Ray's return, naturally, was cause for celebration all around.

He'd been gone a full thirty-six days, which meant the evolution tree had produced thirty-six more fruits. Every single woman there had eaten one, and their power shot straight up to a hundred, a hundred and one units each.

A hundred and one units for those who'd already evolved, a hundred for the ones who hadn't yet but had become ability users purely off the fruit.

This little army of women had turned into something genuinely te