No Other Way

Sitting around the core with everyone Xilo explained what happened while he messed around with the core. It had changed from the cyan colour it was before to a scarlet red with a silver hue. He tried commanding it to create an Astral Beast and a small squirrel spawned in front of him. "Interesting." Letting it run free, Xilo also tried to communicate with the rest of his Clan by using the Zone. "Come on back everyone, we're done here." Seeing them pause and start heading towards them Xilo figured he heard them. "It looks like they explored this entire Zone." Looking through the layout of the place he tried to see if they had missed anything.

"Looks like nothing's left, this thing is really interesting."

"So this entire Astral Zone is under your control now Xilo...Kind of hard to believe that's even possible."

Felli stared at wonder in Xilo.

"Trust me, I didn't think so either. I just really don't want to repeat the events from before with how your Mother handled the first Zone. I can agree that the Zones are dangerous but I wanted to look for another way and it seems like I found that. I can set most of its functions to autopilot and also stop it from starting any rampages. This thing is completely under my control."

Spinning the orb around in his hand, Xilo tried to reassure Felli.

"If that's the case, Mother shouldn't be upset. Though she might question you to hell and back on how you did it."

"Figures, I can't really give her a proper answer though. I just got lucky, there really isn't much more to it. I wonder how she'll take that."

"Awfully if I have to guess but oh well. She deserves it after what she's done so don't feel too bad. I doubt it was luck that helped you however so when you feel like explaining, We'll all be ready to listen."

Xilo's smile froze as he heard Felli's sassy tone.

"That obvious?"

Rolling her eyes Felli leaned back and didn't even bother replying. "I think that's a hard yes." Shrugging his shoulders Xilo pulled Tearia closer to his body who had stayed quiet this whole time. Wrapping his arms around her, He could feel the jealousy radiating off of her body. After she figured out about the link between him and Xelfia she had gone somewhat quiet. He had tried to explain that it wasn't just a good thing and there were a lot of downsides. That just edged her on more in the end. "I knew she would act like this." Rubbing her back, Xilo peeked at Xelfia. Tearia and her had always had a somewhat interesting relationship. They were highly competitive with each other even though most of the time they acted like sisters.

"Don't worry Tearia, we'll figure out a way to give it to you. I'm not purposefully leaving you out or anything. Starting one with Xelfia was just a complete accident, maybe in the future I'll figure out how to manually do it and start one with you. There's a lot we still don't know about my powers, we'll figure it out together."

Pouting Tearia glanced upwards at Xilo.

"Promise?"

"Of course, I promise."

Noticing a bunch of footsteps approaching them, Xilo stood up and offered each of the girls a hand. Exiting the underground area Xilo saw Yulrin, Vandor and everyone else entering the Castle grounds. Waving at them, they ran up to them. Instantly Xilo was greeted by a bunch of them arguing with each other. "What are they counting?" Numbers flew left to right as they tried to decide on something. Stepping in Xilo took control of the situation as he wondered what was up. "Ahh, a competition." He also heard them mention someone asking them to go out and kill the beast to help him. "Must have been her." Tapping his foot Xilo calmed everyone down and asked the leaders for their answers.

"Alright you four, you were the leaders. Let's hear the scores and no tricks. You all decided on this competition and I'll hold you all to it."

Starting from Vandor he heard them all out.

"We killed a total of 100."

Yulrin was a next."

"90...."

Raran was right after.

"80."

Finally was Keld.

"120."

"Looks like that makes the winner Keld's group and the loser is Raran's. I look forward to how the place will look for the next week. Ah and Keld here you go."

Grabbing some stones from his bag that he had with him, he tossed them Keld's way.

"Sir?"

"Think of it as a prize for winning, split it up with everyone in your group. Other than that we're finally done here so let's get going. I'm tired of looking at this wasteland."

"""""Yay.""""""

Many voices rang out in agreement with Xilo as they exited the mountain area. Playing around with the Zone the whole time, Xilo's large group eventually made it to the entrance of the Astral Zone. "So this is where they all were." Xilo quickly noticed over a hundred different presences on the other side waiting around. "They were waiting for us to leave." Searching through the map of the Astral Zone Xilo couldn't find any other exits. "How did they know we were the ones here though?" Causing a commotion and drawing a crowd was one thing, Xilo sensed aggression in their Aura though. The only reason he could think of as to why they were here was one woman in particular.

"You can't be serious, Katrin."

He could already see her smiling at him pleasantly as she passed this off as a test.

"This is ridiculous."

Taking a quick peek outside the Astral Zone confirmed his suspicion instantly as he saw quite a few old faces. "They look pissed." Ducking back into the Astral Zone, Xilo tried to figure out how to handle this. "We could sneak around them if we're lucky." The other option they had was to fight them and Xilo was pretty sure that was what Katrin had in mind. She probably tipped them off about their location and told them to set up an ambush.

"We'll one way or another we need to leave."