another. After all, a giant meteorite and a giant dragon’s blade would obviously make for far more material than she could conceivably use to make a new body for the Butcher. But Jorfr’s meteoric growth? His reception of his ancestors’ blessings, awakening of the Immortal Blood, and now taking-up of the antediluvian, god-killing weapon Superbia? That, she could have never predicted. Even the full scope of Victor’s new abilities was beyond what she had anticipated.

Unlike herself, Victor didn’t have that air of untouchability about him, and she got to watch him fight one time after she’d returned from the Spirit Grove.

An absolute terror, he was, even without his armor, which the duel’s terms had dictated. He riddled his opponent with so many fragments of devilbone that he became capable of using them to lift the two-hundred-kilo Bjorn warrior through sheer force of will. The man conceded the fight before Victor could drop him onto a bed of flaming spikes. By the look in his eyes he didn’t look like he was actually going to do it, but few could discern intent the way Zelsys could. The redhead’s drive hadn’t slowed in the slightest, either; she noticed him constantly trying to use his “Eating Hand” techniques to absorb Eisengeist’s flesh and bone, tiny bit by tiny bit; he’d fashioned small trinkets from them that he wore on strings around his wrists, constantly working away at them when he had his hands free. The unrotting nature of the dragon’s made it a fair bit less macabre than it would’ve been otherwise. Zel hadn’t even known that the King had cut the bones into such small pieces.

She couldn’t wait to see Ozmir’s reaction to everything she would bring back. And Makhus’s, given that he would be undoubtedly ecstatic to work with ultra-high-grade alchemical ingredients. Everyone’s, really. Just two of Eisengeist’s tendrils added up to an utterly massive quantity of every component that made them up. The dragon’s paralytic blood that had been salvaged massed in hundreds of liters, congealed into great jiggling purple masses inside its glyph-glass containers.

It hadn’t quite sunk in just how far she’d come to reach this point; not until these final days preceding her departure for Eldartha.

Her bidaily visits to Ingvald continued, to ensure her arm’s metamorphosis would continue optimally. One of these days, when Zel had come with Zef in tow, he brought up dragonsteel ammunition. Particularly, the sheer amount of standard-diameter bullets, shot pellets, and slugs he could make from his spare dragonsteel.

“It would be the opposite of a problem normally, but this ammunition will return to you a short time after you fire it; as we have discussed earlier, it will simply fly into the gaping maw of your magic cylinder. So you see, it would be pointless to make too many. I shan’t protest using it all, but I thought it would be best to consult you two before I do so. Do not worry about compensation, this… This is personal work. For me as much as it is for you.”

“The obvious answer would be to ask that you reinforce these,” Zel said, raising one of her braids, holding up the bladed shard at its tip. “But that will require very little material. So…”

Zel took two shells out of her ammo belt. One with a solid ball, and a Type-1a high-velocity anti-cultivator round.

“I would also ask that you make projectiles for these and casings from normal starmetal. I also use standard-diameter bullets for shotgun shells, as such a greater ratio of those is justified. I do not have a storage medium for ammunition as convenient as Zef’s black cylinder, unfortunately…”