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Reeni said, "Oh sure. We can increase production, but I heard you have Meaty, and Impregnate."" You want them in a bull?" Mark asked.

"Addavein said you might."" We do! And we have just the one for it. His name is Chad, and all the ladies already love him." Mark soon stood beside a 3 ton bull that was one of the most calm monster bulls Mark had ever seen. He was dappled grey and black, and he wagged his tail as he sniffled at Reeni, licking her hair a little before Reeni managed to pull an apple from her pocket. Chad zeroed in on that apple, opening a mouth full of teeth and then chowing down as Reeni chuckled, patting his face."

Calm for a monster," Mark said, full of surprise." He's a really good bull. Already has Healthy Body, too," Reeni said, holding the side of Chad's giant face, beside his lower fangs. Reeni did something to Chad, and Chad kinda huffed, finishing off his apple, his eyes going softer and then closing. Chad's vector folded inward as he slept standing up. Reeni held her hand to his face, saying, "He's ready." Mark proceeded.

Afterward, Mark and Reeni stood on the top of the railing, overlooking the breeding yard from inside an invisible box. Chad was waking up, but all the ladies were already sniffling around him. Soon, the bull got to doing bull stuff with the ladies. As he moved, Mark watched as he gained another ton of weight, turning truly meaty. The ladies seemed to love it, and much mooing was had.

They were monster cows, too, so they were kinda violent sometimes, but mostly the cows got pregnant and had babies within minutes, and those calves matured within hours instead of months, and then those cattle went off for processing. Mark only watched for 20 minutes; he didn't need to see the whole process since he had already seen it once. It was basically the same order of events as before but now Reeni had doubled her number of cow callers and catchers on the walls, inside their own invisible boxes.

They were preparing to Taunt the fresh calves away from their mothers at the right time, right before they started fighting, and to put them into the growing lots with more food and get them to full size, as per normal operation. Reeni was smiling wide the whole time they watched Chad and the ladies do their thing. She saw something amazing. Mark didn't see anything truly different besides the size of Chad. Mark asked, "So… Is this normal? What changed?" Reeni smiled softly, saying, "This is amazing, Mark.

This is…" She cut herself off and explained, "Okay. From a basic standpoint of breeding cattle, this is fantastic. Look at him go! I need to hire even more people. We'll have 300 cattle per day for you to process, easy. Chad is passing on a lot of his Skills too. Look at those cows there, at their big bellies. That's bigger than normal. Those calves are at least Meaty and probably Healthy Body and maybe even Impregnate if they're male, or Breeder if they're female." He's passing on so many Skills to his children.

When you cull them, take some Impregnates and keep them around. Meaty, too. Just a few! They're useful in case we ever lose Chad as stock, and they're going to be useful for other farming practices, too. Chickens and pigs. All of that." But more than that… This little experiment is showing that if you want to harvest Skills from some kinds of monsters, we can do that. Impregnate on a True Brawny bull and you could have all the True Brawnies you could ever want."

"… Holy fucking…" Mark's thoughts went to the war, and then to how difficult it would be to keep around True Brawny cows at all, to… to a lot. Too much to think about. Mark breathed out, "Wow."" Wow!" Reeni agreed, giggling. Mark came down from the momentary high, focusing on the big issue, saying, "True Brawny cows would be horrific."" Absolutely, I agree," Reeni said, "Lots of difficult parts to figure out, from enclosures to everything else, but the possibility is there."

She moved on, "Something to think about— Oh! There's the first birth." They both stopped and watched as a normal-sized cow gave birth to a mostly-normal calf that began standing almost instantly, moving strongly, and then it suckled on the mother's udder for a minute before it bit her, and she kicked it away. The calf went to the feeders and started growing as it buried its head in the feed bucket." Oh wow, that's Meaty alright," Reeni said, sounding very happy, but also marginally worried.

Her eyes switched between new calf and Chad, still out there and still having fun with the ladies, as she pulled out a little walkie talkie, saying, "Catch #1, ready?"" Ready, ma'am!" said a guy who was kinda nervous. Another, stronger voice, said, "Loading double-tranqs into the gun." Reeni said, "Pull him early… now." Mark simply watched as the calf taunters did their thing, suddenly tapping at the mind of the new calf and making it rear up.

The wall at Catch #1 turned invisible, showing off the people who had taunted the cow. The calf went charging, hit the invisible-metal wall with a solid hit, got tranqed from above, and then the floor opened up and the calf went downstairs. Finally, the wall turned visible again, hiding the taunter and the tranquer. Catch #1 yelled in the talkies, "Whooo boy! He's a biggun! Cracked the wall!" Another guy said, "Auto-repairs are working. Wall is sealing." Reeni spoke in the comms, "Everyone load up double tranqs.

We proceed as normal." She cut the comms and told Mark, "Can you be a dear and ask Eliot to come by later today? We need to reinvent a few things." Mark called up Eliot right then and there." Yo yo yo?" Eliot asked." Got some cattle slaughterhouse issues that need solving with some of your Manipulation."" Priority?" Mark said, "In an hour."" I can do it in 20 minutes?" Reeni nodded. Mark said, "Sure! Thanks." Click.

Later, Mark started stripping Bindings out of cattle as Eliot refitted the breeding yard, the bulking yard, and the transport lines. Sure enough, like Reeni had predicted, Mark got a whole lot of Natural Meatys, a few Impregnates at about the same rate he got Breeders from the girls, and the rate of Healthy Body went up considerably. Instead of 1 Healthy Body every 2 cows, it was more like 4 Healthy Bodies every 5 cows. The rate of Healthy Body massively increased when both parents had it.

That evening, the first round of paladins came through the settlement, and sure enough it was 49 Chosen and 1 guy who had been an office manager at some church somewhere for the last 18 years. Mark didn't say anything about that. What he did say was a whole lot of 'Okay, hurry it up, people,' when they did a collective prayer beforehand and when too many people wanted to speak up, to 'just say one more thing about what they were thankful for'.

Mark enjoyed their joy, but he did not have time to wait for it to finish. No one had that kinda time right now. Mark had originally planned for 'this Skilling thing' to take up 3 hours per day, maybe.

Here it was a week after the Winter Ball Attack and Mark was spending 4 hours a day at the slaughterhouse, 3 hours Skilling for the Collective, Walaria wanted a whole bunch of her people Healthy Body'd since Mark was already doing all of that, and then Tulo Khava came in, asking Mark if he could add 25 people to the list, too." Bring 'em on!" Mark had said.

"Never would have thought Healthy Body would be such a damned game changer." And so, Mark spent three 16 hour days in a row, Skilling nothing but Healthy Body and getting almost nothing in return except a whole lot of experience. Meetings still happened, taking up even more of his time. Mark was going to meet with Aurora to discuss Skilling people in the settlement, but what he found in Aurora's office was Isoko standing to the side. Aurora said, "We'll do it another day, Mark."

Isoko pulled him out the door, saying, "You're taking a break! Let's go hunting."" Thank you thank you thank you."" It's still work!" Isoko said, grinning. She said in English, "We're hunting witch monsters."

"… Which monsters?" - - - -" OHHHH. Witch monsters. Well this is awesome! … but what makes them witch monsters? Just Natural Powers?" Mark had flown with Isoko south for about 15 minutes, to a place far beyond the normal hunting grounds of most people. About a year ago this place had been a mushroom forest, with a kaiju-sized mycelium mushroom below the surface that sprouted mushrooms everywhere above, changing the very biology of the land.

There used to be a mushroom-based ecology here, with mushroom trees and mushroom bushes and mushroom grasses. And then some of the Death mana of the Ethereal Turtle had fucked up the established ecology, followed by the goblins coming in and driving the kaiju shroom deeper into the crust. Perhaps, if it was just the Death mana and the goblins, then the kaiju shroom could have recovered. But then the Archmage Twins, Lancer and Buckler, had done even more damage.

The constant, monthly Gate Days had forced the weakened shroom underground. The mushroom kaiju was now fully hibernating, about 500 average meters below the surface, and the surface had fully regrown, as the Wilds were wont to do. But they had grown back wrong." I think I know what makes them witch-monsters," Mark said. It seemed, according to Mark's initial assessment based on visual clues, dreamsight, and Quark's analysis of the lands below, that the dream was very close to the surface, here, in this space.

Did all sleeping kaiju cause this kinda reaction? What about hibernating dragons? Mark would need to ask Addavein about that, because he would know." I don't get it myself," Isoko said, gesturing down below, "But it's easy to see that this place is unnatural… or rather, full of Natural-types of monsters, each contorting the world in their own ways."

There were mushrooms down there, but they were leftovers from the mycelium-kaiju's offshoots; weak things, growing alongside trees and underneath greenery, instead of out in the open and dominating everything. What dominated, instead, were giant, twisting trees that had no business looking like they did. They arced across the land, forming bridges between other trees. They grew thick as houses with deep holes in the bark for monsters to nest within like burrowing maggots.

A few scattered trees grew ramrod straight, white and shining and 50 meters tall, raising their pale boughs higher into the sky than all the other trees. Those white boughs and leaves formed perfect ovals of silver-greenery high above everything else. Those white trees mostly resembled the dream of the mushroom kaiju, for those tall trees scattered dust on the wind, like spores. And then there were the monsters. Mark was most interested in the monsters inside of the boughs of the tall, white trees.

The leaf dust there was scattering weirdly, a vector present inside of those swirls, prepared to attack anything that attacked it. It wasn't a Shaper-swirl, either; those were easy to recognize. Shaper swirls usually had vectors fully present inside whatever they were swirling. It took a skilled Shaper to only control part of whatever they were controlling. So this was not a Shaper swirl… but it could be? There was a guidance to the swirl patterns, but it was loose. Inexact.

And, that swirl was present all down the entire length of the 50 meter tall tree. The swirl pattern down the entire 50-ish meter length of the tree is what most told Mark that this was not a Shaper Power. It was a Natural Power, because it flowed near the tree, attacking anything near the tree. Small monsters usually didn't have ranges like that, and whatever was inside those silver-green boughs, hidden from sight and Unionsense, was certainly a small monster. A Natural Power that inherently protected a space…

Mark wanted Castellan. But at that same time, Mark killed his hopes for a Castellan, but… it wasn't Castellan, right. No way. Couldn't be. Down on the forest floor, in what small parts Quark and Mark could see of it, Quark painted a few dots into Mark's vision, linking up what he saw with what he knew from the quest boards of the settlement— of Dawncoast. Mark had called it 'the settlement' a few times since he had decided on the name, but he would get it right eventually. Just took some time. Anyway.

There were a bunch of interesting monsters here, and it was easy to tell where to go looking for them. Natural monsters always did something to their environment, changing something fundamentally about how this or that worked. Most of the time those changes were only visible in secondary effects, like with Mark and his Union of X and Y, shifting stuff out and bringing stuff back in. Hard to notice, really, unless you were in the effect.

Visible effects, though, were like those dust-swirling monsters who had turned their trees tall and powerful. Other secondary effects included a purple grove over there that was currently fighting against an orange-colored grove, the borders of the groves indistinct but there was a clear clash of orange and purple between the spaces. That was how you spotted Natural monsters duking out realities in the world, with each of them trying to impose their own way of thinking.

It was very possible that the orange and purple monsters were parent and child, each having the same Power but using it differently. Other such 'fighting areas' abounded, all throughout the former mushroom forest. Most notably, were the spaces where the mushrooms still grew, but which looked ephemeral.

That could be the result of former residents of the mushroom forest having survived the kaiju moving on, but which had yet to adjust their own Natural inclinations, which had evolved in the presence of the mushroom forest. So some mushroom-symbiosis Natural powers. Some things had clearly evolved and adapted to their new lands, though. There was a 'mushroom caller' kinda monster, right down below, looking like a roaming mat of mycelium.

It was probably a slime-variant, and Mark recognized its hunting patterns based on the carrion around it, even before Quark populated his vision with what the scouts had marked out. Where the slime-shroom roamed, slowly, it set up shop, producing spores that smelled like carrion. Monsters would go to the shroom and try to eat it, because it looked like some dead meat, and then the slime would spray spores at the monster and weaken it enough to eat it, slowly.

Or maybe the slime would just grow the mushrooms on the monster directly; Mark didn't know. It was a top predator of this part of the forest. Suspected Power: Shroombiosis.

Mark would have thought the slime would have had a Body Power for a whole bunch of reasons, primarily because this place was full of Natural Powers and Body Powers ate those things rather easily, and this was a slime, so it could survive any counterattacks rather well (since Natural Powers rather handedly handled Body Powers, in turn), but the scans had outed the truth of the creature.

It was Naturally-aligned on the Power Hex, so it was absolutely a Natural Power, according to the large-ish scanner that Isoko had brought along. The full-spectrum, high-quality scanner that Eliot had made, and that Isoko held in her platinum hands, was two geodesic spheres each about 50 centimeters across on opposite ends of a long metal rod. It looked like a giant, disco-adorned barbell. Isoko had a visor on that let her see the readout from the scanner, while Mark had Quark to do the same.

Isoko said, "I got targets on the things in the trees and that bear up that way."" A bear?" Mark asked, looking forward. He didn't sense what Isoko was sensing, but now that Mark was looking, Quark picked out the target underneath the trees. It was a yellow dot below a field of green, and that was it.

"Ah. Out of my range." Isoko grinned, the sky shimmering overhead with platinum flashes.

"I still got something better than you!"" Thank the gods, right?" Mark teased." Thank the gods!" Isoko said, smiling brightly, looking like a reflection of the world all around. She asked, "Which ones first?"" Do we have an actual target list?"" A small one, but there are a ton of Natural monsters here. I do have a list of the ones that are actually dangerous, though? We can go through that." Mark rolled his eyes at Isoko, who was handling him with soft gloves.

Mark said, "Thank you very much for pulling me out of that back there, Isoko. I needed a refill and a break, and I knew I wasn't going to get it normally. BUT! I'm pretty sure Aurora has an actual list. I was going in there to talk to her about all of that… well. Really just to start Healthy Body'ing people from Dawncoast. So give me the list!" Isoko beamed with teasing joy, saying, "The list came from Reeni, Pearl, Amy, and Uva, by way of Aurora. They wanna make more witches for Dawncoast. A full Grand Coven."

"… Why couldn't they just tell me that?" Mark asked, feeling kinda hurt. He knew he was busy, but… that was serious, right? Isoko shrugged.

"I think they just gave an update to Aurora about future plans and desires and she decided to make it happen now."" Oh," Mark said, "Okay. That's not that bad, then. Aurora is just making it happen now. Well that's fine?" Isoko said, "The bear over there has something like 'Easy Life'. Jury is out on what it can do, exactly, only that it's got something good. It's not the biggest or strongest monster out there, but nothing seems to hurt it for too long and nothing seems to kill it at all.

Food grows where it's looking for food. That sort of thing. And then there are those birds in those white trees." She pointed at the nearest white tree, saying, "That's not Castellan, but damned if everyone is hoping it is." Mark snorted. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Isoko continued, "And shrooms are quite effective against trees, so there's some hope that you can grab some mushroom-mancer stuff from here.

Lots of shroom stuff to choose from down there." Mark nodded, looking around… And then he set his sight on that nearest white tree with the swirling dust around it. He looked down at the canopy, to where the dust swirled against nearby trees, turning those trees away or… something. Mark wasn't sure. Welp! Time to find out." Going for the white tree first."" I'm on backup," Isoko said, connecting to Mark with a Union of Good and Bad, the wind flowing for him.

"Have fun!" Mark loved his job. Mark launched at the white tree— The tree disappeared to his senses; sight, sound, Unionsense, everything. Mark slowed down and hovered in the middle of the cleared space where the tree had been. The Wilds down below were cleared in about a 5 meter radius from the base of the tree, and the air seemed cooler here, but if there were roots and branches anywhere near Mark, then they were too well-hidden to recognize. A Mind effect?

But Mark was PL 98 in Mind and with a Clean House ritual going on, so… Mark asked, "Quark? Can you see it?"" I see nothing, sir." Mark called to Isoko on their comms, "You see it?" With a hint of mirth in her voice, Isoko said, "Nope! Try the bear!"

"… I think she's enjoying this, Quark." Isoko laughed a little. Quark said, "I believe you are right, sir. And also, the bear is over there." An arrow appeared in Mark's vision, along with a distance readout of 813 meters. … Mark spun up his rotor and headed that way. Much to his chagrin, the white tree reappeared once Mark got 75 meters away. Mark kept going toward the bear. Soon, Mark spotted the bear down below in the middle of a rather pleasant glade. The bear looked rather normal.

Big, black, and with big claws. Not a monster bear at all. It was currently picking off big black berries from a large bush of them, purple juice all over its brown snout. Now that it was inside of Mark's range, Mark saw that it was doing something funny to its surroundings, its vector everywhere, like it was standing in the middle of its own reality of how things should be." Holy shit," Mark said, "That's… that's not Reality Manipulation, is it?""

The scanner says Natural," Isoko responded, hovering high overhead, barbell scanner in her platinum grip.

"A reality warper might show up like that, though. No real way to tell until you hit it." Mark descended through the trees, landing beside… The glade was empty? Mark looked around. There was the big black berry bush and the comfortable glade, and the remnants of berries all over the ground, but no bear. To Mark's Unionsense, the bear was about 20 meters in that direction, past a big tree. It was right out of sight. … Either it had moved very, very fast, or else something else had happened.

Mark suspected the second possibility more than the first because the bear was not stressed at all, and was, in fact, moving rather sedately toward its next meal. … Mark walked around the tree. The bear was eating from a red berry bush, now, its Power thrumming into what had been a small bush and which now grew and grew and grew. The red berry bush became something to match the bear for size, with giant red berries hanging in groups of three or four among big, shiny green leaves. … Mark walked toward the bear.

The bear, which was easily in the 6 to 7 ton range and standing at 4 meters tall at the shoulder, looked at Mark, and then it went back to eating red berries, getting red all over its snout. Mark raised a rotor blade, preparing to secure the beast so it didn't thrash while taking its Binding, but… Something stopped him. Not physically, but emotionally. Mark did not want to hurt this monster at all, and the monster certainly wasn't trying to hurt Mark, so… Mark didn't hurt the bear.

He put his rotor back down and sent a message to Isoko, "So it's not directly affecting me, but I think it's affecting my Union or astral body, or something. There's a mental effect, for sure, because it's making me not want to fight it."" Holy shit, you can actually interact with it?" Isoko asked, surprised. She was directly overhead, kinda far, but still within sight.

"It doesn't let people get near it." Mark regarded the bear and its vector as it chowed down on red berries. Maybe… Mark asked, "I think it knows I'm here for its Power, but it wants more in return than what I take from it? Wow, this is strong. I am feeling compelled to do exactly that?" Mark asked both Quark and Isoko, "Should I?"" Fuck if I know. It's supposed to have 'Easy Life' and we want that for Dawncoast. We want that A LOT." Isoko added, "No one has been able to hurt it yet, though.

Thought maybe you could." Mark nodded a little as he Unioned with the world around the bear, bringing in the Good and dispelling the Bad, focusing on the berry bush. The bush suddenly lurched to life, expanding and expanding, dripping with giant red berries that filled with small, inner lights. They glowed, or maybe they just shimmered brightly in the afternoon sun. Hard to say. The bear was unsure about this, but he ate the bigger berries anyway, chomping down on two at a time.

Mark got the distinct impression that this was not enough." Does it hurt people?" Mark asked." Yes, it does hurt people when they try to hurt it. But what are you thinking?" Isoko asked." We just need it in Dawncoast, and it's obviously very powerful as-is."" It teleports around when you get close enough to it, and it's survived all the kaiju attacks in the area, so… You tell me."" Probably not, then." Mark regarded the bear.

Mark told the bear, "If you teleport away at the first sign of danger, then I can't make a home for you at Dawncoast… though I kinda want to—" Mark had a thought.

"Would you abandon your children at Dawncoast—" The bear paused and glared at Mark.

"— because I can keep you and your kids safe at Dawncoast. All the berries and good stuff that a bear could ever want. Maybe a little nature reserve? But if you would abandon your kids in the case of a kaiju attack, then this isn't going to work anyway." The bear turned toward Mark— and it kept turning, and turning and then it became a shadow that was not there anymore. Its vector was now 40 meters distant, behind some trees and briers.

Mark walked toward the bear again, hopping over some logs and ducking under a branch, and though some sort of spider dropped on him from above Mark easily dispatched the spider, got the Natural Power Web Control from it, which was actually quite good when Mark thought about it for a second, and then he easily caught up to the bear. The bear huffed at Mark and then turned away, turning and turning and turning again, before it vanished. It reappeared 30 meters away this time.

Mark walked toward the bear again, and this time a hypnotic toad appeared on a stump directly in the path, flashing colors and attacking Mark's existence directly. The world shimmered and faded, and Mark latched right back at the toad. Soon, Mark extracted the toad's Natural Power from it, leaving the toad alive and unable to do much but stand there on the stump, looking rather colorful. A bird came out of nowhere (or maybe it was just a speedster bird) and grabbed the toad, eating it in one gulp.

It was only when the bird had passed that Mark imagined he should have nabbed the bird, too. That thing had obviously had some speedster Power, for sure. Oh well. The toad had given him Beautiful Existence, Natural. Mark caught up to the bear, and said, "Those are some neat Powers I'm taking from whatever you throw at me. What's next?" The bear ignored him and kept walking in the sunshine, the trees themselves seeming to bend out of the way, though they never visibly did so.

The bear simply walked in a path that existed as the bear walked it, but which hadn't existed before, but also the bear didn't seem to be making the path itself, at all. It was weird. It might have been Reality Manipulation, but Mark was pretty sure it wasn't. Isoko asked, "What'd you get?"" The spider was an ambush Natural monster, with Web Control. It's not a Shaper Power, so it's broad as heck. Maybe a techie in Command would want it?

The toad had Beautiful Existence and then some speedster bird came through and ate it, once it no longer had that Power." Mark added, "Missed the bird, but Beautiful Existence absolutely seems like a Witch Power."" The bird is still there, about a kilometer away on the branches of a tall tree. Its vector is kinda fucked up right now. Kinda… druggy? Hard to tell."" Grab that bird for me, Isoko."

The bear suddenly turned at Mark, showing teeth, rumbling like an avalanche getting ready to tumble down a mountain directly on top of Mark. Mark glared right back at the bear, and said, "Belay that request, Isoko."

"… You sure? I already picked it up?"" Heal it and set it back down somewhere, or let it fly away. Tell me when you get it done." Isoko said, "Sure." The bear looked at Mark. Mark looked at the bear. And then Isoko said, "That bird is super gone now. No idea where it went." The bear huffed and then kept walking. Smart bear. Mark walked with the bear, telling it, "I can give you another Power in exchange for Easy Life." The bear huffed.

Mark threw the gauntlet, saying, "You better give me something useful because I'm out here trying to save my entire world from an evil tree, and I will kill you to get what I want. Or, I could leave you with a different Power." The bear turned and growled at Mark, showing fangs, the red on its snout looking almost like blood. Mark was done playing. He glared right back at the bear, rumbling, "Try me." Mark did not blink. The bear regarded Mark, and then it found him inadequate.

It simply turned translucent, then vanished, shadows flickering into the light.

"… Completely gone?" Mark asked, because he wasn't able to sense it anywhere at all.

"Isoko? The bear?"" I'm checking!" Isoko said, vector turning a little frantic and directed. She was probably poking at her scanner barbell. Mark waited. Isoko said, "Gone! I can't find it anywhere, and I can't sense its distinct vector anywhere, either… Maybe it will come back?"" Doubtful… Maybe I should have just attacked it anyway." Mark lifted his rotor overhead, prepared to catch Isoko's wind, but he paused. Normally, he would have just ignored what he saw, but not in this case.

A small black mushroom, about a handspan across, grew where the bear had been, and it had a vector. A lot of things had vectors in the wilds, though. But this mushroom had not been there before. And without shifting its vector at all, the mushroom kinda… turned a little, like its parent had turned when it went teleporting, and now the mushroom was a small black bear. A cub. It was not the same bear at all, and it didn't even look like a normal bear. It was too small. It would fit in Mark's palm if he picked it up.

And then it looked at Mark with watery, small eyes, and it whined. It was the tiniest, cutest squeak. It wanted food, and a lot of it. Mark did a union of Sustenance and Deprivation, guiding nutrition into the tiny bear and linking it with all the world outside of itself. The bear whined for a moment longer as the wilds grew strong and tall, the sunlight slowly fading as greenery came together overhead. As the forest closed over, the light fading on the tiny bear, the bear reached full satiation.

With a tiny little squeak, the tiny bear laid down on the ground, in the quiet dark, and the wilds went to sleep with it. Mark was pretty sure that absolutely nothing bad would ever happen to this bear as it slept, right there in the open, among the grasses, and wasn't that amazing.

"… I want to keep it. Reeni had it on her lists, right?"" What?" Isoko asked, through some static in the comms.

"Didn't catch that?" Quark said, "Sir, our connection is being quieted." That would be why Mark imagined that nothing would ever happen to the sleeping bear; the world had turned away from him. The loss of radio signals was just one such indication of that turn. Mark was still here, though. Mark gathered up the tiny bear along with a good meter of soil and its surroundings, wrapping the bear in a sphere of adamantium, saying, "We're taking this one home."

Mark threw a rotor into the sky overhead, churning the greenery, escaping into the sky with a little bit of help from Isoko, and said, "That's enough hunting for today. Let's get this little guy back to Reeni. She'll know what to do with him." Isoko was all, "… Okay? Sure? What happened down there?"" No idea!"" What about the white trees?"" I'll come back later for a few of them. See if I can figure them out."

"… Okay! Sure." Isoko eyed the black sphere with Mark.

"So a baby mushroom bear?"" No idea!" - - Mark stood beside Reeni in a calm grove of Dawncoast, located outside of the farms. Mark had planted the baby bear onto the ground and then he opened up the adamantium sphere. The bear had been nestled into a bunch of overgrown grasses, but now, when the sun touched it again, it woke and whined for food. Mark fed it again, and soon the world closed over it again, the nearby trees growing overhead, shrouding the newly-10-kilo baby black bear in shadows.

It slept soundly in the grass. Reeni was full of wonder as she said, "It's not an Easy Bear at all. I had sent you out there for an Easy Bear. The Skill they have is An Easy Life. This is so much more than that. This is a Good Bear, Mark. A Good Bear and it's too young to teleport. It'll grow fast, though… Gosh. You go decades with nothing happening, and then suddenly it's everything all at the same time."" So a Good Bear that can't teleport?" Mark asked, slightly enthusiastic.

"That's good, right?"" It's a good omen for Dawncoast, for sure. We can't keep it and we can't kill it and if you can't take out its Binding then… then we just have to live with it."" I could take its Binding, but that seemed like a really bad idea." Reeni was conflicted for a moment, and then she said, "I don't know what would happen if you managed that, but I do know that when someone kills or tries to contain a Good Bear they turn into a Bad Bear. That lady that came in with Misfortune Manipulation? Ha!

Nothing compared to a Bad Bear." Mark was both worried and intrigued as he asked, "So is this a good idea? This Good Bear? Or should I bring it back to the forest?"" We'll feed it and keep it safe enough, and when it wants to move on it will. Maybe it'll come back sometimes if we keep the space good enough for it to return." Reeni looked at Mark, and said, "This is actually a really good witch familiar.

If any of the current coven of Dawncost get it I will be surprised, but I'll put a feeler out to some druids I know. Even if they can't Familiarize with it, they can still take care of it. It's good practice." Mark grinned.

"Good." He walked away, saying, "I'm heading back for some of those white tree monsters. Gonna try some Ethereal/Adamant." Reeni nodded, waving slightly, not really saying anything. Her focus was on the tiny, sleeping, baby bear. - - Mark hovered triumphant just outside of the canopy of a white tree. A tiny, kinda-translucent bird squeaked furiously at him from the canopy. It had been ethereal and untouchable, but Mark had disrupted it fully.

Just took a bit of slamming it with a Union of Ethereal and Adamant to knock it back into this reality. And now Mark had a copy of the Natural Power, Ethereality. Mark told the bird, "Yes yes, I know. You hate me. But you bastards hunt these lands and have almost killed several humans who tried hunting here, so fuck you, too. No regrets!" Mark went and got a few more Etherealitys from other birds of the same type, but he did not get all of them.

The birds were kinda native to this land and flourishing, and Mark might want more Etherealitys later. Who knew! It was a Natural Power, with a monster-PL of 85. So pretty strong. Grey Phantom of Memphi, before he had revealed himself as a Cultist of Thrashtalon, had had something like Ethereality as his main Power. Grey Phantom had needed Thrashtalon to Wild him to higher strength, though.

Mark had just needed to hunt some birds, and now he could make a bunch of people as strong, as fast, and as infiltrative as Grey Phantom.