"I told you we should've killed him," the President of the United States said. She was sitting in her chair in the Oval Office. The General of the Army, standing in front of her table, had just reported the conversation Shen had had with Alicia in the SUV. "We could keep killing all Rising Stars until we got an American one."

The General didn't respond. He had gotten used to her antics. She wasn't even the worse President he had had to deal with when it came about complaining uselessly about things.

Yet, despite his silence, he stood by his previous opinion: killing Feng Shen would be easy, but dealing with Rising Stars in other parts of the world could get tricky. All manners of issues appeared in operations that had to be put together quickly and required precision. The nuclear option was also not feasible: there were only so many atomic bombs they could use before the world ended—not that many of his aides seemed to understand that fundamental issue.

Having a known friendly Rising Star, or at least a neutral one they knew wasn't a psychopath, was preferable to an unknown variable who hated them.

He still thought it was a mistake not to let the boy participate in the training. The President had gotten livid when he demanded another entrance other than the elevator. Yet, his presence would have deepened his bonds with the other American Pioneers, especially Alexandra King, who had become friends with Alicia Winter after three tiring weeks together.

"We're lucky he has no idea how technology works," the President continued. "If he did, he would know what's going on, and he would resent us. Then we would need to kill him anyway. We're just wasting time."

The General had also been against limiting Feng Shen's access to information. The US had the tech and personnel to do that to a few people, but it wasn't perfect, as shown by the boy's resourcefulness in his online searches. The President wanted Feng Shen in the dark to make him easier to control, but that was too short-sighted.

Despite everything, MacArthur didn't blame the President. She wanted what was best for America. She was just having trouble adapting to a world where people might become strong enough to go against her entire nation alone. She had sacrificed so much to become the President of the strongest country in the world that she couldn't understand treating a teenager close to how others treated her.

Fortunately, he knew just how to fix the mistakes up to now. It started with sending Feng Shen away from DC. At least Lorain agreed with that.

She resented her part on the plan though.

"I'll not be questioned by a random alien," she continued. "I am the President of the United States of America, not a random miss as he calls me. All of this is because of your misguided mercy, General. You better remember that."

"Yes, madam President," he replied at once.

She kept silent for a moment before saying, "Well? What are you waiting for? Go fetch the annoying children. I have a meeting with Senator Livingston in twenty minutes."

The General obeyed his Commander in Chief.

Shen and Alicia were sitting in a corridor in the White House. He had accepted leaving his weapons by the door but had brought his backpack after an inspection.

Separating him from his spears felt pretty stupid, considering anyone with mana was always better armed than him, and Alicia was a mage. Yet, he had gone with it. He was confident of his speed if he needed to escape.

Now that he had decided to leave the country, he was willing to deal with more stupidity than usual. He also reckoned that interacting so much with the mortal populace online had affected his sense of normalcy. It felt proper to not go armed to a meeting with the President of the United States.

And it was a President that was disrespecting Shen and Alicia by having them wait for ten minutes already. That was another thing he was willing to let go of for now. However, it was obviously not doing the President and the General any favors in how Shen saw them.

A woman in her early twenties approached and sat in front of them, on the other side of the corridor.

She had long violet hair cut straight, eyes of the same color, and was tall and thin. She wore large black leather pants and a black leather jacket, both with small metal spikes, over a purple T-shirt. Her long barrel black boots had a thick sole that made her even taller than Shen when standing up.

"Inspect," Shen whispered.

| Holly Dyson (E) | 150 / 150

She nodded to Alicia and Shen, then ignored them completely; she was listening to music on her wireless earbuds and evidently didn't care for conversation with strangers.

Five minutes later, a secretary finally called them to the Oval Office. Holly Dyson followed.

The President and the General, wearing common mortal clothes this time, focused their attention on Dyson when they entered. The secretary left and closed the door.

"Who is this?" General MacArthur asked. He was standing beside the President's desk, with the President herself sitting on a chair behind it. "A friend of yours?" he asked Shen.

Shen shook his head. "I thought you had called for her."

Dyson took her earbuds off, stored them in a jacket pocket, and nodded. "I'm Holly Dyson. I came as a representative of the Save the Maiden Initiative. We know you plan on killing the Human Maiden."

The General frowned and touched something on the table. "How did you get in here?"

"You were fooled by the Sorcerer King's troops for months, General," Dyson replied while shaking her head. "It's not my fault you can't understand the marvels of magic."

MacArthur said as his frown deepened. He was looking at the room's doors. "Where are the Secret Service agents?"

"Asleep. A simple wind spell coupled with a sleeping solution. The Save the Maiden Initiative cannot be stopped, General."

Shen watched everything with surprise. The Dyson girl had acted as if she was just another visitor outside the room. Yet she had been an invader all along?

He was impressed—and careful. He stepped closer to Alicia, ready to protect her if needed.

The General opened his mouth to say something else, but the President beat him to it. "Remove her," she ordered.

"You heard the President," MacArthur said, but Shen noticed the man had no weapon at hand. That was supposed to be a safe area, protected by others. "Your invasion is illegal, and I want you to leave now. Not doing so—"

He never finished the sentence.

Suddenly, all air in the room moved at once to produce a wind blade that materialized right beside the General's head, already moving at a ridiculously high speed. The blade cut his head at once, his innate soul defense and resistance stat utterly useless against the spell.

One moment, General MacArthur's head was on his shoulders. The next, it was rolling on the floor.

Blood sprayed as the body fell. The President stood up and stepped back in surprise, her eyes wide. Shen tensed, ready to bring Alicia out of the room and rush for his spears.

"The old world order is over," Dyson told Lorain. "The Alliance evolved us, but people like you are worms trying to keep a measure of control over gods."

The air rushed at the President, and a wind blade beheaded her.

Dyson turned to Shen. "They were keeping your access to information limited. Ditch your government-issued phone—really, how stupid can you be to accept it in the first place?—stop believing in any random politician who says they have power over you, and come with me if you want a ride to Italy. The Save the Maiden Initiative—"

A lot of things happened at the same time then, preventing the girl from finishing her sentence. Alicia recovered from her shock and screamed, the office door slammed open as three men in black with rifles entered the room, and Shen moved.

He reached Dyson in an instant and tried to punch her to death.

She reacted quickly. A wind barrier appeared in front of her. Shen kept moving. His speed was enough to go through the barrier, but it still slowed him down.

Dyson had also pushed herself back with a wind jet and tried to go through the windows behind the big desk in the room. She failed. Her wind blade wasn't enough to cut through whatever the windows were made of, and she found herself cornered.

Shen kept going her way. Two agents rushed at the desk while the third secured the exit by pointing his rifle at the people inside.

Dyson tried to flee to the door, but Shen intercepted her. She threw wind blades his way, but his armor was enough to stop them, so he kept going. When the air in the room rushed to her front again, creating a transparent distortion that he identified as a new barrier, he used his qi.

Combat, Boundless, and Arc Flash Qi made him faster and stronger. He also pushed some Boundless Qi out of his body, and when his qi met the barrier's mana, a battle of wills started.

Dyson wasn't interested and pulled back. Shen used the opportunity to approach her. She tried to push him away with a lot of wind—now coming from the corridor—but he resisted it. It didn't even slow him too much.

"Stop!" she pleaded. "I can—"

He reached her and punched her in the face.

His hand caved her face in. She took eighty points of damage but didn't die.

He punched again and turned her head into tomato sauce.

Shen didn't care about the dead leaders, whom he had stopped trusting. He could've tried to protect the President, but he had decided against it simply because she had done nothing to deserve it. She had been an unwilling ruler being forced to acknowledge him because the nation's Congress—or sect elders, as he saw it—insisted she did so. Shen didn't mind seeing her dead.

But even if he minded, he wasn't sure he would've interfered. Cultivator honor demanded a leader to have the power to protect themselves, be it personal power, magic, or personnel. For a leader to die at the hands of an assassin that had entered through their front doors was pathetic; protecting her would've been a disservice to the people of the United States. Now, they had the opportunity to find someone better prepared for this new world.

The same honor that demanded him to protect the weak and vulnerable didn't apply when dealing with the leader of one of the strongest nations in the world.

However, Shen cared a lot about being implicated in their deaths.

Dyson had entered the room with Shen and Alicia, and no one would believe they weren't connected to the woman. Even if it was done under wraps, the US had to try to capture or kill him for this. He refused to believe his Diplomatic Agent status would stop them from attempting to do so.

Dyson had done that to him using the blood of others, so honor allowed him to make her pay with her blood for it.

Everything had happened too fast. The two agents finally got close enough to see the President's corpse. Shen rushed to the screaming Alicia, put her over his shoulder, and rushed out of the room.

His spears were by the White House's door, where he had left them. He grabbed them and left the place as fast as he could.

Once outside, he kept running.

A middle-aged man of brown hair and eyes, wearing a tweed, was sitting on a bench in Lafayette Square, the park across the White House. He was reading a newspaper when a blonde in her late teens sat beside him. She had short pink hair in two buns and wore yoga pants under her miniskirt. Her white T-shirt had hearts and skulls, and she had a jeans jacket on top of it.

"Holly is dead," she said emotionlessly while checking her smartphone.

"Thank God," the man said. "that one was nuts. And the targets?"

"Dead too."

They were pretending not to know each other just to avoid immediate suspicions. They didn't care if the conversation was being spied on or recorded, which might cause people to come after them later.

There would be no USA later.

"So the Rising Star isn't all that," the man concluded. "That will make our plans easier."

"That's the strange part," the girl said. "He didn't act until the President was dead. Then he killed Holly so fast that I think he could have protected the old hag if he wanted."

The man frowned. "Where is he now?"

"He moves at over two thousand miles per hour. He disappeared even to our magic."

"He'd better not get closer to the Maiden. She's ours." He stood up and left.

A few moments later, the girl left too.

A being was floating in the Oval Office, unseen by the people there.

They were humanoid and naked, with big mammaries and a reproductive organ seen on biological females. She had a pair of long arms and legs and a rather long tail that ended in a vaguely pointed and narrow end. She was almost seven feet tall, with dark blue skin that faded to almost white in places, almost black in others.

Her face had some resemblance to a human's, though she had no nose or ears, and her head was slightly elongated, with bony ridges at points. She also had no hair visible anywhere but five long appendages on the back of her head.

It was as if she had five additional long and thin tails growing from her back.

Most notably, she seemed almost intangible, as if made mostly of energy.

All that marked her as an alien already, but what marked her as a powerful alien was her eyes. They seemed to be bottomless wells of power, glowing purple, with the intensity of barely contained power.

If she let a glimpse of that power escape her control, everyone in that room would die instantly.

The Primordial Maiden was looking at her dead shell, with a caved-in face, on the ground.

She was very, very angry.