The SSS-rank Guide Doesn't Need Saving

Aisha stood outside and listened to the voices with an unreadable expression.

The woman was right. Absorbing what was inside the broken energy stone isn’t helping her. It can lessen the pain, but the real problem had already buried itself into her bone marrow. Getting rid of the spreading miasma needed just one or two Pure Energy Stones, but a guiding from a Guide with a high purification rate.

After what felt like a long while, the voices inside quietened, and the door creaked open.

The boy suddenly rushed out, almost bumping against her. He skidded to a stop when she saw her standing outside the door, feeling slightly embarrassed. Then, as if he remembered something, he went to the shed he had pointed out earlier and came out a few minutes later.

Dirt covered his hands, holding something that was wrapped in a cloth.

He held it out to Aisha without a word at first, then said, voice a little unsteady, "Thank you. Really. For earlier."

Aisha took the bundle from him, feeling its weight settle into her hands.

"If you ever want more," the boy added, quieter now, "you can contact me. I can get you more of these."

"Where do you get them?" Aisha asked.

The boy hesitated, glancing back toward the house before answering. If he told her, would she stop needing him? Would she just go find the source herself and cut him out entirely?

"I’ll keep buying from you," Aisha said, realizing the boy was hesitating. "I won’t look for it myself. I don’t even know where to start looking."

That seemed to ease something in him, and he nodded slowly. "There’s a forest. North of here. But you can’t tell anyone — not the Association, not anyone. If they find out, it’ll be bad for us."

"I won’t tell anyone," Aisha promised.

The boy studied her for a moment longer, as if weighing whether to trust a stranger’s word, then seemed to decide it was worth the risk. He gave her his contact information, scrawled quickly onto a scrap of paper.

Aisha took it, tucking it away along with the wrapped bundle in her bag.

With one last glance toward the small house, where the muffled sound of quiet crying still lingered behind the door. She turned and made her way back toward the market’s main street, the boy’s directions and the mysterious bundle weighing heavier in her mind than in her hands.

Aisha didn’t go to the villa.

She sent Daisy a short message telling her not to wait up, then had the rental shuttle drop her off near the address Zeke had given her.

The place turned out to be a small, two-story building tucked between two larger residences, close enough to the academy that she could walk there in fifteen minutes if she needed to. It wasn’t grand. No holographic gardens and marble floors. Just plain gray walls, a small covered training yard out back with a scuffed stone floor, and a kitchen that looked like it had never been used before.

She liked it immediately.

She checked every room twice before she let herself relax. No one was around, not even servants who might come out to check on her. This was truly the perfect place to train and peacefully relax as Admiral Zeke had told her.

Kylin and Nibbles didn’t seem to care about privacy. They’d been quiet the whole ride over. Either they were asleep or sensed her emotions earlier; they acted more behaved when she was at the market.

But the moment she set her bag down on the kitchen counter, both of them perked up at once.

"Awake already," she told them.

Kylin first floated from her collar and circled around the bag with a curious look in its eyes. While Nibbles crawled and clung to her hair like a hairpin.

She had spent a good minute picking through the vendor’s stock, rejecting two other cuts before settling on this one. It looked remarkably normal. The white fat ran through the pink flesh exactly like boar meat.

She unwrapped it fully, turning it over under the kitchen light.

Pale pink flesh with thin veins of white fat running through it in uneven lines. Her chest started beating inside her chest. The scent was sweeter than what she remembered, but it was mostly because this was different. However, once cooked, it might taste just like pork.

But she had to do something first.

She could still feel the faint trace of miasma clinging to it, a thin, cold film sitting just under the surface like oil on water. It wasn’t a lot. The vendor had said it came from a low-threat zone and had already been purified once. But she could still feel a large portion of it inside the meat, sticking deep within.

Hence, she needed to purify it.

"Whew..."

Controlling this little light was harder than she thought. She knew her power wanted to be released. It craved nothing more than to be let out of its confinement, protesting inside her like a little child she’d abandoned.

But Aisha couldn’t do it now. Not unless she wanted to scorch the meat and put the entire place on the morning news by blowing it up. She wasn’t that psychotic.

Heady rush of power spread through her arteries, veins, and capillaries until her whole body tingled with power. The exhilaration lifted her from the overwhelming energy that was boiling inside her.

Not enough...

She wanted more.

Aisha shook her head, trying to snap herself from even imagining it.

Kylin stopped floating around the meat and hovered before her, silently watching her with those white, sparkling eyes. She thought she saw its tiny form shiver when it held her gaze.

Finally, the thread of light coming from her hands reached the meat.

She could feel the miasma now, faint tendrils of it curling through the muscle fibers, thin as hair, and every time she tried to touch one, three more would form elsewhere like she’d disturbed a spiderweb.

They were more conscious than she thought. Perhaps that was also why humans couldn’t purify them completely because no matter how much purification and guiding was given, they could recover and form elsewhere.

Nothing happened at first.