Thanks to Kan and Lucy’s careful planning, they arrived at the village near the nest by mid-afternoon.

The first thing that caught Sokram’s attention was that the small settlement didn’t give off the vibe of a place under constant attack from beasts.

The village was small, with only thirty houses.

The walls that surrounded it were only four meters tall and made of wood, like a temporary, improvised fort.

The gates were also made of wood, and Sokram doubted that this village could withstand the attack of any beast from Flawless to above.

Even the captain of the guards who received them was just a Tier 10 True Existence like Sokram.

The village Chief, a human man who appeared to be in his fifties, was a picture of deceptive calm.

He had pale skin, a stocky build, and was bald.

A constant, oily smile was plastered on his fat face, but his eyes were the key.

Too dull, lifeless like the eternal darkness of the Nether.

The contrast between the joyful smile and the dead eyes made Sokram's skin crawl.

At Tier 8 Common Existence, his cultivation was low for someone his age.

Yet that wasn’t strange, as people in small settlements rarely cared about the Path of Evolution.

Only Sokram seemed wary of him at first.

And after reading his teammates' behavior, he also saw that Amira seemed put off by the overly kind elder.

The Chief wanted to host them in the long house.

But Sokram, wary of his strange behavior, chose to camp near the Village wall.

It wasn't only that.

In the mission's briefing, there were reports of an irregularity in the behavior of the Horned Hares.

The latest reports said the hares were attacking anything that entered the woods at night, which was unusual.

After explaining that to the village’s Chief, Sokram and his team went to set up their camp while taking turns watching from the walls for any Beast or Chaos Creature that came out of the woods.

The sky was a deep, inky canvas, broken by a celestial spectacle.

The Aether Moon shone with a cold brilliance, casting long, sharp shadows across the snow.

Behind its luminous disk, the Nether Moon, a faint, dark crescent, peeked out shyly behind her sister’s shadow, a subtle smear of darkness against the overwhelming light.

The air was crisp, and the northern lights shone brighter than any star.

While the team prepared dinner and set up their tents, Sokram, Kan, and Lucy were on top of the village’s wall chatting about some things he wanted to teach them when they saw it: five Horned Hares chasing a Dire Wolf away.

They were all brown-furred and easy to spot against the snow, with horns that looked like tree branches but were extremely sharp.

They were more than a hundred meters away.

Sokram looked at Lucy and asked to borrow her bow.

Seeing Sokram aiming at the Hares so far away, a guard nearby became overly excited, “Heh, if you manage to shoot one from here, I’ll go fetch them for your dinner.”

Sokram only smirked, saying nothing, pulling on the strings without any arrows.

When the string reached its limit, a shadowy arrow formed, humming like the wind.

The bowstring hummed as Sokram pulled it tight, the sound a low vibration that seemed to cause ripples in the air.

With no physical arrow, an arrow of concentrated shadow took shape between his fingers.

A deep blackness that seemed to drink the moonlight.

It wasn't a loud sound; it was a deadly, shadowy whisper of raw power. Sokram released it, and the shadowy arrow split into five, hitting all the hares while the wolf ran away scared for his life.

But Sokram frowned.

He felt as if the Hares had allowed themselves to be hit.

Once the hares were dead, the guards around all wanted to open the gates to fetch them, ignoring how dangerous it could be.

As if they were certain they wouldn’t be attacked.

But Lucy’s excitement broke Sokram away from his observations, “Wow, so that’s what you were talking about?”

She excitedly tugged his arm after seeing what Sokram wanted to teach her.

Sokram smiled back at her, “Yes, instead of Ranger, when you advance to Uncommon Existence, I hope you will get the Arcane Archer or Mystic Ranger class, but for that, you need to master at least one elemental arrow spell. The one I just used was a secondary element, shadow wind.”

Kan was impressed.

Even if it was a spell, it was still amazing that Sokram got all five at once.

The guards were about to fetch them when a flash of Dark Lightning hit the location where the dead hares were and flashed back in an instant. Sokram reappeared with the Hares in hand.

“Damn, that was scary, almost thought you missed your dinner.”

The guard flashed him a creepy, overly friendly smile, but his eyes were dead, just like the village's Chief.

But Sokram remained polite and kept his expression neutral.

Sokram looked down at the camp and shouted to Nora, “Nora, I got some Hare for the soup, Tier 5, all of them.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Nice catch, Sokram! Can you purify it and season it? I still have to chop the veggies.”

Nora was shamelessly lying; she just wanted him to season the hare as the team was getting quite addicted to his choice of seasons.

Sokram saw clearly that she was lying.

He jumped down the wall with the hares in hand, and getting closer to her and pointing at the chopping board filled with freshly chopped veggies behind her, “No need to lie, you know?”

“Haha, I’m caught, oopsie.”

Nora winked at him while the other girls laughed at her antics.

But Sokram, as a good leader, resigned himself.

He quickly butchered, purified, and seasoned the meat, but it wasn’t hare’s meat; he cast a spell sealing the hares' dead bodies, and swiftly replaced it with something similar he had inside one of his Void Glove’s rings, to add to the stew, and stored the dead hares inside one of his empty spatial rings.

The reason he decided to seal it and replace it was because of something he found in one of the hare’s brains while using the purification spell.

After adding the meat to the soup, he left the stew for Nora to finish and went inside his tent to check the other hares.

He found the same thing on their brains as well.

He simply sighed and stored the bodies away, wondering how the Extermination Hall missed something like this.

As Sokram worked on seasoning the meat, a sense of being watched prickled at the back of his neck.

He glanced up, catching the furtive shifts of the guards' eyes, which would dart away the moment he looked at them.

Some of his teammates even thought the guard would want some of their dinner, but it wasn’t just the guards.

The people of the village also seemed overly interested in them.

Their gazes lingered too long, as if they were waiting for something.

Looking around the village, he noticed that the people’s behavior was off. The children acted too mature; the villagers didn’t seem to sleep.

And the guards never changed shifts; they all worked continuously, and it had been hours since Sokram and his team arrived.

It could be said that they were in deep vigilance, but they were too cheerful for that to be the case, and it wasn’t out of relief from Sokram and his team being there.

However, his teammates didn’t suspect anything.

This disappointed him slightly.

They were still too trusting, too green.

Especially with none of them noticing the odd behavior of the guards and the people around.

They didn't even see anything wrong with the hares' behavior after their research to prepare for the hunt.

Dinner was quite tranquil, with the girls joking around and lively chatter filling the night with an illusion of safety.

After the guard saw they were eating, they stopped lurking around them as if they had relaxed.

After dinner, Kina and Kiana went back to practice the sword and shield techniques, while Kan focused on practicing his sword dance.

Sokram stood on top of the wall while the guards kept stealing glances at him from a distance.

He noticed one of the guards walking toward him, but suddenly, the guard changed his trajectory.

Right then, Amira appeared by his side, acting sheepish.

But there was no embarrassment or shyness in her eyes, only hunger. “You seem to be looking for something…”

Sokram glanced at her with a smirk and countered, “And your shy girl act is not that convincing; you should be yourself if you want the team to truly accept you.”

“Oh, I’m caught, oopsie.” Amira mimicked Nora’s earlier expression.

But seeing that Sokram wasn’t reacting, her expression shifted to a naughtier one as she leaned over his shoulder.

“What if the only acceptance I truly care for is yours, my future Lord Seeker?”

“Sigh… There, much better now. I like my fanatics submissive.” Sokram winked at her.

But her face contorted into a frown, and the hunger in her eyes turned into anger.

“You know how offensive that word is. We are no longer like that. Calling us fanatics is the same as denying the light of Evolution that shines over Lady Mentyr.”

“Come on, learn how to take a joke. Besides, my joke was no less disrespectful than you trying to show yourself as something you’re not.”

Sokram’s words, although spoken softly, hit the mark completely.

Amira nodded, understanding what he meant, “Then can I truly be myself? Without holding back? My best version?”

The hunger in her eyes as her gaze held his flared like a burning flame.

A wicked smile formed on her lips.

The sudden shift in Amira’s personality was a jolt, a cold shock that momentarily froze Sokram.

He was brought back to his senses by the warm, sweet breath on his face.

But by the time his mind reasserted itself, her arms were already wrapped around his neck, and a dangerous stillness had settled around them.

Lucy appeared from behind him, pulling them apart, “Is she the reason you’ve been spending so much time in that tower?”

She accused, as Amber and Savannah stood behind them.

“Oopsie, I’m caught, haha.”

Amira glanced back at the girls with an arrogance that she hadn’t shown so far.

“No, Sokram is truly seeking knowledge, but I might as well make my stance clear. He told me to stop pretending, so like a good, obedient, and submissive future wife, I’ll obey…”

Amira cast another glance back to Sokram, her eyes full of allure and lust, “That is what you wanted, right? Hubby.”

Sokram snapped out of his daze, realizing something.

With a solid grip on her arm, he turned to the girls and said, “We’ll be right back.”

And then he flashed to the position where hares had been killed previously, taking Amira with him.

Once at a safe distance, and under the watchful gazes of the girls from afar, Sokram raised a Sound Isolation Barrier around them and went straight to the point, “You’re not a Keeper, nor are you a Seeker. What are you?”

“Haha, your perceptiveness is astonishing. My lady never met such a talented child; none of them did. Did you know that Harten almost broke his throne out of anger when you first said you wanted to be a Seeker? Haha, I can only imagine how funny that must have been.” Amira giggled, not hiding the fact that she and Mentyr shared a deeper bond than the rest of her family.

“You’re a Vessel. Like Aunt Moira, you…” The words just left Sokram's mouth, and he felt a torrent of Nether energy coming from above into Amira’s body, like a waterfall of freezing, murky waters falling into her.

“Cleaver. But you can truly sense it, hm?”

Although Amira’s voice remained the same, her demeanor, tone, and even her expression shifted entirely.

Sokram knew immediately that it was possession.

The being in front of him right now was someone at the Paragon Level of Existence, someone he didn’t want to encounter so soon.

“Lady Mentyr, first Princess of the Nether, should I kneel?” Sokram grinned, trying to maintain his composure.

He knew that she didn’t come to harm him; she couldn’t, and he was sure Nhiria wouldn’t allow it.

“No need, child. I came only to test something. And the results are astounding; someone at the Awakened Level of Existence, and on the initial levels, nonetheless, can sense Nether Energy. But what about Aether?”

Mentyr raised Amira’s right hand, and a bright light shone, momentarily blinding Sokram's eyes.

Caught off guard, he had no time to shut his senses, and his cells reacted to the Aether Energy manifesting in Amira’s hand.

“Amazing.” Amira’s head snapped upward as if peering through the stars as she asked, “Can you see it, Milady? Is this because of the fusion between the Solar and Lunar Aefhery and the High-Human Bloodlines? Or is his Aether Resonance that mutated further because of it?”

Then, as if receiving her answer, she nodded.

Her gaze fell back at Sokram, and she caressed his face and spoke softly, “Keep reading, child. You’ll find what you’re seeking. As for this place…”

Her gaze swept into the dark forest, and her frown deepened.

“I think you know you should run as fast as you can.”

Suddenly, Sokram felt her pulling him into her embrace, her tone shifting to something more alluring as she teased.

“Too bad you’re not of age yet. Otherwise, I would have borrowed this body for a few more nights, haha. Just so I can teach you not to call my children fanatics ever again. There are better ways to break someone than pain, you know?”

Sokram didn’t flinch.

But his breath hitched, just for a heartbeat, betraying the storm beneath his calm expression.

His fingers curled into fists at his sides, yet he smiled.

But inside, his mind was like a storm of conflicts raging and thundering.

Mentyr leaned closer, her eyes sharpened into slits, and she whispered. “Tread carefully, Seeker Candidate.”

He could sense the weight of her threat; he knew he was the one baiting her when he explained to Camile why he felt jumpy around most of the Armfrosts.

But he never expected Amira to be a vessel.

With Mentyr being able to reach him so easily, he would better be extra careful from then on.

Yet, as suddenly as she came, she was gone.

Amira fell, knocked out on the snow, exhausted by the cost of being possessed, and Sokram could only let out a breath in relief.

While also realizing that the weight of Mentyr’s presence now limited his freedom.

‘I need to find a way to keep them away from me; otherwise, they’ll start interfering with my plans. Hopefully, in that library, there are some old runes I could use.’ Sokram thought while restabilizing himself.

When he lowered to pick up the passed-out Amira, something deep in the woods flashed in the corner of his vision, causing his body to freeze with primal fear.

He wasn’t the predator anymore; he was the prey.

But when he looked again, there was nothing there.

He had no intention of playing the hero.

But he couldn’t just run away either, even if Mentyr’s warning had somewhat confirmed what he was suspecting about what he found in the brains of the hares.