Being the second-youngest child to the Aerilian emperor brought immeasurable luxuries and access to the best tutors available. Yet, wherever he looked, Ulian'al always fell short in comparison. Too young to vie for the position of the crown prince, not talented enough in martial arts and battle prowess to measure up to his older sister, not diligent and smart enough to compete against his scholarly half-brother. Not even enjoying the spoiling privileges of the youngest one.

No, Ulian’al was just good enough, and to add insult to injury, on his coming of age ceremony the card his father granted him was a supportive Legendary card called Narlatan’s Burden. An ability capable of transferring injuries between the people under his command, or taking them by himself at a fraction of their power. After reading its description, he came to a conclusion that its fifteen-minute cooldown and restriction preventing its use if the transferred injuries were to be fatal to the recipient, made it bad in comparison to purely offensive or defensive abilities. At least the legendary card from his mother was an offensive one, making up for it.

All that, coupled with a mandatory participation in an invasion hanging over his head like an executioner’s blade, filled Ulian’al’s childhood and teenage years with endless lectures and grueling trainings. The invasion, or New World Integration aptly named by the System, was an event cycling through the ten Quadrants of the wider universe. Each occurrence happened in eight to twelve-year intervals and as such, the invasion repeated roughly once a century.

Due to its importance, the most influential beings of the Quadrants pre-planned their progeny to reach maturity shortly before the invasions, usually waiting multiple decades for the perfect time to conceive their children or adopt their heirs.

For Ulian’al, the announcement triggered a few months after his nineteenth birthday, and the three weeks leading up to his departure were filled with heavy anxiety. For the first time, he had a chance to prove to everyone he was someone who mattered, someone to be respected for more than a royal title.

Normally, it would take years or decades to reach C-grade, but there the whole process was shortened to days or weeks. While his older siblings were making promises and forging alliances with the Aerilian nobility, he negotiated with some less savory contacts he made over the years, and eventually ensured the support of the Gray Phantom.

Unfortunately, everything went wrong from the beginning. Melis'ar, his bookish half-brother, was expected to pick a Shelter somewhere in the middle of nowhere, yet not only did he pick the second-largest city in the Territory, but he also somehow secured the support of the most powerful Archduke in the empire.

This setback made him lose his calm, and commit his first mistake—picking the same city for his invasion.

Having his thoughts clouded by negative emotions, he forced his retinue into early confrontation with the Sector Overlord, but even that somehow proved too slow. His brother took the triumph right from under his nose and retreated back into his Shelter, forcing him to respond with a desperate, all-out assault. Otherwise, his only chance to prove himself was gone right after it began.

Like everything else in this invasion, the assault went poorly. His main attack force was ravaged by an unfathomable twist of Fate and when he sent his best scout to the building from which the Spider attacked, the whole team was crushed by a native working together with his brother.

That was when he saw him for the first time. He just exited the house, giving Ulian'al an opportunity to use his Political Disposition card, which revealed the man’s grade and three important keywords; E⋆, Averse, Inconsequential, Existential.

A simple string of words, yet it crushed the last shreds of his pride to dust. The star indicated a complete evolution, but what scared him much more were the other three words. Averse signified how much the other party was interested in talking with him, Inconsequential revealed how the other party viewed him, and lastly Existential was the evaluation of threat the target posed to him on political scale.

With no hopes of success before him, Ulian'al offered a full surrender and begged his half-brother to accept him into his faction instead of sending him home in shame. Surprisingly, Melis'ar turned out far more sympathetic than Ulian’al expected, and they formed an alliance with only a few conditions.

As shameful as it was to admit, were their positions reversed, he wouldn't have been so forgiving, but the last week was a powerful wake-up call. The natives proved as a cunning species and despite their lack of experience with the System and the cards, some of them adapted to their new circumstances extremely well and that was nothing to the outlier named John Miles.

At first, Ulian'al was apprehensive of his new position and remained mostly passive, but it quickly turned out that Melis’ar’s talents lay in governing and not military leadership. His brother was very efficient at planning the future Sector development, diplomacy, and budgeting, but when it came to leadership, he lacked the necessary decisiveness. Could he have asked his Knight-Protector for help? Probably, but their protectors were discouraged from doing so unless absolutely necessary. It was as much a lifetime opportunity as it was a teaching experience.

Eventually, he took command of the squads during their battle against the hostile faction of the natives, but was worried that Melis’ar would take it as an attempt to undermine his position. To his surprise, his brother praised his success and encouraged him instead.

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This somewhat helped soothe his damaged pride and also cemented his position as a second-in-command for the up-and-coming Sector.

Funnily enough, their first major disagreement happened shortly after, when Melis’ar insisted they need to challenge the Sector Trial before the native leaves the city.

Ulian’al argued that they were not ready and challenging it too early would only lead to subpar rewards, but his brother insisted that having John with them would have a bigger impact than a couple more days of waiting. Melis’ar refused to listen to reason and kept insisting that it was something they had to do until Ulian’al gave up and went with it.

He was annoyed, but decided to make it through and draw the conclusions later. Seeing Melis’ar bestow one of their most precious Epic cards to the native as an incentive to help them also left a bitter feeling in him, but there wasn’t much he could say about that. He was given three unbound Epic cards by their father upon the promotion to Bastion, and distributing them as fit was Melis’ar’s prerogative.

Well, he was glad to be proven wrong. His annoyance and nerves got the better of him, and he made a fool out of himself shortly after they headed out, but after a shameful berating from Friala’el he pulled his act together. The first couple of waves in the Trial went very well, and he had to agree that the native fought surprisingly well. By his early estimate, John was almost comparable to Friala’el in battle prowess.

This estimation warped more and more as he kept revealing how much utility his combat style had and when he casually mentioned his capability of guiding Fate, Ulian’al wasn’t sure what to think. It only got crazier from there and culminated during their battle against the elite C-grade monstrosity.

He got killed roughly a minute into the fight, but even that was enough to realize why Melis’ar insisted on having him present during the Trial. If he was able to grow this powerful in a single week, how much more would he become in a month… a year… or a decade from now? That was a worrisome question, and the fact that the Spider was allowed to leave the city with him bordered on treason. The Archduke Calian’ci and his father had an understanding, but if his daughter’s power was allowed to eclipse the royal bloodline’s he wasn’t sure if there would be anyone able to keep her in check.

Unfortunately, Melis’ar didn’t share the same view and was unwilling to create distrust among his allies. Something Ulian’al had to agree on. If she decided to leave with the native anyway, he wasn’t sure which side would John take in this conflict. The thing he knew for certain, he did not want to be on the other side.

With the trio gone, the rest of them focused on fortifying their position and strengthening their rapidly growing combat force. He took a risk and started integrating the natives into the Aerilian squads and was rewarded with a significant increase in overall effectiveness, alleviating the Aerilian’s greatest weakness. Their numbers were limited, but when they began training and supporting the natives, the number of combat-ready fighters almost tripled overnight.

The following few days passed in relative calm, until the sixth day of the invasion when he returned from an expedition. He went to Melis’ar to announce their success at mapping the surrounding area of the Sector and clearing one of the nearby Nests, but before he got a single word out, he was told something ludicrous.

Apparently, the native not only secured another Bastion right next to the Territory Hierarch, but he also challenged it by himself and walked out as a victor. Because of that, Melis’ar sent out their elites to secure the area and declared that they would challenge the Colosseum in the next day at noon.

His first instinct was to reject it. They were significantly ahead of the projected timeline, but still nowhere near enough to reliably challenge the Hierarch. However, it came to the same situation as the last time, with the exception that the native would either kill the Hierarch for the second time on his own, or he would kill it together with them before the week’s end. Worse yet, the Spider has already reached D-grade and there was no doubt that she did it with all seven attributes, putting him under significant pressure to do the same.

After consulting Friala’el, he realized that he wasn’t the only one worried about it. She wasn’t keen on the Archduke’s family growing in power unchecked, and was willing to follow him into the trial without question, but she warned that she couldn’t guarantee his safety there. With their sealed cards and attributes, she and Duraq'er couldn’t risk staying back and protecting their lieges. On the other hand, if they were to succeed, Ulian’al would be guaranteed to reach D-grade Fate before his second evolution.

Understanding that the attempt was happening no matter what, he once again gave in and decided to trust his brother and the native supporting them. After all, he did make a promise that he would prove to everyone that he was better than just good enough.

Going over the detailed description from the native, he and Melis'ar decided to slightly bend the rules and ask for their Knight-Protectors’ ideas, and together formed the best battle plan they were able to.

After gathering together with the rest of their group, they teleported to the Weaver's Nest, and Ulian'al had to offer the Spider a respectful compliment. Her strategy to establish a new Bastion at the edge of the Sector was a brilliant move, winning the conflict with barely any loss of life and securing undisputed leadership over the new land.

The last stroke of craziness happened shortly before they entered the Colosseum, when the native suddenly remembered he needed to introduce his bond.

A Terasil’ab damned Elevated beast. And the worst part of it? The question Galan'il asked him shortly after.

“John, you didn't feed it your blood, right?” He asked with a small hitch in his voice.

“Ehh, why?” The native shrugged, making it obvious that he indeed did just that. “Would that be a problem?”

“No… no problem at all,” the Spider followed up with a fake smile. “How could feeding your blood to a world-eater be a problem?”

Is it too late to go back home?