The man was as old as his voice indicated. He had dark skin, a bald head, and light blue eyes with a faint purple glow of Arcane Energy at the edges of his irises. He wore black martial arts robes with a golden belt, and his feet were bare.

He walked into the room with his hands behind his back and the posture of someone who dominated the whole world.

Aaron felt only Arcane Energy at the Champion level within him, no other. By the rules of that world, the man needed to be at least a Three Star Qi Manipulator to reach the Champion level on any secondary energy. That Aaron couldn't even feel Qi inside the man meant he was using some technique to hide his real power. And who knows what else he may be hiding? Aaron frowned.

Just to be sure, he used the Celestial Skill Check Level on the man and see if he could find out anything more with it.

'Check Level', he thought.

Arcane Champion

A dark rectangle appeared, floating above the man's head. It had bronze text, which made Aaron alert. He could feel the purity of the man's Arcane Energy, and the system should have classified it in silver. This meant that he was either tricking Aaron's senses or the system. Either way, he was a great danger.

"Logan, recall your Nature Spirit Familiars," he ordered.

"But High Lord—"

The man interrupted him. "You lost three Vitamancers, and the fourth has only half of her Vital Energy left because of the attacks of the spatial blades. All you have to show after such losses is a Four Star Sorceress with a slightly damaged soul, and an angry Three Star Qi Manipulator who was about to take your life."

"High Lord, I can handle him!" Logan insisted.

The High Lord turned to Logan with narrowed eyes. "Are you suggesting that your judgment is superior to mine? That you can analyze the situation clearer than me? That you are better than me?"

Logan paled, took a step back, and shook his head.

"Good," said the High Lord, turning to Aaron. "For sparing my stupid pupil at my request, I will forgive the death of my other subordinates." He made a gesture with his hand, and their corpses disappeared into a hidden spatial artifact that Aaron felt him wear around his waist. "But I do this only out of respect for the Goddess of Light. Next time, I'm going to kill you." He turned around and walked out of the room.

The Confluencer seemed a little lost for a moment. Then he collected all the shadows, snorted at Aaron, and ran after his master. "High Lord, what about the Sapphire Daughter?" he asked with a mixture of submission and anxiety.

"The spatial disturbance in the room makes it clear she left on her own," replied the man. "Now, silence. I'm negotiating reparations for your losses with the Guardian of the Light in the World." While they talked, the last living Vitamancer stood up with difficulty and limped after them.

Aaron watched them leave in silence. He was annoyed at being denied his target, but he didn't dwell on it.

"Lana, Come heal me," he ordered.

Aaron could use his Qi to heal, which was great for small wounds in battle, but it wasn't as fast as Lana's spells. Also, Qi was ineffective in healing broken bones because he needed to set the broken bones perfectly or they could end up bent. Healing spells did everything automatically.

He sat in the corner, watching one of the floating globes of light, glad for Alys's spell being good enough to continue even with her unconscious.

"Yes, Patriarch," Lana replied with relief, but also with some concern in her voice.

In her heart, she had already forgiven her brother. It wasn't his fault he was like that; he was suffering some kind of disease. She was happy he had left alive and worried about his future.

A High Lord of the Black Hand had threatened the Herald of Light. That was troubling. It didn't help that the High Lord seemed to be his brother's new master.

The goddess had said Logan would probably leave the Temple of Light on his own accord eventually. That it was almost impossible for him to reach the last day of five years without relapsing. That death was better than what he would become if the imbalance within himself got out of control for a long time. But Lana had always hoped.

Her hope had just been crushed.

As much as she tried to control herself, tears came to her eyes again. She walked over to the Patriarch, who was sitting with his back to a wall next to Alys, kneeled beside him, and concentrated on healing his injuries. She was surprised to feel the extent of the damage he had suffered in the legs. Even though she had heard bones break, feeling his knees and legs in that state... How could he even walk like that? Empathy filled her being, and she felt even more tears streaming down her cheeks.

And then, to her utter surprise, she felt the Patriarch's hand touch her face, and his thumb dry her tears.

"Stop healing me," he said in a soft voice. "As my maid, you must always move on regardless of your pain. But as Patriarch, it's my prerogative to have compassion for my subordinates. You can heal me later. Just rest for now."

Before she could think of anything, he pulled her into a warm hug. She was shocked at first, but then, she felt so secure in his firm arms that she couldn't help but relax.

Everything crushed into her again, and she cried to sleep.

Aaron found himself in a moral conflict.

On the one hand, Lana was vulnerable, and using that vulnerability to cement a greater loyalty in her would avoid future problems, especially when Aaron finally killed Logan. She had sworn an oath of absolute obedience to him, and while she had done nothing to make him doubt it, he didn't fully trust it either. Making that absolute obedience come true through some psychological manipulation would be quite easy in her state.

On the other hand, he considered it wrong to use people's moments of weakness to advance his own goals unless they were enemies. Lana was not an enemy, she was his maid, a subordinate he should have in the highest esteem, no matter the reason he had placed her in that position.

He sighed, divided. Finally, he decided that he would help her in this tough time, as he saw it as his obligation towards his maid, but he wouldn't try to further any of his goals other than to comfort her.

Lana was so emotionally drained that she fell asleep in a few minutes. When he was sure her sleep was deep enough, he removed a sleeping bag from his spatial ring and gently placed her on it. He did the same with Alys, then sat down to regain his energy.

Meanwhile, he meditated on his battle with the Mouth-Man and everything he could have done differently. He had plenty of experience, but he knew very well he was not perfect.

Identifying and correcting one's flaws was an endless process.

Upon waking up, Lana felt strange butterflies in her stomach. Now, kneeling beside the seated Patriarch and using her magic to heal him, she was trying to find out where these butterflies had come from.

Maybe it came from the hug he gave her and the way she comforted her to sleep. Maybe from the way his eyes looked deeply at her, as if they were looking into her soul and peering into her deepest secrets. Or maybe from the gentle, intimate way he put his hand over hers and squeezed a little while dazzlingly smiling at her.

Men had hit on her many times before. Priests of Justice needed to abandon all carnal desire that could hinder an impartial judgment, and Priests of Purity considered carnal desires filthy, but a Priestess of Light had it easier. The Goddess of Light demanded nothing like that from her priesthood.

However, Lana always knew that in the future, her hand would be given to consolidate some family agreement. Her wishes didn't matter, and she was fine with that. She had been raised with that in mind, and learning to serve the goddess had made it even easier to submit to her parents.

Of course, she had been tempted a few times. Some men who made advances on her were handsome and powerful, a dangerous combination. Fortunately, although the goddess did not demand carnal purity from her priesthood, she did provide them with a skill to temporarily remove all desires of the flesh if they so wished. Lana had always used this ability, as her family came before her selfish desires.

But Aaron, the breeze-windstorm...

He was neither ugly nor the most handsome man in the world, but his self-confidence seemed greater than that of the Imperial Crown Prince, whom she had seen once.

His muscles, which she could only see through the tears in his clothes after the battle with the Mouth-Man, were not as big as her preference, but they had something to them that was difficult to put into words. They look... right, in a way. Or... or a word that shouldn't be used to describe mortals: perfect. Their proportion and shape seemed to be made by hand, perfectly sculpted on his body to create something so effective that she could not even describe.

He was also not as old as she was told to expect her future husband to be — and that expectation shaped her taste. Even though she was twenty, her future husband would probably be at least in his mid-thirties, and that if he were young. Aaron looked just a few years older than her. However, there was an old feeling to him, an air of experience, of knowing and having lived, that seemed to imbue the air around him with a mysterious and ancestral aura.

Now that she thought about it, the way he had embraced her was evidence of his experienced character. She didn't feel like a child or a vulnerable girl being abused. No, his care for her fragility at the same time that he had pulled her firmly without asking for permission made her feel feminine, like a real woman being held by a mature lover in a bard's song.

She blushed for the thousandth time as she remembered his body heat when he had held her.

He was not the man her family had chosen. Worse, he was her direct boss, and romantic relationships between boss and subordinate weren't well regarded in the Empire. However, he had moved her heart, and now even the warmth of his hand seemed to fill her entire body.

She screamed in her mind and tried to focus on healing, which was taking much longer than it should have. Finally, she finished and took a step back while still kneeling.

"It is done, Patriarch," she said with the submission that was expected of a maid of the Ironblood clan, hating how much her voice trembled while talking to him.

The Patriarch got up and walked around a little.

"Excellent work," he said and came back to stand in front of her. "Look at me," he ordered, in a way that would not allow arguments. It felt as if it was natural for the world to obey his will, as if resistance was so futile that it was not even considered by him as a possibility.

She stood up and obeyed. When she looked into his eyes again, those black eyes that were as deep as the endless sky, she blushed again.

"You have honored me by staying by my side even when it made you suffer so much." He patted her head. "You're a good maid. Well done."

The butterflies returned as soon as he touched her head.

She was glad Alys wasn't awake to see her smile happily at his words like a silly little girl.