"Do you think the nearby beasts and monsters will pay my men any mind if you are meditating?" Philia asked Isaac. She had finished whatever research she had needed to do in the 'Library' and had met with the duo in the training yard. An hour after she had left her office, that morning, Philia had sent her second in command to relieve Walter of the task that she had left in his care. Walter was walking Isaac through each and every pressure point and soft target on a human, using Isaac himself as the dummy. Though, unlike last time, Walter was not hitting each of the targets but was simply poking most of them and pointing at the others in a non-combat fashion.

"I don't think so." Isaac told Philia honestly. "Not unless they get in between the critters and their prospective meal. There is always the risk that your lindwyrm comes looking for the tastiest meal of all time."

Philia nodded. "Give me fifty two minutes and then you may begin meditation in the courtyard, right in front of the mess hall." She told him. "I will have all preparations in order by then. Walter, I require your magical assistance."

Isaac and Walter nodded one after the other and the artificer was practically drug away by an invisible leash.

Philia spent the intervening time using Walter to contact each of her scouting teams with telepathy. She informed them that most of the creatures in the area would begin heading towards the fortress, and that as long as they didn't distract the animals from their new and sudden calling, they should be left alone. With most of the predators focused on reaching Isaac, the scout teams should've been able to move at a faster rate than normal. With that in mind, most of the scouts would be able to make it back to the fortress before nightfall. The two teams that wouldn't, would be back around midnight, unless something unforeseen happened, which considering what night it was, that was decently likely.

Fifty two minutes after the time of their talk was exactly an hour after noon. That would give Isaac, hopefully, eighteen hours of meditation time. Once the aforementioned time arrived, Philia met Isaac and Lenna in the courtyard. "Ready, Fortress Commander?" Isaac asked Philia.

Philia nodded and gestured to the roof of the main building where Walter was sitting with a rifle that was twice as large as his normal one and also had a spyglass attached to the top of it with a pair of legs jetting out from the bottom of the barrel, angled out to each side as much as they were angled downwards. "Walter will be waiting for the lindwyrm. He is not to fire unless he notices it." She explained and then gestured across the walls around them where dozens of archers stood with swords on their hips and/or backs, and spears resting in notches pointing towards the heavens next to them. "We are ready whenever you are." She stated.

"Why are you alright with messing with the local balance so much?" Isaac wondered. "Doesn't this disrupt your ecological equilibrium?"

Philia shook her head. "No. Balance was already being steadily eroded by the lindwyrm. The thinning of the local predators will only serve to help the forest return to balance more quickly once the lindwyrm is inevitably slain." She explained.

Isaac nodded in understanding. "Then I will get right to it." He told the swordswoman druid before he turned to talk to his wife. "Wake me if anything serious happens."

Lenna nodded once. "If we need you, or if you are in danger, we'll get you." She assured him. It wasn't quite what he had wanted but it was as good as he was going to get and he knew it.

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Isaac took a deep breath and settled into a sitting position. He needed this mediation time. Lenna had gotten plenty of it, while they were on the road and while they were resting in the fortress, so she was already able to gently use her aura and cast fourth level spells again. Given another week she would be able to cast fifth level spells again and another week after that she would be able to use her aura as she normally did. She still wouldn't technically be fully healed but she would be healed enough to fight normally. Isaac was still very far away from being able to fight normally.

As Isaac tried to wrestle his mind into silence. His thoughts kept returning to how weak he was compared to how he had been when he was fighting Judgment and Jallen V'Nova. He was strong, and skilled enough, to hold his own against Lenna as long as she wasn't casting spells and just augmenting her strength with a little mana here and there, but he was positive that if they were going all out against each other, she would win. He was elusive but lacked any real power at the moment and it grated on his nerves.

Isaac took another deep relaxing breath and acknowledged the feelings and then filed them away. He focused on his mana and let the feeling of power, grace, apathy, inevitability, and fathomlessness wash over him. It didn't take him long after that to fully embrace his power and to drift away on the torrential river of power that washed through him. He felt almost as if he had been stretched to his limits and was now finally able to relax. Tension was washed away and stretched material was returned to normal. He was utterly at peace as his consciousness nearly completely merged with his power, only his attachment to Lenna kept the dark mana from washing him away down its endless and infinite streams.

—

Philia and Lenna stood next to each other in front of Isaac, both women were staring at Isaac as he struggled to calm his mind to begin his meditation. "I don't think we'll get to spar." Philia complained to Lenna. "It would've been fun, I think."

Lenna nodded. "If we are still both good to go come morning, we can spar before we leave." She told the older elf.

Philia looked over at Lenna and smiled. "I'd like that, but I get the feeling that it will have to wait until next time."

Both women felt the mana in the area start to shift. Something felt like it was missing from the air around them and they both focused entirely on Isaac. They could tell that whatever was 'missing' from the mana around them was being pulled in towards Isaac.

"It's starting." Lenna explained. "Give yourself a minute but no longer." She knew that Isaac mediating was a spectacle that drew the focus of everyone around. That was why she warned Philia and told her to only give herself a minute of distraction.

Sure enough, as expected, everyone was momentarily distracted by the spectacle. Philia mastered herself almost immediately and refocused all of her soldiers with a single word: "Focus!" She called out loud enough that every single person in the entire fortress could hear her. Not a single one of her soldiers hesitated and all immediately returned their attention to the outside.

Silence reigned as Isaac hung in their air by the massive amount of mana gushing through him. Not a single person spoke as they awaited the incoming horde that would no doubt be drawn towards the extreme mana event. As Lenna watched Isaac, she noticed something: "Huh, the sun really does make it weaker."

Philia turned and just blinked at Lenna. "That's weaker?" She couldn't help but question.

Lenna nodded. "About twenty to thirty percent, I think." She confirmed. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck start to stand up as a sense of impending disaster settled onto her shoulders. "They're coming." She said and turned her attention towards the front gate.

She didn't need to tell Philia as the older elf was already discarding her cloak. Her spotless verdant cloak dropped into a heap behind her revealing a pair of curved swords that were sheathed with their blades crossing and pointing upwards. She did not immediately draw her swords however, instead, she slammed one heel and then the other down onto the ground. Her boots rippled, folded, and pulled themselves up into ankle, shin, and calf guards.

Philia cracked her neck as fur rapidly grew to cover all of her exposed skin. Her eyes became slits that then dilated like a cat tracking prey. Her nails grew long and sharp like Gypsy's and her ears shifted to be more vertical. Her fur was the same oak brown as her hair and was only barely thick enough to hide her skin underneath. Her nails all turned black and she lowered her stance slightly. Her ears twitched as her, now even more heightened, senses picked up on something that no one else could hear. "Seventy one! Seventy! Sixty Nine!" She counted down and then went silent. Everyone else could count in their own heads, she would not add further to the anticipation of violence, other than giving the men and women under her command fair warning. It was time. A culling was about to begin and the clearing around the fortress was about to become an ocean of blood with islands of corpses.

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