Kyra was helping Benny pack the night's loot away into his car when he turned to her.

  "You seem more tired than usual," he said. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  "Tired is a good thing," she replied. "It means we're training at my limit."

  Her nights with Benny were the only way she was getting stronger. While she'd been keeping up her daily meditation practice and strength training, nothing in the real world compared to the intensity of a dungeon.

  "It's more like something has been weighing on your mind," he said. "Are things not going well with the recruits?"

  He was far too astute for her liking.

  The problem was Lori. A week and a half had passed and the mental exhaustion was still there. If anything, it had sunk in deeper than last time. While she was up, she was hardly about. At this point, Kyra would have welcomed coming home to a kitchen table draped in scribbles.

  She feared she'd caused the girl permanent damage.

  "I made a mistake," she said, unsure if it was wise to go into further detail. She was talking to a man who could turn back time, and she very much didn't want him to do that. The chill of death on that mountainside still resided deep in her bones.

  "I've never known you to be burdened by mistakes," Benny said.

  That only proved how little he understood her despite having known her in a previous timeline. It wasn't that she was never burdened. She was just well practiced at hiding it.

  It also confirmed her instincts about not opening herself up to Benny if the other Kyra hadn't warmed up to him after all that time.

  "It's nothing to be burdened about," she lied.

  "That's good," Benny said. "You know, I never meant to discourage you from asking me for help. Just because I don't like to use my regression powers unnecessarily doesn't mean it hurts to ask. I want you to succeed."

  "For now I'll continue to ask you to save up your power so that it's ready when I really need it," she said, and then quickly changed the topic. "If you really want to be helpful, there are a few things I'll need for the main part of my plan."

  "You're talking about the creation of a continental hunters association?"

  "Not just creation, but control," she said. "All the countries of Concordia must want to unite under one association, and then they must elect Tristis to the seat at the top."

  For some reason Benny's silence filled her with satisfaction. It wasn't often you get to hit a time traveler with a curveball.

  "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he said at last. "There have already been plenty of timelines with Tristis in charge."

  "And there has already been one with me in charge, hasn't there?"

  "You're fishing again," Benny chided. "I don't want to poison this timeline by talking about the last one."

  "You don't have to say because I already know what must have happened," she replied. "The other Kyra must have done the same thing I'm doing, and then she installed herself at the top. And it failed. It failed so hard that it couldn't be fixed with you going back a little bit within the same timeline. You had to go all the way back to the beginning."

  She enjoyed seeing him shifting uncomfortably, unable to respond without breaking his own rule.

  "Whatever caused the other timeline to fail," she continued, "must be something the other Kyra couldn't solve from the top. Take for example the president of Charais Gamor. He's the most powerful man in the country, but there are things a regular Gamorese citizen can do that he can't. He can't go anywhere without being recognized. He's confined by all the eyes on him."

  "Is this why you want me to take on the role of a civilian?" Benny asked.

  "The world will have no shortage of powerful hunters," she said. "They won't miss you and me."

  "You'll be taking on the role of a civilian too?"

  "No."

  He furrowed his brows in confusion.

  "It's about getting a piece into every position," she explained. "There's the puppet at the top, the researcher, the soldier, the eye on the ground, and the outsider. Five roles for five of us."

  "Tristis is the puppet, Lori is the researcher. Which one are you?"

  "The eye on the ground," she replied. "The trouble with any large organization is that the boss is too high up to see the problems on the ground, and the voices on the ground can't reach them in the clouds. So that's where I'll be, a regular hunter with a direct line to the boss."

  "And you don't want me to be the soldier?" he asked.

  "Your unique ability is best used, in my opinion, in information gathering. It surely makes you unbeatable in battle, but if the problem of human extinction was one that could be solved by beating it into submission, I don't imagine you would have failed a million times."

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  "Very well, if that's how you want to run it," Benny said. "As for uniting the continent under one association, it's all about hitting the right levers, and that is something I'm well practiced in. Tristis is a good choice for this because coming from a prominent family means he'll have an easier time gaining access to the right people."

  "So you can write me the playbook?"

  "For Tristis? With ease. He has sat on that seat before."

  "Before we get into all that," she said, "I'm going to need a bit of help recruiting the soldier. In particular, I'm hoping you've got some dirt on his family . . ."

  When Kyra got home, the first thing she did was check on Lori. She'd set her disciple up in the spare bedroom—or rather, one of the two spare bedrooms, both of which had remained empty since she moved in five years ago. Kyra just never had any use for them.

  Even the parts of the house that were being used always seemed oddly bare. The living room didn't have a TV, the hallway any pictures, nor the kitchen a microwave. It was like she was afraid of anything that could easily be lifted up and carried away.

  She checked her phone for a message from Tristis. She'd been sending him on easy dungeon runs on the nights she trained with Benny. This had boosted the boy's confidence, which helped him along in the harder dungeons, and the payoff was his recent rise to D-rank.

  The mystic fox emerged from the master bedroom, where she'd kept his bedding. There had been a time when she'd entertained the idea of giving him the second spare bedroom, but she found that she slept better in his presence. It still wasn't clear if this was an effect of his magic or if all this time she'd just needed a dog.

  The fox yawned and then nuzzled at her hand. She noticed that he'd dropped something at her feet. A little present, and not one she was pleased to see, but she gave his chin some scratches anyway. It wasn't the little guy's fault there were rats living in her walls.

  She supposed he deserved a reward for bringing the problem to her attention.

  With a tiny push of mana, something popped into her palm from a magical pocket dimension. She held it out to the fox.

  "Is this what you're after, boy? Is it?"

  He excitedly snatched the mystic orb in his jaws and crushed it. The shards dissolved into wisps of magical essence that then got sucked into the fox's body like a breath.

  She'd first learned of his voracious appetite for these things when Lori had left the cabinet unlocked. By the time they managed to pull him out of the drawers, all the orbs had been devoured. Luckily that had only been half her stash, as she never liked to keep all her belongings in the same place.

  When the last of the magical essence disappeared into his body, the fox began to glow. He lowered his head in what looked like a bow, and that was when she noticed a second tail sprouting beside the first.

  With his body pressed submissively to the floor, he crept toward her.

  "You didn't do anything wrong, boy," she assured him and pet his head. The fur seemed softer than it had been just moments ago.

  Eager for more attention, he rolled over onto his back and invited a belly rub.

  "If I'm going to be keeping you, I ought to give you a name," she said. "What would you like to be called?"

  His only answer was to rock happily from side to side under her touch.

  "What do you think of Fenne?" she asked.

  He rolled back onto his belly and licked her hand. She took that as assent.

  "Let's see what this business with the second tail is about, Fenne."

  In all her time in the dungeons, she'd yet to encounter a mystic fox in the wild. When Benny had said they were hard to find, she never expected them to be positively endangered.

  What this meant was that the fox's abilities remained a mystery to her. She'd asked Benny about the gift of the mind, and he said that the foxes specialized in illusions. As far as she could tell, Fenne had never used any of that on her. It could be useful if he did, as it would be nice to be prepared should she ever have to fight one.

  But if he'd refrained because he felt safe, she wasn't about to do anything to change that.

  What was interesting was that the transformation improved his abilities without the need to train. And he'd also gained a new one. Mystical energy. She wondered if it had something to do with mystic orbs. Or maybe that strange glow when he transformed. More questions for Benny.

  Fenne rubbed up against her leg, and the questions didn't seem so important anymore.

  There were some loud sounds from Lori's room and the girl appeared at the door. "Kyra? You're home." There was a brief pause as if the girl's brain was still booting up. "How were the dungeons?"

  Kyra bit her lip while she watched her disciple steady herself against the doorjamb.

  "I have to be in the Litten Dominion for a couple of days," she said hesitantly. "But now I'm not sure if you'll be all right by yourself."

  "I won't be by myself," Lori said. "I'll have Whitnick to keep me company."

  "Who?"

  Lori pointed at the fox.

  "His name is Fenne," she said.

  "Whitnick suits him better," Lori replied.

  "Check his name for yourself."

  Lori stared at the fox and then furrowed her brows. "How did you do that? I've been calling him Whitnick for days and it never registered in his status."

  "I've never heard you call him that," she said.

  Lori knelt down beside Fenne. "I've got to figure this out."

  Kyra grabbed the girl's arm. "You're going to overexert yourself again." Recalling something she'd picked up tonight, she withdrew a vial from her pocket dimension and handed it to Lori. "Try this."

  "An A-rank healing potion?" The gears turned painfully in the girl's head. "Does this mean you've been clearing B-rank dungeons?"

  "Drink it," she urged.

  "I don't want to waste it," Lori said. "Potions work better on injuries than other health statuses."

  "This one could be potent enough to have an effect," she said.

  It's harder to muster up an argument when mentally exhausted, so Lori obediently drank the potion. Her health status didn't change.

  Kyra sighed. "I'm sorry. It's my fault you're going through this."

  "You have nothing to apologize for," Lori said. "I knew when I signed up that it wasn't going to be all smooth sailing."

  Lori's words had the opposite of the intended effect. They stabbed at Kyra's pride. She was being consoled by her own disciple.

  "How about some good news instead?" Lori chirped.

  "Good news would be nice," she agreed.

  "Rastane kept his end of the bargain. My mom is on her way back to Charais Gamor. The flight will be landing tomorrow. We can all go see her at the hospital together!"

  The timing wasn't good. "I'll already be in the Litten Dominion tomorrow."

  It was the first real opportunity to recruit her final disciple, and she couldn't afford to miss the window.

  "Oh."

  She couldn't bear to keep letting her disciple down.

  "I'll go with you to visit when I get back," she said. "I promise."