"We never actually finished stripping this place," John said, standing at the edge of the crystalline treeline with his hands on his hips. "We swallowed the whole structure and called it a day. There’s still a fortune sitting in these branches."
The swallowed Mythical-rank secret realm that became part of Monster Paradise.
"So we’re going shopping," Yuna said, cracking her knuckles. "In a magic forest we already own."
"Basically," John said. "Everyone grab a section. Anything that hums, glows, or bleeds light when you touch it goes in the storage ring."
Alfred took off first, crashing through the underbrush with his nose low, and within minutes he’d rooted out a cluster of dense, violet-veined fruit hanging from a spiraled trunk. Pymon handled the canopy, plucking anything glowing gold from branches too high for the others to reach, while Rexion coiled along the riverbanks of light, sniffing out veins of ore buried just beneath the surface.
Terravax simply planted himself in the middle of the densest cluster of trees and let Levi’s void-threads do the actual picking, weaving between branches with a patience none of the others bothered with.
"You’re supposed to help, big guy," Jibril teased, poking his shell as she passed with an armful of shimmering ore.
Terravax rumbled something that sounded like a shrug and didn’t move an inch.
"You know," Yuna said, tossing a handful of glowing berries into her storage ring, "for a place we technically own, this forest is doing a lot of work to make me earn it."
"That’s usually how ownership works," Azelis said.
"Boo. I liked it better when things were just handed to us."
"When has that ever once happened to you," Jibril called from three trees over, and Yuna threw a berry at her on principle.
...
By midafternoon the harvest had turned into something closer to a competition, Yuna and Chronavael racing to see who could clear a row of trees faster, Azelis quietly outpacing both of them without seeming to try.
"That’s not fair," Yuna huffed, glaring at the neat, towering pile beside Azelis. "You’re not even breathing hard."
"I’m very fast," Azelis said, deadpan, and Vhastra let out something that might have been a laugh if crystalline cats could laugh.
Jibril worked her own row with Tidereign perched on her shoulder, calling out which branches held the richest veins before she’d even reached them, and Vaelirash swept low over the rivers of light, scooping loose motes of drifting energy into a woven basket she’d apparently decided was her job now.
John moved through all of it with a grin he couldn’t quite shake, watching his family turn a fortune in ancient resources into an afternoon of good-natured chaos.
By the time the light dimmed into evening, storage rings across the group sat heavier than any of them had expected, crystalline fruit and refined ore and jars of bottled river-light stacked in careful rows.
"That," Chuthulos said, surveying the haul with obvious satisfaction, "is a Mythical-rank fortune properly emptied. Well done, everyone."
...
Ythera’s little tower on the second island had grown a second floor by the time John delivered the first batch, shelves multiplying along walls that seemed to expand just enough to hold whatever new equipment she’d conjured that day.
Becky met them at the door, dusted head to mandible in fine golden pollen, practically vibrating with excitement.
"Becky sorted everything already," she announced proudly. "Fruit by potency, ore by attribute, river-light by clarity. Ythera said Becky has good instincts."
"Excellent instincts," Ythera agreed, emerging from the back with sleeves rolled up and both hands stained faintly violet. "Better than most Tamers I’ve watched cross this crater over the centuries, if I’m honest."
Becky’s whole body seemed to glow brighter at that.
John set the last of the haul down on the worktable, watching Ythera’s eyes move over it with the same slow, appraising patience she’d once studied him with in her own domain.
"This is more than enough," she said. "Give me two days. I want to do this properly, not rushed."
"Take three if you need it," John said. "Nobody’s dying of impatience here."
"Speak for yourself," Yuna called from the doorway, already halfway back outside to organize a football match before dinner.
...
The two days that followed settled into something John hadn’t realized he’d been missing, ordinary in a way that felt almost strange after weeks of ancient monsters and imperial death squads.
Mornings meant sparring. Jibril and Azelis squared off first on the second day, Chronoshard Fang humming against Shadow Ink in a match that ended with Jibril flat on her back and Azelis grinning down at her, entirely too pleased with herself.
"Rematch," Jibril said, already scrambling up.
"You said that the last four times."
"I’ll be right eventually."
Yuna’s turn came next, and she immediately activated the Sixfold Halo’s Full Bloom before John had even finished explaining the rules, spending the entire match narrating everyone’s next move half a second before they made it, which everyone found deeply unfair and John found deeply hilarious.
"That’s cheating," Azelis said, parrying a strike she’d clearly seen coming from a mile away thanks to Yuna’s own commentary.
"It’s not cheating if I tell you I’m about to cheat," Yuna said cheerfully.
John took a turn against Jibril before lunch, mostly because she wouldn’t stop asking, and spent most of the match holding back just enough to make it interesting without making it obvious.
"You’re going easy on me," Jibril accused, catching her breath after their third exchange.
"I’m going exactly as hard as someone should against a girl holding a blade that undoes death," John said. "Forgive me for being careful."
"That’s not a real excuse."
"It’s the only one I’ve got," John said, and let her land the next hit clean, grinning the whole way down onto the grass.
Afternoons belonged to the Monsters. A full-scale football match broke out on the first island, Alfred playing goalkeeper with far more enthusiasm than skill, Emberlune scoring three goals purely through illusion trickery that the referees, all volunteer Prisoner-team veterans, refused to allow but couldn’t quite prove.
"That wasn’t even the real ball!" someone shouted.
"Prove it," Emberlune said sweetly, nine tails swishing.
Terravax, appointed permanent and immovable defense, simply stood in front of the goal and let every shot bounce off his shell, occasionally rumbling with something that might have been the closest a giant turtle could come to smug satisfaction.
Levi’s void-threads got banned from the match entirely after the second goal, mostly because nobody could prove she was cheating but everyone was fairly certain she was. Rexion refused to play at all and instead narrated the whole match from a branch overhead in a booming, dramatic voice that the Prisoner team found significantly more entertaining than the actual football.
"AND HE SHOOTS," Rexion bellowed as Alfred flubbed an easy save entirely, ball rolling gently between his front paws into the goal. "A DEVASTATING DEFEAT FOR THE HOME TEAM."
"I wasn’t ready," Alfred grumbled.
"THE GOALKEEPER OFFERS NO EXCUSE."
John spent both evenings exactly where he wanted to be, sitting with his back against Alfred’s flank, watching his family be ridiculous together and feeling something settle in his chest that no amount of power ever quite managed to touch.
...
Breakfast on the second morning was a quiet, easy affair, the kind John had learned not to take for granted anymore. Jibril burned the eggs slightly and blamed the pan. Yuna ate three servings and denied all of it. Azelis said nothing and simply looked amused, the way she always did when she was happiest and didn’t feel like announcing it.
...
On the evening of the second day, Ythera called them all back to the tower, and the moment John stepped through the door, he understood why she’d wanted the extra time.
Row after row of small, dense pills sat cooling on trays, each one glowing faint gold at the center, humming with the same patient weight her own gems had carried.
"These," she said, "will not simply heal you. They’ll push your bodies past whatever wall is currently holding them back, provided the wall was ready to fall anyway. I refined them from the Hollow’s own resources, concentrated centuries of stored potency into something small enough to swallow."
"How many can we make?" John asked.
"Enough," Ythera said, "for every Monster and every one of you currently sitting at peak Legendary-rank. Not for the ones already past it. They don’t need this, and giving it to them would be wasted potency."
That ruled out Vaelirash, Vhastra, and herself, all already comfortably Calamity-rank, and left everyone else standing in a loose, expectant circle.
"Well," John said, grinning. "Guess it’s everyone else’s turn to catch up."
...
Alfred went first, swallowing his pill whole without hesitation, and for a long moment nothing happened at all. Then gold light bled up through his fur in slow, spreading veins, and he threw his head back and howled as the transformation took hold.
[Alfred — Ruinmaw Tyrant of the Black Stars]
[Rank: Mythical, peak]
[Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000]
[Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
One by one, the rest of John’s original seven followed, Pymon shrieking loud enough to rattle the tower’s windows, Rexion’s scales rippling through three new colors at once, Terravax letting out a rumble so deep it shook the ground beneath everyone’s feet.
[Pymon — Heavenpiercer Aurustrax Skylord] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Rexion — Runeheart Imperian Embercreast Draconis] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Levi — Nihilweaver Dreadlace Matriarch] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Terravax — Verdant Crown Turtle] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Chronavael — Temporal Flowmon Stag] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Noctelith — Syrrakhel Doomreign Noctelith] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
Yuna went next, laughing through the process like it tickled, Emberlune’s nine tails multiplying into something that looked briefly like fifteen before settling back down.
[Yuna] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Emberlune] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
Azelis took hers in careful, measured silence, and Volkia’s mechanical wings unfolded an entire second layer of plating that hadn’t been there a moment before.
[Azelis] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Volkia] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
Jibril went last, and Tidereign let out a scream of pure delight as storm-feathers along his wings sharpened into something closer to blades.
[Jibril] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
[Tidereign] [Rank: Mythical, peak] [Strength: 10,000 | Defense: 10,000 | Speed: 10,000] [Legend Spark: 50,000 / 50,000]
For a long moment, nobody spoke, the whole tower humming with residual gold light and the sound of everyone’s breathing settling back to normal.
"Well," Yuna finally said, flexing a hand that felt entirely too strong now, "I could probably punch a mountain."
"Please don’t," John said, grinning.
Becky clapped four small legs together in delight from the doorway, and Ythera watched the whole scene with something warm and satisfied settled behind her eyes, the closest thing to pride John had seen on her since she’d first stepped out of her own domain.
...
They were still celebrating, half the group testing new reflexes against the tower’s outer wall, when Chuthulos’s voice cut through the noise, sharp enough that everyone froze mid-motion.
"Brother John. Something just crossed into the Godsgrave Expanse’s outer boundary. Something large, and it isn’t Dranvok."