Liù darted up and into the canopy above, her little wings fluttering in the air and her face scrunched up in effort and worry. Ishrin, meanwhile, was more preoccupied by the buildup of magic he felt to his side, where Lisette had placed herself right between him and the angry farmer.

He felt the mana coalescing into a spell, then a yell.

“Lisette!”

It was Melina.

The buildup of magic changed. Ishrin did not know what spell Lisette was about to unleash, but he didn’t need to be told twice about what was going on. With a quick dash, pushing his weak Tier 1 body to its limit, he dove to the side and out of the way.

Then, he looked up and gave the signal.

“Now!”

A new sun was born.

From far above the treeline, a miniature nova came into being and a beam of magic slammed into the earth like Albert’s judgement itself. The raw mana pouring in from the elemental plane of light that Liù could access, however briefly, exploded on contact with the solid matter of the ground, turning water into steam and rock into lava.

The overpressure from the explosion was terrifying. Trees were flattened, stone was upturned, and every single one of the people present was flung out of the way and into the thick of the vegetation. The glade, where they had been experimenting all day, and most of the group of trees that surrounded it, was suddenly no more.

A fire erupted, and the roar of the displaced wind would have been wild, Ishrin guessed, if he could still hear. Instead, a loud ring filled his head and he felt something thick and warm pour down his ears. His eardrums were gone, but he had no time to worry about it.

As soon as his vision stopped spinning he got up to his feet, and assessed the situation. Already a shield had appeared around him, taking most of his mana with it, and another Tier 1 was being prepared. A mana needle, the strongest thing he could think of that wouldn’t leave him completely drained. He trained it against the two women.

“…!” Melina yelled. He couldn’t hear her, and the dust was too thick to read her lips.

“…” beside her, Lisette was shrugging dirt off her leather armor, looking singed but unharmed.

Melina shook her head at her and said something unintelligible, then broke into a run. Ishrin was about to skewer her when he saw her run towards the farmer, who was on the ground in a pool of blood. She poured something into his mouth that stopped the bleeding. Could he even hurt her if he tried? His magic was more powerful than its tier would suggest, but a Tier 1 mana needle becoming Tier 3 still couldn’t hurt the Tier 6 woman. Even a single rank was a gulf in power, ever wider the higher one got in cultivation. Three ranks was a gap that was impossible to bridge.

I’m out of here. Liù, come back to me.

The pixie obeyed, and soon the two of them were running out of the little hill of trees. Signs of the pixie’s Tier 8 devastation were visible even from hundreds of meters of distance.

Ishrin circled back and entered the vegetation from a different point, a new spell erasing his presence. It wouldn’t be much use against Melina’s sight if she was looking right at him – it was not invisibility and heat and mana signatures were still a problem – but the foxgirl must have assumed he had run away. She would never expect him to be in the last place he would ever want to be.

He crouched, channeling some mana to heal his eardrums. Barely a trickle, he couldn’t spare much, although the sharp pain coming from his left arm and the way the elbow was bent at a bad angle were a very tempting thing to expend more of his limited mana on. He grit his teeth. His life was worth some pain.

He inched forward, trying to listen to the conversation. It helped that they were all yelling after the explosion had damaged their hearing.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The scene that played itself before his eyes was surreal. The farmer, whom he had assumed was in it with Melina, was desperately trying to slash at her with his bent and mangled farming tools. The blades, rusty and almost useless before the explosion and now barely recognizable, bounced against her reinforced skin. This didn’t deter the farmer, who kicked her, punched her, and even spit at her.

All the while the guild master did her best to prevent a very, very angry Lisette from cutting the man to ribbons.

What’s going on here?

He did not move. Perhaps this was all a farce. But the more he waited and watched Melina patiently try to explain something to the farmer, at times even bowing and making peace gestures, the more he thought he might have misread the whole debacle.

“I’ll give you enough money to live like a king.” He heard her say as the ringing slowly disappeared.

“I don’t care about your money, vile woman. You have torn my land apart and almost killed me! I do not care that you are adventurers. You are pillagers!”

“Please,” the guild master said patiently, looking behind her and seeing Lisette basically growling at the man. She gestured at her to stay put, trying to hide it from the farmer. Who, in turn, did not care about rank disparity at all.

The man saw her try to communicate with Lisette and did not take it well.

“You are talking amongst yourselves even now!” The man spat. “Wretched—”

“Listen.” Lisette said, monotone. “If you don’t stop verbally abusing the guild master right now, I will behead you.”

Everyone stopped in their tracks. Melina’s mouth hung open. Lisette looked mildly uncomfortable. The farmer was stunned. There had been something in her tone of voice that spelled finality. Mentioning that Melina was the guild master had barely registered.

The moment passed. “You will not.” He spat, as color returned to his complexion and life to his voice. “You came here, tore up my place, and now threaten me? I will file a formal complaint, see if she’s the master or if it’s yet another lie.”

Melina was clearly panicking. “There’s no need,” she said. “I am the master. Here.”

She gave him something, perhaps some sort of identification. While Ishrin could not see it clearly, he could feel the magic from here. Apparently, even the Tier 0 farmer could. There was some more unintelligible conversation between the two, followed by a heated debate.

Ishrin looked at Liù. Good job with the beam. If you had killed them, we would have been soooo fucked.

The pixie chimed happily. She had no idea just how close they had come to a complete mess. What they had obtained instead was just a partial mess.

Ishrin waited until the farmer was gone before he emerged from the bush.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he said with his hands up, palms facing forward. “I might have misread the situation.”

“You don’t say???” Melina practically screamed at him.

Lisette was looking pale as a sheet. Perhaps it was her color, but her deep red eyes were darting to Ishrin and to Melina, Ishrin and Melina. She mustn’t have been comfortable in the slightest.

“What the fuck was that?” Melina pressed on.

“…the demonstration you asked?” Ishrin cringed. How did people do in these situations?

Melina deflated. “I don’t know what to say...”

She collapsed to the ground, sitting against a smoking hot rock that was standing upright and half buried, and hugged her knees. Lisette stood standing beside her, looking like a guard dog. Ishrin waited, feeling every bit as awkward as Lisette.

“You were acting paranoid, so I assumed, you know?”

“That I was leading you here, on purpose?” Melina asked, and her voice started accusatory and then became something barely short of a sob. “You thought the farmer was an accomplice, perhaps an actor. You thought I was engineering your capture to extract information from you. Shit…”

She stared at the ground for a long time. After some internal debate, Ishrin sat beside her.

“You know,” she began, her voice tiny. “I did get orders to do something like that. Perhaps.”

“Hmm,” Ishrin hummed. He couldn’t press her too much in her current state. “Is that why you didn’t want the guy to file a complaint? Because you were disobeying?”

“Not disobeying per se… but yeah,” she sighed.

“Yeah, well. For what little it is worth, I’m sorry.” He said. “You were acting paranoid, and I have reasons to—”

“Be paranoid yourself?” She snapped. “Why? Because you are from another universe? Huh?”

Ishrin inhaled deeply. She’s in a shit position to be in for sure. But she’s a guild master, this amount of pressure shouldn’t make her snap. What else is going on? Fuck, I really shouldn’t do this but… I can be a good guy tomorrow.

“Tell me,” he said, “did you even know about multiversal travel up until yesterday?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well? You see why I didn’t tell you, don’t you? You learn about it, and you go all paranoid.”

He shook his head. To his surprise, he found that he really did not like being mean to her. Did Albert do something to his brain in the many deaths he had inflicted him?

He sighed and offered her a hand as he stood. “Here, let’s get back to Noctis, shall we? We don’t have to do anything right now. We can sleep on it.”

She looked at him with misty eyes. “How can you trust me, after all” she waved her hands, “this? I could rat you out to the guild while you sleep.”

Ishrin shrugged. “I don’t think you would. You showed your colors today, I think. I want to show you mine. Besides, I have insurance.”

Right at that moment, Liù chirped from his pocket.

Melina chuckled nervously. “Right. Let’s go back.”