Wanderer Merchant lifted his hand and held it steady above his crown, sliding his fingers into his hair. He plucked a single long, jet-black strand; as it left his grasp, a faint gleam rippled through the air, and he let it fall.

While it drifted, the strand swelled as if inhaling an unseen breath, curling and lengthening; the black sheen thickened into gray fur, the ends whitening into a bristling beard. A heartbeat later, a goatman stood where it landed, Caprion’s exact likeness—gray-furred, white-bearded—who sank to his knees before the Merchant and bowed his head.

"This hill recognizes the Mountain." Caprion’s voice carried the weight of solemn respect.

"Caprion, you already know what I want." The Merchant clasped his hands behind his back, gaze steady, breath even.

Without raising his head, only the narrow glint of Caprion’s yellow eyes moved. "Shall I kill?"

Liora and the others tightened at once; breath hitched and attention locked to a single point. The Merchant paused, weighed the thought in silence, then moved his head side to side. "No. That would be excessive for a jest. Make him retreat for now."

His intention was to grant Adyr a measured favor, nothing more. He did not presume to dictate Adyr’s path in the Outer Region; too much interference would be unwise.

If Adyr’s family had sent him here to be tempered by hardship, sweeping his enemies aside on his behalf would smooth the road in a way that would ultimately hurt him. Help should be given at the proper weight and left there.

"As you wish." The words had barely formed before Caprion moved. His toes bit into the ridged hide crowning Collossith’s skull, and he launched like a torpedo, the air cinching tight behind him. His wake collapsed inward with a brief hiss as he accelerated, a thin pressure-line stitching across the heat-shimmered distance.

"He’s fast." Liora tracked the silhouette knifing forward with no skill or Spark Mount active; his speed outstripped her Cloud Spark several times over.

"I thought he had only Rank 4 power. What kind of skill is this?" Lucen’s composure slipped, surprise roughening his voice.

"It isn’t a skill." The Wanderer Merchant allowed a small, satisfied smile. "Technically, he is a Rank 5 Spark."

"He what?" Mirela and Malrik reacted in unison, while Liora and Lucen fell into a silence that signaled understanding.

"He is not a subdued Spark like this Collossith," the Merchant continued. "He is a Spark I used during my evolution to Rank 5 Adept. The innate talent I gained from it allows me to summon a clone of that Spark."

Liora listened with widened eyes, searching her limited memory of Rank 5 Sparks, and murmured a name. "Mountain’s Echo."

She knew only that it belonged to the Astra Path and could shapeshift and create clones of itself. How it fed, what territories it favored, how it nested—those details were beyond her. Even so, the simple fact of it being a Rank 5 Spark left her genuinely impressed. Until today, she had never seen one with her own eyes.

"Oh? You know it?" The Wanderer Merchant sounded mildly surprised. "That’s right. It isn’t so rare in the Midlands, but as you can see, it is very useful for someone like me."

For a merchant by nature, strong, reliable clones were an elegant solution to keeping business flowing in multiple places at once. Choosing an evolutionary path that supported that life was simply wise.

"Thank you, my lord." Liora bowed her head along with the others, gratitude plain and unforced.

None of them doubted that the clone could halt a Titled Rank 4 Practitioner with ease.

—

A while ago...

In the Velari territory, the sun shone bright, lighting every stretch of fertile ground and the bustling streets of the capital.

People moved through the avenues with smiling faces and carefree bodies, weaving among stalls and storefronts as they tended to their daily errands.

Vendors along the curbs cheerfully called out their goods; from the bakers’ doorways, warm, fresh scents rolled into the lanes; cafés and bars were bursting with people, their laughter spilling outward and carrying down the streets.

In the open spaces and public squares, troupes staged theater and recitals; choral songs rose and mingled with the chirping of seasonal birds that crossed the sky in loose colonies, undisturbed and gliding high above.

Beyond the city walls, not far from the gates, a very crowded group had formed.

Hundreds of workers, small in figure yet full of spirit, gripped pickaxes and shovels, cutting into the hard ground and working to widen a deepening hole.

Among them moved knights with hardened bodies and heavy, gleaming armor—an unusual sight, at odds with their training. Some dug with pickaxe in hand; others hefted stone and soil into waiting carts. There were nobles among them as well, men and women in royal attire and glittering ornaments.

For the moment, their status seemed stripped away; they worked alongside common folk and knights with the same high spirits, not forced in the least, united by a single objective: to dig.

A little farther on, upon a small hill, stood 2 figures watching the Velari working like an ant colony, pouring in all their energy. Shock and interest were plain on their faces. "Miss Veyla, I can’t really understand what motivates them like this," said Isolde, blonde-haired, one of the 2 researchers Adyr had dropped here a short while ago, eyes wide as she studied the scene.

Her gaze even tracked the king of Velari himself, Vale Von Velaris, who had stripped off the upper half of his fine royal garments and now lifted a shovel, tipping extra soil into one of the carts.

"Well..." Dr. Veyla Arden tried to answer her assistant’s question but could not find the words that would capture it. "What kind of spell has Mr. Adyr cast on these people? For an entire kingdom, even its king, to work for him like this... It feels more magical than anything logic can explain, I suppose."

Since their arrival, they had heard many accounts from the Velari people about Adyr: how he fought Sparks without rest and saved not only small villages but even the kingdom itself from a Rank 4 Spark, Collossith.

Everyone they spoke with described him not merely as a hero but as a protector of the entire race, with real respect and reverence. Even so, the boundless loyalty they now witnessed still struck the 2 Humans as something that bordered on the absurd.

"Maybe it is the character of this race," Dr. Veyla said, thinking it through.

"According to our reports and findings, the Velari are followers of Astra. Their culture and teachings also instill an endless respect for the kingdom’s Practitioners and a habit of unquestioning obedience. But still..." She recognized that truly understanding this kind of behavior lay less in the expertise of the Subsurface Studies Department and more in psychology and racial-behavior research. She decided to stop overthinking it and to report everything when they returned.

Simply knowing that Adyr could move an entire kingdom to aid him was enough. It already showed how reliable he had become in the eyes of humankind; the evidence, laid out before them, was more than enough on its own.