Violet and her group made good speed as they traversed the Emerald Lakes region. They were finally beginning to get closer to the large mountain range that split the continent in two. Days passed by with relatively few interruptions, they did enounter a couple of stray Beast Lords that they had to deal with, but both Susan and Rhyana wanted to test their metal against them so chose to do battle by themselves.

Violet and Luna naturally had no objections to their friends growing stronger so let them have their fun and learn their new limits. Both girls had grown considerably stronger thanks to their new level, now easily able to contend with early stage lords without much fuss. It was still a tough fight for them, but well within their capabilities if they fought together. Something which the two were growing considerably more adept in ever since they bonded.

Other than the small fights, both Violet and Luna used their most recent skill upgrade token to advance their chosen skills.

Violet chose to upgrade her multicast skill, seeing as she focused on magic as her primary source of damage it was a natural choice.

[Upgrade token used on skill - Multicast.

Upgrade option available:

- Enhanced Multicast

- Parallel Mind]

This was a tough choice for Violet, the first option would just enhance every aspect of Multicast. Making it much easier to cast and concentrate on multiple spells at the same time. Parallel Mind however, was a bit different. It would allow her to have a duplicate version of her mind act semi autonomously, this could be useful in a variety of different ways.

From dedicating this new mind to focus on magic whilst her main mind fought up close, or to just have two brains to think problems through at the same time… maybe, she wasn't 100% sure on exactly how the skill would work, but that's the impression that she got from it.

Still, after much consideration, theory crafting and contemplation. A full 12 seconds to be precise. Violet opted for Enhanced Multicast.

She was sure that having a parallel mind could be useful. But it came down to the simple fact that she didn't want anyone to be able to use her powers, not even herself! Besides she already had Luna if she wanted to think things through with someone else, and she had no intention of sharing her companion with anyone else! So she had no need for a second Violet.

[Skill Multicast lvl 20(MAX) upgrades to - Enhanced Multicast lvl 1]

Luna on the other hand opted to upgrade her Healing Presence skill.

[Upgrade token used on skill - Healing presence. Upgrade option available:

- Selective Healing Presence

- Ranged Heal

- Frozen Life]

Luna was quite pleased with the options that she had available to upgrade her skill into. Her current skill basically only enhanced passive healing around her, sure that was nice to have, but its effects were becoming quite lackluster as time passed.

The first option kept the passive healing presence, but allowed Luna to focus its effects onto a singular target, vastly boosting its effects. Useful but also limited in its effectiveness on significant wounds. The second option was quite straight forward, it just replaced her presence healing with a basic ranged healing option. No passive healing boost just a basic healing spell that can be cast at range.

The last option however, now that caught her attention. It allowed her to heal with her ice. It would allow her to turn one of her most potent powers into a healing skill. It would work with a few of her others skills aswell, most notably her Arctic manifestation, she could create a domain of freezing healing around her, providing incredible healing at a high mana cost. Or just use her manipulation skill to create some ice over a wound to do more localised healing.

After understanding that the choice was quite obvious for Luna.

[Skill Healing Presence lvl 20(MAX) upgrades to - Frozen Life lvl 1]

The two naturally experimented with their upgraded skills and found them to be exactly what they wanted, both being more than happy with their choices.

And with that done the group advanced ever closer to the towering peaks of the pitch black mountains.

When they were just approaching the foothills of the mountains Violet suddenly froze in place, Luna pausing a moment later as her nose and ears began to twitch erratically. Susan and Rhyana only paused when they looked back at the two in confusion, not knowing what had stopped the two girls.

Currently they were both in their humanoid forms. Now that Luna was decently acquainted with fighting in her beast form she was eager to ensure that she didn't loose her abilities in her humanoid form. And after some prodding from the girl Violet relented and also joined her.

It was true that Violet lacked combat experience fighting in this form so she figured that it would be a good idea for her to get some experience fighting in her humanoid shape.

Violets head slowly turned in a particular direction, due north of their current location. She was focused on the flows of mana that saturated the world around her, and had noticed a… disturbance? Something that was causing the mana in the air to react in a chaotic and unnatural way.

Luna who was less adapt at sensing the mana flows was instead focused on a unsettling scent in the air.

Both girls had a sinking feeling in their guts when they looked at each other, both of them thinking the same thing. Turning to face their two friends it was Luna that spoke up. "Their is something being corrupted in that direction." She said, whilst pointing north towards where they had sensed the disturbance.

"We need to check it out and figure out what is going on there." Continued Violet. She didn't quite know why she felt like she had to do so, but ever since becoming a beast lord her instincts around anything corruoted seemed to have grown much stronger. They screamed at her to destroy it, eradicate the corruption and return the Wilds to their natural state.

Luna too seemed just as impacted by these instincts since her own evolution, likely due to her powerful bond with Violet. Still neither girls questioned it too much as they both knew that corruption was a bad thing, even if they didn't fully understand it.

Seeing the seriousness of their friends in this regard, and with both of them also reacting to hearing about corruption, albeit to a lesser degree than Violet and Luna. The group swiftly changed direction and headed north to investigate what was going on.

They moved swiftly, covering the distance between the anomaly in quick succession.

Before telling they rounded a particularly large tree and came upon a clearing. Within this clearing was something that they did not expect to see.

One of the giant monster ant soldiers was currently engaged in battle against a peculiar humanoid tree, the weird tree person was moving with incredible speed. Vines would shoot out of the ground to wrap the monsters legs up, whilst razor sharp leaves and speeding seeds would shoot forth to impact the creature.

The ant was hopelessly outclassed against the tree person and was quickly loosing ground.

It was then that Violet noticed the sign of multiple other solider ant corpses littered around this clearing, quickly counting them she noted that 7 soldier corpses were present. Violet's blood ran cold at that, knowing the struggle that both she and Luna faced against just a single one of them. And here was an individual that had seemingly effortlessly cut down 7 of them, with the 8th soon to follow.

The group watched in dazed amazement as the tree person soon finished off the twisted ant, its body falling to the ground with a resounding thud.

A silence settled over the clearing, Violet and her friends were stood dumbstruck on the outer edges of the clearing. Violet belatedly realised that their was a small lake on one side of the clearing, and she sensed the telltale signs of corruption coming from the lake. It reminded her of encountering the corrupted tree from a while back, yet not as far along in the process as that.

As she took in all of these details the tree person suddenly disappeared from her spot in the middle of the clearing. Violets eyes widened in shock and she spun around, spears of void manifesting in the air around her as her presence surged forth.

Yet her actions froze when she laid eyes on the tree person who was now stood behind their group. For she could no longer move, she could barely even remain standing, Rhyana and Susan had already collapsed to the ground whilst fighting to stay conscious.

For the tree person, had released their own presence. And it was at such a level that Violet would hardly understand, in fact it was the singularly strongest presence she had ever felt in her life. Including that of the giant snake Slavina.

Standing less than a meter away from Violet was a Sovereign, and it was looking straight back at Violet with its emerald green eyes.

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