The next morning, everyone slowly gathered in the foyer. The decisive day had arrived; today, it would become clear which academy was the best in the kingdom of Lygote. Everyone understood that because of my plan, this battle would be difficult, but no one was afraid.

  We left the hotel and headed to the academy. The crowd around us recognized us and parted to make way. We had suddenly become famous. At the academy gates, the rector’s secretary met us again and led us to the arena. I sat in the stands with the rector.

  I carefully examined everyone present. The atmosphere above the arena was oppressive. Were they expecting a repeat of yesterday? That made sense, considering that the majority of the spectators were students of this academy.

  The judge appeared above the arena. He had been patched up quite well over the past day; the consequences of yesterday’s beating were barely noticeable.

  “Dear guests and tournament participants! First of all, I want to apologize for my mistake in attempting to disqualify the Matan Academy team! I have spent some time reviewing the tournament rules and have concluded that they were not violated in any way!”

  Oh, really? Yesterday, the whole city saw you reviewing them with your teeth, you bastard.

  “Therefore, I would now like to invite the Matan team to this arena and congratulate them on their victory in yesterday’s match! Please!”

  He gestured toward the doors, which immediately swung open, and my team appeared in the arena.

  “Applause, please, for our winners!”

  Sparse applause came from the stands. Damn, that was so humiliating that I clenched my fists in powerless rage. I couldn’t even imagine what my teammates were feeling at that moment. I looked at their faces. Anger and confusion.

  “And now, I invite your opponents for today, the Lygote Academy team!”

  The doors opened, but no one rushed out. The pause dragged on, and some spectators began turning their heads, trying to understand what was happening. Finally, a student ran out and, stopping at the center of the arena, loudly declared:

  “The Lygote Magical Academy team concedes defeat!”

  Then he quickly ran back.

  I jumped to my feet. I had not expected such a blatant slap in the face.

  “Youuu!…” I had no words.

  Raman grabbed my arm and surrounded me with a magical barrier, wisely deciding that I was about to start smashing everything around me. And that almost happened.

  This was the height of humiliation. They didn’t even step onto the arena to properly refuse the fight—they sent some… brat instead! And what about my plan? I hadn’t slept at night, analyzing all possible details and consequences! And where was all that now? Damn it! I needed a new strategy for the battles in the Empire! Under pressure from the rector, I sat back down.

  “Well then, in that case, I declare the Matan Academy team the winners of the Northern Empire’s magical tournament qualifiers in the kingdom of Lygote! We look forward to seeing you in the Imperial capital in two months! Dear spectators and guests, give a round of applause for the winners!”

  Once again, sparse applause echoed from the stands. Damn, I almost burned this place to the ground!

  “Let’s go,” Raman patted me on the shoulder.

  I silently got up and followed him out. To hell with all of it.

  We returned to the hotel in a less-than-good mood.

  “So, what do we do next?” Raman asked as we occupied the foyer.

  “There are different options. We can leave for the Empire right now or return to Matan for a week or two and then travel from there,” someone added.

  “Or we can just forget about these competitions and let them all go to hell,” I finished.

  “Captain?!”

  The team didn’t understand me. I silently went to my room. Everything had fallen apart, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

  “Captain,” Irgen scratched at my door. “We’re going to dinner together. Are you coming?”

  I gathered the magic books that I had surrounded myself with in bed.

  “I’ll be right there.”

  We entered the restaurant where, not so long ago, we had cleaned out another team down to their last coin. At least one pleasant memory from this trip.

  “Alright, it’s time to make a decision,” Raman raised the topic again as dinner neared its end. “I’ll hear all proposals and make a decision.”

  “I’d like to go to the Empire. I’ve never been there before…” Irgen spoke up.

  “I’m for that too,” Gras supported her.

  “And I agree,” Mara added.

  Almost all the team members voted for a direct journey to the Empire. No one was interested in returning home for a week just to extend the trip by a few more weeks. Besides, we didn’t know if the road back was safe—no one wanted another dose of poison. And as for dropping out of the tournament, as I had suggested, no one wanted that at all. My proposal turned out to be almost marginal.

  “Alright,” I summed up. “The Empire it is. But on two conditions: first, we take an airship because it’s faster—no slow land travel. And second, we clear dungeons along the way! Only on these conditions do I remain the team captain.”

  A brief silence followed.

  “Yes, Captain!” Irgen shouted.

  “The conditions are better than I expected,” the rector said.

  Everyone nodded in agreement. It seemed the team had regained its unity and excitement.

  “If that’s the case, tomorrow is a day for preparation and supplies. We depart the day after…”

  I didn’t finish because I suddenly sensed the hidden aura of a High-Rank Battle Ancestor near the door. Raman and I turned toward it at the same time.

  An old man with a long white beard dressed in black.

  I frowned. He reeked of the church.

  “…morning,” I finished my interrupted thought.

  My instincts didn’t deceive me—the old man was heading straight for me.

  “Aney, can we speak in private? If you don’t know, I am Lyric, a bishop of the Church of the White Twins in the kingdom of Lygote.”

  Alright, I’d hear what the head priest of the kingdom wanted. I stood up and moved to a nearby table, gesturing for him to sit. Lyric covered us with an aura.

  “So, to what do I owe the honor?”

  “Aney, I have not come as an enemy.”

  “And what, am I supposed to shed tears of gratitude?”

  “There’s no need for that…”

  “Lyric, let’s be honest—every time churchmen in Lygote approach me, they try to kill me, even though there is no conflict between us. So tell me, why should I believe your words?”

  “I admit, you have a conflict with the church, but you must understand…”

  “Understand who?” I interrupted the bishop. “Murderers and torturers who don’t hesitate to sacrifice innocent citizens for their own power? You should be grateful I haven’t wiped out your dens in every city, town, or even abandoned village in this kingdom—or anywhere else I can reach!”

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  Lyric tapped his fingers on the table. The conversation was clearly not going as he had planned.

  “Aney, believe me, not all of us are like that. The Church of the White Twins does a lot of good for the continent!”

  I leaned toward him, looking into his gray, time-faded eyes.

  “When someone shoves a barrel of filth under my nose and claims there are a few diamonds inside, does that mean I should roll up my sleeves and start digging through it?”

  “Aney!”

  “Besides, I suspect the church is behind the mass murder of people on the road between Matan and Lygote! But I have no proof yet.”

  Lyric stood up.

  “Aney, you are clearly crossing the line right now!”

  “Sit down, Lirik, while I’m still patient. Don’t give me any of your old-man antics here.”

  The old man sat down.

  “Aney, the church is not to blame for the tragedy on the road, I give you my word, as I personally conducted the investigation. I must thank you for burning the source of the poison’s spread, though you also destroyed all traces of the culprits.”

  “There were no traces.”

  “What?”

  “There were no traces at all. Do you take me for a fool, incapable of sensing an aura?”

  “If that’s the case, then it could only be…”

  “An Archmage or a God of War of the highest rank, or someone even stronger. The list of candidates isn’t that big, is it?”

  “Tell me, how did you and your people neutralize the poison?”

  “I didn’t. I’m just temporarily suppressing the effects with medicine. The Healers’ Guild has a sample, it won’t be hard for you to reproduce the formula. Is that all?”

  Lirik shook his head thoughtfully.

  “Aney, about the reason I came here.”

  “Just say it already.”

  “The church has legitimate concerns that you have become too much for the kingdom. It’s time for you to leave and go to the Empire. We’re not forcing you to pick a specific one—North, South, East, West, or even the Central Empire—go wherever you please. But the path to the principalities and kingdoms of the continent is closed to you, I’m sorry.”

  “Cleric, it’s neither you nor your church who decides that.”

  “Aney, the church insists on this. Think about whether you and your friends can withstand the consequences of refusing to comply.”

  I leaned toward Lirik and hissed in his face.

  “If a single hair falls from the heads of my acquaintances or friends, I will personally gut every holy man in this kingdom like a fish. And no God of War will stop me. So think about whether the church can handle the consequences of threatening me.”

  “If I were you, Aney, I wouldn’t make such threats so carelessly.”

  “You’re not in my place, old man. And you never will be. Now that’s it, the conversation is over, it’s time for you to leave.”

  The old man left in silence. Let him roll away, damned zealot. I turned back to my team at the table.

  “Everything alright, Captain?”

  “Yeah, our plans remain unchanged. Prepare for departure the morning after tomorrow!”

  The entire next day, I wandered through restaurants, buying an absurd amount of ready-made meals along with tableware, sending everything straight into storage. The lesson I had learned from the Vangan dungeon, where I had lived on little more than mana for over two years, was clear—delicious food is the key to a good mood, even for a Battle Ancestor.

  The next day, since flying ships were prohibited from taking off over the city, we had to travel by gah for nearly two hours to reach the outskirts. Finally, after passing the gates, we found a suitable clearing for takeoff. Everyone disembarked and grabbed their belongings, after which Raman stored the transport in the vault. I pulled out the flying ship. My team had seen it before, but for the rector, it was a first.

  “Wow!” He stepped up and patted the wooden hull. “She’s a beauty!”

  “I agree with you, Rector!”

  I jumped onto the stern and lowered the gangway so everyone could board.

  “Get settled while I prepare the ship for flight.”

  Descending into the cabin, I removed the casing from the power device near the stairs and pulled out two sixth-class cores, replacing them with seventh-class ones. After completing this simple task, I returned to the cockpit, placed my hand on the artificial horizon device, and activated the ship’s navigation system with my aura.

  Nearby, numerous instrument indicators lit up in the air. Well, I practically knew the manual by heart by now, so I shifted the wing deployment slider into the green zone. With a quiet hiss, four pairs of semi-transparent mesh wings, previously folded along the sides, extended perpendicularly to the ship’s axis and assumed a takeoff position. I moved the lift-off slider, and the wings began to oscillate vertically with a low amplitude. The ship slowly lifted off the ground by about ten meters.

  “Yahoo!” I shouted.

  This was fun! A map of the continent lit up above the artificial horizon device. I selected a point on the border between the Kingdom of Lygote and the Empire, then placed my hand back on the artificial horizon device and set a positive pitch angle.

  The ship’s nose tilted upward slightly, and I moved the speed slider to the fifty-kilometer-per-hour mark. The ship surged forward and upward, slowly gaining altitude. At seven hundred meters, after checking the map to ensure there were no high obstacles in our path, I adjusted the pitch angle back to neutral, bringing the nose level with the horizon.

  The airflow at this speed felt uncomfortable, so I reduced it to thirty-five kilometers per hour. That was just right! Now, all that remained was to turn the key to automatic flight mode, and the ship would take us to the destination I had set on the map.

  I seemed to have done everything according to the manual. Or had I? Something was nagging at me, making me feel like I had forgotten something. I peeked out from the cockpit toward the stern. No, the gangway was retracted… Damn it, the cabins! I had forgotten to claim a cabin! There were only four double cabins, and there were twelve of us on board!

  I rushed down to the main cabin, where narrow doors led to the fore and aft sleeping quarters. Quickly glancing around, I tried to determine if any beds were still unoccupied.

  “Captain!” Irgen waved at me. “I picked out a cabin for us!”

  Us?! She pointed at the door to the left at the stern.

  “Are we going to sleep together now?” I stepped in close to her.

  “And what, are you against it?”

  Her long ears turned red.

  “Did I say that?”

  The people around pretended not to hear us.

  An hour later, everyone had found a place to settle in for the long journey. Four of us, those who were left without cabins, set up folding beds in the common room next to the galley. They joked that at night they loved snacking anyway. I agreed—only Raman among them wasn’t overweight. The other three could use some slimming down.

  We finally gathered on the cockpit for a meeting.

  “Rector, what do you think? Should we head to the nearest dungeon in the Empire, or do you know which one is best?”

  Raman approached the map.

  “I haven’t heard much about them, but with your gold badge, we won’t be able to take everyone into a dungeon in the Empire. Each person needs to obtain an adventurer’s mark from the guild—that’s the rule. So we need to go here!”

  He pointed at a spot on the map. The city of Zrakal. I adjusted the course. The automatic navigation system indicated that it would take us nearly two days to get there. Fine, we didn’t mind.

  “Folks, none of you are against registering as adventurers, right?” I asked loudly.

  “No, captain!”

  “Golllld…” Irgen licked her lips.

  Holy hedgehogs, she really was obsessed with money…

  “Alright! Then now you split into groups and study your future opponents!”

  I pulled out the first four volumes of the Monster Encyclopedia and handed them over. The rector flipped through one with interest, then persistently searched for the author’s name. A wasted effort—I had already read them all, and there was nothing there.

  “What an interesting edition, Aney. Where did you get it?”

  “A friend, an adventurer, gave it to me a long time ago. Why?”

  “It’s a very valuable thing. Some of the monsters in this book—I’ve never even heard of them. May I make copies?”

  “Yes, of course. As long as it’s for a good cause.”

  Raman gathered everyone, and they went down to the common room, leaving me alone with Irgen, who had already studied everything earlier. She quickly sat on my lap and hugged me around the neck.

  “This is nice… Flying like this forever… through the sky…”

  I brushed her white hair away from my face.

  “Forever won’t work, but we’ll be flying a lot, I promise.”

  “Oh, come on… Captain! You ruined such a moment!”

  She stood up and walked to the railing, gazing at the endless fields below.

  “I’m a pragmatist. Nothing can be done about that.”

  I walked up behind her and leaned in, pressing her against the railing.

  “Ghkh! Idiot, you’re heavy!”

  Irgen broke free, laughing.

  “You’ll press me at night!”

  With those words, she ran down to the team.

  I took a deep breath and spread my search sense over hundreds of kilometers around. Hundreds of thousands of auras. Mostly ordinary people, with occasional first- to third-class monsters or weak warriors… One might think we were flying over the Atun Principality, but with every hour, we were getting closer to the borders of the Northern Empire—one of the five formidable powers of the continent.

  An hour later, Raman came up to me.

  “This time, I’m going into the dungeon with you. Don’t you dare leave me behind like last time! Or do you think a rector of a provincial magic academy doesn’t need money?”

  The old fox, but you refused to come with us for training last time yourself…

  “Alright, Rector, we won’t turn down your help. Though, honestly, why does a rector need money?”

  “Are you mocking me? Ugh…” He sat on the bench, resting his hand on the ship’s railing. “Do you think, after all the expenses, the rector has a lot of money left? Do you even know how much it costs to maintain the academy for a year?! And you can’t raise tuition in Matana—it’s not a rich capital city… I need at least two or three hundred thousand just to renovate old buildings and buy new magical devices for the learning process… With that, the quality of our academy’s graduates would skyrocket!”

  “Well, if everything goes according to my plan, two to three hundred thousand gold per team member is just one or two dungeon raids.”

  “Really? What class of monsters are you planning to hunt?”

  “Third and fourth.”

  The rector nodded quietly to himself.

  “A class of monsters not too difficult for our team, but for such earnings, it would take months or even years of hunting…”

  “Not at all. I have a great way to make all the monsters of the level attack us at once.”

  Raman looked at me intently.

  “You never stop surprising me, Aney!”

  “But, Rector, this won’t be for free.”

  “So, what’s the price?”

  “You will explain to me the theory of sixth and especially seventh-circle magic. In a way that I understand. No matter how long it takes.”

  “Deal!”

  We shook hands.

  Yes! Seventh-circle magic—that which scared me. I remembered the barrier between the third and fourth circles and how hard it had been for me. So I strongly doubted I could overcome the barrier between the sixth and seventh circle on my own. But with Raman’s help, it was more than possible!

  I was lying in bed after a delicious dinner, thinking about my study plan with the rector when Irgen straddled me and pulled off her shirt.

  “And you were so persistent a few hours ago in the cockpit, pressing the poor half-elf so passionately… And where is all that now? Chickened out?”

  I wrapped us in an aura cocoon and threw her onto the bed, pinning her down.

  “Oh, I’ll press you so hard now, you’ll only be able to squeak!”

  By the afternoon of the next day, we were approaching the border of the Northern Empire.

  “Has any of you been to the Empire before?” I asked the team.

  “I studied the highest magic in the Tower for ten years,” Raman replied. “But I don’t know much about the Empire itself. Mage Towers, how should I put it… they live their own lives, separate from the affairs of the Empire. So you could say this is my first time here too.”

  Several auras of mid- and high-level Battle Masters were approaching us.

  “That’s the border patrol,” Raman said.