“Ellis?!” Elise exclaimed. “You want me to be a man?”

“Yes!” said Oberon.

“No!”

“Why not? It’ll be fun!”

“I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t want to.”

“You’ve passed the test!” he said, taking the paper back. “Congratulations! You’ve gotten better at exercising your freedom.”

Despite his words, Elise could detect a hint of disappointment from {Sense Emotions}.

“Here is your real new identity.”

Elise looked over the paper and while she didn’t gasp this time, she frowned.

“Princess Eleanor?” she asked. “You want me to pretend to be a princess?”

“Kind of,” he said, handing her a second paper. “Now read this.”

Elise’s confusion grew as she read down the paper. It was a completely new identification form, and while the name on this one was also Eleanor, this time, she was a commoner. An orphaned commoner who had grown up in Greenwood and befriended the Grays, and was now attending Jelor University while staying with them. In fact, she was so close that they had let her take on their last name, making her Eleanor Gray.

“Which of these is the true one?” she asked.

“Both!” he said. “You are Princess Eleanor of Corunia, but you will be attending disguised as the commoner Eleanor Gray. Also, by the way, you are legally a princess now.”

“What?!”

“Yeah, that’s an official document. You are now my inheritor. Not first in line, of course. That goes to Sebastien II.”

A new, younger-looking Oberon appeared beside him.

“Hello!” said the clone.

“But you’re now fifth in line for the throne!” continued the main Oberon. “A real life princess!”

“...Why?” she asked.

“Why not? If anyone looks into your background, and they manage to somehow get past the fake Eleanor Gray identity, they will find a totally legitimate Eleanor of Corunia identity. I even have a backstory for you. You are the child of myself and a commoner woman that I loved, but who ran away from me. She passed away shortly after, and you grew up an orphan, but she left you a letter about your true identity, and upon reading it, you came to find me. I wanted dearly to announce you to the world, but you insisted on having a normal life before revealing yourself to the world, so I allowed you to remain Eleanor Gray so that you could attend University before settling into the princess life. Romantic, isn’t it?”

“...I guess.”

“Also, I want to see what kind of evolution options you’ll get when you reach the cap, now that you’re literally a princess.”

Ah, there it is.

Elise thought it over to herself for a few seconds. The princess background didn’t really hurt her at all, since that princess identity had a commoner fake identity, and she had to admit that she was also curious about her evolution options.

“If you had never shown me that paper, would I still have gotten princess-related evolution options?” she asked.

He put a hand to his chin. “That’s a really good question. I would guess yes, but I actually have no idea. Wanna wipe your memory so we can test it?”

“No thanks. I like my memory the way it is.”

“Ah, shame. Oh well. That’s that. You’re free to go now. I just wanted to show this to you before you went out so that you could have a better idea of your future situation before you picked your evolution.”

“Thank you,” said Elise, putting both papers into Astrid’s Star before taking her leave

The little storage necklace was much emptier than it had been a few months ago. With Rose restored, and Sylvanna and Corwin buried, the only thing taking up a large amount of space was Jag. Maggie had yet to return, and Ostra had yet to find a qualified soul healer, so he was stuck in stasis, but Elise had generally gotten over it. It still made her a bit melancholy when she checked the necklace and saw him in there, but she was mostly numb to it, and was just waiting for whenever they found an adequate healer for him.

With the space in the necklace freer though, she was able to store more of her valuables inside. She tried to leave a decent amount of room, just in case she encountered another Rose situation, and had to put someone in, but she had moved over a spare set of clothes, a sword, and a thousand gold from the spatial bag that the changeling tailor had given her. She kept that bag full with most of the rest of her money, and some other useful knick knacks.

And by “her money,” of course she meant the money that Oberon had given her for the auction. He never took it back. At first, Elise had felt guilty about hanging onto it, but by now she knew that Oberon truly, legitimately didn’t care. If she dumped it all into the ocean, he wouldn’t care. If she used it to hire assassins to kill him, he would find it funny. So, the money was hers, and it would remain that way.

Speaking of the auction, all evidence of it was now basically gone. She had her book about mind control, which she had read through twice now, but the rest had been given to Duke Larcombe. The centipup had been given to the Grays as a housewarming present, much to Sophie’s delight and Elise’s dismay. Elise had grown attached to the funky little canine in her time, and had even given it a name, Skitter, because of the way he moved. Seeing Oberon just give it away like that was a bit saddening, but the blow was softened by the fact that she would see him again pretty much as soon as she evolved, because she would be moving back in with the Grays then.

The box was gone too. What Oberon had done with it, Elise had no idea, but she sincerely hoped that it was at the bottom of the ocean. She had a nagging feeling that wasn’t the case, but she also thought that trying to figure out where it was might have the side effect of bringing her back into contact with it, so she tried not to think about it as much as possible. Especially since, after two months, Oberon was seriously starting to rub off on her. More than once, she had found herself thinking that if she saw the box again, it would be fate, and it might be worth opening anyway.

As for fate, things had been oddly quiet lately. She had a few more dreams, but none of them particularly informative. She had one where she just sat on the mountaintop next to the old meditating man all night, and woke up incredibly confused. Nothing else had happened, and the old man had not acknowledged her existence, but she felt every second of the night and woke up feeling very unrefreshed.

When she left Oberon’s office, she switched to her human form to leave the city, then changed back into her rabbit form when she was mostly certain that no one was watching. At this point, she could be reasonably certain of such things, because {Sense Emotions} basically worked as a very rough version of {Aether Sense}, so if anyone was feeling any emotions around her, and didn’t have the proper stealth skills to hide it, she would know.

It was frigid outside the city limits, which made her thankful that she was a rabbit. Her fur was pretty great at keeping her insulated, though it was a little less effective when she was flying due to the wind.

She flew for a couple hours, getting past the closer regions where there were still humanoid Monster Hunters out catching prey and into the less popular wilderness. Oberon had given her a map of the surrounding areas, including the tier of the spawn zones and the type of monsters that inhabited them. She was heading to a relatively small tier 5-7 spawn zone that spawned yetis, direwolves, and deer. The yetis were the strongest, sometimes spawning at tier 7, while the other two species spawned exclusively at 5th tier, and only sometimes evolved higher.

Elise had picked this spawn zone for obvious reasons. The direwolves there were Greater Frost Direwolves, and she wanted to get better at fighting them. She doubted those ones would give her too much experience, since she seemed to have outgrown 5th tier monsters, but it would still serve as good experience.

As she flew over one particular mountain that she vaguely recalled being a tier 2-4 spawn zone, something started approaching her from below. She sped up, but it proved to be faster than her and started gaining, so she turned around to fight it. When it got closer, she saw that it was some kind of eagle or falcon or something. She had never been sure of the difference between them. {Inspect} told her it was an eagle apparently, and also that it was weak.

[ Lesser Golden Frost Eagle, lvl 9 ]

The fact that she could see its level meant that it was weaker than her, and since she doubted it had even a Legendary species, that meant her stats were also significantly higher. Except for Agility apparently. But if its Agility was high enough to catch up to her so easily, that probably meant its other stats were lower. And since it was a monster, its mental defenses would be especially weak.

As soon as it got within range, she hit it with {Forced Feeling}

FEAR!

[ You have slain Lesser Golden Frost Eagle, Tier 3, lvl 9 ]

Huh, she thought.

Aside from the brief excursion to Greenwood with the Grays in which she only killed a few foolish weaker monsters, this was really her first time fighting since Operation Blood, so not only did she have all her skills capped now, she also had nine more levels’ worth of stats after defeating Daisy. She hadn’t expected to instantly kill the eagle with just one use of {Forced Feeling}, but with how high her Charisma was, on top of the fact that she had bonus aether for being aetherborn, it made sense. It also reinforced in her mind exactly how powerful Oberon was for having tanked the skill so many times to help her level it up.

Maybe the clones help distribute the load or something, she thought.

There had been a few other eagles watching from below, but seeing their comrade dead before it even had a chance to attack, they were wise enough to decide not to attack her, and she made it the rest of the way to her target area without further incident. She almost immediately spotted a pack of the wolves sleeping in a small clearing between the trees. They were on guard, but apparently not expecting trouble from above, so she was able to get close enough to inspect them.

Almost all of them were Greater Frost Direwolves, but there were also two Alpha Frost Direwolves, which seemed to be one tier higher, based on their size and how much mana they had. That was probably what the warg would have evolved into if it didn’t evolve into a warg.

Why had it evolved into a warg anyway? What could it possibly have done to earn a legendary evolution? She had always kind of wondered that, but now that she saw the alternative in front of her, the question was brought to the forefront of her mind. It would have been so much easier if it just evolved into one of these. Oberon had assured her there was nothing sentient in this spawn zone, so if the warg was one of these instead, she could have killed it without causing any problems.

She observed the sleeping wolves for a few seconds longer, then decided to be a little reckless and just attack. She aimed at the nearest Alpha Frost Direwolf and used {Forced Feeling} again.

FEAR!

She followed it up with an immediate {Magic Missile} volley aimed straight at its head. The {Forced Feeling} didn’t kill it, but it did stun it enough that {Magic Missile} hit unobstructed, and while that didn’t kill it either, it did turn its face into a bloody mess. And looked like it blinded it. This alerted the other wolves as well, but she fired another round of both skills before flying away from the barrage of icicles that was being aimed at her.

[ You have slain Alpha Frost Direwolf, Tier VI, lvl 4 ]

[ You have leveled up! 21 - 22 ]

[ Strength +4, Agility +4, Dexterity +4, Fortitude +4, Charisma +35, Intelligence +14, Willpower +20, Mana +15, Mana Control +15 ]

Between {Move} and the fact that her attack was a complete surprise, by the time the direwolf pack fired their attacks, she was well outside their range. The icicles looked powerful, but they weren’t aimed very well, so by the time they reached her height, they were spread out enough and moving slowly enough that she could easily dodge them.

She was pleased at the fact that not only had she gained a level, she had killed the wolf almost instantly. The warg would be different, since it was a Legendary species and had higher stats and possibly better mental defenses, but the fact that she killed its inferior relative so easily gave her hope. Especially once she evolved once more. She wouldn’t even need any support to kill it, as long as she caught it unaware.

Of course, catching it unaware was the problem. She doubted that killing the second Alpha Frost Direwolf would be at all easy, even if it didn’t have a pack of Greater Frost Direwolves to back it up. Ranged attacks were Elise’s greatest weakness, since she needed to be close enough to use her mental skills or else be severely outgunned. It also didn’t help that her stealth ability was basically non-existent. The only reason she had gotten that last attack off was that the wolves weren’t looking up. Her next kills would be much harder.

She waited a few minutes, flying higher to see if the wolves would calm down, but ultimately decided to just go to another part of the mountain to find a new target. It wasn’t worth waiting around, especially when she knew there were more things to hunt.

She spent the next three days flying around the mountain and technically not committing genocide. It was technically not genocide because the wolves would just continue spawning, so she was doing nothing to prevent their reproduction. It was more of a culling.

She discovered fairly quickly that the deer didn’t give her many experience points, and that the yetis were too difficult to hunt, as they lived in caves, and only came out at night and moved in groups. That left the wolves, which, unfortunately, gave less and less experience with every kill. She knew it was a necessary feature of the System to prevent people from just farming kills on the same kind of monster who they had a distinct advantage over, but it still annoyed her and slowed her down. The fact that the wolves were learning to be wary of her slowed her down even more.

Still, it wasn’t really all that bad. Her fully capped assortment of skills made hunting and survival trivial when she wasn’t caught off guard, and with her ears and her opponents’ lack of stealth Skills, she was never caught off guard. At the end of the third day, she finally got her last kill, and felt a wave of excitement as she read the System notification.

[ You have slain Greater Frost Direwolf, Tier V, lvl 16 ]

[ You have leveled up! 24 - 25 ]

[ Strength +4, Agility +4, Dexterity +4, Fortitude +4, Charisma +35, Intelligence +14, Willpower +20, Mana +15, Mana Control +15 ]

[ You have reached an evolution threshold! Excess exp will be disregarded. ]

[ You are eligible for evolution! You have {19} options! You have 168 hours to select an option and begin your evolution before an option will be randomly selected for you and your evolution will start automatically. ]