The Tidebreaker kingdom is the only one bordering a sea. The watery expanse is just as treacherous as it is endless. Exploring it is a fool’s errand because there’s nothing to take cover behind, aquatic saurians will spot you and eat you.

  Make sure not to wander beyond the safe zones established by the royal family and their retainers.

  — Excerpt from Around the Empire in Two Years

  Day 212, 5:00 AM

  It had been a week since I parted ways with Newstar, myself at the third layer of the third realm, the youth in high layers of the second. I’ve taken the break to spend quality time in Thunderbluff. Even if the city was a springboard to a better future and likely a place, I would never visit once I left it, getting to know people, getting on their good sides and seeing whether I could learn anything else from them was definitely worth it.

  I indulged myself, but not overly. Instead of staying at the best inn, I went to the third best, which was still at least a four-star hotel by my standards. Adventurers’ guild existed as an option, but I preferred to spend a bit extra to give off an air of style, but not enough to seem wasteful.

  I ate fine meals every other day, inviting people I was familiar with. Except the citylord. I hated that bitch for some inexplicable reason. The chat with healer Fivesnake went especially well. The man thanked me for paying two hundred and thirty years’ worth of taxes for his institution in advance without a hint of sycophancy, never mentioning anything else, or hinting at other problems.

  I liked the man’s integrity and honesty, but there was a limit to what I could do for him. He also brought up the soup kitchen I had funded. He confessed that it might have even been more cost-effective for his clinic to start it a long time ago. The simple act considerably lessened the influx of patients, easing the workload and allowing for better care for the remaining ones.

  It was nice finding out my pocket change was helping make many lives better, and I was grateful Fivesnake didn’t pollute the feeling by acting weird. After a week of posturing and strengthening connections, it was time for grinding.

  I headed over to the scribes’ guild and, after a polite knock, entered the guild’s main hall.

  “Greetings, I am Dandelion, and I would like to take the guild entrance exam right now. I am willing to pay for a private examination.”

  In previous loops, I didn’t join the snobby guild because they only accepted mages and mageknights, which I wasn’t. So, it was time for the grind to become the bestest scribe around, and it all started by joining the guild.

  “Please wait, sir,” the clerk said before she fetched the guildmaster Barb.

  The short, skinny curmudgeon was another person in Thunderbluff I disliked. For one, he had gotten into intense arguments with him in one loop while insisting to take the test without being a mage, on the other, the man took unreasonably large bribes just to let him peruse their library.

  “What now?!” Barb growled with his usual cheery personality. Like I had interrupted his ascension to the sixth realm when he was probably reading a random tome if not taking a nap.

  “I would like to take the entrance exam.”

  “That would be a third realm manarium piece. Go and wait for your turn like the others and come back in six weeks.”

  The fee was a first realm manarium piece, but I had no intention of arguing with him, when I would get a full reimbursement in two weeks. I just tossed the manarium piece at him. He gaped at it, then cleared his throat.

  “Follow me.” He led the way and opened a door leading into a dark corridor. Neither of us had trouble seeing, so he didn’t turn on the light, probably skimping on mana, so he could claim it later. It seemed tiny, but by pinching a bit here and a bit there from the maintenance seals, he could earn himself quite the profit every year. Especially since these lights were the kind that should be on all the time.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  I didn’t say anything as he took the second door to the left and entered another dark room. In this one, however, he did turn on the light, and for the first time I saw the device for testing scribes’ guild applicants. The chamber itself was narrow, barely wider than the corridor. An intricate maze-like relief covered the entire right wall, while bookshelves lined the opposite one.

  I scanned the titles, committing them to my photographic memory, before answering guildmaster Barb’s question.

  “I’m at the third layer of the third realm.”

  “Age?”

  “Too old to keep track of. Under one hundred and twenty.”

  The man snorted, but didn’t comment. Instead, he focused on the testing device.

  “To pass the exam, you need to hold this handle and run your mana through this three-dimensional maze. Simply flooding it won’t work. You have to shape your mana into fine threads and search for the correct path. Luck plays a certain part in completing the task, but it’s negligible. You will pass no matter how long you take. You shouldn’t waste much mana if you can properly manipulate and withdraw the energy you invest in searching the proper path. If you can’t, the maze will devour your mana.

  “Your goal is to light the gems by coursing mana through them. If you light the yellow gem, you pass as an initiate. If you light yellow and red, you will pass as an apprentice, and if you light all three, you will be eligible for a journeyman test. I generally don’t have to be here, but since you’re paying already, I might as well stay.”

  Barb turned around and went towards a bookshelf. “You may begin.”

  I took the handle, identifying the metal as an alloy of gold and silver, but that wasn’t all. It craved mana, making it more conductive than just plain old electrum. And since it craved it so much, I fed it. My mana entered the void space, expanding and ballooning, filling the metal.

  Now, my mana reserve was prodigious. With eight elements and their improvements to my realm, I wielded more than twice the norm for my realm and layer. And yet, the metal handle was sucking it up rapidly.

  I need to shape it into a fine thread. I had never successfully manipulated mana outside my body, not in this world anyway, but the action was familiar, something I had done to wreak havoc and heal with equal expertise. Mana in the Eternal Light empire was more rigid, fragile, and difficult to control, so I quickly gave up.

  Given the tool before me, maybe I had made a mistake. Mana was subtle and obedient in the special metal I was exploring. Touching the edge of the metal wire wilted the entire thread of mana, snatching it from me.

  The sneaky theft wasn’t anything I couldn’t live without, but it irked me. So, I didn’t touch the walls. I explored the wire until I reached a fork. Unlike the usual forks, this one was three-dimensional, one wire leading up, the other right.

  Right choice was always right unless when it wasn’t, so I went with the right wire. Another fork, another right choice, then a three-way split, again, I followed the rightmost option until I touched the edge of the wire, and the damn thing stole my mana again.

  I hit a dead end, but half my mana thread had wilted, so I retracted it and started over. Systematically, I explored the maze, the threads of my mana sometimes looping over each other, merging and forming quicker paths while eliminating what was basically waste.

  The exploration went on for hours until I found something that wasn’t electrum wire. Yellow light hit my closed eyelids, and I opened them. After who knows how much time, I lit up a single gem.

  “Giving up?” Barb asked, but I didn’t let it break my concentration.

  “I can go on for a while longer.”

  “You’ve been at it for two hours, and your focus is obviously great, since you can talk with me and keep your eyes open while still controlling your mana. Have you been exploring the entire maze?”

  I was getting tired. Every moment I maintained the thread of mana took a bit more out of my mental capacity. Still, I wasn’t in a hurry. This loop obviously won’t be a keeper. No way am I letting the shrill-voiced twig extort a third realm manarium piece from me.

  “Is this entire thing a spell seal?” I asked, suddenly considering the idea of three-dimensional seal formations, but even as a thought experiment, I was certain the flows of energy would interfere with each other unless I spent centuries optimizing them. And that level of madness honestly wasn’t worth it.

  “You could consider it one, I suppose, since it fits the definition - it has a constant shape, it has a purpose, and it hosts mana to achieve the said purpose. But no, it isn’t in the sense where you want it to achieve a phenomenon other than wasting the testee’s mana. You can view it as a giant, poorly made circuit, which could feed a real spell seal with mana.”

  Barb paused. “And your focus really is incredible if you’re able to follow all that while holding your mana so firmly under your control. Ah, there it goes.”

  The yellow crystal winked out, my mana thread collapsed, and the test was over.

  “Welcome to the guild, Novice. You can go over to the counter and fill out the paperwork.”