Cytortia held her new almanac tightly. She should feel happy, but happiness was the opposite of what she felt when she saw the exhausted Luxinna.

“Let me guess: the negotiation went south.”

Rem didn’t even try to act sad.

“Let be honest here. We all know the negotiation would go south.”

Luxinna stifled back her urge to scream.

“But you don’t have to make it worse!” Luxinna yelled at Rem. “You pretty much pissed her off within the first five minutes.”

“Because I need a confirmation,” Rem grinned sinisterly. “No worry. I have a secret plan to make Shyme tell us everything she knows.”

“How?” Luxinna demanded.

Rem handed Cytortia a piece of paper.

“Cy, please read the paper,” Rem said. “I will give you a clue about what to do next. Remember what I said to you about politicking.”

…

Cytortia held her breath, opened the door, and met her friend one on one.

“I hope you are not planning to persuade me to change my mind,” Shyme Enma combed her luxurious black hair. “Where did you find someone that annoying anyway?”

“Oh please, I fell onto Rem, literally,” Cytortia said. “The longer I stay with him, the more I am sure I exist to keep him under control. Do you know he already came up with eight plans to remove your cousins?”

“Do you mean that idiot?”

“No, I mean both that idiot and Grustav.”

Shyme giggled for a solid minute until she realized Cytortia wasn’t joking.

“Are you serious?”

Cytortia tossed Shyme a stack of papers.

“Does this feel like joking to you?”

Shyme skimmed the papers. They dictated several known abilities Grustav had and a lot more speculation. Shyme must admit the person who wrote this was good. He got everything from date-of-birth to body-weight. There was also a detailed analysis of Grustav’s habit from a recorded fight. Wait, what did the approximated his penis get to do with anything.

Finally, Shyme reached the Nightmare fuel-station.

The list included but not limited to:

Trick Grustav into eating Burning Sunshine Desecrate the Enma clan's ancestral grave and blow up the area when that distract him Mindwipe his competitor (Shyme or Sorin Enma) and turn them into a suicide bomber Drop an invisible grand-class airship on his head

The paper even noted the tool, resource, and parameter needed to execute the plan. By the time Shyme went through the redundancy and escape measure, she was in awe. People had to put effort into being this evil.

“You should see the plan he reserved for LinLey,” Cytortia cracked a dark joke. “I don’t know whether to feel horrible or satisfy.”

“Cy,” Shyme said. “I think this man is insane.”

“I know,” Cytortia replied. “But do you think you have a chance against him?”

“I can smack him easily,” Shyme huffed. “No matter how good he planned, it will be useless if he got caught by surprise."

“He wants me to tell you that it will be easier for my senior sisters to kill me with him gone.”

Shyme bit back a curse.

“Okay, what is the point of bringing this up, Cy. I am quite busy, and talking about your new psychotic buddy isn’t a great use of our time.”

“Because he doesn’t have a plan.”

Shyme turned toward her best friend in the world.

“What?”

Cytortia picked up the paper and waved it in front of Shyme.

“The man who wrote this admit we are doom. Someone in this city has a weapon that makes Rem threw the towel. I don’t know how that makes you feel, but the prospect of Rem running out of idea terrifies me.”

Shyme indignation responded.

“Why should I care about Rem—”

Shyme suddenly stopped as she realized something.

“Isn’t his name Dream?”

“It is a fake,” Cytortia said. “His name is Rem Breaker. Rem isn’t a type who trusts anyone with his identity.”

Shyme could only think one thing.

“Isn’t this excessive?” Then she realized another obvious. “Wait, what about the elf?”

“Luxinna Latoria,” Cytortia replied honestly. “She is Magnolia’s older sister.”

Shyme did a spit-take.

“Magnolia has a sister! How?! Why did I never hear about this?”

“Because no one in Lightwell wants to acknowledge she existed. Don’t talk to Luxinna about Magnolia. It is still a sore spot for her.”

Shyme clutched her head. Suddenly, life looked way too complicated.

“Who is stronger between the two?” Shyme asked out of curiosity. “Is Luxinna anywhere close to her sister?”

“Luxinna only received a proper training a few months ago,” Cytortia said. “The Drakokia pretty much tossed her into the wood after her awakening.”

“Wait,” Shyme said. “Don’t tell me you are picking up strays.” The fox girl’s expression softened a little. “Cy, you know I admire your compassion, but picking up Luxinna means adding Magnolia as your enemy. Don’t you already have enough enemies on the 33 Stars? I can’t protect you from everything.”

“I know, but let me finish,” Cytortia said. “The current Luxinna is a solid B-rank with potential to fight a low A. I don’t know who will win, but Magnolia needs to come at Lux with all she has to survive the fight.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“I ain't the one who claims that,” Cytortia said. “Scathach did. I don’t what do you think, but from what I have seen, Luxinna is one of the greatest combat prodigies of this generation. And Rem is the only human in equal rank who won several fights with her.”

Shyme shrunk down on her chair. The statistic she heard was absurd. She did a quick estimate. If the elf could reach a B-rank in a few months, it was highly likely that she would surpass even her by the end of the year. That was terrifying. But even more terrible was the fact that such a monster could remain under the radar without anyone knowing. Shyme knew she would still be underestimating the elf unless her best friend spelled it out for her.

“Why do you tell me any of this?” Shyme said. “The elf and that human is your secret weapon to win the fight between the 33 Stars. Why let me know?”

Cytortia showed her another piece of paper. Shyme skimmed past several tips written on the note on how the conversation would go. But what shock her was at the end of the page.

IF YOU GOING TO JUMP, I TRUST YOUR LEAP OF FAITH.

“I wouldn’t tell you any of this without their permission,” Cytortia said. “Rem believes in my judgment, and I trust you more than anyone, Shyme. So I want you to trust me when I said we are all in danger.”

Shyme didn’t how she felt. Despite her popularity, Shyme Enma didn’t have friends. She only had employees, admirers, and tools. All of them treated her like a divine existence, and given how the Enma clan descended from the divine beast, they should. However, that kind of reverence wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was a friend she could open up to--someone who accepted her as a regular person, not an heir to a worlds-spanning enterprise. She only got Cy as that friend, and it took a very unlucky circumstance for that to happen.

Cy trusted her with information that her comrade never would. Shyme trembled. Yes, this was indeed a leap of fate, and it hit hard.

“Your comrade said something about summoning ritual,” Shyme mentioned.

“My patron said that someone is summoning a beast from beyond to power his plan. If this beast get lose, there will be no one who can defeat it--not my master, not the Enma clan, not the five guardians. I know that sounds outlandish, but she was never wrong before.”

“And you are planning to fight this monster?”

“Hopefully, no,” Cytortia said. “But I can’t abandon an entire city to die, and you know that, Shyme.”

Shyme took the breath. She finally worked out what was that man's angle. He decided to put up a proposition she couldn’t refuse. That bastard let Cytortia be Cytortia; trusting, faithful, and loyal. He knew her friend's genuineness would convince her, and it presented her with an ultimatum: give them the information or let Cytortia fight a hopeless battle to the death alongside them.

Shyme exhaled. That human already won the moment Cytortia's honesty convinced her the threat was real.

Shyme flicked a switch in her drawer. A sound of sliding mechanism followed. The bookcase in the wall on her right opened to reveal a secret room.

“Follow me,” Shyme said mirthlessly.

…

Cytortia’s jaw dropped.

Shyme collection was impressive. Rows of display cases lined both sides of the wall. Each display case held a tome. Every document she passed by must be an ancient artifact costing at least several million. Cytortia flinched when she saw a text made out of human skin sitting next to a book with pure gold-cover. Who in the world would write that book?

“The author of that book is a shaman from the Senile Islands,” Shyme explained the question running through her head. “Try not to stand next to it for too long. It drives people insane just by standing next to it.”

Cytortia took ten steps back.

“This is an impressive collection, Shyme,” Cytortia glanced at a ruby-color diary; she recognized that book. It was a diary of an ancient king from another world. Shyme bought it in an auction for 180 million credit. “But why did you bring me here.”

“Because of that,” Shyme pointed to an empty display case. “Someone stole a scroll from my collection a few months ago.”

Cytortia blinked.

“What? How!? You have the best security in the damn city! Enma clan’s barrier is impenetrable.”

“Yes,” Shyme said. “But someone proved that isn’t true anymore. My father recovered that tome from a ruin of an ancient death-cult a decade ago. Nobody could decipher that ancient language, so he gave it to my personal collection. It disappeared a few months ago.”

Cytortia might not be as good as Rem, but she did learn the fine art of spotting coincidences. It all made sense. The timing of Satholia's contact and the tome theft coincided. It also answered their question of why the user was only putting his ritual in motion now. Finally, everything started to match.

“So, the thief who stole the tome is the ritual master,” Cytortia said. “He must discover that you the tome a month ago and stole it. Given the expertise requires to infiltrate your barrier, he must be an incredible mage. Do you have any idea?”

“I don’t,” Shyme said. “The only mage who can pull this off is a high-ranking government official or someone above the high A-rank. Even Tai Hua couldn’t do this without breaking the barrier, and we know that bitch is a monster.”

“Rem might be able to work it out with his [Clairvoyance].”

Shyme raised her eyebrows.

“The guys who made plans to kill us all can look into the future?”

“Yeah,” Cytortia admitted. “I guess you should know who to blame when someone you know fell out of the sky in a ball of fire.”

Shyme glanced at the brick ceiling. Suddenly, the world seemed to be less candy-cane and rainbow and more of a hellish zombie-land.

“That is fuck up, Cy.”

“I know.”

Shyme silently decided to cut to the chase. She strolled toward the display case before knocking on it twice. The metal panel flipped, revealing a stack of papers.

“This is the copy of the stolen tome,” Shyme handed Cytortia the paper. “I know it will be a long shot given that my entire family failed to interpret it, but I hope this will help.”

“Thank, Shyme,” Cytortia accepted the paper and finally understood why even the Enma clan failed. What was on that tome wasn’t letters but patterns of dots. Cytortia had no idea how to deal with this, but she was sure a combination of Rem, Hikma, and Melody would break any magical language barrier.

“I will also provide you with a letter of recommendation if you want to find any accommodation in the city,” Shyme said. “I will even ask Waiter to update you with any information source you request.”

“Wow,” Cytortia couldn’t help but beam. “That is incredible, Shyme.”

“Yes, but I have one condition.”

…

Outside of Shyme’s office, the elf was looking at Rem strangely.

“Are you sure Cy can pull it off?”

Rem looked at her leisurely.

“Are you doubting our fearless leader?”

The elf snorted.

“Of course not, but I want to know why you of all people let Cytortia tell Shyme about us.”

Rem sighed.

“Because we don’t have leverage over Shyme. Moreover, alienating her would only make things more difficult in the long run. When going in with a disadvantage, not making concessions is impossible. We must show the evidence of trustworthiness and accountability by letting our mask down. Shyme knows Cy, so she would likely trust her word. Us putting our information up first is a sign of goodwill, which will only sweeten the deal. Right now, we need Shyme Enma more than she needs us, and she know it.”

The door opened.

“That is right, you lunatic,” Shyme eyed Rem with suspicion. “Your existence will make me sleep pretty hard tonight.”

“Cy told you about my redundancies.”

“I did,” Cytortia looked at Rem with annoyance. “I told you I don’t appreciate you making a plan to off my best friend.”

“I already give you what you want, but I need something more from your bargain.”

“A plan to deal with LinLey and Grustav, right?”

“Yes,” Shyme said. “But I also have one more opportunity for you. There will be a ball hosted by a Duke Lamington next week. Everyone with status will be there.”

“Why should I be interested in getting on the radar?”

“Because I recognize the way you operate.”

Rem turned stiffed.

“You are logical and know how to compromise,” Shyme explained. “I can see it from the way you hold yourself. You must be born in quite a high society, no matter how much you try to pretend otherwise. Trust me. It takes one noble to know another. That is why I know you know the benefit of having a connection.”

Rem’s eyes sharpened.

“It seems someone is rejecting his root,” Shyme felt a bit satisfied with this small victory. “I recommend you embrace it, fellow noble. I understand the joy of being free from obligation, but you can’t escape your blood. I am saying this for your benefit, Mr. Breaker. Your issue aside, I am also confident that our little thief will also be there.”

“What is your price?”

“Cytortia sold both of your ability to a very high standard,” Shyme said. “I want to see it for myself. How about you two fight three opponents of my choosing? I hope you do well, or else I might tag some of my employees with you. I hate to left my best friend safety in the hand of an incompetent.”