Maxwell sighed from behind his desk.

“Boy, you better be careful, getting entangled with the daughter of that warlock. I already heard about the stunt you pulled during that Elite party at the President’s mansion. If you continue to act like that before you have the power to support your recklessness, then you’ll be killed sooner rather than later.”

“That old man was being a bitter asshole, so he deserved a bit of pushback.”

“I agree, but believe me when I tell you that I know better than anyone how malicious nobles can be. They are a group founded upon generations of constant supremacy, and in the last two centuries they’ve never been able to be challenged by anyone except the Church. There are extremely few cases where someone is able to do what you do and use a relationship to stick a hand into that circle. Just that is enough to warrant unsavory attention, but if you go out of your way to actively challenge their authority, they’ll gladly take the chance to stick a blade against your neck.”

“...Yea.”

I sighed with a nod. I understood that just being Umara’s boyfriend was dangerous, and that testing the tolerance of those snobby nobles was asking to be killed.

The wonderful world of nobility was even darker than the black market, mainly because the darkness of the black market was created by them in the first place, even if only through their demand for it. I was under no illusions that those god-like people didn’t have a hand in everything that went on in their kingdom, good and bad.

The influence they wielded should never be disregarded. But even knowing all of that, I still didn’t care.

I spoke my thoughts.

“Right now, they think I’m just an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s dealing with. They won’t do anything to me yet.”

“The parents won’t, but the children will.”

“Let them try. Ravon is lucky I didn’t shatter the right side of his skull. He’ll think twice before testing me again. And besides, I have more experience fighting people than Scourge beasts. There isn’t a single student at the Magisterium I couldn’t kill.”

“Perhaps that’s true. But don’t walk down the path of no return. If you keep pushing, they will find an excuse. So if you don’t want to live the rest of your life hiding inside that fancy hotel room of yours, then learn to either bear with the harassment or avoid it.”

“...”

I didn’t respond. Although I understood that, I didn’t like it at all.

Until I had the power to face them on equal grounds or at least survive any underhanded machinations they sent my way, I couldn’t be so brazen.

Suddenly, I had a thought.

Tapping my Aerial, I activated the rudimentary browser and searched for the Black Spider Repository. From there I searched the bounties before finding my name.

And perhaps unsurprisingly, my bounty increased.

From a measly 40 to a clean 100 thousand coin, over double the previous amount.

There were also a few more details on me and my whereabouts.

It seemed some people had decided that my existence was annoying, so they were contributing more to take me out. First it was only those from the Trenches, but now, it seemed that my notoriety was rapidly spreading through the noble circles.

There would be more eager hunters, and ones not so easy to deal with. Perhaps that hunter who attacked during my date with Vetsmon had jumped at the opportunity, hoping I was an easy target.

And he would only be the first of many. The details under my name said that I was Authority 5 as well, so I would be getting hunted by those at or above that caliber. There was a very real threat to my life, not that there ever hadn’t been.

I would need to start taking more precautions, even when around my friends. And I had a feeling that Aura would be my most important lifeline. No different than a radar for hostiles, it would be a crucial source of immediate information.

My breath was long as I pondered the future. But soon enough the entire Polaris Headquarters was interrupted by the presence of a rather esteemed but unannounced guest.

I could feel her presence before she even arrived. Maxwell was more perceptive than I was, and together, we left the room as we heard a commotion outside.

A dozen guards had responded as Duchess Talerria stormed into the compound. And at the helm was someone I had never seen before, yet someone who very obviously held a high status.

Or, I should say the highest status. I quickly recognized her from one of the bounties on the Repository.

The Head of the Polaris Family, Luna, an Authority 10+ Warlock.

She was a woman with bright platinum hair. The evening moon seemed to highlight her gorgeous locks like a spotlight, perhaps the origin of her name.

And she wore a gentle set of white and blue robes held up by a thick sash. Her hair was bundled up around the collar of her robes, and together with her button nose, she was shockingly cute for a woman who should be rather old.

But her regal was even above that of the Duchess. She stood before her as an equal yet the grace by which she carried herself made it seem like she held dignity well above the other.

One looked too high to be touched or challenged, while the other didn’t give a damn. The Duchess also wasn’t in the mood for delays, so she came with a certain level of hostility.

Thankfully we had appeared before any of those hostilities could be exchanged. When the Duchess saw me, the direction of her gaze also attracted the Polaris Head, both of their gazes landing on Maxwell and I.

The Duchess jumped, her figure bounding over the heads of everyone present and landing before me. That’s when her gaze flickered and shot past me, sensing the fluctuations in the nearby room.

So she walked past me too, entering Maxwell’s study with hurried steps.

The two, no, three of us followed and entered the room. Maxwell sighed as he did so, and I could clearly sense the Head on my heels.

Everyone’s sight landed on Umara in the chair, and an audible sigh could be heard. It seemed that after finally getting a read on her condition, the Duchess was okay.

Then, she looked at Maxwell, her first words being spoken.

“Thank you for taking care of my daughter, Sir Albarain.”

“Mm. John didn’t give me much of a choice after he came barging through my door. But rest assured my tools are top quality.”

“Yes, I noticed.”

She nodded before turning her gaze to me.

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“Thank you as well, for your quick thinking, though I’m not sure how I feel about you being with my daughter this late into the night.”

“I was just helping her train. I didn’t even know anything about enlightenments either. I thought it was an advancement, so I brought her to the only place I could think of.”

“Well it’s certainly an unpredictable event. I will ask her about it afterward. But for now I have no more worries. Lady Luna, I apologize for my intrusion.”

The Duchess turned back around, facing Luna in the doorway.

She stood there with a smile on her face, undisturbed by the sudden events.

“It’s of no consequence. I suppose I should congratulate you instead on your daughter’s enlightenment. At this age, she’s no less than a prodigy to achieve such a feat. Truly a surprise to reward.”

“Not that I don’t believe in my daughter’s talent, but even I didn’t expect anything like this to happen, not for a long while. Nonetheless, thank you for your hospitality.”

“Of course. Please enjoy your stay. And… You are John, correct?”

Luna suddenly turned her focus to me, but it wasn’t like I didn’t expect some attention so I just responded normally.

“Yes. Pleasure to meet you, Lady Luna.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you. I imagine your tutelage underneath the esteemed Maxwell Albarain has been more than fruitful.”

“Yes, it has. I thank you for the opportunity back then to receive his teachings when I was just an upcoming summoner.”

“Well, Tavera had been merely fulfilling one of my old requests to provide me with a talented but new summoner. I had started to believe that he would just ignore it for another year, but then you came along and impressed him. Who would’ve thought that you’d grown into such notoriety so quickly? Even I have heard of the American bringing just havoc to the Trenches.”

“Heh, I was only trying to stay alive.”

I just chuckled as she looked me up and down.

Once she seemed satisfied, she nodded to all those present, giving a goodbye before seeing herself out.

The Duchess took a nearby seat with a sigh, crossing her legs while watching her daughter. She obviously didn’t plan on going anywhere.

And since that was the only seat besides the one behind the desk, I sat against a wall. I didn’t plan on leaving either.

Maxwell looked at both of us before shooting me a glare and sitting behind his desk.

And so all three of us sat in silence. I did some work on my advancement formation since I was waiting anyway.

But after another hour passed, we all felt some changes. Umara groaned while all the nearby Magika started getting sucked into her body.

“Dear? Can you hear me?”

“Agh… Mom?”

"Expel your Mana! Quickly!”

The Duchess tried to help her, and Umara seemed to gain enough of her mental faculties back to listen. She started wielding her mana and casting several spells all at once. All of them were air spells, and I started to notice various effects.

At first I heard some vibrations, like a low resonance frequency similar to bass. Then I heard nothing at all as the ground started to shake, bookshelves being rattled.

It was the spell I had inspired her to create. Even the Duchess was surprised by its effects.

However, after some time, even the ground shaking stopped. Yet, the spells that were releasing a constant low frequency were still active.

My eyes widened.

There was a new spell being cast, and however it worked, it canceled out sounds entirely without releasing any of the energy into something like the ground.

Speaking of noise cancellation, I couldn’t help but remember some modern technology. I remembered a term called destructive interference whereby one noise would combine with another and cancel each other out. I didn’t know the specifics, but if that was what Umara was doing, then I would be incredibly impressed.

I had mentioned something along those lines but didn’t get into it much when I was teaching her. Most of my knowledge was basic, like how sound wasn’t just a vibration but a wave of pressure traveling through a medium. It had highs and lows, frequencies and amplitudes, even if we couldn’t perceive them. But it wasn’t like I had a PhD in physics or acoustics.

I taught her a lot, even things that seemed completely unrelated to sound. I just wanted to get my knowledge out. But it seemed that in her efforts to translate that knowledge into magical insights, she had discovered more than I knew.

Warlocks probably understood scientific concepts intimately. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were warlocks out there who could turn lead into gold because they knew all about the fundamental forces, atomic configurations, fission and fusion.

But that didn’t mean they could put it into words, which was why technology in this world was still lacking advancement. It would take summoners to study science and realize that more could be achieved without magic in order to take this world further. And I was sure once they did, they could even surpass Earth, and quicker at that.

Magic was too useful. If Earth suddenly gained magic then the already exponential technological growth would increase by another magnitude. We would probably be colonizing planets not long after, maybe even terraforming them given a few decades to get used to the changes.

But even disregarding the technology, as proven by Umara, science could help warlocks understand their magic, or their elements, in different ways. It would help them directly, not just in making spells, but by increasing their understanding of the element and making them stronger. For them, knowledge was power. Except, all their knowledge came in the form of feelings instead of hard math.

It also meant that my modern knowledge was far more valuable than I thought. If I could spread scientific knowledge to the entire kingdom, then the entire warlock class would jump in strength. That meant that humanity’s combat power as a whole would increase by a significant percentage. Enlightenments, which were considered rare, may become merely uncommon, perhaps even a standard.

And as my girlfriend, Umara would benefit the most. She would no doubt hound me for more knowledge later, and I wouldn’t hesitate to oblige her. Even disregarding our relationship, she was a battle partner, someone who I would trust my back to, someone who stood by my side under siege.

The more powerful she was, the safer I would be. Not only that, but I was curious to see how far she could take my knowledge. I was also eager to spill my knowledge anyway. After all, the information in my head brought over from a modern Earth was what set me apart from everyone else on this planet.

Perhaps it was a bit childish of me, but it made me feel special. Especially when Umara was able to understand it. Whenever she was able to grasp the concepts, I felt like a new bridge was built between us that could close the gap in our relationship.

A gap that was no doubt created by my own psyche. In the back of my head, I was always aware that everyone around me was naive to many of the things that I took as common sense. While humans had always understood the world around them through instinct, it was our academia that brought us far beyond the animals which could do the same.

This world hadn’t even had an industrial revolution, and at the rate it was going, it would take another couple centuries for it to begin one. Even then, it was advancing more in the magical sector than the science sector. While I understood that magic could do a lot, I was inclined to believe that science could do even more.

A magical revolution? Was that even possible for them? Unlocking magical abilities required a powerful caster, so they would always be stuck behind a wall unless the few Authority 12 warlocks were able to enable the rest of their lessers to break past it with some esoteric practices.

Even then, it wasn’t like they could just pass their abilities down. There was only one thing I could think of that might trigger a magical revolution similar to an industrial revolution.

Enchanting.

Take my Aerial as an example, magic could be programmed to do complex tasks just like a computer. Sawn was already creating a magic internet, but I had yet to see any factories full of automated machines. I felt like he was skipping a few steps, but it wasn’t like he could be blamed for nobody else innovating like he was. Or perhaps I was just ignorant and there was much more going on than I was privy to being a mere consumer.

Nevertheless, if enchanting was a craft that didn’t rely on the authority of a warlock, but their knowledge and ability to create magical software, then it was possible that I had been brought to this world right as it was beginning something similar to an industrial revolution, but for magic.

The only issue was resources. Every enchantment had to be run by a Crystal, which could only be sourced from killing Scourge beasts and purifying their Black Crystals.

Their only advantage was how White Crystals seemed to be an infinite source of magical power, at least from the little I’ve seen. It passively recovered its Magika without any input, something that defied all laws of physics. It simply generated energy out of nothing, or at least, nothing that we could perceive. And whatever its source of energy was, it seemed infinite as well.

But even with that advantage, Crystal supplies were incredibly limited and paid for in human lives. Even the least powerful ones were expensive, let alone anything above that.

So unlike machines that could be built with the seemingly limitless supplies of metals from the ground, enchanted devices would always remain in short supply and would never be allowed to exceed a certain scale, no matter how amazing the field of enchanting became.

So even a magical revolution was likely to only affect the noble class whereas the commoners would see little to none of its benefits.

Unless… there was a way to create Crystals.

Scourge beasts grew them in their bodies. Who was to say that such a process couldn’t be artificially replicated?

And if it was, would this world create an infinite source of infinite power sources? If that happened, then the magical revolution might cause seismic shifts far more drastic than the industrial revolution on Earth.

Hm, more food for thought.