Leo telekinetically flew out of the fake vault, giving a whistle as he flew over the cannonball where it had smashed into the stairs down, shattering them and plowing into the earth behind. He put the devastation he had no doubt unleashed onto this world from his mind as he flew through the dust cloud of the cannon attack and out into the open air of Crystal Port.

A battle raged in the skies above the city. Feng led his two soldiers in an assault on the remaining dragons. Each of the two hundred elves carried one of the fifteen-foot lances they had trained with, and a couple stockpiles of replacements had been hidden throughout the city. Even as Leo watched, one red-scaled dragon flew at an elf, breathing flame. That elf briefly screamed and plummeted, but another elf above the fight launched his spear with its huge, overly heavy head. The spear plunged down and slammed into the dragon’s back.

The dragon screeched in agony, but a second later the tip of the spear detonated inside the dragon. A huge spray of blood, scales, and viscera shot into the air, and the dragon keened in pain.

Another one nearby caught a lance in the wing. The lance ripped through but exploded beneath the dragon and metal shards ripped into its wing as well. The dragon tilted sideways and plowed into a building.

A few more elves passed over the downed dragon as it struggled to extricate itself—but for a critical moment it was unmoving, and no less than four of the deadly spears caught it and then exploded.

Leo saw that considerably more spears missed and detonated in the city than hit dragons, and a fair number more elves were dying than the dragons. But as much as it pained Leo to see their deaths, he knew that any ratio of Level Two to Four elves less than twenty to one against the level fifteen to eighteen dragons was a victory. The elves were doing way better than that.

Leo raced in, heading for the red-scaled dragon that had been wounded. The dragon had just enough time to realize it was being attacked by an elf before Moon Fall cleaved its neck to the bone, and the dragon fell from the sky trailing blood. Leo dismissed the one experience point notification with disgust—mere weeks ago it had only taken a couple level eighteen kills to level him each time.

As he pulled up to look for more dragons, he saw Feng with six spears flying alongside him, carried by winds so powerful they held the spears horizontal. The elf flew near a dragon and all six spears slammed into a green-scaled dragon’s side, digging so deep that Leo was pretty sure the dragon was functionally dead before the bombs went off and turned its insides to soup.

Leo and Feng dived together for another dragon, and Leo slashed its face, causing it to rear back in mid-flight with the aid of its Air magic. But halting in midair was barely better than on the ground, and Feng stabbed it deep in its belly just before two more spears from his soldiers hit the dragon and then detonated.

Losing three dragons in as many minutes seemed to be the signal for the remainder of the flight to give it up as a bad job. The last dragons fled, and elves started to give chase.

“Stop!” Leo called—he wasn’t prepared to have ‘his’ soldiers chase after a bunch of dragons and be ambushed or turned on when they didn’t have tools or abilities.

The elves left off chasing the dragons, and instead focused on finishing off the few wyrms left on the ground, who couldn’t escape quickly.

None of the wyrms asked to surrender, choosing to fight till the end. Leo didn’t request anyone offer it—the wyrms were making their choices, and Leo doubted the elves, who had seen homes, friends, and family destroyed before their very eyes, would listen to him on this if he did order them to offer it. Still, he couldn’t help but grimace. His best friend was functionally a wyrm, and he briefly imagined it was Hugh being pierced by exploding lances, and shuddered.

As Leo watched the last of the wyrms die, Feng floated over to him, a giant grin on his face. Normally, Leo would describe Feng’s smile as serene, but now it had more of a ‘shit eating grin’ vibe to it.

Feng bowed in mid-air and did a fancy hand gesture that Leo didn’t understand. “It was extremely expensive, Golden Coin, to buy all the burning potions. But you were right—your magic powder, quite cheap for what it did, multiplied the damage inflicted massively. A formula that should be added to the treatises of alchemy. I’m not sure it’ll replace normal magic items, given the cost, but what a way to defeat decently strong opponents.”

Leo smiled and nodded to Feng, but inside he winced. And there goes a lot of advantage I had. Andul made the cannon, so they’ll need a bit to figure a lot of the implications out, but since they can all fly on this world, they’ve effectively got low-tech mortars now.

Although it’s excellent to know that I’ve got a backup method of making gunpowder if something happens to Stonehaven.

“May I ask something, Golden Coin?” Feng asked.

“You just did,” Leo absently said as he thought about the implications of gunpowder. Will it make building homes into the mountainsides here more common? Or make for easier terrace farm construction?

“What?” Feng’s brow furrowed.

“Permission granted, Azure Blade,” Leo said with a slight roll of his eyes. “You may ask of me anything you wish, knowing of course that the answer may not be as you wish.”

“Of course, Golden Coin,” Feng said. “I would never presume to think that the answers of an august personage such as yourself would be influenced by my own self.”

Leo made a ‘get on with it’ motion with his hand.

“My question is, now that you have proven victorious here, what is your plan?”

“Well, I made three levels,” Leo said. “I need to deal with that. Afterwards I’ll most likely head back to my dimension. I have another war to fight—old enemies came for me and tried to assassinate my queen, and did assassinate my prime minister. I need to see to that.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Feng nodded slowly. “May I, and as many of my men that wish, accompany you? Be a part of your collection, as your daughter so blithely and surprisingly accurately put it?”

Leo blinked. “You want to go back with me?”

Feng bowed slightly, pressing his hands together. “Yes.”

“Hmm… can you just up and leave?” Leo asked. “I mean, you guys seem a touch stiff about that.”

Feng’s smile went back to ‘shit eating grin.’ “Well, about that… it turns out, not normally. But as the only remaining individual of Golden rank, you can release me from service, for the purposes of serving another post. Since you hold rank in our realm, I could simply serve you. And any of my men that desire to do so may stay with the unit.”

“You know that sky elves can’t fly on my world, right?” Leo asked.

“Normally, yes,” Feng said. “But my unit is the elite Air magic sky elves… our magic will allow us to claim the skies in your realm as well. Perhaps without as much agility as we would have remaining in the Empire of the One Land, but against an almost entirely wingless people, I suspect our advantages will be huge.”

A true air force, Leo thought. Technically, Leo’s general Valynrae Belmoria was bonded to two of the sun eagles, and he had quite a few small dragons on the payroll—close to twenty, now. But even a hundred sky elves would be huge.

But the expense would be prohibitive. “It costs about two to three gold for each soldier level two to four. I don’t have that kind of money for a long haul.”

“Could you pay it for a year?” Feng asked.

“Easily,” Leo responded, thinking about the ridiculous treasure they had hauled from the Eighth Vale.

“Perfect. Then hire us for your war. If you want, you can decide to keep us afterwards. But the value of learning at your side will far exceed the danger of war, or any paltry pay, I suspect. Coin is nice, but knowledge worthy of the treatises is priceless.”

Leo nodded, smiling, then bowed back to his newest vassal. “You’ve got a deal, Feng. See who you can gather.”

“Thank you, Golden Coin. How long till we leave?”

“I aim to head out of here within twenty-four hours. I’ll want your help getting all the treasure back to the proper civil authorities, but after that, I’ll want to leave. I have my own nation to see to now that I’ve helped yours and secured trade routes both.”

“It will be as you say,” Feng replied, doing the complicated bow-and-hand thing again.

***

Leo sat at a table surrounded by his adventuring partners. It was a beautiful table in the third story of one of the very few buildings that hadn’t been destroyed by the dragons—an Inn whose name translated as ‘The Rest of the Iridium Flower.’

Leo was almost positive he was missing some context and it made more sense to those that had grown up in the culture.

Hugh took up half the table, drinking from a barrel of beer. Leo and Lily squeezed into one end, and Neha took up the other half because all three of her foxes were on the floor around her. The far end was oddly empty.

It had been a long day after everything, but they were now packed and ready to go, and the town’s magical items had all been returned to it. In a truly macabre practice, the elves had used an Entropy mage to ask all the dead dragons for specific directions to their lairs—so the elves of this town might, possibly, come out ahead of this raid if they could go capture those hoards as well.

But Leo had more immediate concerns. He let out a contended sigh, put the fruit salad down, and said, “Level Twenty-Four. I can’t believe it. I’ve made eight levels in roughly a month, if that. Unreal.”

“Twenty-Five,” Neha and Hugh replied, and “Twenty-Three” Lily came back with. Andul was off fixing both his armor and Zun’s—and Zun was working with him as well as grumpy about missing out on some levels.

“What did you take, Dad? For Level abilities and stats, I mean.” Neha daintily placed a candied nut in her mouth.

“I understood, Sprout. Nothing that interesting is the answer, though. I took the ‘wrapped in magic’ ability for more essence, and because I have a sneaking suspicion it’ll lead to insane abilities later. Then I took Mind affinity, rank IV and V both.”

“You can have a five affinity?” Lily asked, her eyes wide, an apple poised before her mouth but obviously forgotten. “That’s insane. Everything costs you half as much and does fifty percent more damage!”

Leo nodded. “Aye. And speaking of damage, I took all six stat points in Strength. My damage is going up again rather notably between everything.”

“Wow.”

“What did you take my betrothed?” Leo asked, trying to sound a bit gallant.

Neha giggled and Hugh laughed, but Lily beamed at him. “Another tier of aura healing, and then… well…”

As she spoke, everything shifted around them. The food became impossibly delicious, the table was a smooth, beautiful darkwood. Hugh’s scales nearly glowed, and Neha was dressed in a beautiful dress and emerald tiara. The three foxes around her were spruced up as well, Remy appearing even more luxurious and with a glowing crown over his head. The tails of the twin nature foxes gained glowing motes and butterflies around them.

Lily got up and walked to Leo, but Leo’s new sense told him something different. With his telekinetic sight, he saw Lily still in her chair—and no Lily walking toward him. But with his old-fashioned eyeballs, his fiancée approached him, with a touch of sway to her hip. She leaned over and kissed him, and Leo felt the kiss at the same time as he could see nothing was there.

“What the… what is this?” Leo asked, shocked by the two Lily’s in different places.

The Lily near him spoke. “I took the touch enhancement for illusions ability, called ‘kinesthetic sense.’ But this… well, I took an increase to my personal dweomer ability. Within about ten feet of me, everything can look as I wish at all times. And sound as I wish… and smell as I wish. Even feel as I wish. My illusions now cover every one of the senses.”

It doesn’t cover all the senses, Leo thought.

The voice of Lily came from the end of the table, and Leo looked up to see another Lily sitting there—another Lily that didn’t register to his telekinetic sight. “This is my mantle power, Leo. The mantle of illusions. Within range, it’s costless for me, a facet of my existence now.”

Leo nodded. It was impressive—and he could see how it might grow into something insanely powerful.

“Just so you know, hon, it doesn’t beat telekinetic sight yet.”

Everything faded and Lily was sitting in the chair again.

“By Merdrek’s teeth, that was amazing, Lily!” Hugh said, then slurped a huge amount of beer. “Not as amazing as what I’ve got, but still, pretty amazing.”

“Yeah, way to go, Mom,” Neha said.

Lily blushed pink but changed the topic, reaching out to ruffle her new daughter’s vine hair. “What did you take, short, purple, and wooden?”

Hugh looked miffed.

“Well… I took some minor stuff since I can’t take more powerful familiars or more of them yet… Travel affinity, an increased phase damage touch, and increased Toughness in Wyld.”

“You got four levels, so aren’t you actual Level Five now?” Leo asked. “Can’t you take the familiar power?”

Neha smiled, staring at Leo with shining eyes. “Well, I could have, Dad… but I did something I think you’ll like even more. I took Travel crafter instead. I can make Least quality Travel magic items.”

Lily whistled. “Our first Travel crafter—the first I’ve ever heard of in Toth. I mean, least items aren’t much… but still. Wow. I think that’s a bigger accomplishment than my illusion aura, Sprout. Congratulations.”

Neha smiled up at Lily. “Thank you.”

Leo was a bit concerned—he didn’t want Neha making her build to please him. But he’d talk to her about it later. Making Travel magic items was incredible, actually. “That’s extremely cool, Sprout.”

Neha turned to Hugh. “What did you do?”

Hugh snorted. “You know what? It’ll be cooler if I show you. But later. I also made a ton of levels, killed a ton of shit, and did my job great. So it’s ‘get drunk and do Zun’ time. That’s my reward.”

“Never change, Hugh.”