Simon had spent three hours talking to them about the monster system. At least, the one that Taz used. He said other monsters might use different systems.

  The group agreed to give Simon twenty of the twenty-nine cores they had found. They'd all be dead if he hadn't been there, and he was the only one who could immediately use them anyway.

  They all sat in wonder as he fed them to Taz one at a time. The two sharing a mental conversation as Simon wrote in a thick leather-bound journal. "Huh. Each core increases his Earth Mana Resistance by one percent. It's odd. It's like it's augmenting an existing skill. Not leveling it up or evolving it. There's just a plus symbol and a twenty next to it. Every five I fed him, he gained a point of vitality up to the fifteenth. We didn't get any vitality at the twentieth."

  "Diminishing returns? His own resistances, maybe? Level difference?" The goblin kept rattling off information and words as he wrote everything down. "Any changes to other skills? New options?"

  A few seconds later, Simon nodded. "Nothing yet, but you have a better understanding of Earth Mana. Ok. Maybe when we have the time, we can try to hunt down some primordial creatures that use wind or lightning mana."

  Trillia turned to the rest of the group as Simon came to a close on his own information. Ialu and Dire had joined them at the fire and had been watching Simon intently. Trillia felt a sense of relief from Dire, though she wasn't willing to poke and prod him on it just yet. "Does anyone know of a canine-like monster with a high vitality stat?"

  The group paused and gave it some serious thought. Dire was the one to reach out mentally. "Behemoths."

  Trillia felt a shiver run down her spine at the mention of the beast. She hadn't forgotten Persona. "Behemoths are canines?"

  Dire mentally affirmed it. "Yes. They are considered a bunch of different things. My pack once found a wounded Behemoth, and I devoured its core."

  Trillia nodded. "Anyone know where Behemoths are found?"

  Simon immediately shook his head. "I would very, very much so recommend against trying to hunt a behemoth. There are a bunch of variants. The smallest and weakest of them use psychic powers. Our group would not fare well against them unless we could find one that was on its own."

  "Persona would be considered small? What?!" Trillia shouted at the well-armored goblin, who was startled by her sudden outburst.

  "Who's Persona?"

  "A Psionic Behemoth that kidnapped her on behalf of Alirast." Amelia filled in for Trillia. "It was... terrifying large."

  Simon nodded. "Yeah... There's a set of mountains about two weeks to the west of us. It's called the Beast Scar. I guess it was where Dad and the others fought Centrallis. Behemoths make their homes there. They hunt about twenty miles around it. Most folk just never get anywhere near it."

  Trillia took a deep breath as she thought about that. "How much bigger do they get?"

  Simon thought about that for a moment. "It's hard to tell. I flew over the area because Taz and I were curious. We were about two hundred feet up."

  Simon reached over to the fire and pulled out a stick. Drawing a small circle and one that was about three times larger. "This is the trees as we saw them from above." He made the second circle more of an oval shape. "This was the behemoth we saw. No idea what kind it was. I wasn't willing to risk our lives getting that close. There's a small mana rift in that area now as well, since the cataclysm."

  Everyone looked at the circle and shuddered. "That's huge. How are those creatures not more known?" Trillia wondered just how large Alirast really was.

  Simon laughed at that, tossing his stick back into the fire. "The world is a big place. There are apparently a couple of land masses that just aren't inhabited by any civilizations we know of. Despite the [Primordials] seemingly avoiding them, we can't create a foothold there. I've heard the Queen arguing with some Merchant Lords about it. I guess there is stuff on those places that give even young dragons pause."

  "There's still so much I want to explore." Trillia's face held a grin that was sure to cause her to do something stupid in the future.

  "We can look up other canines in the capital. I'm sure Queen Alliyah would be ok with you using the library." Simon offered as a middle-ground between sure suicide and something that wasn't a suicide mission for a big dog.

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  Trillia nodded. "That will have to do. I wouldn't wanna risk our lives, plus I highly doubt I would be able to tame something that dangerous."

  -=====-

  They were a little over a month into the trip. They hadn't run into any other monsters.

  Malor had made a breakthrough with one of the cores after destroying six of the others. It now sat embedded in Frederick's chest plate and was giving him resistance to earth mana. "Imagine what we could do with larger, stronger cores. The enchantments needed to maintain the core are so minimal that I could probably stack a half dozen cores on top of regular enchantments."

  Fred rubbed a thumb over the core. "The armor still seems solid. I was worried initially that it would cause a weak point in the metal, but something about the core is strengthening the area around it. I'll bet we could do something similar with weapons as well."

  Trillia frowned a bit at that. "Is this really ok? Don't the cores hold the soul of a creature? Isn't this basically like imprisoning something for all eternity?"

  Layla seemed visibly upset at that revelation as well. Leaf rattled in its sheath.

  "It may be different here. But in my world, cores were often used in equipment. But they didn't hold any souls."

  "How can you be certain?"

  "Mistress Meridia was a Sylph."

  A long moment of silence hung between the two of them. "I don't know what that's supposed to mean, Leaf."

  "Apologies. She was a spirit. Spirits can see souls like you can see mana. I'd imagine, with some training, you could put yourself in the Aether to see souls as well. Before Mistress went off to battle, she mentioned the two looked similar."

  Trillia relayed the information to the group. They all fell into silence once more.

  Simon shrugged. "So we add it to the ever-growing list of things you all can ask Queen Alliyah."

  Amelia chuckled. "You think she's gonna get sick of our questions?"

  "I hope not. I have a bunch." Trillia laughed right along with Amelia. Of all the people she had met, Queen Alliyah was the one she was most excited for. At this point, Trillia wasn't sure if it was possible for the Queen to live up to the legend that Trillia had built of the woman in her mind.

  -=====-

  Another month had passed, and the roads were becoming more populated. They had run into a small group of bandits that had been utterly terrified and surrendered on the spot when they saw that Simon was a member of the Golden Gryphons. Simon had Taz fly ahead and get other members to come and pick the prisoners up. The whole ordeal had only delayed them a couple of days.

  As they settled into camp one night, Trillia spoke softly. "Why don't we see any orcs or minotaurs? Or goblins? It's almost entirely humans and elves."

  "Culture, mostly. How many arguments in an orc village are settled with violence or a duel?"

  "A lot."

  Simon nodded. "You all have a racial trait that makes it so that you can't easily die, right? Imagine how that culture would clash with humans or elves. They are considerably more fragile and don't have such a trait. Any duel with them would be an almost sure victory for the orc."

  Simon motioned to Amelia next. "Minotaurs hold councils and banish would-be troublemakers. The leader of a minotaur city can even seal the skills related to their home. But that punishment wouldn't work on humans or elves either. There are dozens of human settlements all over, it's the same with elves. Their skills can't be sealed."

  Fred spoke up. "Humans have trials, and we imprison people. Usually, we force criminals into a geas to work off whatever debt they have to society. It's why I was so shocked when I came to Red River, and there were no prisons. We can be allies and form small parties like this. But as a whole, I don't think a city that is a mixing pot of so many cultures will do well. As much as I hope your brother succeeds, I fear he has a difficult road ahead of him."

  Trillia remembered how her tribe used to be. Constantly moving, constantly fighting. The more she learned about the world, she realized that her mother wanted a simple life for their tribe. Free of politics and clashing cultures. "Is there really no way forward?"

  The group thought about it for a while before a round of shrugs answered her. "Maybe one grand city with different districts based on the culture of the inhabitants?" Malor offered.

  "That might work? I guess there'd still be a lot of friction, though." Layla said in turn.

  Taz cawed at them, and Simon translated. "Taz says the way Lord Arlyss is doing things makes sense. Set up a powerful teleportation network. This way, each city can handle crime based on their own culture. People can still visit and see friends, family, and allies. But the culture doesn't have to suffer or account for outsiders."

  Trillia nodded along. "Oh! I'm curious about that. I noticed that the portals are way more efficient now."

  "That was Lord Arlyss and I. I spent three months studying the enchantments he was using, and we found a far more efficient way to create them." Malor's chest puffed up with pride. "We also managed to create a sort of containment core for the Sage. It is still a problem that D'Jamu will have to deal with, but Lord Arlyss was grateful that we were able to find a solution."

  Trillia smiled at that. She really needed some free time to visit everyone. As the group started to eat, Trillia broke the silence. "How come other people haven't figured out the same enchantments?"

  "They have." Malor summoned DuMont's journal from his storage ring. "Thousands of years ago. A lot of the information is buried in rubble and ruins around the world. The [Primordials] cause a lot of loss in advancing magical theory. Sometimes, entire cities of casters and all of their knowledge are wiped out. Other times, places that held an expertise in something area buried hundreds of miles below the surface."

  "A lot of magic research and theory is looking for remnants of enchantments and researching how they were created. Lord Arlyss found the rubble of an old portal network, and that's where he started. From there, it's just getting as many eyes as you can. Different perspectives are incredibly important when it comes to research."

  Trillia's smile grew as Malor launched into a deeper conversation on magic research and theory. She could tell it was something he was truly passionate about. Amelia seemed happy to hug his arm and listen to him rant about the subject.