What should I do? Should I go and ask them what is going on? Or should I head home first? Or should I head to my uncle’s house? There were many options and as ten years old kid, I had no clue which one was best. Those who worked at fields have also noticed us and one of youth has been sent by them to village.

“Let’s head to the village. We should visit my grandpa first.” decided Keiran. Since situation confused me, I followed, even though I didn’t like to take orders from him.

Before we even entered old man’s house, it was obvious something was wrong. House was partially damaged, and it looked like it was because of vandalism. But vandalizing house of one of three most powerful practitioners in village… what idiot would do that?

When we entered, we noticed old lady that was sitting by table and eating some bread. Whole interior of house looked extremely poor. I remembered that old man Keiran had some books, collection of herbs and many other interesting things but everything was gone.

“Grandma Lua!” ran Keiran to her as he hugged confused woman.

“My little Keiran, why are you here? You should be in the city learning magic, shouldn’t you? Don’t tell me those bastards…” she started, but then she looked at me and her confusion deepened. “Could this young master here be… no, there’s no way…”

She only saw me few times, but since my hair color was quite unique, she correctly identified me. But fact that I had exquisite clothing and looked like some noble child was probably what caused her confusion. I bowed to show respect to her age, and then reintroduced myself.

“Good afternoon, I am Aiken, son of Tyree, nephew of Jannon. We have already met before, but I don’t think I properly introduced back then.” I said.

“Grandma, what is going on? Where is everything? And where is grandpa?” asked Keiran

Old woman tightly hugged her grandson, and had tears in her eyes.

“You should go. You should leave this village and never return, Keiran. Take your friends and leave. I am sure we will somehow manage.” she said, confusing us even more.

“No grandma, first tell me what happened.” he protested.

Seeing that he was not willing to go, old woman gave up.

“You see, two years ago, young Jannon finally reached tier eight as whole village was expecting him to. Everyone was celebrating, but that bastard Oisin. Few months later, he also managed to reach tier eight, which was surprise, since no one knew he was anywhere close to it. But, you see, everyone was happy as well. Village now had two tier eight practitioners.

But then, on one day that young man, Strill, arrived. He was from some distant city and was tier ten practitioner, and after talking with Oisin he decided he would stay here. He married his daughter, and together, they started terrorizing our and Jannon’s families.”

Old woman turned to me. “They forced both our families to sell all our land to them for laughable price.” She said and then turned back to her grandson. “Their children vandalized our house and stole or burned what we had here many times and we were not allowed to stop them. But few weeks ago, Oisin wanted to send two of his sons to city to bring you two back and get all gold. Grandpa could no longer stop himself and… now he is heavily injured.“

When we heard her story, all three of us we were pissed off.

“What should we do? Should we contact lady Sable?” asked Laura.

“That would probably take too much time.” said Keiran junior.

“You should all leave. If they learn you are here, I don’t know what they could do to you.” protested Keiran’s grandma.

But Keiran ignored her.

“Do you feel like challenging tier ten magician, Aiken?” asked boy carefully. He knew he alone stood no chance, but since I was tier eleven, he had high hopes of me. It felt bad to betray his hopes.

“I doubt I could win against him one against one. After all, I have almost no soul power.” I said. There was also fact, that apart from training battles with Saffron and Brant, I had very little real experience.

“What about two versus one.” he said. “I am only tier eight magician, but I already have three thousands and six hundreds soul power.”

Tier eight?! I was shocked about how self-demeaning it sounded when he said it. Of whole my class, or actually of whole fourth year in branch of generous, only Saffron and Brant were only tier eight magicians and big part of that was because of me. Neither of them had more three thousand soul power. Compared to anyone but me and Flore, he would be genius with no equal.

“I see. That could work. But since uncle Jannon has already reached tier eight, maybe, we should ask him for help as well.” I said.

“Don’t be stupid! You can’t fight him, he is tier ten practitioner!” protested old woman Lua.

“So what? I am tier eight magician and Aiken is already tier eleven practitioner.” said little Keiran confidently.

“We should see old man Keiran first.” I said, trying to change the topic. I still remembered that aunt Sable gave me quite a few potions just in case. And there was injured person who needed help.

“I have potions that could help him.” I stated, making both grandson and grandmother turn to me with hope in their eyes.

“This is hallucination, isn’t it?” asked old man while we stood beside him. He was lying on bed and his left bandaged forearm, was obviously missing a hand. I could barely contain my anger.

“No grandpa, we are really here. We came to help the village.”

“Stupid children, you should have stayed in the city. What do you think you will change here?” he said.

“We will simply beat that tier ten practitioner and make him go away.” responded his grandson naively. Even I knew it won’t be that simple.

“Where is that tier ten practitioner?” I asked his grandma.

“You see, he went out four days ago to hunt and practice in forest. He should return within month.” said junior’s grandma from behind us.

Thankfully, he was not here. As long as he was not here, we could manage somehow. Maybe we would even have enough time to send Laura to bring help from Aunt Sable.

“Here, take this potion, old man.” I said as I gave healing potion to him. It would probably take few days before he would be back to full strength, and his hand would likely never recover. Potions capable of such miracles were even more valuable than new staff I received from teacher Alaric. We could not count on him for upcoming fight, if there would be any.

We were still talking with old man Keiran when disturbance came.

“Come out, children, I know you are hiding in there!” we suddenly heard old voice from front of house.

“They have already came for us.” said Laura.

Keiran junior looked at me and I nodded. After seeing state of old man, neither of us was going to run.

In front of house stood old man with two of his sons, who were both tier six magicians. He was Oisin ap Raegan, who was currently tier eight magician.

Yesterday, his two sons returned, telling him that they were thrown out by headmaster of school without receiving any money, so it was obvious that school would keep us as students. But he certainly did not expect that two of us would return of our own will. When his nephew’s son told him about spotting three travelers, two of them being children, he couldn’t believe it. But while we went to old man Keiran’s house, other people have also spotted us.

With current distribution of power in village, every villager told him what they knew.

I stepped out of house followed by Laura, who was shivering bit, and Keiran junior. Unlike us, Laura had some brain in her head and knew quite well what would happen if we actually had to face tier ten magician after all.

Old man inspected us with his eyes, especially my magic rings didn’t escape his gaze. Seeing so many valuable items, greed overcame him. If he was not so used to fact that no one dared to oppose him ever since his daughter married that newcomer, who was apparently disowned from some practitioner family, he would probably think about danger of pissing off someone with support of some wealthy family. But blinded by illusion of power, he failed to see that.

“Little kids, you have some interesting things with you, if I might say. Do you think you could share with old man?” he said mockingly.

“Yeah, I will gladly share.” I said, no longer being able to suppress my anger for what this bastard and that ten tier practitioner did to old man Keiran.

I took out new staff, and without thinking about it twice, I casted my strongest water spell, [Pressure Cutter] while releasing water from ring. Unprepared old man just stood there and was hit by spell. Only in last moment he crouched a bit, which made spell aimed at his upper body hit his throat instead.

The spell easily burned through all his mana and almost beheaded him in an instant. It stopped after reaching about half way into his throat, giving him time to make inarticulate sound as his throat strongly bled and sprayed blood all around, before he collapsed to the ground and struggled over next few seconds, bleeding and continuing to make inarticulate sounds before they faded into silence.

No! I wanted to scream, but no sound escaped my throat. I have too much overestimated him, forgetting how powerful my magic already was. Since when person was hit with a magic spell, amount of mana consumed was not much affected by caster’s soul power, fact that I had no soul power did not matter if enemy didn’t protect himself with magic shield. And since he did not raise shield to his defense, my spell only lost about one fifth of its power on consuming his mana and then hit with him with barely reduced power.

I didn’t want to kill him. At best, I expected I would be able to land scratch on his body, not realizing how strong I became. Instead, I killed him with single spell, shocking everyone present. Some of his blood was even on my face. I, realizing what I have done, finally started screaming, making Oisin’s sons who were probably thinking they were next to die run away. I collapsed onto ground and started scratching my face in useless attempt to rid it of blood, while bit behind me, Laura vomited her lunch. Few people that gathered around before, were now gone.

“Aiken?” I heard familiar voice screaming my name as a distant figure was running towards me. It was uncle Jannon. He suddenly stopped, noticing dead body of old man Oisin.

“Aiken, what happened here?” he asked.

“I killed him, uncle.” I cried. “I killed him.”