"Late! You're late!" Tia loudly stated as she recovered from the surprise caused by Aaron's fresh look. "I said before sunrise!"

Aaron calmly approached them while staring at the last member of the group. "Tia, what did you hire me for?" Before she could answer, he continued, "Disarm traps and open locks. How do you expect me to do this without the right tools?"

He put his hands in a small strategic opening in the seam of his jacket and took two small pieces of metal from it, two lockpicks. As fast as he produced the tools, he stored them back.

"Some of the merchants I had to visit only open at night, but others, only during the day, after sunrise," he concluded.

Tia couldn't argue against that. Aaron had joined their unit just the night before, and by the time he had left the guild, most shops in town were closed. Only taverns and inns remained open at night due to low traffic and high crime rate.

It would be unfair not to give him even a few hours in the morning to buy what he needed, and he hadn't taken more than an hour after sunrise to show up, which meant he had taken care of his business as fast as possible.

"Is this Alys?" He changed the subject, using the name he had heard in the guild's restaurant.

Since arriving, he had not taken his eyes off the woman, who appeared to be almost forty years old. She had brown hair held in a bun, brown eyes, and wore a black robe with silver mystical symbols all over it.

Aaron hadn't seen her face the last time they met, but he could feel her aura.

He was sure she was the summoner who had brought him to this world.

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Alys couldn't believe what she was seeing.

How? How was it possible that he was there? That he was the Rogue that Tia had found?

She had seen him kill two Two Star Royal Guards with the ease of taking candy from a child. No, even easier; the child could try to react, but the guards just fell like two puppets with the strings cut, dead as soon as he attacked. That had been enough to make her feel like she never wanted to cross paths with him ever again.

And yet the dread she felt went even deeper than that.

He had simply ignored the restrictive magic in the summoning circle. The circle was a magic formation of a level so high she couldn't even comprehend, the most complex in the entire kingdom, and he had passed through it as if it weren't even there!

She was a Three Star Sorceress, and he had been just an Inept, but if he could ignore the power of that magic circle, she was completely vulnerable before him.

To make things worse, he wasn't just an Inept anymore but a Two Star Qi Manipulator. When she saw that, she had to use all her willpower, even the bits she didn't know she had, just to not pass out.

The energy disturbance of the previous night, which had caused an uproar in the Arcane Circle and left the powerful figures of the city in a panic... The cleansing of the city's violent gangs, which had made the criminals and corrupt guards unable to sleep... The recommendation for all Circle members to stay at the Arcane Tower until they identified the culprit... It all made sense now.

Actually, no.

How did that make sense? He had become a Two Star Qi Manipulator in a single day!

No, wrong.

Tia had told Alys that Aaron was an Inept when she saw him the day before. Since he had stayed with the Fire Wolves until night, and the energetic disturbance in the city also happened at night...

He had become a Two Star Qi Manipulator in one. Single. Night!

No, even worse.

If the time span of the disturbance was an indicator...

Fifteen minutes.

That's all it took him.

Fifteen.

Minutes.

This was beyond the capabilities of a genius. Only "monster" could describe him.

And she had opened the portal that had kidnapped him without him being able to defend himself. She had been responsible for abducting him from his world into this one. She had taken him away from everything he knew and everyone he loved without his consent.

"Is this Alys?" he asked, looking deeply into her eyes.

She felt the world spin, and everything went black.

Then she saw nothing else.

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Aaron barely contained his surprise when the summoner suddenly passed out.

He had noticed her paleness from afar, and when he approached, he saw her legs shaking. But wasn't that reaction a little too much? What had he done to make her so afraid of him?

Logan, who was standing next to Alys, reacted immediately when he saw her body fall and caught her.

Tia frowned. "What the hell?!" She looked at Aaron. "What did you do?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Me? You were looking at me the whole time. What could I have done?" Then he opened his eyes as if he had solved an impossible mathematical problem. "That's it!"

"What?" asked Tia.

"I'm sorry, it's indeed my fault. Or maybe it's my parents' fault?"

"Your parents? What do you mean?"

Aaron sighed and opened his arms theatrically. "What else could it be? My beauty! I'm so handsome that she couldn't stand being close to me without fainting in overwhelming passion!"

Silence.

Everyone looked at him in complete silence, not knowing how to react to that.

In the end, they ignored his idiocy and him. Since the purpose of such a statement was precisely to distract them and avoid their accusations, he was satisfied with this result.

Lana came over and touched Alys with her hands. Their contact point shone slightly, and Aaron felt Holy Energy leave Lana, run through Alys' body, then go back.

"She's fine," she said and frowned. "Looks like she passed out from... shock?"

Everyone looked at Aaron in astonishment. Was he telling the truth?! Alys had found him so handsome that it stunned her into unconsciousness?!

Aaron laughed inside, but outside, he made a pose of someone who was the culmination of physical perfection and knew it. "Told ya."

Tia shook her head and turned to Lana. "Wake her up."

"It's better if she gets some rest," replied Lana.

"If she needs rest, she can sleep on the trip, mounted, while we head toward the Sky Splitter Sword."

Reluctantly, Lana complied, inserting more energy into Alys's body. Aaron wondered why the Seccos brothers obeyed Tia, who was weaker than both. Money, perhaps? Did the summoner also obey her?

Alys swiftly woke up. She had a confused expression at first, but when she saw Aaron, it quickly disappeared as she paled again.

Aaron smiled at her, winked when no one was looking, and said, "You always pass out when you meet new people?"

She opened her eyes wide, surprised by his words. Meet new people? But they had seen each other before, under very unusual circumstances! The meaning was obvious; he wanted her to hide his past.

She would do it pronto. How could she refuse someone who could level up twice in fifteen minutes, someone with the ability to kill her in the blink of an eye, someone she had already seen kill two people without hesitating for a single instant?

She opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out. So she just shook her head slowly.

"Alys? Are you okay?" asked Tia with concern. "Do you want to rest in the city? We can leave tomorrow."

Tia had just said the opposite, that Alys could rest while riding their mounts, but she wasn't able to repeat that directly to the older woman.

The summoner closed her eyes, sighed, and stood up from Logan's arms that were still supporting her. She didn't try to say anything, she just mounted her animal with some difficulty and looked silently and firmly straight ahead.

Everyone looked at her with some concern, including Aaron. He would have a serious talk with her later; the only people who should fear him that way were his enemies, and he had nothing against her.

Eventually, Tia decided it was worth trying to continue. "Logan, travel close to her in case something happens," she ordered gently. "And keep a close eye on her. If she doesn't get better within an hour at the most, we'll stop to rest." Then she turned to Aaron. "Do you know how to ride?"

He looked at the five animals. They looked like giant light brown rodents, with the height of an adult man. Their hips and shoulders were wider than their waist, and both face and tail were almost identical to those of a kangaroo. They didn't have the front pouch kangaroos did though.

Aaron had seen many different species in his life, but this was the first time he had seen that animal. The Laws and Concepts of this world differed slightly from the ones in his home universe and, of course, they had given life to some different living beings.

If anything, that both universes had humans was the strange occurrence, no matter how identical the dimensions were. Strange, but not impossible. Aaron had seen things with much lower odds happening in the vastness of space throughout his long life. Though that did make him wonder if there was more to it; something to research when he had the power and time for that.

For now, he kept checking the animals. Several bags hung from their saddles. Aaron knew that Tia had a spatial ring and didn't think its internal space was limited, since she was rich. So, she certainly could bring everything inside her ring if she wanted. He supposed she didn't do it to avoid grabbing the attention of bad guys. Although her ring released almost no energy, it would be suspicious to see people traveling so light they didn't even have food to eat.

"Yes, I do know how to ride," he finally replied. "What's the name of this species?" He approached one animal and held out his hand for it to smell. Soon after, he stroked its head.

"You never saw a liguru before?" asked Tia. "Where are you from? Did you live under a rock or something?"

He smiled. "Or something. There are many things about this place that I don't know."

The liguru licked his hand and Aaron shook his head, noticing that both in his native dimension and in this one, the fate of a docile being like this was to be dominated and used at the convenience of the dominator. The unchanging reality of any universe was that the weak obeyed the strong.

Power was an interdimensional language.

However, he obviously wouldn't trust his life to the animal's apparent docility. He had already used his knowledge in the anatomy to identify the most likely places to be the liguru's weak points if he needed to kill it.

"You have a way with animals," Tia commented.

Aaron nodded. The auras that people released could be aggressive or gentle, agitated or calm, cold or hot; it depended on their personality and lifestyle. As soon as he saw the ligurus, he gave his aura a soft and gentle pattern. It didn't have even an ounce of aggression, but rather a feeling of tranquility to anyone who could feel it.

Animals were more sensitive to auras than ordinary humans, thus he automatically became a pleasant companion for the ligurus.

Tia was annoyed at Aaron for not answering her last questions. The day before, he had talked nonstop, but now, he was playing the mysterious figure. She snorted impatiently.

"You ride this liguru," she said. "Let's go."

Everyone mounted, and the journey began.

And it took only fifteen minutes for them to encounter their first obstacle.