When Kali opened her eyes, she saw a lot of vegetation full of tall and thick trees surrounding her. The crowns were extremely dense, making it rather dark despite it being midday. She could hear the sound of different insects, and animals, among other things. It was clear that she was in the middle of a very dense forest.
However, this didn't discourage her; on the contrary, she was extremely happy. For Kali, a forest like this one felt like home. 'It's like I'm in my natural habitat... huh? Why did I choose those words to describe it?'
She frowned slightly, her tail swishing as she thought. 'Is it because of my transformation into a beast? Well, after some experiments yesterday, I know that I still have some human blood in me, but the ratio is about forty percent. The other sixty, I suppose, is from my bloodline, [Life's Origin Nine-Tailed Fox]. The change is rather massive compared to my previous ninety percent human blood.'
Kali looked back, seeing her fluffy tail. Moving it between her arms, she hugs the foxy appendage. She smiles slightly, 'Although I'm still not used to this and my ears... It is very comfortable to hug my tail like this...'
Her tail was long enough to allow her to cover her face or even cocoon herself with it. Her thoughts trailed back when Yasenia pet her to oblivion and blushed slightly, 'I-it felt very comfortable to be pet by Yasenia. I a-almost couldn't think straight.'
Kali curiously tried to pet herself, scratching behind her fox ears and sinking her hand in her fur, but it wasn't nearly as pleasurable as when Yasenia did it. She felt a little empty as she started to miss her lover. She took out the communication devices, intending to contact Yasenia, but saw that the devices were currently offline. Her long fluffy ears flattened against her head as her tail drooped with sadness.
The wind blew her green robes, and its yellow accents glittered with the sunlight sneaking past the canopy of trees. These robes were high-level earth-ranked and named [Clear Nature Robes]. On her waist, a sharp wooden sword was hanging without a sheath. It was her weapon, [Treant Heart Wood Sword], won in an alchemy competition prior to meeting Yasenia.
She placed her communication devices on her waist and looked around, deciding where to go from here. 'Hmm, I should probably summon my [Golden Crown]. With this amount of flora everywhere she will be an extremely powerful helper. I'm glad she's my summon, as I doubt I'd be able to defeat a similar creature in this kind of environment. Moreover, her ability to absorb ambient Life, Nature, and Wood energy from the environment will allow her to sustain herself, conserving my energy.'
Kali began gathering a copious amount of life energy, focusing it on the ground before her. Then chanting, her voice was gentle like nature's sound, "[Golden Crown Summoning]."
Green ripples spread throughout the soil before her as if a small pebble had been thrown into a silent lake. In the center of those ripples, a small sapling appeared on the ground. Growing fast, it became a three-meter-tall green trunk adorned with numerous flowers. The trunk soon sprouted a golden crown on it. Finally, the tree changed forms, growing slender branches to serve as arms while its roots pulled free from the soil, merging into a set of thick thighs and slender legs. Its chest area swelled as its waist thinned before finishing with wide hips to create quite the voluptuous figure.
A head appeared, growing long green hair and gaining well-defined facial features giving her a gentle but ravishing female face. The flowers that were on her trunk linked together to create a sleeveless floral dress, showing ample cleavage that ends mid-thigh as if to flaunt her greenish yet supple skin. Upon opening her verdant green eyes, Kali was surprised to find her pupils were golden and slit-like.
The voluptuous humanoid creature tapped the ground gently, causing three branches, one green, one brown, and one azure, to grow from the ground, interlocking to create a staff. On top of the coiling staff lay a golden sphere floating slightly.
With such a short skirt and her [Golden Crown]'s great height, Kali could almost see her privates. Blushing, she asked, "C-Could you make your skirt longer?"
The [Golden Crown] smiled gently and tapped the floor with her staff. Flowers grew from the ground and interlocked, fusing with her current dress creating a skirt with a train that was still short enough in the front to display her beautiful ankles and bare feet.
Kali looked the [Golden Crown] up and down and couldn't take her eyes off of her, blushing crimson. Her fox tail wagged, and her fluffy ears twitched every time she looked at her. 'W-Why did she change to that form? She was much slimmer before… Moreover, besides her face, which is gentler than Yasenia's, the rest is similar to her… Are my deepening feelings for Yasenia transforming her? H-How should I look at my love when I summon her near her? So embarrassing!'
Feeling her embarrassment, the [Golden Crown] looked at Kali with a gentle smile, so small that it was almost imperceptible, but Kali managed to see it. 'She can comprehend my feelings!?'
Kali opened her eyes, and any other thoughts flew away, focusing on the tall lady beside her. She asked excitedly, "Did you gain intelligence? Can you understand me?"
Normally summons could understand complex battle commands because they were linked with their summoner's soul and were created for that. However, they wouldn't be able to understand emotions no matter how much you tried to share feelings through the link. Energy is used to maintain that link like a bridge. Because of this, if a summoner stops providing energy to a summon, they either disappear or stand there doing nothing until the energy inside them dissipates.
This was why Kali was so excited upon seeing the [Golden Crown] show a reaction to her feelings. After hearing her question, the [Golden Crown] looked at her but didn't speak, nor did she make any more movement. Kali was so disappointed that even her tail drooped. "It is still too early." A sigh involuntarily left her mouth.
Kali watched as the [Golden Crown] looked North taking a combat position. Thanks to her ability to control vegetation, and the fact that they were in a place similar to a rainforest, the [Golden Crown] was extremely perceptive of the 700 meters around her, putting to shame the spiritual sense of any cultivator around. Moreover, the amount of life energy around was passively buffing her, making this sense even stronger.
Kali saw her reaction and took out her sword as well. Using her [Mother Nature Coat] she wrapped her body with sparsely flowered roots increasing her plant affinity, defense, agility, and strength of her skills. Then, she used [Dryad Summoning] to summon four archers and two casters. Kali commanded them to hide in the thick vegetation of their surroundings. She did nothing more so that she wouldn't alert the approaching threat.
What appeared before her was a male beastkin. She was surprised at his bull-shaped head, legs that ended in hooves, and hairless yet quite bulky torso. It was clear to her that she was looking at a Minotaur.
Besides the obvious bull features, the thing that differentiated minotaurs from humans was their height. This one, for example, was very tall, reaching almost two and a half meters in height. His body was muscular, looking like a mountain of rock-hard muscles, and only his waist was covered with animal leather short pants.
Kali was surprised because this race was very scarce in the Sky Continent surroundings as it had almost gone extinct. The males from this race were too well endowed to breed with human-sized females, so they couldn't reproduce that well outside of their own race. Moreover, minotaur children were not small. A human-sized woman was much more likely to die when giving birth to a minotaur child.
Additionally, minotaur females weren't conventionally attractive by most human standards seeing as they didn't differ much from males. With the same cow heads, rock-hard muscles, and extremely tall frames, while their large breasts could be seen as attractive to some, besides a few... quirky individuals, female minotaurs were often passed over in favor of other beast-human females.
Therefore, they had almost no chance of surviving in a continent dominated by humans. The only reason they haven't gone extinct was due to the independent tribes of minotaurs around the country.
Even then, some humans still hunted male and female minotaurs to enslave them for combat forcefully. There were also bastards and demonic cultivators that would capture pregnant female minotaurs because they produce a lot of milk during pregnancy, further reducing their numbers.
The last problem with their race, and perhaps the most glaring, was their lack of intelligence. Evolution had made their physical bodies extremely strong, comparable even to some dragon races, but sadly their intelligence did not follow suit. So, although they were much smarter than beasts of the same level, compared with the cunningness of humans or other races, they were considered lacking in this aspect.
She only knew this because she had studied beast-human races since getting together with Yasenia. Not only Kali but all of Yasenia's lovers have studied about beast humans.
Despite this knowledge, Kali didn't lower her guard. The fact was that this minotaur was inside the secret realm, and it likely meant that he differed from the norm.
Kali saw that the minotaur looked at her for a moment, and then his eyes moved toward the [Golden Crown]. Kali smiled wryly as the minotaur's body seemed to freeze after looking at the gorgeous and gentle-looking [Golden Crown]. 'I hope he is reasonable enough...'
The minotaur approached Kali holding an enormous hammer as tall as himself. He had his bull-like eyes locked on the seductive yet tender-looking [Golden Crown] as he spoke, his voice deep and rumbling. "Greetings. I'm the son of the chief from the tribe [Steel Bull Head] from the Black Tortoise continent, and my name is Darragh. What is your name, big beautiful lady?"
Kali raised her eyebrow, amused. 'Is this guy flirting with my summon? Well, I can't blame him since she takes after Yasenia. She is honestly divine looking…'
Kali spoke, "Hello, I'm Kali. I'm from the Academy in the central continent and—"
"I wasn't speaking to you, little woman. I don't care who you are." The minotaur interrupted.
Kali's eyebrow twitched with annoyance, but she didn't want to fight like a brute with the first person she saw, so she continued to try speaking with him. "I know that you don't care, but—"
The minotaur interrupted again, "Didn't you hear me? I don't care!"
Kali crossed her arms and asked, "I was about to introduce her. Why are you so impatient?"
The minotaur said with a sneer. "Can't she speak for herself? What are you, her mother?"
Kali said bluntly, with a touch of irritation in her voice, "No. I'm her summoner."
The minotaur froze, and she could almost see his rusted brain cogs moving. After 20 seconds of awkward silence, the minotaur turned to look at her and asked, "What do you mean? You summoned her?"
Kali felt smug after making this rude bull use his brain, so she nodded. "That's right. She is my summon."
The Minotaur scratched his horn with his sausage-like finger and said, "Sorry for my outburst before. It is very rare to find a woman like your summon, so I was excited."
Kali was surprised, 'Oh… He is quite nice.'
She decided to speak more gently with him. Understanding that minotaurs wanted to find people of the opposite sex willing to propagate their species she didn't become angry with his attitude. She was just slightly irritated at being unable to speak.
Scanning the minotaur, she felt danger coming from him. Wanting to avoid any fights her tail swished as she said, "Well, let's part ways then, shall we? I have to find my lover."
The minotaur nodded, "It'd be for the best. Grouping up will make us fight sooner or later…"
Then, they both went their separate ways. Kali made her dryads silently follow him until she was sure he was gone then sighed in relief. "Thankfully, he was quite a nice guy. His strength was no joke. I don't think I would have been able to win without serious injuries. He was also quite sharp..."
Kali looked at the [Golden Crown] and then muttered, "I should give you a name, right? It is clear that little by little you are gaining intelligence."
Kali began thinking about it, but she didn't want to be hasty, so she first asked the [Golden Crown]. "Let's go to gather spirit herbs. Guide me to any heaven-ranked flora around~."
Although teaching a summon emotions was impossible, this kind of command wasn't out of range. Then, with the golden crown in the front, and the six dryads around, Kali began happily harvesting the various rare florae around as she waited for a message from her dragoness.
After five minutes of gathering, a big explosion to her right made her stop her movements. She looked over there and thought to herself, 'Someone is really going at it… Not to mention that they have very high strength…'
*ROOOAR!!!!*
A deep and resounding dragon roar reached her ears shortly after. Kali's body immediately reacted, bolting in the direction of the roar even before her brain registered that it was Yasenia's. Kali's lips arched mid-charge, her heart pounding excitedly, 'I've found her faster than I had expected.'
After running for a while, her smile widened as she saw the alchemy liquid inside the device reacting through the formation lines clearly showing that another person with a device was nearby.
Using [Flower Blooming Step] to further accelerate she left a beautiful trail of flowers in her wake, with her summon, the [Golden Crown], following close behind.