Day Nine & Ten

The marriage of the young lady belonging to the village heads family had been rushed forward so fast that there was little room for her to prepare for it or to even voice her own thoughts on it.

Many formalities and preparations involved in the marriage were thrown aside and the negotiations were made to allow for a quick marriage without anything too complicated being involved or there being a large amount of people being invited to watch it take place.

It was arranged and agreed to so quickly that there were only a couple of days to prepare for it so it needed to be kept as simple as possible with few witnesses being invited to it besides close family members.

There was no time to prepare new clothes or jewellery for the wedding so anything that would be worn on the day would be something that was already available to each person or was something that would be handed down from someone else.

Since there were no officials or priests within the villages that could make the marriage official like in the larger human communities, they had to settle for one of the village heads being the ones to oversee the whole wedding and making it official.

It had taken a little time for the messengers to safely travel between the two villages and to discuss everything before it had started to be put into action.

Another day had passed by and further away within the forest, Inis had continued to go over the things that she had collected as she had continued to play around with the guns and other things in front of her.

Inis was becoming very familiar with disassembling and reassembling them to the point that she could do it very quickly with very few errors being made during the whole process.

There were some documents that she had started to read over but she had set them aside after finding out that the contents of them only contained information about what the village had kept stored or exchanged with others.

It did have some small use to her in a way to allow her to gain some additional knowledge about the other villages but there was no deeper information that let her get a much clearer understanding of them.

She watched over the growth of her fellow Gremlins who had started to spend some time absorbing the energy within them but she had found that their growth had started to slow down.

It was to be expected when their lack of an energy training method was something that had reduced their speed of absorption and growth a lot compared to herself and Xeni.

Even if she tried to guide them individually to learn the method, it would take them a very long time to be able to grasp it even if they could understand a fraction of what she could teach them.

They may have possessed a kind of body that could consume more than others that could be harmful but it was not like they possessed a body that had a skill that was comparable to something like advanced absorption or gluttony that would allow them to absorb everything inside of them quickly.

Each of them had to just rest up and slowly let the energy inside of them settle down and be absorbed before they tried to eat anymore.

Their growth had already been quite fast compared to other creatures but there was still some kind of limit to how much they could continue to grow or the amounts of energy they could begin to convert into their own power before it became harmful to them.

The amount of things they had consumed since their births had already been a lot to the point that they had built up a lot of excess energy and food within their bodies so they all needed further time to make room for it and to convert everything before they could go on to eat anything else.

The consumption of the Aether Crystals was enough to take them to their current consumption capacity or a little past it so they had all entered a deep sleep where they had started to let their bodies adapt to that overflowing energy inside of them and grow stronger.

Inis was the only one that had been awake for a longer period of time due to her looking over everything and keeping a vigilant watch over her surroundings.

Xeni was busy exercising her body and was slowly gaining a better grasp over the method that had been taught to her by Inis so she was often busy with her own things most of the day before going to sleep through the night.

Xeni may not have been able to grow stronger using the Aether Crystals but she could increase her own power through the consumption of plant based energy sources or elixirs so she had been able to gain some benefits from the fruits that she had eaten.

Even if Inis wanted to go out and explore her surroundings more or to face more challenges, she had come to accept that it was best to use her time to improve herself further and to let others do the same.

Inis had sat down with her eyes closed after checking over many things then entered a meditative state as the energy within her had continued to wash over every part of her body to further allow it to improve and to refine any traces of energy that was lingering anywhere else in her body.

She did not enter that state too deeply since it was a requirement for her to keep up her vigilance enough to pick up on anything going on in her surroundings.

One day turned into two days as she continued to keep training herself and watching over the others while occasionally producing new cocoons and greeting the new borns.

Inis was too focussed on those matters so she had missed out on finding out what her actions had triggered and what had happened during that time but even if she did not know, she was still doing everything she could do prepare for any future troubles that could appear.