It hurts, damn it! Sir, put me back where you just picked me up… I was doing fine, and now I feel awful again! Cobblestones are no feather bed, you know, to be slamming me against them like that. The heavy, wheezing breath—like someone breathing through cotton—reminded me of a certain man.

  “Butch, sir, is that you?”

  At first, all I heard in response was a wet, rattling cough and some unintelligible mumbling.

  “Who else would be dragging a wretch like you across the city?”

  “Why would you bother?”

  Not that I really cared, but still…

  “Huuuuh. Well, first of all, who else is going to look after my granddaughter? And second… you’re Kruk’s student, aren’t you?”

  “How do you…”

  “Idiot. You think I wouldn’t recognize the weapon I once forged for him?”

  “So that spear is your work?”

  “That’s right. What, you doubt me?”

  “No, just…”

  I was sure—don’t know why—that the teacher had forged that spear himself. I groaned.

  “Butch, sir, wait, the belt… I need the belt…”

  “What now?!”

  Butch dropped my collar angrily and leaned over me.

  “Help me fasten the belt. It’ll hide my aura. The Imperial Court is definitely going to want to find me.”

  “The Imperial Court…” Butch swore under his breath as he helped me. “And you didn’t think of that before? Before you wrecked half the city?”

  I wanted to correct him—it was far from half the city—but it felt inappropriate, so I just quietly shoved another dozen recovery pills into my mouth. Butch kept dragging me along the cobblestones to God-knows-where, still grumbling.

  Bad. Really bad.

  That damned incarnation of the White Twin shattered my body so thoroughly I had no idea how I was still alive. How the hell did he even do it? That strike… There wasn’t that much raw strength in it. And the aura… No, there wasn’t much of that either. No use thinking about it now.

  I need to recover as fast as possible, if fate really did give me a second chance. And become strong enough to destroy those so-called gods. But first, I have to somehow get out of this cursed capital.

  The Imperial Court… Since my plan A went completely to hell, they won’t just let me go. Someone has to answer for those thousands of deaths, and they sure as hell won’t blame their little godling whose actions caused it all. I need a quiet place immediately. Somewhere I can absorb cores. A lot of cores.

  “We’re here. Help me out…”

  I looked around. We were near the stairs leading to Butch’s forge.

  Damn it, old man, seriously? This is the first place they’ll look for me.

  But whatever conclusions I might’ve made were worth less than nothing in my current state. I did what I could, using my elbows to help haul myself up the stairs toward the door. Butch dragged me inside, locked the door, then kept pulling me through the shop floor into the workshop, and from there into a small, dark room.

  “Butch, sir, it’s broad daylight… So many people saw us…”

  “Shut it, fool. You think I don’t have a plan? I was doing this kind of thing when your great-grandfathers weren’t even a thought yet! They saw us? Good.”

  He left the room, and I watched as the old man and Alika quickly packed up all their belongings into storage. Once the workshop was cleared, a large and complex formation became visible on its stone floor. Butch pulled out several sixth-tier cores and arranged them in a sequence known only to him.

  When the formation began to glow with a dark violet light, he quickly tossed a pile of junk into the center, grabbed Alika by the hand, and ran back into the room with me. A moment later, a massive multi-layered spell began to flare above that junk.

  Teleportation magic! I’d seen something like it before, even drafted a diagram once. A thin white beam shot from the center of the formation, and the entire pile vanished.

  “Let’s see them try to find us now…”

  “But we’re still here.”

  “Move!” Butch pulled me to the corner. “Like I don’t know what I’m doing. That teleport trick should send them searching hundreds of kilometers away. Meanwhile, we…”

  The old man pulled a scroll from a hidden compartment and tore it open. I felt the floor tremble, and a huge stone in the center of the room lifted all the way to the ceiling.

  “Alika, help the old man get this oaf down there…”

  They grabbed me by my clothes and dragged me into the newly revealed passage. As soon as we descended the stairs, the old man pulled out a paper cylinder, snapped it, and tossed it back into the room we’d just left.

  Before the stone above us dropped back into place, I saw a massive blaze ignite in the now-empty workshop. The stone sealed behind us, and darkness swallowed everything. I was about to conjure some magic to light the way, but Alika beat me to it and lit a lantern. They kept dragging me down the stone stairs.

  “Where are we?” I finally asked Butch.

  “The catacombs, as you can see.”

  Damn it, I couldn’t see a thing except the black stone walls and stairs.

  “And then what?”

  “Then we wait for you to recover, and we get the hell out of the Northern Empire.”

  I said nothing. Sure, we’d get out of the Empire, but I still had to find Irgen. Butch and Alika finally pulled me from the narrow corridor into a large cavern and stopped.

  “Huuuuuh, break time. I need a damn break… Damn it, my old bones are tired of hauling your sorry ass around!”

  “Sorry, Butch, sir!”

  “Let it be… Although, now old Kruk owes me one…”

  Butch began to chuckle to himself. Well, I couldn’t wait and keep popping pills forever either.

  “Mister Butch, could you and Alika step back a few dozen meters? What I’m about to do may be dangerous to your health.”

  They exchanged glances and silently moved away. I didn’t want to do it in front of anyone, but I had no choice.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  I created circles and absorption runes, then began pouring out sixth-class cores from my storage without pause. Dozens, even hundreds of them crumbled to dust every second, releasing their monster mana, which under the influence of magic turned into God’s mana and was absorbed through every inch of my body.

  I could feel my internal organs and bones quickly regenerating… After a few hours, I could already sit up, but the process didn’t stop even after full recovery. I noticed that my skeleton was starting to change again. Whereas my bones used to have a uniform structure, now they were layered, which greatly increased their durability and ability to withstand impact.

  Millions of sixth-class cores were fully exhausted from my storage, and I began using seventh-class ones.

  “Mister Aney,” Alika called out to me, “upstairs, they’ve declared you an enemy of the Empire…”

  “Does that change anything?”

  “Well, now anyone can kill you and claim the reward.”

  “Ohhhh? And how much is the Imperial court offering for my head?”

  “One million gold.”

  “Cheap bastards. I’ll be ashamed to die for such a pittance.”

  Without stopping the absorption, I pulled out a sheet of paper and a stylus from storage and wrote a long letter to Tot, asking him to give refuge to Butch and Alika.

  “You should leave now. Staying with me is too dangerous.” I handed the letter to Butch using my aura. “Go to the city of Matan in the Kingdom of Lhote. My friend there will help you.”

  “Aney, maybe we should go together…”

  “No, Mister Butch. I’m already an enemy of the Northern Empire, so there’s nothing holding me back anymore from turning this place upside down. Besides, there’s still someone in the capital I need to rescue…”

  “That’s insane…”

  “Yeah. But I’m still young, so I have the right to make insane decisions.”

  “Damn it, kid, four War Gods nearly beat you to death, and the Imperial court has eight! You won’t survive!”

  “War Gods?” I opened my eyes and looked at the old man. “Mister Butch, I killed four Gods of War without a scratch… It was the White Twin’s embodiment that kicked my ass.”

  The old man looked at Alika, and the two of them burst into laughter. They laughed so long that even my lips curled into a smile.

  “Ooooh, Aney, you’ve really lost your mind. No one’s ever survived an encounter with an embodiment in combat.”

  “I believe it. I just got lucky to kill him…”

  “Wait, you’re not joking? You actually managed to kill the embodiment of the White Twin?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah.”

  “So that explosion…”

  “Right. That bastard got torn to bloody dust.”

  Now the two of them were looking at me with awe.

  “So that’s why they blamed you so quickly, without an investigation. The Imperial court can’t admit their God was at fault.”

  “How many casualties?” I asked for the first time.

  Alika and Butch’s expressions darkened.

  “Not exactly known yet, but the death toll has already exceeded ten thousand…”

  I clenched my fists. Damn pseudo-god, sooner or later, you’ll have to answer for this. Just like I will… I exhaled.

  “I’m really sorry, Mister Butch.”

  “Eh, kid, it wasn’t your idea in the first place… Don’t beat yourself up too much. But… damn it, old Kruk really found himself a good student, ha-ha-ha! To destroy an embodiment… unbelievable…”

  “Mister Butch, whatever the case, you really need to go. Please be careful. I don’t want to hear bad news when I return to Matan.”

  “Relax, Aney, back in my youth—”

  Alika dramatically rolled her eyes. Seemed like the old man had worn her ears out with stories from his younger days.

  “Gramps, let’s go already! How many times do I have to hear your tall tales?!”

  She grabbed the old man by the hand and dragged him toward one of the passages.

  “Good luck, Mister Aney!” she shouted, waving the lantern.

  “Farewell! See you in Matan!” Butch waved goodbye.

  “Good luck to you both!”

  I watched as the lantern light disappeared behind the turns of the corridor they had gone down. Now the wide cavern was lit only by the yellow glow of my absorption magic circles and runes. Finally. There was another reason I had insisted they leave. It seemed my breakthrough to the level of War God was approaching.

  No, not right now, but within a few days it could happen.

  Time passed slowly, and I kept pouring out cores from the storage, which was now more than half-empty. After the changes to my skeleton had finished, the absorption didn’t stop, and the transformations began in my spinal cord. Earlier, when my nervous system was changing, it had halted at the nerve nodes and the anterior and posterior roots of the nerves…

  But now the process slowly moved further, affecting the white and gray matter, as well as the central canal. I was satisfied, because by changing this part of myself, I hoped to significantly accelerate my body’s reaction time, which would give me an edge in battle against an equal opponent.

  Until now, I had used time-element magic to speed myself up in combat. But now, combining this enhancement with the ten percent bonus from magic… I grinned with satisfaction. Declared an enemy of the Northern Empire? Well then, we’ll have the chance to settle this on the battlefield!

  Damn idiots, all I ever wanted was to live freely, but your idiotic rules, your damned balance of power on the continent, your desire to either recruit me or destroy me… You brought this on yourselves. And now I won’t stop.

  I will strip power from and destroy those damn pseudo-gods, and anyone who stands to protect them or beside them!

  The mention of the Gods brought me back to analyzing the fight with the embodiment of the White Twin. When I asked myself what he had that I didn’t, the answer was simple—everything.

  He was three times stronger and faster than me, and if he hadn’t been so arrogant, I’d already be dead. I had absolutely nothing to counter him with. That bastard even possessed instantaneous teleportation! And his strike?

  I recalled it over and over, replaying it in my mind, but I still couldn’t understand. A light touch of his palm to my chest, then a short movement forward—and I was flying back hundreds of meters with bones shattered throughout my body…

  How was that even possible? Vasa, a high-grade Goddess of War, pummeled me daily for hours, and at best she could dislocate a joint. So how did that damned freak… I was driven mad by the fact that I couldn’t grasp it. It wasn’t a strike with physical force. Nor was there a single drop of magic involved.

  Is there something else in this world I don’t know about? Some… unknown principles? Heh, I’ll call it that for now. A Principle. At this point, I understood that even after my breakthrough to the class of Gods of War , I still shouldn’t face the embodiment of the White Twin.

  Almost a full day passed, and the transformation process was nearing its end. All this time, I had been using my senses to scan the endless catacomb passages, trying to find a safe place for the breakthrough, because I clearly remembered how I nearly destroyed a dungeon level when I ascended to High-grade Battle Ancestor.

  So to cause something like that, only much stronger, right beneath the capital was a bad idea. From what I had managed to explore, these catacombs extended far beyond the city, gradually descending kilometers below ground. That wouldn’t hide the breakthrough entirely, of course, but it should significantly reduce the consequences. I gathered the last drops of monster mana and dispersed the magical circles with runes.

  The mana of a God surged inside me, breaking free in unstoppable waves, causing the space around me to tremble. Faster! I had to leave the area under the capital as quickly as possible! I rushed like a madman through the narrow corridors, destroying them, leaving behind clouds of dust and debris that slowly settled into the complete darkness of the catacombs. Farther! I had to get far, far away from the capital, I couldn’t contain this power anymore…

  The underground cavern the dark corridors had led me to lay several kilometers deep and was enormous. I even thought it wasn’t entirely natural, showing signs that humans had played a part in its formation… But I didn’t have time to examine it closely.

  A bright white light enveloped me and shot upward in a wide beam. Waves of power pulsed outward rhythmically, shattering the brittle stone, turning it into fine dust. The cave’s vault began to collapse, burying me under large boulders, as mountain rock gradually began sinking down.

  Damn it, when will it end?! I couldn’t stay here—I had to rise before I was buried under kilometers of stone! The white beam still didn’t stop, so I started ascending alongside it, pushing away the searing fragments that rained down on me.

  Finally, a final powerful burst shattered the thick layer of rock and soil above me, and within minutes I saw the clear starry sky. I stood in a massive crater filled with soft soil and small stones. Silence reigned all around. I spread my senses to orient myself and figure out where I was. About twenty kilometers from the outskirts of the capital.

  Not bad either, but I was sure that all the Gods of War and high-circle mages already knew where I was. I rose into the air and looked around. The crater was right in the middle of an orchard of unfamiliar fruit trees. Two people with lanterns were approaching me.

  “Hello,” I said first as they neared.

  They were an older man and woman, likely a married couple. They stopped at the edge of the crater, looking around in stunned confusion, not understanding what had just happened.

  “Was this your orchard? Sorry, I fell on it…”

  “Sir, this was our orchard, and now…”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll compensate you for the damages. But I should warn you—it’s best you leave this place immediately.”

  I pulled out a storage ring, poured several tens of thousands of gold coins into it, and descended to hand it to the old man.

  “Here. The storage is unlocked, now don’t waste time—run. Very soon, this crater will seem like child’s play.”

  Damn, those two just stared at each other stupidly, as if they didn’t understand a word I’d said.

  “Get out of here!” I roared.

  Oh, look at that—they understood that.

  Dozens of auras were approaching me, among which I counted eight War Gods. Most likely the imperial court had decided not to play around and sent everyone they had. I ascended several dozen meters into the air and decided to wait for them right here.

  An incredible power filled me—this was a completely different sense of self compared to being a Battle Ancestor. I waved my open hand downward, and saw a giant imprint of it appear on the ground below, raising a cloud of dust.

  Ho-ho, I like this! I drew my spear and effortlessly created a protective sphere. I remembered how I hadn’t believed Vasa when she said War Gods could hold her for weeks… Weeks? I could hold her for months! Everything was so simple now I could hardly believe it myself.

  A God of War unfamiliar to me stopped nearby. Then another joined him, and another… Within seconds, they had surrounded me. Vasa and Munk were among them.