Stein, also known as the Builder, watched Iroonblood leave with a frown.

His first impression had been of a man who was nice to you while he found you useful, but didn't mind mercilessly discarding you after you had fulfilled your purpose. A utilitarian through and through.

His second impression had been that he had been originally wrong. Such change happened when Ironblood said he would buy a vast area of the city's slums, build an apothecary processing plant there, then employ whoever had lived there originally with great terms — including accommodations. That wouldn't solve the issues of the half-million people the Templar had talked about, but a fifth of that would be better off for it, while at least half that again would benefit indirectly.

Then came Stein's third impression, and it was the worst yet.

Ironblood had talked about including a huge pattern — he had called it a formation — in the very architecture of the place. It would slowly siphon the Qi and Vital Energy of the residents and turn it into Nature Energy to improve the huge plantations that would surround the processing plant itself. The Builder had worked enough with the powerful to know that their secret plans were always much worse than their open plans. If Ironblood's open plans were to take Vital Energy out of people as part of employment terms, his secret plans should be truly nefarious.

He would spread the word, his Workmen would help. In the past, he would have informed the Arcane Circle and have them check on it, but Ironblood was the Arcane Circle now, somehow. He was also the goddamn Herald of Light and had started a Holy Crusade. Only the Apostle of Light or the emperor himself could stop him now.

But well, he was the best Builder in the kingdom, and that came with connections in the right places. He would send the pattern for a friend to forward it to the Patterners Guild. If they found the pattern too wicked, they would petition the emperor to stop Ironblood.

Ironblood had only given him a rough outline of the formation, but that should be enough for the great Patterners Guild. He had sent them rougher drafts in the past, and they had had no trouble analyzing it.

That aside, Stein was quite excited about building the processing plant itself. Ironblood's explanation of the workflow had been detailed, and he had been good enough with his magical drawing to show the Builder multiple examples of other plants. The Builder now would adapt it to the pattern Ironblood wanted and to the way Illyria worked.

It had been a while since he had accepted such a challenging commission!

Suddenly, he saw something very wrong from the corner of his eye. "Luks, what the hell are you doing with that stone?!" he snapped. "Do you want to break your damn spine? Carry it as I taught you!"

"Sorry, Builder, sir!" the man yelled back and corrected his posture.

The Builder nodded and went back to his architectural planning.

Lana was lying on a bed, looking at the ceiling, crying once again.

She looked hideous.

The Patriarch had been there when she woke up and softly told her about her condition. She felt no pain thanks to him, but his powers couldn't deal with the extent of her injuries. The best Physician in the city — no Priest would touch an excommunicated woman like her — could do little more than that, only healing her spine.

She became desperate when he described her injuries and begged him to show them to her. He told her it was a bad idea, but also that it was her decision to make. She insisted, and he produced a mirror for her.

That had been a terrible choice.

Then he had said she wasn't to leave the bed under any circumstances, that he had to deal with some urgent matters but would return soon. He would find her a healer too.

She had seen nothing in the Patriarch's eyes. No pity and no disgust — which was good — but no compassion either. He had looked at her as if nothing had happened, as if she had tripped and hurt her little toe.

That had been a bucket of cold water thrown at her face. He didn't care enough to show worry. He had asked her out, but he wasn't in love with her as she was with him.

And that made her cry even more. Should she just give up on him? Should she feel offended? Or should she feel grateful that, according to the Physician who had come to see her, the Patriarch had saved her life yet again?

Why was everything so confusing? What were all those feelings inside her? Life had been easier when people just told her what to do and how to feel.

Freedom was scary.

A maid from the king's estate where Lana was staying came to clean and feed her. The humiliation only fed to her maelstrom of chaotic emotions. She suppressed her tears while the woman was there.

Then she cried harder when the maid left.

Wooden ships filled the skies above the capital of the Thenor Empire. Each ship was at least a hundred feet long, and the biggest of them reached almost three thousand feet. Metal and precious stones covered the hulls of many, and protective patterns covered them all.

Throughout the empire's history, many artificers had tried to change the shape of flying traveling vessels, as seen by a few metal boxes here or some huge circular plates there, but most cultivators always went back to ships.

The Thenor Empire was open to the sea on the East, so they already had big ships filled with protective materials and patterns. It was simply cheaper and more practical to retrofit a ship rather than build something else from scratch. It also didn't help that the strongest ancient traveling vessels were ships from the times of old, thus the very shape of a ship gave more status than some random flying metal box.

There was a single exception to that rule flying among the others, an enormous fortress of metal and stone. It looked like a floating cube with energy cannons throughout its extension. The almost ten thousand feet long fortress released an aura of absolute power that made even the handful of Masters in the capital uncomfortable.

The emperor was standing at a study with his High Inquisitor, Great General, and Celestial Designer. The three were kneeling and keeping silent, awaiting his commands. He was staring at the Temple of Light's Fortress of Light with a frown and a calculative gaze.

"A Lesser Peerless moving fortress," he said with envy.

Cultivators wanted to survive more than anything. The very act of cultivating was an act of rebellion against their limited lifespans. As such, defensive artifacts were highly sought after and expensive.

A mere Lesser Peerless armor would allow even a Champion cultivator to establish a powerful clan in the empire simply because no one could kill him easily. A Lesser Peerless fortress would give any clan a ridiculous solid foundation and allow them to rival even the imperial forces.

There were two major reasons the Thenor Empire had never gone against the Temple of Light ever since they became the Capital of the Light of the World, and the fortress was one. It was the Sanctuary of Light, the headquarters of the Temple of Light, where the Apostle of Light lived in. It usually stayed on the ground, but it had been activated the day before, a few hours after the Holy Crusade against the Timelords had been declared.

The fortress wouldn't leave for the crusade, but the Temple of Light was letting the world know that it prepared to protect itself against whoever came.

That included the emperor, and it worried him. The Temple of Light had exterminated a vassal kingdom's ducal clan for the current Herald of Light. Said herald had publicly revealed that a Garrison Commander had tried to kill him — and damn the useless man for having failed! Already, the Imperial Court was investigating it. Soon, they would arrive at the Great General.

The man wouldn't betray the emperor, he was physically unable of doing so. Yet, that same loyalty would make clear to all parties that the order to attack the herald had, at the very least, been approved by the emperor.

That would be bad enough, but something was even worse.

The Arcane Circle was the second reason the Thenor Empire had never gone against the Temple of Light. Almost all Sorceress in the empire were a member of the Circle, and it had great economic and political power. As such, the Guardian of the Light of the World, the hateful leader of the Arcane Circle, should be the one leading the hunt for whoever had ordered an attack on the herald. However, he had vanished right after killing all the spies the emperor had by his side.

A flying fortress and a missing guardian meant the Temple of Light was baring all its fangs for this crusade. That had never happened before, and currently, the emperor had made himself an enemy of the herald.

The signs were all there: the Temple of Light would come knocking on his doors eventually.

In times like this, there were only really two ways to survive. One either bunkered down and did one's best to weather the coming storm, or preemptively caused such a great destruction to all other parties that they would pose no danger to oneself.

The emperor had bunkered down for too long. The humiliation brought by the Goddess of Light was too much. Half the time he didn't feel like the empire belonged to him, and he refused to ask for forgiveness for trying to get rid of an alien pest from his own empire.

"Laku, I want a pattern ready to ground the fortress and neutralize its defenses within the week," he ordered his Celestial Designer. That was an impossible deadline, but he wanted the man to try his absolute best.

"Mia, ready the troops to conquer the fortress, man it, and subsequently use it against the Primary Arcane Tower," he told his Great General, the sole female in the room. Her job was easier. Her armies already had plans in place for that; she would only need to coordinate things.

"Yan, prepare to imprison my rivals in the court and any follower of Light in the city you think might bring trouble. You don't need to bring them in alive if they resist," he told his High Inquisitor. The Inquisition also had plans for all that, though a last look at the intelligence reports would keep the man busy.

"Yes, your Divine Mandatary!" they replied in unison.

He felt their unwillingness, but he had properly bound their minds to him over the years without them ever noticing. They were absolutely faithful to him.

"Not the Divine Mandatary for long," the emperor whispered.

The clans that sympathized with the Temple of Light were sending some of their best troops to the Crusade, and even over half the Templar Knights in the capital were getting ready to leave. Those things, paired with the absence of the guardian, made it the perfect opportunity to get rid of the goddess' forces.

He kept looking at the fortress. This was a turning point in his empire's history. He could feel it, and the World Diviner had said so too.

She had told him to ask the Herald of Light for forgiveness before he came for revenge, but that would be suicide. His enemies would see that as a sign of weakness, and his allies would think twice before protecting a weak emperor. Though he could survive it, he refused to live like a spineless lackey of the Light!

No, he would show them all his strength. He would remove the disease that was the Temple of Light — and its allies — from his empire.

By the time the Herald of Light declared a Holy Crusade against him for killing the apostle, he would have his capital under his tight control, his army prepared to engage, and his protective patterns ready for anything.

After a long time, war had returned to his empire, and he would win.

"When do you plan to start the march?" asked the deacon.

"Seven days from now," replied Aaron.

They were in the main dining hall of the Temple of Light. The stone room was big and luxurious. The dining table was covered by a sheet so white it seemed to shine, and the furniture was made of wood. Every piece of wood had some silver added to it though, from painting frames to the chairs, and everything that was made of metal was silver, from cutlery to the plates the serving Priests were using to bring the food.

The message here was clear: they might be a small temple at the fringes of the empire, but they were still a Temple of Light, with all that came with it.

The deacon was a short old Four Star Devout with little hair and a lot of wrinkles. He wore simple white robes as any other Priest, but he held himself with the humble confidence that only trained priests knew how to show.

He shook his head. "Even coming from the capital to here would take three days by teleportation, son. The incoming ships from the other side of the empire need at least a month to arrive, and it would be wise to double that to account for unforeseen circumstances."

"We're moving against Entropomancers," Aaron countered. "I expect them to know we're coming. If we give them too much time, they'll have no trouble preparing or fleeing."

"It's because they are the Timelords that you'll need a large military." The deacon sighed. "The last reports from the Time Lands, from three hundred years ago, put them at fifty thousand Three Star combatants or stronger, and about five thousand of those should be Timelords. They level up quickly, so at least a tenth of them should be Champions. Five hundred Champion Entropomancers isn't something to take lightly. Your only saving grace is that their race can only have a single Master at any given time."

Aaron hadn't heard about that. The number of fodder mattered little, but that bit about a single Master was crucial.

"That is surely wrong. How could a single Master resist the might of the empire?"

The deacon laughed a little and choked on his saliva. He had to heal himself to not die. "What do you know? The Thenor Empire has eleven known Masters, the emperor himself, his three lapdogs, the heads of the Imperial Big Five, the Apostle of Light, and the Guardian of the Light of the World.

"The Apostle of Light, may the goddess bless her, doesn't interfere in worldly matters. The guardian is as neutral as a piece of rock when it comes to anything that doesn't involve the goddess. That leaves nine of them free to act."

He sipped his tea. "But the capital is a den of vipers, son. The five clan heads would rather die than leave the capital, only to return and find their clans erased. Likewise, the emperor would rather lose a war than risk leaving his protected capital and getting stranded from his seat of power. That leaves only his three lapdogs free to move, and he sent them against the Timelords.

"Now, tell me, what can an Arcanist Celestial Designer, a Fire Elementalist Great General, and a Vitamancer High Inquisitor do against an Entropomancer when they are all at the Master level? Nothing, I tell you. That's how much they accomplished in the past war. The Celestial Designer almost died. They might have killed the Master Timelord if the Timelords were invading, but they couldn't defeat her in her own turf."

Aaron nodded. It all made sense, both political and militaristic matters.

It was also good to know the empire had around thirty Masters. While the deacon had said eleven, he expected at least that much again to be hidden for multiple reasons. Multiplying that number by three and making plans accordingly would be the safest option. Maybe even consider a hidden Grandmaster.

"I see. What was that about the Timelords only having a single Master?"

"Beast Tamers studied Timelords in the past. If I remember correctly, it's an issue caused by energy compatibility. Their bodies were created for some other energy, and they had to adapt to Time Energy for reasons unknown. Because of that, they can't go beyond the Champion level. Their Master is the only female in their race. Her body and soul are different from the males, which allows her to level up further."

That also made sense. Beasts with high affinity to Time or Space Laws were almost always at least Immortals on birth, thus they used Divine Energy. Since Timelords were no versatile cultivators, but beasts with innate energy mastery instead, they had trouble going beyond their zone of comfort, energy-wise. They had lucked out that there was a Time Energy for them to use, but it was way too different from Divine Energy. It was already an impressive accomplishment for them to reach even the Champion level using it, much less the female Master.

A Master Entropomancer was beyond Aaron's means to deal with currently. He would need to become a Champion in both Arcane Energy and Qi to have a chance. He also needed to be unpredictable in his march, else they would step right into a trap.

One didn't simply walk into a Master Entropomancer's home and expected everything to work out.

"Change of plans," Aaron said and stood up. "I leave in three days, but let latecomers know I'll not march too quickly. I must attend to other matters now. Thank you for the meal." He left.

The only way for him to break into the Champion level was by eating the unique sprouts that grew where he trained in the Rise to the Heavens' cultivation method. He expected to need three of them to break through that bottleneck. He could consume one per day. He would start marching after he was done with it.

If everything went according to plan, he would be at the Champion level by the time he arrived in the Timelords nation.

Unfortunately, he was going against a Master Entropomancer.

Something would go wrong.