The existing system basically divides all of existence into hot equals has fire, cold equals doesn’t have fire. If it doesn’t have substance, it’s air. If it has substance and it’s wet it’s water, if it’s dry it’s earth. While accurate, why not use the real words instead - hot, insubstantial, wet, and dry? Sounds lame, doesn’t it?

  — Excerpt from Notes For Newstar

  Day 1088, 9:30 PM

  “So, you want to go scouting for approaching dangers, and if you find something you want to take a closer look at, you want me to come with you.” Ruby gave me a flat look. “Dandelion, you aren’t approaching me with ulterior motives, aren’t you?”

  Of course I was, just not the ones she had in mind.

  “My intentions are honorable. The safety of those I care about is and always will be my primary concern.”

  She held my gaze a while longer before nodding.

  “I think the request is reasonable, but I’ll have to ask my master for permission. It shouldn’t be a problem. It’s not like there’s a sudden crowd looking for books.”

  I held back a sigh of relief. We enjoyed our platonic dinner and went our separate ways. The next day, I handled my patients, then went on an eight-hour sprint to lend credibility to my plan to save Ruby.

  As for her master, the rotten scumbag could become dino food and then rot in hell.

  During my run, I witnessed the devastation the saurians had caused. They had destroyed the frontier settlements, and pushed out in the open, they were slaughtering each other, attempting to evolve.

  Everything seemed business as described in the books, more or less. Looking around from a convenient hillock, I paled and crouched behind a bush.

  What looked like a foot-long snake flew through the sky. I remember seeing airplanes from the ground; they were tiny dots. The dragon either flew lower or spanned miles, and I feared it was the latter.

  The one that attacked Hailstown was a whelp compared to the monster soaring through the sky.

  This plan might be more dangerous than I thought it would be. The sudden realization struck me, but it wasn’t all bad as it turned out.

  “You saw a dragon?” Ruby’s master asked when I came to the library to make my report.

  “I swear I saw a huge serpentine creature with wings. It was too far for me to see its realm, but I think it was really big. Possibly miles long.”

  The mageknight nodded. “I thought you were doing this because you were bored, but if there are dragons around, keeping an eye on them is a sensible plan. Keep up the good work.”

  “I was thinking of taking Ruby with me. It will make the going slower, but she will be able to spot the threat more clearly than me.”

  The old man frowned and hesitated.

  “Fine, if she wants to go,” he said after taking longer than expected to reach the decision. “Scouting dangerous manabeasts isn’t in her job description, and while I see it as a necessity, she has the right to refuse.”

  He looked at Ruby, who nodded.

  “Just don’t frolic in the bushes as soon as you’re out of sight.”

  “Master! I would never—”

  “Save it, kid. You don’t have to explain anything to me; just focus on the job.”

  Ruby was indignant, but she still followed me towards the jungle the next day. Both of us watched the sky, keeping our eyes peeled. About three hours after leaving the town, I grabbed Ruby and jumped to the ground. She glowered at me, but I just pointed at a cloud and a red noodle squirming out of it.

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  “How big is that thing?” I whispered in her ear.

  “I have no fucking clue. It’s so far away, it could be a mile or ten miles long. It’s certainly at least at the sixth realm, maybe higher.”

  I blinked at her, wondering whether she had had vulgar outbursts before and I had just forgotten them. Perhaps the dragon shocked her enough.

  “Should we go back?”

  “Yes, I need to inform Master, and we need to see what we should do if a high realm dragon attacks Hailstown.”

  The return trip took three more hours, and it was close to noon when we approached. The town was well in view when we heard the screams.

  Ruby and I exchanged glances, then rushed towards the town gate. Seven figures flew into the sky, one of them lashing out with a flaming whip, while the other six shot crimson javelins at him.

  Ruby’s master dodged the attacks, but despite having a higher realm, the six fifth realm cultists had him at a disadvantage.

  Crimson threads rose towards them from the streets, where people were screaming, and above their agony, I caught the roaring laughter of cultists drunk on carnage and power.

  Ruby’s master, ever the coward, tried to flee, flying towards the gate with the cultists hot on his trail. He was already close when he saw me and Ruby. The bastard flew over us, hoping the cultists would focus on us, but it was no use. Their orders were obviously to slay him, and they ignored the little fish flapping about.

  A fatal mistake. With both my mind and body at the fifth realm, I wasn’t an opponent to be taken lightly, let alone completely ignored. I jumped towards the nearest cultist, wind accelerating my flight. He realized the danger too late, just as Batsy connected with his skull, exploding his head and caving in half his chest.

  I was a lowly third realm mageknight. Not worth a second glance, and suddenly a peak fifth realm mageknight was dead, his body broken. Unfortunately, their minds worked nearly as quickly as mine, and they recovered from shock after a split instant of confusion.

  Ruby’s master stopped running and focused on four of the cultists, while the fifth one came at me.

  “Ya’ lill git,” my opponent roared in a heavy accent, probably from a completely different part of the empire.

  Then he shot two bloody icicles at me, the attacks too slow even to register to my danger sense as I avoided them on my own while rushing to meet him. The misses surprised him, but me heading for him seemed to enrage the cultist, who drew a wicked serrated saber.

  The weapon’s thorns bit into his flesh, drawing his own blood for fuel as there were no victims nearby to draw the energy from. He certainly thought it was enough as he swept the cursed weapon at me. I feigned a parry, then closed my eyes at the last moment, and used a trick I had picked up from Newstar.

  A burst of light flashed from my hand, and the cultist screamed. My mindcore helped me dodge his blow, then I opened my eyes, and slammed Batsy through his skull, swatting him from the sky much like I did the one before.

  Seeing me take out two of them emboldened Ruby’s master, and when one of his attackers turned around to face me, a jet of flames turned his head into a charred ball. The corpse dropped from the sky, but unfortunately, so did I.

  True flight was beyond the third realm awakened, even those with air affinity. But as soon as I touched down, I jumped back up again, and between us, Ruby’s master and I wiped out the fifth realm cultists in less than two minutes.

  “My mana is mostly spent, Sir,” I told the old librarian who looked at me and nodded in approval. The conniving bitch.

  “You did well,” he said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

  And he took care of them. Like every coward, in his rage he vented on those weaker than him. The screams in the town changed. Instead of the panicked townsfolk and refugees, the ones screaming were the cultists. Ruby wanted to go and join him, but I was worried something might happen to her.

  “Don’t go. I need someone to watch over me,” I feigned weakness, and she looked at me, then at the town, but eventually chose to stay with me.

  “How did you do it? How did you kill two aspirants as an initiate?”

  “By relying on their overconfidence.” It wasn’t even a lie, but it would raise questions, so I added one more bit of truth to the mix, so that everyone leaves me alone. “Also, an imperial princess gave me a tonic which made my body roughly as strong as that of a peak fifth realm knight.”

  It was a bit of an overexaggeration; the tonic made me as strong as a fourth realm knight, but when combined with my other abilities and the power of my realm, it was more or less the truth.

  As expected, Ruby nodded, but didn’t ask any more questions regarding the subject. Bringing up an imperial princess was a great way of sealing curious mouths.

  And since that was the first time I used her, it turned out to be a great way to explain some of my extraordinary abilities.

  “Is that why—”

  “No,” I stopped her before she insinuated anything stupid. “I am a well-known soother in Glory, working with wealthy clients. I’m going back there after the onslaught ends. I’d offer to buy your contract and have you come with me, but I’m afraid you would misunderstand my intention. I’m not looking for a masseuse.”

  She gazed at me for a long while, looking conflicted, before finally nodding.

  After a while, the screams stopped, replaced by the wails of the wounded and those who had lost their friends and family.

  “Let’s go inside, and see what we should do next,” I said, and together we walked into Hailstown.