An Owl's Rise

With her shopping now completed, Evelyn left the large and varied market hall and flew back to Melisandre's mansion to complete the next step in her goal.

She needed to use a special magic tool that drained her magical energy for her and imbued it into each of the items she had just bought.

Of course, she could have done this on her own, but it would have been much harder and taken far longer since she did not have perfect control over her magical energy.

'Okay I will start with the least expensive and work my way up. Once they have been tainted by my magical energy each of these items becomes far less valuable.'

Taking out the box shaped magic tool Melisandre was loaning her Evelyn placed it in the floor of her room and inserted the first item.

Then she grabbed ahold of a nob on the outside of the box and allowed it to drain her magical energy and imbue it into the item.

It was a particularly boring and uncomfortable process that Evelyn wished she could have avoided, but there was no way around it if she wanted to find out if any of these items were useful to her.

'Nope, the first one is a dud.' Evelyn thought as she did not receive the instinctual reaction she was told she would.

Though she had no idea what this reaction was supposed to be, but Melisandre, Anneli, and even Katrina assured her that she would know if she found the right item.

'Well, the first one was not what I needed but maybe the next.' Evelyn thought as she placed a peak fiend beast's core from a beast that had a wind elemental affinity into the box.

Around twenty minute later the process was done, and she looked over the next item that was a complete failure as well.

At least in this case she could easily repurpose it and swallowed the core which allowed her to restore the lost magical energy and stock up for her evolution.

The next seven items all ended up not being of any use to her as well, having her go through around half of what had been on Melisandre's list and coming up with nothing.

'There goes thousands of credits down the drain for nothing. Ugh, I need a break. I am nearly out of magical energy, and I feel famished.'

Tired and hungry Evelyn left the monotonous work of imbuing the items she bought for later, and went to the kitchen to get something to eat.

Unfortunately, it was not a scheduled time for a meal, so neither Anneli or Katrina were in their cooking right now.

'I cooked a bit in my old world and here I have magic to help me. I am sure I can make something for myself.'

Going through the cabinets and magical cold storage Evelyn found an assortment of ingredients and began picking out the ones she thought would be best.

'I think this is what Anneli uses a lot when she is making food.' Evelyn thought as she grabbed some sort of magical herb.

Once she had everything she believed she needed, she tired to figure out how to use the heating magic tool but found she had no idea.

Eventually Evelyn just gave up on that all together, and used her heavenly flame, wondering why she had not done so from the start.

However, she found a slight problem at first when she accidently melted the pan she was using.

She had figured that he same level of heat she used on her caldron would be acceptable, but this was just a normal metal pan instead of an enchanted item. So, it only withstood the heat for around half a minute before losing its shape and quickly turning molten.

'Oops. I guess I will need to buy another one.' Evelyn thought as she looked at the misshapen pan she had ruined.

Finding a waste disposal magic tool Evelyn tossed the pan in and watched it disappear before her eyes.

'Note to self. Do not put my wings or feet in there.'

After her first fiasco Evelyn focused a lot harder on controlling the output of heat of her heavenly flame and lowered it down to an appropriate temperature to cook with.

Soon enough she had a slab of meat form a creature she did not know the name of that was lathered with an already prepared sauce and coved in a few types of magical herbs.

Yet as Evelyn took the first bite, she knew immediately she made a mistake somewhere.

Spitting out the food and gagging she felt tears welling up in her eyes from how bad it tasted.

'Where did I go wrong!?' She thought as she frantically washed out her mouth.

The foul taste in her mouth was nearly as bad as the potion Melisandre had given her before she made the jump to the high tier of the fiend beast rank many weeks ago.

Luckily it came out much easier, and Evelyn decided not to try using any ingredients she did not understand.

Nevertheless, she was still hungry, but this time she did nothing fancy and simply heated up a couple pieces of meat and ate them plain. Which was more than satisfactory to fill her stomach.

Evelyn No longer hungry and having spent enough time to recuperate, deiced that it was time for her to get back to the tedious work of imbuing her magical energy into numerous items.

Eight more items later and Evelyn had still hit all blanks.

Not a single one was compatible with her, and she was beginning to get quite upset over how much time and credits she had wasted.

'Now all that is left is the whispering vine seed cluster and the gale pearl. If neither of those are of any use, all of this will have been for nothing.'

With far less enthused movements than when she started Evelyn placed the seed cluster into the box that drained her magical energy and imbued it into items.

This time though there was far more pushback from the seed cluster not wanting to accept the foreign magical energy, and it took her nearly an hour of exhausting work to complete the process.

And when she checked on the results of her work she was simply met with another dud. Just as she was coming to expect.

'Great, I should have known this would not work. My lineage may be that of a zephyr owl, but I mutated thanks to the Aethersphere and am a completely different species now. It is possible I may never be able to find what I need to go up to the next rank and am stuck like this forever.'

With dark thoughts creeping into her head Evelyn felt like giving up and just selling back the wind pearl to recoup some of her losses.

At this point she was pretty sure that her species had changed to the point that she only bore the slightest resemblance to what she would have been before being bound to the Aethersphere.

But the slight possibility that if she tried one more time, she might hit a winner just like a gambling addiction had her place the gale pearl into the magic tool and start the long process of imbuing it with her magical energy.

A bit surprised, she found that unlike the whispering vine seed cluster, this one did not present any resistance from what she could tell and easily took in her magical energy.

Yet this created another problem as it seemed capable of draining what seemed like an infinite amount of magical energy. And to make matters worse, Evelyn was already more than half drained from all she had already done, had to take a few magical energy replenishment pills and work in intervals.

'It is finally finished.' She thought after two hours.

Opening up the magic tool she found the gale pearl sitting inside and now glowing far more brightly than it had before.

Seeing it she had no reaction, just like everything else, and figured she had drawn another blank. That is, until she moved to pick it up.

As soon as she touched it, she felt a reaction and her eyes went wide.

She could tell that this item imbued with her magical energy could make her stronger.

'So, this is what they meant. Truly I cannot understand why I feel this way, but I do know that this is something I need to get stronger. Ah I am so happ-'

"AGHHHHHHHHH!"

While holding onto the gale pearl Evelyn suddenly felt a searing pain in her chest, and the Aethersphere began spinning at an uncontrollable speed. Similar to how when it first integrated into her.

All the remaining magical energy inside her as well as the in the area began being drawn towards it.

The storage amulets currently hidden within Evelyn's feathers even broke apart as their energy was forcefully stolen and their contents shunted out of their subspace.

In a matter of seconds, the magical crystals that Mason had given her which were now out in the open were absorbed by the Aethersphere as it broke them apart into pure magical energy.

During all of this Evelyn had fallen to the floor and was rolling around in pain nearly as bad as what she initially felt when joining with the divine item.

And when the pain in her chest subsided after the Aethersphere absorbed enough magical energy, her head was assaulted with an incomprehensible amount of knowledge that she could not process all at once.