Celes had managed to fully recover her strength after eating almost all the extra Dantians I’ve gathered. This was fine with me, it was power taken from traitors. I did it because I wanted to help Celes, not because I wanted to rule the city.

Baroness. Damn. I still couldn't believe it.

“Okay, go take a quick bath and change.” I regretfully kicked the healed kitsune off the couch.

“Avidius, take Miss Rada to the bathroom and the armoury. I want her in tip-top shape, in a similar armour to what you’re wearing. You know where the good stuff is, yes?”

“Yes, Baroness.” Avidius bowed. He was quick on the uptake and seemed to have gotten used to the title far faster than me. He had a good reason to do so, after all I promised safety for his family.

“While Celes has a wash… you have my permission to send one of the mail servitors to your sister’s family - I want them relocated here asap,” I added. “Tell them to take a flying whale to the back garden, there’s going to be a lot of important people coming to the front entrance tonight.”

“Thank you, Baroness.” My new Praetorian guard bowed even deeper. I was slowly laying the foundation of my new empire and didn’t want to end up like Caesar. Avidius was just the beginning. I was already contemplating how I could improve the pact contracts and oaths to make sure that they wouldn't simply be redirected to some poor patsy.

The fairly basic noble oath, one that Arianna and I had come up with, could also use a ton of improvements. I had rushed the process because I was short on time. I thought of the one thousand page user contracts, from the long-gone world of the Pharmacist, written for computer software that people signed and not a single person read. I thought of auto-refreshing web pages. I thought of cryptocurrency.

Once I had time... I would write up a thousand-page book that would cover every single possible, theoretical loophole to make the oath truly unbreakable. I would make every oath made to me pass through said book. The oath had to be protected. I had to figure out how to make it reinforced not just by someone’s Qi but also protected with an unbreakable mathematical algorithm akin to bitcoin.

The oath had to constantly refresh itself so that nobody could simply redirect it. The oath needed to have a variety of options from absolute servitude for the worst offenders to basic Dantian-donating support for the more trustworthy individuals. The oath had to be a little self-aware and be able defend itself from being changed using the user's own Qi.

Numerous ideas for the future buzzed in my head like angry bees.

“...so?” Arianna jabbed me in the side, interrupting my contemplation.

“Um… yes?” I blinked at her.

She waved a hand at the enormous ward book on the table.

“Oh right, right. Wards! Let's dive into it.”

Arianna opened the book and started reading to me.

The principle behind Magisterium Citadel was quite interesting. There was a massive control servitor phantom linked to the keystone located in the wall of the Magistrate’s office. It responded to the Magistrate and the Master Key ring on my finger. The control servitor connected to thousands of other beast cores all over the castle. Basically it was a phantom-controlling phantom. During the Deathstorm Convergence it connected itself to every single servitor in the castle and could push a ton of power into a specific ward such as the “hold beast” ward the Magistrate used on Celes.

There were mail-sending phantoms, cleaning phantoms, maintenance phantoms, hunter phantoms, cooking phantoms, gardeners, lights, clocks, heating and cooling... and a plethora of others. The ghosts ranged from truly abominable creatures to… people, which was justifiably upsetting to me. The full list was truly mind boggling - that's why the book was so huge. Every magistrate worth their salt added new beast cores and lanterns to the Citadel over seven hundred years in order to make it truly impregnable.

I made Arianna read the list of various ward commands and memorised them all for future use. I was extremely thankful to her for showing me how to wield my Qi when I was a nine-year old urchin. Without her education there would be no way for me to picture the various ward formations while ordering the Citadel around.

The Master Key basically made me the Admin of the entire castle. I added Arianna as a Mod into the control system, since she knew how to do everything far better than I. She practically grew up in the place after all and while her grandfather never granted her full access, she was still allowed to practice warding in her own room. Thankfully, giving her ring full access to the Citadel was a fairly simple, mechanical procedure and not “push Qi in a specific way while yelling words”.

I spend the next 4000 heartbeats memorising the commands and practicing summoning and dismissing a variety of Citadel phantoms, manipulating the wards in specific places. I was absolutely shit at it, since I had no idea what I was doing, to the growing frustration of my fiancee.

“No, no, no, Sparks! You have to visualise the hexagram mesh in your head and pull Qi in the exact pattern through the ring! Look at the diagram on this page! Memorise it! Watch me closely! Gods damn it, you’re stupider than a brick! Wrong! Look what I’m doing, you incompetent!” The rambunctious redhead grabbed my arm and wrapped it around hers. “Feel the flow! See it with your Qi-infused eyes!”

I heard a small giggle from the couch and felt my confidence and focus skyrocketing thanks to the focused beam of serenity. Celes was looking way-too-damn spiffy in the full-battle Celesteel armour regalia.

“Don’t get distracted!” Arianna chided. “Picture the pattern, push it through the ring, say the command.”

“Defence-Ward! Hold Person!” Both of us yelled at the same time, pointing our joined hands at Avidius who stood near Celes.

Runework flashed into existence on the floor of the drawing room and a hundred ghostly arms came out of the floor and grabbed at Avidius, slamming him into the floor with a yelp. Celes jumped in surprise.

“See? Like that!” Arianna declared, panting. Focusing the ward took a lot of Qi and concentration.

“Yeah, I think I’ve got the gist of it,” I muttered.

“Defence-Ward! Release-Person!" I pointed my ring at Avidius. Nothing happened. I swore under my breath.

“The gist? You can’t even do a single command by yourself! You do know that we have less than a thousand heartbeats left, right?”

“I know,” I nodded, admitting my incompetence. “Sorry, this is kinda hard. It’s the first time I tried ward-commanding anything.”

“You’re hopeless, Sparks.” Arianna sighed.

“You guys are adorable,” Celes commented.

Arianna sent her a glare.

“You should just do it together,” the kitsune added. “It worked great when you did it together!”

“Be my brace?” I looked at the ginger highborn with a pleading look.

“Might as well, since you’re such a snail,” she sighed. “Let's practice the rest of these on Avidius.”

The lime-skinned man held by ghostly hands and tentacles on the floor paled.

-=[Clint Potatius, Head of the Surgeon Barbers Guild]=-

The Head of the Barbers sat behind his polished, steel desk reading the latest servitor-brought reports from the Hidden Hands. When he was done, he incinerated each letter with a spiral pattern of Qi and leaned back in his chair.

How… interesting. The urchin lives.

Not only had the cursed girl managed to escape his bombardment, but she also got engaged to Arianna Manning, the Magistrate’s granddaughter! It was a completely unexpected move, an original and clever way to change someone’s Dantian!

Clint had underestimated this ancient enemy, presuming that she would not be able to get too far ahead being a lowborn child. Somehow, Ash Sparks not only won the support of the lowborn populace, but she had also managed to get Magistrate Manning on her side.

The Head of the Surgeon Barbers was a dedicated, Immortal Cursed-Hunter. Seven hundred and twenty years ago, Grand Inquisitor Jubs Horacia attempted to awaken a hundred men to interrogate them. Ninety seven of them went insane and were unable to answer his questions. Two of them jabbered away incoherent nonsense and were executed. Only one lowly novitiate had survived with his sanity somewhat intact, devouring and dominating the cursed ghost entirely. His name was Clint Potatius.

When Clint consumed an array of memories from a cracked, old skull he learned of vast evils that the ancients were capable of. Weapons that turned entire cities into ashes, empires that sought to dominate the world, steel monstrosities that consumed mountains and forests, corporations that scorched the sky for seemingly worthless green pieces of paper. Clint told Inquisitor Horacia of these evils and became his right hand in establishing the Hidden Hand - a secret Order that would hunt down all future awakened.

Clint Potatius died six hundred and ninety five years ago and his body was taken to the central well. He spent centuries trapped in one of the hells within Lord Boundless where time was running a lot faster than in the Gold city. When he finally emerged, Clint saw himself as the dedicated keeper of the balance and the protector of order. Inquisitor Horacia never returned from his death, he wasn’t strong enough to pass the trials of Lord Boundless to become Immortal.

Clint kept the hunt and his secret Order alive. He caught and executed many awakened over the centuries. Six hundred and forty seven years ago he ended a cursed man named Dima Kovalsky who tried to open a hospital in the Gold city while preaching about ‘invisible germs’. Five hundred and twenty two years ago Clint cut down a cursed high-cultivator girl who tried to build a metalworking factory. Four hundred and eighty eight years ago Clint annihilated a false messiah that tried to make flintlock rifles.

It was unfortunately impossible to completely stop the arising of awakened - thanks to Lord Boundless, the cursed city kept changing, shifting around in currents of broken time. Sometimes entire semi-decayed streets appeared out of nowhere.

Three hundred and thirty years ago the Hidden Hands Order tried to burn down the cursed city using beast core detonations. It didn’t work - Lord Boundless feelers had responded to the core-explosions and large fires nearly instantaneously, sucking up the released energy and returning the ancient buildings to their prior state of being suspended in time. Basically, all of Clint’s attempts at destroying the cursed city using beast cores resulted in more artifacts and bones appearing in it!

Ash Sparks made an interesting move to hide her Dantian and to gain power, but it wouldn't help her in the end. Clint was a patient hunter and his Hidden Hands were everywhere. In this exciting game of chess played with human lives he had won against many opponents, far bigger than the clever, little girl. Thirty three years ago Clint had put awakened Magistrate Calypso Manning to sleep forever. Sparks had foolishly tied herself to the most obvious ‘highest authority in the land’ - the Manning family. She had no idea that the Hidden Hands already established total control of the Magisterium three decades ago.

In a roundabout way, Clint was responsible for Ash Sparks. After murdering Calypso and all of her helpers, he left the last bit of her legacy intact - the ropes hanging from beneath Lord Boundless. The ropes were a trap set for any future awakened. The Hidden Hands attached metal spheres to the end of each rope, with a tiny slither shard from a very special servitor. Anytime someone used a rope to go down, Clint knew about it immediately as the biggest shard of the servitor in question was embedded into a gold bracelet on his hand.

In the last three decades, only a few urchin thieves and a single blind hunter had descended down into the cursed city. Each one was monitored afterwards. Any artifacts that were exhumed by the urchins were bought by the Barber’s Guild and were sealed away in Clint’s office or destroyed. In the last few years, only Ash Sparks went down to the city, bringing up cursed artifacts for Clint’s collection. Clint allowed this to go on because he knew that a mere orphan could not possibly kill a mighty beast to acquire a beast core powerful enough to awaken an ancient memory. His mistake was that he almost completely stopped paying attention to the friendless, talentless, scrawny urchin.

Fate had intervened, giving the old Surgeon Barber a surprise, somehow blessing an orphan girl with a potent core. Ash Sparks used it to awaken an incredibly resourceful ancient - a truly worthy opponent.

Clint was greatly amused at talking to the cursed awakened memory in the Bell lake cavern, entertained by its delusions. He played at being a kindly old man and a hot-blooded executioner. The girl got away.

He played a vengeful angel of death, raining fire from the sky down at her. She survived!

This prey was starting to be a lot of fun to hunt. She acted unlike the others, constantly making unexpected maneuvers. The Immortal’s many-centuries-long game of cat and mouse with the awakened had grown stale until this week. It was time for a new move. Clint decided to use human greed against Miss Sparks.

This morning, Clint had put five hundred gold on the life of Ash Sparks in the Hunter’s guild. Already hundreds of hunters had signed up for the job of killing the girl. The wealth of the Hidden Hands built over centuries was vast and it would not be reduced. The final amount, even if it was a million gold, wound’t make Clint any poorer - he would simply murder whoever killed Ash Sparks before they managed to spend the reward, making it look like a mugging.

Such absolute greed had to be rewarded fairly!

Every day the amount for the hunt would double, until every person in the Gold city would turn against the girl. People were desperate. Gold ruled the world. The corrupting desire for it would inevitably end the life of Ash Sparks. She would not have a happy wedding.

Clint was excited at the prospect of seeing exactly how many days Sparks would last against the ever-growing pile of gold and mercenaries.

To up the ante further, Clint sent out a kill-order to the Hidden Hands in the Magistrate’s castle to execute Ash, Traetorius and his granddaughter. He smiled deviously as a small servitor carrying the note swiftly departed to the Magistrate’s estate.

Tonight the Magisterium would fall! Tomorrow the first daughter of Traetorius, Gale Manning, would ascend to the city’s throne made from false gold.