After leaving Beril’s house, Shiro made her way back to the base of the tower.

  Arriving at the base, she looked up at the top and narrowed her eyes.

  With the information of the past attempts playing in her mind, she furrowed her brows.

  ’The first thing the person did was offer the land large amounts of nutrients in the form of Liquified Essence. However, I don’t have this so I need to find a substitute.’ She thought to herself while thinking of what she could do.

  Remembering that there should be a dryad in most forests, Shiro wondered where the dryad of this forest was.

  Thinking about it for a moment, Shiro flew out of the city.

  Once she was clear, she sat down on a branch and wondered if the spirits would arrive if she spread her aura out.

  Focusing her power around her, a gentle current started to blow through the forest.

  While she was focusing on spreading her aura, a few curious orbs of light flickered nearby but didn’t make a single move.

  Noticing their presence, Shiro didn’t do anything since they’d approach her once they felt comfortable enough.

  After a while, more and more orbs of light started to appear. Suddenly, a rustling sound could be heard as a young girl popped her head up from the bushes.

  She had scarlet hair and a pair of aqua blue eyes.

  "Ah so it was you!" She exclaimed in a hushed voice.

  Looking around with wariness, the young girl dashed towards Shiro at impressive speeds.

  Stopping her stream of power, Shiro looked at the young girl with confusion.

  "Follow me." She placed her finger over her lips before tugging at Shiro’s sleeve.

  Nodding her head, Shiro followed the girl and ran deeper into the forest. While they were running, Shiro noticed that the forest started to look a little different from her mental map and understood that it was a situation similar to what had happened the first time she had met the dryad along with the Minotaur. This was a private space that was somewhat detached from reality.

  Glancing around her one last time, the girl sighed in relief.

  "What were you doing releasing your power like that? Do you want people capture you?" The girl berated as Shiro tilted her head.

  "Pardon?"

  "You’re a humanoid spirit aren’t you? So shouldn’t you know not to do that since it’s dangerous?" The girl sighed.

  "I’m lost here. Who are you?"

  "I’m a humanoid spirit like you. I received word from the younger wind spirit that there was a crazy lady making her presence known to the monsters so I rushed here as soon as I can before the monsters got you." The girl sighed.

  "Where’re your friends? I haven’t seen you around so you’re not part of the other spirits. You must have come from afar right? Why did you release your aura like that?" The girl asked.

  "Ah I was looking for the dryad. Do you happen to know where she is?" Shiro asked.

  "Of course I do. Why are you looking for her?"

  "I wanted to ask her some questions. Can you enlighten me about what’s happening? Where are we?" Shiro asked while looking around her.

  "Right…… you came from elsewhere so you wouldn’t know about this place. Hmm…… you would have been here right when you were born but you would have forgotten. Ok, let me explain to you then." The girl nodded.

  "First, my name is Ran and as I have said earlier, I’m a humanoid spirit like you. Most of the spirits that are born near the tower are rescued by patrollers like me and we don’t often see humanoid spirits like you since monsters will kill you before you can find your way back. Right now we’re going to the spirit world since it’s safe for us to talk there.

  "You’re probably confused about the spirit world and that so I’ll explain that now. The spirit world is where all the spirits are born but after a while, they are placed into the material world. They’ll need to survive there before attaining their humanoid forms. When they do, the aura they let out will notify the patrollers and we’ll bring you back. The dryads are usually responsible for when the spirits are in their younger stages but they can’t protect everyone. Once the spirit becomes an a.d.u.l.t and attains their human form, it’ll be our job to retrieve you.

  "We need to retrieve new a.d.u.l.ts quickly since they aren’t able to control their aura and monsters can easily detect them. To monsters, we are great sources of nutrition so they’ll attempt to catch us whenever they can." Ran explained while weaving through a few trees.

  "I’m not sure I’m like the rest of you. I woke up as a human and I had been living in an orphanage in the material world as a human." Shiro replied as Ran paused.

  "Huh? But I can definitely tell you’re a spirit. Strange…… you shouldn’t have had a human form straight away." Ran titled her head.

  "Hmm…… I’ll go back and ask granny about you. She should know what to do with you." Ran shook her head.

  Nodding her head, Shiro stayed silent for a moment. There were several questions she had in her mind but she set them aside for now and decided to ask the basic ones first.

  "What’s the spirit world for exactly?"

  "A place of safety. It’s where you don’t have to worry about getting consumed I suppose." Ran replied.

  "Is there any other use for it or is it just a place for safety?"

  "Ha? Did you get brain damage when you were in the outside world? A home is a home, what else would you use a home for? War?" Ran looked back with confusion before continuing.

  Meanwhile, Shiro suppressed the urge to say yes since her flying fortress was both a home and a war machine.

  Following behind the girl, they eventually arrived before a rather small pond.

  Letting go of Shiro’s sleeve, she placed her hands in front of her and muttered some enchantments.

  Suddenly, the surface of the pond started to glow with a cyan light.

  "Jump in." Ran said while hopping into the pool.

  Nodding her head Shiro followed after her.

  Just as she jumped into the pool, she was immediately ejected out. Confused by this, Shiro thought something had gone wrong when she looked up and immediately noticed that they weren’t in the same place anymore.

  Instead of the usual clear blue skies, it was now a mixture of purple, blue and green. There were streaks of starlight which stretched across the sky while the ground had a slight turquoise tint to the ground.

  "Welcome to the spirit world. I’ll take you to granny so that she can bring you up to speed on the situation" Ran smiled.

  Nodding her head, Shiro glanced back and widened her eyes in surprise.

  That was because not too far from her current location was the same tower that she had been trying to find the skip for.

  Tower of Gaia.

  Only this time, instead of having plant life growing on the surface, there were rows upon rows of carvings which Shiro recognised as Ancient Spirit Language that she had used previously when casting Wrath of Stars to bolster its prowess.

  Furrowing her brows, she captured the runes and quickly translated them.

  The translation was rather strange since they were quite broken up and it was hard to make sense of it all should she translate it literally. It was like a child trying to express their feelings but lacked the proper words to do so. But if she was to interoperate some parts of the carvings, she could get a rough idea on what it could potentially be trying to express.

  The first translation caused her to smile since this could be her key.

  [Offer Nutrients to the Great Land.]

  This was the first step that the previous challenger had completed and managed to get a reaction out of the tower.

  "What are you standing around for, come with me." Ran called out as Shiro nodded her head.

  Walking towards Ran, she gave the tower another glance before focusing on Ran.

  ###

  Watching Shiro enter the Spirit World, Nyx’s lips curved into a smile.

  "I was wondering when she’d find the spirit World. The fact that it was next to your tower was quite a surprise wasn’t it?" Nyx smiled at her new guest who was a woman with emerald hair.

  Taking a sip of the tea, the woman nodded.

  "Indeed. It should help her in completing my tower. Though I must say, for a queen of the spirit race to not have contacted the Spirit World for so long is rather…… abnormal. However, now that she’s there, she should be seeing the effects soon. Even if she doesn’t succeed in this trial, when she comes out, her prowess as the queen should increase by quite a bit." The woman smiled softly.

  "Mn. I wonder what her true spirit nature is. Once she unlocks that, she can finally act as a proper Spirit Queen or rather, Spirit Empress. Though Gaia, what do you suppose she’ll receive from your trial?" Nyx asked.

  However, Gaia only smiled and watched the scene in silence.

  Shrugging her shoulders, Nyx did the same.