Belfray's POV

  “I’ll take my money, now,” Radek said, his green eyes gleaming and that nearly youthful face twisting into a sneer so deep it almost cut something in my chest. The bastard then reached out a hand to demand his payment.

  “How could he be so careless?” I muttered to myself as I peered out from the wide windows, into the scarce woods outside, where a little figure stood frozen under the recently gathered clouds. “Impulsive… Reckless… I should’ve interfered with the Grand Marshall’s training. She’s been too hard on him.”

  “You’re worrying about nothing,” Radek said, his smile giving way to an expression that surprised me. Was that pride? “He’s not broken like many Runemasters. He’s not conditioned to grow as a servant. He has what many people in this Planar System dream of. Freedom. You should take pride in that, old friend.”

  “Freedom?” I echoed, my mind heavy with the implications. It wasn’t long until I was reminded of the nature of my company, however, after which I gave him a suspicious look. “You don’t have anything to do with this, do you?”

  Radek’s eyes widened. “You blame me? I did nothing.”

  I kept my eyes on him for a while, knowing how crafty he could be with these sorts of circumstances. You could never trust a Heart Mage. Playing with people was second nature for most of them.

  Yet, he didn’t have any good reason. A difficult bastard he might be, but Radek was here as one of the Young Master’s teachers. I couldn’t let our differences get to my head. There were things he could teach Young Master that I was painfully ignorant about.

  This scene, though, wasn’t one of those.

  “I thought he knew better.” My disappointment proved a big lump to swallow, but my confusion was far heavier and difficult to ignore. “If you didn’t tell him anything about this, then how come—”

  “He’s not stupid,” Radek said, then shrugged when I glared at him. “Not like most kids, anyway. He knows there are strange things going on behind the curtain. He’s aware we’re training him for a reason. Coupled with his curiosity and eagerness, I’m rather surprised it took this long for him to figure out the connection.”

  “The Words of Power.”

  The second I said that, I was reminded of a memory long discarded into the depths of my mind. We were at the doors of The Pit, struggling our way toward the Noon Castle, thousands of our men having already been butchered by that stubborn bastard. He’d covered himself with a circle of Runeknights, but those, we could deal with ease. The Runemaster, however, wasn’t someone courting mere riches.

  He had an appetite for battle. He cared little about the side he served on. He was there, later we learned, only because he’d gotten word about the Butcher of the Dawn. He wanted to have a taste of her sword, and he wanted it desperately.

  Worse yet, he was prepared.

  We had forced ourselves into a battlefield of traps.

  There wasn’t a single spot in that world that didn’t hate us. Firestorms awaited our marching. Spears of lightning hung at the ready across the sky. Underneath the earth, soul-bound creatures salivated with expectation, waiting for word from their master.

  We’d lost a lot of men that day.

  There was a reason why Runemasters were cuddled with riches. Not only did every single Kingdom dream of inscribing all of its soldiers, they also knew this was the best way to ensure these people wouldn’t want more. That was the tradition, anyway. As long as budding Runemasters grew up believing they didn’t have to do more than the bare minimum, there was no reason to expect them to look beyond the gilded cage they’d been raised in.

  On that front, we were different. Or rather, my Lady was different.

  She knew she was raising a monster, for she wished Young Master to become his own master.

  “My money.” Radek’s voice pulled me back from the pit of memories, and I was greeted by his hoax of a young face once again.

  I pulled a golden coin from my ring rather than a bill, then flicked it into his face. I might have gone a bit overboard as the coin nicked him across the face.

  There was some blood.

  “Why would you do that!”

  I ignored him.

  Heart Mages were fickle things.

  Then a suffocating presence filled the whole room, followed by the shivers. My disappointment quickly gave way as I forced my inner will to action. Slowly, without turning my head, I balled a fist.

  Radek did the same as we crossed eyes.

  We were disturbingly, yet decisively aware of the situation, of what we should do.

  Protect the Young Master at any cost, even if that meant taking the blame in this situation.

  ……..

  “I did it,” Radek said with genuine dedication, his chin held high and his eyes as serene and confident as ever. “I told Young Master that he could start practicing the Words of Power.”

  “No!” I countered right away, my fingers convulsing, the side of my chest tightening as I kept my eyes nailed down to the ground with shame. “It was me. I wasn’t being particularly careful when I told him about the true Runemasters. I should’ve expected such a reaction. He’s a clever kid.”

  “Clever? Try genius.” Radek gave me a side glance and snorted. “He may think and act with a child’s curiosity, but the things he can do are nothing short of miracles. How old is our Young Master, really?”

  “He’s nine,” I said. “Nine years old, and already on his way to becoming a true monster.”

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  “That’s why we should encourage him.” Radek rubbed his neck contentedly. “Enviable is the man who will get a chance to become his Master in the future. I rather regret not having the means to be his mentor.”

  “We all do.” I nodded, and that was a fact.

  We could teach the Young Master how to wield a sword or how to become a better Knight. There wasn’t any promising talent in the Planar System who wouldn’t kill just to get a single lesson from the Bloody Mistress. Radek could show him the ways to control his emotions and such. The Silver Chiper scarcely had any rivals in his own field. We could have him learn about the history of the worlds and the intricacies of multiple dominions. We could do all that, but there was one thing we all lacked here in this mansion.

  Ultimately, that was the main thing that truly mattered here.

  The key to becoming a true Runemaster.

  That was why we worked and prepared so hard for him to get a chance to learn from the best and most feared Runemaster in the Planar System.

  “Enough.”

  The Grand Marshall’s gaze held us in place like a pair of insects pinned beneath glass. Her hands were clasped behind her back, the knuckles pale beneath the leather gloves. I could see the blatant disappointment in her eyes, which wasn’t anything new. She always managed to look somewhat disappointed even when she was with her most trusted aides.

  And yet, there was something else. A flicker of emotion. Could that be fear?

  Nonsense.

  “My own Shield and General are lying to me, and I’d like to hear the reason for it,” she said coldly. “How could you let Leo sneak away in the middle of the night? How could you let him do something so foolish?”

  “There’s nothing to worry about here, Grand Marshall. We were fully present during the time Young Master decided to carry out his experiments.”

  “Oh?” The Grand Marshall cocked her head. “Fully present, you say?”

  “My eyes never once left him, you can be sure of it,” I nodded with confidence.

  The Grand Marshall didn’t look impressed as she gestured slowly toward the corridor, from which a head poked out right away.

  She blinked when she saw me, but still dragged herself into the room proper, bowing once to the Lady with dutiful precision.

  “Mary!”

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “I called her,” the Grand Marshall cut me off as swiftly as an arrow while Mary flinched at my remark. Underneath her scared face, however, I knew she enjoyed this. That foolish girl’s mind worked in ways I couldn’t comprehend. “Tell them the same exact words you’ve told me.”

  “It appears that…” Mary started, but even with her strange mind and rather different personality, she obviously found it rather hard to face two Celestials’ direct gaze in such close proximity. She did, however, manage to continue to our most unfortunate misery. “Young Master nearly burned his Runic Chamber. I believe those rain clouds weren’t his first experiment.”

  “And that means?” Grand Marshall asked.

  “He’s been at it for a while, if I have to make a guess.” Mary lowered her head, long curls of dark hair falling across her face, failing to hide the smile etched in the corners of her lips.

  “You hear that?” My Lady’s frown cut through us like a sharpened knife. “He was experimenting all night long while you two were busy bickering with each other.”

  “Forgive me, Grand Marshall, but I’d call that taking initiative,” Radek said with a straight face.

  I nearly smacked him across the head.

  “Young Master shows great promise, and I mean that,” he continued even though the Grand Marshall’s face twitched at his words. “I’ve been around many a magical academy and seen my fair share of geniuses. To my experience, shackling these talents and trying to mold them with strict codes will not, most of the time, be productive in the long run. They should be given a generous amount of space to try and fail at things.”

  “He was supposed to wait until he got a real teacher,” the Grand Marshall said. “He can’t do that if he blasts himself into pieces in that little room, can he?”

  Radek raised an eyebrow. “I believe that was the exact reason why he’s been motivated to practice The Undying as a Manual, isn’t that so?”

  He was right, of course.

  The Undying might have been one of the strongest Manuals in the Planar System, but its privileges were reserved mostly for those who had ascended to become Heralds. Before that stage, it was a fairly defensive Manual, which was precisely why it was such a good fit for the Young Master.

  “Belfray.” The Grand Marshall looked conflicted for the first time. “Do you agree with him?”

  My throat tightened, but I didn’t budge.

  “I do,” I said in the end. “I have complete belief in Young Master’s talents. Such a genius shouldn’t be leashed—”

  It was too late by the time I noticed my mistake.

  Fool.

  I couldn’t even see the blast as it splashed across my chest, sending me streaking from the windows like a comet. I lost touch with the gravity and let the pain take over me. Blood spilled freely from my chest where the blast caught me, yet all I could think of was how relieved I felt at that moment.

  Such relief, indeed.

  Better to be subject to a powerful blast than to stay there in the presence of the Bloody Mistress.

  I almost pitied the fool who remained in the mansion.

  That was the only sliver of joy I could find in this situation.

  …………

  Leo's POV

  Okay.

  We’re okay.

  We’re fine.

  But damn, how could I be so stupid?

  I thought this whole magic business was coming from the runic alphabet. As in, I believed that gust of wind or even that fire started from within the runic sequence.

  Turned out I was wrong.

  It had to be that.

  The soul energy in those characters was somehow affecting the world.

  I stared up at the slowly gathering clouds, all of them squirming dangerously. The rain had already begun pattering down the pond. I wasn’t spared from its quick arrival, yet I wasn’t completely wet either.

  Most of the drops fell strictly toward the pond.

  Just like how I wrote it.

  The trouble was, I didn’t write where the water would come from. I should’ve been more careful with my wording. I should’ve known I couldn’t just create fire or wind out of my ass.

  Then again, there was not much of a difference, was there? Using my soul energy and pouring it into magical letters opened the doors of a magical world for me. I might be a touch clueless about the details, but this was all my doing.

  Goodness.

  I could summon rain.

  Not long after, though, I was reminded of my shortcomings as a loud tearing sound echoed across the pond. One second, the magical leather was there, floating slightly over the ground, and the next second it was gone, torn into a million pieces.

  With that, the gathered rain clouds swiftly drew back from the pond and vanished up high in the sky. I was left with wet clothes and a bag of questions. My hands also itched as my internal energy tried to stitch a new layer of skin across the burnt parts.

  Now, I wasn’t the most accomplished or even clever person in my first life. I was a miserable fool through and through. There was one thing about me, however, that I’d always been proud of.

  Imagination.

  Thanks to the countless games and novels I’d read in the second part of my life as a shut-in, I was good at imagining things. Only, back on Earth I couldn’t do shit with all those daydreaming sessions.

  Here, though, that had changed. A part of my mind was already occupied with a bunch of possibilities, implications of this sudden enlightenment, and, of course, the likely ways that I could use my newly earned wisdom. Another part was hoping that this little skit would go unnoticed.

  Breathing in, I glanced back toward the mansion, which looked like a largish dot in the distance. I’d sneaked quite a long way to not disturb anyone in the middle of the night.

  It seemed to have worked since I couldn’t see anyone around.

  That was a relief.

  I mean, it was just a couple of clouds, right? It wasn’t like there was any sound. At first, they looked grim and dark, but they passed silently off into the distance. There wasn’t even any thunder.

  Still, it was probably a good idea to seek some serious guidance from Radek about this recent development. He might know something about it. He might even encourage and support my entrepreneurial side—

  The ground shook. Thunder growled across the sky, which didn’t make sense since the clouds were long gone. It was a clear horizon from what I could see, a circular moon hanging high up in the middle of it with thousands of stars.

  Wait…

  There was something strange.

  One of those stars seemed especially bright. It was glowing with such light that it took me a long second to understand it was actually falling toward me.

  I blinked.

  The “star” crashed into the ground near my feet, and it had a face.

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