Staring at a landscape bleached like wasteland dust, Lucimia blinked again and again, as if brushing sand from lashes, before trusting it wasn’t a mirage.

Where had she ended up? Why did this vibe clash so hard with the Town of Tranquility?

That town had façades neat as folded paper, streets smooth as river stones, glass windows bright as clear ponds, showers like spring rain; lights bloomed at night like constellations.

Here was bare and wind-scoured, like a riverbed gone dry.

She felt split between two eras, one foot in winter shadow, one in spring light.

She glanced down at the girl sprawled on her, eyes sparkling like fireflies, scratched her head, and sighed first, then asked, “Where… is this?”

“Luke Village,” the girl answered, crisp as a pebble skipping water.

“Luke Village?” Lucimia frowned, the line of it tight as a drawn bow. “Never heard of it.”

The girl didn’t sulk; her calm was a still pond. “It’s just a small village.”

“Uh… hop off me first.”

“Okay!” She chirped like a sparrow, slipped off, and stood obediently at the side.

Lucimia let her go and turned to the red-haired girl beside her.

Not a stranger—the very Holy Knight she had tricked… no, rescued: Desty.

Even Lucimia had woken, yet Desty lay quiet as snow on pine. The unease rose first like cold mist, then thought followed: was her life in danger?

“Don’t tell me a Blue Ringed Octopus tentacle rattled her brain,” Lucimia muttered, worry prickling like nettles.

She knelt, anxiety tight in her chest, then tested breath with a fingertip, felt for the pulse like a drum under skin, and gently lifted an eyelid.

“Mm. At least not dead.”

But the cause of the coma stayed hidden, like a stone under dark water.

That wasn’t a good sign.

Most likely a hit to the neck… or the brain?

She had no real way to be sure; she wasn’t a doctor. Maybe… try Devouring?

Devour Desty’s state of coma. Or Devour the cause that led to her unending coma.

Would that fly?

In theory, yes. But she hesitated to draw on her Authority Power.

Why? Her current state was a cage with teeth.

To keep Elyssus from slipping chains, she had to keep her Devouring Authority grinding, holding back his Deception Power like tide against tide. She didn’t know how much she could spare.

Let’s set it on a scale.

Say her Devouring Authority sat at 100. In fact, cap all Authority Power at 100 for the model.

To counter Elyssus’s Deception Power, she needed 70 just to hold the line, leaving only 30 to Devour anything else.

If any Devouring cost over 30, Elyssus would prise the bars apart—return to the world, or seize Lucimia’s body like a shadow taking a host.

After all, the new prison she’d forged for Elyssus… was herself.

So how to judge the cost of a target?

Drawing on what she knew and what she’d tried, she marked three tiers—using her Devouring as the yardstick.

Top to bottom, First Tier: Devouring pure concepts.

Meaning: you swing straight for things like Devour Dark Deity, Devour knowledge, Devour life.

It’s vast, it’s ocean-wide; the cost swells accordingly.

Second Tier: Devouring a general content without a clear target; or Devouring the macro-concept of a specific object.

Two flavors. First, take Desty: Lucimia didn’t know the cause of the coma, so if she cast Devour the cause that keeps Desty unconscious, it’d cost less than the First Tier, more than the Third.

Second, take Elyssus: she picked a specific target—Elyssus—and Devoured his concepts: flesh, soul, even Authority Power.

Third Tier: Devouring something detailed and specific.

Easy as a crisp bite: Devour this twig in front of me. Low cost, clean swallow.

It’s simple—know exactly what you’re eating.

Say Lucimia declares: Devour tree branches.

That’s First Tier. The Fuzzy Orb would go wild, gulping every branch in the world, maybe the very concept of branches.

Say she specifies: Devour this branch in front of me, or Devour the ache in my calf.

She barely spends any power.

That’s the shape of it.

How you phrase it, how you frame it, shifts Devouring from mountain to molehill.

Another example.

Harder: Devour the soreness in my body.

Easier: Devour the soreness in my calf.

The first jumps to Second Tier. The second rests in Third.

Clear enough now?

No wonder people spoke of “proficiency” with Authority Power. It’s a blade of concept; it tests how well you define your own edges.

Luckily, before she started Devouring Elyssus, she had triggered an Erosion effect—something that takes first bite and never stops. Elyssus couldn’t resist it; it kept gnawing, grain by grain.

As Erosion advanced, the cost to counter would fall from 70 to 60, then 50, until she swallowed him whole.

Back to now.

She hovered at the brink, heart a tight knot. Should she spend a Second-Tier effort to treat Desty’s coma?

She couldn’t tell if that would cross the 30 line.

But if she nailed the cause—what was hit, what triggered it—the cast would be Third Tier, safe from Elyssus slipping through.

“Think… causes of coma from blunt hits,” Lucimia murmured, dredging a past life’s lessons like shells from surf.

She couldn’t use Healing Magic.

And this world had no doctors like before; when folks fell ill, they went to the Church or begged a high-tier mage for Healing Magic. That kind of convenience left medicine crawling.

“If the neck takes a heavy strike, transient ischemia or shock can cause a brief blackout. If the head’s hit, concussion is short; intracranial bleeding keeps you down longer…”

She checked Desty’s neck first, fingers gentle as moth wings. No marks, no swelling.

“Then it’s the brain,” she said, certainty settling like a stone.

The little girl stood by, wide-eyed as the moon, knowing the redhead slept in a stubborn coma.

She heard Lucimia mutter strange words, names like foreign birds, and watched her press the neck here, lift an eyelid there.

To the girl, this was savior’s work, miracles done with steady hands.

Peeking at eyes—that’s what Uncle Anjelo did in the village! Uncle Anjelo said he was a doctor; only doctors could stop a plague.

So this big sister was a doctor too, right? Great! With her here, the plague would be easy to beat!

Then the village would bustle again like a market in spring.

Her heart filled with quiet, bursting joy.