“Wow, this is a magic school!” Aaron said, eyes widening in delight.

  “It looks fun,” he added, watching the students laugh and play as they tossed spells at one another in the courtyard.

  “Yeah,” Luther nodded.

  Aaron leaned closer. “What do you think about us going to Sacred Fire?”

  “Your parents won’t let you. And I want to go to Columbia.”

  “Ahhhh, Columbia, huh?” Aaron let out a long sigh that seemed to stretch on forever.

  He for sure wanted to go to the same university as Luther, but he knew deep down that getting into Columbia would take a lot of effort. Fortunately, the higher his rank, the clearer his mind became, and his memory sharpened as if someone had polished it clean. It helped him a lot at school.

  “I hope I can reach lord rank, maybe even grand rank, before I take the ACT. That would make things so much easier,” Aaron said with a half-smile, though there was a spark of seriousness in his eyes. “Almost ninety percent of my blood has already etherized. I think it won’t be too long before I become an elite knight. What about you? How far have you gotten?”

  “A bit over forty percent,” Luther replied.

  “That’s pretty slow. But then again, it makes sense,” Acher remarked. “With the current level of the Origin’s magic, that pace is reasonable enough. Of course, Aaron got some divine power from Orpheus, so he doesn’t count.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you!” Aaron declared.

  “Squeak! Me too!” Jack-O cut in.

  “You? Protect?” Acher cawed in laughter. “You can only be a snack.”

  Since arriving in the United Kingdom, the train had begun making stops more often, and each time, more passengers boarded. It was clear that the Orion Route was still pretty popular here.

  “We passed by so many interesting places already. Someday we have to spend a whole month traveling across the entire supernatural world of Europe,” Aaron said, his eyes gleaming with excitement. “I can see that the closer we get to Athens, or maybe I should say the closer we get to Gnomon, the more magical communities exist.”

  The train even stopped in a mountain region where dragonic creatures could be seen roaming in the sky. Several knights boarded, bringing with them their imposing mounts: giant gecko-like creatures the size of horses.

  Aaron’s eyes shone like stars when he caught sight of winged lizards soaring between the jagged peaks in the distance. Unable to resist, he opened the incubator and took the Hemerian egg out.

  Pressing his ear against the shell, Aaron let out little chuckles when he caught the faint sounds of movement from within.

  “Hurry and hatch, Pyrasol. You’ve been inside for far too long,” he whispered, channeling more solar magic into the egg.

  He had already chosen the name for the dragon. Pyrasol, a word formed from “Pyra,” meaning fire, and “Sol,” the sun. It simply meant solar fire.

  Ever since the egg had been revived, besides the Ascended Energy granted by Luther, it had also shown a clear desire to drink in Aaron’s power whenever he touched it. It made sense, after all, this was a solar-type dragon.

  The moment the egg wriggled, every draconic creature in the area reacted in strange ways. Some collapsed, trembling to the ground, while others leapt about restlessly in frenzied excitement.

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  “Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!” From the distant range of mountains, a loud roar thundered across the skies.

  Luther activated his cloak, wrapping it around the egg. A few minutes later, from the distant sky, a creature twice the size of a bus came gliding toward them. What showed up was a monstrous moth, its wings thin and veined like stretched membranes, its whole body layered in scales, with a slender, serpentine neck, a deep crimson dragon's head, and two barbed tails whipping behind.

  “Mothwyrm,” Acher said. “That’s a Grand-rank demi-dragon species. This one here is just at the prime rank, though.”

  Aaron scowled. “They can sense Pyrasol from that far away? Why are they so damn sensitive?”

  “It’s not really about sensitivity,” Acher said calmly. “Dragons live by a strict hierarchy. This egg’s rank is just too high. Its magic weighs down on dragons of lower ranks. The fear woven into their bloodlines tells them it’s here.”

  The enormous moth-like beast landed beside the train, lowering its dragon head to sniff along the ground. Slowly, it began moving down the train’s exterior, checking near every single carriage. When it reached the one where they sat, it stopped. Its massive wheel-sized eyes, slit-pupiled and gleaming, pressed close to the window, trying to peek through.

  “Don’t worry,” Acher assured them. “This one-way vision spell isn’t something a small prime beast can break through.”

  With the colossal dragon face pressing on the window glass, Aaron seized the chance. He whipped out his phone and started snapping pictures in a frenzy.

  “Damn, this thing looks badass!” He grinned widely.

  Luther and Acher:

  “…”

  After a few minutes of trying, the mothwyrm gave up, opened its mouth, and spoke with a voice that rang clear across the forest. It carried the bright tone of a young man.

  “I suspect that someone aboard this train is carrying a treasure belonging to dragonkind. In the name of Velgryth, Lord of Shriekthorn Hollow, and as an official member of the Imperishable Scale, I demand that the staff of the Orion Express cooperate at once to investigate this matter.”

  The slime train driver poked its head out of the locomotive.

  “Demand, huh? You lizards are still as arrogant as ever. Every passenger on this train is under Orion Express protection. Now, crawl back to your stinking hole.”

  “WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY??!! YOU FUCKING…”

  Before the word “lowborn” could escape, the mothwyrm froze. It had just felt the train driver releasing an overwhelming wave of magic.

  Damn it! How could it be a Grand slime? To hell with Orion Express! To hell with the League of Gaian Mythic Species, too! I’ll file a complaint with the Council no matter what.

  Even though the mothwyrm itself could reach the Grand rank when fully matured, right now it was just a prime beast, and it was smart enough to shut its mouth. If it kept making a scene, it would get crushed on the spot.

  One of the armored knights approached and whispered something into his ear, then left with three others. The four of them purchased tickets and boarded the train, entering the very carriage where Aaron and Luther sat.

  As they passed the boys’ compartment, they stared hard at the locked door for a long moment. However, since it was locked, they couldn’t figure out who was inside. They also tried knocking, but it was useless, so they just stood there and waited, not even going to their compartment. As for the two boys? They hardly seemed to care. Aaron was still busy snapping photos of the mothwyrm as it stood right outside the window.

  After that minor incident, the train continued on its way, and by around nine in the evening, Aaron let out a cheer: “Yay! We’re almost there!”

  “Squeakkkk!!”

  All of them pressed close to the window, their eyes sparkling with excitement as they looked forward.

  The Orion Express was racing along the slope of a steep mountain. On the left side stretched a sheer rock wall, and on the right side yawned a cliff of hundreds of feet.

  In the real world, this place would have been the coastline of Sicily. But in the shadow world, it had transformed into an immense mountain range. The island, already vast at over ten thousand square miles, is hundreds of times bigger on the Dark Side. The train rumbled onward, weaving between towering peaks.

  “There are so many ruins,” Aaron remarked.

  Between the cliffs lay multiple long-abandoned cities, castles, roads, and all manner of deserted structures.

  “Sicily used to be sacred ground for the Cult of Harvest, so the whole island was extremely crowded back then,” Acher said. “But after Eudemia was gone, the plant pantheon went through a long period of weakness and decline. Besides that, magical beings all across the Origin also began migrating. Little by little, this place started falling apart. By the time I was sealed away, only a small central area was still inhabited.”

  The train turned around a jutting cliffside, and a vast landscape spread out before the boys’ eyes.

  It was a wide valley, surrounded on all sides by towering mountains that rose in dozens. A broad river wound its way through the valley and flowed into a massive lake that shimmered in the center. Built around the shores of that lake was a radiant forest city glowing with warm lights, spreading upward until even the lower slopes of the nearby mountains glittered with brilliance.