Lucavion moved like ink spilling over a sacred script—fluid, inevitable. He descended the slope from the rise, his form a whisper in the saturated air. The eastern zone awaited. Not just with the promise of a relic, but with the kind of energy that made his bones remember being alive.
The terrain changed almost immediately.
Trees—tall, ancient, and draped in moss—greeted him like silent sentinels, their branches woven together high above to form a natural cathedral of verdant light. The pillar of vitality still pulsed in the distance, a heartbeat of gold and green that colored everything in hues of renewal. The wind here smelled different—earthy, rich, and tinged with something unmistakably alive. Not merely oxygen. Essence.
He passed under an archway of gnarled roots that had formed a natural gate, the carvings on them not made by mortal hands, but by time and magic. Flowers bloomed in impossible shapes across the forest floor, glowing faintly as if the sunlight itself had decided to stay after dusk. Vines twisted in patterns resembling sigils—some ancient, some new—and the very ground exhaled mana like breath from a sleeping god.
'It's alive,' he thought, fingertips grazing a bark that felt warm. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Alive.
[There are echoes here,] Vitaliara murmured. [This place has memory.]
She wasn't wrong. Every step forward felt like a negotiation with the land. Not resistance. Not welcome. A test.
"Good," Lucavion said, adjusting his grip on his estoc. "It means we're close."
They entered what might've once been a garden-temple, now half-swallowed by the forest's stubborn reclamation. Stone bridges arched over pools of crystalline water that shimmered with bioluminescent fish, their scales trailing mana. In the center, the relic pulsed—rooted in a tree grown through the ribcage of an ancient colossus. The corpse was fossilized in stone, its armor half-buried, its helm now a perch for nesting birds.
But nothing stayed quiet for long.
The underbrush ahead snapped violently.
Lucavion paused, his gaze sharp. Then came the howl. Not from wolves. Something lower. Thicker. Older.
The first monster lunged from the canopy—twisted and moss-covered, its limbs like gnarled branches, its face a hollow split of teeth and vines. It moved like a puppet on forgotten strings, and the forest responded to its hunger.
[A Warden Beast,] Vitaliara hissed, ears flattening.
Lucavion didn't flinch.
He tilted his head slightly, eyes narrowing as he watched the creature emerge fully from the underbrush—its body half-coated in bark, half-covered in pulsing, leaf-veined muscle. A crooked crown of antlers extended from its skull like broken branches, and vines slithered down its limbs, dragging mist and spores in its wake. Where its eyes should've been, two glowing pits radiated faint green light.
"A what?" he asked dryly, adjusting his stance—not in fear, but in vague interest.
[A Warden Beast,] Vitaliara replied, her voice low and steady. [A creature bound to the natural cycle. Very old. Very stubborn.]
Lucavion's eyes narrowed further. "Bound to… life?"
[Yes.] Her tail flicked once. [You forget who I am, Lucavion. I'm the Mythical Beast of Life—my lineage remembers what the world forgets.]
The Warden Beast let out a guttural creak, its breath exhaling spores into the air, and its massive form stalked forward, pressing clawed, root-like feet into the ground like a thing testing the soil it once ruled.
[It's not artificial,] Vitaliara continued. [I can feel the memory in its mana. This one lived long before this place existed.]
"Mid 4-star?" he guessed.
[Maybe slightly higher,] she murmured. [But not overwhelming. It's here, but it's not wild. Which means…]
Lucavion nodded slowly, the pieces already arranging in his mind. 'So the Headmaster didn't just create this whole space from raw magic. Of course he didn't.'
Creating monsters from scratch wasn't impossible—not for someone with the Headmaster's reach—but to populate an entire dimensional pocket, with different terrains, different relics, different themes?
'Too resource-heavy. Too unstable. Even high-tier spellwork has limits. No—he borrowed.'
He looked at the beast again, and now he saw it differently—not just as a guardian, but as a piece relocated from elsewhere. A living relic, summoned and bound by a spell more elaborate than it had any right to be.
[This one was brought in,] Vitaliara confirmed, as if reading his thoughts. [Taken from a living territory, and anchored here.]
Lucavion's eyes flicked to the glowing relic pulsing at the center of the garden-temple.
"Guarding it. Of course."
The Warden Beast let out a second low howl, its jaw creaking open like an ancient gate. Moss clung to its back in drooping sheets, and spectral butterflies peeled off its shoulders with every twitch.
The Warden Beast took another step forward.
The ground trembled beneath its weight, but Lucavion didn't react. Not with fear. Not with aggression. Just a faint, deliberate exhale—like a chessmaster watching the final move before a checkmate he already predicted.
"Let me guess," he murmured, voice edged with quiet amusement. "It's going to attack no matter what I say."
[That's the role it was given,] Vitaliara replied, calm but alert. [But that doesn't mean we need to follow the script.]
Lucavion tilted his head, considering the creature again. It was powerful, yes—at least a mid 4-star as he'd guessed—but more importantly, it was old. Its mana wasn't wild or feral. It was ceremonial. Rooted. A relic in flesh, placed here to simulate conflict.
'Like a test,' he thought. 'But not for me.'
His eyes narrowed as the realization bloomed behind them, sharp and slow like dawn.
"I don't need to defeat it," he said aloud. "I just need to *take back what's already ours."
Vitaliaras' tail twitched once, the faintest ripple of anticipation running through her coiled form.
Lucavion stepped forward—casual, unbothered. The Warden Beast tensed, claws digging into the moss-covered earth, breath rattling with spore-laced intent.
But Lucavion raised a single hand.
"Stand down," he said, his voice low but resonant. "You recognize her, don't you?"
For the first time, it didn't move. Its breath slowed, the spores no longer drifting with hostility but hanging in the air like uncertain dust. The glowing pits of its eyes fixed on Vitaliara—small, perched on his shoulder, but undeniable.
[You feel it,] she said, her voice no longer whispering. It carried now. Deeper. Older. Her presence surged, the quiet pressure of divinity rolling off her like heat from the sun. [I am of the same cycle you were born from. But higher.]
The forest responded.
Leaves shifted, branches swayed—not from wind, but reverence. The very roots around them thrummed like strings plucked by memory.
Lucavion stepped aside, giving her space.
Vitaliara leapt down from his shoulder, graceful as moonlight through trees, and landed before the Warden Beast. Her body shimmered faintly, her form drawing in mana from the very air, from the relic's light, from the soil that had always known her name.
The beast lowered its head.
[You were borrowed,] Vitaliara said gently. [Pulled from your homeland, forced to guard a relic you do not understand. But I… I remember your forest. I remember your name.]
Lucavion felt it before he saw it—mana spiraling upward, coalescing in delicate threads of green and gold. Not violent. Not destructive. Restorative.
The same energy she used when she faced the Nyxaliths. Or, as she had called them—forks. Low-grade echoes of herself. This was the same. A lesser beast, born of the same divine root.
[Return,] she whispered.
And the Warden Beast shuddered.