The dragon roared, the air around her trembling in force and fear. Cerulean water and violet mist rose around her massive form as she flew out of the mountainside, chasing after the interloper.

Her wyvern head adorned a crown of amethyst and sapphires. Her wings glowed like shattered mirrors and her body flooded the sky in a serpentine shadow.

The vine-bearded man, now sitting on the back of a black-winged lion, threw out one magic spell after another to no avail. The tiny fireballs and miasma-spheres plopped like balloons when they made contact with the dragon’s plated scales.

The dragon roared again. Elrhain could see the fury in her eyes.

Manna gathered in waves around the skyspace. The dragon and the lion competed for supremacy. But in less than ten heartbeats, the former dominated the latter in sheer magnitude of violence.

The manna swooped down in waves, as if bowing to the victor as they gave off their neon hues. The brilliant colours consolidated in spirals and settled into a colossal dome of light covering half the mountain ridge.

Elrhain saw a look of panic on the vine-bearded man’s face. The intruder and his winged mount crashed into the dome like a meteor, manna exploding in all directions. It was clear that this charge was their last-ditch effort to escape an enraged mother’s wrath.

But it was futile.

Cyra, the Faediaga Eldress of water, ice and plumes, whipped her crystalline tail faster than Elrhain’s eyes could follow and plummeted the black-winged lion into the forest.

The last thing Elrhain saw before Thundham flew out of range was the lion exploding in a shower of blood and flesh. While Cyra, now back in her dhionne-form, lifted the paralyzed and near-death vine-bearded man up by his neck.

****

「Assassins.」, Elrhain muttered.

He looked out of the window. The raucous voices of many dhionne invaded their room from outside.

The impromptu meeting Thundham had convened raged in full storm.

Eluned cradled him and Agwyn in the dark of the night. The woman was now deeply asleep, but her closed eyes showed signs of distress.

「Assassins.」 Agwyn echoed. 「You were right.」

「I know. Weird. I wish I wasn’t.」

「A lot of dhionne died. Do you think the gheistrum outbreak was planned too?」

「My instincts tell me it was. But how is that possible? No magic can control a manna-riogh like that. At least, according to what we learnt…」

The two fell back into silence.

「I hate being small.」 Agwyn spoke again after ten minutes.

「Cyra was a dragon. Maybe you can turn into one too after cultivating to a higher realm?」

「How long would that take? Ten cycles? Twenty? Mommy is over three hundred! She is older than grandpa!」

Agwyn rolled over, facing Elrhain with clear lilac eyes. 「By the time I am that strong, my butt would be sore red from being a punching bag.」

「It’s not that bad. I am sure the big guy and uncle Morys will toughen the security.」

「They will make us cultivate non-stop. By usual standards, reaching the sky realm before the age of fifty is already remarkable for a supreme talent. I’m not one.」

「Sorry…」

「Why are you apologizing?」

「You already ignited all your nodes. You have to wait longer because of me…」

Agwyn scooted closer, then pecked him on the lips with a whisper. 「Dummy. I will have to wait until I am ten. So you better work hard not to waste more time, alright? 」

Elrhain bobbed his head, and the silence returned, but sleep would not come. The princeling tried counting to a hundred backwards. He meditated, controlled his breath four in seven out.

But his mind’s pesky wandering became unbearable.

「We will still lose.」

「….」

「To those people. I don’t know who they are, but would it make a difference even if I cultivate all the time? Can we stop them from hurting us, harming our subjects? It takes an unreasonable amount of time for me to light one node. It’s not like I don’t try. But manna hates me.」

「I will protect us.」

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「I want to protect you too. But I can’t cultivate. That isn’t my path.」

「What are you thinking?」

Elrhain closed his eyes, then shook his head. He lay there in stifling quietness. The moonlight outside flowed in like milky manna, kissing his distraught face.

Or maybe it was Agwyn again.

「Comprehensive strength.」

Agwyn squeaked in confusion.

「That is what the fishing pole increased. These… assassins, why did they attack now? Today and not wait for a sure-hit moment? 」

Agwyn thought for a while before making a conclusion.

「Everyone thinks we are like little sages. So the enemy wants to snuff out our talents. They investigated our routine and planned an attack. But if so …. 」

Elrhain nodded. 「 It’s too sloppy! I don’t know about the vine-bearded man the slug woman took down. Maybe he was sneaking in early to set traps. His soul magic was potent enough to even fool Cyra. We are lucky that our souls are fucked up. Otherwise, I doubt I could have detected him.」

「Hey!」

「But that woman in white. Her ambush was hasty. As if she capitalized on a sudden chance. We only had Alleigh and Captain Anouk with us today, sure. We also went rather far from our regular routes, visiting the Out-tribals. But we are the clan successors. One oceanic realmer is not enough to guarantee success. 」

「That woman could have acted alone.」Agwyn said. 「And not under the command of a team. So, this was a one in a million golden opportunity for her. The vine-bearded man could be from another faction. 」

「But in that case, the question is how she could predict when the gheistrum outbreak would occur. Shamans are always on the lookout for these things. How could the Out-tribal’s not notice, but the woman in white could? One possibility is that she was the one who triggered it. 」

Agwyn clapped her hands. 「Or, what if the target of the gheistrum outbreak is not us, but someone in the Out-tribal settlement? Another force triggered the outbreak while the woman in white was tailing us. She simply took advantage of the mayhem! 」

Elrhian ruffled his hair in annoyance. 「That doesn’t explain why half the Kiklas came for us. Geez, so many possible scenarios. If there is one hostile force, then they don’t have that many spies they can use. If there are multiple, they are cooperating but each has different objectives. The woman in white, whoever triggered the outbreak, and the vine-bearded man…

In any case, one thing is for sure. One of those objectives is getting rid of us. The woman in white acted on it; the vine-bearded man messed up.」

Agwyn sulked. She grabbed his head by his cheek and turned it her way.

Elrhain blinked, smiling.

「Or maybe I am mistaken. Whatever the case, I don’t want to lose. Annie, do you want to know why dealing with the food problem is first on my list?」

Agwyn shook her head.

「In Earthloch, whether or not cultivator, the dhionne spend the majority of their waking hours either gathering or hunting food like our ancestors of palaeolithic Earth.

Only after filling their stomachs will they spend any surplus energy on other things. Like thinking, innovating, and cultivating.

But nobles aside, most of our servants and freemen are uneducated laymen who merely wish to survive, not thrive.

If they have a calorie left over, they choose to spend that on cultivation, thought and innovation be damned!

Heck, even the big guy spends most of his time outside, putting down gheist hordes. That’s hunting, that’s gathering food. This primitive life binds the chieftain too.」

Elrhain paused to gather his thoughts while Agwyn snuggled into a more comfortable position and echoed her affirmations, indicating she understood.

「Ninety percent of cultivators are brutish warriors. Ninety percent of cultivators mindlessly follow scriptures without further thoughts as to why or how.

After thousands of cycles of cumulative ‘study’ and ‘truth-seeking’, their progress is a pitiful ‘special technique’ that is more destructive.

What a waste of time! What better is that than apes figuring out how to poke beehives with longer sticks?

You know, Earthloch has three hundred thousand cycles of history? That is three million Earth years! That is longer than the entire human race’s advent, starting from when the first human evolved from tree-dwellers to dirt walkers. But look at this, these Earthlochian dhionne, still glorified hunter-gatherers.

The only difference is that they stay in one place, unlike nomads. But I think that’s because of manna-rioghs and other hostile factors.

I also heard the Impelakty is far ahead in technology than us, whether magic or infrastructure, even though they were established about the same time as Earthloch. Same for most other high noble clans.

The Oumental Diuvakty has magic towers that can fly like zeppelins. The small Ruolf Eyrshakty in the south can build ships that sail the void.

And Earthloch can face them head-on with nothing but brute force. But in my opinion, we still lost. They lost long ago when the other high noble clans left them behind in authentic, magical or scientific, progress. While we today are content in the resource-rich mountains and lakes of the north. We don’t even have wheels, for Collective’s sake!

Therefore, grandpa Thundham has been encouraging to train more ‘thinkers’ in the Elder’s rest. He sees what the future will be if we can’t solve these issues from the root, our inevitable defeat as more time passes.

Why could the cold, resource-starved Europe conquer the world? Because of progress.

China, India, Africa. These historically more prosperous kingdoms and empires were toppled over by the unstoppable trend of times that is scientific progress and turned into bread-basket colonies.

That’s why no matter what anyone says, the collapse is a bona fide blessing for Earthloch. It will give the dhionne here not only a chance to progress in personal strength but societal too. It gives us time.

You and me, we are here now. We don’t have to cultivate to be the strongest, not yet.

Starting with food, as long as we reconstruct this society into something far more glorious, to make up for lost time, it will be our win.

The spies, the woman in white, her masters, and however many foes lurk within our people, they know that. If there was no collapse, maybe their masters could invade in full force. Win or not, it will damage Earthloch’s foundation for hundreds of cycles to come.

But now, all they can do is tickle us when we look in the other direction. Poke the sole of our feet with blunt needles because they are too far away.

Earthloch is our Collective now. Slowly, steadily, we can change it for the better. So no matter what happens, we can avert tragedies like today from happening.」

「And the truth?」

「That woman in white fucking spat at me! She looked like I was already a dead thing, that she could kill me whenever she wanted!」

「I don’t want to die so soon either. Ysbail would be sad.」

「I know, right? Who cares if I can cultivate or not. I’d like to see who can threaten us again after every one of our servants and their family’s fish-gremlins are Oceanic realm powerhouses!」

With that, Elrhain huffed. In his previous life, death came before his brain could register it.

It was a painless death. Overcoming it, Elrhain thought it was no big deal.

Today, Elrhain realized, he was terrified of dying. Today, the difference between life and death was just one Talisman Cyra gave him, just one spear that failed to skewer Alleigh’s heart.

Elrhain did not want to die again on another’s terms.