An Owl's Rise

After separating from her siblings Evelyn days went back to a more normal routine.

While training and preparing for her match against Devurg and his team Evelyn had cut back on running her alchemy store to only two days a week, but now it was time to get back into it.

Her skills were getting a bit rusty for some of the more difficult and less common items Melisandre had taught her to make and she was using her new increased wealth to purchase the items she needed to practice.

Her days went by like this with every third day being reserved for strategy meetings and training with Bylur and Rehni.

Naturally the two of them asked about her siblings and Evelyn told them she was going to take it slow to see how they would mesh before possibly incorporating them into their group.

Today it was the ninth day since she had left her siblings to their own devices, and they had plans to meet tomorrow.

Evelyn had just finished training with her teammates for the day and they were cooling down a bit after an especially tense session.

"Are you sure you do not want us to go with you? If you are planning on having them join us it would be best if we got to meet them." Rehni said to Evelyn, wanting tag along with her tomorrow.

"Yeah, it is as Rehni says. We want to meet your siblings as well." Bylur said, jumping in as well.

Evelyn in response firmly shook her head.

"No, I think it is a bit too soon to properly introduce you to them. I am still not sure if I want to associate with them yet. We may be family, but we have been estranged for a long time, and I frankly do not need any more people to look out for. Especially if they end up being deadweight. I want to make absolutely sure that neither of them just want to leech off of us." Evelyn said, making her intentions clear.

Unable to refute her and understanding her distrustful nature, Rehni and Bylur backed off for now. Both of them figured that things would eventually work out and that they only needed for Evelyn to warm up to her siblings.

Once they had finished their discussion and were well rested, the three of them said their farewells to each other and went on their ways to do as they pleased for the next three days.

…

Waking up the next day Evelyn got ready to meet up with her siblings again.

Today she was going to assess the progress they had made and how they had used the knowledge she had imparted them with.

Depending on where they were at she would assess what to do next and give them some more advice. At least, so long as they did not seem to be squandering their time and had made no progress.

Yet when she met up with them, Evelyn went wide eyed with astonishment.

In front of her Aralee was no longer at the peak of the fiend beast rank but had evolved into a low tier awakened rank beast just like Verrader.

'How? What the hell happened in these ten days?! She was nowhere near being close enough to gather the materials she needed as catalyst to evolve!' Evelyn thought as she stood stunned.

And it was not as if Aralee had simply gone for the easiest evolution path. Evelyn could tell by the feel of her sister's magical energy that she was a superior type of owl.

"We managed to surprise you, didn't we sister." Aralee said with an elated expression on her face.

It seemed she really enjoyed seeing Evelyn's reaction to her abrupt evolution.

Verrader, who was standing behind her had a smug expression on his face and was looking quite pleased with himself as well.

"What happened? How did you managed to evolve so quickly? Just ten days ago you were struggling to get by after only having been here a couple of months." Evelyn asked, unable to process what possibly could have happened.

"It is all thanks to Verrader. He worked really hard over these ten days to help me out. He said it was a shame that the three of us could not work together like back when we were still children since we were not the same rank and did all he could to gather the items I needed to evolve." Aralee said, giving Verrader a look of gratitude and respect.

Evelyn on the other hand had an expression of pure bafflement.

She had not pegged Verrader as the magnanimous type and even if he was willing to help out Aralee, tend days was a very short time to gather the items one would need to trigger an evolution to the awakened rank.

Evelyn may have been an unusual case in that she needed some exceptionally rare items, but Aralee clearly had achieved a powerful evolution in her own right.

If it was so easy to just go out and gather these items than every peak fiend beast rank owl would be evolving with ease rather than struggling.

'Sure, Verrader is at the awakened rank and would have an easier time gathering than Aralee. But still, how did he get it done so quickly?' Evelyn wondered.

Plus when they had last met, Aralee had said neither of them had even met the requirements to leave the Roost yet, so Verrader would have needed to clear that hurdle first before going out.

None of it really made sense unless he had some type of benefactor helping him out.

"Verrader, what did you do? How is it possible you gather the items needed for Aralee's evolution so fast, and why did you really do it in the first place?" Evelyn asked, her tone stern.

This was not the reaction either Aralee or Verrader had been expecting.

They figured that Evelyn would rejoice that Aralee had made so much progress. Yet instead, she seemed to be seething with anger.