Scathach and Cytortia walked out of the auction houses and into the afternoon skies. The young goddess felt tire from the entire ordeal. Beside her, the warrior maid in her furry form lectured her student on the importance of accounting.

"We get the money, right?" Cytortia stretched lazily. "Those pills sold for millions. We are already out of the red!"

Scathach nearly choked on that naivete.

"Didn't Rem lecture you about accounting?" Scathach said. "What happened to investment checking and capital accounting?"

Cytortia cringed.

"Let be honest here. Rem is way better at the job."

"Yeah," Scathach said. "And you are going a great job pushing him to an early grave."

Cytortia stood still for a second. The badger's comment was an understatement. Ever since the Paracis, Rem was walking bag of exhaustion. He often smiled and said everything was fine, but nobody bought it. She admitted Rem was a good liar, but not when he was lying for a selfless reason.

And here she was, complaining about accounting while her friend was moving toward Death's open door.

"Hey," Cytortia said suddenly and quietly. "How do I do the accounting?"

Scathach paused in shock. Then she suddenly felt a familiar presence. The badger looked around the corner in split second of panic.

"What?"

"An old friend," Scathach whispered. "Go to the train. I will catch up with you later."

Cytortia hesitated, but the badger stared sent her away. Scathach waited for a few minutes for Cytortia to fade from her sight before starting a conversation with no one.

"Come out Marley," Scathach said in annoyance. "Your bloody magpie already give you away."

Behind a column to her left, a sandy-hair man in a tattered tunic and worn-out cloaked step out of the shadow. On his shoulder, a tiny Magpie blew a small flute as a sign of greeting.

"Hello, old friend," the man named Marley spoke. "Care for a drink."

...

Phantasia is big enough to contain several Earth. This fact was registered, accepted, and proven. Tragically, this results in one major logistical problems: transportation. People need to move from A to B for society to function, and vast distance suddenly makes societal maintenance much harder.

The answers come in many different shape and size: magical airship, teleportation network, use of machinery, and flying magical creature. Anything that drifts is set to soar is the rule of the game.

Given Horizon Dawn's cash-flow crisis, the great length separating Millain and Northland Forest, and Rem Breaker's immense paranoia about World Enemy watching them from wherever it was that World Enemy set-up their Hobble Telescope. The gang had narrowed down the only method to reach Millian.

Go to the station and take a train.

Hyperchanal was a train which utilizes a series of gateways to shorten travel time. When the train passed through the station's gate, the spell enchanted on the train's body created a time fluctuation, reducing the time for the passenger to reach travel from point A and B.

Essentially, this spell enabled the train to travel at a higher velocity, not by accelerating the vehicle but by creating a bubble of space which moved faster in comparison to the surrounding.

And that setting was where the gang found themselves.

...

It was a peaceful scene.

Rem's face was framed by shadow as he slumbered. It was a guise, a mirage concealing the intense battle erupting in his mind. Through a small miracle and a human's spirit, the boy always emerged in triumph. But every victory came with a price, a price he couldn't afford to pay forever.

Beside him, the elf also slumbered.

And she was also having a conversation.

...

Luxinna never forgot this place.

The balconies of whitewood stood high and suffocating. From above the jade-color light illuminated the court of the elf lords with a sickly green.

The girl crumbled down on all four as the trauma resurface. She was roughly breath, suppressing the urge to throw up with all her might. Unlike that fateful day, there was no elf lord in this place; only a helpless little girl, a trauma, and a golden mist.

A girl walked out of the golden mist.

"A knight who will save everyone," said the voice of a girl. "Are you serious? you can't even save yourself."

Luxinna looked up to find the face of a familiar 10-years-old elf.

"You are me," Luxinna said, blinking in surprise. "Me from back then."

The younger Luxinna sighed.

"No, I am simply the representation of this moment," the younger Luxinna replied, conjuring up a chair, and started looking down on the older version. "I mean, I am certainly not crying for Uncle and Grandpa to save me. Even then, what a bang-up job they did? Well, exile is better than death, I guess."

"Shut up," Luxinna said furiously. "They tried their best."

"I know," younger Luxinna raised her hand in a gesture surrender. "And I am grateful we still have our neck. But what about the elephant in the room: dear old dad."

"H-He have his reason."

"For executing us!?" The younger version threw his hand us. "You must be kidding. I think you already stop deluding yourself when Rem--who is already a better friend than our bloody sister--knocked that fantasy out of you."

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

The girl continued.

"What did dad often say? It is a duty of the chosen to lead those below them. Isn't that sound plain wrong to you? Guess what? It's our family's motto. We all call Mia Alusto an egotistical ass but guess what hon. She's our great-great aunt and Magnolia sure as hell think that bitch is an embodiment of virtue. Our blood is pretty much taint for all eternity."

The younger Luxinna spat to the ground.

"No wonder the Threshold exists," she groaned. "The world might be a whiny ass, but it has a point about keeping power from the hand of egomaniacs."

"What threshold?" Luxinna suddenly felt terrible about that word. "What does any of this even mean? Is this a part of my Mana Core?"

The young girl snorted.

"Yes, this is all about True Magic," the younger Luxinna frowned to the heaven. "You see True Magician isn't like those fancy spell-crafter and cultivator. Those so-call practitioners only stick with the easy stuff, learn some law, trained your physique, maybe do some bit of mental energy honing, and hopefully become powerful to blew up the planet. Us, we don't do those kiddies stuff."

"Kiddies stuff," Luxinna said in a daze. "Are you telling me that my parent arranges marriage and grandma's obsession for a cultivation technique...is all... it all a kiddies stuff."

"Yes, kiddies stuff," the younger girl shrugged. "You can also substitute that useless, pointless, inadequate, and weak."

Luxinna flopped down to the floor with tears in her eyes.

"What did that even mean? How did that even work?"

"Mana stocking is only that, adding more power," the younger Luxinna said. "Same with honing muscle and spirit. You will just be adding more numbers to a stat sheet, but does number sum up everything when you take it outside the context. It will be just a plain number. That's why the World let those knock-off get away with power-piling."

"They don't get away with it! Heavenly Tribulation existed?"

The younger Luxinna face switched from annoy to solemn.

"Lux, do you seriously think the nigh-impotent entity who foresaw all reality in 4 Dimension and know the past, present and all possible futures will only throw few bolts of lightning at a puny crow despite knowing that in a hundred years that bird will go on to defeat it. Instead of lightning and life-endangering phenomenon, why not directly stop it heart or separate the soul into a tiny bitsy little piece and scatter it throughout cosmos. Those 'Heavenly Tribulation' is the universe laughing at how stupid you are and throwing you some more stick and carrot to keep itself entertain by your stupidity."

Luxinna tried to protest, but she couldn't. It made sense. If the universe had the pre-cognition to know who could reach level 10000, why not went with the one-hit-kill when your opponent was an lv 10.

"You mean the reason I was born, my grandmother pursues of the ultimate technique; is a huge joke by the universe?"

"Yeah," younger Luxinna said flatly on that stupid chair. "Pretty funny when you look at it that way."

Luxinna felt a part of her died.

"Then who I am?" Luxinna said in stone-cold shock. "Why am I even born?"

"Finally, you get it," the younger Luxinna cried out, deliberately missing the point. "That is the crux of True Magic. It's not a pursuit of power, but the pursuit of meaning!"

"Meaning?"

"That's right," the young Luxinna excitedly said. "True Magic is an act to replicate the process that created Satholia you know today. It the act of using the power generated by the clashing of the Center and Malice to create a conceptual entity; the Supra Mayaa."

"Supra Mayaa?"

"Yes, that what we called the being like Satholia," younger Luxinna said wistfully. "An entity that is an embodiment of a story. A living concept unbound by any rule. The World Enemy might have the potential to destroy the multiverse, but a Mayaa existed potential. Here is a comparison, you have a glass of water, now how to make it the purest glass of water it can be?"

"Clean the glass."

"How about making the glass cease to exist?" The younger Luxinna raised her eyebrows. "There is nothing purer than emptiness. That is the crux of a Mayaa. You operate out of the matrix that is impossible to quantify. You are as powerful as you need to be. The universe can't deal with that shit, so it tends to collapse when a Mayaa arrived."

"How does this solve my problem?" Luxinna said. "What this has to do with me?"

"Yeah, I am getting to that," the younger Luxinna explained. "Right now, you are rife with conflict; an identity crisis, a traumatic memory, and cluelessness about how you should feel about your family. Those are component you have to overcome, and the decision you made to overcome them is something you made into an ability under your True Magic. Those abilities are called a Legend."

"A Legend," Luxinna repeated. "How does that work?"

"You will know when the time arrives," the younger self-started to fade away. "We will meet again when you are ready, but be warned. The world already learned about True Magic and Supra Mayaa when Satholia ascended. In response to this threat, it placed a Threshold to block your progress if it is not happy with your Legend. The higher you are blessed with natural talent, the tougher the threshold."

Luxinna looked at the fading girl strangely.

"You mean those Mia Alusto's crap dad often sprouted is..."

"...is backfiring on our entire race," The girl faded as she finished the sentence. "Yes, apparently being the bless children of Heaven get you kicks by the world now."

The jade life swallowed the world, but despite that, Luxinna was laughing happily. In spite of all that happened, the fact that Lucian Drakokia got kicked hard by the heaven he praised filled her with euphoria.

...

Scathach and Marley finally had a face-to-face under the shadow of the station.

"No," Scathach said. "Continue dreaming Marley. It will never happen."

"That girl was our best chance," Marley said somberly. A magpie chirped on his shoulder, oblivious to the tense mood.

"If Tie Hua Tianshang is your best chance, you should quit."

Marley facepalmed.

"You never see her fight, Scathach," he said to the Badger. "Her potential surpasses anyone I have ever met. Given time she will bring balance back to Phantasia."

"Then what do you do next?" Scathach said. "Submit to her as our all new overlord."

"She gave freedom to the people," Marley sighed. "Look Scathach. You don't know how bad it is around here."

"As a matter of fact," Scathach said calmly. "I do."

Marley slammed his fist to the wall and glared at the badger in anger. Scathach didn't budge. Her eyes were uncaring. For her, this was another day. People kept praying to god such as her for salvation, but it was not her business to give any.

Their plight was none of her concern.

"You don't even care, do you!?" Marley screamed.

"Yes, I don't," Scathach said. "This is realities, Marley. Injustice happens, people die, and those who do it would get away with it. Accept it and move on."

Marley gritted his teeth.

"That was not the reason I become S-Rank," Marley twitched dangerously in a barely suppressed rage. "Why can't you see it? You, Olympus, Asgard, the gods, how can you be so blind."

With that Marley went on an unstoppable triad.

"Yesterday, the Grand Empire just doubled their slave demand. Do you know where they are getting it?"

"The Mergia Trade Federation or Emma Enterprise," Scathach answered.

"That's it!" Marley asked. "That’s all you have to say! Do you know how many wars were orchestrated to fill that demand? The smaller states are turning to hell! The Demonic Continent's forces are pillaging and raping their way across Solovar. Hundreds of colonies in the buffer state fell to the vampire's attack last week. You know full well what those parasites do to there prisoner."

"I can't take care of one million strangers, Marley," Scathach said. "What I care about is the fact that you have the nerve to ask me to join the Liberator."

"You rather side of the bastard who forces the war refugee to sell themselves to slavery over the person who tries to free them."

"I am not taking any side, Marley," Scathach sighed. "My stance in this is neutral. Without those major power, the world's balance will crumble."

"Hell with the balance!" Marley screamed. "Balance didn't save my father or brought those evil sacks of shit gorging on their golden throne to face justice. Do you want to know why so many people are rallying under Tie Hua?!"

The magpie chirped in panic as Marley's fist slammed into the wall for the second time.

"This is the reason." he ranted resentfully. "While the myriad different factions are burning the world on the back of the powerless, you, the gods, done nothing to stop any of that."

Marley's breathing turned rough.

"Do something Scathach?" he pleaded. "Tie Hua will pull Aurorin to the ground. If you don't pick a side now, the god will go down next. You are my friend, Scathach. Please don't do this."

Scathach closed her eyes and answered.

"I can't. What's happening is not business?"

Scathach left without looking back.

Marley's eyes flashed dangerously, but the fire of rage soon faded to reveal only sadness.

"Where are you going?"

"A vacation," the badger lied.

"Are you using the Hyper Channel?"

"No," she lied again.

"I could shorten the trip you know."

"I don't want your help Marley," Scathach said. "Now go."

Marley left dejectedly.