One year; that's how long it had been since Shen had woken up from his long slumber.

It hadn't felt like so much time had passed, but Earth's calendar didn't lie. Even if the tutorial might've left him unconscious for weeks or months, he estimated he had been awake for at least nine months.

That meant Shen was seventeen now. A seventeen-year-old cultivator at the Fate Origin realm with advantages beyond most cultivators' imaginations; a prodigy the likes of which he had never heard before.

In the past year, his mind had expanded, and his morals had changed. His honor had been challenged and morphed a little too. He had killed, learned of his father's betrayal, and was all alone in the world except for a single friend.

The future looked bleak, but at least he had some strength to protect himself.

The mortals were pretending society hadn't changed. He had withheld his judgment until he rested, but now he could tell he hadn't been wrong in his initial assessments.

The US government knew there was no going back. The General of the Army's declaration to accept civilian judgment once the crisis was over and martial law was lifted was a political one. There would be no lifting it, and the choice to assimilate potential criminal Guardians into the army was a move to future-proof the armed forces.

They knew what was coming. They were studying Guardians and finding their limits to know how to kill them faster when order fell completely. Bombing cities had been a test to determine how effective it was in stopping anyone with great ambitions and a warning of how far the government was willing to go even against its own people.

Shen still felt like it was useless.

There was no stopping the Guardians from ruling the Earth. They already did at the Maiden's hands, though they didn't know what powers she had beyond judging people. Even so, it was only a matter of her getting enough protection to not get killed.

Even if she died and all following Maidens were killed, it was only a matter of time until a B-rank appeared; and B-ranks wouldn't need protection even from atomic bombs.

Shen was extrapolating that conclusion from his father's power and considering Ethereal Harmonization cultivators were the same as B-ranks. Still, he was confident in those assumptions.

The only way for humanity to stop B-ranks from appearing was by killing anyone who showed the potential to become one, but if they did that, they would weaken themselves. Any race of the Alliance would be able to conquer them then. More importantly, if the system hadn't lied, they needed strong Guardians to fight the Void.

So, either Guardians would rule sooner or later, or humanity would be enslaved or killed.

Now that Shen thought about it, that explained why they were treating him well. As a Rising Star, he had advantages that let him grow faster than other Guardians. He was also the strongest Guardian around as far as he knew. They were preparing to kill him if needed but hoping he could be befriended, if not outright controlled.

Control was the keyword here.

The Guardians who were willing not to destroy Earth's existing society would be allowed to live.

The revolutionaries would be dealt with.

Shen concluded that last bit from the online PR battle. The government was prepared to control public opinion. They knew what to do to vilify the opposition and had entire teams ready to do it at the shortest notice.

He felt it was the move of a fool grasping at straws.

Sooner or later, Earth would be invaded by the Void. Only strong Guardians would be able to protect people because Void Spawn could only be hurt by Concepts. Said Guardians would defend only whoever they wanted, no one else.

Though they might accept weaker people above them for a time, you couldn't keep a dragon chained up. At some point, they would create their fiefdoms where their will reigned supreme no matter what others thought. That's how cultivator society had been before the Eternal Empire.

Even if the Maiden could use system- or Alliance-provided tools to rule, it didn't change the fact that the Alliance wanted Guardians ruling over the general populace either. Shen was being skeptical here, but he didn't think mortals had an easy life in the Alliance if the Guardians above them didn't allow such.

So it was only a matter of time—

"Oh," Shen said.

That was it. Time. The powers-that-be were hoping their own people, descendants or sponsored, would rise to prominence in however much time they had. A single extra month to let them grow was another month with a kindled hope. They knew what was going on with the wars in the rest of the world, and that's why they were desperate to keep a measure of control over everything for as long as they could. At the very least, the surviving Guardians, the ones approved by the government, would be less likely to murder everyone belonging to the "old world order" once they rose to power.

Then again, Shen had to admit there was also a more honorable perspective to things. The Pioneers were being trained on effective ways to respond to emergencies. That crucial knowledge was being passed forward even if society might fall in the near future.

So, there were a lot of politics going on, probably a lot he couldn't even imagine. Even so, all in all, Shen was happy the US had accepted him.

This was a nice place to pass that month until rifts appeared. It also had a great structure to understand mortal culture. But more importantly, those thoughts also let him make an important guess.

Shen took his smartphone and called the General's secretary. Half an hour later, he was talking to the man.

"Yes?" the man asked.

"I want to go when you invade Italy," Shen said. "And I'll resent if you kill the Maiden. We'll save her and bring her alive to this country."

The US wanted to control things, but there was another advantage to having a stable society if the Maiden died: Maidens were elected.

The system had said that the Maiden Title was decided by casting a vote among all the highest-ranked beings of a race. Shen was the highest-ranked human as far as he knew. The US wasn't showing interest in Italy because they didn't need the Maiden. They would try to take her for them, of course, but failing that, killing her would also work.

When the elections came, the US would be friends with the stronger being around. Even if other people could vote too, one of the most stable countries in the world, with the third-largest population, would have a clear advantage over all others. Unless, of course, China was half as stable, but even then, politics could give the US the advantage they needed.

There was a pause before the General asked, "The call is secure now. Why is her life important to you?"

"She said she wanted to follow me back in the tutorial," he explained. "I understand you might not like so much power in my hands, but I have nothing against the US yet. This is not a threat. I also don't like your country any more than any other. Bringing the Maiden here and not trying to control her would make me see your nation very positively." He smiled. "Also, until a B-rank appears, any Maiden can sanction my title, so I would rather the current one, who likes me, stays alive."

In other words, he wanted to protect Marzia for his own sake.

Shen wasn't great in politics, but he knew it had a lot to do with favors. He was saying that he would owe the US one in a roundabout way. And Marzia should also owe him one when he saved her.

The General understood. "I'll forward your proposal to the President. Anything else?"

That was all, so they hung up.

With all those things clear for him, Shen could set up plans and detect threats more easily. He cultivated a little, then finally stood up and searched for Alicia.

A trail of a pizza box, cups, a dirty plate, and clothes led Shen to Alicia.

The girl was in the penthouse's infinity pool, looking at the city beyond.

She was wearing a pink bikini, and for the first time, Shen truly noticed Alicia.

When he had met her for the first time, he had considered her a mere mortal. Even nowadays, he barely glanced at any mortal; he only looked long enough to recognize them, and only if they were relevant in his life. He had recognized other people's beauty in the tutorial, but only from the third stage onward, as he started realizing Guardians were more than mortals.

It wasn't that he saw mortals as a sub-race as the Sorcerer King had done, but mortal girls were just not on his plans. Even Guardians were. He was supposed to marry a cultivator with a compatible Path, and he had no reason to seek women until he was ready for said marriage. In fact, seeking them would be a distraction from what truly mattered, cultivating and walking his Path.

So while he had intellectually recognized Alicia's beauty, he had never seen her.

Now he did, and Alicia was gorgeous.

She had light brown straight hair so long they touched her... her... Shen swallowed. The very visible curves of her bottom, on her back. Her hair seemed to cascade down, not hiding her thin waist and big... curves. Shen also got a privileged sight from her frontal curves from where he stood—diagonally on her back, but more on the side than on the back. She noticed him and turned her head, revealing her green eyes and bright smile as she saw he was up.

"Sleepyhead," she criticized as she started slowly swimming his way.

Shen liked brunettes. He also enjoyed a lot fewer curves than Alicia had. Yet he took too long to take his eyes off her smile or stop them from moving downward, and she noticed it.

Alicia stopped swimming, her smile died, she crossed her arms to hide her attributes and arched her body slightly to the front to make her figure small—thus harder to notice.

That reaction felt simultaneously like a slap to his face and a punch to his guts. Shen had only felt worse in his life after finding out his clan was gone and then that his father had betrayed his clan. Yet, even then, he had felt bad in a different way.

This was something horribly new.

Shen felt like he had betrayed something he shouldn't have.

It felt absolutely terrible.

"Sorry," he said at once, turned back, and fled.

He felt pathetic for running away even as he did. Shen had taken lives not long ago, but now he found himself alone in the street within seconds because he didn't know how to face a bad situation.

Yet, his face was flushed, and he couldn't remove the image he had seen from his mind.

That was the first girl he had ever seen wearing so little in person. The internet had plenty of that, but he could easily ignore it, and the scantly dressed girls online weren't really close to him. It didn't feel real. Seeing Alicia in a bikini that close had felt completely different.

To be honest, he had absolutely no idea what to do now.

He felt he needed to apologize, yet he also felt he didn't. That was his home, and she had clad herself like that in a communal area, knowing he might see her like that. He was a young male, and cultivators weren't immune to hormones. Then again, he should be able to control his mundane instincts as he had done his entire life; he was not some mindless animal but a cultivator.

It all came down to why she would dress like that if she minded he looked. Well, he had never looked at her like that before, so maybe she felt she was safe. Perhaps she also had nothing else to wear to enter the pool.

He kept thinking about everything as people on the streets started noticing him. He was wearing a martial arts robe, just standing there. Some recognized him; many took pictures. Shen ignored them as he kept considering all options.

Then it dawned on him.

Alicia had never considered him that way, and it hadn't even crossed her mind that it might be an issue, just like he hadn't thought of that before.

It was all a silly, albeit significant, misunderstanding.

Shen smiled, nodded to himself, and returned to the building. He realized that he had broken the building's and his apartment's front doors when he pushed through them. He would have to find a way to apologize—later.

Right now, he had to apologize to his best friend.

He found Alicia pacing back and forth in the living room, biting her lower lip down and calling someone on her phone. Maybe him, though he hadn't brought his smartphone with him.

She was still wearing a bikini, but Shen resisted the temptation of looking down this time.

When he entered the room, she looked at him in sheer relief. Then, to his surprise, she rushed at him and hugged him tightly.

All the instinctual feelings he was trying really hard to avoid came rushing to him like water through a broken dam.

She kept hugging him tightly in silence, her head right below his shin chin. Shen found himself freezing once again, unsure of what to do. He felt both that this was inadequate and that he wanted that moment to go on forever.

Then, Alicia felt his lower body's reactions.

She instantly shifted her body to avoid it... then slowly returned.

"Alright," Alicia whispered, and he could hear the tears in her trembling voice. She was terrified. "You're a man; you have needs," she said, though Shen felt he was talking more to herself than to him. "Just please, please, don't leave me. Please. I'll do anything. Please don't leave me."

When she finished talking, her whole body was shaking.

Shen never knew he could feel so bad through simple empathy.

His lower body rested down at the same time he gave her the tightest hug he could without hurting her.

"I have no fucking idea what's going on," he told her, forcing himself to use the swear word to try to connect better. It worked. She tensed a lot in surprise, then relaxed, her body trembling a lot less. "But I'm not that stupid. You're my best friend, and you're hurting. I'm not going to do anything to you; please believe me." He awkwardly patted her back lightly. "Stay here for as long as you want, and feel free to leave if you want to. I'll be here for you, Alicia. We're friends," he repeated. "I appreciate your presence. I'll be here."

Her body stopped shaking not long after.

They kept like that, in silence, for a long while.