The Realm was finally starting to settle down after the war between the dragonslayers and the Tyrants. The fight had, in a literal sense, shaken Sectors and more than a few famous dragonslayers had been blacklisted overnight. There were no orders to hunt these dragonslayers down nor had a bounty been prepared for them.

  In fact, the Guild had been in half a mind to not blacklist any of them, they didn’t know most of their identities anyway, and it was too dangerous to antagonize them all.

  That was, until they got sent a list with every single dragonslayer that was involved in the assault. Hand delivered by the Tyrants’ Secretary, under orders from the Witch herself.

  The Adventurer’s Guild took that list, posted it, then tried to very implicitly explain that the dragonslayers wouldn’t be hunted nor would there be a bounty on them. They really didn’t have the time nor the resources to launch an assault on over sixty blacklisted dragonslayers.

  Not when they were preparing for a Realm expansion.

  It had been leaked that the Chieftain Tyrant had allowed Mezhar's team to challenge the highest Trial and now everyone was certain that it was going to be completed. For the first time in history the highest Trial was going to be completed by another team.

  And every time the highest Trial was completed, a realm expansion would arrive.

  It was estimated that Sector Thirteen would be at minimum, one and a half times as large as Earth. With it, opportunity would come, new ruins, new artifacts, potentially even a new energy source.

  But most importantly?

  New dangers.

  Monsters, environmental hazards, even threats that attacked the mind. Sometimes it wasn’t too bad…

  Sometimes a literal dragon would arrive and a Realmwide quest would begin.

  The Realmers were preparing, the adventurers were preparing. People were nervous about the blacklisted dragonslayers, yes, but they also couldn’t let that stop them from practicing drills and getting organized.

  Adventurers from all over were helping Realmers evacuate towards the System portals. While the portals were down for now, the moment it was up all the portal allocations would be used to transport Realmers en masse into the inner Sectors. Where the defenses were strongest.

  Most would be evacuated to Ulverra, many to the other cities that had been designed for just this situation. Where respectable dragonslayers had claimed their homes.

  Larger cities in Sector Six were being migrated, portals had allocation limits and millions of Realmers couldn’t just simply go through them at once. Instead they were escorted by dragonslayers and those above the fifth realm, many of whom had families and friends amongst the crowd.

  Despite the upheaval, not too many Realmers were nervous. After all, two of the ‘weakest’ Tyrants had just fought off eighty dragonslayers. How much more powerful had the other Tyrants become in that time?

  The Realmers’ faith in the Tyrants doubled as they dutifully prepared their defenses. Excited about the prospects of new lands and new sights that the adventurers would explore.

  Meanwhile the two most talked about Tyrants in recent history met together in a floating fortress.

  What did two of the most powerful beings in The Realm talk about? The Realm expansion? The highest Trial being challenged without them? How to deal with over fifty dragonslayers?

  It was none of them.

  “It has been awhile, Dwarven Tyrant.”

  “Ah fuck you too Lihua, you couldn’t even come in person?”

  The Witch Tyrant sniffed. An action that was uncharacteristic to anyone but her peers.

  “I am here in person.”

  “Want me to prove you’re not?”

  Her mother, the Witch Tyrant, was obviously not in a good mood. She seemed to want to gloss over the niceties and get to the point.

  “What is this meeting for?”

  “Well… A little birdy told me about an interesting boy that’s been running around. A second realm?”

  The air froze as the Witch twitched. She opened her senses again and found Gamielle spying on them both. Gamielle was technically always spying on her mother, just not this explicitly. She reached her hand out to bring her wayward daughter into the room.

  That was right. The two bickering Tyrants cared little about The Realm and the upcoming expansion. They had gathered to discuss something else entirely, or rather, a someone else.

  “Hey, not in here! You’re going to activate the damned wards.”

  “.” Her mother hissed.

  Gamielle appeared sheepishly, hiding a bucket of popcorn behind her back. She shrugged innocently at her mother, then gave the Dwarven Tyrant a side eye.

  “Aw, I asked you to be subtle, Henry.”

  “Sorry girl, best to get this out of the way with me around,” he thumbed at the Witch, “old pointy here would figure it out eventually.”

  There totally was a way, Henry, or rather Henrick had just disagreed with her planning and went and blabbed it all out. Her mother would have been furious later, yes, but nowhere near as she would be now.

  “You on me

  Now Gamielle was many things, an irascible imp, a devilishly beautiful girl that knew how and when to push buttons. Gamielle quickly hid behind Henry’s small but stocky frame and peered out at her mother, trying to look as cute as possible. It didn’t work.

  .

  “You never told me to keep it a secret.” Gamielle squeaked.

  Her acting cute might have worked a long time ago. The Witch loomed over both of them, like a tyrant deciding on what kind of horrible execution to place upon their own offspring.

  Henry put his hands up, trying to come to her rescue after he had left her to dry.

  “Alright, alright. It’s been done and she outplayed you, you should be proud of that!”

  “Yeah!”

  Gamielle was still trying to tug at her mother’s heartstring. A ploy diminished by the fact that her mother knew exactly what Gamielle had done. When her mother had been grabbing at Indigo’s Legend, Gamielle had annoyed her, annoyed and shaken her enough to throw her across The Realm and tune her out.

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  That was when Gamielle had run off to tattle on her.

  “-”

  “Enough, I’ve already told two of the others.”

  The Witch Tyrant tilted her head at Henrik.

  “”

  “Hey! Don’t take that tone with me,” Henrik warned. “Soon everyone will know and all of us will have a meeting about this. That’s the end of it.”

  The room was getting cold. Most people believed the Witch Tyrant’s aura to be of rot and decay, it may have been, once. Now her true aura was a simple cold fury, it started to warp the magical enchantments. The Dwarven Tyrant was unmoved, his arms crossed as he looked at her in both sympathy and disappointment.

  Lihua did not like that look. Though there wasn’t much she could do to him now, not here and not when she wasn’t here in person.

  “Fine.”

  The Witch Tyrant vanished in sparks of light. Gamielle let out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding as she wiped at her brow.

  “Phew, I thought she was going to shove me in a box again.”

  “She did what?!”

  “I It was a threat, one I am quite happy to make again.”

  “I think you should stop talking, Gamielle.”

  “...yeah.”

  She paused, waited for ten seconds, then took out the popcorn from behind her back, she put her hand in and - it disappeared.

  “No food or drinks for a year.”

  “Aw.”

  –

  Ryan chased down a giant snow leopard he’d scared from its camouflage.

  “Come back! Let me stab you! I’m so close I can feel it.”

  The leopard had no interest in whatever the [Rogue] was selling as all it saw was an enormous aura stained in death and war. It yelped as it dodged a throwing knife and scattered away in perfect zigzag motion around the trees. Once it got going, it was faster than a car going top speed on the highway.

  He’d struggle with that speed even if he was in the third realm.

  Ryan made a face and flopped on the ground, uncaring about how vulnerable he was. Nothing dared to attack him, not since the war. Something about the whole thing had added to his Epic, making sure nothing would attack him, not even the apex monsters of the area.

  “Damn. Gamielle was right, this really isn’t adventuring.”

  How could he put himself in life threatening danger to hone his skills if monsters just ran from him?

  The main problem was that the vast majority of his levels and all of his precursor skills had come from incredibly dangerous situations. It made him impatient and feel like that was what he had to keep doing to progress.

  It might have been the fastest way to level, but it definitely wasn’t the only way to progress. Zedart had trained the entire time in safety and made it to a maxed level [Cleave] and [Uncanny Parry], hell he even managed to make a merged skill. It may have taken a few months but it did show that training worked.

  Ryan was a realm two [Rogue], he should have an easier time mastering physical skills than a realm one [Warrior].

  There was just a small voice in the back of his head,

  He sighed and got up. It was finally time to practice on his own.

  Ryan spun around a tree as he took his soulsword in a fencers’ stance, he rapidly stabbed forward, his hands blurring as the tree was pierced again and again. There was the slightest, lightest touch of else piercing the tree but he was going for something else. Not the spectral stab that came with a level five and above [Double Stab] but the level one [Double Stab].

  He thrusted forward, every single motion, every single muscle fiber at almost the exact same position. Every motion down to feet placement, breathing and the position of his fingers were exactly the same.

  On the next thrust, he visualized another hand layering on top of his own, it was like an extra hand where he pushed them both at the same time. An extra bit of chip barked off the tree.

  Unlike the incident in the harness, Ryan didn’t pause, he immediately stabbed again, this time focusing on making the ‘second’ hand real. He pushed, not just with his mind but his aura as well, his Epic. He demanded the skill to bend to his will.

  A red tinted spectral stab appeared next to the thrust. There had been no help from the Trial System at all.

  “YES!”

  –

  [Instant Dodge] turned out to be a little more difficult. The precursor skill, [Partial Acceleration], did help in getting the feel for activation, but it wasn’t like [Double Stab] at all. There was no uniform form to be had as there was no uniform force with [Instant Dodge].

  Sometimes it was a harsh pull, like he was tethered to a taught bungee cord that was pulling him back up, sometimes it could be like someone was pushing him hard, sometimes it just felt like had just recently kicked off the ground.

  There was no physical constant here, no uniform form, the best he could do to replicate even a portion of the skill was to jump hard. But that was probably why [Double Stab] was a Common and [Instant Dodge] was an Uncommon.

  There had to be a way…

  Ryan leaped into the air, he stabbed a soldier’s spear right into a tree and used it to pull himself upwards. He spun, kicked hard off the tree and into another one. Stopping the momentum again and kicking off back at the embedded spear. He grabbed the spear as he passed, about to–

  The spear tore out from the tree, making him go spinning into the forest floor.

  “aaaaaahh”

  If someone had walked by where Ryan was training they’d see a blur of a person jumping, pulling and kicking off around the treetops of a forest. The branches on these pine-like trees couldn’t hold weight, much less a second realm kicking hard off of them. Instead each tree was embedded with at least three spears, looted from the corpses of both armies.

  He was jumping around like a freaking ninja.

  He couldn’t just stop and kick off from things, that had been a mistake. It ignored the ‘instant’ part of [Instant Dodge]. Ryan needed to with the least amount of stopping possible, the lightest of touches. Until he was no longer bending his knees to stop his momentum. It meant he couldn’t accelerate as hard, but it felt closer.

  Ryan started bouncing around the obstacles like a pinball.

  Here he hit a wall with his progression. His body moved like a dream and it like he had been on the right track, but the skill just wouldn’t activate.

  Somehow even bouncing around became dull after a while.

  All training and no progress make Ryan a dull boy.

  –

  “Why the fuck is he hunting us?!” Felsley whisper-exclaimed while pulling at his hair.

  “I’m pretty sure he’s just bored, he’s not trying to kill us.”

  Valee wasn’t completely certain of that. Every time Artigan came close to them, her [Enhanced Senses] picked up things that really made her question the blacklister’s sanity. Some of the stuff he mentioned gave her goosebumps.

  “There’s a whole forest full of monsters he could be fighting. Why is he harassing us?”

  Marickle wasn’t happy. An extended Trial was something only the best fought over and they’d been taking the opportunity to hunt monsters and raise their achievements. Now most of their time was spent making false trails and carefully avoiding walking on large patches of snow.

  Then the notification hit.

  “Huh, someone must have snuck past the Tyrants.”

  “Damn a ten to one desync, that’s going to be an issue.”

  Valee wanted nothing more to do with these woods ever again. If she never saw another pine tree again she’d be happy.

  They made their trek back to the Trial portal. While their team hadn’t explored too much, there hadn’t been another exit portal they could find. As they reached the clearing, a grinning figure sat outside the portal, waiting for them.

  “Oh for Manager’s sake.”

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