“It’s pointless! None of this crap is going to work!” Ostanes yelled, flipping the table and watching his equipment shatter on the floor for the third time this month, the liquids spilling into a magical puddle. A few drops splashed onto his robes, but the self-cleaning enchantments caused them to roll down the violet fabric without staining it.

  The sight of the broken glass only exacerbated his frustration. At least the cauldron and the gemstone vials had survived his outburst, though he’d have to get more tubes and ingredients later.

  Alchemy was a field that required a lot of patience, and Ostanes generally considered himself a patient man – it would be strange if he wasn’t after having practiced the art for over a thousand years.

  The problem wasn’t his – or the other elders’ – inability to devote the necessary time and effort to figure out the Red-born’s recipe. The issue was mainly that they had people entirely clueless about alchemy breathing down their necks, forcing them to experiment with ingredients that they knew wouldn’t give the concoction the required properties. That bastard, Deimos, had even had the gall to berate them whenever they inevitably failed, as if they hadn’t kept warning him about that exact outcome.

  They’d already tried adding every primary or secondary ingredient under the sun into the elixirs, and they’d even varied their approach in every way they could think of, yet the resulting brews had only ever damaged one’s core, rather than mending it faster.

  Ostanes had kept telling that stubborn fool that whatever technique the boy had used to improve the recipe didn’t exist on Remior. The details of the Red-born’s bloodline were still a mystery, but the consensus was that he’d found a way to acquire knowledge from other places. How else could they explain the wide assortment of otherworldly abilities that he had demonstrated?

  He sighed. ‘At least things have calmed down a little since that idiot got himself killed.’

  A Blue venturing out of the settlement to fight a known Blue-killer without backup had been the epitome of stupidity. Judging from the chasm that their subordinates had found next to Deimos’s corpse, as well as the lack of news about Percival since, they’d concluded that the boy had tried to hide inside the hive after defeating Hermes’s son.

  Another fool.

  Defeating so many of Remior’s elites must’ve gotten to his head. Even a healthy Violet would have been hard-pressed to survive in such a hostile environment for so long – let alone an injured… whatever the boy was.

  Since then, Ostanes and his colleagues had been operating under the assumption that Percival Avalon – the fugitive who had terrorized their world for the past several years – was finally gone.

  They’d still opted to err on the side of caution, waiting until they were certain of their conclusion before spreading it to the noble Houses, but nothing else made sense. Hopefully Orin would see reason and spill the beans on his student’s secrets soon, sparing them this wild goose chase.

  Of course, Ostanes and the other elders hadn’t given up on deciphering the recipe yet. They wouldn’t abandon their efforts until they received permission from the higher-ups in the Divine Root, but it was refreshing to be allowed to work more reasonable hours and from the comfort of their private labs, free from Deimos’s suffocating supervision.

  ‘Just a few more weeks of this nonsense and we can ask the Great Houses to reconsider our approach…’ he consoled himself.

  He was about to clean up his mess when somebody banged on his front door with reckless abandon, clearly forgetting that this was the residence of one of the Guild’s leaders.

  “Elder Ostanes!” a young female voice yelled.

  “Kinin! Didn’t I tell you not to disturb me while working? Figuring out this recipe is hard enough as it is…” he grumbled as he opened the door, though the edge in his voice tapered off as he realized that his apprentice was out of breath. “What happened?”

  “Elder… sir…” the blond woman spoke amid pants, both hands plastered on her knees. It wasn’t until a few seconds later that she recovered enough to form complete sentences. “He’s here…! The Spectral Reaper… the Red-born! He… he’s entered the Guild through the east gate… he’s strolling through the settlement as if he owns the place… he’s heading here, sir! Nobody dares to get in his way!”

  The colour drained from Ostanes’ face before rushing back again with a vengeance. Shoving his apprentice aside as gently as his fury would allow, he bolted out of the estate, running straight toward where he guessed he would find the infiltrator.

  He hadn’t the slightest clue how the boy had survived inside the hive for so many weeks, but that was beside the point. How dare he step foot here after all the crimes he’d committed?! Was disrespecting the gods or butchering Holy Children no longer enough?! Did he wish to plunge one of the oldest and most important locations on Remior into chaos too?!

  The elders had tacitly agreed to stay out of this mess and focus solely on alchemy and their responsibilities for as long as the Red-born behaved, but it appeared that the unscrupulous boy hadn’t appreciated their generosity in the slightest.

  Sprinting along the cobblestone path, Ostanes struggled to see more than a few metres ahead, his rage blurring his sight more than the rush of colourful motes did. Even so, finding Percival with his Mana Sense proved simple enough, the boy making no effort to conceal his Yellow cores, the robes brimming with mana of the same grade, or the even-stronger creature perched on his shoulder. It was a well-known fact that the Red-born’s equipment had been enchanted to hide his mana signature if he so wished, meaning that flaunting it was a conscious choice!

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  ‘How insolent…!’ Ostanes gasped.

  Taking a sharp turn, he crossed a narrow alley in an instant, heading straight toward the boy. Upon realizing that there were too many obstructions in his path, he gave up running entirely, leaping above numerous buildings and using his domain to fly for the first time in decades.

  He landed thirty or so metres in front of Percival with enough force to dig a crater as deep as his knees and send a ripple of cascading cracks across the whole street. Looking up, he carefully scanned the Red-born who had also stopped walking to gaze back at him.

  He was wearing clothes made entirely out of his strange, bluish-grey mana, countless intricate runes densely woven throughout the magical fabric. The boy had lowered his hood, not bothering to hide his face, his long, dark hair and unkempt beard fluttering in the wind along with the ends of his robe.

  His eyes didn’t match their previous description exactly. His slit pupils were encased in grey irises, shimmering in a soft light that barely betrayed their magical nature. They stabbed into Ostanes’s very soul like a pair of daggers – as did the similarly-coloured eyes of his infamous crow.

  The bird didn’t look anything like it was supposed to either. Its grades were correct, but its size and colour weren’t. Ostanes felt something off with their scrutinizing gazes, though he struggled to put his finger on it. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear that he was being stared down by a single, monstrous entity – rather than a man and his pet. Wherever one looked, the other’s eyes followed, their actions seemingly in perfect sync.

  “Have you no shame?!” Ostanes asked, pushing his other questions aside for now. “You dare attack this place too?!”

  The Red-born’s lips moved, the boy clearly trying to come up with some excuse, but Ostanes didn’t care enough to listen. Killing a few Blues had clearly emboldened him too much. It was about time that somebody knocked him down a peg. While Ostanes was no fighter, he was still a Violet. Rusty as he was, his domain should be plenty to put the boy in his place.

  Allowing his willpower to gush out of his body, he shaped it into an invisible hand large enough to crush an entire house in its grasp. Reaching toward the Red-born, he tried to grab him.

  Just when the colossal construct was about to pinch the boy between its thumb and index finger, Ostanes watched him tilt his head up. The Red-born’s lips curled into a frown as his eyes appeared to spot the invisible hand in an instant!

  ‘The rumours about him are true…’

  Ostanes didn’t even get the chance to consider the implications, when a series of howling winds and shrill cries emanated from the Red-born. A murder of cawing crows joined them, yet the bird on his shoulder hadn’t even opened its beak!

  It felt like countless blades sliced through the domain, dicing the giant hand into fine pieces. Whatever the boy had used to accomplish this most impressive feat, it wasn’t mana. It felt extremely cold to the touch, giving Ostanes the impression that his willpower had frozen into a bunch of tiny ice cubes!

  Furrowing his brow, he cautiously took a few steps back, buying time for his willpower to recover. Thankfully, the boy showed no intention of pressing on his advantage.

  ‘No wonder he was able to slaughter entire groups of Blues. Does he have a way to counter our domains?!’

  Finesse clearly wouldn’t work on Percival, but Ostanes refused to believe that his opponent could match the full brunt of a Violet’s willpower. Gathering his strength again, he unleashed his domain once more, this time launching a thick torrent of pressure directly at the boy, far stronger than his previous probe.

  ‘Let’s see you block th–’

  Before he even completed that thought, the Red-born’s eyes narrowed, something no weaker than Ostanes’s domain meeting it head on. This time, there was no doubt – Percival somehow wielded one as well!

  The two domains collided like tidal waves, distorting the very air between them. A booming shockwave sent all the glowing motes flying away, those in the Red-born’s side of the battlefield turning grey in the process.

  The entire settlement shook as a wide crater expanded outwards from the impact point, a thick layer of cobblestone peeling off the ground only to shatter halfway through, followed by layers of rock and dirt.

  The pressure crashed violently against the nearest buildings, their windows breaking first before their walls cracked. The enchantments blinked repeatedly in a desperate attempt to repair the structures, but it was a losing battle. The runes would have never managed to undo the destruction even if the domains hadn’t robbed them of their colourful fuel.

  The first house collapsed a second later, followed by another the very next moment, and two more after that. Thankfully, their owners appeared to have evacuated the area, but Ostanes’s heart still clenched at the sight. Many of these buildings had stood tall for thousands of years, weathering the endless march of time for far longer than even one as old as him had been around to protect them.

  ‘That bastard is going to destroy the whole Guild!’

  Left with no other choice, Ostanes pulled air mana out of his core, causing a massive hurricane to form around him. He still had no idea how Percival had been able to match a Violet’s domain, but there was no way he could overpower his spells too – not with their mana separated by three grades.

  Seemingly in response to his actions, the crow’s talons sank into the boy’s robes, distorting the fabric into rags and causing it to grow outwards as the Red-born’s eyes turned white. Ostanes didn’t know what his opponent was up to this time, but he wasn’t going to give him a chance to pull it off.

  Yet, just when he was about to attack, he felt a firm grip on his shoulder.

  “That’s enough old friend,” a familiar voice said.

  The storm eased slightly, though it didn’t disperse entirely. “Let go of me,” Ostanes said, glancing at his fellow elder. He didn’t know why his colleague was trying to stop him, but they couldn’t allow this to continue. “Don’t you see what he’s doing to this place?!”

  Flamel – the oldest among their ranks – shook his head, the silver strands growing on his temples reflecting the green sheen of Ostanes’s mana.

  “Look around. The only one threatening the settlement is you…”

  Ostanes creased his brow, finding his fellow elder’s words difficult to believe. Normally, Violets had great control over their willpower, but that flew out of the window during such an intense clash. After all, it should be impossible for one to unleash all their strength and still have the presence of mind to limit the damage they caused.

  Even so, he heeded his friend’s advice, allowing both the hurricane and the torrent of willpower to die down, only to be immediately surprised by the Red-born’s apparent willingness to deescalate just as rapidly. The boy’s clothes returned to normal, as did his eyes, though they were looking back at Ostanes with unconcealed disdain. The crow popped out of the fabric again, back to standing on Percival’s shoulder.

  Scanning his surroundings carefully, Ostanes spotted over a dozen wrecked houses around him, even their foundations torn asunder. Yet, his eyes couldn’t help but widen upon wandering to the other side of the battlefield.

  Near and behind Percival, he couldn’t spot a single pebble out of place!

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