After returning to the 9th floor, I send a scan through the area after realizing the base has disappeared from the place I’ve appeared. My scan finds the mark, the kind we developed locates only markers we have made. It has a huge range, doesn’t use much mana, and since it’s only looking for these markers, it’s hard to notice as well.

Doing that, I take a few steps and find a small pile of rocks piled up against a tree. Buried under it is a small sheath of metal with carved words on it.

“We had to move again because of Skippy. Be careful, he might still be in the area. We’re temporarily located in the Dusk Horizon village.”

And immediately, the noises of the jungle sound more dangerous. It feels like Skippy could be hiding behind any of these trees.

And I really don't feel like meeting Skippy.

I reduce my mana signature even further and start moving, keeping myself pointed at the demon village. I know it’ll take me a few hours to get there, but I’m not in a hurry. After the weeks of constant grind in Beyond, I take it as an opportunity to rest. But even so, I refuse to let myself slack off and start examining my mental techniques.

As funny as the thing with Mapthaniel is, it also makes me cautious. Even now, I can’t help but think of my mind as the most important part of me, so not fully understanding parts of it annoys me and could be dangerous.

I have a theory, though. I have long known that powerful active skills gradually change your body. Not to the extent of passives, at least not at the low level mine are. But I have reason to suspect the changes my active skills are going to bring could be greater at higher levels, especially given that some take years to level up just once, giving the skill enough time.

So I have to wonder. Could my low constitution and my powerful skills be doing that already, if only slightly? I know they do, but maybe they’re doing it to a greater extent than I thought.

If so, should I stop raising my constitution to allow it to happen at a faster pace?

I suspect it could be [Manifestation] or [Focus] that’s causing my split minds to behave this way, especially the ones I’ve kept running for longer periods of time. I still do not think it is anything close to what happened with Duplicaniel, and I don’t think it will ever reach that level. It is probably just my mind evolving, maybe it’s just something you need to go through. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a chance for it to go terribly wrong. Faora was a good example, with all the pieces of herself trapped and tortured in her Mind Palace.

Maybe 9th floor Nathaniel will finally be the first to beat the living legend, the 3rd floor Nathaniel. Damn, that guy was cool. I wanna be like him one day.

Do you agree, Mapthaniel?

There is no answer. Thankfully.

For now.

I don’t know what the hell’s even happening anymore.

----------------------------------------

The tribe we’ve been staying with is called the Dusk Horizon, as is their village. Tess would probably know why, but I don’t. I didn’t even bother to ask.

The demons stay mostly on one of six trees clustered together, often connected by powerful branches. This place is relatively safe thanks to the fact that the main tree, the one the others grow around, eats monsters.

If anything bigger than a human-sized snack comes close, it opens its single huge eye on the trunk, and crazy shit happens. I haven’t seen it in person, but Dennis and Aaron have been swearing that it’s super metal.

Otherwise, the flesh-eating tree doesn’t bother to attack, likely because the Dusk Horizon tribe has been feeding it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it actively demanded sacrifices, but as it turns out, they just lure in monsters, which have started avoiding the area, cutting out a source of protein for the tree.

I don’t know the exact level of the tree, but it shows as three question marks, so at least it is below 450, though probably not by much.

It doesn’t seem to care when demons climb, sleep, eat, or do any of their other daily activities all over it, and it needs to be seriously damaged before it reacts. Though it really doesn’t like fire, not at all. Dusk Horizon members mostly have gravitational demon hearts, so that works for them. Similarly to Malika, they have strong bodies and move in a way not unlike Min-Jae.

Even though Min-Jae isn’t really aggressive enough for their liking, they probably like him the most out of group 4. They seem to respect and challenge Lily the most, but they spit on the ground whenever Tess walks by. They really don’t seem to like lightning primordial energy users.

I think Tess beats the crap out of one or two demons per day, but never gives in to the urge to push further, so they pick on her, exploiting her kind heart. Though now that I think about it, she might be doing it on purpose so that she can use them as training. How scary.

Meanwhile, on my first visit here, I almost killed ten of them. This tribe is shameless as hell. I expected one-on-one challenges, but after I said, “Let’s make it quick, just attack all at once,” they took me up on it and came at me as a group of ten.

I mean, I know I said it, but I didn’t expect them to actually do it. I guess it’s just the results of growing up in a tight knit tribe, and them behaving slightly differently than the demons I met so far. As I noticed over time, they even take things you wouldn’t otherwise expect seriously. So if you tell them to attack all at once, they think you’re either powerful enough to back it up, making it okay, or you’re dumb enough to deserve to be fed to their tree.

In this new area, I can already join the web of Ley Lines. It is a secret cupola-like construct that Sophie and I have set up in a number of places to serve as defensive zones.

[Ley Line] is used to create the base, and everyone from group 4 gets a mark that allows them to connect to it. Then they can use some of the functions. My skill makes the construct long lasting, and I fill some of the nodes with my mana every time I leave. We also modified it so Sophie or the twins can charge and connect to it as well.

Soon, Min-Jae might be able to do it as well, and I’ve seen how much that annoys the twins. This is something they’re really good at, and here Min-Jae is, catching up to them. Honestly, I think it’ll only make them push further, so it is a good thing.

The web we’ve made has been heavily inspired by the Veil from the 5th floor and a number of defensive arrays we’ve seen, including the Academy’s. So far, none of the demons have seemed to notice it, or at least they’ve just been ignoring it. Either option could be true.

Not far from the main tree, I brace myself and take a few deep breaths.

As with almost every other time I’ve been here, a bunch of demon kids come rushing in while screaming. They all have white hair, red eyes, and thick, short horns. They are tall and slim, leaping from lower branches or hovering down as if they can levitate.

“Two-hearted one!” one of them shouts.

“Human demon!”

“Nya!”

“Mana Daddy!”

“Who the fuck said that!” I ask, looking around.

Giggles echo, and a bunch of demon kids aged three to twelve laugh as they circle me. A few try to sneak in some punches, but I just absorb the impacts.

“You’ve been away for a long time!” A five-year-old girl shouts, jumping on my back and climbing up higher. As always, when she does, she goes through my hair, searching for horns, still refusing to believe that I’m not just a demon who dyes his hair.

The smallest one, a three-year-old boy, clings to my leg and bites me right above the knee, leaving drool everywhere.

That’s new.

I start walking with the girl on my back and the boy clinging to my leg, while the others move along with us.

“I went somewhere to train,” I answer. As always, I’m still a bit curious how much the system truly influences the natives when an attendee leaves for Beyond. Some of my excuses no normal person would believe, but when it is connected to Beyond, the system seems to ensure that they accept it more easily.

“Did ya, kiw somewan stronk?” The boy asks, taking a break from biting my leg and looking up. His red eyes look huge.

“A few strong monsters,” I nod.

He giggles happily and starts biting me again.

“Still no horns,” the girl sighs, disappointed, and taps my head multiple times.

“He’s already told you loads of times, he’s not a demon!” one of the older girls shouts to the little one.

“My mom said he must’ve been born with hidden horns, and my auntie said she’s going to check someday to be sure he’s not hiding it in his pants!” the girl on my back insists, stubborn as ever. She shakes my head left and right while digging through my hair again. “Maybe they're just slow to come out.”

“They’re not coming out,” I answer.

An older boy snorts. He is probably around twelve, his horns already longer than the rest. “It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have any. He fought ten of my uncles, and they lost.”

The hell? Was it his entire family that grouped up on me? What a vile bloodline. I should’ve known from the way he was punching harder than the others.

The group goes silent for a moment. Then the little one, still chewing on my leg, pipes up through a mouth full of cloth. “He tastes like metal.”

Some of the older kids burst out laughing so hard that a few nearly fall from the branches. The girl on my back tugs harder, frustrated. “No, he is hiding them! I’ll find them!”

At the same time, the three-year-old finally lets go of my leg, leaving spit everywhere. He grins up at me, red eyes glowing faintly in the shade. “Can I have your horns when they grow?”

“They’re not going to,” I answer, shaking my head.

“Yes, they will!” the girl insists, and now two more kids start digging through my hair while others shout out their bets on when my horns will appear.

The one from the vile family smirks. “If they do come out, I get to be first to fight you to the death.”

The others cheer at that, voices overlapping as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Fight to the death, laugh about it, then run back to play.

“Sure,” I say flatly. “If I ever grow horns, you can line up behind the rest of your family.”

The girl on my back taps my head again. “See? He admits he has horns.”

“I did not,” I mutter, but no one listens.

Another kid shouts, “When they grow, we will all fight you!”

Great. I can already see them setting up a little death tournament the second I sneeze wrong.

The drool monster at my leg looks up, still chewing on my pants. “If he dies, can I keep his bones?”

I sigh and kick my leg with enough force that the drool monster loses his grip and goes flying into the air. While he’s up there, I use [Redistribution] to freeze him in place. Before his movement fully halts, his face twists into a wide, happy grin.

The girl on my back moves and tries to dig my eyes out with her hands. She always does that.

I freeze her movement as well and take a step forward, leaving her body hanging in the air in the position she had been clinging to me.

The remaining kids charge at me all at once. Someone kicks at my crotch, someone else pulls out a dagger, and the vile one tries to punch me with gravitational energy surrounding his fist.

All of them freeze mid air.

It almost looks like some sort of twisted painting. A bunch of white-haired, red-eyed kids with horns, attacking me with wide smiles on their faces.

Knowing she hates it, I step toward the girl who was searching through my hair and start poking her tiny horns. I tap them multiple times. From the ground, I pull up a bunch of grass and put it on her hair. Noticing her mouth is slightly open, I shove a few flowers inside. I finish by moving her hair into her eyes so that she can’t see anything.

I walk between the floating kids, hands in my pockets.

The drool monster gets his nose tapped, then I wipe the spit from my pants onto his forehead in an awkward motion while lifting my knee high into the air. For good measure, I press a patch of grass between his teeth so he looks like he’s been trying to snack on the lawn.

The dagger kid gets a quick poke in the ribs. Then another. Then another. I keep going until I’m satisfied he’ll feel it the second he unfreezes.

One of the older girls has her mouth slightly open. I drop a tiny pebble inside. Not big enough to choke her, just enough to leave her spitting it out in disgust later.

I do similar things to all of them, and finally, I step back, satisfied. I’m not even sorry. Not in the slightest.

A cackle escapes my mouth, and I secretly use nearly invisible threads of mana to tie their shoes together, weaving them just wide enough that they can waddle about. I set it to dissolve after one hour. After that, I release my skill and teleport away.

I stop by the home belonging to the leader of this tribe. An old demon man with his name showing three question marks. I walk over to his usual spot, in a house made of wood, built at the top of the man eating tree. I’m sure he sensed my presence as soon as I approached the village.

Once there, I greet him with a simple and respectful nod.

After looking at me for a moment, he nods back, and I leave, teleporting back to our temporary base. As scheduled, everyone’s already here, sitting around the table with some snacks on it.

“Hey,” I say, greeting everyone and getting a chorus of greetings in return.

(Food!) Biscuit shouts, sounding the most excited of all of them, as he jumps into my lap the moment I sit down. He expands in size until he’s about as big as a Labrador and snuggles against my whole body.

I wait until he settles, then look around him to see the others. They all seem a bit quiet, as if wanting someone else to speak first.

Tess takes that role. “Before we have our meeting, I think we should share some of the information Sophie managed to gain.”

Her tone sharpens my interest, and I glance over at Sophie, who gives me a strange smile in return.

And Tess continues, “It seems that our round’s first Beyonder will be participating in the 3rd tournament.”