The wolf's words echoed in Shen's mind.
Was the Immortal Emperor alive, or had he sent Shen a message through time? Was this wolf an immortal come from ancient times?
This might be a trap of some kind, but Shen doubted it. What would be the purpose, having him reveal he was awake? What could the wolf possibly do to Shen only while he wasn't asleep? He would be more vulnerable in his sleep instead.
He swung his arms and legs widely, and the wolf chuckled—which was a little scary, as it revealed very sharp teeth made of what looked like white crystal.
"Ah, that reaction proves you're the one I'm here to meet. This is fortunate; I thought I would have to wait for the second stage's special ending. Imagine my surprise when I felt a cultivator killing some of my future test subjects and realized it might be the one I was looking for? The system is blocked on this place, so I can't Inspect you, but move a lot if you're Feng Shen."
Shen immediately noticed the wolf was being extra talkative for Shen to better understand what was going on. The beast was a much better teacher than Alice, that was for sure.
Shen kept moving his body.
"Good. Before we get to the message, let me give you good counsel based on what I saw of your fights. Stop overestimating yourself. You lucked out against the Techmages, but you would've died to the Grey Werewolves if I hadn't messed up with my experiments. Find allies; you will need them as you needed when you almost died and when you did die an instant ago. Which brings me to the message."
The wolf stood up, and Shen noticed it was twice his height, occupying almost the entire room.
"I am Achr Vanuugandr, and I speak for the Immortal Emperor of the Eternal Empire." His speech had become solemn.
"Feng Shen, heed this decree. Thrice I shall forbid you. Thrice I shall command you.
"You are not to give up on cultivation. Magic is powerful, but it comes with hidden pitfalls. Your cultivation knowledge shall serve you better.
"You are to find trustworthy allies. The Multiverse Alliance is big and full of schemes, and you cannot survive alone.
"You are not to mention the Eternal Empire or anything related to it to anyone. If you have already revealed it to anyone, request their silence. If they disobey, finish them under my name. This matter is related to the survival of our entire race.
"You are to do your best to join the Primordial Bridge, no matter how long it might take. Once in, do your very best to climb through their ranks.
"You are not to investigate the Eternal Empire or your planet's past. Await further contact.
"You are to live your life to the utmost. Your father sacrificed himself for you. Honor his memory.
"Such are the words of the Immortal Emperor. May his will always be obeyed. May he rule forever. May his Empire be Eternal."
Before Shen had any time to think about what he had heard, everything shook. The room's walls cracked, and some tiny bits fell from the ceiling.
Achr looked up, then laughed widely. "To think my domain was almost broken by the mere collateral damage caused by someone's attack. Alas, the Emperor's plans must come before my own desire for advancement." He turned back to Shen. "When the Shadows I modified malfunctioned, I had to reveal the decoy and have you killed quickly to get your soul here. Fortunately, my experiments with Incarnations went better than the ones with Shadows. Ten Incarnations and three different domains from a single drop of blood essence! That will create waves in the Alliance!"
He then shook his head. "Anyway, the decoy is gone; someone will soon notice you're taking too long to revive. You have no idea what the Immortal Emperor had to give the right people to buy this moment or how much he risks by telling you these things. Don't waste this opportunity by being rebellious, boy. You're at that age, aren't you? Damn human teenagers."
There was a sudden white flash, and then Shen was standing in a wooden hut.
He immediately fell to his knees in pure shock.
The Immortal Emperor was alive. The Eternal Empire still stood.
But his father...
His father was truly gone.
Tears came unbidden and rolled down his face.
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Alvaerelle watched the many screens in front of her when the largest one, which showed the cultivator boy, turned black. Only a single line of red text remained:
SYSTEM BREACH DETECTED (D)
A D-tier breach at the second stage should be impossible. Every trainee, Shadow, and Incarnation were limited to the E-rank with E- stats—and the limiters were placed with a D-tier priority. Only a peak D-rank or stronger could circumvent them.
There was one possibility for someone to break the seal, but that would require them to make a deal with the Void. No one would be stupid enough for that, but even if they were, their base power was too little to matter.
So she had missed something.
'I officially request the second stage's template and execution data,' she mentally sent to the Stage Overseer.
The answer came at once. 'Denied.'
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'I'm requesting it under the Talent Reevaluation Committee's authority,' she insisted. 'A D-tier breach happened to the data feed monitoring one of the talents I had under watch.'
'I'm denying it under the Tutorial Privacy Law, which overrules you,' the Overseer replied.
'We can do it the easy or the hard way, Overseer. I will either willingly get the data from you or request a C-tier priority feed. If I find whatever you're hiding the hard way, there will be consequences.'
'Dry swamp,' the Overseer cursed. 'Alright, I'm sending you the data, but I'm also informing the Dreamer about it.'
Alvaerelle got instant access to all of the second stage's data, and it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. Using prisoners as bosses was frowned upon, which she guessed was why they had hidden it from her, but it was not forbidden. So why—
"Mother Goddess," she mouthed, "the Dreamer betrayed us."
'I did not,' the Dreamer's androgynous voice—surprisingly jovial for a being as old as they—replied in her mind.
She hadn't even felt the mind connection happening, but it was no surprise. She was at the early C rank while they were at the peak of the B rank. It was easier for her to resist the gravitational pull of a black hole than their power.
'I was ordered to let the prisoner be,' the Dreamer continued. 'I resent the fact that you would accuse me of treason.'
"Before anything else," Alvaerelle said, "I request B-tier monitoring priority and official recordings of this conversation." She might be talking to a traitor and would rather he get caught if she was killed.
She would've requested A-tier if she could, but B-tier was her limit, and only because she was talking to a B-rank.
| Monitoring Priority: C → B
The Dreamer sighed in her mind. A being like them had no respiratory system, so it was the translation function at work. 'Was that really necessary?' They asked.
"Someone betrayed us, and I would rather not take any chances," she said firmly. "There's a C-rank prisoner in the second stage. A prisoner who's been taken in for sympathizing with the Void. Later, it was also discovered that she breached the Guardian System on two occasions. Someone knew you would experiment with the Void in here and is using it to help her escape."
Another sigh. 'That's not completely accurate. If the prisoner wanted freedom, she could be gone already. If you had followed the data before accusing me, you would've discovered she was never officially transferred to this tutorial. She just spontaneously materialized in place, and her data just appeared on the prisoner manifest. That means she already had a Contract with the Void when she arrived, which the Integrity Scans instantly detected and reported. It was rather sloppy of the Void to try such an old strategy, if I say so myself. Her helpers in her former prison were identified and placed on the Bounty List. I was ordered to wait and see what she wants here.'
"You're letting a Void Contractee walk free?!" Alvaerelle seldom lost her composure, but she was almost yelling right now. "This is against Alliance Law! I demand her immediate execution!"
'It's not against the law, not really. Or rather, it's a gray area. This is a Pioneer Tutorial, and rules can be bent to an extent. As long as no one reports it, no one will care.'
"I officially request this matter be logged and reported," she said at once.
| Report sent
'Thank you,' the Dreamer said. 'I would have had to waste a lot of time better spent elsewhere for doing what you just did. I owe you one.' There was a pause, and Alvaerelle felt an enormous mana flux in the planet not too distant from her. Then an even larger one. And finally, a third one, followed by the shaking of everything. 'She's gone,' the Dreamer said, panting, then she felt the connection fading.
Alvaerelle guessed the B-rank had spent a lot of willpower to limit his power to the target rather than blowing the whole planet, hence what the system translated as panting.
When she looked back at the screen, it was working again, and Shen was reviving in a safe zone.
She shook her head. So many hands influencing a tutorial couldn't be good for any race. It seemed the lessons learned with the drow had been forgotten.
Alvaerelle idly wondered about what Liya was doing before returning to her job.
----------------------------------------
Liya was running to another village when she saw something she hadn't expected: two orcs standing in her way.
One was a white orc, a shaman then. She wore a nondescript wool robe, but she was a B-rank, so she could be nothing but a High Chieftain in orc culture. She was tall and thin, as most shamans were.
The other she identified as Tuk'Url, the Rising Star's companion. He was red-skinned, meaning the warrior caste, as shown by his thick muscles. Liya had no idea how a pitiful early C-rank could be the Rising Star's sworn brother, but orc politics could be beyond her understanding at times. He was also wearing nondescript clothes.
"I must say," she said while approaching, her spear ready for striking, "of all the things I expected, an assassination was not one of them. Which was silly of me, of course. Your Rising Star betrayed me; it stands to reason you also have no honor."
She was surprised again when Tuk'Url answered, rather than the High Chieftain.
"What? No, no! Lady, calm down and hear us!" He raised his open hands in front of him, palms pointed at her. If he were a shaman, that would be an attack. He was a warrior though, so that was the closest gesture he had to ask for peace. "We got ourselves in a huge misunderstanding. I'm here to explain things."
"What could you possibly say that would explain Uk'Gaar's betrayal? And why is a High Chieftain letting a mere early C-rank like you even speak in their presence at all?"
"Good question!" Tuk'Url said jovially. "You see, lady, I was born a warrior, but I actually have a better brain in my head than skill with weapons. A mind so brilliant, in fact, that it made me instantly realize I should train anyway because that's how orc society is, which brought me to the early C-rank. Your attempted insult is rather a compliment considering how shitty my fighting talent is." She snickered at the "talent" word. " I also quickly identified the best fighter among the ones at my training barracks and befriended him. I didn't think Uk'Gaar would become the Rising Star, but here we are."
"I'm not interested in your life story," Liya interjected.
"I promise I would rather not be talking about my life within range of your famous spear technique if it wasn't important. Really. Uk'Gaar told me the story about how you two met, and I do not believe I could survive even with the High Chieftain's intervention, not at this distance. So, can I continue? Please?"
That answer showed he wasn't lying completely; he was really more intelligent than the average orc. But what really made it for her was to hear an orc say "please." Liya had seen only a few stranger things in the multiverse.
She nodded.
"Thank you, lady. So you see, I like pranking Uk'Gaar. Minor things, like getting him dead drunk and making him donate his blood essence to the Guardian System, which he did. That's how the human boy became his apprentice. He wasn't even aware of it until I told him, which only happened after the boy was marked."
"So? It doesn't change what he did to me."
"Just let me finish, damn it," Tuk'Url said, annoyed, then paled a little when he realized who he was talking to. "So, Uk'Gaar didn't even want to train the boy, so I suggested he send him to you. It would solve his problem and give him a stronger tie to you, lady. Part of my planning mind, you see? But what my genius didn't account for was Uk'Gaar laziness. He used his influence to change the boy's status to your charge as soon as being the boy's master became even slightly inconvenient. All it took was the Talent Reevaluation Committee asking for a visit. You know Uk'Gaar, you know he would do that."
Liya nodded again, though she still didn't see how that changed the betrayal. Tuk'Url was basically admitting to Uk'Gaar's wrongdoings in setting a target on her back for the Cultivators' Association.
"Thing is, we never knew the boy's a cultivator. Not until you came here and started the damn Ritual of Fornication to seek not an orgy with our Rising Star and all of his thirty-seven brothers, but to kill him. You have no fucking idea how orc culture works, do you? Why else would you need to be naked?"
The High Chieftain chuckled.
Liya's jaw dropped open.