“Kekemi! Stop dazing off, carry the meat!”
“Peipeiro, the lady said that whatever is thrown on the ground belongs to whoever grabs it first!”
“Kalolo, you're flying too fast! I clearly bit that roasted wolf leg first!”
“Ugh... Xilulu, this meat is just too delicious...”
Ninike hurriedly stuffed roasted meat into her arms.
A little bird girl beside her tugged at her clothes.
“Captain Ninike, should we save some for the lady?”
“We can't! Didn't you hear her say it's trash?!”
Ninike tapped her on the head.
“Hurry up and carry it back to your treehouse to hide! If even a single piece of meat is left in the square tomorrow morning, our entire clan will be punished!”
Listening to the sneaky cheers of the bird girls of the White Feather Clan outside, Qimeng twirled her hair, her face full of smiles.
“Does this count as me forcing them to live a life that wild magical beasts would envy?”
The next morning.
The sunlight was beautiful, and the square had already been swept clean.
Qimeng pushed open the wooden door of the treehouse. Ninike was waiting respectfully outside with a few other bird girls, holding clean water and a towel.
However, the legs of the bird girls behind her were trembling, and they looked at Qimeng as if she were a demon who would skin them alive at any moment.
Qimeng took the towel and washed up quickly.
Having nothing to do during the latter half of the night, Qimeng had flipped through her alchemy manual and used All-Things Deconstruction to improve several potion recipes, successfully brewing them.
Special Tree Court potions!
Among them was the Tree Court Awakening Agent, which could minimize side effects and help magical beasts break through to the Advanced Rank, as well as the Tree Court Strengthening Agent, which could boost combat strength—an improved and enhanced version of the Demon Prince's Red Magic Potion.
Not only that, using the potion recipes and the pure magic power gathered from Devour All Things, she had refined the Tree Court Extraordinary Secret Potion, which could temper the physical body and break through the barrier to the Extraordinary Rank.
And today, Qimeng planned to gather all the bird girls of the White Feather Clan in the square.
The reason was simple: she wanted to feed them the potions.
“Huh? T-Testing potions?!”
The originally quiet square instantly erupted into a commotion!
Terrified, the bird girls wrapped their wings tightly around their bodies, whispering to one another, their eyes filled with panic over the unknown substances.
“How terrifying... Is that wicked woman finally showing her true colors?!”
“This must be a poison to turn us into mindless puppets!”
“Ugh... I knew there was no such thing as a free lunch. She enslaved us just to use us as materials to refine evil monsters!”
However, some of the bird girls who had been saved from the brink of death yesterday bit their lower lips, their expressions wavering.
“Don't say that! If the lady wanted to harm us, she wouldn't have gone through the trouble of saving us last night...”
“In any case, our lives were salvaged by her. If it is her command... I-I am willing to test it!”
The group of bird girls fell into a state of conflict, struggling internally one moment and convincing themselves the next.
Qimeng gave them a lazy glance.
One must always be wary of others; she had no intention of wasting her precious potions on ungrateful wretches who might betray her at any moment.
Qimeng flicked her finger, and emerald spots of light rained down, landing on the chests of the bird girls and transforming into Tree Lord spirit marks.
In reality, the marks could integrate into any part of the body, but Qimeng had simply thrown them carelessly to save trouble, and they just happened to land right on their chests.
“Mm?!”
“My chest... feels warm?”
The bird girls cried out, covering their chests.
With the mental contract established, their lives and deaths were now completely at the mercy of Qimeng's thoughts.
On the soft couch outside the treehouse, Qimeng reclined lazily, her long legs crossed casually. She held a bottle of glowing, colorful potion in her hand and beckoned to Ninike with a finger.
“Slave Ninike, come here and drink this bottle of 【Extraordinary Secret Potion】.”
The surrounding bird girls gasped.
Several of her companions grabbed Ninike's sleeves.
“Captain Ninike, don't do it!”
“If you drink it, you'll turn into a living corpse!”
Ninike's face turned pale, and she instinctively took a step back.
“I-I'm not afraid! Um... although I say that, I really have no confidence in my heart! This demon definitely has bad intentions, I don't want to drink it!”
“Slave Ninike, are you disobeying me again? It seems last night's punishment didn't teach you how to be obedient.”
“Ah! I get it, okay?!”
Covering her face, Ninike knocked her own little head, on the verge of tears.
“It's all because of my big mouth! Why did I have to say my inner thoughts out loud?!”
Half a minute later.
Ninike very consciously found a thick branch, tied her feet with vines, and hung herself from the tree, transforming into a bird suspended upside down, completely devoid of hope.
“I'll take the punishment myself! This way, I won't have to drink that strange potion, right...?”
“What an idiot.”
Qimeng rolled her eyes at her, completely unswayed by her little tricks. She turned her head and threw the potion directly to one of the bird girls who had just recovered.
The girl caught the potion bottle, her small hands trembling.
Glancing at the worried looks of her clanswomen, she gritted her teeth. With a resolve that welcomed death, she threw her head back and swallowed the potion in one gulp!
“Xilulu!!”
Screams erupted from all around.
The girl closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the onset of severe pain or a mutation.
However, the next second...
Boom!
A surging light of breakthrough erupted from all over the girl's body!
The wings on her back burst with bright light. Her weak aura, which had only been at the Novice Rank, shattered the barrier like dry weeds before a gale and stepped into the Intermediate Rank!
There was no poisoning or mutation at all?!
“S-She leveled up?! Xilulu really broke through to the Intermediate Rank!!”
“Heavens! She broke through directly without even cultivating?!”
The bird girls, who had been trembling in fear just a moment ago, now stared at Xilulu with envy, their faces filled with utter disbelief.
Qimeng paced forward.
She placed her fair, slender hand on the girl's wrist to check her condition.
“Not bad. The side effects have been completely neutralized. Now, you just need to adapt to your new power.”
With the first successful case, the eyes of the bird girls completely changed!
How was this some evil poison? This was clearly free power being handed out!
“L-Lady Qimeng! Please let me try!”
“I also want to serve you, my lady! Choose me!”
The bird girls, who had been dodging and resisting just a moment ago, now scrambled to surround her, the panic in their eyes completely gone, replaced by a burning desire for strength.
The success rate of the Tree Court's breakthrough potions was extremely high. Over a hundred bird girls at the Novice Rank all successfully broke through to the Intermediate Rank!
Afterward, Qimeng selected members with better constitutions from among them.
She began feeding them the second-stage potion to break through to the Advanced Rank.
Although the difficulty of breaking through from the Intermediate Rank to the Advanced Rank spiked dramatically, resulting in only a fifty percent success rate, those who failed suffered no discomfort. They were merely exhausted and only needed to rest.
As for those who successfully advanced to the Advanced Rank, she immediately drafted them into the patrol squad, drawing looks of envy from the others.
Finally, only the members of the patrol squad and Chief Feifeier remained in the square.
Qimeng played with a few bottles of pitch-black potions that shimmered with faint green light.
Rate on N.U.
