Since Thorndale was at least three hours behind Aurora time, at least in the regions Michael frequented, it was still dark in the Land of Origin.

There were still several hours before any hint of an approaching dawn.

Michael’s other body stood deep within the Everlong Forest.

He had left his territory earlier in preparation. Though he could not do anything due to the coffin being used by his other body, it did not mean this body had to remain idle.

"This should be good enough."

What he planned to do in the Land of Origin required space. He also needed to distance himself from anything he did not wish to implicate, or have implicated, in the lightning tribulation of his undead.

Though given how much commotion he had caused during his own lightning tribulation, Michael felt that unless he was willing to go deeper into the Everlong Forest, distance alone wouldn’t hide anything.

However the current Michael felt bolder than he had been a few days ago. After all he now had Rank 4 undead. Not just one but two.

Even if something bad were to happen, Michael felt it wouldn’t affect him much.

This was what he loved about the Land of Origin compared to reality, where he was restricted on many levels. Here, though he was still restricted to a certain degree, his level of freedom was undoubtedly higher than in Aurora. At least the stronger you were in the Land of Origin, the more freedom you gained.

In the real world it didn’t matter how strong you were. There was always someone stronger.

Michael looked around at the trees surrounding him. The canopy above was thick enough that almost no light reached the ground.

He felt a certain unfamiliar comfort in the darkness.

Unfortunately he had to cut the trees down to create a clearing.

After all, a disaster was soon going to wash over this place and he didn’t want it to spread any further than necessary.

The lightning that came down during a tribulation was not ordinary atmospheric discharge. It carried an elemental intensity that left lasting marks on the environment it touched, and fire was one of the more predictable consequences of that contact. Michael had already seen what his own tribulation had done to the terrain around it. The crater. The fused earth.

Cutting down the trees was not something he particularly wanted to do. But the alternative was allowing a fire to chase its own path through the canopy after the tribulation ended, which would cause considerably more destruction than clearing a controlled radius now.

It didn’t matter that the flames couldn’t hurt him, or that he could intervene and stop a spreading fire if he chose to. He simply did not want to destroy the forest any more than the situation required.

Soon a clearing two kilometres across had been carved out of the Everlong Forest.

The work had not taken long. At Michael’s current level, uprooting trees was not meaningfully different from pulling weeds.

As for the uprooted trees, he made sure to stack them in orderly arrangements scattered around the forest’s edge, waiting to be used in the future according to his territorial plans.

When everything was done Michael stood at the center of the clearing and looked around at what he had made.

Satisfied with his work, he summoned the Damaged Coffin of the Forgotten out of his soul space but did not immediately rush to release his undead.

After taking a deep breath he first released his Rank 4 undead, then based on first come first served, Michael released Lily as well.

The moment Lily appeared in the material world, a dreadful aura and a smell of death immediately enveloped the area. Michael instinctively teleported outside the range of the two kilometre clearing.

Fortunately he had ordered the Rank 4 undead to depart the moment they appeared.

It was only now that Michael clearly understood the academy director’s reaction to not wanting anything to do with him during his tribulation. Though this was his first time witnessing it from the outside, Michael immediately understood that if he stayed close to Lily long enough to be recognized by the heavens, it wouldn’t only be her receiving a lightning tribulation.

As that thought flashed through his mind, Michael turned to focus on the phenomenon that had immediately appeared in the dark sky the moment Lily was summoned out of the coffin space.

Stormy clouds filled the sky above the clearing almost immediately, spreading outward with a speed that had nothing gradual about it.

Michael watched from his position well outside the two kilometre perimeter as the coverage continued to expand, pushing further and further beyond the immediate area in every direction.

Michael noticed almost immediately that the phenomenon was significantly larger than what had accompanied his own tribulation.

It made sense when he thought about it. His own lightning tribulation had arrived early, triggered by circumstances that had pushed the boundary ahead of its natural timing, and it had appeared when he was advancing from Rank 2 to Rank 3. Lily was preparing to advance to Rank 4.

The difference between those two thresholds was not something that could be expressed in the same terms.

The clouds continued spreading as Michael watched, the pressure they carried already pressing down across a range that dwarfed anything he had experienced standing at the center of his own tribulation.

Michael turned his gaze slowly across the horizon in every direction.

There was no angle from which this could be described as subtle. The phenomenon was visible across a distance that would draw attention from every corner of the region. Anyone with even basic sensitivity to mana would feel it long before they saw it.

"This is going to be a long night."

Just as Michael had suspected, the surrounding regions felt it.

His territory, being the closest, felt it first.

People stepped out into the night air and looked upward. The sky above had changed in a way that was difficult to articulate but impossible to ignore, and the instinct to look up at it was apparently universal.

The ordinary folk among them reached the most immediate conclusion available to them.

A storm was coming. A seemingly bad one. Worried voices passed between neighbors as eyes moved from the sky to the fields and back again. They wondered what destruction the storm might bring down on them.

However among those with a degree of power and sensitivity to mana, the reaction was different. More than a few felt a chill move through them.

This was not a storm. They did not know what it was exactly, but it was not a storm.

Strangely, through all of it, the master of the territory was nowhere to be found, which left a certain knight captain deep in thought.

Compared to the thoughts her lightning tribulation caused in the surrounding regions, Lily, who stood at the center of it all, looked up at the lightning gathering above her with light in her eyes.

She could tell immediately, almost instinctively, that this was something very important.

The feeling lasted for a brief moment. Then hunger arrived and overrode everything else.

This was not her first encounter with a tribulation. It was her master’s tribulation she was remembering. She had been there in the midst of it, and more than that, she remembered what it had tasted like when she swallowed it. The sheer density of it. The way it had filled her in a manner that nothing else had quite replicated before.

Well, maybe except for that garden belonging to those long-eared, thin two-legged creatures that had healed her master.

The memory surfaced with remarkable clarity as she looked up at the storm forming above her now.

Whether what moved through her was excitement for the taste, or anticipation of what she would become once the lightning had passed, or some combination of both that she could not separate, Lily opened her mouth wide and let out a loud roar.

Immediately the first strand of lightning descended rapidly.

Michael watched from his position outside the clearing as the first strike descended.

His eyelids twitched slightly.

The first round of Lily’s tribulation looked closer to his second than his first. The gap between a first strike and a second strike was not trivial. The fact that Lily’s tribulation opened at that level said something clear about what the heavens considered appropriate for what she was.

Michael exhaled slowly through his nose.

At this level though, he was not worried.

He had survived to his ninth round thanks to Lily. If she could do that for him at the stage she had been in then, this opening round was not going to give her any difficulty at all.

As if to confirm the thought, Lily met the descending lightning with her mouth wide open.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

*

A/N: Do not hold on to those golden tickets dear readers!! Please vote to support!!!