Copper gingerly meandered down the mountainside with Walter on her back and the duo walking along behind them. Copper may have been enjoying the pleasant walk and fresh air but Walter's eyes never left their surroundings. He trusted her to know where to walk on her own which left his full attention available for keeping watch.

"We'll spend the night at this next campsite." Walter told the duo. "It'll feel like a waste but to do anything else would be courting trouble."

"I take it the panther wasn't the apex predator of the region then?" Isaac asked.

Walter didn't reply right away as his eyes narrowed in focus at something far down the mountain. "Yes and no." He said after a moment as his gaze continued scanning their path and the areas around it. "As far as singular mammalian predators go, it's at the top." He explained. "One of the traders mentioned seeing a lindwyrm. It might've been something he ate, or there could be an honest to gods legendary creature slithering about." He continued. "There was a griffon nest about forty miles that way." He pointed towards the east, the direction that they were going to turn towards as soon as they reached the bottom of the mountain range. "Those and the dryads are the ones you'll need to watch out for. It's a lot easier to miss one hyper lethal threat than it is to miss an entire brood of dirt drifter snakes or a pack of wood-wolves."

Isaac nodded as he and Lenna continued to keep their own eyes out for any potential threats. They weren't entirely sure what those threats would look like but they knew that they were out there. "Lenna and I can see just fine in the dark, I'm sure you can see well enough too, why can't we travel through the night?" Isaac wondered. "Nothing you mentioned, save maybe the lindwyrm, should pose much of a threat to the three of us. What even is a lindwyrm anyway?"

"The forest doesn't like travelers using the roads at night. It also doesn't like us using the forest trails ever. The trees might try to eat us if we break the rules of the forest." Walter explained. "That's also assuming that you're planning on fighting every nocturnal creature. They're a hungry bunch." Walter glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Isaac was still listening and when their eyes met, Walter nodded and then continued: "A lindwyrm is a demi-dragon, like a hydra, drake, wyvern, dragonkin, or anything else you find that looks just dragon enough to give you pause. All of them are magical in their own way. Lindwyrms are… interesting."

"How so?" Isaac wondered. "The way you said it makes me think it isn't just breathing an element or flying around."

"Oh, they are land bound. The young ones look like sand vipers with scales that match their surroundings. As they get older, they eventually grow a set of front legs. Usually people don't see them after that stage, because they can't. They are greedy creatures by nature, when they find something they like, they form a bond with it and start to collect it. Their natural magics continue to expand as they grow larger so the guild classifies them as electrum level threats at viper size, double platinum if they have forelegs, and apocalyptic if they have hindlegs." Walter went on. "Stage one magic is some form of kinetic absorption. The active camouflage is entirely biological. Their first stage magic and active camo are just to keep them alive until they get bigger but it's what makes them so damned hard to put down when they are the size of a house. Thankfully, the amount of kinetic absorption seems to be flat based on their age or something."

"What is stage two?" Isaac couldn't help but ask. A giant snake that was hard to kill wouldn't be too hard to fight for him and Lenna, no matter how big it got.

"Material duplication." Walter told them seriously. "They use it to passively grow their hoard of whatever thing they attached themselves to, but its real purpose is killing people." Walter let the duo think about all the ways material duplication could get them killed before he continued. "What if your armor was suddenly double its mass and you were still inside it? It'd have to expand both outwards and inwards. You had better hope the buckles snapped themselves before it finished crushing you. A tree branch overhead suddenly gets so big it snaps off, a rock on the ledge you are standing on doubles and then doubles again and again pushing you off or causing the cliff to crumble, that's assuming you have some level of magical weight. Unleveled creatures have no resistance to it. It can feed itself for days on a baby bird or rabbit, imagine what it can do to a wagon driver or a mortal child."

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"Still, it shouldn't be too bad if we know it is out there." Isaac replied.

"If we know indeed." Walter agreed. "That's half the problem, lindwyrms are smart. They're as smart as dragons but lack the inherent knowledge of the pure bloods. They are a wild predator with the thinking ability of a mortal but no social structure."

"I see." Isaac nodded. "So it doesn't stalk, it hunts."

Walter nodded. "Yep." He confirmed. "So keep an eye out for a snake that's always the same color as whatever it's next to."

As the group continued on their way, Isaac and Lenna filled Walter in on the necromancer problem that Alten was facing, the little of it that they knew anyway. They also told him about Chatohsha and what they had learned about the 'blessed' dragon.

"That's perfect." Walter said as if he'd just had a revelation. He quickly pulled out his notebook and scribbled in it. "Blessed adult dragons, why hadn't I thought of that? I was too focused on elementals. The blessing should be enough."

"Care to share?" Isaac wondered.

"I've been working on creating a hero." Walter began with a glint in his eyes. "Using the powers of Fire, Ice, Lightning, Wind, and Gia. At first, I'd only thought about elementals for creating each piece of the armor set. I'd been wracking my brain trying to find a way to get ahold of elder elemental cores but the passive durability increase of draconic gear would be much better."

"I understand all of the words that you are saying." Isaac told him. "But I feel like I am missing a lot of context."

Over the course of the next hour or so, Walter informed Isaac of his grand plan to make an armor set that would be so powerful and all encompassing that a level one warrior would be able to fight at the level of an electrum ranked one. His plan was to finish the set, find someone he deemed worthy, and then bestow it upon them like some ancient mentor from a storybook. If the warrior and the Elementalist's Armor, name pending, were one in the same from the beginning, then by the time they reached level twenty they would be nearly on par with a demigod in terms of power synchronization and combat ability. Any and all powers and abilities that came from the armor would be just as natural as breathing. With the five elements that Walter had chosen, the 'hero' would also be able to deal with any foe regardless of their resistances or immunities. Apparently he had been working on the idea for quite a while, decades most likely, and had all of the enchantments drawn out in his notebook, enchantments that all needed to be redone because of his change in strategy for creating his heroic armor.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached the next campsite and Walter imminently got to work giving Copper food and water. Gypsy had vanished at some point again and returned just as they reached camp. It really seemed like she was heading out to hunt but there were never any signs of prey being slain.

"Walter, I'm going to be straight with you, I am going to go crazy if I have to sit here for the next fifteen hours." Isaac told their guide with total seriousness.

Walter glanced at Isaac as he continued to take off Copper's traveling gear. "I get that." He replied with a nod. "Just… I don't have the will to explain to you all of the ways that the forest'll kill you. The simple fact that I won't be with you will turn even the grass against you. You can go back the way we came if you want, just be back here by dusk."

Isaac eyed the forest that shimmered and waved in every color of a complete set of paints. It looked peaceful enough but they had hired a guide, they had better listen to him, especially if there was anything out there that could actually threaten their lives. The worst part was, he couldn't even meditate, or could he? "Can I medi-"

"No." Walter cut him off. "Grandmaster sorcerers can't either. The runes are too efficient. They can't handle a power imbalance."

"What's the limit?" Lenna wondered.

"Ninth level spells or mana equivalent." Walter replied. "That's the mana density alteration limit."

"So grandmaster sorcerers." Isaac said flatly.

Walter nodded. "There are so few of them that the wards didn't absolutely need to be able to handle someone like that. Especially because they can just teleport." Walter told him with a shrug. "Do you have a hobby?"

"Piano and reading mostly." Isaac answered.

"I always wanted to learn the piano." Walter remarked. "I have a few books that I've finished. I just haven't gotten around to returning them. Just be gentle with them."

Isaac nodded. "I can do that." He said. "What are they about?"

With that, Walter had managed to get Isaac to sit down and shut up for a few hours at least. Or he would have, if Walter himself didn't have very interesting work to do. Isaac had only been reading for ten minutes or so before he was pulled out of the pages by a spell chant: "Hither unto me, mine arcane impedimenta."

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