“We’ll arrive shortly,” the god said as she looked at the hawk that was roosting on top of her bed, having gathered all the bedding to make a small nest.

“Ree!” Sylphie responded happily before flapping her wings and flying up.

“I want to bring attention to the fact that our late arrival is primarily because you insisted on taking detours,” the god sighed, as she wondered why she had even taken this job... well, alright, she knew why she had taken it. Escorting the Sylphian Hawk had been a sought-after assignment, in part because it was expected to be incredibly easy, but primarily because it would help them form better relations with the leadership of the Pantheon of Life.

Potnia had taken on this task also because of the Chosen of the Malefic Viper. She had risen to godhood only three eras ago and had been the Chosen of Artemis before her ascension to godhood. After becoming a god, she had remained close with Artemis, which was also why she found the current situation quite... puzzling.

Things had changed after Artemis went to Nevermore just a few years ago. When Potnia heard that her former Patron was busy visiting the Chosen of the Malefic Viper and spending quite a lot of time with him, Potnia at first theorized that Artemis was trying to strengthen the relationships between the Order and the Pantheon of Life, which would make some sense. Artemis was a hunter goddess, after all, and the Chosen of the Malefic One was also a hunter specializing in archery, so if she could color his Path just a little and help him, it could be great for the relationship between the two Primordial factions.

However, as the days progressed, and when she briefly met Artemis after she had gone to visit the Chosen... Potnia had begun to believe that what Artemis was hoping to nurture wasn’t the relationship between two factions, but two people. Namely, herself and the Chosen.

What’s more, Artemis didn’t deny this at all, which only confused Potnia further. Artemis had the reputation she did for a reason, but now she was suddenly interested in getting close to a mere C-grade mortal. An impressive one, sure, but still just a mortal who some would argue had barely begun his Path.

Potnia didn’t have to guts to interrogate Artemis directly, so when the mission to escort the Sylphian Hawk was presented, Potnia saw it as a great opportunity to get to learn more about what was going on from the person she and others considered closest to the Chosen.

With a Path that revolved around rearing and fighting alongside beasts, Potnia was the ideal candidate, and with her power at the Fifth Circle of Divinity, she was neither too strong nor too weak to serve as a proper escort.

The place they were visiting was led by a Sylph at the Seventh Circle of Divinity, so if someone too powerful had served as escort, the Sylphs would likely have found themselves pressured, while if someone who had only just become a god came along, it could be viewed as disrespectful... even if Sylphs weren’t known to care about that sort of thing.

Anyhow, Potnia had run into some problems with her plan of learning things from the Sylphian Hawk. Maybe she had gotten too content, but Potnia usually had a really easy time convincing any and all mortal animals to tell her whatever she wanted to know. Her Path made them innately trust her and view her as a safe person, but none of that had shown any effect on the Sylphian Hawk... at least not in the way Potnia had wanted it to.

The only effect it had seemingly had was to make the hawk more comfortable, asking Potnia and their entire flight crew to make random stops whenever the “wind whispered” about something interesting in the vicinity. Granted, these minor excursions had all been fruitful for the hawk, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t delayed their arrival by a lot.

Luckily, the journey was at its end now as Potnia walked with the happy hawk out to the deck of the flying ship. On a side note, yes, they could have used teleportation, but opted for a more scenic route so the hawk could see more of the Great Planet.

Arriving on the deck, the massive pillar of wind was visible in the distance. The tornado stretched upwards into the sky, where it was swallowed by a wormhole connected directly to the Vortex Pinnacle, a World Wonder Potnia didn’t dare visit due to how dangerous it was.

Around this tornado, sky islands had been constructed, and they all floated around, turning with the tornado, albeit at far lower speeds. The remnant energies from the World Wonder leaking through the wormhole made this blessed land for any creature walking a Path using the wind affinity, and even at this distance, the hawk could feel it.

“Ree!” she screeched gleefully while flapping her wings, making Potnia smile.

“Our presence has already been noticed,” she said. “I will retreat to the background and allow Miss Sylphie to handle matters from here on out.”

“Ree,” the bird agreed, while also politely thanking Potnia for her work, making the goddess smile even more.

“Just call for me if you need me for anything,” Potnia said as she teleported to a hidden room within the flying vessel. Chances were, she would stay there until Sylphie wanted to leave again. Not that Potnia complained. This was exactly why escort work was considered a simple job. Unless things went really wrong, one wouldn’t really have to do anything, and even in cases of conflict, diplomacy was nearly always the solution, as no one wanted to make an unnecessary conflict with a god simply due to the actions of a mortal.

Potnia had also briefly conversed with the Sylph goddess who ruled this communion of Sylphs, and things shouldn't go wrong. In fact, upon realizing who and what Sylphie was, this Sylph goddess even expressed personal interest in meeting with the hawk, which partly shared a name with their race. Especially upon realizing she was blessed by Stormild, the sole elemental Primordial and the greatest god in existence to most elementals.

Still, Potnia had to keep an eye out as half a dozen S-grade Sylphs soon surrounded the ship, all looking curiously at the small green hawk that sat perched on the railing. The wind blew around the ship, and a form of communication Potnia could not understand took place between the wind elementals and the part-elemental bird.

Some nervousness did worm its way into Potnia’s mind when a full minute passed with no one moving, but just then, Sylphie let out a loud screech and flapped her wings, the many Sylphs responding by also transforming into shapes of birds as they flew down, and together, they all took off and headed towards the largest of the sky islands floating around the tornado.

I wish you luck in your endeavors, Potnia thought to herself, still a bit miffed that she’d failed to learn much about what was truly going on between Artemis and the Chosen of the Malefic Viper, though she did have her theories.

A lot of theories... including those that, if she weren’t a god, would definitely have been considered heretical to even think about.

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Much less writing them down.

--

Jake stretched, his entire body cracking after having meditated for too long. Jumping up and down on his toes while shadow boxing a little, Jake confirmed he was back to a pretty acceptable state. He wasn’t quite fully healed yet, but the wonders of natural recovery had certainly done their job.

Helped along a little by Meditate, sure, but all Meditate really did was speed up natural recovery. Granted, Jake did speed it up a lot more than usual, as despite his lack of skill upgrades, he had improved the skill continuedly while studying the tome left by the First Sage. It had definitely saved him a few days of sitting on his ass.

“Good now?” the little Warpsnatcher asked curiously as it watched Jake jump around.

“Definitely getting there,” Jake answered politely to the critter that had allowed him to stay in its home during these roughly two weeks of recovery. Feeling a lot better, Jake also finally had the confidence to ask some questions he had been wondering about, now that he no longer had to be overly worried about the beast turning aggressive or kicking him out.

“Can I know why you decided to save me?” Jake asked a question that had been burning in his mind for a fortnight. Sure, Jake had given the Warpsnatcher a single core from a Rainbowfeather Songbird, but watching the pile of cores the beast had already collected, it was just one among thousands now.

The Warpsnatcher looked at Jake for a few moments before answering. “Hunter nice. I help Hunter. Hunter help me.”

Jake frowned, not entirely sure what the creature was getting at. Noticing his confusion, the Warpsnatcher held up its palms as a large orb of magic appeared. “Hunter from big world.”

The orb floated upwards as the cat-like porcupine creature summoned a tiny orb. “Me from small world.”

Realization struck Jake as he realized what the creature was getting at. “You want to leave this planet?”

“Leave!” the Warpsnatcher started clapping its palms happily, confirming Jake had guessed right... which put him in a bit of a debacle... because according to the rules, Jake couldn’t help the Warpsnatcher with that.

One of the rules of the Hunting Grounds was that one was not allowed to bring any monsters outside the planet unless given express permission. This even included the regular hunting targets, much less the endangered species. The Warpsnatcher was mega-endangered and definitely not something that could just be smuggled out.

Jake did understand why the creature wanted to leave, though. From what the Rainbowfeather Sovereign said, some of the older B-grades appeared aware that this was just a Hunting Ground with limited growth potential for all those living on the planet. They could all grow to high-tier C-grade relatively quickly, but evolving to B-grade was incredibly difficult, while going even further than that was borderline impossible.

Records on a single planet were simply too limited. Killing hunters was one way to inject new Records into a B-grade’s Path, but the best way would naturally be to leave the planet behind entirely and explore the multiverse.

Chances were the Warpsnatcher knew this too, and from the aura and abilities displayed by the little beast, Jake was confident it was a high-tier variant. The kind that had a harder time evolving than other monsters, likely resulting in a B-grade evolution being borderline impossible if it remained on the planet.

Jake found himself deep in thought and didn’t even notice when the Warpsnatcher began poking him to get his attention. Back in reality, Jake looked down at the critter as it stared up at him with its large cat-like eyes. “You help?”

Taking a deep breath, Jake nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”

He couldn’t make any more promises than that, and luckily, the Warpsnatcher seemed happy with his reply as it danced around a little before searching through a pile of fruit and taking out one, which it promptly offered to Jake.

Taking the weird purple fruit, Jake nodded politely as he ate the thing. It had a strong chocolate flavor. With a few happy jumps, the Warpsnatcher left the cavern again, leaving Jake to sit down for his final meditation session before it was time to get topside again.

Jake really had to hand it to his intuition. Going to the Warpsnatcher’s hideout had been a brilliant move. The only other place safer had to be the outpost, and Jake honestly preferred this cavern as he didn’t even have to consider other people potentially being around.

Around a day and a half later, the Warpsnatcher returned once more with a few new pieces of loot. Jake watched it unpack and sort its findings before he spoke up.

“I’m all good now, so I’ll leave,” Jake said, catching the attention of the beast.

It turned around and scanned him from top to bottom. After a second, it tilted its head and spoke in its tiny voice, this time perhaps even sounding a bit nervous. “Come find again?”

“I promise I will,” Jake said in a reaffirming voice, making the Warpsnatcher happy.

“Me help you go top!”

Clapping its hands, the fur on the little beast started to shimmer as if it was about to disappear again. A silver light began filling the cavern, enveloping Jake as he felt something pull at him slightly. Feeling no sense of danger, he trusted the Warpsnatcher and didn’t resist as the world around him began turning weird and blurry.

All colors disappeared, and for a second, everything looked... off. It was as if he could see the outline of everything, like reality was just an in-progress sketch. The only solid things were the trees far above, which all looked like solid white masses. However, before Jake could properly commit what he saw to memory, he found himself standing in the jungle once more, the Warpsnatcher beside him, looking a bit tired.

“You big!” it exclaimed, sitting down.

“Are you calling me fat?” Jake asked, acting all offended.

“No! Big!” the Warpsnatcher corrected him, clearly not getting the joke. The creature looked in thought for a while before seemingly finding the word. “Heavy! You heavy!”

Jake was about to make another joke as it clicked. The Warpsnatcher wasn’t talking about Jake’s physical form, but his metaphysical one. In other words, he had a “heavy” soul.

Teleporting stronger people was harder than teleporting weaker ones. It took more energy, effort, and the teleporter had to be more complex. In many ways, it wasn’t inaccurate to say that stronger people were “heavier” to transport than weaker ones. Jake, with his Anomalous Soul and power that he had proven capable of taking down B-grades, was definitely one of the “heaviest” C-grades around.

What the Warpsnatcher did wasn’t strictly teleporting, but affecting stronger people with any kind of magic was just harder. That was also why healers were pretty much useless when it came to treating those significantly stronger than themselves, and having a support member in the party with roughly equal power to everyone else was a requirement for the true top parties of the multiverse.

“I apologize for my heaviness,” Jake said with a slight smile, the Warpsnatcher taking his apology at face value.

“It okay! You go!” the Warpsnatcher said as it raised its two paws above its head. “Fight!”

Jake chuckled and shook his head as he walked off, raising a hand to wave goodbye to the Warpsnatcher that mimicked his movement, waving him goodbye. Once Jake was a suitable distance away, he slowly shifted his own position within the paradigm of Perception, disappearing from sight.

Once Unseen Hunter was active, Jake took to the air to orient himself and properly determine his distance from the Grand Lake. His escape had taken him pretty far, and it would take him about an hour and a half to reach the massive lake once more.

Over the last two weeks and a bit, his Hunter’s Mark had also naturally faded from the Rainbowfeather Sovereign, and he could confirm that the B-grade hadn’t left its Area since getting there. Seeing as the Sovereign couldn’t have known Jake had a mark on it, he assumed the bird wouldn’t interfere in what would come next.

Starting his preparations for the hunt, Jake traveled to the Grand Lake, and during the following two days, he scouted the many islands to try to get an idea of what he was dealing with. Using Pulse and stealth, Jake looked for the nine B-grades on his shit-list, and once he found one, he left a Hunter’s Mark on it.

A part of him had feared that the B-grades would be smart and stick together after hearing his threat before leaving, but it seemed that the B-grades were as afraid of each other as they were of Jake. Rather than sticking together, they all stayed in the inner circles of their islands, surrounded by peak C-grades of their kin.

While that was annoying, Jake learned the Simivita had definitely been one of the most populous species. Additionally, before, Jake still wanted to improve his archery and learn his own limits.

Now... now, Jake didn’t care about that. All he cared about was showing these B-grades just how royally they had fucked up by ruining Jake’s fight.

Floating far up in the air, Jake held out Eternal Hunger as the malleable weapon warped, taking on the shape of a spear-like arrow, energy surging as Jake remained hidden with Unseen Hunter.

Far below, deep inside the jungle, surrounded by kin it believed offered it safety, a B-grade relaxed, unaware that its pissed-off grudge-fueled reaper was readying his metaphorical scythe.