Aaron's eye locked with Alys' for a moment. Her request meant something was very wrong. There was no time to explain things though, and even if there was, that would only tip off the enemy among them. He needed the benefit of surprise to guarantee he could fix things before it was too late.

He acted swiftly. He untangled his hand from her grasp while rotating his body, his other hand moving at his top speed to grab the panther.

Impossibly, the Inept beast leaped away fast enough to dodge a Four Star Qi Manipulator. Aaron immediately took a sword from his spatial ring, equipping it on the hand of his moving arm. That allowed his reach to get to the panther, and the surprise move should've enough to impale most opponents.

Yet, it twisted its body as if it had no bones, easily dodging the surprise attack. Only Aaron's experience allowed him to change the sword's trajectory in time, and the very tip pierced through the beast's hide. The blade ripped throughout the hide, leaving a big tear behind.

"Patriar—" Alys started, but the panther let out a terrifying cry of pain and anger, interrupting her.

The sound was so loud it made the building tremble. Aaron protected his body with Qi while moving towards the beast to grab it. It jumped again, its injury already healing visibly to the naked eye.

Arcane Detaining Arts: Omnidirectional Lockdown!

Arcane Energy left his body and created a tight cage around the panther. A pulse of Divine Energy came from it and shattered the skill to smithereens. The beast had taken a second to react though, and that was enough.

Aaron grabbed it by the neck and slammed it to the ground. Repeatedly. The beast became dazed enough for him to use a new technique.

Arcane Detaining Arts: Soul Lock!

Arcane Energy seeped into the panther's body and pressed its soul from all sides. It was an even tighter fit than the cage from the omnidirectional lockdown would have been. However, as it pressed, Aaron felt a thread coming out from the soul, linking it to elsewhere.

'As I feared,' he thought.

He was out of Arcane Energy to slice the thread but put his hand where it was coming from, forcing the thread to go through his hand. He focused his Qi there and cut the thread off.

Alys screamed in pain. Blood ran from her nose, ears, and eyes.

The panther was already recovered, and he slammed it to the ground again. With the thread cut, he finished locking its soul, then pulled a lot of Arcane crystal dust from his ring.

Tatou woke up and roared in defiance, and Lana also let out a roar of anger. A wave of his hand pushed both of them to the side, together with the soot that remained from the soul contract formation. Another wave put Lana and Tatou to sleep. A third wave made the dust he had just taken out settle into a new soul contract formation.

This was a more powerful formation, intended on severely restricting the soul beast's freedom. Aaron picked up Alys, whose body was shaking, and placed her in the middle of the formation. He left the panther over her body, then left the formation.

He activated it.

Lana's process had been soft and smooth. This, however, was a matter of life and death, and he had no time for subtly. The enormous amount of Arcane Energy crashed into Alys' soul, damaging it again, forcing the contract upon her despite her not being as open to it as Lana had been.

More importantly, it also crushed into the beast's soul. It tried to resist but was still dazed, and its soul had been properly locked down. The Divine Energy it had used earlier was likely the extent of its current power, or it would've escaped the soul lock already.

There was no finesse in the process. Alys' soul tried to resist, but the formation was as close to perfect as Aaron could make it. When faced with her clumsy mastery over her energies... His formation didn't even notice Alys' attempt.

When dealing with Tatou, Aaron had made it sleep, then used an Arcane needle to open its soul to the formation. With the panther, he wanted it to pay the consequences of its actions. Moreover, the more restrictive contract he was attempting to put in place required the formation to have a greater hold over its soul.

So he ripped its soul apart with hundreds of needles, like ethereal shrapnel intended on destroying it. It let out cries of anguish that he ignored. The Arcane Energy of the formation entered its soul, and the beast finally fell unconscious.

A shame. While he didn't take pleasure in the suffering of others, the beast had almost killed Alys, then almost enslaved her.

It should have suffered more.

Alys screamed in pain as her very soul was shaped back into something healthy. Because of his limited power, Aaron couldn't feel the effects of Divine Energy when it was actively hiding, hence why he hadn't realized what the panther was doing earlier. But when he cut the beast's thread linking it to Alys' soul, the influence from the panther left gaping holes in her soul. His formation was now mending and remolding the soul to serve the purpose of the soul contract.

A few minutes later, it was over. The light died, and Alys was left gasping on the floor. The panther was still unconscious.

"The panther is a carnifex," Aaron said. "I didn't realize it before because it never killed enough to develop a proper death aura. However, it invaded your soul and subtly influenced your mind to tie you to it. It enthralled you."

Alys couldn't speak or move. She only turned her eyes to Aaron.

"You're probably confused. Puppeteers have a way to make it look like they are doing you a favor, it makes the enthrallment process easier. The panther increased the healing rate of your mind, but it wasn't natural. It filled the gaps with its own power. If I hadn't acted, your very essence would have become dependent on the carnifex to survive, and your every thought would have been influenced by it. Only my experience with mind injuries allowed me to realize you shouldn't have healed so quickly, though I admit you asking to be bound to a beast you never met before helped."

"I—" Alys started, but her voice crackled. She gulped and tried again. "I believe you. I can feel her frustration. Her anger. Her... hunger. She wants to consume all. To conquer all. To rule over all."

"Its feelings and thoughts won't affect you like Tatou's will affect Lana in the first hours, I made sure of that. Yours is an absolute Mistress-Slave Contract. The panther is completely yours and can't act against your interests. This is not open to interpretation either, it can feel your will through the link between your souls. Its only way out of the soul contract is by killing itself."

"That sounds harsh," Alys said while sitting up, still breathing haggardly.

Aaron snorted. "When it entered your soul, it could've killed you. When it enthralled you, it effectively turned you into its slave. Only my mercy made me even leave it with a way out. I told you, the panther is a carnifex, Alys. You will forget it eventually because the soul contract will keep it from spreading evil, and your soul will affect it enough to turn it back into a simple beast. But believe me when I say it could've spelled the doom of this world if I let it to its devices. The Divine Energy inside it, which it is already mastering, is that dangerous in the wrong hands."

She frowned and looked at the panther but said nothing.

"I would've killed it if not for the way it influenced your soul. That would require a lot of time to revert unless I did things the way I did, reverting the link, which requires the carnifex to be kept alive." He willed Arcane Energy to take all the soot in the room into a ball, then stored it away in his ring for later disposal. "We can talk about it later if you want. For now, rest. Tonight, we visit the Temple of Darkness."

He woke Lana up and left the room. He didn't want to have to deal with her while her mind was being influenced by Tatou.

Once he was out of their sights, he cleared his throat and swallowed, feeling the distinct taste of blood.

He had protected his body from the pulse of Divine Energy, but it had still been enough to almost turn his insides into a pulp. He wasn't exaggerating when he spoke about the danger of a divine carnifex. In a world that seemed to have a lack of other beings with control of Divine Energy, except for the one he had felt before walking through the portal, it could've reigned supreme.

Its origin as a carnifex was a mystery, but not an overly complicated one. Even as a pup, it could've learned from its parents. Or maybe the bud itself, that gave it the Divine Energy, might've warped its mind while making the wolf harmless to achieve balance. It didn't really matter.

Aaron went to a corner and focused on recovering his spend energy and healing himself. He was glad that in a few hours, his clan would finally be running in a semblance of normalcy again.

They were already rested after lunch, and Aaron decided it was time for them to breath some fresh air. The girls had almost died multiple times and needed a few hours to destress, especially Alys. He also needed to check how Lana was dealing with her emotional and psychological trauma.

That's how the three of them found themselves sitting in a tea shop at three in the afternoon. It was in Illyria's second layer, so though it wasn't in the Royal Road, it was still top class.

Their table was on the outside, a small round white one with a cute yellow umbrella to protect them from the sun. The ground was made of pinkish bricks, the front of the store was mostly blackened glass and stainless steel, and a few vases of flowers gave a homey feeling to the elegant place.

A tea mistress was preparing tea at their table, in a ritual that reminded Aaron of Asian ones back on Earth. Alys looked distracted at it, absentmindedly caressing her soul beast, which sat on her lap. Lana was looking unfocused in the distance, ignoring both the tea mistress and Tatou, who was standing on two paws on the ground, biting and licking her hands playfully.

Aaron was the only one paying due respect to the tea ceremony. He paid attention to it and let the serenity of the practiced moves wash his worries away. Only the here and now existed; the veritable art of preparing tea and serving it was one to be admired with his complete focus.

The tea mistress was an old woman, over seventy, with gray hair held in a tight bun, wearing a simple yet elegant black and white dress. She was the owner of the store and had insisted on serving two Four Star cultivators herself, even though she didn't know who they were. She was paying all the attention she could to the ceremony, but she had noticed Aaron's appreciation for her movements and let a small smile bloom on her lips.

It was a shame that the girls weren't paying attention to it, and he couldn't tell them to do so. Breaking the ceremony silence would be an offense to the tea mistress, a Two Star Air Elementalist who had even gone through the trouble of erecting an air dome around them to stop the exterior sound from interfering.

Her movements contained minute secrets of the Laws of the Universe and would be beneficial to most cultivators watching them. There was a subtle harmonization of Yin and Yang in what she did, as Fire and Water mixed to make the tea at a precise temperature. The leaf-to-water ratio had also been perfected over the generations.

She finished the proceedings and poured tea — only for Aaron. She had come to pay her respects to the two Four Star cultivators, but she had her own pride. She wouldn't pour for people who didn't appreciate her gesture.

Aaron bowed slightly and waited for a few moments before taking the cup with his two hands and drinking.

The taste was as good as expected from well-prepared, high-quality leaves. Although the leaves were only mortal ingredients, it tasted marvelous.

As the flavor filled his mouth, he received the distinct impressions of fresh air hitting his face hundreds of meters on the skies. The air tasted salty, from what he guessed was the never-ending ocean below, and the sensation of freedom filled his mind. He had noticed tiny bits of Air Elemental Energy being poured into the tea as the mistress prepared it, and now he knew why. It was a tea-making skill.

After basking in the feeling for a while, he conveyed those feelings in a tiny poem.

"Independence, soaring above the boundless sea," he said. "A look from above, judging all below as a blue blanket of pure meaninglessness. True freedom is to fly alone, beyond the reaches of the mortal coil."

He bowed slightly once more to the mistress, before giving her his thoughts about the words he had just expressed.

"Not a false statement, but not a path for all. Soaring alone can be lonely for many, and that can be perceived as oppression as much as freedom. And even when it is freeing, is it real freedom if you're forced on a single path to reach it? A fish in the sea, surrounded by thousand others, moving to the same place as all others can find true freedom as much as the lone eagle above. What you and I consider true freedom are different things."

Her smile increased ever so slightly, and she bowed her head back. "May I ask what mister customer considers true freedom?"

He smiled. "Would it really be freedom if we defined it and thus limited what it can be?"

She didn't expect that answer, and her eyes widened a bit in surprise. She thought for a moment, then bowed once more. "I'll meditate on your wisdom, dear customer."

Aaron nodded at her one last time, and she left silently. She kept the air dome around them though, and a few instants after her departure, a middle-aged waitress wearing a tight black uniform came to pour tea for the girls.

They had watched the exchange in silence, but Alys finally broke it. "What was that, Patriarch?"

Aaron's smile widened as he looked at her and replied, "Freedom."