In every high-level awakened’s life, there were times when it was easy to succumb to the temptation of being overly eager to get results. The world was full of various methods of making extracting information a lot faster and easier. When it came to music, not even pain was involved. With enough practice, one could make the target of the interrogation willingly share every last detail and even be grateful for it. And that was without mixing it with magic.

When it came to Dallion, he was careful not to abuse such methods. For one thing, he didn’t want a repeat of what had happened during his battle of the Star. Back then, thousands of birds, animals, and insects had been sacrificed in order to grant him an advantage in combat. It had served him well, though was also a reason for the void’s effect on him to grow. The void had been purged for some time now, but the lesson had remained with Dallion for life.

“The information is useless,” the copyette said, still maintaining Cleric’s appearance. “The archbishop will see things before you do them.”

“He doesn’t seem to have seen this.”

“Hasn’t he?” Cleric smirked.

“Why didn’t you go north or south?” Dallion pressed on, using his music skills to directly affect the copyette’s thoughts. Combining it with magic allowed the music to come into contact directly with the being’s subconscious.

“The north was out of bounds,” Cleric said. “The archbishop sent scouts to the south every hundred years or so, but we never stayed. I think it holds too many painful memories.”

“How old are you?”

“We’re all the same age. Just as your emperor.”

“When were you unbanished?” Dallion clarified.

“It’s been a while. After the fall of the dyads. There are many a lot older than me, but I’m old enough to remember the rise of the empire.”

That put him at about a thousand years old. Quite a lot, everything considered. But given some of the other players, he was no more than a newborn pup.

“How come you didn’t cover the globe in all that time?”

“It was never our goal to cover the globe. Citadel and monasteries were only built where they were needed. We started expanding three hundred years ago.”

“Why?”

“In response to the empire. As it gained strength, so did others. The archbishop knew that it was only a matter of time before all powers became concentrated in a few rulers. And he was right.”

The explanation was very well thought out and definitely logical, but it was also a complete lie. Even the copyette suspected so—Dallion could tell by the emotional fluctuations floating within Cleric’s body like tiny bubbles. There was another reason that had pushed the archbishop into sending off his Order to roam the world; possibly the same that made him start moving his island throughout the ocean.

“And yet you never went north,” Dallion noted.

“North was not our concern. The west was.”

That was true. Based on everything Cleric has said so far, the progress to the nest had been the most cumbersome of all. With most of the non-human races there, the Order had a much more difficult time establishing a local presence. While they wholeheartedly accepted any person willing to join, awakened or not, the non-human races remained cautious, only joining in exceedingly small numbers. Gorgons, furies, and even dwarves were more likely to avoid monasteries, let alone shrines and citadels. It didn’t help that their awakening rate was far less than that of humans, so they couldn’t even use the services of awakening altars.

Dallion looked at the aether globe of the world. There were several large land patches not “occupied” by the order.

“What about the ocean?”

“There never was any concern with that,” the copyette replied.

“Even now?”

“Even now.”

It seemed that there was some sort of arrangement between Tiallia and the archbishop. Maybe she was still indented to him for the advice he had provided millennia ago. Then again, the Order was in an unspoken arrangement with each of the other three major players. Even Dallion hadn’t gone into an all-out war, although there was no telling whether that would change in the near future. He knew better than anyone that he was only one alliance away from getting attacked from all sides.

“You should have joined the order when I offered,” Cleric said, correctly interpreting Dallion’s silence as the end of the interrogation. “It would have been a lot better for everyone, yourself included.”

“Maybe.” Dallion ended the spell binding the copyette. “But then, I would never have married.”

Dallion glanced at the door. There were fifty-seven other members of the Order within the citadel. No doubt all of them had felt the shift of the domain. There was a good chance a few of them might try something radical.

“You can have your shrine back.” Dallion stopped using his music skills. “Tell the archbishop to move them out of my domain if he wants to remain on the sidelines.”

“That was it?” Cleric appeared confused.

“You told me everything I needed to know. Everything else depends on his reaction.”

“I’d tell you you’re playing a dangerous game, but you already know that.”

“At what point does it stop being a game?” Dallion asked, and ventured back into the awakening realm of the Nerosal.

AREA AWAKENING

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“Veil,” he said, aware there was a good chance the archbishop was listening in. “Tell everyone to be at the ready.”

What did you do this time? The overseer sighed.

“Nothing for now, but if what I’m thinking is correct, there’s a chance rockets will start flying down soon.”

Rockets… There was a time when the only thing I was worried was being swallowed by the Star or some chainling. You’ve brought danger to a whole new level.

“Beats hunting boars, right?”

Very funny. The prolonged pause suggested that Veil was more amused than he wanted to let on. I’ll tell Eury and let har handle things. Anything else?

“No. Yeah….”

At that stage already? I guess it comes with married life.

“Tell her not to worry. I’ll be back soon.” Of course, that was as long as everything worked out fine.

Dallion floated through the wilderness until he reached the edge of his domain. Then, he returned to the real world and continued on west, flying.

The number of cloud forts in the area had significantly increased, most of them crimson. With the nymphs retaking the coast from the Alliance of Stone and Steal, it was normal for there to be a gathering of troops on the new boundaries. Yet, even so, there were a few no-man zones that neither side showed interest in. Those were deserts and mountainous terrains that made even the standard barren wilderness feel welcoming.

While flying, Dallion carefully examined the terrain below, searching for magic anomalies: vortexes, magic thread clusters, spots without magic altogether. Everything seemed as it should be… well, almost everything. The magic at the vortex fields remained in flux. It wasn’t enough to cause any harm, but the magic threads remained in constant flux, attaching and detaching at random, as if they were living beings. If a rogue mage wished to hide from the Academy, this would be the perfect spot.

“Gleam,” Dallion summoned the spectral shardfly. “Feel any illusions.”

No, but there could be a city here and I still wouldn’t be able to say for certain.

“That bad?”

Again, it depends. I might get lucky, but after what you pulled off, it would be decades before the place settled down. The shardfly fluttered closer to the ground. Searching for anything particular?

“If a magic rocket hit here, how long would the magic take to settle?” Dallion wondered.

Depends on the mess it causes.

The fallen south had been hit by something powerful, and despite the chaos, the terrain had recovered. Dallion hadn’t been there recently, definitely not since his awakened and magic levels were boosted to their current states. Still, he doubted that was the place he was searching for. The Order had been keeping an eye on it, if Cleric was to be believed. Yet, there was one spot that Dallion knew of, which had suffered almost as much, a place that remained uninhabited to this day, whose name was enough to terrify anyone aware of the destructive power of large magic rockets—the Glass Mounts.

The surrounding area had been sparsely populated way back when Dallion had visited the place as a junior hunter. Now, it was completely deserted. War and fear had driven the local inhabitants to seek shelter elsewhere, and fail to find it by the looks of it. Trade roots that used to be full of caravans had remained unused for months, while the monsters of the wilderness had vastly increased. None of them dared take on Dallion at his current level. Even from the air he could sense them run and hide. There was one structure among the vastness of glass that had remained very much unchanged—the lodgings of the retired dwarf hunter.

Out of caution, Dallion landed several miles from the structure.

Freezing winds blew, having no effect on him whatsoever. A thick mesh of magic threads had already covered him, protecting him from any temperature fluctuations. That wasn’t the reason that Dallion had done it, though. The layer of protection was meant exclusively for combat.

Gripping the hilt of his harpsisword tightly, he slowly made his way towards the glass building. As he got within twenty feet, the door swung open, just as it had back when he, Jiroh, and Euryale had approached. Back then, they were seeking information regarding the fury’s home—the cloud bastion. This time, the question would be of a very different nature.

“I knew you’d be back,” the dwarf said, all traces of his previous accent gone.

Dallion could now see layers of illusion magic covering none other than a human. The complexity far exceeded anything Dallion had seen even back at the Academy. There could be little doubt that this was the doing of humanity’s greatest mage, possibly rivaling Tiallia in skills. What was more, a thin layer of shimmering light also surrounded the man—he was an otherworlder.

“Took you a lot longer than I thought,” the man slid a finger along his chest, ripping away the many layers of illusion. The new person was remarkably average. Dark-haired with dull brown eyes, and a face with sharp features that could be defined as handsome, though not exceptional, the man gave off the vibes of an influencer. At six-point-two, he was a lot shorter than the image of the Tamin Emperor, wearing simple, though comfortable hunter clothes. Each of them had been leveled up to the absolute limit, though retaining their original material.

JEREMY LAYNE

Traits

- AWAKENING: 132

- BODY: 107

- MIND: 98

- REACTION: 111

- PERCEPTION: 108

- EMPATHY: 37

- MAGIC: 186

Sills:

- ATTACK: 100

- GUARD: 100

- ACROBATICS: 100

- ATHLETICS: 100

- FORGING: 100

- ARTS: 100

- CARVING: 100

- SCHOLAR: 100

- MUSIC: 100

- HERBALISM: 100

- ZOOLOGY: 100

- SPELLCRAFT: 100

“Jeremy,” Dallion whispered.

“Saint Jeremy,” the other corrected. “But I believe that was long before your time, back when the Order meant a thing. It’s annoying how fast things get corrupted. Give it a few centuries and even the best ideals get bent.”

“You left an aether echo running the empire all this time.”

The unusual aether glow, the reason he spent so much time isolated, even the impossible feats the entity in the capital had achieved, could be explained with this. Adzorg’s claim that the emperor had managed to escape a prison item in seconds was utterly false. The emperor had done nothing of the sort. He had simply ended the existence of the echo within the realm and created a new one in the real world again. Everything else was smoke and mirrors.

“The only way I could be certain that my orders would be followed. Of course, the last one had gotten a bit rebellious. All of them do at one point or another. I guess all that power that I put in goes to their head. That’s why I have to replace them every so often.”

“Who knows?”

“Other than you and Simon?” Jeremy scratched his chin. “A few might suspect, but only Alien knows for certain. When I found him, I still believed that Earthlings could fix the problems of this world. Now I know that they can’t. Only a Moon has that power, and each era can only have one Moon.”

Dallion stood there, saying nothing.

“Afraid I might kill you?” Jeremy smiled.

“You won’t.” Dallion chased out any thoughts of fear from his consciousness. “You don’t want to risk anyone finding the real you.”

The smile on the other’s face quickly disappeared.