Figuring what she should do was frustrating to her for some reason. That was the main part of her job, back in the Diery county, but this was just…different. Running the county was something she wanted to do. Running after the staff while she figured out how to sneak around was not.

In fact, she was starting to think the latter was not something she could manage. Not if she wanted to make it to the Human Cup in time.

"Ok, I think we need to discuss other options." she said.

"Like trying to communicate with the entire universe instead of the world?" Aasha asked.

Althea turned to her, giving her an unamused look. The girl did not care. In fact, she seemed to take some perverse kind of pleasure in it.

"I just thought doing things at a larger scale was your style."

Oh, it was. But that did not-why was she even debating this? Shaking her head, she turned back to Gramma.

"What do you think?" she asked.

"I could go." Aasha said, not shutting up. Althea's head swerved around, ready to scold her for making a nuisance of herself. Then she caught what the girl had said.

"No, you are too weak." she said, looking towards Gramma.

"Adita is too known in the region to work." Gramma replied, sounding hesitant. "But one of the other hunters could manage."

Althea's smile was more than a little embarrassed as she looked at the old woman, asking her to risk her people's lives to help her. Even though she had done the same thing for them a few days ago, she still felt embarrassed to ask this. The danger had technically been minimal for her. Zhang had been pretty easy to kill.

"I shall make the preparations, though it will take a few days for it to be handled." Gramma replied. "The way you travel is far too conspicuous, I would rather have him go by himself. That way he won’t be associated with any fairy."

Gramma apparently had someone in mind. Althea couldn't exactly refuse waiting for a few days. The delay was still within what she could bear, even if it did make things difficult for her. The journey wasn’t very long if you just compared the distance with her speed, but she expected a rocky journey.

For one, her power was too low to ensure safety. The Eastern part of the continent had been cleared of Adepts thanks to her aunt, but the same could not be said for other parts of it. Even avoiding territories of major sects, she would be traveling through hostile territory.

Gramma had impressed the importance of hiding who she was upon her. The powers of the Southern Continent would not take kindly to her presence. The least hostile would seek to exploit her, while the more aggressive ones would see her as a threat to eliminate.

"I shall work on my cultivation in the meantime." she said, not actually sure what she would be doing. Althea didn’t know where to even begin looking for her Mastery, somehow she didn’t think she would be moving forward with that one.

"Do as you wish." Gramma said, standing up.

"What are you gonna do?" Aasha asked, curious as usual.

"Cultivate." she repeated. "Perhaps you should do the same."

"Oh, I can't. Am a peak Novice already." Aasha replied, flexing her mana outward. Althea had to admit she was a bit surprised by that.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Sixteen."

"That is…young." Althea commented. The old Althea hadn't even been in the middle stages of Novice back then. Aasha was clearly a genius. A genius that might never be able to cultivate because she did not have a suitable manual. Hmm, manuals.

"Can you try cultivating?" she asked, narrowing her eyes. If she could see the mana flow through herself, then she could see mana flow through others. Perhaps that way, she could tell what was going on with the cultivation. Or even make a map of meridians. Even if she still couldn't see them, she would at least be able to use that map to make future manuals.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Aasha started cultivating just like she had asked. Mana entered her, flooding into her through two pathways. The head and the neck. The tip of the spine to be exact. There were only two places that mana entered Aasha's body, and both of the flows headed straight for the core.

Althea tried it on herself, observing her own flow and comparing it with Aasha’s. There was the flow from her head, but not one from the spine. How strange. The spine seemed more prominent in Aasha, the flow was at least three times larger there.

In fact, that gave rise to another interesting thing. How was it that some meridians were larger than the other? Or was that just in those below the Apprentice stage? The manual almost definitely changed stuff, meridian wise. Perhaps it regulated meridian size too.

"Is there somewhere I can find people cultivating? Or sparing? A training ground of some sort?" she asked Aasha.

The girl looked up, halting her cultivation as she answered. "Yes, that way. I will show you."

Althea followed Aasha through the village to the place where she had fought Adita and Grandma when she had first come here. Of course, how had she forgotten? This time, there were quite a few people training.

A bunch of men and women flung themselves at each other, others wrestling as they participated in some sort of combat. That reminded her that she hadn't asked Gramma about working out. But she could do that later, there were more important things she had to do now. Like, see how they used mana.

Althea used her magic to observe two martial artists flinging themselves at each other from a distance, clashing once before retreating. The combat felt strange to her, perhaps they were just having fun. What they were doing did not matter, however, what did matter was that she could see their mana.

A number of meridians supplied their core, more than Aasha but less than her. That still left a large difference. Althea had slightly over a hundred meridians supplying her core. The combatants before her both had just twenty ish.

The woman had twenty-five, while the man had twenty-seven of them. The man, though, also had one very strong one. The spine meridian was seven times larger than others for him, allowing mana to flow quickly into his core.

In terms of pure meridians, he had a great advantage. The advantage wasn't really displayed on the field however, in fact, the woman seemed to be winning. Althea felt that it was just because of her better suited element. The woman's wind element was more useful in such battles than the man's earth one.

This did tell her that not only could meridians have different sizes, but they were also varied in number. Or perhaps it was just the manual. The Druid manual might need hundreds, while others used far fewer.

"Do you know what manuals those two are cultivating?" she asked, checking if her hunch was incorrect.

"Oh, every warrior of the village is cultivating in the martial manual. That is the only manual we can use." Aasha replied.

Althea furrowed her brows. How was it that two people having the same type of manual had different numbers of meridians active?

Looking around, she noticed that most people here had somewhere between twenty and thirty meridians. And she was the only with the mind meridian, the rest had the spine one. That could be a martial artist thing, she would have to verify against other mages.

But it still puzzled her. Did manuals just use a range of meridians then? Why? There had to be some other complication in it.

Althea watched the battles, her frown increasing as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Perhaps she should compare just use of mana. If two people clashed with nearly equal amounts of mana, the one losing was usually…the one with more meridians. The ones with larger meridians seemed to bridge the gap a little, but the ones with more meridians were losing.

That did not make sense, why was more giving rise to less power? And if more was less…what about her?

Althea didn't have twenty meridians, she had a hundred.

sc

Nerusia.

The Empress of Soleria was wondering if she should kill her husband. Oh, she loved him, really. But there were times in a marriage where you really, really wanted to just take a knife and stab him with it. Like when he took way too long to get back from his meeting.

Or when he decided to do it right when she was dealing with a mess. Reigning her temptations down, she strutted back to her office, staring at the glowing orb. And the head laying beside it.

The Sel and Ger Empires had both lost their heads when the Princess had killed a bunch of Adepts. The same bunch of Adepts that one had used to kill the others' talents. Perhaps the young woman did not understand just what she had done, but Nerusia did not have that problem.

The Princess had done something that the Sel Empire had failed to do. And in doing so, she had declared herself a threat. If the Sel Empire did not have any plans to kill her yet, they did now. Nerusia could practically feel the kill teams moving across the continent, even if they hadn't entered her range yet.

And that was without mentioning the political fallout from this. The assassins might have been assassins, but they were still Adepts. The Ger Empire counted them to be weapons, and frankly, so did the Sel Empire.

Nerusia was willing to bet her left hand that the Sel Empire had known the assassin group existed, and used them before. There was no such thing as honor among assassins, and taking hits on both sides was just business.

That also meant that whoever had raised this bunch of idiots was angry that they were suddenly dead. And people with the power to raise assassin groups and make a profit off of them were rarely weak.

Another orb chimed, growing purple, as its owner didn't even bother waiting for her to reply before teleporting over.

"Jon." she stated. "I thought I told you to keep out of my office."

"And I thought I told you to keep your niece in line. I see you still have a habit of ignoring me." The Duke of Zerolia responded, not troubled by her taunts in the slightest.

"What do you want?"

"What do you think?"

"I think you would look good without any flesh on you." she responded, not really meaning it. The Empire needed the Zerolian duchy, especially now.

"And here I thought I had good skin." Jon smirked." But I shall oblige your majesty if that is your wish."

And he'd called her out on her bluff.

Nerusia rolled her eyes. "Why are you here, you overgrown cretin?"

Jon opened his mouth to reply.

"Don't even think about it. I have better things to do than spend the rest of the day arguing with you." she said before he could start again.

"As you wish." Duke Zerolian said. "I wanted to know what you were going to do about our issue."

"What do you think I should do?" she asked, sighing as she stared at the leader of the royal council.

"I am honestly not sure." he said, to her surprise. "The girl's absence complicates things, but it may be to our advantage. The regent she left behind should be easier to control. If we have him force the half-breeds into hiding."

Nerusia winced, realizing that, of all things, the Duke hadn't caught on to this. Did he really not have any spies in the palace?

"I know that you have been helping her train him, so it should be easy enough for you to force-"

Oh, dear. Now she had to decide if she should update him on who Nathan actually was. And she knew that her husband wouldn't support telling him under any condition. The Solerian-Zerolian rivalry was too important to him.

But she knew one thing. The next few months would require a lot of maneuvering if they wanted to come out of it without starting a war. And Duke Zerolian was the best there was at it. At least in the Empire.

"Sit down." she motioned. "I think it's time we had a talk."