Taming beasts is more than coaxing them to do our bidding. What if we formed bonds of partnership instead of bonds of dependence? As things stand now, a beast is taken at birth or early infancy, then through rewards and punishment made to do its master’s bidding.

  — Excerpt from The Innovative Approach To Beasttaming

  Day 383, 9:00 AM

  The princess sat behind a paravan, which blocked normal and magical sight alike. I wondered how that worked, since we were out in the open, in a park-like garden. Did she have servants who carried around paravans for her when she moved around the palace, or did she not care if servants could see her?

  “Your Imperial Highness, the servant you requested is here to see you.” My escort, a fourth realm woman, said, bowing deeply, and I mimicked her gesture.

  “You may leave us.” The princess’s voice was clear and melodious as she dismissed the woman, who moved with haste to do as bidden.

  “You may sit in our presence.” I sat at a garden table made of stone, atop of which a cup of tea steamed.

  “I am Dandelion, Your Imperial Highness. What can I do for you?” The tea smelled tantalizing, mana misting from the cup, and I wondered just how much such a thing cost.

  “It has come to our attention that you have helped Honor Helmsworth overcome his heart demon.”

  A silence followed those words, where I realized her statement was actually a question.

  “I have, Your Imperial Highness.”

  “I would appreciate help with a similar problem.”

  Crap.

  “I will do everything in my power to help, Your Imperial Highness.” As I said the words, I had to wonder - why me? Being a soother was potentially something I, with my high social and mental stats, could do rather well, but didn’t the imperial family have more qualified staff?

  I waited for her to say something, but she remained silent.

  “What can you tell me about your problem?” I asked once it became apparent she wouldn’t say anything on her own.

  “Are you familiar with the concept of heaven’s wrath?”

  “Naturally, Your Imperial Highness.” Heaven’s wrath was a divine punishment all awakened faced when entering into a new realm starting from the sixth.

  “And do you know how knights and mages become mageknights?”

  That topic was somewhat more nebulous. At the peak of the fifth realm, mages and knights had a chance to become mageknights, and that was their only path forward. Otherwise, they were stuck at the peak of the fifth realm.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t explored the topic too deeply. What I do know is that the breakthrough to the sixth realm somehow makes mages and knights whole, letting them evolve into mageknights.”

  “While your words are true, they simply state when this change occurs the most frequently; they don’t touch upon the nature of the change. Tell me, how did you, a knight, become a mageknight?”

  “I shattered my realm and started over from scratch with a much higher quality core than I did originally, Your Imperial Highness.” I concealed the truth frankly.

  “Would you say that what you have done was unnatural? A defiance of the natural order?”

  I considered her words. “One could say that, Your Imperial Highness. From where I stood, I simply gambled my life to reforge my path.”

  “What you did was defy fate. Have you suffered no reprisals afterwards? Didn’t the heavens try to smite you for your transgression?” There was a note of puzzlement in her voice.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Silently, I went through everything that had happened since, but I really hadn’t suffered any consequences for my actions. I gambled on success, died a few times before getting it right, and that was that. If facing death wasn’t enough to satisfy the heavens, I don’t know what was.

  “Not that I’m aware of, Your Imperial Highness,” I said diplomatically, hesitating to call her outright wrong.

  “You said you shattered your realm completely?” She said thoughtfully. “Perhaps that’s the reason.”

  Well, that, or maybe it’s because on a universal scale of things, pulling back time one hundred and sixty years whenever I feel like it outweighs reforming my realm, so the heavens don’t give a damn.

  “Could be, Your Imperial Highness. I don’t think I can offer anything beyond speculation on such arcane topics. I guess this has something to do with your problem.”

  “Yes. I defied fate when I was breaking the barrier of my fourth realm. I went from knight to mageknight upon advancing into the fifth realm and suffered the wrath of heavens because of it.” She paused for several heartbeats before continuing. “The experience changed me.”

  Whatever she was talking about was deeply traumatic, and I let her gather her thoughts without interrupting. Anything I said would be hollow words to fill in the silence, and that wasn’t what she needed.

  “Nobody expected a bolt of lightning to strike me. Fortunately, it shattered the palace, losing the smallest speck of power, which was enough to make a difference between life and death. My father fed me a potion personally and complimented me for the first time since my awakening, thirty-seven years ago.”

  Another pause.

  “Everyone sees the glory, but nobody thinks of the moments when your body and being are incinerated. That bolt of lightning…”

  “You’re not afraid of the wounds you suffered.” My logical deduction was clear on the topic. The life of the imperial family, based on her handful or words, was cruel, death and critical wounds expected. “It was the lightning.”

  She was silent for another long moment. “I could have you whipped for lack of respect, but I’’ allow it this time. Yes, you are correct, death and injury can’t frighten me. My father’s lack of attention and disappointment stung so much, death was an easy way out.”

  My mind raced. What else could such an event entail? The feeling of being minuscule before the cosmos? No, she was almost certainly at least once in the presence of the emperor, her paternal grandmother, and before a tenth realm exalt, she was like a grain of sand.

  “It wasn’t the powerlessness that unnerved you,” I said before quickly adding, “Your Imperial Highness.”

  “And what was?”

  It wasn’t the pain, nor the threat of death, nor the insignificance of her own existence. What else was there at that moment? Lightning, probably an explosion, but the princess almost certainly didn’t feel loud noises. Was she disfigured?

  Nonsense, with the imperial family’s resources and access to healers, they would reconstruct her body without a scratch from a smear on the ground, assuming she was somehow alive. Did she die, and they revived her? No, she remembered her father feeding her a potion. That only left…

  “The lightning,” I muttered to myself.

  “Yes, it was the lightning,” she confirmed again, but her voice was odd.

  “You’re not telling me something, Your Imperial Highness,” I said. “I know that lightning itself couldn’t have been what scarred you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s neither fear nor reverence in your voice when you mentioned the lightning nor the heaven’s wrath, Your Imperial Highness. That means something was delivered with the lightning, or something else happened I am unaware of.”

  “And how would you deal with an unknown fear? Something that shakes your very soul?”

  “Are we discussing the fear of the unknown or an unknown fear, Your Imperial Highness? If it is the latter, I would first learn what it is that I fear. If it is the latter, fear of the unknown is difficult to deal with, but ultimately, what we fear is ourselves and our own imagination. Neither of these is the problem you are suffering from, Your Imperial Highness.”

  Someone would’ve dealt with such simple sophistry and exercises in philosophy.

  “That will be all for today,” the princess said, and I stood, leaving behind the precious tea I never found the time to sip.

  I bowed deeply. “Thank you for your time, Your Imperial Highness. I hope our conversation helped you.”

  Because I sure as hell didn’t see any value in it, save for wasting what is very possibly the most expensive cup of tea I had seen in my life.

  The princess said nothing, and I left the palatial complex escorted by a guard. There was neither prize nor thanks, as I walked back towards the block with the guilds.

  The princess clearly didn’t trust me enough to tell me her secrets and what was bothering her. Which was fine. I had a feeling that knowing an imperial scion’s dark secret would have me assassinated in a matter of minutes if not seconds.

  There was a mystery hidden there. Like how she managed to advance her class before entering the sixth realm, or why it has to happen at the sixth, and what it is about her that’s special enough to let her do it ahead of time.

  As for what had scarred her soul, I didn’t give a damn, and I didn’t want to know a hint of it, let alone the whole truth. No number of lives and redos would see me safe if I figured it out.

  “Master Dandelion,” the guildmaster approached me personally when I entered the guild, shortly before noon. “We have received three missions for you personally. Would you like to review them?”

  No. No, I would not. You’re acting way too nice and your tone is too warm and familiar. And that was how the whirlpool of power and wealth dragged me in. The only question remaining was whether I would learn to swim quickly enough to weather it in one piece.