She was awake or maybe asleep or perhaps both? She waded through without seeing—through something that she recognized as nothing yet felt like something. She saw, no she felt, no actually she heard. Ah! She was seeing without sight and feeling without touch and hearing without ears. Then everything consolidated into something finally real—or at least something she recognized as such. Around her was a forest, but instead of the vibrant greens and browns that effused out of forests this one had a blanketing blue hue, as though blue filters had been placed on her eyes. Who was she again? S-Sapphire? Yes, she was indeed. What was she doing here? What is this place? The last thing she remembered was dying…. She wasn't dead, was she?

She roamed around this forest to finally stumble upon a human boy bound to a tree trunk with a rope. He was unconscious, and scabs were covering small wounds on his lips and palms. What could have happened? Then she heard the prowls of a beast, which she recognized as a bear, but something was different about this one. Then a thought bubbled up from the depths of her mind and she remembered: this was a Dako-Bear. A bear turned into a monster by mana. She realized that it was stalking the boy, so she bounded on top of her toes and tried to undo the knot on the rope, but as she did so, her hands passed through the rope and consequently through the trunk of the tree. She was incorporeal? How could this be? Was she really dead?

She racked her brain for a solution. Then she noticed the boy's figure began to glow, and his material form started becoming ghostly, granting her sight into a black emptiness, like the darkness of the universe with the form of a human, while veins of light wrapped around this darkness and propagated through all his limbs. Then she noticed that some of those veins were tangled in a messy bunch just at his head. She looked to the beast and saw it starting to pounce at the boy, so she hurried towards the boy's head. She instinctively knew what to do: she needed to untangle the veins of light that bunched up in the boy’s head—meridians that clogged up the proper flow of mana into his brain. She could touch them and undo the knots. At a moment's notice, the world started to slow down (including the vaulting beast) as if the processes of her mind (if she had any in this incorporeal form) somehow sped up to give her time to undo the snarling veins. Immediately, she started undoing the tangled mess of glowing meridians. When she finished undoing the last knot, the world sped up again, and the boy's features returned. Then the boy looked at her briefly, then at the rope, as if wondering why he was in this mess.

The rope that bound him crisply burst into flames; its ashen remains offered no resistance as the boy stood up, weaving to the side, barely dodging the Dako-Bear’s maw that ripped through the trunk and pulled out a huge chunk of the wood. What just happened? She did not know for certain, but did the boy just cast magic? A human? The boy was still looking at her and she looked back. Instead of the eyes of a helpless, hapless human, he now had a fiery gaze, which, rather than indicating inexperience, represented a man who had a depthless knowledge of combat and an inimitable mastery of magic. When the bear turned its attention back to him, its maw soaring in the air towards his direction, he quickly raised his two hands in front of him. Tendrils of light escaped from his hands and began creating a pattern in the air—some angled, others knotted. Then she saw the mana in the air surged into the pattern, weaving through the symbols and finally transforming into the force aspect. A plane of force formed into a rectangular construct in front of the boy, starting from the center and rippling towards its edges.

The bear's teeth pierced through the shield but it did not get through. The boy clicked his tongue, seeming to be disappointed at his magic's performance. The bear's mouth appeared to be stuck as it tried to pull itself free but was failing to its chagrin. The boy took advantage of its plight by pivoting on his heels, rotating around the shield, keeping it intact to hold the bear's mouth in place, and piercing the tip of his sword through the bear's side. The sword reached midway when the Dako-Bear pulled itself free from the force-shield, shattering it. Then it backpedaled, freeing itself from the bite of the boy's sword. Sharp bones then grew from the monster's face.

It wasn’t long before the splinters of bone launched towards the boy. When the bones reached a certain distance from him, they flared up into flames, its ashes merely blown by the wind. Seeing its failure, the bear furiously roared. It sprung from its position, bounding for the boy. The edges of the boy's sword suddenly glowed red hot, searing the beast's flesh as it cut through its head. The beast died, headless. And the boy huffed in triumph.

She would have liked to talk to the boy but couldn't. Then she was suddenly whisked away by a mysterious force. A vortex of light swallowed her and the next thing she knew, she snapped into the body of a girl and woke up.

***

She jerked up from her bed, sweating profusely and huffing as if she had just run a marathon. No matter, this will just resolve…. A surge of foreign memory erupted in her mind—no wait, this was hers but from another lifetime. She was Sapphire Auston, adopted daughter (or at least would-be adopted daughter) of the King of Ethera. She had just successfully rewinded time and would soon start her journey towards the peak of magic—or at least that's how she remembered it to be. About a month from now, she would be adopted by the King of Ethera from among elves more advanced than her. The first time it happened, it was purely by accident. She wasn't supposed to get adopted that day, being still in the preliminary stages of mana-control development. But, lo and behold, when the King came out of the training hall, dejected that he had found no one of interest among the sixteen-year-olds presented for his picking, he chanced upon her, sitting on one of the couches scattered around the living room. The King saw, in his extraordinarily advanced spiritual eyes, that Sapphire was emanating vast amounts of aura that presaged her future potency in magic. At least, that's how the King had described it to her when she pestered him later on for an answer.

Looking at the wall clock in her room, just right above the door, it was already morning. She stood up and changed her nightgown to a more fitting outfit. Walking down the stairs she bumped into her fellow orphan—a hateful, haughty gal that bemoaned everything in the world, including her.

“Fancy seeing you this early in the morning,” the woman sassily provoked. “Bitch.”

Being called bitch somehow made Sapphire prickly, but her long experience had forged her into a good humored elf, eschewing conflict whenever possible and whenever doing so was good.

Instead of an acerbic quip, she offered her a friendly smile.

“Good morning, Saiena,” she blithely greeted.

The woman scoffed.

“You and your toxic facadé. No day is good with you around. Why are you always acting like a goody two shoes? I know you're a caustic bitch inside. So show it. I absolutely despise you. Always doing ‘good deeds’ just to get everyone's attention.”

She… was actually right. In the past—Sapphire meant her other past—she would always try to do good just so she could get Madame's attention, which when earned made her preen herself as the better girl than her peers. Nonetheless, Sapphire was certain—she remembered—that this girl was jealous of her because of her sizable mana reserves of a hundred thousand jiggs. But Saiena had the better mana control, and if she applied herself more rigorously, she was sure Saiena would become a peerless mage. Sapphire guessed it was an infirmity of soul in many to want what they did not have and be blind to the things that they did have.

“Love you too, Saiena,” she jokingly said, smiling, but she meant it too at the same time. Truth wrapped around jocularity.

Saiena merely glowered in return.

“Whatever,” she said, walking down the stairs. “I'm not the one who's in trouble.”

“What do you mean?” Sapphire said warily. “I-I am?” She didn't remember that happening in the previous time she lived through this. Whatever could be the reason?

“Yes, you are, dumbass,” Saiena gibed. “Just get down and find out for yourself.”

When they reached the living room, Saiena veered to the side towards the training hall, probably going to train her mana control. Saiena had not practiced since three days ago (?).... She forgot when the last time Saiena trained, it was a long time ago (for Sapphire, at least). Regardless, Saiena was already so advanced at it that she was exempted from mana-control training.

When Sapphire set foot in the living room, the headmistress, or Madame as they called her, greeted her with a deadpan expression. Uh-oh, if she remembered correctly, that meant she was furious inside.

“You did not come to last night's mana control training, young lady,” She groused.

“I-I didn't?”

Madame put a hand on her hip and raised an eyebrow.

“You didn't,” a moue of discontent formed on her lips. Of course she didn't, she regressed back to that one time when she went to bed early because she was tired from helping take care of the little ones, entirely forgetting the scheduled training. “When I sent one of the gals to fetch you, they came down saying you were fast asleep, and sleep-talking about a human mage or something. Have you gone soft in the head or something, huh, Sapphire? You know far more than anyone how I want my ladies to behave: punctual and responsible. Unlike those ruffians at the male side of this city's Soul-House. You know how much the ones at that orphanage, especially their headmaster, give a bad name to the entire Soul-House branch in this city. You would do well not to emulate their behavior.”

“Yes,” she announced, giving her ascent. “I'll keep that in mind Madame.”

“Oh you damn well should. You know full well that our reputation doesn't stand up to the scrutiny of the folks in this neighborhood, calling us but a cheap imitation of the more successful orphanages that train young talents. That means we're poor, because few sponsors support us; so much so that we need to hook a big sponsor soon or we'll be closing down. That means the more fortunate of you will get picked up by houses slightly better than ours, while others would be left to the streets. And besides, skipping mana control practice just so you could sleep early is a rather poor display of your dedication. Despite your mana reserves, your mana control is horrible. Any respectable mage family would only ever choose you if you were the last orphan in the world. Your only redeeming factor being that you're dedicated, a fact which has been smeared with mud by your actions last night….”

Oh, right. She remembered. This was one of the reasons, aside from vanity, that she strived to please Madame with all the fiber of her being—she was insufferable when she nagged, and when she did, it was never a quick lesson but a protracted lecture. But the tempering of all those years spent mediating conflicts between merchants, as well as intervening in disputes between raucous aristocrats, had molded her into an amicable elf.

After listening patiently to fifteen minutes of irritating lecture, relief washed over her when Madame finally relented.

“I understand it fully well Madame,” Sapphire assured, while Madame eyeballed her carefully. "It won't happen again.”

“It better not be, or else I'll spank your bottom a thousand times more than you'd wish.”

Sapphire shivered at the thought. A thousand spanking would really hurt, but she knew Madame did not have it in her to hurt her charges. She might have been very strict and imposed rules by taking things or activities the girls loved from them as punishment, but she would never hurt a fly.

“I'll be off now, Madame,” Sapphire meekly said. “I'm going to go practice my mana control to make up for the time I lost.”

Madame snorted derisively. “Make sure to use your time well.” She trailed.

Sapphire waited for Madame to dismiss her.

“What are you staring for? shoo!”

Sapphire then bolted towards the training hall.

Once in, she was greeted with a spacious, empty, white room, which wasn't actually empty as Saiena trained on one of the corners, sitting down in a lotus position. Activating her spiritual eyes, Sapphire could see a globe of unaspected mana in front of Saiena, which she dutifully shaped into various forms, those being fish, birds, four-legged animals, and various humanoid shapes. Yeah, she was better than her, and thanks to the reset, the mana control, which she honed through jaw-dropping dedication, had also regressed.

Though mana control wasn't exactly magic as such (all the magical, sentient races agreed), it was nevertheless a necessary, precursory basis towards the real path of magic—defined as being the act of drawing a spell-effect from mana, as well as that very spell-effect. In other words, no mana control, no magic.

She immediately sat down on the floor of the training hall with only the sound of her and Saiena's breathing flooding the room. Training halls for mana-control exercises were specifically sound-proofed so as to allow a mage in training to focus. This was also why such rooms were more commonly called as quiet rooms than training halls, which more accurately captured the idea of what the room represented.

Sapphire closed her eyes, releasing a cloud of mana in front of her and trying as much as she could to form it into a sphere—the very first step to learning mana shaping. Somehow, she envied the human in her dream or was that real? But then again, how could something like that be possible? So a dream then.

He was shaping his mana into thin lines that knotted and curved into various finicky shapes, the sort of mana shaping that could be considered as godly. She knew of no one who could ever pull that off, not even her—the pinnacle of elven magic. But she guessed she should put those thoughts aside and focus on the now, so she trained.

***

Sapphire and five other female elves stood in line inside the quiet room. It had taken her about a month to drastically improve her mana control—and even then it was still sub-par compared to the more advanced girls—thanks to the variety of tricks that she had picked up in her previous lifetime that helped in improving mana shaping in the fraction of the time it usually developed. Some of those tricks she even developed herself to help her students advance far faster than possible. She did not bet on luck this time around. Now, she was part of the picking, alongside Saiena, who, just like last time, advanced fast enough to be included with the sixteen-year-olds despite being about ten-months younger than them—just like her, only, she was about a year younger than the others.

Madame ushered in the first aspirant foster parent—or parents, plural: a married couple who had astonishingly deep eyebags. The man's hands were twitching every now and then, and the woman's eyes were tinted with a shade of red. Sapphire was taught not to judge people by appearances as all of those signs could have indicated many things. One possible explanation was that the woman was suffering from an eye disease that reddened the sclera of the eye. Another could have been that the woman had suffered a backlash from an alchemical failure and its smoke—an irritant—brazenly found its way to her eyes. As for the man, he could have had a physical condition that explained his tic, or it could have been that he was particularly just fond of twitching them out of some habit he formed since his childhood, or some such other numerous reasons. The point was, to provide an overarching impression of the character of a man by discrete (possibly situational) information formed from their appearance was a bad way to judge people.

Although, the act of judging by appearance could be very well justified if a person foresaw possible risk to thinking otherwise—a case in point being the eternal, proverbial warning for kids: “Don’t talk to strangers”. Maybe that's why evolution had developed this instinct in all creatures: to aid in their survival. But the act of superseding that for a good reason, she supposed, was a facility of a higher creature. But… she humored the judgmental urges and thought: They could be doing drugs. But let it slide as just a fanciful, humoring thought, as if Soul-House would allow people like that to adopt.

The two elves briefly paused in front of one of the girls.

“If you were given a chance at power,” the woman began, smiling. “But it means sacrificing an integral part of you, will you jump at the chance?”

Now, that was a strange question. Some cynical part of Sapphire belabored her with thoughts about the possibility that maybe her negative judgment was true, but she still brushed it aside. I trust Madame knows what she's doing.

“I-I don't know how to answer that,” the girl replied, flinching on the spot. “M-maybe?”

The woman shook her head. She moved on to the next girl, namely, Saiena.

“Same question.”

Saiena flashed an evil grin and briefly glanced askance at Sapphire, obviously gloating and smug.

“Would I ever,” she answered. “Especially if it means I could crush my enemies.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Madame visibly winced at her answer, just as all the other girls were unnerved by it.

“She’s the one,” the woman smiled, turning to Madame. “Where do I sign?”

Huh, weird foster parents for a weird girl, with the word weird being a mere euphemism.

“Yes, right,” Madame quickly gained her composure and led the woman and her husband to a table Madame had snuck into the quiet room before this whole thing began. “Please sign here.”

When the whole matter with the paperworks was done, Saiena strode with her new parents and left the room. A few minutes later, a burly elf was ushered in; his unkempt facial hair made him look like a thug, but guessing by Madame's incessant simpering, the man had definitely dropped a huge donation at the outset, probably (actually she knew this as fact) becoming a loyal sponsor by the end. After all, this man was none other than Sorus Auston, King of Ethera. Although relatively young compared to most of the living leaders around the continent, his wisdom was second to none (which did not really reflect his age). If she calculated it right, Sapphire was sure that after the rewind, he should be five hundred and six years old now. A perfect glamor was cast around his facade, preventing the elves in this room, except for her, from connecting their memory of the King's face to his present countenance.

Immediately upon seeing her, the King’s eyes widened, and his mouth fell open. Realizing his reaction, he quickly composed himself, adopting a more serene expression. He walked over to Sapphire and stood before her.

“What's your name, child?”

“Sapphire.”

Her reply was terse because she did not want to clue the man in on the fact that she knew he was the King. Any sign of deferential attitude towards him would tip him off about Sapphire's foreknowledge.

“Do you have anything you like doing?”

The King scratched his beard.

“Studying about magic!” she exclaimed, beaming, and it was also true, considering she had spent all her waking hours in the past poring over tomes and scattered papers (on which she wrote her findings and ideas) to invent new useful items and spells.

“I see…” the King ruminated for a while, putting his hands behind his back. “What’s your ambition?”

“Protecting the nation! Helping it become strong, and helping the common people improve their living conditions.”

The King shook his head.

“Too shallow an ambition, young lady. I need something more concrete.”

Sapphire thought for a while. The King did not ask her this question the last time. Why now? But she resolved on an answer.

“I want to be able to cast magic by the end of the year.”

“That would be about seven months from now.” The King smiled. “Very well, Sapphire. Henceforth you shall be my daughter. I will help you achieve, with all the resources at my disposal, your goal. By the end of this year, you shall be casting magic fit for your level. And the years after that, well, be creative, and I'll help you achieve them all!”

“Thank you, Sir,” she said, grinning widely. “But would you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Not at all,” the king intoned, waving his hand in the air.

“Why did you ask me that specific question?”

“Because,” the King began, folding his arms in front of him. “I've heard you're quite gifted, developing your mana control in a little over a month. Usually people like you are ambitious, some even become so consumed by ambition that they lose track of what they're truly capable of—which is, if I'm being honest, really sub-par. I had to see if you had a more concrete goal in mind, for the future.”

“I see…”

“Um,” Madame cut in, looking apologetic. “I hate to cut your conversation short but the other aspirant foster parents are waiting outside, and I can't really allow this to drag too long, so maybe…” she flinched, “you both can end it here?”

“Oh!” the King fluttered in embarrassment. “Of course, of course. Where are the papers?”

The King and Madame then took care of the paperworks. Afterwards, Sapphire walked out of the Soul-House, tailing his royal patron—her new father.

***

Sapphire spent another month honing her mana control, and when it had reached a decent enough level, her instructor–a very demanding scoffer—decided it was high time for her to really learn magic. Namely, step one: learning how to aspect mana. She should have started—the instructor disclosed—learning how to aspect in the previous month, at least that was how it went for him in his youth.

“When I first started learning to shape my mana,” he bragged. “I learned it at record speed, being already capable of perfectly shaping my mana into anything a month after. Then I learned how to aspect, much too early for my age.” He scanned her snidely, from head to toe. “You, however… sadly, aren't up to par for someone supposedly gifted. What might have caused your spike in growth may just very well be a fluke, or perhaps you blundered onto a technique that speeds up growth purely out of chance. Regardless, you need substantially more than this to be a High Mage at the very least, but I'll make a proper battlemage out of you yet.”

Of course it was about that, it was always about that, wasn't it? Her previous lifetime was littered with mage-instructors that hampered her growth out of fear that she'd overtake them and become High Mage before they could even be included in the roster. What made Sonak different from all her past teachers was the fact that he was on the roster. Another difference was the fact that at least he did teach her something—many few tricks she never got to learn in the past. Maybe he just didn't see her as competition, that's why he was forthcoming, or maybe he was just generous with his talents. Regardless, he was kind of an ass towards her. But she wasn't so prickly as to be so easily affected by that. As to why he was teaching her this time around, and not those cheap masters with few tricks, she blamed her conspicuous growth for that.

She smiled exuberantly.

“I've been waiting for this the whole time!” she exclaimed, startling Sonak, who obviously expected her to be discouraged by his brazen remarks.

“Very well,” Sonak immediately schooled his features, pretending he wasn't affected. “Let's start with the basics. Tell me, what is mana exactly?”

“Mana,” she began, closing her eyes as if in thought, and then opening them as if she decided on an answer, “is the element that we can form into a spell-effect.”

Of course she wasn’t going to reveal she had all the knowledge in the world, hyperbolically speaking (unless it meant all the knowledge that was essential to a High Mage, then it would be the truth), so she decided on a very generic answer which was not exactly right but common enough of an answer that a novice would get away reciting it by rote.

Sonak face-palmed, not bothering to hide his disappointment in her.

“Very generic definition,” Sonak groaned, finally removing his face from his palm. “But no matter, it isn't your fault you weren't taught right. Really, the King should have avoided going to a Soul-House, they're one, if not the worst of all orphanages.”

Sapphire frowned. “I'm listening here you know?”

“That, you are,” the elf arched an eyebrow. “And? Does that mean I should be feeling remorse? No. I'm here to teach you, and if I can help it, make you see how terribly educated you are so that you don't get any ideas of being so far above your peers, just because you sped up your development by two months. Hardly rare if I do say so myself.”

Sapphire rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I get it, I'm not special. Now can we continue?”

Sapphire wanted more than anything else to step out of the room and begin her lesson by herself. After all, she already knew what to do, she only lacked practice. But alas, if she was going to keep the pretense of being just a gifted elf rather than someone with foreknowledge, she needed to stick to the script, she needed to endure re-listening to stuff she already knew.

“Very impatient, young lady.” Sonak smiled, instead of actually getting irate with her. “I expected as much from an obnoxious brat. Okay let me clarify what I mean by generic. Your definition only scratches the barest surface of the truth. The truth is, mana isn't an element. It is purely immaterial; neither matter nor particle. It is, in truth, now don't laugh, possibility devoid of information.” He paused, checking Sapphire for a reaction. When he saw that Sapphire wasn't the least bit affected, he continued. “Oh good, you did not laugh. Most of my students who hear this definition think it's stupid, but it is the truth. But I digress. It is the fact that mana is pure possibility that allows a mage to produce an effect out of it.”

Sapphire raised a hand, and her mentor gestured for her to speak up.

“So that means,” Sapphire began, putting down her hand, “if mana is pure possibility, a spell is nothing more but a constraint to this possibility? So to say it informs it?”

Sonak's eyes widened. His mouth slowly crept into a smile.

“Why, I’ll be damned. You actually understood! Yes, you are perfectly correct. Since mana is pure possibility, to make it into anything, one must constrain it. That is why intent has to be imprinted onto mana when producing a spell. If for example you want a fireball, you have to imagine its form taking shape and imprint it onto the solid and fire aspected mana.”

“Then why,” Sapphire brought forth, tilting her head as if in wonder, “do we see mana as some formless cloud of light when shaping it? And as motes of light when viewed in the air?”

“Oh, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for that,” the man paused, then sagely nodded. “Since mana is an immaterial possibility, we cannot naturally perceive it as it is. Instead, our souls make it look like it's a mass of light. But that is never its true appearance, since it doesn't have any. What we're seeing with our spiritual eyes is just an interpretation our mind makes through the filter of the soul. It is the same with the other senses.”

“So basically, our souls just make it look like that so we can make sense of it?”

“Pretty much.”

The discussion went on for hours, with Sonak and Sapphire exchanging thoughts back and forth.

***

Six months had passed and Sapphire had fully mastered aspecting mana, but not aspecting it to match all the aspects she had learned in her past life. She could only aspect it to the water, cold, solid, and force aspects, at least for now. She was creative enough to use these aspects and their accompanying spells effectively in battle. Her mana reserves had also jumped up by fifty thousand jiggs, giving her a full hundred-fifty-K. By her estimation, her strength should be equivalent to an E-rank adventurer. But that was enough for this case, as she would be fighting sub-par elves—those that grew their talents away from the Kingdom's purview, where only the wealthiest had access to the necessary resources to make a proper mage. Slavers though? They had barely enough money to burn that they had to resort to slaving. Most of the wealth gained from slaving all but went to the pockets of their leaders, the most powerful of whom could only be D-ranks with sizable reserves.

A case had been filed at the guild for a batch of human low-adventurers going missing a year ago. The authorities did not even think twice to just throw the case in the dustbin. The case had only wafted to Sapphire's attention because of an auspicious encounter with a human low-adventurer, whom she happened to meet on one of her wanderings close to Thuruk. She was just asking for directions when the human scoffed at her and told her to die. When she prodded for an answer why he thought so, the man rhapsodized about how the elves had been ignoring a case they filed for missing low-adventurers who were, according to him, most likely caught in a slaver's trap.

Dagnabbit, she was a year too late to stop the kidnappings. The human also told her of a hundred other cases of humans going missing that just couldn't be reported to the guild, with the higher-ups saying the guild only handled guild business.

Anyway, because of that news, she had been tracking down this particular group of slavers for a while now. They were using the old ‘wagon and swift-horses’, probably to avoid tripping the wires of suspicious humans by the sight of self-motioned vehicles (selmoves for short). After three days of tracking, she finally found their camp, situated at a ravine with a thin, flowing stream.

She estimated their numbers to be about four dozen. It would be extremely dangerous to take on that many elves at the same time, even if they're weak. She needed a plan. A while later, she was herding a herd of skeeps towards the slavers’ camp. There were about seventy five of them, all stage-3—dangerous enough for her purposes. She chose the skeeps because they were mostly cowards, fearful of any creature they deemed more powerful than themselves; at the same time, when roused to panic, they would often bite and ram anyone nearby.

She looked at one of the skeeps, a herbivorous ovine with a wood-like hide and three powerful horns jutting from its head. No matter how much she looked at them, she couldn't help but feel they were sublime, namely, elegant in their form. She shook her head. Focus. She needed to focus. One small group of skounds started to deviate from the others. She immediately casted a whirling mass of water, splashing the area ahead of the separating skeeps, causing them to buck back. A few more splashes and Sapphire successfully guided the strays back to the group.

When they arrived at the camp, she casted a water wip, whipping the skeeps with it—until they were charging madly at the elves. She wasn't left alone, however, as five skeeps shifted to attack her. She quickly pointed her palms to the ground and released a rush of water, pushing her up by the pressure, and catapulting her towards the center of the camp. She slowly descended by, again, blasting high-pressure water to the ground, freeing her from her pursuers as the five skeeps found new victims to ram into. She barely moved her head when she saw an elf running after her, screaming something; “Die you bitch!” she might have heard, or maybe not.

A shower of dust descended upon Sapphire's vision, preventing her from seeing. But she activated her spiritual eyes quickly enough to see light congealing around her feet. She jumped at the right moment, realizing after, that the ground where her feet had been had now become a pit of quicksand. She turned her attention back to the charging elf. He was now sporting a rocky gauntlet, racing towards her, ready to crush. She simply bent back to allow the gauntleted fist to pass by her, and then grabbed his arm. Cold and water mana started coiling around the elf's arm, and then suddenly, it started to frost, and her attacker cried in pain. There might have been two ways to produce ice—either combining the water aspect with cold or solid aspects—but there was only one way to produce frost, by combining cold and water mana, and that shit hurt like hell. The elf jerked backwards rubbing his reddened upper arm.

“We didn't attack you! What have we done to deserve this raid?”

Sapphire smiled. “What have the slaves done to deserve your cruelty?”

The elf's eyes focused beyond Sapphire, causing his face to twitch a bit. Ah! A geyser of water erupted from behind Sapphire, hurling the furtive elf behind her up into the air, who eventually fell down with a loud thud. The elf writhed in pain for a while. Sapphire used that time to fling spheres of ice at the elven leader who deftly dodged her constructs.

The elven leader then flung spikes of rocks towards her, which she blocked by erecting a thick ice barrier. A flurry of movement at her side caught her attention, and she dodged backwards. Burning balls of solid fire innocuously passed by her. Then tendrils of water began creeping from the ground, which successfully slithered around the two elves who had casted those fireballs. The tentacles of water froze after they had completely wrapped around the elves.

The elves fell down while crying in pain from the frostbites that they should have definitely incurred from the attack. Before she could return her attention back to the leader, however, rocks, shaped like fists, struck her at the side, throwing her to the direction where the two frozen elves laid down on the ground. She howled from the throbbing pain her injury caused—that would definitely leave a mark. She turned to see that the attack had come from the leader, so she made a dash for him and summoned two ice spikes, which floated around her like planets in their orbits. She launched one spike to the leader, which he adroitly dodged. She sent another spike and he blocked it with his gauntlet.

The elf then sought to maul Sapphire's face by punching her with his gauntleted fist, but she was quick enough to blast a powerful stream of water under his arm, redirecting his attack upwards. With a swift motion, Sapphire grew ice nails on her fingers and impaled the leader. Blood trickled down from the wounds, and the elf backpedaled.

“Bull crap!” He cried, caressing the wound at his side. “You virtue-signaling, goody-two-shoes! Always gloating at the fact that you are supposedly more elf than the dregs like us that just want to make a living!”

“By enthralling other people?”

“Humans are scum! You know that!”

“Apparently I don't!”

“They are… all of them. A human killed my brother despite all the help he gave them!”

Sapphire gave the man a blank look, but uttered no word. The man seemed to take her silence as a sign to continue talking because he did proceed.

“He was a healer, and took care of the lowest of the low—and yes, including humans. He would often go to Thuruk on medical missions where he helped cure and nurse the sick. Growing up, his kindness had been what I desired to emulate. I wanted to be a healer too, then it happened….”

The elf wiped tears from his eyes.

“One day, a human patient struck a knife into my brother's chest when he was least suspecting it! The blade cut through his heart and he was dying faster than he could heal—worse, the human kept stabbing him again and again. The reason? Because the 'patient’ was actually a herbalist who envied my brother. They are all violent scums, it's written in their genes. We have to keep culling them or else they'd multiply too fast for us to control! Humans are freaking low-lives!”

Okay wow, that was hard to unpack. Sapphire commiserated with the elf, but even while he talked, shackles of eyes clamped down around his wrists when he least suspected it.

The elf looked baffled, as if he had expected for Sapphire to understand his plight and then simply release him.

“W… why?” he asked dolefully. “Didn't you hear what I've said?”

“I did.” She tersely replied. “But bad things happening to you doesn't justify you doing bad things to others.”

The life in the elf's eyes drained away. Sapphire proceeded to defeat and restrain the rest of the slavers’ band. It was easy to do while they were preoccupied fighting the skeeps. She discovered by interrogating them that, aside from the fact that their organization had been active for five years and had no plans of stopping, they virtually had no idea what's going on at the top of their organization. They just did what they were told and then went on their merry way. But she did get the names of the one's at the top, so she proceeded to trail behind those other groups whose leaders are in on the secrets of the slavers’ guild (as they called themselves).

She first struck at this group who had captured a fresh batch of slaves. It was hard to lure them into a trap so that they wouldn't get any ideas of holding the slaves hostage. Sapphire spent an ungodly amount of hours trying to chip away at their numbers slowly, waiting for when any of them separated from the rest, such as when they took a piss. By her seventh victim, the leader became suspicious of why the others were not returning, so he sent a search party for them. Thank goodness he was too cautious for his own good and actually sent most of his underlings for the search, leaving only three at the camp. The search party broke into five groups with five members. She slowly whittled down their number by attacking each group clandestinely, leaving the group with the leader for last. When she got to the leader's team, she restrained him and offed the rest, then went after the three elves left to guard the captured slaves. Once she finished them off, she released the slaves, who thanked her endlessly and bounded like hares towards the direction of Thuruk. Then she interrogated the leader, but since he was a tough nut to crack, she had no choice but to do him in, lest he alarm the other slavers’ squads.

She went on for five more raids until she struck gold—a slaver who was high enough in the bureaucratic ladder, but at the same time fearful of death, that he spilled everything down to the last dregs.

Apparently they truly had been in operation for only five years, but they had recently been ramping up their game because of a recent deal that they had struck with an unknown organization—which only the Archmaster of the slavers’ guild knew—about eleven months ago. Apparently, their contract stipulated that all the slaves the guild would catch after the signing of the contract would all be sold to this mysterious organization in exchange for a hefty sum.

Odd. What organization paid so much for their slaves? No matter, Sapphire would delve deeper into this conspiracy soon enough. What she needs to do now is return home and report to the King.

***

“So you're saying,” King Sorus brought forth, brushing his beard with his hand, “that recently, these slavers are working for this shady organization?”

“Indeed, Your Majesty.” Sapphire matched the King's pace, as they ambled towards the meeting room. Sapphire had just walked up to the King as he marched towards some meeting the Noble Council had organized. “I reckon, they have successfully delivered about two thousand slaves by now.”

“Where exactly is this organization operating? Because if it's in Kirisal then maybe it's connected to their recent aggressive behavior towards Ethera? They've been demanding concessions for trade these past few months—concessions that one-sidedly benefit them and put us at a severe loss.”

“What?” Sapphire exclaimed. “Kirisal's being aggressive? This can't be, why this early?”

“What ‘early’ are you talking about, lass?” The King asked, giving Sapphire a concerned and suspicious look.

“A-ah, nothing. I was just surprised. One would think Kirisal would be the last country to resort to irrational demands, given their wealth with all their monopoly on petrolisiom in the continent.”

“Exactly,” the King eyeballed her, still seemingly suspicious of her. Then he walked forward, leaving her behind. “Anyway, look into this shady organization for me. I have a feeling it's all connected, somehow.”