Day 123, 6:10 AM

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Edna asks, her treant army blocking my path.

  “Neat creations. Did you come up with the design?” I don’t answer her question and watch her reaction.

  “Archmages long dead designed the tree soldiers, now, where are you going?”

  “Deephorn, to see how the residents are doing, deliver the metals we promised, and whether the inquisitors have made an outpost there, maybe check for talented recruits, Lucy and Gila will soon become full-fledged mages, and we could increase our group’s power with more fresh blood. Once I’m done with Deephorn, I’ll take the potential recruits to the dungeon, to awaken their guide and increase their attributes.”

  Edna squints at me suspiciously, probably searching for lies. She’ll find none, since I’ve decided that this is the best way to move ahead. When you know a paranoid mess can detect whether you’re telling the truth, you create your truths to be convenient and logical to them.

  “Your body’s mana has changed.”

  Ah, she skipped straight to the second possible problem.

  “I drew mana inside the mansion, trying to level up, there’s a mess of different types in there, and I worked to draw all of them. Your body is also a swirl of different colors.”

  Silence lasts for two heartbeats.

  “What will you do if you run into inquisitors?”

  “Kill them if their numbers are manageable, six or less, if there are more, I will flee here and draw them to your tree warriors. How many of them do you have?”

  “Enough to handle any attacking inquisitors. Are you planning on betraying me?” Is she paranoid or do I look that suspicious?

  “Not unless you betray me first.”

  Edna’s gaze slices me to pieces, but there’s nothing to find. My heart rate, blood pressure, and even neural activity should be perfectly normal. I’m calm, and as far as I know there’s nothing to worry about. Redo is ready and waiting, should the need arise.

  “You prepared all these answers, didn’t you?”

  “Naturally,” I smile, it should’ve been obvious, since I took no time to respond to her questions. “But that doesn’t make them any less true. I mean you no harm, Edna, not until you harm me first. You have nothing to fear from me. I want to overthrow the corrupt church, to liberate the people, to give humanity a chance to reclaim this world, and I want to start the biggest public disturbance this world has ever seen.” After all, that is the level up condition to advance anarchist.

  Edna holds my gaze for a long while before nodding and turning away from me.

  “Good luck, and come back as soon as you can. Did you have anyone in mind for becoming a mage?”

  “Harlos. He’s old, probably has a bunch of unspent attribute points, assuming he hasn’t activated his guide yet, and he seems friendly enough.”

  Edna stops.

  “Well, I am surprised,” she says with mirth. “I was certain you would try to get your clutches on another young girl.”

  I shrug. Girl, boy, old, young, what does it matter?

  With scanner active all the time, I know what Lucy, Gila, spiders, and worms, look like, sound like, smell like, and even taste like. I have seen the invisible light their body-heat radiates. And much, much more. In fact, scanner has made human body disgusting to me, no matter how perfect and young, until finally I grew numb to it.

  As tragic as it sounds, I have lost the last lingering specs of interest in women. Even without comparing them with Manny, their secretions, masses of organs, and everything else inside their bodies is what pushed me away from them. Perfect scanner combined with Advanced Overpower Resistance now allows me to see what’s happening inside humans around me.

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  Edna loses interest in me and departs, her treants parting to let me through. I could escape now, abandon her to her war with the inquisition. An attractive prospect. Oddly enough, the anchor tethering me to her are the girls, whom I don’t wish to leave alone with her new sociopathic self.

  Should I get them away from her? Edna has spent decades living alone in her hut. I thought it was out of fear, but her current behavior dissuaded me from that line of thought. Similar thoughts come and go way too many times for them to be a passing whim or a moment of pettiness, meaning I’ll possibly act on it and flee. The one thought which scares me is that Edna might snap and harm the girls, experiment on them, or do something even worse.

  Things inhabiting the transparent vats in Hadriuse’s basement tell me the “saintly” archmages of life aren’t beyond human experimentation.

  Time passes in dark consideration, and four days later, I reach Deephorn.

  The walls appear fine, well, no different from when we had first arrived. There aren’t as many monsters as in the depths of the jungle, but I hope I’m contributing, since I’ve been electrocuting anything that approached me in these past four days.

  Magic is an addictive thing. You need to use it all the time to grow, and using it makes you feel like a god. Power corrupts. I knew the old adage was true after becoming a king, but with the ability to bend the elements to my will, it’s truer than ever. I need to make sure I don’t become a monster.

  “Hello!” I wave at the soldiers guarding the wall. “Did a group of inquisitors walking their monsters pass here? Did they cause problems?”

  “Well, well, if it ain’t the witch’s knight who set us up to fight the inquisitors?” Elie’s fake cheeriness is tinged with anger, and I guess the encounter with the inquisitors turned poorly.

  “Hi, Elie, what happened?”

  “A small band of inquisitors taking a bunch of monsters for a walk happened. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself. The bleedin’ bastards treated them like pets.”

  “Captain,” a nervous soldier said, “badmouthing the inquisition can get you burned.”

  “And who’s gonna burn me? They left us here, and now they are obviously allied with the bugs, they were probably allied right from the start. That means the inquisitors killed our friends and family, fed them to their pets. And what did we do? We fed them, paid taxes, and made donations!”

  I let Elie rant. She is pissed, but I’m not the target of her ire, so at least that much is good.

  “May I come in, or do you have a preference for shouting at people? I have several matters to discuss with you.”

  “Let him in.”

  Edna guides me to the cozy guardhouse, where I explain that we have cleared the dungeon, that I plan to clear it again once I wrap things up in Deephorn, and that she should organize a team of delvers to clear the bug spawner regularly.

  As for the inquisitors, I straight up tell her what happened.

  “You killed thirty men on your own?” I can understand her incredulous look. Even one against three is a nearly impossible challenge, let alone ten times the odds.

  “I managed.” I smile, with no intention of explaining how Rage turns me into a killing machine, boosting my strength and agility. “My injuries were substantial, but Edna healed me afterwards and now I’m as good as new, ready for another fight one against thirty.”

  I grin, and she shakes her head. “What’s your plan now?”

  “I have attained some mastery over magic, and I would like to teach another apprentice or two, if anyone is willing to learn magic.”

  Elie stares at me without saying anything. I let the silence stretch.

  “What does one need to do to become a mage?”

  “You first have to become an apprentice, everyone can do that, you just have to want to learn, but that’s far from enough. To advance, apprentices need keen minds and dexterous hands. But with enough practice and effort, they would learn to cast basic spells, and assuming enough study, they could learn other magics.”

  I can see the cogs in her head moving. “Eternal youth and long life are within reach. I’m much older than I look. But people who haven’t awakened their guide and young folks would have an advantage. The former would have a stockpile of attribute points to invest and to get their bodies and minds where they need them, while the young have time.”

  Disappointment shimmers around her, like a summer haze.

  “Don’t you need to stay here and defend the settlement?”

  “I could find a replacement,” she says with renewed hope. “My agility is sixteen, wisdom fifteen, intellect fourteen. They aren’t bad attributes.”

  They really aren’t, but she’s still lagging behind the girls. Then again, Elie is probably more driven than either Gila or Lucy, and she would break her back studying.

  “Fine, you’re one, I was thinking of recruiting Harlos as well. Did he activate his guide?”

  After chatting for several more minutes, we’re off towards the center of the fort-town. I’m going to recruit my second apprentice, while Elie is going to quit and pack her bags.

  I honestly didn’t plan on nabbing her from the failing community, but now that I think about it, it’s normal she wants to extend her life and increase her strength. After a year or two of apprenticeship, she should reach heights she had never imagined, and protect her community in a much more meaningful way.