Taking control and progressing

The time he intended to stay for a week turned into months inside the forge, dozens of accumulated failures made his technique more efficient but he still had to find a solution to finish the product.

During that time, his companions decided not to disturb Nicola's concentration and followed through with the plan. For the first week late they just waited to see if Nicola would come out and also ventured into the nearby forests, seeking battles to raise their levels. After a month they decided to go ahead and take control of the situation, with the release of the levels of authority granted to them by Nicola, the team took the space artifact and resolved the problems in the city before moving to Uglitch.

The trip took about a month, as they were attacked by groups of bandits and had a lower cultivation level than Nicola who could carry them at high speed. But it served them well, as they polished their team fighting skills and even Fibula was turning into a more sociable person, except for the fact that he sucked his opponents' blood dry. Which caused the skeleton army under Nicola to rise in considerable numbers.

Now with four AI at his side, Nicola could control many more undead under his command, a total of 600 who were slowly increasing their ranks of humanoid beings that were being used as potions and object factories, in fact, the number of humanoid corpses that could be used for this were much larger, but due to the limit they were stocked in space rings in case the former were destroyed as had happened before. So the exit of Gin from the equation didn't change much.

During the crossing to Uglitch City they passed through several environments very different from the forests found in Melkor Kingdom, the forests here were not magical, or glowed with small magical animals eventually. Most of the biomes found here were grassy meadows and plains. Woods or the like were rarely found. It was a more primitive biome, the species of magical plants found here were few and sparse, most were under the escort of magical beast clans and the few that remained were taken by bandit groups.

These used the special herbs and shrubs as bait to attack travelers. The group did not avoid confrontation with bandits and faced everyone. Sometimes they were forced to flee and hide in the artifact, as the number of bandits was more than they could handle.

There was a time when they were surrounded by a group of were-dogs led by what appeared to be a Cerberus in humanoid form, they surrounded them and tried to steal their belongings. But the teamwork developed by them managed to overcome the superior amount of enemies.

Gin was the long range attacker, fibula used webs made of shadows in the form of a field control domain, Kin and Tyris were the forward attackers fighting the enemies and finally, Tuatha attacked in all possible positions and was the team brain, coordinating their attacks and creating combinations of techniques that made enemies submit to their feet.

The societies of the country of beasts was different from that found in the realm of humans, here the law of the strongest reigned, the clans rarely mixed with other species of beasts, maintaining their lineages with a certain degree of purity.

After the patriarch reached the gold level, his offspring could develop into humanoids with beastly characteristics, and could even shape-shift back into magical beast bodies. But most remained in humanoid form for the advantage of using weapons and techniques more developed for battle than the brute strength of their bestial forms.