Zenith of Sorcery

One thing Marcus definitely had to give Helvran – the death priest was very good at keeping his cool. If Marcus had been in his position, he would have been at least a little hesitant about imposing on his host so suddenly, but if Helvran had any doubts about Marcus and his new students, he did not show it. He politely introduced himself to the children watching him from the sidelines, and then he followed Marcus into the tower.

Helvran appeared to be a very curious person. His head swiveled from side to side, silently taking in the recently renovated interior of the tower as they ascended to the top of the tower. When they finally arrived at the office, the priest stopped at the entrance to take in the interior of the room.

“The sight isn’t much, I know,” Marcus told him. “I’m still setting up here.”

“Why do you have a wagon wheel in your office?” Helvran asked.

How perceptive.

“I like to break it periodically and then practice fixing it with magic.” Marcus said.

Marcus watched the priest intently for a reaction, but the man’s face did not change in response to this admission.

“Everyone needs a hobby, I suppose,” Helvran commented diplomatically.

Marcus offered no further explanation. He gestured towards one of the two chairs currently present in the office, indicating Helvran should take a seat, and then sat down on the other one himself.

Helvran gestured to the raven sitting on his shoulder, and the bird briefly took off to perch itself onto one of the empty bookshelves in Marcus’s office. After that, he took the offered seat and waited for Marcus to speak.

“So,” Marcus began. “What does the Raven Temple want from me?”

“I’m sure you’ve seen the signs,” Helvran began. “Chaos storms occurring outside of season, dimensional rifts opening up with increased frequency, a surge of new spirit adepts across all factions…”

“The vision,” Marcus added, nodding.

“The vision?” Helvran asked, uncomprehending.

“You don’t know?” asked Marcus, raising his eyebrow. “Surely an organization as prestigious as the Raven Temple has a spirit adept or three.”

“My brethren are called upon to ascend to the outer planes the moment they achieve our equivalent of spirit manifestation,” Helvran said. “It seems to be related to an of agreement made by the Raven God and the Illuminated Pantheon. We are allowed to operate freely and independently, but our spirit adepts must leave the planet as soon as possible. Since our existence is backed by a literal god, it hasn’t been too much of an issue.”

There was a moment of silence as Marcus processed that. He actually had no idea that Raven Temple was limited in such a way. He wondered if the Sun-Moon Temple also had a similar restriction placed upon it…

“What’s this about a vision?” Helvran asked.

Not seeing a reason to keep quiet about it – the temple probably knew, they just didn’t feel the need to inform Helvran for whatever reason – Marcus told Helvran about the things he had seen while touching that random tree next to the pond. He also added a bunch of details he had only gotten from talking to the Sacred Oak, though in his retelling of the story these were simply things he personally had seen and puzzled out from the vision.

“Amazing,” Helvran said. He didn’t sound all that amazed, in all honesty. “No wonder the high priest sent me here. I’m already learning new things. More importantly, this will make things much easier to explain.”

Oh, so Marcus was going to get an actual explanation?

“You know something, then,” Marcus said.

“Yes,” Helvran confirmed. “I may not have been sent any visions, but our high priest does get direct instructions from the Raven God from time to time. What you saw was doubtlessly the destruction of the nearby planet of Sadyrit at the hands of abyssal forces.”

Marcus hesitated.

“By nearby, surely you mean in another star system?” he asked.

There were three habitable planets around Tasloa’s star, four if one counted Tasloa’s moon. The other planets were hard to reach, even with magic, so they stayed largely isolated from one another. Only selenite tradeships made regular trips between these planets, and they allowed no passengers aboard their vessels.

From what Marcus understood from talking to Celer, it was already very unusual to have so many habitable worlds in a single system. Expecting them to have a thriving transport network between each other as well was probably asking too much.

“Of course it’s around another star,” said Helvran. “But it’s a relatively nearby star, and it had been an important bastion in the fight against the abyss. With its fall, the abyssal forces are free to turn their greedy eyes elsewhere, emboldened by their success. Many other nearby worlds have already been struggling for a while and are finding themselves overwhelmed. This could easily start a chain reaction where world after world starts to fall.”

“That’s terrible,” said Marcus. “But, and forgive me for being a little cruel here, what do such distant events have to do with us, on this planet? We have basically no contact with the other planets here, so we can hardly be expected to help such distant places. These planets might as well be on another plane of existence from our perspective. A problem for the gods themselves to tackle, I think.”

“Unfortunately not,” Helvran told him. “While travel between different planets of the material plane is difficult, there are invisible corridors connecting them, allowing one to open rifts that allow passage between them.”

Something clicked in Marcus’s head. The recent dimensional rift he examined, which didn’t seem to be abyssal in nature, the proliferation of rifts in general…

“Yes,” Helvran nodded, guessing his thoughts. “The recent surge in rifts happening all around us isn’t just indicative of an increase in abyssal incursions – though we will likely see more of that too – but also of other planets seeing the writing on the wall and trying to create an escape corridor in order to flee their doomed homes. Some of the planets in the sector are already being invaded, not by the abyss, but by other nearby planets trying to carve out a new home for themselves. If the natives lose, they may very well try to invade another, even weaker planet in response. In any case, such desperate refugees are all going to eventually make their way here to Tasloa, so we need to be ready.”

“What? Why would they inevitably make their way here?” Marcus asked, baffled.

“Do you think it’s normal for a planet to have this many rifts opening on it all the time?” Helvran asked. “Even before the first abyssal incursion, our planet was prone to rift generation. Sometimes they even form spontaneously, with no conscious effort from either side. There is nothing mundane about that. Perhaps it’s a consequence of our periodic chaos storms weakening our dimensional boundary, or the action of some ancient god, but Tasloa seems to be very easy to connect to. As the situation in the local sector gets more desperate, they will surely notice this. Opening a rift to another planet is already a difficult undertaking, doubly so if you’re trying to transport an entire invasion force and a large refugee population. A planet that is easy to connect to, located in a star system with two other habitable planets… we are a very tempting target. Possibly the only viable one, for some.”

“Well…” Marcus began, before hesitating. That was a lot of information to take in at once. “Hopefully nothing comes of it, and we all go on with our lives as if nothing happened.”

That sounded a lot better in his head…

“Indeed,” Helvran readily agreed with his sentiment. “But it doesn’t hurt to start preparing, which is why Raven Temple is keen to spread the word and forge connections with powerful people. To be honest, I’m surprised the other two temples haven’t also sent a representative here. They probably will, sooner or later.”

Marcus hoped he was wrong. He didn’t need three different priests bickering about things right in his home base.

That aside, he still didn’t see why he needed an official liaison with the Raven Temple. And it was very suspicious that Raven Temple was so interested in him, just as he had begun to dabble in soul magic. There was a lot more to this story than what Helvran was saying, but in Marcus’s opinion, the priest in front of him didn’t know it either. He simply did as he was told by his leadership.

Marcus opted not to pursue this matter for now. He didn’t think the Raven Temple wanted to harm him.

“This is all very interesting, but you didn’t really answer my initial question. Sure, the Raven Temple expects to work with me in the future, but surely you don’t have to be here on a permanent basis for that. What exactly do you expect to do here as the official liaison from the Raven Temple?” Marcus asked.

He honestly didn’t mind letting Helvran stay for a few weeks, but if the man intended to just be a leech on his resources for years on end, providing nothing more than vague connections to his parent organization, he wasn’t going to play along with this.

“You tell me, Master Marcus,” Helvran answered calmly. “I was told you will have a need for my help.”

“A need for your help?” Marcus repeated slowly. He tried to think about what he needed at the moment that Helvran could help him with. “I don’t suppose you have experience teaching children how to read and write, perform basic arithmetic, and so forth?”

“I do,” Helvran nodded. “It’s not a specialty by any means, but I have taught temple initiates such things in the past. Raven Temple does not have the best reputation, so a lot of our recruits come from the poorer, less educated sections of society.”

Convenient, but also a little disturbing. Did the Raven Temple leadership really predict that Marcus would need help teaching academics to his students? Or were they spying on his somehow?

“Well, then,” Marcus told Helvran. “I don’t know what kind of game your temple is playing here, but congratulations! Consider yourself recruited as a teacher of the Zenith Academy! You already met your students, so you can start with the lessons tomorrow afternoon, after they’ve had a chance to rest from their morning exercises.”

“Zenith Academy?” Helvran asked.

“I came up with a name for it while we talked,” Marcus nodded.

“Are you sure you want to go with that, Master Marcus? Naming your academy like that… it might be taken as a provocation by many people. Not to mention, if the results of your teaching do not measure up to the name, people might-”

“I really like the name,” Marcus interrupted him. He stared at the death priest stubbornly.

“Zenith Academy it is, then,” Helvran said, sighing slightly. “I knew this assignment was going to be a trial.”

“Actually, that reminds me of something. Can I ask you a religious question?” Marcus asked. Helvran nodded. “What does it take to become a god?”

Helvran raised an eyebrow at him.

“I’m just curious,” Marcus said dismissively. “A spirit told me something, and it made me think there might be a connection between staying on the material plane and becoming a god.”

“From what I understand, it’s actually easier to become a god in the outer planes than it is to become an earth god,” Helvran told him.

“Earth god?” Marcus asked.

“As opposed to heavenly gods,” Helvran clarified. “Heaven and earth, the outer heavens and the material plane. When a person rises to godhood on the material plane, the result is somehow different than when they do it in the outer planes, though I don’t know in what way. It is not something my superiors ever felt I should know. After all, I am a priest of an existing divinity, and can never ascend to become one myself.”

“So priests cannot ascend?” Marcus asked. Was he out of line asking these kind of questions? Well, whatever. Helvran seemed like a sensible man – he would surely put a stop to his questioning if he went overboard.

“The advancement of priests is superficially similar to that of mages, in the sense that both of us are building internal mana reserves, gathering logos, and creating a spirit, but whereas mages are constructing a personal ideal, a priest is simply getting closer to their god by emulating their magic and ideals. I am not building my own spirit. I am simply drawing upon my connection to the Raven God to create a lesser emanation of him housed inside of me. As such, there is nothing to ascend. The Raven God is already a divinity, and I am just a flawed reflection of his greatness,” Helvran explained.

“That’s a somewhat depressing description of priesthood,” Marcus nodded.

“I’m sure the priests of the Sun-Moon Temple and the Illuminated Pantheon would phrase things differently, but the Raven God is a god of harsh truths. I see no need to sugar coat things. One becomes a priest to serve a god, not to become one.” Helvran hesitated. “That said, I did read in one of our books that it is theoretically possible for a priest to be acknowledged by the universe and ascend to divinity… if the god they worship is dead, that is.”

“A dead god…” Marcus mused out loud. His recent meeting with Calvus floated up to the forefront of his mind. “Are you talking about the Temple of Deep Waters?”

“This is who I was thinking of, yes,” Helvran nodded. “They have been trying to bring their lord back to life for quite some time now, by raising one of their own as a replacement deity, with tacit approval of the rest of Tasloa’s gods. This was apparently done before in ancient past, and on other worlds, so it’s not entirely a fool’s errand. If done right, resurrecting a god in this fashion should be significantly easier than giving birth to a new divinity through personal apotheosis. But alas, their goal remains out of reach, even after all this time.”

“How can a god die, anyway?” Marcus asked. “I thought gods were spiritual entities, immune to the old age, and capable of reforming back on the spiritual planes if their avatars were slain here on the material plane.”

Certainly, lesser spirits were all capable of such. Their forms on the material plane, when summoned, were all just ectoplasmic vessels constructed by the summoner to hold their spirit. If these vessels were ever destroyed, they were just violently flung back to their home plane, eventually reforming intact. The only way to really kill a spirit was to pay them a visit on their home plane.

In light of that, it made no sense that the god could have its corpse lying on the bottom of the sea, here on the material plane.

“Everything can and will die,” Helvran said. “That is the first harsh truth that the Raven God teaches us. Even the Raven God himself will one day meet his fated end.”

“So you don’t know either,” Marcus summarized.

“I don’t know,” Helvran admitted. “But it’s not so unusual for stories to talk about gods being killed. These things have happened before.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

That was true.

“In any case,” Helvran continued, “I hope these questions really are just idle curiosity. You have students to teach, if nothing else. Leave the dreams of godhood aside for the decade or so.”

“Hopefully, by that time, you’ll be long gone from this place and won’t get caught up with any divine retribution I bring upon myself with my arrogance,” Marcus joked.

“Exactly,” Helvran said. He sounded deathly serious. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

* * * *

After some thought, Marcus decided to use his earth magic to simply build a house for Helvran next to the tower, rather than shoving him into the basement of the tower or forcing his students to hand over one of the rooms to him. Marcus was quite good at making temporary shelters through earth magic, but making permanent accommodations was something new to him. Most mages still built their abodes through old-fashioned methods, and simply used magic to ward and enhance the building, rather than building one magically from scratch. As a safety measure, Marcus brought a non-magical builder from a nearby town to oversee the construction, adjusting the house based on his comments. Helvran also contributed to the construction, asking Marcus to add a small shrine to the Raven God inside the building.

Afterwards, Marcus launched a few weak offensive spells at the place, just to confirm it wouldn’t collapse easily, and pronounced the work complete. Oddly, the builder he invited to oversee the work refused payment for his services, claiming that just witnessing a mage’s construction process was enough for him. He was very insistent on this, and eventually Marcus gave up on trying to get him to accept his money.

In any case, Helvran moved into the new house without complaint and afterwards, his raven familiar could often be seen circling the skies above the tower and hunting for berries and small animals in the surrounding forest. No predator bothered the ominous bird, and even the local ravens seemed wary of it.

Marcus continued to teach his students every day, his ability to sense them through his connection to their soul growing every single day. This was not just because the soul seed rooted itself into their soul, but also because they were steadily advancing in their mastery of the Soul Tree Technique. He found that he could sense exactly how well they resonated with it, with basically no effort at all. It allowed him to spot and correct any mistakes they were making immediately as they happened. It was the first obvious result he had gotten out of the soul seeds, and the sheer clarity of the information he was getting out of them shocked him. Did it only work on magical traits? But then why did the Sacred Oak imply that even mundane animals could provide him with useful information?

The only person he couldn’t do this with so far was, of course, Julia. However, Julia had a natural wood affinity, and was advancing rapidly even without any detailed instruction from him.

Marcus was actually glad that Julia was under the influence of the Sacred Oak rather than him. It allowed him to compare progress between them, and hopefully puzzle out what the soul seeds were actually doing.

He had been wrong about his prediction that all of the students would pick oak as their spiritual tree. Cricket actually picked a spruce tree, saying her village was literally named after them, so she simply had to choose that one. And Claudia picked the linden tree, saying that her home town had a big linden tree in the middle of their town square, which was used for oaths, weddings, and other significant occasions.

The rest had no strong feelings one way or another, and simply picked oak.

Currently, Marcus was teaching his students something new – non-magical staff fighting. He had given each of them a big wooden stick, and was making them fight inside a warded field that prevented any serious injuries inside of it. The goal was mostly to trip the other person prone on the ground, but predictably, most of the children were just trying to whack each other with direct strikes instead.

Marcus didn’t let it bother him. He hadn’t been much better back in his student days either.

“I don’t understand what the point of this is,” Julia complained during one of the breaks in the fighting. She was not doing well in the duels and couldn’t keep a note of bitterness out of her voice. “Why do we have to learn this? We aren’t warriors.”

“In the long run, you’re right. You aren’t warriors and the value of hitting things with a staff will gradually diminish as you grow stronger,” Marcus told her patiently. “But first you need to survive to get there. Right now, you’re very weak. You don’t know even a single spell, and even when you get some, your ability to cast them will be limited by various factors. You need a fallback option for when you cannot summon the willpower to concentrate, or you run out of mana. When I was first sent outside of the academy, I was actually given a crossbow to defend myself.”

“So why not give us crossbow lessons?” Julia challenged.

“I will,” Marcus told him with a smile. “After you get proficient with the staff.”

She pouted at him.

“There are plenty of minor magical creatures that you can handle well enough with a big stick. Remember those dire centipedes from earlier? Beating them dead with a staff from a safe distance is entirely viable. They’re not that fast and don’t have good eyesight,” Marcus said.

“I don’t think I would dare get near one, even with a staff,” Claudia complained, clutching her staff protectively over her chest.

“So, this is probably a stupid question, but even if we aren’t warriors… is it possible to become one?” Volesus asked. He and Cassia seemed most eager about these staff exercises. “I mean, is there a reason why you can’t be both a mage and a warrior?”

“You can do both, but it’s a bad idea,” Marcus told him. “Fundamentally, all adept paths compete for the same limited resource - your soul. I’m sure you’ve all felt exhausted after training the Soul Tree Technique every day, even though you’re just repeating the series of simple chants and movements. This is because your soul must be able to support your training, and at some point you reach your limit. Your mana reserves, once you establish them, will require a certain amount of soul power to remain stable. The logos you gather from the world around them will require soul power also. And so on. I’m not sure how things work with warrior adepts exactly, but their advancement will also require your soul as the foundation. If you try to pursue two adept paths at the same time, you will have to split your soul power between them, restricting your growth in both.”

Despite Marcus saying that, he knew that quite a few people were attempting to do just that. Volesus was not the first person to come up with the idea of combining adept paths, and some people went for it despite knowing about the drawbacks. Traditionally, however, it was considered a bad idea.

“Doesn’t that mean if you had an especially powerful soul, you could practice two paths without any downsides,” Volesus persisted.

“Well…” Marcus began uncertainly. “It would require incredible dedication and a lot more time dedicated to basic training… but I suppose there is nothing inherently stopping that from working. Though I have never, and I mean never, heard of such an amazing person so overflowing with soul power.”

“There is no way any of us are that amazing,” Renatus noted tiredly, leaning heavily on his staff.

“None whatsoever,” Marcus confirmed. “I have an extremely good grasp on your souls, and I regret to inform you that they’re all average in strength. Very, very average. It will require a lot of work just to keep up with your more talented peers in the great academies, so I won’t allow you to spread yourself thin by pursuing another adept path.”

“Umm, we don’t really have to keep up with people like that, do we?” Claudia hesitantly asked.

“Yeah, we shouldn’t compare ourselves to people like that,” Cassia said, sounding resigned.

“Why not?” Julia challenged. “We have the man who is supposedly the most powerful elder of the Great Sea Academy as our teacher. We should aim for greatness and not give up so easily.”

“Well said, Julia. I like your attitude. Though you could have dropped that ‘supposedly’ out of your speech,” praised Marcus. He tried to ruffle her hair, but she dodged out of the way. “Anyway, I’ll forgive you this once but I don’t want to hear such defeatist talk out of you. I don’t mind if you don’t become masters of magic, but I expect you to give it your all. Maybe you’ve forgot, but there are three more students joining us soon, and they’re not going to be your average talents. Are you just going to let them come over and surpass you? That’s why I was saying you will have to work hard to keep up with your more talented peers. They won’t be some distant people out of sight, in another academy – they will be your fellow students.”

“How do you know in advance they’re all going to be more talented than us?” Julia asked, frowning.

“They will have all gone through a lengthy selection process just to get a chance to be at that judging ceremony,” Marcus said. “They will have had to prove themselves many times. It would be more surprising if they weren’t more talented than you.”

The children were quiet as they processed that.

“Anyway, I wasn’t trying to demoralize you by saying that. Quite the opposite,” Marcus said with a sigh. “Let’s go back to practicing your staff work for now. I seem to have been a little overzealous by having you fight each other immediately – let’s just focus on swinging the staff repeatedly in order to build some arm strength. Maybe we should also run a few laps around the tower every day from now on…”

Once their protests ran out, Marcus set them to swing a staff through the air repeatedly for a while, before dismissing them and letting them have some rest. Under normal circumstances, they would have been making good progress. However, his conversation with Helvran made it clear to him that these were not normal circumstances. There were dark days on the horizon, and raising these children into powerful mages was not just a matter of personal pride anymore. It was a matter of their own survival, even if they didn’t know it.

He would be stepping up their training from tomorrow onward.

* * * *

Marcus flew high above the sea, heading towards Adria, his six students flying along with him, scattered in a loose sphere around him. This was not the first time he had used his magic to fly with them, since he had also used flight to transport them all to their new home in the former Amethyst Academy, but that had been a relatively brief flight and he had been too absorbed in his own thoughts to really pay attention to their reactions. This time, since the flight was lengthy and took most of the day, he had all the time in the world to note how they handled the experience.

Most seemed to be enjoying it, especially in the beginning, but were by now starting to show signs of weariness. Marcus had been taking frequent breaks along the way, much more often than he would have if he was flying alone, but since they were now flying over the open sea, there was nowhere to land. They would just have to endure it for a couple of hours.

Curiously, the student who seemed to be most enjoying the experience was Claudia. Marcus had learned over the time he had spent with his students that she was generally the most skittish one, shying away from any sort of conflict and danger. However, one wouldn’t know it by looking at her now. She was flying with her arms outstretched like wings, eyes closer, and a smile on her face. She seemed to be enjoying every moment of it.

It reminded Marcus of Cricket and her bird imitation, except that Cricket was apparently feeling too shy to do that in front of other people. She kept a serious façade throughout the whole flight, occasionally throwing Claudia curious glances.

Thankfully, he soon spotted one of the pillar-islands and immediately charged course towards it. Usually the pillar islands were quite habitable on top, despite the strange shape, and this one was not an exception. It was a verdant landscape of unspoiled wilderness, rarely visited by man. Marcus circled the island twice, performing a basic search for obvious dangers, and when he failed to find any, landed in the largest clearing he could find and let his students rest and recharge for a bit before they continue their journey.

“Teacher!” Claudia was immediately upon him. “Um. When do we learn how to fly on our own?”

“You need to be at least a rank two mage and have your own internal mana reserves to be able to fly,” Marcus told her. “Open air lacks any significant mana reserves in most places. But honestly, even that is only enough for brief flights. To truly do something like this, you need to be a rank three mage or above.”

To truly replicate Marcus’s feat and bring six other people with her, Claudia would have to be even stronger than that, as well as in possession of some kind of flying item like his Orb of Flight… but that might be discouraging to hear, so Marcus stopped himself from mentioning it.

He hoped that this, at least, would motivate her to try harder. She was a smart kid, but not an especially passionate or dedicated worker.

“These islands are so strange,” Renatus noted.

“Like you’ve seen many islands before,” Cassia rolled her eyes at him.

“W-Well, I’ve talked to sailors! And looked at pictures in books!” Renatus protested defensively.

“This is great!” Claudia said. “When I become a real mage, I want to fly all around the world and see everything!”

“This is cool and all, but real powerhouses would go around riding powerful beasts like dragons,” Volesus said with his hands folded over his chest.

These kids sometimes really were asking for a beating, Marcus thought.

“Dragons are intelligent beings and insanely prideful. You’d never get one to agree to be a steed for you,” Marcus told him. “The best you can hope for is a griffon.”

That said, dragons were also lascivious creatures capable of breeding with seemingly everything. Someone dedicated enough might be able to find a magical creature with a distant draconic heritage, weak and stupid enough to yield to a powerful adept.

Marcus didn’t really see a point in that, aside from empty prestige, but some mages cared quite a bit about things like that.

“What about a flying ship?” Renatus asked. “I read about that in a story.”

“That was a fairytale,” Cassia told him.

She also muttered ‘stupid’ quietly into her chin, but Marcus didn’t think Renatus heard her.

“Every great academy is capable of building an airship, but they aren’t allowed to own one,” Marcus said, shaking his head. “If the Lygos Empire found out they were trying to evade the airship ban, they would send their fleet to bomb the academy into ruins as an example to others.”

The students looked at him like he was crazy.

“Where is the Lygos Empire?” Claudia asked. “Is that somewhere in the Eastern Lands?”

“It is east of the Silver League, but when most people talk about the Eastern Lands, they’re actually talking about a set of large kingdoms on the other side of the continent,” Marcus explained. “There are actually two more human regions between them and us. One of them are the Hamdraut City States. They’re fairly small and less developed than us, so people rarely think about them. The other is the Lygos Empire, which is located at the south of the continent, roughly in between the Silver League and the Eastern Lands. They are by far the most powerful force on the planet, and they have a giant fleet of airships that they use to bully everyone around them into compliance. Even the elves fear them. Anyway, they have long decreed that only they have the right to build and maintain airships, and anyone who defies that gets a visit from their massive airfleet.”

“How come we have never heard of them?” Volesus asked. “You’d thing an empire that amazing would be on everyone’s tongues.”

“If you’re just a non-magical trader, you will only perceive the Lygos Empire as a prosperous trade state situated along the path to the Eastern Lands,” Marcus said. “Powerful, yes. But even Hamdraut City States are powerful in their own right, capable of policing their territory. You’d have to be a powerful mage before you could begin to understand just how dangerous the empire really is, and most powerful mages would rather not talk about them.”

“Master, you travelled all the way to the Eastern Lands, right? Does that mean you have been to the Lygos Empire?” Cricket asked.

“Yes,” Marcus confirmed. “It was an unpleasant experience.”

In Marcus’s opinion, Lygos spirit adepts weren’t anything special. One on one, they were roughly equal to the ones in the Silver League and the Eastern Lands. However, they had so very many of them that they could potentially drown any individual enemy in sheer numbers, and they had airships which allowed them to move relatively large forces across the planet with ease.

They were also arrogant beyond belief, treating Marcus as a poorly-socialized savage during his brief stay there.

After some more small-talk, the group continued flying towards Adria, stopping by on several other pillar-islands along the way. It was an uneventful trip, though the six students did get excited about spotting a flock of harpies in the distance.

Finally, the group landed at one of the designated landing sites on their destination. The sight of the Great Sea Academy was absolutely breathtaking for the children, just as it had been for Marcus back when he had first seen it. Though, for Marcus, the first view of the island and its academy came from a ship at sea. He hadn’t experienced the privilege of being transported via air when he had arrived to Adria as a student.

In any case, the judging ceremony wasn’t due to start in another two days. Marcus had deliberately arrived early to give his students some time to explore the city and rest. Since Adria was full of criminals and scammers, especially if one took a wrong turn somewhere, Marcus would not allow them to wander off on their own, but it should be fine to let them wander around in the safer, more public areas.

“This place…” Volesus began, looking around everywhere with obvious admiration. “This is what a Great Academy looks like…”

“No, this is what the city built around it looks like,” Marcus told him. “The real academy is even more luxurious and amazing.”

“Master, you’re one of the elders here, right?” Volesus asked. “So why are we in that tiny tower instead of here?”

“Because you’re my students, not students of the Great Sea Academy, and I like my tower better,” Marcus told him. “This place doesn’t have enough trees.”

If Volesus had an opinion about that, he didn’t voice it. Good. Marcus didn’t want to explain the circumstances of his exile to his students.

He was in the process of leading his students to one of the inns where they could rest from their long flight, when a strange man and a young girl accosted him.

Marcus didn’t even realize the two were going towards him at first. He had noticed them, of course. How could he not? They were both wearing exotic clothes painted in garish colors – the man was wearing blue robes decorated with images of clouds, birds, and flowers, and the young girl trailing beside him was wearing a vivid red dress full of black patterns that reminded Marcus of flames.

The man was unmistakably a spirit adept.

Well, their sense of fashion was unusual, and it was curious to meet a spirit adept he did not know, but Adria was a big city with lots of travelers and new spirit adepts did arise more frequently these days. Marcus thought nothing of the duo, until the man walked up to Marcus and his group with purposeful, almost provocative strides. The young girl followed after him, quickening her steps to keep up with her companion.

“You!” the man said, his voice booming. He pointed a finger at Marcus dramatically. “I’ve finally found you!”

Marcus was taken aback. He pointed a finger at himself in a silent question of disbelief.

“Yes, of course I’m talking about you!” the man said. Or shouted, rather. He almost seemed to be speaking to the crowd as much as he was to Marcus. “Did you think your actions would never catch up to you?”

By now, Marcus had noticed something strange. The girl standing silently beside the man, staring straight into Marcus’s eyes with strange intensity… she was not human. Her eyes were red like blood, her skin pale, and her ears were pointed like an elf.

She also had a bloodline of some sort.

“Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Marcus said. “Why don’t you calm down and explain yourself. We’re both exalted spirit adepts, we should be above these kinds of petty outbursts.”

“Petty outbursts. Hmph!” The man said, snorting derisively. He put his hand on the back of the girl beside him and pushed her forward. She stumbled a bit, clearly not expecting it, and glared back at him in response before fixing Marcus with her unnerving gaze again. “This here is your daughter. It’s time you took responsibility for her.”

The people in the street watching the spectacle immediately erupted into hushed conversation.

Marcus was outraged. He couldn’t possibly have a daughter. His dedication to reaching the pinnacle of magic was pure and absolute!

“That’s ridiculous,” he told the man frostily. “She’s clearly an elf.”

“What? Why would that be a problem?” the man sneered. “I know this place is a primitive backwater, but you can’t possibly tell me you’ve never seen any half-elves in your life?”

“I didn’t even know such a thing was possible,” Marcus replied.

“Not going to take responsibility, I see,” the man said, clacking his tongue. “I knew it would be like this. But… maybe it’s better this way. I would have had to test your skills before leaving her in your care, anyway.”

The man stretched out his hand and an elaborate staff manifested in it out of some invisible space.

Before Marcus could say anything, the man launched a fireball straight at him.