Cleo's ears perked up, unused to the unnatural feeling that were now her long pointy ears despite years passing by.

She breathed in the mana, easing up her tension. She pulled another all nighter and, no matter how powerful she was, even she had limits. Still, she hated how these little annoying tics kept showing up proving that she needed to rest. She swore if others started to notice, she would never hear the end of it.

Still, she was almost done with her work.

Her finger glowed a beautiful cyan color, and the world changed around her. Mana circulated and gathered all at a fingerpoint, directing all the massive unseen forces at her will.

Even now, this feeling never ceased being incredible. Directing them with purpose, Cleo directed all the energy to her project, the massive torrent of mana entering into the steel frame of her little work, enchanting it fully by following the proper scripts she had studied and written.

This was different from runecrafting. While it also couldn't really be considered enchanting either. In a way, it was their people's own power-up to match those who could become absolute monsters under the system.

What she was doing was a mixture of all the magical crafting skills into one. Despite the system being consistent with its singular paths, it never truly intended to separate them individually.

In her opinion, all power comes from the same place–the system. Therefore, if the system granted them powers, shouldn't it be apparent to try and experiment with such powers to see the results for oneself?

Then again, she only learned of this due to how the Soul Elves work. They don't focus particularly on any craft, or in any skill. They just focus on the aspect of magic itself.

It fascinated her. She wanted to know how it all worked, how it all clicked and made together. She was certain everyone back home would've loved to see it.

She let out a breath. Once again, her exhaustion was making her true emotions slip past. Not that talking about her emotions was bad–it was just that she preferred to keep it in for a time or two.

She focused her thoughts onto her project, the metal frame used as the basis for the ritual had now been completely empowered by mana. She would say it was enchanted, but it was far more than that. She can only say that it had advanced in terms of concepts–or in other words, it wasn't enchanted, but instead ascended to being a growth item.

Growth items, as far as her limited knowledge of video games from the old world, are able to not only grow in terms of power, stats, or abilities, but become more perfectly customized for the user. However, rather than it being some equipment, Cleo was creating an item to help cleanse the area around the vicinity.

Closing her eyes, she focused deep within the mana, unfurling her Legendary Mana Horizon skill to the maximum size. With her senses, her mind attuned to the environment around her, she was able to finely pierce through the veil between planes with mana sight alone, usually requiring plenty more materials, items, gear, or who knows what natural treasures is included in there.

Thanks to the ritual item's empowerment, the mana being sent out subtly like pleasant airwaves were utterly eradicating the corruption that was slowly infecting some parts of their home. Despite how long it happened, she was still shocked at how much the world changed thanks to the tower's influence.

Her travel here wasn't pleasant–Definitely. Out of possibly any other unfortunate soul, rather than just staying by herself, she was instead sattled up with a man near her age who seemed to come from an upper-class portion of society. It was unfortunately something that she was quite used to.

The tower itself was a nightmare incarnate, filled with a mixture of humans mixed with animals; such classics involved centaurs, lizardmen, and then there were the crude ones like mermen… the one where the fish part was used as the head while the bottom was all male. Unfortunately, her eyes were traumatized as the mermen liked to go commando.

But she could take all of that. She really could–even the damn naked mermen. But the one thing that really settled the trauma was her male partner suddenly deciding that he wanted more than the 'little playful hip swings' she allegedly kept throwing at him.

Wanting to ensure that he was still sane, he suddenly attacked her. His hands managed to wrap around her wrists, her body entirely defenseless against the clearly larger man, his stat build focused more on melee compared to her naturally weak mage build.

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She panicked. She panicked for quite a bit–about a few seconds. Anything more, and she worried that she might let out a tear.

But there was a disgusting pig trying to do the unthinkable and she had no plans of being a sexual victim in this hellhole on top of everything else.

One thing Cleo would admit is that she is different from other people. Rather than being adhered to emotions like most girls around her age, Cleo always preferred a more logical approach to things. It was the one thing she was proud of, something that instantly took over once her panic of being attacked that was worse than death started to occur.

She looked down to see that her legs were still free, only her arms still bound. Then she noticed the pig trying to unleash the freak hidden within his pants. She wondered why she even bothered panicking.

One swift kick was all she needed to haul ass out of the pig's path. She ran, her legs getting the sweet dopamine to hit the bastard right where it hurts–especially where it hurt at the worst timing, she was certain.

Yet either his hornyness or outright arrogance of being trounced by a woman surfaced harder than it should; the man ran full tilt at her, uncaring of the situation surrounding her.

She knew the situation was utterly ridiculous–so she had already treated her ex-partner as a liability and, when she noticed a group of ravenous and what appeared to be rabies-filled ratmen, she shot a quick spell at them, then unleashed a barrage of all the spells that emitted the greatest light imaginable, blinding everyone chasing her.

Her own eyes were blind, but she already knew where she needed to go, so with all the tumbles and bruises and whatever cuts that got her, she got away from it all. She was thankful that her eyes were the only ones affected. The harsh screams of the man getting ripped to pieces, too jumbled up after literally getting caught with his pants down. She would say she felt guilty, considering that was her first murder. Even if she wasn't directly responsible, nobody but her knew the real truth.

She felt guilty, and that was that. Afterwards, she managed to get out of the tower by herself, thankful that she didn't need her shitty partner to get out of the dungeon after escaping from the nigh-impossible chimera boss at the very end.

Then, she managed to find herself here, all the way in the deep hidden forests where extremely rare and extremely wary Soul Elves resided. So she honestly considered herself relieved when she was only imprisoned for a single month with barely food and water from invading their lands and causing such a ruckus.

After the month passed, some more reasonable elves came along to hear her story. After hearing her out, they sought the treasures she kept and the knowledge she had. She really had no other choice but to give just a smidge of trust to her saviors (and prison guards) to even have a decent shot at life in this other world.

And thus, here she was. That same corruption in the mana was indeed from the multiple towers that are appearing and disappearing like mad. She can't imagine how many otherworlders have been in, killed, or outright forgotten within the towers once it was left around. Those were the worst, the towers becoming more and more in flux with the environmental mana that it creates a chaos zone capable of calling forth stronger and stronger monsters to the source.

That was already a bad thing, as most of the entire planet of Tarial is actually covered by insanely strong monsters that went beyond Grandmaster. So to create something that could create a zone that could potentially call forth more of those powerful monsters to a place of plentiful civilization was considered having a very bad time.

And what she was doing was basically using a cup to scoop out the water that is slowly sinking the ship she was on. At the very least she was thankful that the village of Soul Elves isn't so large to take up the entire day of doing these ritual cleanses. That cup is just enough to fill up a few crates if she worked hard enough, advance her skills well enough, but she still needed to do a lot of work.

After all, an outsider, even if having a Sub-race for a Soul Elf, is considered frowned upon by the Soul Elf community. She can understand that point, and it honestly wasn't even that different compared to her old life.

Constantly being belittled, being treated as some spoiled brat who thinks she knows everything. It was bad enough as it is to be considered nearly equal to Mother.

She refused to see it that way. She was nothing like that devil. Even the prick that attacked her was just a fly in comparison to the real catastrophe that was Mother.

If it was Mother and herself in the tower instead of the man… well, she at least knew which preference she would choose, yet she still didn't like either one.

After many hours passed, her work was complete, finishing much faster than usual and impressing some of the more friendlier Soul Elves around her.

The others, of course, insinuated that she slacked around and could've done so sooner. Considering that it took even her Legendary mana perception skill to even reach a semblance of a few hours, let alone in a single day, it made her bitter since natural born Soul Elves naturally have a better sense of mana than humans. It constantly irked her, but it was an unfortunate feeling she was also used to.

She was used to a lot of dealing with bad hands. Even then, she always played her cards right. All it took was just to wait for the perfect opportunity.

Honestly, it would've been better if that opportunity was actually known to her, but for now, she was satisfied living in the forest and expanding her abilities with magic further. If she could reach Grandmaster, she can perhaps go out with permission from the elders to go and try to find more otherworlders.

Maybe, just maybe, someone she knew might be included. Maybe someone who had been missing from her life for a long, long time.

"Aster… god, I hope you're doing well."

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