When the carts on the road had nearly disappeared beyond the horizon, I pulled out my boat.

  “Long time no see…” I said, stroking its wooden side before jumping into the cockpit.

  After unfolding the collapsible roof to keep the rain out, I activated navigation and lifted the boat into the air. At first, I had planned to return to Matan, but I did not want to put my friends in danger, so I set a course westward. I needed to make my passage as loud and visible as possible so everyone would believe I was hiding in the Western Empire. From there, I could quietly slip back into Lhote.

  And I could not forget the promise I made to the imperial court. Let them remember well that Anei never speaks idle words. Grinning, I checked the navigation map for dungeons along my path to the Northern Empire’s border.

  There were, in fact, two dungeons almost directly along my course and a third slightly off to the side. Well, three it is… Eventually, I would visit the largest dungeon controlled by the Empire—Vangan—and destroy it. We would see how the Empire reacts to that. And the Church—I had not forgotten about them either. I still hoped to be greeted by all four cardinals…

  The nearest major city was two days’ flight away, so I pulled out the grimoire of space-element magic of the seventh circle, which I had bought at Matan’s auction, and immersed myself in reading.

  Of course, I knew this would not make me a seventh-circle mage, but I hoped to at least come closer to understanding the underlying principles and foundations.

  So, what exactly is space? At first glance, it is a fundamental category that describes the placement of objects and their relationships with one another. But is it really so? Perhaps space is merely an a priori form of sensory perception that exists in our consciousness and allows us to perceive objects as being arranged in a certain order.

  In other words, we only see it from our own point of view—and we ourselves are objects within that order. But what if everything is not as it seems? Could it be that space is not an absolute reality but merely a system of relationships between objects?

  Perhaps I, and the city of Ruzha that now lay ahead of me, are objects—and my movement, which requires time, is the relationship that connects us. But if this relationship were excluded from the equation, then I and the city of Ruzha would become a single object, with no relation between us?

  Damn!

  This was getting complicated. But gradually I arrived at a logical conclusion: one more category was missing—time! If I could manage to unify them into a harmonious theory, then…

  Ruzha appeared on the horizon, so I stowed the grimoire in the storage compartment and landed the boat. Enough of straining my brain—it was time to put my hands to work. After securing the boat, I stepped onto the road and walked toward the city gate.

  Unbelievably, on the notice board next to the gate, there was a portrait of me, quite detailed, too. Damn, I looked like a ruggedly handsome man—and they were offering a million for my head!

  I handed a silver token to the guard and passed through the gate without any issues. Seemed the little soldier had no desire to become a millionaire.

  I sensed the damned aura of churchmen almost from the gate itself and strode toward it boldly, not bothering to hide myself in the slightest. After a while, they must have noticed me too—their auras grew restless. Too late. I was already near.

  Even if they had tried to scatter, it would have made little difference—whether they died now by my hand or a few months later from weakness, the result would be the same.

  “Knock knock, you bastards!” I kicked in the closed door and walked straight toward the altar.

  “Stop him! Do not let him reach here!”

  At the far end of the church, several dozen figures in black robes gathered. I roughly gauged their strength—nearly half were Battle Ancestors of various degrees, the rest were Battle Masters.

  A few spears flew my way, though they could not even scratch me.

  “Is this supposed to be a joke?”

  I drew my spear and swung it in front of me.

  “Come on, all at once. I do not have time for games…”

  The churchmen formed a defensive formation but hesitated to attack, focusing on protecting themselves. I examined their auras once more. They were afraid.

  That fear, invisible to the eye, reeked of bile all the way to the doors where I stood.

  They knew I would start killing them any moment now, but each one hoped that even if everyone else died, he would survive. I never understood that. What was that baseless hope founded on? That their false god, the Twin, would save them?

  I did not believe in the loyalty of these dogs for even a second. Beings who lived solely by stealing the power of others were incapable of idealistic acts.

  So, what could have pushed them to protect the altar? Only fear greater than certain death—or faith that someone stronger than me would come to save them.

  A trap? No—nonsense. They could not have organized one that quickly.

  “Today you die here, heretic!”

  Oh, so he is pissing himself in fear, but still dares to shout. I began to walk toward them slowly, each step cracking the stone floor beneath me from the pressure of my aura.

  “You hunchbacked mutts—what are you hoping for? Your little god? He is not coming. But you—you will answer now for the thousands of stolen lives. Ready to die, scum?”

  Their auras, joined together through a defensive technique, were about equal in strength to the God of War—or close to it. An interesting technique, but still not enough to stop me.

  “All your tricks mean nothing in the face of absolute power!” I thrust my spear into the center of their formation.

  One strong, direct strike… For a moment, the tip of my spear was indeed halted. I grinned with a wicked smile.

  “And that is your combined strength? Pathetic!”

  After those words, I barely pushed the spear forward, and its tip pierced the cleric’s nose bridge, going straight through his skull and emerging from the back of his head. I twisted the spear along its axis, turning his face into an unrecognizable mess of brains, bone, and blood. His body collapsed like a sack onto the stone floor the moment I pulled the spear back. The scene threw them into a panic; their formation shattered, and all of them began fleeing in terror. But I had been expecting this.

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  “Too late!”

  Not a single one of them escaped the strike driven by my thirst for blood. The Battle Masters died instantly. The Battle Ancestors tried to resist for a while and screamed horribly, crawling on their knees across the floor, their lifeless eyes staring in horror. Crimson-black tongues wrapped around each of them individually, stripping away even the faintest hope of salvation. And even then, I found their deaths far too easy compared to the weight of their guilt.

  I glanced at the altar nearby. Too easy. And those dead bastards had been so sure I would die here, which meant… something was off. I looked around, searching for anything suspicious, but could see nothing unusual. What had they planned?

  I grabbed the corpse of the dead cleric by the collar and threw it at the altar. It missed by only a few centimeters before disintegrating into dust.

  Well, well!

  I threw another one—with the same result. Further experiments were pointless; only an idiot would repeat the same actions expecting a different outcome.

  “Ha-ha-ha, almost got me!”

  My laughter echoed through the empty temple walls. Killing dozens of clerics just to lure me into a trap? Someone among them had a bit of imagination.

  I headed toward the doors, pulling out a bottle filled with God’s mana I had prepared for a battle in the capital of the Northern Empire. Finally, it would be of use.

  Stopping in the doorway—where the remnants of the doors still clung to their hinges—I hurled the bottle at the altar. As it passed through the strange barrier, the glass vanished instantly, and pure God’s mana splashed onto the black stone, beginning to trickle down in thin streams.

  Seventy meters, was it?

  I began slowly retreating from the church. Sixty meters from the altar… sixty-five…

  At the seventieth meter, the space around the altar twisted into a tight spiral and erupted in infernal flames that devoured everything in their path. A thin white beam shot upward, tearing through the roof, and then the walls collapsed inward, burying the history of everything that had happened inside.

  Terrified passersby began fleeing, emerging from the clouds of white dust that had risen from the explosion. I sensed several strong auras heading my way, so I tightened my belt and ran off with the panicked crowd, slowly shifting my course toward the city gates. There was no need to start a massacre among innocents—it was better to slip away quietly.

  “There! There… there’s no more temple!”

  With a look of panic, I waved my hand—clutching a silver token—in front of the face of the soldier at the gate. I did not know whether my acting was convincing, but he almost threw me out of the city, shoving me toward the gate.

  “Then get out of here, you fool! I already know!”

  Well, if you know, then what’s the need for shoving?

  I walked away, barely suppressing a victorious grin.

  Thanks for the cooperation, idiot.

  A few kilometers ahead lay the entrance to the dungeon, and I had no intention of stopping my fun. Besides, after ascending to the level of the God of War, I was almost out of cores—and that had to be fixed.

  On the way to the dungeon, I encountered very few adventurers, so I concluded that the place was unpopular—which worked in my favor. The fewer people I had to kick out to close the dungeon, the better. There was not even a guard at the entrance.

  There was a table with a registration log, sure—but no one around to fill it in.

  Restricted facility, discipline, responsibility—yeah, right. Classic.

  Blockheads were always diligently placed in their roles in this world.

  I descended to the first level and felt the black steel drop beneath my heart stir—the one I had acquired on my last trip into the dungeon.

  Was it… pleased?

  Not the time to think about that. I began my quick descent to the lower floors, using the technique of sequential steps. This time, I would close the dungeon from the bottom up, to avoid losing control of the situation like last time.

  The thirty-first level was the final one here. At the site of the future passage stood a gray stone cube, just beginning to sink into the floor. I strained my senses and peered inside. This time, the stone held a large shinbone.

  “Come here, you’ll be the fifth!”

  I tore it out and placed it in my storage.

  To my surprise, there was no mana river beneath the cube.

  Had the Seed not taken root yet?

  I punched the stone floor several times, creating a decent-sized pit… It seemed… To speed things up, I had to draw my spear and strike it with aura.

  The massive floor area beneath me crumbled into fine gravel, which immediately sank into the raging river of monster mana below.

  Much better.

  I drew circles and absorption runes around myself and dove in.

  Ah, how pleasant…

  Like diving under a warm blanket after standing in freezing cold. I even closed my eyes in bliss.

  This time, I maintained control of the absorption process so I would not be teleported out like last time. If I did everything right and kept calm, the benefit would be far greater than when you take everything with blind force.

  I only emerged once I felt the river begin to tremble faintly.

  It seemed to have given me all it could without suffering serious loss.

  “All right, all right, I understand…”

  I spoke to it as if it were alive.

  The massive hole in the floor began to shrink before my eyes, and I turned back toward the passage to the thirtieth level. I was greatly tempted to engage in battle with the monsters dwelling there, but even as a lower-tier God of War, I was still far too weak. Enormous swarms of ninth-class monsters…

  At this moment, I was their prey, not the other way around. But I had another method. By creating circles and absorption runes, I instantly expanded them to cover the entire level. The light flickered and died out as billions of insects dissolved into those circles, raining nothing but ash to the ground. Millions of ninth-class monsters began to disintegrate almost simultaneously, crumbling into dust.

  While absorbing their mana, I could feel their pain and terror, their incomprehension at what was bringing them to such a death… Some of the swarm leaders let out horrifying roars and attempted to attack the bright yellow runes that hung in the air here and there, as if they had realized the cause of their total annihilation… But that only hastened their demise.

  Even the mana clouds of monsters that burst from the cracks in the ground vanished within minutes. All that remained was the black stone and gray dust upon it. The level was dead. The black steel droplet within my chest flashed for a moment, spreading a signal through thin threads that extended from it to every muscle in my body.

  Damn! It was like a cramp, but… pleasant? It was as though there had been a sudden conflict between my nervous system and—also mine, but not entirely… Whatever. I diminished the absorption circles and stepped into the passage to the twenty-ninth level.

  The sound of a snapping string echoed behind me, and the passage ceased to exist, forever sealing the black void of the thirtieth level. That level, and the next two, I cleared the same way—without physically confronting the ninth-class monsters—and only on the twenty-sixth level did I change tactics, summoning a wave of monsters to harvest their cores first.

  This slowed my ascent, as I now needed several days per level for the clearing. And when I reached the twentieth level, my storage was completely filled with sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-class cores. From this level, I returned to my old tactic—eradicating all life simply by absorbing it through magic—and within a few hours, I had reached the fifteenth level. That was when I first sensed a human aura.

  “Leave this place!”

  I amplified my voice so it could be heard in the furthest corners of the level. To ensure even fools understood, I detonated a few drops of God’s mana in the sky, which triggered a wave of monsters. Noticing the change, the people rushed toward the passage to the fourteenth level, and I activated the absorption circles and runes, letting the last one barely slip through.

  Thus, I continued my ascent, leaving behind sealed and desolate levels. I also noticed that from the tenth level upward, there were almost no people left in the dungeon. Perhaps the adventurers who fled had warned others that some mad God of War was rising from below.

  On the surface, I was met by a crowd of several thousand adventurers. They stared in shock as the black rock behind my back dulled, turned gray, and crumbled into dust.

  “What… How can this be… What is happening?”

  The bewildered guards rubbed their eyes and touched the gray dust on the ground where, just seconds before, the entrance to the dungeon had been.

  “The dungeon is sealed! Tell your emperor that Aney, the God of War, always keeps his word!”

  They had no idea what was going on, but I hoped that sooner or later, my words would reach the imperial court. We shall see what their reaction will be. There were only two possible outcomes—they would either increase the bounty on my head or send an emissary to try to resolve our conflict. I leaned toward the latter, as the imperial court had already tried to capture me with Gods of War, and everyone had seen what that achieved.

  I walked through the silent crowd. They quickly scattered in all directions, making way for me. Even without reading their auras, I could see their anger and helplessness. These people were understandable—anyone would be furious if some bastard deprived them of a stable income. Well, I made sure they knew who was to blame.

  After walking a few hundred meters, I took out my boat and lifted it into the sky, once again heading west. The next major city with a temple and dungeon was about six days’ flight away.