Althea gathered her mana, trying to be discreet as she prepared her spell.

The first to pass by her tree was… Isa. Suppressing a swear, she stopped her spell, hoping no one had been paying attention to the surrounding mana.

This time, her luck did not hold out.

"There’s an assassin in the trees!" a person shouted as Althea unleashed her spell midway through his sentence. A wave of fire launched towards the incoming attackers as she began the second part of her attack. A few of them stood their ground, using Earth shields and their like to resist the flame attack, but many more tried to run.

A bad idea. Althea had raised the ground just behind their feet, making them trip as they turned around, right onto an array of thorns. The thorns weren't big enough to kill them, but they would hurt. And force them to leave so they might recover.

Purple mana flared as escape rings activated, teleporting those grievously injured out of the Hidden Land. With the host of Adept stages waiting outside, it was unlikely anyone would be in any serious danger.

A third of the attackers were gone by the time she landed on the ground.

"Hand over your stuff and leave." she ordered with a smile on her face. The pursuers, of course, did not comply. Fire, ice and stranger attacks made of light and shadow hurled at her as she stepped forward.

Remove the air around to quench the fire. Heat the ice. Shove the others away with pure mana. And then, attack them again. That was her tactic.

This time, the wave of fire did little damage, the people left could counter it easily. Althea didn't have any finishing moves to begin with.

What next? Why it was time to continue.

The attacks continued, coming at her from various directions, quite a few deciding to flee. A very unwise decision. The attacks were barely distracting her, and certainly not enough for her to not take the opportunity to attack them. The Earth opened up, swallowing the wannabee escapees whole as they landed on some more barbs. As expected, they were out of the game.

The other side of the battle was getting a bit boring. Having only one trick up their sleeves seemed to be a fallacy her opponents shared. An over-reliance on the manuals, perhaps? The Diery manual was supposed to be one of the best manuals in existence, and it had given her scant few ways of attacking.

"Are you done?" she asked, pushing down another wave of fire on her foes. This time, she did not withdraw it immediately. There was no gain in fighting more, she would be better off searching for the lake of Alto.

The big guy huddling under a shield of earth grunted in reply as he tried to reinforce his melting shield. Of course, their defenses were waning. Althea sensed at their cultivations, noting that they were mostly in Journeyman 1. The big guy and a petite girl who was trying to cut the fire away with her wind blades were the only two in Journeyman 2. Althea's power, which was nearly in the late stages of Journeyman, was too much for them.

Althea withdrew her attack and looked at them.

"Do you surrender?" she asked.

"What do you want?" the big guy demanded, huffing as he glared at her. The wind blade girl rolled her eyes at him.

"Do you know where the lake of Alto is?" she asked.

"The trees must be protecting it." the wind blade girl said. "I presume you went deeper to investigate? The trees start closing off a kilometer in. There is no way past them. Attacking them is hopeless, it is nearly impossible to damage the trees with our attack."

The girl looked at her quizzingly, probably wondering if Althea's attacks could get through.

Althea had definitely walked for more than a kilometer. But she had gained nothing by the extra effort. Attacking was probably not a good idea. If the trees could defend themselves against so many Journeymen, they were definitely magical. And magical trees might attack them if they got irritated.

"Show me what you have collected, '' she said. "I will see if there is anything I want."

The wind blade girl shrugged and spoiled her spacial bag's contents. Althea had no way of knowing if she was spilling them all, but she hoped she did. There wasn't much to begin with. A few strange fruits with a little mana, a few herbs she recognized as those the half-Elves were growing, and a couple more valuable healing herbs that she had likely gotten from her faction. Althea wasn't interested in any of them.

Turning towards the big guy, she stared at him. A distasteful grunt left his lips as he emptied his bag's contents. A bag, not a spacial artifact. Were spacial artifacts rarer than she thought?

The bag had even less than the girl, which had the wind blade girl smirking.

"The sword is more valuable than anything we have." the big guy pointed out.

"The sword was taken by her retainer, you dummy." the wind blade girl said, shaking her head.

"Yes, precisely," the big guy smirked.

Althea had to take a second and figure out what he meant. The idiot was talking about Isa betraying her for it. There had been instances where a contestant had flipped allegiances to another Empire. But she doubted Isa would do that. That girl was more dedicated to the county than even her.

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"Empty your bags." she ordered the others. To her disappointment, the lot of them did not have a single thing that interested her. Perhaps nothing significant had happened yet.

"Do you three want anything?" she asked her companions, who had decided not to show themselves throughout the battle. Not very loyal off them, but that was to be expected.

"No." A muffled voice said. Althea turned around, noticing their condition for the first time. The trees they were hiding under had been charred by the fight, and their own clothes had not fared too well either.

Rolling her eyes at them, she turned to the crowd that had visibly stunned. The wind blade girl and big guy were still here, but two thirds of those that had survived the battle had run away while she wasn’t paying attention.

"Go." Althea shooed them away as she went off in the direction Isa had gone. Perhaps she knew some interesting places.

The three from the Elemental sect followed behind her, forcing her to slow down to let them catch up.

"Are you going to attack next time?" she asked.

Gerrard raised a finger. "There was no agreement to attack."

Althea hmmed to herself. That was true. Perhaps they thought she wanted to just hide away. Three Journeyman 1 stages would be demolished by that crowd.

"Leave the battles to me." she finally said. "Perhaps I can breakthrough like that."

That worked for her. The three could just…act as moral support.

"If I may ask, your grace, what stage are you in?" Gerard asked, fidgeting nervously. The boy was horrible at hiding his emotions.

"Journeyman 6." Althea was surprised they hadn't sensed it yet. Well, she hadn't been using her full power in those battles.

Gerard gulped. "That means there are only six objects on the island that can help you breakthrough."

"Yes." The island was a hub of magical fruits, herbs, and liquids that could help Journeymen breakthrough. The running theory was that it was a training spot for a sect’s Journeymen. But there was a huge difference in the quality of 'information' needed to breakthrough.

"At least they're all suitable for me to use." she said. "If I had a rarer set of elements, it would be hard to use any of them at all."

"Yes." Hei said. "The Ira river should be easier to find than the Lake of Alto. Now that we have two water users…"

"The volcano will tell us where it is." Sun said. "I suggest we make haste to it when it shows itself.”

"The volcano is one of the most bloody parts of the island."

The volcano erupted every time the island opened, and in its core there was a tree with fruits that would help fire users breakthrough. The bloodiest part of the competition by far. The eruption wasn’t exactly subtle, and there was far too much competition for a single tree.

"Isa is just ahead." she said, interrupting their argument.

The girl was standing on the banks of the river, turning towards them. Journeyman 5, she had broken through.

"Having luck, Isa?" she asked, looking at the river behind her. A river with an overflowing amount of water mana. The Ira river.

"The sword knows it's stuff." Isa said, waving it around.

"Is that the sword in stone?" Hei asked, interrupting them.

Althea swiveled towards him. The sword in stone? There wasn't any chance they were referring to the Arthurian myth, were they?

"Yes." Isa tensed. "I landed on it."

The three from the Elemental sect stared at her. Althea stared at her. Even she didn’t have that kind of luck.

"The sword is known to be hard to find and harder to remove. There are a lot of deaths every time it is found. I do not think anyone succeeded in removing it." Hei said, frowning.

"What's so special about it?" Althea asked, she hadn't heard of this.

"The sword is powerful." Hei said. "Perhaps even an Adept stage weapon. I do not know how your retainer is wielding it, your grace."

Isa shrugged. "This is easier than the other one. And it knows its way around the island."

"The…other one." Gerard almost sounded afraid. Althea just shrugged.

"The Diery armory is well stocked." After ten thousand years, it bloody well should be.

Hei mumbled something under his breath as Althea walked towards the river and bent down.

"The herb isn't growing in here." she said, dipping her hand in the river as she called on her mana, trying to sense where it was growing. A few kilometers down the river.

"Come on, it's this way." she said, gesturing for the others to follow her. Isa could use the herb too, but she was unsure how effective it would be.

Isa looked at her other companions. "Where are you from?"

"The three of us are from the Sel Empire, your ladyship." Gerard said.

"That's in one of the Empires, yes?"

Althea suppressed a laugh. Just about everyone here was from 'one of the Empires', this was an Empire only affair.

"The Sel Empire, yes." Gerard's voice was stressed.

"How come there are three people from a single sect?" Isa asked. Oh, that was a good question.

There was no answer from her other companions.

Althea racked her brain for information regarding the Elemental sect. There was a pitiful little, the sect was a sect that had a whooping four manuals, but a lack of Adept stages. A large sect in sheer number of disciples, it was still counted as one of the weaker Adept stage sects in the Sel Empire.

That was it. The Sel Empire was all the way on the other side of the continent, any information she had on the current state of the war was limited.

Of the seven, now eight Empires, five were involved in the war. The Sel Empire and Norin Empire were on one side. The Ge Empire, Solmer Confederacy and Mesun Syndicate were on the other side.

Althea knew that the Sel Empire had established a lead due to the Merlen kingdom incident, but the lead was small. Twenty Adept stages had been killed, but that could be made up if a half-step Grandmaster stage made a move.

"The information will be known soon enough." Sun shrugged.

"The new powers' alliance tried to land a blow after the fall of Merlen." he continued. "There were too many deaths among the younger generation, pretty much everyone that was going to participate was killed. The three of us were…shoved in to make the numbers."

That did explain the lack of cultivation. Even the Zerolian duchy had a few Journeymen 3 candidates.

"Merlen fell?" she asked.

The three of them stared at her.

"What?"

"I just thought that if anyone, you would-" Sun began.

"The Solmer Confederacy half-step Grandmaster stage made a move." Hei interrupted. "The king killed another twenty Solmer Confederacy Adept stages before dying. And you- I mean your representative, made off with most of the kingdom's remaining citizens. There are rumors that you got the manual too."

Wait a bloody second.

Twenty more Adepts meant the Confederacy lost over fifty Adepts to the King. And now most of said king’s kingdom was in her county.

That…might cause some problems.