The subject of teaching juniors and wards is one often neglected in the literature, but one I found most people really needed help with. So, without further ado, here is a brief summary of techniques I use both to impress and educate my students.

  — Excerpt from Basics of Teaching

  Day 298, 10:00 PM

  No wonder food put Basil’s to dust. The meal was around one hundred times more expensive, and weirdly, non-awakened patrons had the means to pay and crowd the establishment. And yet, despite the hearty meal’s quality, its price paled compared to the nightbird guide the innkeeper summoned for me.

  “Does Your Lordship wish to visit another tavern or would you like to go straight to the guilds?” the young man dressed in smart, respectable clothes asked.

  “Straight to the guilds, please. And could you drop the lordship?”

  “I apologize, but I’m afraid not, Your Lordship. If anyone heard me, a commoner, speaking casually with a higher-realm awakened, I would find myself in a difficult situation. Now, the guilds are too far for me to walk, we can either hail a coach, or take the bullet.”

  If not for my mental stats, I would’ve thought I had misheard. “Take the bullet?”

  “Yes, Your Lordship, an underground public transportation. Unfortunately, I can’t endure the highway.”

  I had read about the highway, an empire-spanning awakened-only road where anyone entering did so at their own peril. For a non-awakened to step on it was no different from committing suicide.

  “We’ll take the bullet. And what’s your name, young man?”

  “Porter, Your Lordship. Nail Porter.”

  Porter led me two blocks back towards the gate, then down a stairway and through an underground passage, which ended in a grand cavern that looked like a cross between a subway station and the most elegant ballroom I had seen. And, oddly enough, the place took the best of both worlds.

  The most eye-catching feature was the two opposing walls, which were giant aquariums with tiny multicolored fish swimming within. Enchanted chandeliers of gold and gems gave off a soft, natural light, apparently close enough to real sunlight that potted plants didn’t mind being a hundred feet below the surface.

  My enhanced senses and mind took a blink to process the entire scene. It was a work of art, one very much to my liking. It was, however, not at all user-friendly. I had no clue how to “take the bullet,” and while the only other living being around was a man dressed like a member of the staff, I would’ve preferred written instructions.

  Porter had no such qualms, heading for the left aquarium, and I followed without breaking stride.

  “We can wait forty minutes and take the public transport, or we can pay two first realm manarium crystals and depart in a private bullet.” Porter frowned, something missing. Then he froze for a moment, actively thinking about his words before adding, “Your Lordship.”

  “We’ll take the private transport,” I said, my brows just as furrowed as I studied the flow of mana through the aquarium glass before I realized there was no glass separating water from air. Concealed runic seals kept the water out of the fancy station.

  I felt mildly uncomfortable, but Porter, a completely normal and very fragile human, seemed to have infinite trust in the magic keeping the crushing mass of water at bay. Still, it wasn’t my place to comment, and we approached an ornamental plinth.

  “Just place the crystals on top, Your Lordship, and then we can step into the water.”

  Instead of doing as Porter suggested, I first pressed my hand against the water. It sank without resistance, and when I pulled it back, it came back wet and cold. With a slight exertion of my will and a sliver of mana, a tiny globe of water formed and shot back into the wall, leaving my hand dry.

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  With my curiosity satisfied, and my sense of public safety even more deeply disturbed, I took two crystals and set them down on the top of the plinth.

  The manarium crumbled to dust in a surge of energy, and Porter stepped into the water. As he did, a room-sized bubble of air formed around him. He beckoned me to follow, and I entered, not a drop of water sticking to my clothes or person.

  “You just have to infuse your voice with mana and say where we are headed, Your Lordship.”

  “The guilds.” Just as I finished the words, the light of the bullet station blurred and disappeared, replaced by the luminescence of crystals or corals lining the water tunnel.

  The bubble moved at such high speed I failed to make out what exactly was casting off the faint illumination, the stationary light sources turning into lines as if traveling at warp speed. The tunnel seemed endless, but every minute or so, a station flashed past before we reached our destination some five minutes later.

  There was no lurch, no sense of speed changing; we just hovered right outside the ballroom station.

  Porter, nonplussed, stepped out of the bubble, and onto the platform.

  “How far did we travel?” I asked after leaving the bullet, which promptly disappeared.

  “Around fifty miles, Your Lordship.”

  Six hundred miles per hour. Other than an airplane, I couldn’t remember ever traveling that fast. Griff took the distant second place, but even a griffin placed behind a magical bullet carriage.

  The city above was identical to the blocks I had passed, but the buildings were made of white marble streaked with gold.. Another difference I noted was the significantly emptier streets, but what few people walked them included a much higher percentage of awakened.

  “This is the adventurers’ guild, Your Lordship,” Porter introduced the four-story building aloud for the illiterate old me’s benefit. “Do you wish to conduct your business here first, or should we proceed to the other guildhouses?”

  “Let’s take a walk.” I had a lot of things to consider, not the least of which was how I would proceed with my redos.

  Glory City had twenty million residents, the number of violent crimes taking place daily must have been staggering, and being in the right place at the right time for incidents dozens of miles apart was much more unlikely than in a smaller city like Thunderbluff. And I was no brooding billionaire. If a screw came loose in my head, and I went out fighting crime masked, heresy hunters would get involved, and that would be the end of me.

  The matters of safety, my sanity, my moral obligations, and many others swarmed my thoughts as Porter introduced guild after guild, kindly reading the gargantuan letters for me in a neatly ordered city.

  My biggest concern was that some old monster would notice my act and turn me into a lab rat. Lady Frostgrave had gotten dangerously close. No matter how good I thought my acting was, the difference in raw stats was tyrannical. A peak sixth realm mageknight like her mentally outclassed me by close to four times.

  And a place as huge as Glory City had more than enough hidden mageknights outclassing her.

  “And this is the alchemists’ guild, Your Lordship.” Porter concluded the tour by reading the final ten-foot-tall sign for my sake, never making a statement without slapping on a “Your Lordship,” but at least he didn’t think me a god.

  “Thank you, Porter. If you don’t mind, follow me to the adventurers’ guild so I can withdraw the money to pay you.”

  “Not a problem, Your Lordship. You paid for my services until dawn. Would you like me to show you the most famous monuments and historical locations? Perhaps fine dining places?”

  “No need.” I would ask around at the adventurers' guild. Besides, meals and accommodations at the guild were free for members, even if they weren’t the best. “What’s the food like at the adventurers’ guild compared to the Fortunate Son?”

  “From what I have heard, Fortunate Son has much better food. Marigold is a renowned cook, and it’s widely known that several high-class restaurants have tried to poach her over the years. Your Lordship.”

  I asked random questions while we walked back to the adventurers’ guild, where I was met with another surprise.

  “You have banknotes?” Blunt blurted out as the clerk gave me a hundred gold bill.

  The clerk looked at me weirdly and explained as if I were a slow-witted child. “The adventurers' guild issues bonds for larger amounts of currency, Sir. We can give you the coin if you need a spare bludgeoning weapon, but you can use these to trade like you would a coin. All merchants accept them.”

  “Do you have them in other denominations?” I asked with open interest, and the clerk took out several other bills.

  One hundred was the smallest one, followed by five hundred, thousand, and so on, just adding zeros at the end until five hundred thousand, or half a first order manarium crystal.

  “Why did they pay in coins back in Thunderbluff’s adventurers' guild?”

  “Probably because you never asked for more than a handful of coins, Sir?” The clerk was demolishing me with his stiff bearing, but he wasn’t wrong, so I had probably earned his scorn.

  “I’m guessing you exchanged a first realm crystal for gold, and that’s where I got the gold?”

  “A stroke of brilliance, Sir.” The damn clerk was having a ball.

  “And if I collect one million gold coins?”

  “Then you will have a lot of gold coins, Sir.”