Pef returned the coffin to its place, the Elf King inside looking a dozen steps from death instead of a half-step.

"Your dad will wake up soon, but he is still very sick." he explained in a grave tone.

Nellie sobbed and hugged him tighter. "Thank you. I was getting desperate, and those slimy priests of yours were making things worse."

Pef sighed inward. "Religion takes a life of its own. Luckily, my followers are mostly righteous people even if too righteous sometimes."

Nellie chuckled and smiled a bit. "You shook the galaxy to the core. So fast, the things began to change..."

Pef nodded in agreement. After millions of years of continuous demon domination, the taste of freedom gave people new hope and dreams.

"Tell me about the Eyeless." he asked glancing at the Tier 3 elf Duke.

"Mysterious and working in shadows. Collecting artifacts and attacking important people. Most of them are demons, or allies of demons." the Duke said in a tired voice.

"I culled a dozen small sects already, but they always return, with poison or gas or other kinds of large scale attacks."

Nellie added with a deep frown.

'Well, you should have a guess what we're dealing with already.' Pef asked his orange glove.

'I can tell you they have a few oracles, and some type of anti-scrying cover. I suspect another demon has reached Archdemon rank.' the glove replied in its usual cold tone.

Pef grimaced and Blinked away, right above the mana well.

The scenery has changed greatly since the last time he visited, trees and vegetation had all dried up, while the well itself was shooting up half the mana currents it used to.

Pef began floating down, collecting thousands of mana stones while descending. As memory devices and power sources for magic arrays and ship engines, the mana stones were quite valuable.

He kept flying down for a long time, scanning the well for any intrusion or trap. Nothing so far, so he kept going til a liquid surface appeared, glowing with a calming Cerenkov blue.

'Is it radioactive?' Pef wondered while scooping some liquid in the glove.

'Very. Quite deadly to anyone under Monarch rank. But otherwise everything is normal. Solar energy filters through the ground til it reaches the magnetic core, then it converts into raw mana.' the glove explained while loading up some more liquid mana for itself.

Free energy was always nice.

'So, we stalk the well at night?' Pef asked with a grin.

'Let's not die so soon, idiot. Use a clone and we wait in orbit. The terminator line would be much easier to see, as well.'

the glove advised him, while dropping his wisdom points again.

Pef listened and fused a clone for this task. Then, they sat and waited for the mysterious Eyeless to arrive.

Soon enough, the planet turned its face from the sun, and the well fell into night.

The mana currents dried up, while the clone cloaked itself and immersed into the ground.

A few hours later, something shifted over the well, and a tiny ship or capsule appeared with no qi fluctuations at all.

A tiny pulse of light emerged and struck deep into the well, and the mana began flowing again, siphoned into the strange capsule.

'The King wasn't wrong...I see no eyes on this object.' Pef mused inward while examining the capsule with passive senses only.

'It's not a ship. I think is an egg of some creature. Someone is nursing a baby.' the glove replied after a long minute of computing arcane percentages and simulations.

Pef scratched his cheek, considering his own options. Sure, this creature was only trying to feed, but it was actively harming Mi'ridolor and possibly involved in the necrosis attack on the King.

Blinking himself next to the egg, Pef tried to grab and capture the culprit into his inner world.

Surprisingly, the telekinetic field failed, grabbing only air and shadows, while the egg flew to the side as if scared, then began shifting sidewise turning into a line.

Thinking fast, Pef formed a dozen void claws and constricted the space itself, blocking the escape.

'Don't attack it. The parent will arrive soon.' the glove said while marking a new shadow over the ground, but one without anything blocking the light.

Indeed, the shadow grew larger and rose from the ground taking the shape of a large centipede, with violet eyes on the sides.

A second later, a blast of soul spike struck Pef from a dozen eyes, shaking his defenses and forcing him to armor up, with Count's Tarkin inscriptioned breastplate.

He knew from the duel experience that the Yama-made armor would mitigate all Tier 3 attacks of all types, and lessen even Tier 4 ones.

The creature attacked him a few times, then observing the lack of result it dove towards the egg, trying to free it from Pef's void claws.

Then Pef struck back, using voidswords as his primary weapon. A few hundreds strikes later, the centipede was chopped into small wiggling bits, still trying to reform into a larger body.

He sighed and started crushing each section with more void claws, mincing the beast into blood mist.

'These one have eyes though.' Pef observed while scooping the mist into the glove for analysis.

'Oh. I know what these things are now. A voidbeast variant, the kind that tunnels through space...making wormholes. Higher tiers can even dig through dimensions.' the glove said after scanning genomes and comparing the findings to its database.

Pef drew closer to the captured egg, and patted it with the glove.

In a second, the egg vanished into the glove pocket, to be trained for his own purposes.

'You can housebreak this voidbeast to make commercial or military lanes for the Legion?' Pef asked to make sure.

The potential applications for trade or ship movement would be huge, if he could connect all Legion bases with instant travel wormholes.

'I will. Molding young larvae would be much easier than an adult. Just keep in mind that raising it will require lots of energy. Mana stones in particular.' the glove warned him in a friendlier voice.

Pef sighed, and glanced at the mana well, as it began drying up again, without the beast egg siphoning mana.

Still, one mystery solved didn't close the case. The Eyeless were terrorists of sorts, acting with an agenda of their own, and probably using the wormholes to move undetected.

He returned to Nellie to find her beside her father, who was now awake and eating medical pills by the handful.

"There was a voidbeast drinking the mana from the well. No sign of the Eyeless, yet." Pef announced as he sat beside Nellie and stole a pill from the Elf King.

'Medium-grade soul restoration Pills. And under 80 percent impurities. Huh. They will actually help the patient.' the glove observed with a snicker.

"You killed it? Of course you did, Pef destroyer of Archdemons. I tried as well, but my attacks just went right though that oval thing. And then the damn shadow thing hit me...I could only run." the King admitted with a suffering shrug.

Pef formed a void claw and started swiping at the air, compressing the fabric of space to show the King his new weapon.

"Void claws, and then voidswords. The perfect counter to voidbeasts." Pef said with a genial smile.

"Very clever. But it's way beyond me. Still, your mind defenses have not improved, my boy. Even on my death bed I can shatter your mind without much effort." the King answered in a tired voice, and fell on his fluffy pillows to rest.

Pef glanced at his wife and stepped outside, and waited a minute for her to arrive.

He then leaned towards her and stole a kiss, while drawing Nellie inside.

"You have made good progress, my love. Half towards Tier 4 already." the avatar said while setting up a table and some bloodwine.

"Both the Duke and my father trained me everyday. Plus the Eyeless incidents...my cultivation is growing a thousand times faster than before we got married." Nellie answered with a grateful smile.

Pef knew better. The Legion's method was just that good. Combat and practiced helped as well.

And now, with some Godbeast blood and flesh and more love...

"Dad is dying. A thousand years, he says." Nellie mused out loud, looking toward the sky.

"Come now, my love. Everyone dies, a few times at least. If there is no cure in this universe, we'll just look into the next one. Try the wine." Pef said with a wry smile.

Nellie sipped the wine and her face grew red and hot. "Amazing! A year of cultivation in a single cup." the blonde elf princess exclaimed in wonder.

"It's very good. Till Tier 4. Afterwards it has less and less effect, though insights into various Daos still help." Pef admitted with a grin, then sipped more wine, just for the taste.

The Dao of quartz sharpening might have been useful to someone, somewhere, but not to Pef.

Still, he now knew a thousand weird trades and jobs, and how to wield a hundred exotic weapons as if he had trained for years.

Maybe one day he would gain something useful. In a billion universes surely someone had obtained something nice.

Another careless sip of wine, and he gained some Dao of wine making.

Pef grinned widely. The Heavens did listen!