Let’s start with how realms and enhanced strength really works. I have tested it only as a mageknight, so the numbers should be different fro mages and knights, but you’ll get the gist of it. Everyone knows your strength doubles once you awaken, then quadruples at the second realm and so on. This is coincides somewhat with reality, but it’s utter nonsense.

  — Excerpt from Notes For Newstar

  Day 470, 6:00 PM

  One two three, it’s strange how despite dancing for years, and despite hearing the sound of the beat as clearly as seeing the face of my partner, counting the beat followed me in the back of my head. One would think only novice dancers had that problem.

  I didn’t mind the distraction, though. It spoke in Manny’s voice as she counted for me once upon a time, and at that memory a smile escaped me.

  “You’re a wonderful dancer, Master Dandelion,” said my partner, a young woman with sapphire-blue eyes and a flowing green ballgown.

  A third realm knight, she was beautiful and graceful; her steps matched mine perfectly. So perfectly, in fact, I was tempted to misstep and see whether she would still follow my lead.

  “Thank you, My Lady. I am but a novice, nowhere near your level.” It was embarrassing, but nobody mentioned my partner’s name even as she asked me for a dance. Apparently, everyone knew everyone in these kinds of events, and an outsider like me hobbled by with My Lord-s and My Lady-s.

  “You’re too harsh, and I really think you are a wonderful partner.” She was quite forward with potential double meaning which I may have incorrectly attributed to her words. “You make a lady feel safe and protected somehow. I’m not sure how to explain it better.”

  Precise, Amicable, and several other skills came to mind to explain her feelings, but I just flashed a charming smile, regretting not having leveled Bodyguard before locking in Mageknight.

  “Thank you for your kind words, My Lady.”

  “Call me Tess. There’s no reason for such formality if you are on a first-name basis with Honor Helmsworth.”

  Social climber. Fortunately, I had years of experience dealing with such vermin. We exchanged pleasantries, finished our handful of turns, and after bowing, I went back to Honor.

  “Dandelion!” He smiled with way too much mirth at my troubles. Tess was the fifth young woman who snatched me from him.

  “Honor,” I hailed back. “Why have you not danced with one of the wonderful ladies adorning your family’s lustrous dance hall?”

  “I’m the host.” He smiled slyly. “I’ve no time to dance. I have guests to entertain.”

  He spread his hands around, a tall wineglass in his hand. “A lot of guests.”

  “You mean shields?” I lowered my voice, and he laughed.

  “Most welcome guests!” And he was off, while another lady approached me.

  Yet another woman approached. They all poked, both physically and mentally. Physically, they pressed their breasts at my chest, skirting the edge of propriety as their tongues sought confirmation and information. Had I been in the prince’s presence in the palace? What about one of the princesses?

  Back when I was the socially ill-adjusted Aang, in my early loops, I would’ve been giddy with the kind of attention I was receiving. As Dandelion, with all the knowledge and experience behind me, I danced loops around them, literally and metaphorically, steering us between other couples with as much skill as I steered the conversations away from sensitive topics.

  I had a feeling of impending disaster, someone spreading false rumors I didn’t utter, sabotaging me despite the rules of the game. But the evening ended peacefully. Redo remained red, my senses scanning everything around me, while my relaxed body language told of obliviousness towards the building threat.

  Eventually, finally, the evening ended. No incident. No disaster. I was free to go home.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Strange, I thought. My senses rarely deceived me, and the sense of looming disaster was strong. A normal man would’ve relaxed; a paranoid creature like me — never.

  “Thank you for a wonderful evening, Honor,” I said, as I bade my host a good night. “I hope I get to return the favor one day. I’ll be sure to invite thousands of starved women and tell them you’re looking for a wife.”

  “That’s remarkably naive of you, Dandelion.” Honor’s smile remained cheerful. “You say that as if my parents don’t already arrange such gauntlets.”

  I smirked and shook my head. Poor man.

  I left his family’s estate with that thought. In truth, the evening would’ve been pleasant had I been deaf. The pastries were on a different level from what normal folk ate. They had prime meat, expertly seasoned not to cover the poor quality, but to enhance the already delicious aroma.

  Wine flowed in rivers, good wine, all of it followed by confections made of fruits and honey.

  Yes, it wasn’t a bad kind of torture, unless you were like Honor, someone who had gone through it dozens if not hundreds of times.

  Instead of catching a coach, I walked towards the guild, the ominous mood returning. Something somewhere was wrong. Then, a soundless shriek washed over the city. The earth should have trembled, the infirm should have wailed, beasts howled, and warriors rushed out of their homes, ready to guard their lives.

  Nothing.

  Three coaches carried on, speeding down the street with the slightest of clatters of wheels against the road, inaudible during the day. Nobody jumped out of them, nobody drew their weapons, and I stopped myself from reacting even if my hand moved to the throwing knives concealed as the decorations of the fancy clothes Lady Helmsworth had commissioned for me.

  Another moment passed, yet no reaction. The coaches drew further away, the muffled sound of their passage growing fainter until it disappeared. I was alone. No horde of monsters assaulted me, nothing out of the ordinary happened, despite the hackles stabbing at the inside of my clothes.

  Whatever had happened had passed. Whatever had happened, no small number of people had died somewhere close by.

  What gives me that idea? I didn’t feel anything like this during the library loops. Did my actions change anything?

  It shouldn’t have, which meant the library’s seals had kept the phenomenon from disturbing the building.

  I’ll investigate once Redo is back online.

  Seven days passed without a hint of anything odd happening. Nobody attacked me, nor the city, then I visited the rumor house and asked for information on what had happened on the night of the ball.

  The full report cost five hundred third realm manarium crystals, but I got all the plots surrounding me, as well as the names of ladies who tried to dig information out of me, along with the likeliest reasons for their digging. All I saw was a pending assassination attempt for poking my nose into the matters of higher nobility.

  And as a footnote to the report, it said it was the imperial prison’s scheduled time for destroying the death sentence prisoners. My gut and skills told me that was it, the source of my discomfort. But I’ve witnessed battles where thousands had died and never felt anything similar. The mostly crime-free city could hardly have so many criminals.

  What if they had executed a bunch of cultists and their deaths somehow fed the outer gods? Other than my own mental problems, the outer gods were the only thing that could give me such a level of discomfort.

  “How often does the prison destroy the prisoners sentenced to death?” I asked.

  “No real schedule, as far as I know,” the obscured information broker said in a distorted voice. “Sometimes it happens once a moon, sometimes moons pass.”

  “Why do they call it scheduled then?”

  The featureless man shrugged. “I don’t know. Would you like us to investigate?”

  I was already dead, so why not dig around the execution schedule while I was at it?

  “Sure.”

  Meanwhile, I would check in the library whether last week was an auspicious day or something. Such nonsense was often presented as the reason for state affairs. A part of me regretted my inability to interact with the seers. The incident with the old woman really drove home the need to avoid them for everyone’s sake.

  So, I went to the library and spent two days there, working things out. And it really took two days. The phenomenon that happened had no name, was never documented, even if the star charts and moon charts showed it obviously as something that occurred with some regularity.

  The night was moonless, which was natural and happened once every moon. The ambient fire mana was in its nadir, and as I checked the charts following the minor fluctuations of mana, I found that somehow all elemental mana was at its lowest that night.

  As if flowing away or fleeing.

  I shook the nonsense thought away. Was it a coincidence that they had executed on the lightless night when ambient mana was at its weakest?

  It could have been, but there was still a question of why such an obvious phenomenon didn’t have a name. And yet, the minimum of light and minimum of mana had the ominous feel crazy folk would use to make all sorts of wild superstitions about.

  Most strange indeed. I spent a couple of extra hours in the library, but found nothing more.

  I left the building, and after turning a corner, I felt a phantom pain flash in my head. All I managed was the slightest tilt of the head, and instead of burrowing into my head, the rock spear went through my neck, down my chest and through my heart. I tried to look up and see whether my assassin was close, but the ruined muscles wouldn’t listen.

  The explosion had lights turning on in the windows of nearby homes, and before a crowd could gather, I exploded myself.

  I hope the assassin was far enough.