The next three days were all about getting ready.
Selene issued field equipnt from the annex’s supply room — reinforced uniforms with energy-woven fabric, compact supply packs, ergency signal beacons, and small vials of purification solution for filtering corrupted water. Everything was practical, lightweight, and designed for people who might need to run at short notice. Ren appreciated that. Running at short notice was sothing he had experience with.
The group trained differently now. Instead of formation-grid drills, Selene had them running field exercises in the school’s outdoor training grounds: navigation without maps, energy filtration under simulated corruption, basic field first aid, and survival camping. It was less polished than the assessnt drills, ssier, more physical. Cassian thrived. Iris adapted. Kaelen treated it like an inconvenience he was too disciplined to complain about.
— • —
In the evenings, Ren ran OPTIMIZE on everything he could think of.
OPTIMIZE.
Target: Field technique package — corruption-zone deploynt.
Adjustnts applied: Energy filtration cycling adapted for partial-channel operation. Combat techniques re-tuned for uneven terrain and restricted visibility. SCAN paraters expanded to include corrupted biological materials and unstable energy pockets. Root-channel defense protocol added for accidental corruption exposure.
Estimated field readiness: high. Recomnd maintaining flexible output — controlled conditions unlikely.
’Controlled conditions unlikely,’ Ren thought. ’The System has a talent for understatent.’
He also spent ti studying the data on corruption-zone materials that was available in the school’s library. Most of it was general — classifications of corrupted plant species, energy density charts, basic harvesting protocols. But buried in the academic language were a few references to rare mutations that only occurred in high-energy corruption zones: plants that had absorbed so much trial energy they had developed properties close to genuine Rare Substances. The kind of materials a Bloodline Plant Lord’s seed could absorb and use for stage advancent.
He made a ntal note of every one.
— • —
On the fourth day, Selene brought soone new to Room 3-C.
The first thing Ren noticed was the cat.
It was sitting on the newcor’s shoulder — a sleek, dark-furred animal about the size of a large dog, which should have made it impossible to carry on a shoulder but apparently nobody had told the cat that. Its fur was black, but not a normal black. It seed to shift at the edges, as if the outline of the animal was slightly out of sync with the rest of the room. When it turned its head, Ren caught a flash of pale violet eyes that looked at him, through him, and past him in about half a second.
The person carrying the cat was a girl about their age, slim and sharp-featured, with short dark hair and an expression that was friendly in a careful, asured way — the kind of friendly that ca from soone who was very good at watching people and had learned to smile while doing it.
"This is Vesper Wren," Selene said. "She’s a Beast Tar affiliated with the Beast Tar Consortium. She’ll be joining us as a field support specialist for the corruption-zone deploynt."
Vesper gave the room a small wave. The cat on her shoulder did not wave. It stared at each person in the room, one by one, like it was taking attendance.
"Hi," Vesper said. "That’s Mistwhisker. She doesn’t bite unless you’re interesting."
Cassian leaned toward Ren. "Is that a void-cat?" he whispered.
"Yeah," Ren said. He’d read about them. Ancient Void-Cats were rare bonded beasts capable of partial-phase invisibility — they could step partly out of normal space, making them nearly impossible to track. Beast Tars who bonded with one usually worked as scouts or trackers, because there wasn’t much a void-cat couldn’t find if it decided to look.
"Is the cat bigger than her?" Cassian whispered.
"Almost."
— • —
Selene explained Vesper’s role briefly. She wasn’t a Bloodline Plant Lord — her cultivation was Bloodline-pathway based, separate from the Beast Tar profession-talent. In the field, she would handle scouting, tracking, and early threat detection. Mistwhisker could sense energy signatures from a distance that most cultivators couldn’t match, including corrupted energy patterns that might be invisible to normal perception.
"She sees what you can’t," Selene said simply. "In a corruption zone, that’s the difference between walking into an ambush and walking around one."
The group accepted this with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Yuelan looked at Mistwhisker with open interest. Iris studied Vesper the way she studied everyone — cataloguing, filing, reserving judgnt. Kaelen glanced at the cat once and went back to his own preparation. Lyra smiled at Vesper with the sa warmth she gave everyone, and Mistwhisker’s violet eyes lingered on her for a mont longer than the others.
During the break, Vesper sat down near Ren’s section of the room. Mistwhisker hopped off her shoulder and settled on the desk, her tail curling around her paws. Up close, the cat was even stranger — her fur shifted like shadows moving across water, and her edges seed to blur if you didn’t look directly at her.
"You’re Valis," Vesper said. It wasn’t a question.
"Ren."
"Vesper." She tilted her head, studying him with the sa careful attention her cat used. "You’re very calm for soone who’s about to walk into a corruption zone for the first ti."
"Who says it’s my first ti in a dangerous place?"
Vesper’s eyebrows rose slightly. Then she smiled — a small, sharp smile that said interesting without using the word.
"Mistwhisker likes you," she said. "She doesn’t like most people."
Ren looked at the void-cat. The void-cat looked back at him with those pale violet eyes, and for a mont he had the uncomfortable feeling that it was reading sothing about him that he hadn’t agreed to show.
Kaia stirred. A faint, curious pulse. As if she had noticed the cat noticing them.
"Good cat," Ren said carefully.
Mistwhisker blinked once, slowly, the way cats do when they’ve decided you’re acceptable. Then she turned away and started cleaning her paw.
Vesper laughed quietly. "That’s the highest complint she gives. You should feel honored."
"I’ll try to live up to it."
— • —
That evening, Ren packed his field bag at ho and checked his equipnt one more ti. Three more days until deploynt. The Greymist Stretch was waiting — corrupted forest, mutated beasts, unstable energy, and sowhere inside it, the materials he needed to push toward Sprout.
He had a team now. A real one. Seven Bloodline Plant Lords, a Beast Tar with a void-cat that could see through walls, and a Peak Stage 4 instructor who was watching him for reasons she wouldn’t fully explain.
It was, by any reasonable asure, more backup than he had ever had in either life.
He just hoped it would be enough.
— • —
Author’s Note: Vesper Wren and Mistwhisker join the team — a void-cat that sees what others can’t and a Beast Tar who asks questions that are never quite the questions she’s really asking. Eira Vale arrives next Chapter. Thanks for reading!
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