This is the best time to use that. My newest invention, one of the greatest magic structures I ever created. But for now... Let's get to know the one that for some weird reason brought books to the royal birthday party.

-What's your name, girl?

-It's Q. Will you answer my question though, sir? - she asked with stars in her eyes, clearly excited. Q? That's... weird. Is that her real name? A nickname? Something just bugs me about her. Now that I look carefully... Isn't that one of my books in her hands? The 6th tome, I think. How come she has it here?

-I thought you didn't have 'Magic Knowledge' in this country? Why do you have one with you, Q?

-I'm not originally from Blackhill, that's why. But I admit it's become almost impossible to get the new volumes once I moved here with my family, that's why I'm reading the old ones again.

-And who is your family, shorty?

-That's... something I cannot tell even you. If you learned of it, you would be in danger.

Oooh realllly now? I knew this girl was interesting!

-Umm... Could you finally tell me if you're who I think you are, sir? It's extremely important to me.

Should I tell her? Well, it doesn't matter anyway after I use THAT.

-Yes, William Wardock is my alias, Q. Now I decided - you will accompany me on my journey!

Even if most of the people present probably never even heard of 'Magic Knowledge' before, they did hear what I said about it earlier. Now their mouths were agape with shock and some started murmuring that I'm definitely lying and this kind of heaven-defying books probably doesn't exist in the first place.

Yes, the most wanted and famous person in the whole world just told them he's right in front of them and the result... they don't believe me at all. Actually, I should have known something like this would happen - there were countless cases when some random person said they're William Wardock but none of them could actually prove it. I have fans and followers everywhere, every country sent at least some of their spies around the world with just one job - to look for me, the author of 'Magic Knowledge' series. Any person who gives some information about me would gain enough money to buy a new mansion and the one who would uncover my real identity... From what I heard, some countries are even offering their princes and princesses to marry as well as a life of luxury, glory and perhaps a whole kingdom in the future after the ruling King and Queen retire.

All of these things just to find me. Well, here I am. In some small Blackhill kingdom, where people apparently don't even know what 'Magic Knowledge' is. I actually thought that it shouldn't be possible not to know it by now but hey, this shows exactly how far from home I am right now.

Suddenly, an extremely loud and shrill yell pierced my ears and woke me from my daydreaming:

-Hell yyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeessssssss!!!!!! Yes, yes, yes, YES, YES!! I'll gladly follow you wherever you go! Please, please take me with you! It was my greatest dream to finally meet you, sir Wardock!

Right. Conversation over, not much time left to do my thing. I moved my hand into my pocket and pressed the button once. At the same time, I saw a blazing hot laser shooting through the air from the window. The path of the red line was eventually going to land in the shorty's head in not even a second...

But then everything changed.

No, not really. Other than the world looking a little blurry for a moment not much changed.

What did I do? Something very simple and yet most difficult to accomplish. Simple, because that was the easiest way to prevent my big secret from being known to the world. Why hard to do? Because what I just did was turning back time by one whole minute!

-...nformation this is the best staff available in Blackhill kingdom! It carries enough mana to destroy half of this castle!

The same shout again. Yes! Perfect timing. What I did now was erasing my answer to this question and the whole conversation with the redhead girl - no one would remember any of it happening (except me, of course). So now it's like I never met her before and no one knows my real identity! Problem solved! But that laser at the end... Someone almost murdered this midget right in front of me. A certain someone that will definitely be outside of the same window, from where that laser shot came from earlier... Huhuhu, this just gets better and better... I couldn't stop an evil chuckle escaping my mouth but a short moment later I thought of something important.

...

That guy made me angry. He wanted to kill my new toy and that is simply unacceptable. But for now... I remembered another person that angered me before.

I pointed a finger at the chubby who was even redder than before and told him loud and clear:

-We'll talk later.

That taken care of I immediately rushed beside 'the vice-master of Blackhill's Magic Academy' (or master of making a fool out of himself) straight towards the king who smiled brightly after seeing my face... Oh, I guarantee it won't be like that for long.

-Sir Alexander! Thank you very much for rescuing us all! Did you finish your meal? Can we talk now?

He was talking loudly, making our conversation a political play in front of the audience. The thing is, I'm not in the mood to play this game right now.

-Of course we can. - I leaned down to his ear and said in an eerie whisper:

-I forgot to tell you this before: Next time you endanger me or my family will be the end of Blackhill's royal bloodline. Someone could even destroy this whole kingdom if they are angry enough... Do you understand?

The wide smile on Leo's face froze and after a short pause he replied visibly shaken:

-I... I understand. I... I'll be careful in t-the future, Sir Alexander.

-Good. I'll come talk with you and that chubby later. - I answered him normally as if we just had a friendly chat and turned around. I found the little redhead in the crowd of people - still safe and sound, so for now I moved closer to the window, looking for the shooter. A guy with a laser can't be a local since they shouldn't have advanced stuff such as a laser gun, fueled by the wielder's mana here. And it strains your mana paths greatly by forcibly taking lots of magic power from the user in a short amount of time. Well, somehow these guys here had a magic compressor but my intuition is telling me that it's most likely 2 different matters unrelated to each other.

That Q... What did she do to have assassins coming after her at her age? I'm seriously intrigued. I positioned myself on the right side of the window and pretended to watch the scenery outside. A colourful garden with a long row of cherry trees in the middle, full of pink flowers... I love cherries in a chocolate cake or with chocolate ice cream...

No! Come on Alex, focus on your task. I guided mana to my eyes, changing them the way I wanted. Gradually, the wall in front of me blurred and I saw a silhouette of a person on the other side, glued to the wall with m.grips (magic grips) - my own invention. I wrote about it in the 269th tome. It's basically something you put on your hands and/or feet and you can walk vertically wherever you want, as long as you have enough magic to keep it working.

I'm proud of myself, even assassins use my gadgets now. That's so cool!

Well, sorry that I have to interrupt your work but you're trying to kill my new toy here. I can't let that happen, so sorry man, no hard feelings.

There is something that I had no intention of releasing in public - there is actually a version of the laser gun that you can just use with your finger instead of using a tool like a gun for it. You only point your finger in the desired direction, gather mana in your finger, changing it to fire and light element, mix both of them in exactly 6,658124: 3,341986 ratio and... shoot.

The spell easily and almost silently penetrates the wall and the body of the soon-to-be killer. It really is a good tool for an assassin - it's quiet and extremely fast, can be long or short-ranged and doesn't leave any easily spotted sign. But to use 2 mana consuming gadgets at once... That requires an enormous mana pool or crazy magic recovery speed. Well, I've got both so it doesn't matter to me but he was lucky to have either one of them... Or not, in this case, since he met me.

Oh, just now the dead man stopped supplying mana to his m.grips and his body slowly moved back... and fell to the ground with a loud bang! Poor guy. Didn't achieve anything after all this trouble. Let's hope his landing wasn't as bad as it sounded, after falling from the third floor into a bunch of thorny roses... I think I don't want to see it.

... now. Where is my new toy?