Yuriko's perception aura spread across the biome. It was supposed to be a couple of longstrides across, and it was an irregular shape, according to the map. It was mostly flat and covered with wild grass as tall as her waist. The horned bunnies' burrows were concealed under them, and while they weren't that aggressive. If someone came close enough, they would attack without warning. Considering that the grass was taller than they were, spotting the bunnies would be difficult. Well, if she didn't use her perceptive aura anyway. Her reach was over five hundred paces and she covered half of the biome's width.

Unfortunately, she still had trouble fine tuning her senses, and was prone to overstimulation now, so Yuriko couldn't go through the entire region with a fine-toothed comb. She focused on a sliver and swept it around, much like the way radar worked. A single three hundred and sixty degree sweep took several seconds, and at the end of the first one, she couldn't help but frown.

She…couldn't sense anything. Not the grass, or the dirt, and certainly no bunnies. It was the same kind of void in her perception that 'Chronian Gear affected, and it wouldn't have mattered much if it was limited to creatures, but the entire landscape?

She used her Animakinesis to check if she could use the ground as leverage and…she couldn't. Her kinesis slipped off as if it was wet glass. She tightened her control and balance, and it was only then that she managed to levitate a couple of inches off the ground. She shook her head and hooked onto the canvas of reality instead, and heaved a sigh of relief when that worked. Not too well, but it did. She only had to adjust her balance a bit. Probably.

Instead of relying on her Anima perception, she sharpened her senses with Animus instead. She could still feel people, though because they had been delayed in exiting the lobby, the other hunters who came with them were long gone. She spotted several game trails leading to the four compass directions, but couldn't make them out through her perception. She clicked her tongue in annoyance, and Carina glanced at her curiously.

"Anything wrong?" Carina asked.

"Hmm, just some complications." Yuriko waved the concern away. But it seemed that Shangria would be more difficult than she expected, though she wondered why Wyllan didn't tell her about this. Perhaps he didn't know…

She froze, or perhaps the density of Anima mattered more than she expected.

She hummed in thought as she contracted her perception until it was just a tenth of its normal reach. Then she thickened it instead of keeping it relatively dispersed, much like how she created Anima armour. That meant it wouldn't be discreet, so she paused and only did that around the area of her feet. Twenty times density was the threshold, and suddenly, she could sense the ground, the grass, and the bunny about to charge over in a murderous lunge.

"Woo-woof!" Fluffington barked as he leapt off her backpack and intercepted the charging bunny. He was still in his pupper form as he slammed his shoulder on the bunny's chest, having ducked under the twelve inch long horn. Fluffers had condensed his body to be that small, and his mass had been the same. He was using the same trick Yuriko did to support her own weight on more fragile surfaces, mainly by expanding his footpads using Anima to better distribute it.

So it came as no surprise when it was the bunny who was bounced away rather than the pupper who was at least a fifth of its size.

The horned bunny rolled over itself as it landed on the grass, and was back on its feet a moment later. It was just about to lunge when it froze, trembling in fright. Fluffington had resumed his original size, and he'd actually grown bigger than Yuriko expected, considering he'd spent the last Season as a tiny puppy. His shoulder was now higher than her head, and he was nearly four paces long from nose to tail.

He lifted his head proudly and smirked, then he slowly, dramatically, strode towards the cowering bunny, waited for a long moment to see if the poor creature could shake off its fear, then reached down with a paw and crushed its head. He observed the corpse for a long moment, before it disintegrated into dust, leaving nothing but a tiny fragment of its horn behind.

"So they really don't leave anything behind," Yuriko murmured.

"Except for a fragment, if you're lucky." Carina agreed. "You know, you are lucky, that's your first kill and already got a horn frag, heh."

"What's it worth?" Yuriko asked as she picked it up with her kinesis.

"Are you a Mystic?" Carina asked after a short pause.

"Ancient."

"Ah, so Mystic."

Yuriko gave the other girl a side eye. Carina just shrugged.

"That's the same family isn't it, just Ancients are the higher level. That's Animakinesis, right? You didn't cast spells and the Elemental energy around us didn't move."

"Huh, well, I guess, you're right." Yuriko shrugged.

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"You're a long way from the Mystic Convention's territory. Your ship's not allowed there?"

Yuriko shrugged. "Neither I, nor my companions are part of that faction. I do have some acquaintances that led me here, though."

"I see. Ah, the horn frag's worth about ten creds. That's not bad, but a bunny's only got one in ten chance of dematerialising with it."

"What do they use it for?" Yuriko asked as they moved towards the southern game trail. Fluffington ranged ahead, followed by Sir Blue. While the two women talked, the wisp let loose a bolt of lightning, but bobbed and whistled in disappointment afterwards. Fluffers pounced a dozen paces to the east, and there was a brief tussle accompanied by panicked thumping, then nothing. Yuriko's dense perception aura was not subtle, and Carina's been fidgety about its presence, so she retracted it.

But she couldn't just make herself effectively blind, so her varied strands of conscious brainstormed a way to use denser Anima for perception. Maintaining twenty times density all throughout was a bit straining anyway, so her working patch was to do just that, a patch of 20X Anima about the size of her finger. Normally, her perception covered everything, but that singular patch…well, sliver now, could cover quite a bit of space if she moved it around. She dedicated a strand to control the sliver since she didn't want it to fly in a predictable pattern. She couldn't stick a slice of her Intent on it either since it was still connected to her. And she used another two strands of consciousness to pay attention to what the sliver detected. Since she only used that much Anima, she could spread her perception to its full range. Actually, since she now had a focus point, she wasn't as easily overwhelmed by the amount of data she had to parse through.

Fluffers and Sir Blue slaughtered dozens of bunnies independently, and managed to recover two more horn frags.

"Not a bad haul," Carina said, "but this is the starter biome and it's not all that useful or expensive." She explained earlier that bunny horn fragments were often ground to dust and used as an additive to certain alchemical processes. There were too many to list down, and the horn dut was easily replaceable with other reagents.

It didn't take much longer, about half an hour or so, before they reached the boundary. The biome just…stopped.

Yuriko's perception hit a wall and no matter what she did, she could slip through it. It felt similar, but not quite identical, to dimensional barriers and Veils. Either way, there was a free standing door frame, with a red oak door, roughly a hundred paces from the boundary, on a clearing ten paces wide.

"This leads to the next biome," Carina said. "It's similar to this one, but occupied white ferrets. They're more dangerous since they can attack at medium range, just five paces or so."

"Are all biomes of Shangria like this?" Yuriko asked. "A homogenous environment with a single type of enemy?"

"Around the starter areas, yes," Carina said. "More complicated biomes appear farther out, and on the second layer, things change up."

"Everything's mapped out?"

"For this cycle, yes. Well, the first layer, anyway. Nobody will give out maps of the second layer for free."

Yuriko tilted her head. "Why not? Or rather, since you said for free, they would sell it?"

Carina chuckled. "Yes, but only to members of their own faction. The Five are very competitive after all." She gestured towards the landscape and pulled some grass off its roots. They disintegrated into dust after a couple of minutes, "As you can see, nothing in this place lasts. The only way we survive in the node cities is because of the rings. They house farms, hydroponics, what have you. And the factions fight over territory. They fight it here, in Shangria."

"A war?"

"More a competition than anything else." Carina continued, "Well, it's a complicated subject and I don't feel like elaborating, especially not here. Besides, you can easily find the basics in the local network."

"Hmm, I see." Yuriko prodded the door frame. "This leads to the next biome, you said. How do we reach the second layer?"

"Ten days travel, across a hundred different biomes. Shangria…limits access to ten biomes a day on the first layer, one less every layer below the first."

"Do you mean…"

"It would take a hundred days on the ninth layer to reach the Bore, yes. Well, probably, as it's not been confirmed." Carina shrugged. "Biomes grow bigger the deeper we go. Anyway, shall we enter? We can cross up to five biomes if you want to make it back to the rings today."

"I don't mind, but are all the creatures that weak?"

"I mean, they're of similar power," Carina admitted. "Different methods, though, but if you're looking for a real challenge, then you won't find it so close to the orbital elevator."

"A pity," Yuriko agreed, still, she could feel her Anima slowly expanding as she took in new sights. Even if it wasn't much of a challenge, as long as she learned something new, or realised something she hadn't before, her reach continued to grow quickly. At this rate, it would take just a bit more than a year and a Season for her to reach the peak of Transformation.

She touched the door and it swung open without a sound. It revealed a vista similar to the biome they were in, but her Anima perception could not cross the threshold. "Fluffers! Come on!"

"Woof!"

Sir Blue was already hovering above Carina's shoulder. Yuriko preceded everyone else, followed by Fluffington, who'd returned to his puppy form since he wouldn't get through easily otherwise.

As soon as she stepped through, she noticed a couple of groups several hundred paces away. No, she noticed two groups fighting each other, all while a few of them were engaged against a golden ferret that was even larger and longer than Fluffington.

Thankfully, the terrain was still relatively flat, and the grass was much lower here, so when Carina walked through, she saw what was happening and bit out a curse.

"Of all the bad luck, a golden ferret!"

"Why?"

"Those jackdaws won't let anyone who isn't affiliated with their group loose until they finish that thing off and secure the drop." Even as she spoke, Yuriko saw a group from both sides of the conflict spot the two of them. A moment later, two people, one from each side, started jogging towards the door.

"So what do you want to do?" Yuriko asked, unconcerned.

"We either wait, go back to the starter region, or make a break for it."

"You don't want the ferret? That must be valuable."

"It is. A heartgem could fetch ten thousand creds, and the ferret can be tamed. A golden variant is strong even for a first-layer beast."

Before Yuriko could answer, the two representatives arrived within shouting distance. One of them was glaring at the other, while the second one gave Yuriko and Carina an appraising look.

"Leave," the man said, and the other nodded.

Yuriko snorted, then shook her head. "I don't think so."

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