The Kingdom of Couatl is the one facing the worst tides. In part that’s because their border to the Summersweald is by far the longest out of all the kingdoms, in part it’s because they have the most aggressive policy of expansion into the wealds, earning the harshest reprisal.

  Then again, they are the richest kingdom exactly because of their militant policies.

  — Excerpt from Around the Empire in Two Years

  Day 212, 5:01 AM

  Nine loops with Barb were great training. I had grown both as a spell scribe and as a person. My biggest achievement was not strangling the asshole outright once in well over four moons I spent enduring his presence.

  But that was about to change today. No, I wasn’t gonna strangle him; I was going for a loop that would stick. I entered the guild for the first time, again, and had Dolorna fetch the twerp.

  “What now?!” Barb complained for the tenth time.

  “Greetings guildmaster. I would like to take the entrance exam, and I’m willing to pay the first realm manarium crystal required by the guild rules.”

  I stood straight, hands clasped behind my back and generally doing my best to project a professional aura, which would in hindsight make me a serious, well-informed candidate. But the immediate effect I was going for at the moment was different - an auditor.

  Barb stopped dead in his tracks. He was a petty, corrupt man, and as such he considered his interests and dangers to them first and foremost, and when encountering a potentially dangerous entity, he acted with caution.

  “Yes, well, Dolorna will come here and fill in your registration and escort you to the testing room where I will be waiting. I will see you shortly.”

  The man was confused, and Dolorna didn’t seem quite sure how to proceed, but she did as the guildmaster had said and took my information. As she did so, she eyed me with more than professional interest, and while I ignored her, I didn’t mind her attention. What little I had learned of her seemed to hint that she was a decent human being, unlike Barb.

  “Follow me,” she said with a smile and a flutter of her eyelashes.

  I returned the smile, but frankly, I was getting tired of the place, just wanting to get things over with and relax a bit. I let it bleed into my smile and eyes, to let her know just how hard I’m trying to act courteous. Unexpectedly, her smile broadened. Damn charisma.

  I deserve a break. Maybe I could get another massage? My muscles don’t really need it anymore, but my soul craves it.

  Dolorna led me into a brightly lit corridor and then into the testing room, where Barb explained the rules of the test. He had used nearly identical words ten times already, and I was certain he was quoting a manual or something.

  Then, I laid my hand on the handle, and directed my mana into it. It wasn’t a surge or a wave, but a hair-thin thread, which drilled through the familiar pathways, always keeping to the center and never missing a turn, not wasting an iota of mana.

  Two minutes later, the first crystal lit up; by the ninth, all three were glowing, and Barb was busy having a heart attack.

  “I—” he struggled for words, “I’ve never seen anything like that. How?”

  A great question, Barb had explained to me that to prevent cheating, the test changed daily and depending on the realm of the one who took it. No sane human could’ve gotten familiar with it on account of that randomness, and even Barb admitted that after giving it his all and taking the test multiple times his best time was forty-five minutes.

  Barb before me didn’t know he had already told me all that. He had never even seen me before, but that was fine. My disdain for him transcended time.

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  “It was an easy test,” I said nonchalantly. “The next should be the runes?”

  “Right, right.” Barb went through them all, and I naturally knew the answers to all his questions. He even added an obscure rune at the end, but I had read through the entire library and with my memory, it was no different from the rest.

  “Congratulations. Where did you come from?” He clenched his jaw. The question must have slipped past his self-control.

  “I was the townlord of Hailstown, a small town closer to the border. I recently stepped down from the position and decided to see the world.”

  The light of recognition flashed in his eyes. I’ve been quite the big piece in the rumor mill as of late, and he just realized I was no auditor, nor a wealthy heir, but a broke wanderer. The shit.

  “You gave an admirable performance, and you have earned your expert’s badge. However, you need to work a lot and improve your craft. I’m willing to take you in as an apprentice, if you’re interested.”

  I was about to tell him no when I realized I could kill several birds with one stone.

  “Thank you for your generous offer, but I’m not interested in employment.” His eye twitched at that. “But, I’m assuming you have heard of me and my fondness for little bets.”

  He hadn’t, since my fondness for bets ended with my days as a pit fighter, but that didn’t stop him from nodding confidently. He just assumed I was telling the truth.

  “And what kind of bet are you proposing?” he asked carefully.

  “A straight-up duel, me a low third realm mageknight against you, a peak fourth realm mage. Seems fair in my book.”

  “And what are we betting?” Barb was interested. The hypothetical fight was a lot of things, but fair wasn’t one of them.

  “If you win, I will work for you for free for one year.” That got his attention, but left the question of what I wanted from him. “And if I win, you teach me a spell seal I don’t know.”

  “Deal!” I expected him to consider it for a second, but there was little to consider.

  His empowered mage mind had already focused on two facts. First - there was no way a third realm mageknight could defeat a mage at the peak of the fourth realm. Second - teaching a freshly initiated spell scribe a new seal they don’t know was beyond trivial.

  The fact that I planned to whoop his ass for being a pain and a scumbag didn’t even register as a possibility. A level in the mageknight class I would get out of it was just a bonus.

  The giddy guildmaster led the way towards a private gymnasium inside the guild. Generally, it was used as a proving ground to test spell seals, but the vast reinforced space doubled well as an arena.

  As expected, Barb didn’t offer me a free move on account of my lower realm, nor any other advantage. He would make a half-decent villain with his deviousness and lack of moral qualms.

  “Ready?” he asked at least.

  After I nodded, six tendrils of water mana burst around him, swiftly materializing into thick, ten-foot-long tentacles suitable for offense and defense. At the third layer of the third realm, the reach of my magic was supposed to be three feet, but thanks to my finesse, it was close to four. And while Batsy III had a length of seven feet, its effective range was around eight feet, taking into account the length of my arms.

  Still, I wasn’t overly worried, though, and started the engine inside my realm, all my mana types passing through the complex conversion spell seal, making the type I needed. He outclassed me in mana quantity by more than three times, and the quality he had at his disposal was supposed to be much higher than mine, which thanks to my skills was as wrong as could be.

  Expert Mana Purity purified my mana by an entire realm or damn close to it, and with Initial Overbearing Mana, I would overwhelm him in a single shot.

  I charged towards him, and the tentacles were ready, dancing and weaving in front of him. My skin tingled from the wrong side, a feeling I didn’t even know you could have, but when you had so much electricity crackling through you it wasn’t surprising.

  I reached him, but instead of hitting him, I jumped to the side, dodging the tentacle slamming at me faster than a third realm mageknight could move. Barb made up for his body’s lack with his magic, a clever trick.

  The tentacle slammed into the floor with a boom, and I struck. Now, I could have struck air, letting the lightning travel through it, but given air’s poor conductivity, I struck the tentacle itself.

  A lightning’s worth of electricity slammed into the water, following it to its source, lighting up the entire room, and I swear I saw something I thought happened only in cartoons. Barb’s body lit up, and like an x-ray, I could see his entire skeleton.

  Water burst into steam, and the smoking man fell to the ground, twitching from random sparks.

  For a moment, I was afraid I had killed him, but then he coughed, rolling onto his back so he could breathe.

  “Should we continue?” I asked with an impassive voice, but he weakly waved his hand.

  “My loss.” Smoke came out of his mouth, and for some reason I still had an urge to kick him while he was down, but I held myself back. I wasn’t that petty.

  At least not at that moment. A level-up notification had appeared.