With the pills and the guidance of a true expert, Zara replaced her Outer Cultivation source of power from Qi to Mana. Her physique rippled and glowed. She grew a full inch taller and her features became even more beautiful than before. Where once she could be considered as 'pretty', now she could be regarded as a country-destroying beauty.

Cara, once regarded as a Sage, found the situation strange. Her disciple seemed to gain more strength through cultivating with mana than she did!

"Why is it more efficient for you than for me?" Cara asked, almost heartbroken. She knew her students were all more talented than her, but to have her three years of effort in cultivating Mana to be trumped by her lowest talent student in just two months? That was too much of a blow.

Cara didn't show her distress, though. Despite her jealousy, she still felt proud of her student.

-

Three months in total passed before the duo stopped their closed door sessions. All of the imperfections in Zara's cultivation were gone and she advanced rapidly, approaching the Middle Rungs of the Ascendant stage, as if the switch to mana was a panacea for lacking talent!

"Teacher, at this rate I'll surpass everyone except Arc in only three years!" said Zara, her voice singsong like a bird's.

Cara didn't reply. She took solace in knowing her alchemy skills were still better. It was a small consolation, but it was enough for the former Sage to get by with.

Cara firmly felt her previous life's failure to transcend the upper Rungs of Ascendancy. She remembered the sensations, the stress, and the pressure. She remembered how it felt to fall, to have to tell her disciples she was dying.

And then, when she looked up into Zara's sparkling eyes, Cara felt just how sad she made her students.

A teacher didn't need to always stay ahead of the ones they taught. A teacher only needed to show their students the path forward.

To get surpassed by your students should have been a joyous thing, and it was.. But Cara still had some resentment in her heart over it. Her own pride, her pride as The Sage, held her back.

And she realized that her Pride was why she failed in her Ascendancy tribulation.

"I have a long way to go," said Cara under her breath.

"What was that?" Zara asked, her smile radiant.

"Nothing!" said Cara, doing her best to keep her cheeks from blushing. "I was just thinking we should start exploring this world more. There are other Paths here.."

"THERE ARE OTHER PATHS?!" Zara exploded. She jumped forward and grabbed her teacher's small hands, almost pulling the young Cara's body into the air.

"Y-yes. I've seen at least one other. I'm calling it something like the 'mage' path for now, but I don't know enough about it to let either of us cultivate it. Remember, even in our old world, there were other ways to get strong than just the primary Six Paths.."

"There were?"

"Yes. I never taught them to you because those ways were heretical, and often resulted in destroying the user's own body. Not to mention they weren't compatible with the other Paths. The Six Paths became the true Paths of our world because they could all work in tandem, you could train all six without any of them interfering with one another. They didn't just make you stronger additively, but exponentially as you trained them."

Cara was genuinely surprised her student didn't know this information. She tried to remember why she never taught it.. But for some reason she couldn't remember much about actually teaching Zara. It was as if the memories were clouded by something, like they were dyed by the color green..

Cara's eyes went wide. She looked up at her disciple and measured her next words carefully.

"Zara, did the part of the soul shield you made.. Was it the green part?" She asked.

"What? No," Zara replied, almost at the drop of a pin, as if she already prepared the answer to the question. "I made the magenta-ish one. I don't know who made the green one.. Why do you ask?"

"The green one. It's clouding my memories. Well, only my memories of raising you and the other disciples. I can't—I can't remember anything about training all of you anymore, only the mundane thoughts of our day-to-day lives."

"Maybe it's just a side effect of the reincarnation?" Zara asked, her tone adroit, and her face showed true concern. But she seemed to know more than she was letting on..

Cara wanted to confront her disciple about the matter, but her words got caught in her throat when she realized her memories of Zara were fading too. Her first thought went to the shield. She didn't know anything about the strange shield. She never even knew such techniques existed until they were used on her at her death bed. Where did her disciples learn such a thing, even?

Cara stood in silence for a few moments.

"Teacher," said Zara, "are any of your other memories clouded? Can you, can you remember everything else?"

"I'm not sure," Cara replied. She tried searching her memories, but without being above the Soul Refining stage, it was difficult to actually search her own soul.

Cara remembered many things, but she couldn't remember teaching her disciples anymore. She searched deeper and found a few other inconsistencies. Happy memories of her times with her disciples, memories completely unrelated to cultivation, were beginning to fade green.

She remembered one particularly nice evening she spent with Aria, back when Aria was the only disciple, and they went to explore the cave of..

It faded. The thought cut itself off, and an aura of green flooded it, hiding it from Cara's mind.

Every other memory seemed fine, completely untouched, but all the happy memories of her disciples were fading.away. Soon other memories, the mundane ones even, started to vanish. So long as they contained her disciples in any way, they would disappear behind a wall of green.

"This," Cara couldn't find words to explain her grief. Tears ran down her face. Originally she planned on going to the Tin City today, to explore with Zara, but now she wanted to sit down and study her own mind. She grabbed a quill and some paper. "I'll be in my room, Zara. Please give me a few days of privacy."

Cara intended to write down the memories she had left of her time with her disciples. She couldn't let them be lost so simply. If she couldn't keep them in her head she would keep a physical copy instead. She had lost so much: her manhood, her life as the Sage, and even her life on Earth; she didn't want to lose her beloved memories too.

-

When Cara disappeared into her tree-home, Zara's tense shoulders collapsed. A few tears ran down her cheeks. She felt terrible that her teacher was so hurt by losing a few memories...

"You can just make more memories," she said in a small, quiet voice, trying her best to think on the bright side.

She wondered if her teacher still remembered giving her that daisy all those years ago. She wondered if her teacher remembered the first time they met.

It felt strange to Zara, but she knew, in her heart of hearts that—despite how painful it was—it was for the best. She straightened her back and brushed back her hair. She pulled a handkerchief from her ring and wiped her tears away.

The green aura of Zara's soul stirred. She needed her teacher to forget. To forget everyone else. She needed her teacher to stay here in this world of mana where the others couldn't come.

Even if her teacher forgot all the time they spent together in the past, they could make new memories here in *this* world. They could be happy together here.

There was a traitor among the 12 disciples, and Zara wasn't going to let her teacher get hurt. It would be so much *better* for Cara if she just lived quietly with her lovely disciple in this world, if Cara could just forget about the other world entirely. After all, they were -just- memories she was losing, and it wasn't like they would be gone forever. They were only clouded over, for now.

Zara wasted her portion of the Divine Shield to do so, but it was a necessary loss. Her teacher's cultivation didn't matter with Zara here, anyways, so why waste the shield on something like 'fixing talent'.

The last few months were enough time for Zara to focus her resolve. She didn't want to betray her teacher, but spending so much time together ended up being too much stimulation. Zara couldn't go back to the old days, when she was only one of the twelve students, where she would see her teacher for a mere hour or so a day at best.

Zara needed to keep her teacher safe. Being able to monopolize Cara was just a bonus.

Zara didn't know the extent of her own feelings. She wasn't certain if it was love or something darker... But it didn't matter.

"I will keep you safe, Teacher.." said Zara with clenched fists, "At any cost."

-

On Cara's soul, the multi-colored shield shifted. The green colored portion faded to white, its energy spent.

Only ten colors remained.