With more than a century gone by—and Abella having learned many top-tier arts from her—Yvette had high hopes for this reunion.

She figured Abella was very likely already a sixth-order commander, ruling a vast domain spanning multiple cities with many powerful subordinates, living like an empress. At the very least, she should have been campaigning for years, clashing with other aberrant commanders for territory—in short, thriving.

After asking around, she headed to Agasha. Notified by the local high-order aberrants, she indeed saw a completely different Abella.

Deep in the ruined city, before a snow-white temple, Abella emerged surrounded by humanoid subordinates. She wore a sumptuous black-and-gold robe and carried herself with regal poise—like a queen walking off an ancient scroll. Her cool, striking face held a frosty remove, aloof and proud, like wintersweet blooming in a cutting wind.

When she noticed the newcomer was Yvette, a flicker of surprise crossed her face, but it vanished at once. She tilted her head with polite reserve and walked unhurriedly toward a side garden.

Yvette watched, puzzled, then noticed a humanoid high-order aberrant in a black butler’s suit glide forward, bow and gesture the way, inviting her to the pavilion in the garden’s residential wing for a private talk.

She followed despite herself, thinking that a hundred years truly changed much—even Abella had become this poised.

Yet when they entered the little pavilion and sent all maids and attendants far away, the Abella who’d been an ice-cold beauty one second later latched onto Yvette’s leg the next, sobbing her grievance: “Master, you finally woke up—I’ve been suffering so much, you must make it right for me— wuuuuu—”

Yvette:

All right—some change, not much.

From warm afternoon to dusky evening, as Abella recounted—by turns impassioned, indignant, and aggrieved—Yvette pieced together her century of bumpy “entrepreneurship.”

A hundred years ago, when they had just parted, Abella brimmed with confidence and ambition. She felt she already had commander-level strength at the sixth order, that promotion was moments away, that she would become Blacktide’s supreme overlord—and even glimpsed the faint outline of a vast godspawn empire forming.

But over the next decade or so, after contacting and fighting multiple local commanders, Abella found it far from simple. First, she herself was, after all, only a fifth-order lord—only with powerful magic added did she qualify to challenge the sixth.

And sixth-order commanders weren’t pushovers. Besides overwhelming personal strength, they had many subordinates; battles were, of course, fought as dogpiles.

So even if Abella could beat a commander, she couldn’t beat an entire faction, much less seize someone else’s brood. The remaining option was to cultivate a brood of her own.

At first, that route went smoothly enough. With strength comparable to a commander’s, Abella seized a third-order brood, spent over ten years on one promotion, then more than thirty on another—successfully raising it to fifth order.

However, the nutrients needed to span from fifth to sixth were vast. At the same time, as her sphere expanded, she drew the ire of other Blacktide commanders, triggering border disputes and repeated nutrient raids.

Sometimes just after she plundered a fat haul, her lair would suffer a surprise attack, leaving her worse off. Progress was often stuck—or reversed.

At root, her faction kept stumbling because, over the long ages, Blacktide’s aberrant power map had largely set. If each commander-tier faction was a country, then Blacktide had long been carved up by more than thirty such “countries,” leaving nothing free.

What’s more, Abella’s faction was the only one without a sixth-order commander sitting in town. Its position was awkward; neighbors treated it like a soft persimmon and squeezed from time to time. Training reliable subordinates from scratch lacked resources—Abella was not a generous leader and wouldn’t leave the brood un-upgraded just to feed her underlings first.

Thus, small skirmishes were fine—Abella could win on personal prowess—but in large-scale faction wars, she often suffered routs at the hands of other commander-tier forces.

When Abella finished her tearful complaint, Yvette wasn’t sure what to say. In her last life she’d only done gig runs—she had no advice for this kind of “startup” problem.

She traced the rim of the pavilion’s dainty silver teacup, watching the amber sky reflected on its surface, and could only sigh, “You’ve… had it rough.”

“Yes, Master! You think so too, right?” Abella instantly put on a pitiful face, then showed her hand. “Then—seeing how pitiful I am—could you help me out?”

I thought you really missed me—so you were waiting for me to fix things. Yvette wasn’t angry. “What do you want me to do?”

“Master, can you take care of those neighbors for me?” Abella made a throat-slitting gesture, her face flipping to a chilling grin.

Yvette glanced at her and said evenly, “You know I don’t slaughter beings with high intelligence who can talk—aberrant or human—so long as they don’t provoke me first.”

“Please, Master! My strength is your strength—this is helping you expand your power, too—” Abella clung to Yvette’s leg again and rubbed her cheek against it.

Thankfully she’d planned ahead and dismissed every maid and subordinate. Otherwise, if they saw their usually noble, ice-cold, untouchable “Spider Lady” acting so clingy and shameless, their eyes would pop out.

Yvette sighed. “Then I’ll top off the last nutrient gap for your brood with aberration mana and stick around to make sure you advance smoothly. Will that do?”

Taking down a sixth-order commander wasn’t easy. If they only wanted to flee, catching them was hard. Yvette had no wish to burn tens of thousands of aberration mana on it—especially with only 160,000 left. She couldn’t be that extravagant.

Filling Abella’s brood’s nutrient shortfall, though, was much easier—at most twenty or thirty thousand.

“Enough, enough! Master, you do still love me!” Abella said, moved. Her earlier ask had been sky-high, waiting for her master to land somewhere reasonable—she was more than satisfied with this.

So, after lingering about a year more in Agasha, Yvette finally helped Abella advance successfully—to a sixth-order aberrant commander.

The change from advancement was tremendous. First, Abella’s appearance became near-human—more stunningly beautiful, even—as if she possessed an inborn bewitchment. Second, beyond boosted abilities, she gained a special battle form—she could become a giant spider with terrifying combat power.

Perhaps that battle form was a high-order aberrant’s true body?

Yvette was happy for her, but also a little regretful. In the days to come Abella would be busy expanding her domain—and Yvette’s journey ahead would still be walked alone.

A year later, leaving Abella’s territory, Yvette began harvesting aberration mana per plan. She traversed one commander’s domain after another across Blacktide, draining their second- and third-order aberrants.

As for fourth-order and higher, one, they were far fewer and not worth much; two, most were intelligent—dealing with them was much like dealing with humans. Unless they picked a fight, Yvette generally didn’t target them.

Because Blacktide was over twice the size of Jadeite, this sweep took Yvette more than a decade.

By the end, she’d gained nearly 500,000 aberration mana—and her fearsome name spread across Blacktide. Perhaps thanks to Lant, these high-order aberrants mostly called her the “Silver Witch,” which surprised her.

At last, she returned to Jadeite to do the same—see how the “leeks” had grown over the past century.

But only a few days after reaching Jadeite, something unexpected caught her eye.

Among the ten tendrils set adrift as surveillance, an aurora appeared at one tendril’s location.

The Detached Touch’s remaining energy was low by then, but she didn’t hesitate—she drove that tendril straight into a lone, isolated Remnant Abyss nearby.