Chapter 138: Return to the Garden
Frank moved with silent certainty through the dense outer territories of the UR, shadows rippling around him like obedient pets. The route he had carved over the last few days was more than just safe it was deliberate. Mapped with patience and honed instinct, it avoided beast nests, mana storms, and the occasional unstable fold in space.
He had given the squad a one-week break. They'd earned it. The young Awakened under his care had grown steady, disciplined perhaps not yet fearsome, but reliable. They'd mapped mana crystal mines, secured key paths, and harvested low-tier beasts with surgical precision. With no rush to meet external quotas, Frank ensured they worked smart, not recklessly. Every beast harvested had its valuable parts removed for trade or study. The rest? Frank devoured.
It was a slow but steady way to build vitality.
But now, he walked alone. Cloaked in silence, his aura suppressed to a whisper, Frank approached the concealed tear in space. The air shimmered faintly, reacting to the fragment of aether-infused vine he had tied around his wrist. A key. The threshold parted, and the world changed.
The Garden welcomed him again.
The air was thick with life and wonder, just as he remembered an untouched Eden glowing with magic. Trees whispered in ancient tongues, vines pulsed with steady mana, and fruits sparkled with ripened energy. The air was dense, heady, more intoxicating than any elixir.
He exhaled slowly.
"I'm back."
Unlike last time, he wasn't just exploring. He came to work.
Rank 3 beasts prowled between the strange trees. His senses picked them out immediately wolf-like creatures with stone hides, serpents made of bark and smoke, leaping beasts that blinked through space in stutters. They kept their distance, but they watched him. Frank, still a Master, knew he couldn't hunt them without risk not alone. But he wasn't here for them.
He was here for the vines.
They still slithered like rivers of greed fattened now, glistening from the power they had absorbed since franks last harvest. Some had even grown eyes, faintly pulsing with sentience. But they didn't resist him. They recoiled from his touch, slicing easily under his blade.
Frank moved like a gardener, not a warrior.
He cut the vines down carefully, coiling the thickest into bundles. Some he threw into his spatial ring he had found in the very garden . Others he roasted over conjured flame, chewing slowly, absorbing their wild power as he ran the titan hunger. They tasted metallic and bitter but the strength they offered was clean, and dense. Mana flowed.
Each bite pushed his core closer to compression. The fog of his internal mana sea thickened, pressurized. His elemental paths screamed for refinement, and he responded by weaving threads of fire and wind into drills and fans . Every motion carved deeper understanding. Mana rushed towards him
He trained and fed..
The air was lighter. Healthier. The predatory tension that had once choked the garden outer ring was slowly clearing..
Frank resumed his work.
He spent the days like that clearing vines, digesting power, refining his core. By the fifth day, the energy swirling inside him had turned solid, heavy, and pure. His foundation stabilized. The early tremors of the Grandmaster realm loomed ahead, no longer a mountain but a path.
Each night, he slept under glowing canopies with one eye open. The creatures never attacked, but he felt their gazes. One night, he woke to find a single rare fruit black and gold left by his feet. He stared at it for a long moment, then placed it gently in his pouch.
Even the Garden was starting to respond to him.
On the sixth day, while meditating at the foot of a tree , he felt it.
A pulse.
Deeper within the Garden.
Not hostile, but aware.
Whatever ancient being frank had sensed that day something older than time, something that ruled in silence was stirring again. Its presence brushed lightly against Frank's senses like a breath against the back of his neck.
acknowledgment.
Frank stood.
He looked deeper into the glowing trees. Citing his goal the herbs with restrictions that thicker and more powerful vines coiled over