Delia looked at the four sleeping girls and smiled. She was happy. Happy that her Yuki had made so many friends. “Master….”

“What is it?” Delia asked as she turned and glared at the young-looking girl, around sixteen years old, who had appeared. The young girl had green hair and was covered in leaves. Her pointy ears and solid black eyes showed that she was not human.

    “There was an incident at the castle. The Black Tortoise Clan is demanding that you hand over your position.” The young girl replied. She seemed very used to her master’s mood swings.

“Oh? Well, so what? If they want the forest, then let them have it. Move all our people to the new base near the Heavenly Cloud Sect. All our resources have already been moved out. So there is no point in staying.” Delia replied nonchalantly. 

    “Then I will do as Master says.” The young girl did not seem surprised. She knew her master did not care to rule over the hod beasts there. She was just doing it to pass the time.

“Wait!” Delia called out to the girl before she disappeared. “Send people to the Mainland. I want to have a few strongholds near the Holyland.” 

“Understood.” The young girl stole a glance over at Yuki and then at her master and smiled. Her master had finally found her fated one. This was enough to make her happy. She knew how much her master longed to see her fated one. And now…. With this thought in mind, the young girl decided to make sure that all these new locations had a room just for Yuki.

The night continued, but before dawn could even break, another figure appeared and stood next to Delia with an angry expression. “Why did you not stop her? Why did you allow her to come out here knowing it was a trap!?”

    “Little Phoenix, watch your tone with me. My fingers might slip, and I might wipe out your entire clan. You should know that I would never let any of these girls die. But you still came all the way here to lecture me. Yuki and I go back deeper than you could ever imagine so do not think just because you are her Master that she would choose you over me.” Delia had always felt jealous of how Yuki treated Elder Nishikawa. She even got yelled at for arguing with the stupid phoenix.

“I do not want to hear that coming from the demon queen herself!” Elder Nishikawa snorted. “You could have at least told me instead of sending me a message. Face to face is much better.”

“I am not sure if I should be more surprised by your overprotection of your disciples or the fact that you were even able to sniff us out in the first place. But I will ignore that and say this. You are babying her too much. I will keep her alive and make sure she can always come back to her Master when she wants to. But you need to let her go. She was going to take a mission no matter what, so whether she got a fake mission or not, it made no difference. But you should be looking into the elder who gave out the mission in the first place. Here.” Delia shot a ray of light into Elder Nishikawa’s head.

 An image of a man appeared in her mind. When she saw this image, her eyes turned cold. She gazed sharply at Delia and said: “I will go take care of this. You keep my disciples alive no matter what.”

    “I do not need you to tell me such things. Just go do what you need to do.” Delia snorted back. They both glared at each other before Elder Nishikawa turned and left. Why the two were jealous of the other was strange as it was. But they both held a mutual understanding that Yuki’s and the other’s safety was important. 

When the sun rose, Yuki was the first of the four girls to wake up. He rubbed her sleepy eyes and floated up into the air to not disturb the other two girls. She hovered there for a few minutes before finally letting herself land softly on the ground.

“Good morning.” Delia appeared in front of Yuki and gave her a hug. 

“Mmm… Morning….. Delia, did people stop by last night?” Yuki asked. She had woken up two times when she heard voices. It was a habit of hers. 

“Yeah. I will explain more about it when we get back to the sect. For now, go wash your face. I already got you something good to eat. It’s currently roasting near the fire.” Delia pointed at the large demonic beast hovering over the fire, spinning around slowly, roasting.

“I knew I smelled something! Delia, you are the best!” Yuki felt her stomach rumble as she gave Delia a squeeze and walked over to the river to wash her face and hands. 

The other girls also slowly woke up. The one who was most surprised that she had fallen asleep was Selene. She looked at everyone sitting down by the fire, softly chatting with one another while eating, and felt things were truly not bad at all.