"Well, this has been a productive session, but I think that's enough for now," I finally called an end.

"Really? But I still haven't Awakened Strength and Agility," Zolast argued.

"It's clearly not working," I answered. "Maybe I should give you a bodybuilding regimen, to make you understand the physical abilities better."

"Actually—" Zolast started, but I interrupted him again.

"You have already Awakened Perception, Resilience, Concealment, and Wisdom," I countered. "And you don't even have any points on Resilience and Concealment. I think Strength and Agility can wait until we get you to level up a few times. You don't need them."

He looked like he wanted to argue for a moment. Then, after a second, he sighed, suppressing his excitement. "You're right," he said. "We have already achieved enough miracles today."

"Well, I still need to find a way to copy the trick of conveying the sensation through my Charisma before I call it a miracle," I said. "Think of just how strong Launara would be with a fully Awakened set of stats."

"Don't tell me that. I'm really tempted to steal her to be my apprentice. With those stats, and my training, she would only need five years to turn into the greatest mage in the land."

I shrugged. "We need an expert at creating weapons far more than we need a second master mage. We don't have the luxury of spending years to train her."

"True," Zolast said.

"By the way, when will the dungeon open?" I asked.

"Soon, why—" Zolast said, before remembering a very important detail. "You removed your skill."

"Yes, and that means I can finally go for a dungeon run."

"Finally," Zolast answered. "I was getting bored of collecting Experience for you."

I shrugged. "I doubt I can spend all day, but I'm sure that with my speed, it's still achieable."

"Certainly, especially since I don't have to worry about the mana build-up with you inside," he said. I looked at him questioningly. "Most of the time, dungeons work under capacity, because the more mana there is, higher the chance of creating stronger mana monsters. That rarely helps the people in the dungeon."

"How strong are we talking?"

"Around the power of a Lord Beast," he said.

"Just that?" I scoffed. "I was expecting something more dangerous."

"Not everyone can take down a Lord Beast in seconds, mister Hero," Zolast grumbled.

"Well, I heard there's some kind of holy crusader around that can do that as well," I said, snickering.

"You annoying bastard," Zolast said with a sigh. I didn't take his tone personally. It was just that he was still frustrated about stopping the Awakening training halfway. I understood his feelings. Unfortunately, the landscape was transforming continuously, and we needed to act fast.

The younglings were developing nicely, but there were a lot of things that could only be done by the two of us.

"By the way, I finally got permission to visit Oniphia," he said as he threw a small pouch at me. In there, there was two magical identity plates, one for the knight identity, and one for the Fekar identity.

"No plate for the assassin identity?" I joked, which earned a chuckle.

"Are you going to visit there now?" Zolast asked.

"Probably not," I answered. "With the gift from Somaton, we don't need high-ranking skills. And it looks like Launara is going to handle our high-end weapon requirement soon enough. There's simply nothing urgent to do. I would rather stick around to see what Somaton would do."

"Is there no chance they just accept that their gambit failed?" Zolast said.

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"No," I said. "I have met the man. He is too entitled not to take his failure in the negotiations personally. He was absolutely sure that he had read me correctly."

"How about this: He might assume that I used my rank to alter the deal," Zolast said.

I shrugged. "I don't think he'll care about the details. He's going to retaliate … and I would rather find exactly what he was doing. Also, I want to hunt more."

Zolast chuckled. "I never thought that there would come a day I would say that, but we have enough Lord Beast meat to see us through for a long while."

"There's no harm in having some safety margin. And, some ability stones might be useful. We need to find some good ones for Kyrll."

"Really? I didn't realize that you liked the kid."

"Well, I did not until he had just made a huge personal sacrifice to save your ass," I said.

Zolast laughed. "It was unnecessary."

"Yes, but he didn't know that. It's earned him a lot of points. And, if you can train him to care about the commoners more than the stupid traditions, I might even develop a liking for him."

He chuckled again. "Really, you want me to be his tutor as well?"

"You're his guildmaster. His training is your responsibility," I declared as I departed, leaving him alone.

I wanted to go to the last point I had seen the flying castle of Somaton, but I didn't start moving immediately. First, I walked around the town, visited both casinos, checked on Mahruss, and made sure the new guards were handling the transition well.

I didn't see any problems, not that I expected any. Zolast was a capable leader, and Mahruss was developing nicely. A few routine patrols were not something that would challenge them.

The trip was not a waste though. First, it was a chance to show my presence around town, giving the spies a chance to report that I was back. And, since my Speed was still a secret, no one would suspect me if an agent of Somaton experienced an unfortunate accident and fell into the sea.

More importantly, it allowed me to check the headquarters of the Night Blades without making it look like I was checking them. It was inconvenient, but they still had their base in town. Kicking them out and taking away their dungeon quota was a legal mess.

Meaning, unless something changed radically, the enemy would have a base in the middle of the town.

Inconvenient.

Still, whatever was keeping Somatons from immediately taking revenge for our immediate betrayal, it must be important. I wanted to discover it. To sabotage it, if possible, but for now, just having a rough timeline would be enough.

Here I was, hoping that things would calm down once I had successfully faked my death.

Still, even as we were potentially facing a kingdom, I wasn't scared, for several reasons. Facing a kingdom sounded intimidating, but ultimately, we were far away from their borders, and the amount of power they could project without starting a proper war had limits.

With Zolast in place, I had no genuine fear about the security of the town. His performance in the first cultist ambush already showed how formidable he was when he had time to set up wards. He just had a few hours, and a couple crates worth of mana stones then.

He had months to reinforce Town Yoentia now.

During that battle, he didn't have his Life Elevation, which put him at a significant disadvantage. Now, not only had he received that important Ability again, but he had also received it in its fully upgraded form, meaning his stats just tripled in effectiveness. Even more, considering the effectiveness of our latest Awakening trick.

One last advantage was the young duke joining our guild, which technically made Zolast his superior. It was not exactly a simple situation — certainly nowhere near Baron Maell's declaration of fealty that gave us full control of Town Maell — but it was simple enough as far as the town security was concerned.

Zolast explained to me how he had already taken command of the wards in my absence and started upgrading them openly.

With all of this combined, I didn't fear any military operation, up to the point of one or two flying castles attacking. It might be different if the numbers were even higher, or it was a full-fledged flying fortress … but they wouldn't have bothered trying to make us betray the young duke if they could just casually attack using those.

No, the actual threats came from covert operations. Fortunately, after my close call with the mana bomb, Zolast had put appropriate measures to prevent such a ham-fisted approach from working.

Unfortunately, that still left problems such as ambushes and assassins, which were our weakest spot. Karak was a good scout, but he had his limits, especially since I was asking him to split his attention between multiple locations.

Which was the reason I was running toward the sea once more. As my experience — during the fateful day that had triggered the current mess — showed, trying to avoid assassinations at the last step didn't work forever. Eventually, a mistake was inevitable.

I would have a far better chance to prevent them by following it to the root.

I was already planning several ways of doing so as I reached the shore, and started swimming … only to hit an unwelcome snag. Their castle was not in the same place. The inconvenience of flying castles.

"I hate flying bases," I murmured after almost an hour of searching, during which I had managed to cover a great expanse of the sea, but failed to find their location even with my Perception. Luckily, it was not exactly a waste, as I had killed six Lord Beasts in the process.

Even as I dragged them to a temporary storage cave, I contacted Zolast, asking him to use his other identity to question the Princess about their location. Not the most ideal solution, which was the reason I didn't want to use it as anything but a last resort.

Ultimately, while small, it was still a favor, and someday, it would require payment.

Zolast said that he would check it, and I continued hunting … but, when I received the answer, about half an hour later, I didn't care about the implications of the favor.

The Somaton forces were at the breach, attacking the princess and the Ralum military!