Lohan led Pip to a secluded chamber, a niche within the tree’s roots where luminous sap pulsed with a steady glow.
Elle remained at the entrance, continuing her gardening work but watching proudly as her brother followed the Vice President.
"Pip, sit back and relax," Lohan instructed.
The blue slime began to expand its biomass, activating the [Weaver Mother Lv 6] .
It extended threads of magical silk that connected to Pip’s joints and mana core. At the same time, Lohan activated the [Sacred Light Core Lv 2] , allowing a controlled fraction of that pure energy to flow through the threads.
The process was delicate. Lohan wasn’t just nourishing Pip; he was using Pip’s parallel processing to identify the impurities that the Beetle Queen had left in the fairy’s circulatory system while injecting pulses of refined vitality, forcing Pip’s biological structure to adapt and expand its mana and energy storage capacity.
Pip shuddered, feeling the warmth of the Holy Light course through his energy channels even more intensely than in previous sessions.
For the little fairy, the sensation was as if he were being bathed by the morning sun after an eternal winter night. His wings began to vibrate, emitting a crystalline sound as their color shifted from an opaque metallic green to a more vibrant, translucent hue.
"Pip feels... Pip feels that Pip is growing from the inside!" exclaimed the boy, his face glowing with the influx of power.
Lohan maintained the infusion for nearly an hour, consuming a considerable amount of his own stored biomass to ensure the upgrade was stable, but he didn’t mind.
After such a massive drain in the previous battle, something as small as this seemed insignificant to Lohan.
Surprisingly, he realized that Pip’s affinity with nature was facilitating the fusion with the Sacred Light, creating a synergy he hadn’t expected.
When Lohan finally retracted the threads and returned to his spherical form, Pip leaped to his feet. The fairy boy now exuded an aura that was subtle, yet subtly more powerful than before.
His movements were more agile, and the mana he released had a "scent" of wildflowers, much like the trail left by Halon himself.
"Pip thanks Halon! Pip feels that Pip can fly up to the clouds now!" he celebrated, performing a few acrobatic maneuvers in the air before landing and bowing formally.
"Practice this control, Pip. When your strength is sufficient and I can guarantee your safety, you’ll take part in the great battles," Lohan promised, pleased with the result.
The two left the chamber and returned to the guild’s entrance. The Mythlorien sun was at its zenith, and Elle’s decorations had progressed wonderfully. However, as they passed through the entrance arch, they both froze.
Lohan activated his [Instinctive Perception] instantly.
Elle was crouched near a new bed of dew flowers, speaking softly to a creature Lohan had never seen in that region.
It was a small unicorn!
The creature was so pure white that it seemed to glow with its own light, with a small spiral horn that shimmered in a mother-of-pearl hue.
It was small, barely larger than a young wolf, but its elegance was mystical.
The unicorn was sniffing one of the flowers Elle had just planted, seeming perfectly at ease with the fairy. However, the very millisecond Lohan and Pip approached, the animal’s ears twitched.
The unicorn looked in their direction with large, intelligent eyes, full of shyness.
Before Lohan could even process what he was seeing, the creature let out a soft whinny and vanished into the glowing bushes with a speed that left only particles of silvery light in its wake.
Lohan rolled over to Elle, who was looking down the path where the animal had fled with a gentle smile.
"Elle, who was that? I’ve never seen a unicorn before..." Lohan asked, curious about the origin of that encounter.
Elle turned, wiping the mana dust from her hands. "Elle made a friend! The friend showed up yesterday, right after the great battle of Halon. The friend said she loved the scent of the flowers Elle planted. But the friend is very shy, and Elle explained that the friend is very afraid of other people, especially people who make noise."
Lohan nodded, processing the information.
Having heard legends of unicorns so often in his previous life, and considering everything he "knew" about those creatures, seeing a young, living specimen so close to the Astralis Requiem was a sign that the ancient tree was truly beginning to draw the mystical life of Mythlorien back to its center.
"Does Elle know her friend’s name?" asked Pip, still excited about his newfound strength.
"Elle doesn’t know her name, but Elle knows that her friend lives with her family nearby. Elle invited her friend to come whenever she wanted to experience the scent of Astralis’s home," replied the fairy.
Lohan gazed into the deep forest, sensing that this small encounter held enormous potential for the future.
If the guild could become a refuge not only for elite Players but also for mythical and shy creatures like that unicorn, Astralis’s control over Mythlorien would be even greater!
"That’s great, Elle. You can keep inviting your friend," Lohan said, feeling satisfied. "A home surrounded by beauty and friends is what Astralis Requiem should be."
He then returned to the guild’s interior, watching the Players as they continued to handle logistics, now carrying disposable gear they’d purchased in Thalendor.
Lohan knew that Syn would be bursting with theories about the guild, but the deciding factor in their surge in popularity would be the outcome of their raid on Saturday.
If they managed to secure another global announcement, combined with a sponsored ad on Syn, the guild’s popularity would skyrocket!
Now, everything they could achieve would depend entirely on how they handled the dungeon on Saturday, and to do that, Lohan knew they would need to train as hard as possible so that when facing Level 15 Elite monsters, the other players could help out too, rather than leaving the battle entirely up to him and Lisa.