A few years of peace turned to a few decades, a few decades to a few centuries. Almost before she had even noticed, Zoe had become one of those old monsters living on the outskirts of a city in books she'd read back on Earth.

  If she'd ever had time for a nice break, maybe she would have gone off on some grand exploration. But she didn't. Or at least she didn't feel like it, though maybe part of that was just her growing age telling her she wanted even more time without disruption to relax with her friends before she thrust herself into another dangerous journey.

  Of course it wasn't as though she'd never left Foizo in the last thousand years. She'd delved some dungeons, ran around on the moon a bit. Even headed down into the deep ravines on Abyllan to explore some of the cities in the dark.

  Maybe it was the fear of her last journey out, or maybe it was just her having grown old and wizened — and she chuckled at the thought of that happening, but at some point the unknown had begun to scare her. It didn't matter how powerful she was, how much healing she had, how many resistance she had.

  If she threw herself out there enough, she'd find something that could hurt her, and there would be very little she could do. It took a very long time before she was truly over the trauma of what happened on that planet.

  Death, alone, was something that had struck her so many times before. Her first encounter with a boar, her first time trying to climb Moaning Point. That damned wanderer she'd tried to talk with.

  But there was something different about her near death experience on that distant blue planet. No matter how hard her friends tried, they would never have found her. They would never have found somebody who had seen her. They would never have known. In hundreds, even thousands of years, her friends would have never been sure.

  They would have assumed, of course. Maybe once her link back home wore off they'd get worried, thinking she'd gotten stuck somewhere. A few months later that little prick of fear might blossom into a real anxiety. Decades would go by, they'd have mourned her and moved on. But they'd always have that tiny bit of hope deep within them rearing its ugly, painful head every time they saw somebody who looked familiar. Something about that made it so much harder to write off as just another learning experience.

  She looked down at the raging elementals below her and the swarms of people trusting her — and nobody else, to keep them safe against the incredible forces in front of them. Yet again, right when she was getting ready to head off on another adventure the world had to throw its wrench of upheaval into her life.

  One elemental Foizo could have handled on its own. She'd more than made sure of that the last time the universe decided to throw one at them. Two, Zoe was even pretty confident would be fine. Maybe with a couple of casualties — which as much as it pained Zoe to say was little consequence in the context of defending a city as large as Foizo from dangers as horrid as two elementals.

  But if she was here anyway, she may as well make that no casualties. And if the elementals were going to be subdued anyway, it may as well be an opportunity for growth. And that raised a whole bunch of problems — if the people of Foizo thought that she would always be here to protect them from these dangers and she wasn't next time that could lead to far more unnecessary casualties.

  Which meant, again, she'd need to stick around to make sure nothing happened for a while. Let people get the excitement out and fall back into the normal fear they should have at these terrifying manifestations.

  "SINKHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLE!" A voice shocked Zoe out of her quiet contemplation. Zoe looked down and watched a massive spike of earth impale the Gale elemental.

  "Hmm," Zoe wondered to herself. A powerful earth mage made things a little tricky for her. A few too many of those spikes and the Gale elemental would fall apart before everybody had the chance to contribute.

  She never knew what the best choice was in these situations. She could overwhelm the mage's magic and defend the Gale elemental — as she was doing for the Earth elementals attacks. But that quite often annoyed the mage.

  She could heal the Gale elemental, but that would require touching it or buffing it a lot more than she wanted. And touching it would require getting much closer, which meant being seen by everybody, which meant even more of the annoying worship she already had too much of.

  Which left the last option. Zoe pushed a pulse of mana into a pendant hanging around her neck and replaced the vine covered suit of earth she wore with frost just as she teleported down next to the mage.

  Tiny pockets of space ripped apart within her body, shoving the incredible amount of mana she was using far away before most people would detect it. A painful solution, but no amount of enchanting or trickery would fool a mage into thinking she was a mere level one hundred mage if they could still feel the suffocating pressure billions of mana rushing from her body every passing second made. If anybody could detect the fluctuations in space, she could write it off as a double edged sword type of passive skill.

  "SINKHOOOOOOOOOLE!" He shouted as more magic rushed from his form, forming another spike that smashed against the bottom of the Earth elemental.

  "It's not even a sinkhole, you know?" Zoe asked.

  "Wha, huh?!" The man jumped, flailing his hands around into something resembling a defensive stance, if Zoe squinted.

  "The spikes," Zoe pointed. "They're spikes."

  The man shuddered back, the offense he felt almost visible to Zoe's naked eyes. "How DARE you." He spat. "These are genuine, honest to gods sinkholes, miss."

  Zoe had heard of the man, even watched him run through a few dungeons with his archer friend. Not once had the man created something Zoe would call a sinkhole. Spikes and blunt opjects smashing into things, sure. But ripping earth away, crumbling it beneath his enemies as they plummeted into a collapsing sinkhole?

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Nope. Not once.

  "Right," Zoe struggled to hold back a giggle, feeling thankful for the mask covering her face. "Well I work with Foizo and these sinkholes of yours are causing some problems right now. Do you think you could try to keep things a little more mellow for a bit? Or at least focus on the Earth elemental, the Gale is a bit worse for wear and we'd like everybody to get a bite of it if possible."

  "So you're saying my sinkholes are too powerful?" The man asked.

  "I'm saying there is a lot of magic already happening, and Gale elementals are particularly weak to earth." Zoe answered.

  The man jumped. "SINKHOLE! I knew it! The pinnacle of magic, unrestrained by the common teachings, breaking through limits never reached."

  "Right, sure. But do you think you could just keep it toned down a bit? Let our weaker citizens get a handle on things too?" Zoe asked.

  "Will do miss! A sinkhole wizard without restraint is a disaster I don't intend to be." He bowed, face parallel to the ground.

  Zoe vanished, a flash of mana switching her frost armour out for her regular earth covered with vines and pulsing through her pendant. It got tedious at times, managing her different personas but at a point it became necessary.

  A light green marked vampire wandering around town was never a good thing, and she'd discovered that very quick. Nobody could take their eyes off of her. Everybody she saw pestering her with questions.

  "What are your classes?"

  "The king wishes to speak with you."

  "How'd you get that high level?"

  "The king wishes to speak with you."

  "Can you train me?"

  Question after question after question. Rumours spread and people began visiting from cities just in the hopes of seeing the mythical light green marks. Entire caravans and tours bringing people to the city home to the first person to get their seventh class.

  Zoe scoffed at the idea, even back then. The first person to be dumb enough to walk around in public with their seventh class, maybe.

  The first few years of her vacation were dedicated just to perfecting her obscuring enchantment. It couldn't just be good enough, it needed to be perfect. At such a high level, worrying about it still working when she levelled up was less of an issue. Levels simply didn't come very often.

  But there couldn't be any strangeness to it, any questions. It needed to be an illusion that would fool even the royal guard, even people that suspected her. She needed to be able to walk around in the middle of the city and have not one person have even the slightest inkling that something might be off with her Identify.

  And then Foizo began to expand quicker than water from a leaking pipe. Enough people had been brought to Foizo by her initial blunder that it had reached something of critical mass. All of a sudden, it was the largest city for months of travel and everybody needed to stop by.

  The leaders wanted more dungeons, more opportunities for growth, more enchantments keeping the people safe. More gates leading to useful resources nearby — or often not so nearby but the people using them often didn't know the difference.

  Then there was the whole problem of secession. The Injellar kingdom did not like its cities seceding. Independence was given freely, but complete secession? A true, independent country? It was seen as a declaration of war.

  As the king so kindly put it, so very many times, why else would they want to secede? They were already granted independence, already given the freedom they desired. What else would they be able to do when they seceded besides invade?

  It was about the principle of the matter, for the people of Foizo. They had expanded so far outside of the Injellar kingdom that it just didn't make sense for them to be a part of it anymore. Not to mention, it did give them options. They could create smaller towns elsewhere on the moon, outside of dungeons they discovered, deep within the planet where nobody sane dared step foot.

  And Zoe could put a gate there for them.

  A deal was made, and the entire secession ended up being little more than a show for the people in the end. Foizo was its own country, with its own towns and cities but the borders were left open. There were some complicated tax shenanigans Zoe knew about but never bothered to listen to where both countries got some amount of taxes taken from visitors of the other country but she wasn't sure how they tracked that. Nor did she care all that much to begin with.

  By the time things settled down and Zoe felt like she could start relaxing again, it had been almost a hundred years since she got her seventh class.

  And then the first disaster struck. Just a simple wandering Frost elemental on the moon, but by the time they got word to Zoe several thousand of the city's most fervent defenders had already fallen to it.

  So began another long distraction. Reinforcing the walls, training the guards, developing a system for communication between all of Foizo's expansions so any of them could get word to any of the others much quicker.

  One thing after the other, for hundreds of years. But no longer. This would be the last distraction, she decided. For real, this time. Not like all of the other last distractions. Before anything else could happen she would be gone, off to explore somewhere new. Foizo would be fine without her and if it wasn't. Zoe sighed. She would be okay.

  Her friends would live, the people she truly cared about would be fine. They were strong enough to survive some simple world ending catastrophe. Even if they still hadn't managed to get their seventh class.

  Zoe never heard enough complaints about how lucky she'd been on her seventh class.

  The time passed as Zoe's immense power bared down on the elementals, keeping the flimsy people below safe. When the trickle of new people rushing in slowed to just one or two every fifteen minutes or so, she'd decided it had been long enough.

  "Like microwaving popcorn," she giggled to herself.

  Her vision extended back towards Foizo, searching for the area they'd set up to receive all of the eager citizens. When she found it, a pulse of mana raced out of her blanketing the battle field in purple cosmic energy. A moment later, the hundreds of people vanished, appearing back in the very large room all set up for them. They were confused, but that wasn't Zoe's problem anymore.

  She turned her attention back to the two waging elementals below her. If she took her time, she could destroy them both without letting them do a thing. But time was a valuable resource.

  For just a moment, Zoe let up on the immense amount of mana she'd been using to stop the elementals magic. In that instant, the battlefield exploded. A true gaping sinkhole ripped from the ground, trees and all as it was thrust at the Gale elemental. Powerful gusts of wind ripping through it and leaving massive grooves in the ground behind.

  The next instant, the Gale elemental vanished, ripped from reality by Zoe's Devastation. Earth was flung at Zoe as her mana recovered. A fraction of a second later, the Earth elemental was ripped from reality as well.

  Powerful gusts of wind still raced across the forest, with massive boulders shooting through the sky in every direction. Another moment passed and the boulders vanished. Another, and towering walls of rock blocked the buffeting Gales, vanishing the next moment as though they'd never existed to begin with.

  Earth rose from the gaping hole in the forest, filling it back in. Then came the trees and grass, like the terrifying battle had never taken place.

  Zoe flashed mana through her pendant and dismissed her earthen suit to reveal one of her favourite dresses — strapless and black with red stripes, resting just above her knees. As she fell through the sky she looked towards where she'd teleported everybody and stepped forward, passing through the fabric of space to just behind a very excited, self proclaimed sinkhole wizard.

  I had intended for this chapter to get out yesterday, but yesterday was sailing's release in OSRS, which I didn't expect to be as fun as it is. I've got salvaging unlocked now for a nice afk thing though so managed to finish the chapter up today. This one actually ended up taking quite a few rewrites cause I couldn't find something I was happy with.

  Initially I was going to have the elementals play a much bigger role in the chapter, showing Zoe's fight against it. But that just doesn't fit the mindset she had at the time. This works much, much better I think.

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