An Owl's Rise

'Ah I feel quite refreshed.'

Shaking her head and bringing up a gust of wind around herself. Evelyn cleaned off the blood from the tiger she had just finished eating.

Her appetite had been quite high after her evolution and testing out her new magical abilities.

Now that she had eaten though, she felt revitalized and ready to continue on her journey to exit these woods that were full of harsh memories.

'Hm, unfortunately the core of this tiger really did not fill me up like they usually do.'

Making this discovery, Evelyn figured it probably had something to do with her recent transformation that had made her much stronger.

The cores of lower ranking beasts just were not really going to do it for her now that she was at the realm above them.

'At least the meat was still filling, though it is hard to believe how accustomed I have gotten to hunting down and eating prey raw.'

Looking at the skeleton of the tiger that she had practically picked clean, she knew that had she seen this when she was a human, it would have made her queasy and likely not able to eat for at least a day.

Yet now it did not stir up any emotions of disgust, and instead she got a sense of satisfaction for taking down what was a top predator.

After taking one last look at the tiger she had defeated, Evelyn took back to the air and continued flying away from the lab where she had been held captive and her parents had been killed.

'Might as well see how long I can go.'

Activating the power of the Aethersphere which was the name of the divine item that had fused with her, she lowered the gravity around her to about seventy percent of its normal force.

This allowed her to fly much easier, and along with it she unleashed the occasional gust of wind to accelerate herself.

Unfortunately, she was only able to keep this up for around fifteen minutes, as even though she was not exerting her gravity powers to their max. it still took a huge toll on her magical energy to use.

'Guess I cannot use it to speed up my flying for an extended period of time. I'll just have to save it for short bursts in case of emergency.'

Coming to understand that even with her recent increase in power she could not use her magic continuously, Evelyn stopped using her powers to accelerate and flew normally.

Still, she was quite a bit faster now than how she had been before, and with her increased strength she flew with even more confidence.

She felt that now that she could take down a tiger there was no reason to worry about trying to hide herself, since she had been able to take down the strongest beast she had seen since her escape.

'Oh, what is this.'

Suddenly as she was flying along and had made it around forty miles from where she had killed the tiger, she felt a tugging in her chest from the Aethersphere.

It had abruptly stated pointing in a certain direction like a compass, trying to guide Evelyn somewhere.

'I wonder what this is. The only abilities that I thought I had access to were to increase or lessen gravity. Everything else that it can do, whatever that may be, as it told me was damaged and inoperable.'

Nevertheless, even though Evelyn had no idea what sort of function was at work, she decided to follow the direction the item bound to her was pointing.

As much as at an emotional level she loathed it for killing her parents, she knew logically that it was her greatest assets in the world.

Therefore, if it was pointing her somewhere, she decided to trust it this time to figure out where it wanted to lead her.

Flying in the direction she was being led, Evelyn noticed that the forest once again took on a less vibrant and lush appearance.

In fact, as she continued, the trees got smaller and other plants became sparser.

At first, she thought maybe she was heading towards a dessert, but the air did not seem to be getting any drier and she did not see any signs of sand.

However, the cause of the malnourished foliage soon became apparent, as she spotted a huge stem of some sort of plant in the distance.

'What the hell is that thing?'

Seeing this huge plant that was bigger than any tree she had ever seen or heard about, Evelyn was stunned in awe.

It was so tall that she could not even see the top of it that was currently covered in clouds, and all she could see was the vibrant green stem and the few dozen massive leaves the plant had.

'Is that where I am being led to?'

Thinking about it, Evelyn could only conclude that her speculation was correct. As the Aethersphere was definitely pointing in the direction of this plant.

She even tried veering away from it a few miles, but there was no doubt that this was where she was being led.

Yet as she got closer, and the landscape became even less vibrant, she realized something else.

The reason that magical energy seemed so sparse in this region was because of that massive plant. It was draining all of the magical energy towards itself and leaving nothing for anything else.

'The tree that I got from the plum was also absorbing magical energy, but not like this. What sort of power must that thing have in order to need this much energy?'

Not able to fathom the degree to which this plant must need magical energy, Evelyn could only speculate on what it might be able to do.

The small plum she had eaten, while seeming to have had a massive amount of magical energy in it. Did not even register on the same scale as the plant she was headed for.

Getting closer and closer, Evelyn felt anticipation as to what kind of treasure she might get from this plant and wondered if it might give her a massive power boost.

The small plum had caused her to evolve, so whatever this had to offer should be worth thousands of times more magical energy.

'Oh, the clouds are breaking. Whoa!'

Being able to see the full majesty of the plant that was draining magical energy from the surroundings for hundreds of miles. Evelyn was astonished by its beaty.

Rising high into the sky was a vibrant red flower, that was honestly more beautiful than anything she had ever seen.

'I have to have it.' Evelyn thought as she gazed upon it.

Her instincts told her to claim it just as they had the silver plum, but to an even more intense degree.

It was as if her body knew that she would become unfathomably stronger is she could get ahold of this flower.

Except as she got closer, she saw why this flower was not being swarmed by other beasts.

Honestly as she saw it, she realized how stupid of it was for her to approach this obviously immensely powerful flower.

Just like the silver plum had a beast that laid claim to it, this flower was already being protected by a beast that had an interest in it.

However, what was protecting this flower was something so beyond Evelyn that just looking at it from afar sent shills down her body.

Coiled around the flower was a vibrant green snake the size of a cargo train.

It blended in quite well with the flower's stem, but now that she was within a few miles she had spotted this incomprehensibly strong beast.

Even from this far away, the instinctual terror she felt was enough to make her want to fly away as fast as possible.

She could tell that with a simple thought this creature could end her life, and there would be nothing she could do.

Fortunately, this colossal snake had no interest in Evelyn.

Certainly, it had long since noticed her approach. But if it went out of its way to crush every ant that approached its turf, it would waste far too much time and energy. When instead it could just continue to nap and wait for its prize to finish growing.

Turning around abruptly, she no longer cared that her divine item was beckoning her to that plant. She flew away as fast as she could.

That beast was so far beyond her that she wanted to get as far away as possible.

'Damn it, this thing is trying to get me killed. If it thinks I am going after that flower, it has more than a screw loose.'

Flying for nearly two hours, Evelyn finally felt safe when she could no longer see the snake that had wrapped itself around the flower.

Quickly she looked for a place to rest, since she was exhausted both physically and mentally from that encounter.

Finding a hollow in a tree she floated down to it, where she located a long-abandoned nest.

Once inside this nest she allowed herself to relax, and soon sleep found her exhausted body that needed to recuperate.