In the sky above Orchta, the air did not cry out, but rather whispered as it allowed two formidable figures to materialize. Suspended five‑hundred‑feet above the sacred gathering ground of the Heptarchis—where the envoys of the seven City-States of Parthina convened to deliberate on matters of paramount significance—hovered two entities of unparalleled might.

One was the humanoid incarnation of the Essence of Wrath, one of the most formidable of the Seven Deadly Sins. Her majestic wings, crafted from obsidian as dark as the deepest night, unfurled with a powerful beat, sustaining her celestial presence.

Beside her flew a woman of extraordinary nature—a chimera who had consumed legions and gazed into the boundless void, emerging unscathed. She was Lyudmila Vredi Springfield, a paradox among paradoxes, a being who defied the very fabric of existence.

There she was, defying all logic and reason.

Lord Springfield looked at Ira, then scanned the horizon. Her own wings flapped before she flew off in a certain direction. Ira immediately followed, although she did not know the destination.

“Are you curious?” asked Lord Springfield as the ground below them became a blur.

“I am. But you haven’t said anything. I didn’t know if it was my place to pry,” replied the Dragonfolk.

“The goal tonight, Ira, is to find an animal I can assimilate to gain immunity to lightning. Earlier, Tris used [Skyview] and [Deduction] in the libraries of the cities we’ve visited to investigate their bestiaries. And she found something. It’s a salamander that loves to snack on bugs that emit a sharp electric shock when they die. And, if the rumors are true, one salamander learned that the bark of a certain tree protected its claws from the bugs’ dying attack. Evolution did what it did best, and the salamanders evolved to obtain innate rubber-like properties. They line their stomachs, their claws, and their throats.”

“Tris weighed the options and decided that it should be the first target?” Ira asked.

Lord Springfield nodded as her wings flapped, soaring her even faster. Ira easily kept up with her own draconic wings. “She did. Except, Ira, it isn’t just the salamander. If luck is on our side, then we will have a bonus monster.” Ira’s curiosity wasn’t subtle. “I won’t tell you. That, Ira, would ruin the surprise.”

“I’m… excited to see this surprise, Lord Springfield. If, like you said, luck is on our side.”

“Here’s a clue,” Lord Springfield grinned. “Hairokei’s national color is yellow—just like lightning, if you trust some artwork. Thunderstorms are a regular occurrence. She studied various weather patterns, scrutinizing air pressure and atmospheric densities to forecast the weather. Her strategy was to pinpoint where a storm would strike. We’d arrive ahead of time and await the salamanders’ appearance. But then she stumbled upon a place called the Valley of Storms—otherwise known as the Storm Valley-- in a history book within Hairokei’s assigned building in Orchta. It’s… exactly what it sounds like—a mountain range of perpetual storms. Why predict the flow of a river when we can soar straight to the ocean?”

Ira was about to respond when a Model 1887 shotgun was hurled toward her. “This is your weapon. A gift from me to you.”

“A… gun? Lord Springfield, are you sure?” Ira asked, taken aback.

“Absolutely,” Lord Springfield replied confidently. “Consider it this way: for better or worse, you and I are one. Your strength is mine, and my strength is yours. Soon, Tris will perform a ‘status stasis’ on you. Your strength won’t increase, but it won’t decrease either. Imagine your potential gains are tucked away in a savings account you can’t touch.”

“Because… you’re about to use your SP? If my status is frozen, shouldn’t I have no recovery period since we share the same strength?” Ira deduced, grasping the strategy.

“Exactly. Tris has just frozen your status, and now she’s using the SP for me. The side effects and recovery should be brief,” Lord Springfield explained. “But I’ll need you to fight. I should be back in action by tomorrow night, if not sooner, because Tris has some experiments in mind.” Lord Springfield paused, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. “Wow. Thousands of SP—vanished in an instant—with over a hundred thousand still remaining. It almost makes you wonder if someone has mastered every single skill and spell.”

Ira shook her head with conviction. “Stagnation in a world of evolution is simply impossible. If someone has mastered every skill and spell, then somewhere, someone will evolve and discover a groundbreaking technique or ability. This innovation will spread, shaping the world. Its influence, Lord Springfield, will inspire new, related skills and spells that are both similar and unique. It’s not a rapid process, but it’s undeniably consistent. I’m certain that today, the world possesses abilities that were unimaginable 1,000 years ago.”

“I suppose you’re correct,” Lord Springfield mused. “A world like this would likely crumble if it ever became stagnant.”

Ira fell silent for a moment, her gaze drifting over the passing landscape until it settled on the distant mountains, growing larger on the horizon. “How… what’s the process, Lord Springfield, that Tris will use to help you adjust to the spent SP? I’m intrigued. I believe it’s possible, of course, but I’m curious about how it will be accomplished.”

Lord Springfield extended an open hand, and five tiny dolls resembling her appeared—clones in miniature. Four vanished, but the fifth teleported to Lord Springfield’s head, its tiny hands gripping her blond hair tightly.

“Picture it like a lake,” the doll said in Tris’s calm voice as it transformed to take her appearance. “The more SP you spend, the more the lake fills. But if it becomes too full, you must wait for it to drain. People in this world have one pipe—themselves—that slows the drain. You can widen the pipe by gaining levels, having spent SP in the past and adapted, or living longer. My lord is unique, Ira. The four miniatures that vanished are each my lord. They each have their own pipe draining the same enormous lake.”

“Not five?”

“Not five,” confirmed Tris. “My calculations suggest that any number of pipes will work—from one to a hundred and one, and beyond. But this is uncharted territory. Four is the perfect number. I can adjust and add more if needed once I have the results to analyze.”

Crack!

Lord Springfield and Ira looked ahead. The Valley of Storms was close at hand. The eternal lightning storm was raging, with each bolt striking with enough force to vaporize a dozen men. They were like spears sent down from the heavens. Yet neither Lord Springfield nor Ira looked worried. Instead, they focused on a simple discussion of speed versus efficiency.

It was a profound gesture of utter disrespect, but the Valley of Storms, as the landmark it was, did not care. It was a violent land ruled by a sovereign power that answered no one.

*****

*****

The storms were unlike anything Lord Springfield had ever encountered since her arrival in this world. The winds howled with the ferocity of a hurricane, while the thunder boomed like a mountain being cleaved in half. Each crackle was followed by lightning strikes that targeted the numerous lightning rods, each of which stood taller and thicker than ancient oaks. Despite being bombarded thousands of times, the sheer black metal remained smooth as ice.

Lord Springfield descended near one and peered at it. She touched it during a lull between strikes, her eyes narrowing in disbelief at the metal’s sheer impossibility. “It’s incredibly durable. Its efficiency is…”

Bang!

Lord Springfield turned to the left. Ira had her shotgun raised, and the yellow moth, the size of a large dog, lay bleeding on the ground. Its wings quivered, but another blast from Ira’s weapon silenced it. The noise, while sharp and loud, was quieter than the ongoing lightning strikes. Lord Springfield turned back to the metal. She applied her strongest acid, but it failed to leave a blemish, let alone provide her with a chunk for experimentation.

“Oh? Mmm…”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Three more shots rang out, and two more moths met their demise. A third moth emerged, but the shells fired from Ira’s gun collided with a passive electric field, causing the pellets to veer off course.

“Coating the bullets of my Soul Weapons in rubber shouldn’t be a challenge,” Lord Springfield remarked as Ira unleashed her flame magic, incinerating the enemy to ash. Five more moths appeared, but she entrusted the Dragonfolk with handling them as she ventured deeper into the scarred valley. Meanwhile, a bubbly slime detached from Lord Springfield—another clone—and assumed the responsibility of assimilating the fallen monsters. Every kill was to be utilized, regardless of whether it was a creature the chimeric Soul Warrior had devoured countless times.

The pair soon arrived at the smallest lightning rod they had encountered. It stood approximately twenty feet tall and three feet wide. “I intend to take this with me in pieces, Ira. Use your flames,” Lord Springfield instructed. “Right about here, there, there, and there.” Lord Springfield fired her pistol four times, marking the designated spots.

Ira complied. Her flames were compressed into a superheated blade that the mysterious metal could not withstand. Within minutes, Lord Springfield had four chunks, each five feet long. She licked one after stashing the other three. Then she attempted to bite it but failed. “Imagine if I could assimilate this… I need something with sharper and harder teeth. If I recall correctly, the orca possessed the greatest bite force in my world. However, that’s only half of the problem.”

“What’s the other half?” Ira inquired.

“It’s one thing to assimilate monsters. I plan to consume that salamander and use its rubber to gain immunity to lightning. This metal, Ira, is likely a fantastic material to create with. Unfortunately, I can’t assimilate metal directly. I must first consume it and then acquire the skills to utilize it effectively. I have [Poison Production], which allows me to use acid, but I would need something like [Metal Production] to enable my body to transform biomass into metal.”

Ira merely nodded in understanding.

“One problem leads to another, which in turn leads to another,” Lord Springfield added as she discreetly tucked away the four pieces of metal inside her [Void Storage]. “One of the monsters on Bellerophon’s Do Not Let Chimera Assimilate list is the metal slime. Well, every variety of slime is. Metal slimes would provide me with a more significant advantage. They would allow me to dissolve metal and passively enable my biomass to produce whatever metal I assimilate. Conversely, the process of turning metal into biomass would transform any metallic structures I may encounter in the future into pure sustenance.”

“A moment, my lord. I do have good news,” Tris said. “I’ve found salamander droppings—and the residual charge that electric slimes leave behind when they roll through an area.”

Following Tris’s guidance, Lord Springfield and Ira pressed deeper into the valley. Moths burst apart beneath spells, electric scorpions were torn down before their stingers could strike, and lightning‑charged fireflies scattered sparks as they died. Even the yellow moles, their hides etched with glowing scars, were hunted without mercy. Every creature was devoured and assimilated, while more fragments of the colossal lightning rods were carved free and hauled away.

Ira eyed the growing pile. “Why do you need so many?” 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

“To lure out the true prize,” Lord Springfield replied, resting a hand against one of the polished black rods. The shard stretched nearly six feet long, its surface gleaming like obsidian beneath the stormlight. “The Sovereign of Storm Valley—the apex predator of this land. What we’re doing here is an insult. I’m hoping it notices.” A faint smile crossed her lips. “And I hope it takes offense.”

Twenty minutes later, they arrived at a cave mouth split through the rock like an old wound. Burn marks blackened the entrance, and fresh droppings littered the stone.

“It should be inside,” the Tris doll said. “One assimilation is sufficient, my lord, though consuming more of the same species would still strengthen you.”

“Our priority is the salamander,” Lord Springfield said, stepping into the cavern. With a careless flick of her wrist, several ghostly fire‑orbs bloomed into existence, washing the tunnel in crimson light. She and Ira could already see perfectly well in the dark, but the eerie glow pleased her. “The slime comes second. The Sovereign is merely a bonus third if it appears at all.”

Her gaze drifted deeper into the cave. “Finding a metal slime is difficult enough. Eating one is the real problem. It’s still metal. If my acid can’t dissolve it, I’ll need something far more corrosive.”

“You may not need to dissolve it outright,” Tris suggested. “Even metal slimes are partly liquid by nature. If you could mimic the function of a kidney, separating liquid from solid matter, then [Drain] might slowly assimilate it over time.” The doll tilted its head. “I cannot say for certain. There’s no precedent for such a thing.”

“I… may have an idea.” Ira’s voice barely rose above a whisper, yet in the cavern’s suffocating silence it carried clearly. The only other sounds were the distant drip of water and the faint, unsettling skitter of countless legs somewhere deeper in the dark as the group followed the trail of strange metallic droppings further into the cave’s heart.

“I know about plasma torches from your world,” she continued carefully. “If we found an electric slime, your lightning and my flames together could mimic one. It’s… brutal, Lord Springfield, I know. But if we melted a metal slime down into vapor and you inhaled the fumes…” She hesitated. “Could that count as assimilation?”

“I…” Tris’s voice crackled softly from the doll in Lord Springfield’s hand before fading into thought. “I don’t know,” she admitted after a long pause. “I have never attempted to use scent or inhalation as a substitute trigger for [Assimilation]. The skill may require direct consumption or structural integration to recognize the target properly.” Her tone sharpened slightly, analytical even through uncertainty. “Still… I cannot dismiss the possibility outright. If it functions at all, the information density carried through vaporized particles would likely be incomplete. You would probably require several metal slimes before the skill could stabilize the process.”

The cave fell quiet again.

Then Lord Springfield spoke. “What if,” she said slowly, “a clone swallowed the molten remains after I melted the slime down? I can sacrifice one clone. I can sacrifice dozens of them,” she said. “If assimilation is based on the being as a whole and not one specific clone, and if each clone could raise the assimilation percentage by even .01%...” Lord Springfield didn’t have to finish.

Even the skittering deeper in the cavern seemed to stop for a moment.

“I… perhaps we can attempt both approaches,” Tris said after a moment, voice steadier now, as if she were already reorganizing her thoughts into a framework. “The first method is… crude, but potentially informative. And comparing results may be the only way I can extract meaningful data from something I have very little precedent for.” Her tone dipped slightly. “I would recommend testing it on the rubberized salamander. Or rather—on the second one we encounter.”

“Yes, Tris. We shall.” Lord Springfield’s reply was immediate. “Come on, Ira. Pick up the pace.”

Without waiting for further discussion, she shifted from a measured walk into a steady jog. Ira matched her stride almost at once, boots striking stone in a rhythm that echoed faintly through the cavern’s hollow throat.

For several minutes they pressed deeper into the earth.

The air changed the farther they went—growing colder, heavier, as if the cave itself were inhaling and refusing to exhale. Darkness pooled in layers, thick enough to feel almost tangible. Then, without warning, a brief flicker of illumination washed across the cavern ceiling. For a heartbeat, the group glimpsed it: a scatter of jagged black spines embedded overhead, like fangs in the stone… all subtly converging toward something far larger above, as if the entire system were wired into a single unseen lightning rod.

“There,” Lord Springfield said at last.

She broke off the main passage, slipping into a narrower corridor that bent sharply downward before opening into a vast chamber.

A brood of rubberized salamanders—each the size of a large hound—circled tensely in a loose formation. Across from them writhed an electric slime, pulsing with erratic arcs of blue‑white current.

Ira didn’t wait for instruction.

Her fingers snapped.

Ice exploded outward.

The chamber was swallowed in a sapphire‑blue cage, thick and opaque, walls surging upward and inward in the same breath. Stone groaned under the sudden temperature drop as the salamanders’ feet were locked fast mid‑motion, their bodies jerking in sudden panic. Their cries—raw, frantic, animal—reverberated through the sealed space, amplified by the prison that had become their tomb.

The slime surged instinctively, attempting to slip through the lattice of ice. But the structure responded as if alive. Where it tried to escape, the prison thickened—fine, translucent layers blossoming outward, reinforcing every gap, reshaping itself in real time into an adaptive, suffocating seal.

Inside the frozen chamber, nothing was getting out.

There wasn’t even a pause.

Lord Springfield’s right arm warped mid‑motion.

Flesh and bone elongated into a thick, writhing vine of chimeric tissue, snapping forward with a whipcrack of wet speed. At its tip, a broad, predatory maw bloomed open—far too large for something that had once been an arm—and drove straight into the nearest rubberized salamander’s skull.

The impact was instantaneous.

The creature didn’t even finish its scream.

It was gone.

Not torn apart. Not left behind in pieces. Simply erased from existence as the living mass was consumed in a single, decisive bite. Three skills crystallized at once.

[Lightning Immunity], [Rubber Production], and [Rubber Coating]

The transformation ended as abruptly as it had begun. Lord Springfield’s arm returned to normal, as if nothing had happened at all.

She turned toward the electric slime. It was already panicking.

Blue‑white arcs of lightning lashed wildly in every direction as the creature thrashed inside the sapphire prison. When it noticed her approaching, its discharge intensified—two dozen bolts converging at once, all aimed directly at her chest.

Twenty‑four strikes.

All of them hit.

All of them failed.

The electricity collapsed on contact, sputtering out like dying sparks in heavy rain. Not a single mark remained—not on her skin, not on her clothes, not even in the air around her.

The slime let out a sound that didn’t belong in any natural ecosystem—something between a collapsing animal and a breaking machine, layered and wrong, scraping against the inside of the cavern.

Lord Springfield didn’t react.

She raised her hand instead.

A thin layer of rubber formed over her fingers, dark and matte, like tightly fitted gloves. She flexed them once, testing the texture.

The slime lunged.

She caught it mid‑air. The creature squirmed in her grip, still discharging in desperate bursts, but it might as well have been trying to burn through stone with breath alone.

“You don’t need the coating,” Tris observed calmly, her voice cutting through the chaos like a scalpel. “The immunity is already fully integrated. The rubber traits are redundant in this state.”

“I know,” Lord Springfield said quietly. “But practice makes perfect, Tris. Covering my skin in rubber is something I need to master even if I already have the hang of it.”

Still, she focused.

With a subtle adjustment—guided by Tris’s precise, analytical prompting—the rubber coating thickened. Once. Twice. Then again.

Layers built upon layers, impossibly dense, compacted into a structure far beyond what simple material should allow. What had started as a glove became something closer to layered armor—elastic, insulated, and unnaturally efficient.

The slime screamed again as it was held fast, its lightning entirely meaningless in her grasp.

And yet Lord Springfield’s expression didn’t change.

Not even as the cavern filled with the echo of its suffering.

A dozen vines unfurled from Lord Springfield’s back, stretching like waking limbs. They were sheathed in the same dark brown coating as before—until a single thought dismissed it. The rubber dissolved. In its place, new growth erupted: thick cords of pure rubber, shaped through [Rubber Production] and modeled on the biological pattern of a plant‑type monster’s vine. But their internals were no longer organic. They were entirely synthetic, entirely hers.

The theory—one of the dozens Tris had—had worked.

“Imagine when I can produce metal,” she murmured. “These vines will be iron. Then steel. Then mythril. The stronger the alloy I consume, the stronger I become.”

Ira could only stare. The transformation was seamless, elegant, and a little terrifying.

The rubber vines struck. They plunged into the slime, draining it until nothing remained but a trembling, half‑lit core. Lord Springfield crushed it between her fingers and tossed the fragments into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, swallowing another set of traits—another creature crossed off Bellerophon’s Do Not Assimilate list.

Ira’s breath caught. She recognized the expression forming on Lord Springfield’s face.

“[Lightning Manipulation]. [Lightning Production]. [Electrical Field Barrier]. [Living Conductor]. [Overload Venting].” She listed them calmly. “Control, creation, shielding, channeling, purging.”

Lord Springfield studied her own hand, eyes narrowing as she watched mana pulse beneath her skin. Every thread of her vast magical potential now throbbed with the capacity to become lightning itself.

“One slime. One salamander, Ira. That’s all it took. Fire, ice, lightning—none of them can harm me anymore unless wielded by a Holy or Dark Lord. And even then… ‘harm’ is subjective. A twig scraping a fingernail counts as harm to some. So does losing a leg. Or being cleaved in half by shadow‑wind. The spectrum is wide.”

A jagged bolt of lightning crackled to life in her right hand. In her left, a sphere of fire bloomed—hotter than anything a mortal could imagine.

She stood between them, radiant and terrible.

Ira’s eyes widened to the size of dinner plates. Lord Springfield hadn’t merely merged the two elements—she had fused them, forging something entirely new.

Plasma.

It shimmered in a deep, unnatural purple, carrying the essence of both primal forces. Drawing on another discipline taught to her by Seraphina Vredi, Lord Springfield shaped the plasma with deliberate precision, coaxing it into the form of a spear.

“Amazing…” she breathed, moving seamlessly into a kata—one of the training sequences passed down to her by her adoptive father. Ira watched, stunned. By all logic, the plasma should have been unstable. Every swing, thrust, twirl, flourish, or evasive motion should have sent droplets of volatile purple energy splattering across the cavern floor.

But nothing fell.

The spear was—

It was stable. More than stable. It felt solid, impossibly so. Only the fierce, radiant glow of the combined magic left its mark, splashing violet light across the walls and flooding the dark cavern with its otherworldly brilliance.

Ira watched as Lord Springfield turned toward the salamanders still pinned in place. She dispatched two of them with effortless precision, pressing the tip of the plasma spear into their skulls. It slid through them like a hot knife through butter. Their innate rubber traits offered no protection against the scorching flames—the other half of the plasma’s nature. When they fell limp, she reshaped the spear into an orb, crushed it in her palm, and scattered the fragments over the corpses. The reaction was immediate. They burned violently, the stench rising in thick waves. Flesh, bone, cartilage—everything inside those beasts crumbled into ash, releasing a nauseating scent that stirred the predator coiled deep within Lord Springfield.

“I’ll be honest. I don’t know what I need to do. I’m smelling it, obviously. Tris?”

“I can confirm that it is working. You are, technically, performing the action of assimilating, my lord. I surmise that it won’t be effective unless you have a few hundred corpses burning if you wish to make any meaningful progress,” Tris replied. “The metal slime is liquid metal. Rather, a form of metal that can take liquid properties. I believe you would need far fewer slimes—perhaps ten? Maybe fifteen, if you wish to obtain the metal slime’s abilities without requiring a dedicated skill to assimilate it otherwise.”

“Ah—I haven’t considered that. Most slimes are quite fluid, yes. Not the slime I just ate. But most others are. Suppose that goes for most water‑based monsters, too. Assimilation via smell could be potential avenues… Ira—”

Lord Springfield never finished. Above them, somewhere atop the mountain, an overwhelmingly powerful lightning strike slammed into the tallest lightning rod. The ground trembled, quivering as if in fear. The air thousands of feet above—where the chimera and the Essence of Wrath stood—became saturated with charged particles. Another strike followed. Then another. Cracks splintered across the ceiling. It wasn’t a full cave‑in, not yet, but for anything to inflict such damage by striking the very rod meant to harmlessly disperse lightning?

It was impossible. And it was happening.

There could have been only one cause. And that cause announced itself with a roar—a declaration of war that shook every last inch of the Valley of Storms.

“It seems, my lord, that the bonus prey has arrived.”

“Good. Very good.” Lord Springfield seized Ira’s hand, and in the span of 1/100th of a heartbeat, warped them both to the cave entrance. They vanished and reappeared as though the world itself had blinked. Two pairs of eyes lifted toward the tallest peak, where an impossible curtain of lightning hammered endlessly against the thickest, largest lightning rod. Each impact boomed like a continent threatening to split apart—like the tectonic plates themselves were protesting the violation.

When the cave entrance began to groan, Lord Springfield warped again, carrying Ira with her. From six hundred feet away, they watched the entire underground passage collapse in a cascading ruin, falling like a line of dominoes. A ferocious bolt surged through the massive lightning rod and split the earth below, obliterating the chambers surrounding the room where they had found the salamanders and the slime.

“The beast raging within is Voltalis, Sovereign of the Storm Valley. He’s akin to a God, you could say,” Tris explained, her voice cool and steady. “If the valley was a dungeon, it’d be the boss. The people of Hairokei worship it. Sometimes, they leave gifts at the entrance to the valley as tribute—as payment for protecting their city‑state.”

Lord Springfield whistled softly as the raging lightning curtain parted like silk. A deep, resonant growl followed. An electric unicorn stepped through—Voltalis, Sovereign of the Storm Valley. Twenty feet tall, a giant in its own right. It stood upon the electrically charged air, its horn glowing with an angry hue as it reared back. It did not whinny. It roared like a lion.

Lord Springfield looked up. Her new lightning abilities allowed her to see the magical particles gathering above—the formation of the spell itself.

She raised one hand.

Voltalis struck down, unleashing a storm of deadly, violent lightning arrows.

Nothing happened. The attack sizzled harmlessly against her palm, sounding like a wet rag slapped against stone. A few bolts missed entirely—perhaps Tris was attempting to use parity to rebound the strike; Lord Springfield couldn’t tell—but those that struck the ground carved out craters forty feet wide and ten feet deep.

Each of the 126 bolts, fired with the relentless rhythm of a machine gun, carried enough force to kill two dozen men. Every single one did absolutely nothing.

Voltalis roared again. It vanished from the distance and reappeared directly before Lord Springfield. Its horn, now blazing with crimson lightning, hovered within arm’s reach. And its eyes—the eyes of a beast revered as a God—locked onto hers, unblinking, issuing a challenge to the intruder it believed deserved death.