The Cradle's workshop was silent save for the faint, residual hum of creation. Leoric held the bow out to me, and as I took it, I felt a profound sense of rightness, of a purpose fulfilled. It felt impossibly light, yet carried the conceptual weight of a mountain.

I found her in her own Sanctum, the Grove of Silver Silence. She was sparring with Grover, her massive Ent Anima, who was now the size of a mature oak tree. The Grove was a tranquil, beautiful space, filled with silver-barked trees and the soft, chiming sound of a hidden spring.

"Anna," I said, stepping through a portal.

She turned, a smile on her face that faltered when she saw the bow in my hands. Her eyes went wide. She was a master archer; she could feel the power radiating from it even across the clearing.

"Eren… what is that?" she breathed, walking towards me slowly, her gaze locked on the silver-white wood.

"A project Leoric and I have been working on," I said, holding it out to her. "Think of it as a late birthday present."

She took it with a reverence I had rarely seen from her. Her fingers traced the glowing, shifting runes, a faint silvery light from her own soul resonating with the bow. She drew the string back an inch, and a mote of pure, absolute energy flickered into existence, straining to become an arrow. She gasped and released the string.

"This is… it feels…" she stammered. "It's like it already knows what I want to do, before I even think it. This is Mythic, isn't it?"

"It is," I confirmed. "It should keep you safe."

She looked from the bow to me, her expression a complex mixture of awe, gratitude, and something else… a flicker of fierce pride. She hugged me tightly, burying her face in my shoulder for a moment. "Thank you," she whispered. Then she pulled back, her eyes shining with an intense, burning determination.

"I will use this," she said, her voice steel. "I will use it to get stronger. I'll clear the Barrow twice as fast, I'll push my Tier, and I will master my own concepts until the power in this bow is just an extension of my own, not a crutch I lean on." She looked at the magnificent weapon, not as a final gift, but as a stepping stone. "I promise you, Eren. One day, I'm going to outgrow this thing. I'll become so strong that I won't need it. But until then… I will make it sing."

A swell of pride washed over me. I hadn't given her a crutch. I had given her a catalyst. "I have no doubt," I said, my voice thick with emotion. "There's also this other thing…"

The twelve-hour countdown passed in a blur of quiet, hyper-focused activity. Every system was triple-checked, every citizen briefed, every defensive position manned. There was no panic, only the grim, electric hum of a city that had chosen to become a fortress and was now about to face its first inspection.

I stood with my team in the command center of the Veiled Path. The air was cool and still, a stark contrast to the tension in the room. Before us, a massive holographic display, a perfect, God's-eye view projected directly from a network of cloaked scout-drones Silas had positioned, showed a ten-kilometer radius around Bastion. At the edge of the screen, a single, sharp-angled black icon was closing fast.

"Final confirmation from the long-range scanners," Eliza said, her voice crisp as she tapped at her console, her eyes gleaming with a mixture of professional apprehension and intellectual curiosity. "We're looking at seventeen signatures. Twelve peak Tier 3s, and five confirmed Tier 4s. They're running a high-energy cloaking field, but it's a power hog. They'll have to drop it before they can commit to a full assault. That's a standard Vanguard blitz-team configuration."

"Seventeen of Vayne's best local lapdogs," Lucas grunted, his arms crossed as he stared at the display. He looked every inch the commander, his gaze steady and unwavering. "They'll be expecting a provincial militia with recently upgraded walls. They're coming here for a quick, brutal decapitation, a show of force to make us heel."

"A shame they'll have to come all this way just to be disappointed," Anna said, leaning back in her chair with a confident smirk, cracking her knuckles. Her hand was resting on [Final Word], which was leaning against her chair. "So, what's the protocol? Do we engage them outside the walls? A full-power shot from me could probably turn their main transport into a cloud of very surprised, very expensive metal confetti."

"Hold that thought," I said, my gaze fixed on the approaching icon. The initial tension had settled into a kind of calm, analytical focus. "Jeeves, what's your final assessment on the upgraded Aegis Line against this specific threat composition?"

Jeeves' calm, synthesized voice replied from the room's emitters. "My theoretical models, based on the infusion of your Tier 6 essence, predict a one hundred percent probability of the Aegis shield nullifying any and all offensive output from this specific vanguard. Their energy signatures are well within the conceptual deconstruction parameters of the new defensive matrix. To them, the shield should be functionally absolute."

"There it is," Lucas said, nodding slowly. "This is an opportunity. Not just to defend, but to test. To gather data. And just as importantly, to control what Vayne learns."

"Exactly," Eliza chimed in, catching his meaning instantly. "If we go out and fight them, they get a full reading on our individual capabilities. They learn Anna has a Mythic-grade weapon. They see Silas' improved Shadow-Meld. They learn everything. But if we do nothing…"

"…Then they learn only one thing," Silas finished for her, his voice a low murmur from the corner where he stood. "They learn that our wall is unbreakable. They learn nothing about who is behind the wall. It's perfect information control."

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"My thoughts exactly," I agreed. "This isn't a battle for us. It's an experiment. A live-fire test to confirm Jeeves' theoretical models. They can be our volunteer lab rats. It's crucial we get real performance data. If there's a flaw, any kind of unexpected power drain or resonance frequency, we need to know now, before she sends something we actually have to worry about." I gestured to the empty chairs I'd pulled from storage. "So, we sit. We watch, we learn, and we enjoy the show."

We settled in, the atmosphere shifting from tense to one of profound, almost academic curiosity. A few minutes later, the icon on our map approached the twenty-kilometer threshold.

"Cloaking field is dropping," Silas announced, his voice flat.

The icon on our display flickered, replaced by a crystal-clear image. The Vanguard's transport, a vicious-looking black ship, hovered silently over the ashen plains. A ramp lowered, and seventeen figures rappelled to the ground with military precision, their black armor absorbing the light.

"Very professional," Lucas noted with grudging respect. "They're good. They're just in the wrong place."

The Vanguard leader, a tall Tier 4 with silver trim on his armor, raised his hand. Five Tier 3s stepped forward, unleashing a synchronized volley of searing plasma bolts.

"Here we go," Anna whispered, leaning forward, her chin resting in her hands.

The plasma bolts hit our perimeter. There was no explosion. No boom. No flash. The bolts simply… vanished, unraveling into harmless motes of light and heat, dispersed into the air like a drop of ink in the ocean.

A full, silent second passed. Then, a snort of laughter escaped Anna. "Wait, was that it? That was their big opener? It was like watching a fly hit a window."

On the screen, the Vanguard leader visibly stiffened. He barked an order. This time, the two other Tier 4 specialists stepped up alongside the Tier 3 mages. One summoned a raging elemental, a swirling vortex of razor-sharp rock and sand. The other began to channel a devastating-looking beam of pure, corrosive energy. They unleashed hell. Lances of shadow, torrents of arcane lightning, and a full-body charge from a brutish-looking Tier 4 whose fists glowed with kinetic force. The full might of an elite Imperial strike team slammed into our invisible wall.

And nothing happened. The rock elemental disintegrated into a gentle shower of sand. The corrosive beam was neutralized into a puff of inert green gas. The charging brute slammed into the shield with a wet, meaty thud, bounced off like a rubber ball, and lay on the ground, groaning.

This time, the entire command center erupted. Anna was howling with laughter, tears streaming down her face. Lucas was trying and failing to hide a wide grin. Even Silas had a faint, cruel smile on his lips.

"My god, Eliza, what did you and Leoric build?" Lucas chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief.

"The Aegis isn't just a barrier," she explained, looking immensely pleased, tapping at a diagnostic screen that showed a flat line under 'Shield Integrity.' "Eren's mana didn't just make it stronger; it made it smarter. It's not blocking the attacks; it's analyzing them and actively deconstructing them at a conceptual level. That corrosive beam? The shield's truth of 'purity' simply overwrote the beam's truth of 'decay.' It's less of a wall and more of a… philosophical counter-argument with extreme prejudice."

On the screen, things were deteriorating. The leader was now screaming at the brute. Two mages were pointing fingers at each other. Their perfect military discipline was fraying, replaced by the sheer, unadulterated frustration of encountering a problem that defied logic. For the next two hours, it was pure theater. They tried everything. Synchronized volleys, focused fire. One of their strongest Tier 4s even activated what we identified as a soul ability, a massive, spectral dragon that clawed uselessly at the shield for a full minute before dissipating.

At one point, in a fit of absolute, primal rage, the brute started picking up massive boulders and just chucking them, each one dissolving into dust. The scene devolved from a terrifying assault into a complete and utter farce. Finally, their energy spent, morale shattered, the Vanguard leader gave a final, furious gesture. Defeated, they filed back onto their ship in a slump-shouldered line of shame and streaked away.

As their icon vanished, a triumphant cheer echoed through the command center.

"Well," I said, as the laughter died down, a deep satisfaction settling in my chest. "Experiment successful. The wall holds." I brought the mood back to seriousness with a gesture. "But don't get complacent. This was just a probe. A test. When Vayne gets this report, she won't send another squad. She'll send specialists. Maybe a Tier 5. This buys us time. That's all. And we will use every second of it."

I looked at my friends. "The long-term goal isn't to hide behind our walls forever. It's to get so strong that we don't need them. So strong that we can take the fight to their own strongholds, Nexus Delta-7, even Akkadia, on our terms. So, we train. Harder than ever before."

And we did. The weeks that followed were a blur of intense focus. Vayne sent more probes. A squadron of drones that were zapped out of the sky by automated defenses. A stealth team that Silas' scouts toyed with before chasing them off. With our borders secure, we could truly focus on growth.

Lucas spent his days honing his conceptual weight, projecting his authority with his very soul. Lena and Marcus had become an inseparable whirlwind of death in the dungeons, Marcus' shield now able to project short-lived walls of force, perfectly corralling enemies for Lena's blindingly fast strikes.

My own growth had an earlier than expected side effect. The torrent of Tier 6 essence I now possessed flowed through my link with my Anima, and one by one, they began to evolve.

Jeeves was the first. His dark, shadow form became deeper, more complex. He had transcended strategy and entered the realm of probability, gaining a new, core ability: [Causal Path Analysis]. He could now process thousands of potential futures, assigning a success probability to every action. He was no longer just my strategist; he was becoming my oracle.

Rexxar's evolution was more direct. His form grew larger, his crystalline facets sharper, the raw kinetic energy within him crackling with a terrifying, golden light. He was now a true Tier 6. He gained the skill [Sovereign's Might: Unstoppable Force], an ability that infused his every strike with the conceptual weight of irresistibility. An object struck by him did not just break; it yielded as a fundamental law of physics.

Leoric achieved Tier 6 and became a true miracle worker. He gained a skill called [Conceptual Forging]. He could now build not just with matter, but with ideas, creating devices that imposed their function upon reality.

And Nyx, my silent shadow, reached Tier 6 in her Spirit, unlocking [Truth's Shadow]. She could now literally step into a person's truth, wearing their identity not as a disguise, but as a temporary reality, making her functionally undetectable by anything short of a ninth tier being.

Even my link to Kasian grew stronger. The data flowed faster, purer. He was accessing the Akashic Record not through a pinhole, but through a creak in the door, allowing me more information regarding my ancestry. When we tried to access information directly regarding the Kyorians, however, the System continued to interfere, referencing the same multiple Edicts.

We were growing. All of us. We had a wall to keep the hounds at bay, and inside that wall, we were forging ourselves into something the likes of which Vayne, with all her Imperial might and resources, could never possibly predict.

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