"Here… take this."

A boy with dark orange hair took what seems to be a potion from the strong hands of a boy with black hair.

Downing the potion in one quick move, the boy with dark orange hair, Walter Peltro, looked back to the boy that just handed him the potion.

"Ugh… if I get my hands on that fucking bastard, I wil-"

"Calm down first! Don't make stupid ideas."

"You of all people think that revenge is a stupid idea?!"

The younger boy looked at his brother in shock, shouting with all the air in his lungs. Did he not see the scars left by that evil fucker?

Did he not see the missing arm, that for whatever reason couldn't grow back no matter what they do?

"And you of all people should know by now that acting without thinking first will lead you here. Revenge is a sweet act of joy but it is like cooking. If you just put stuff together without any thought, you will have something shitty if not poisoned. But if you carefully decide what to do, you can create very good food even with little ingredients."

"You have been spending too much time in the kitchen lately…"

"What can I do?"

The boy shrugged his shoulders hearing Walter's words, ignoring the bitter face of the boy that sat on the side of the bed.

They both knew the reason why he was there. In fact, the kitchen isn't the only place he has been thrown into.

Bathrooms, gardens, hallways, storage and so on. This boy has been sent to a lot of places for only one thing.

Chores.

"Hey! Don't look at me like that, Walter."

"But broth-"

"It's okay. I know why you were doing things but just don't. It is my revenge. And for someone to steal my meal…"

The boy with black hair, Walter's brother, stood up from the chair at the side of the wall, looking at his younger brother with hunger in his eyes.

He was hungry for revenge, not even patient enough to resist the urge of licking his lips.

"... I'd not let that happen now, would I?"

"...no."

"Glad you understand! But before we come to my revenge, let's handle your situation first. Because whoever dares to touch my little brother…"

The room slightly turned red with the ground gaining red cracks all over them. They weren't real cracks but the more one looked at them, the more realistic they seemed.

Temperatures rose as some objects turned even redder. And in between all this.

Between all this heat were the two brothers, slowly forming a psychotic grin on their faces.

"...will have to face me first!"

Stupid training!

Yeah! You heard me right!

I said this is stupid!

And do you want to know why this is so stupid?

Well, good sir and ma'am, let me enlighten you on why this is so stupid.

"And you were holding this blunt knife because…?"

"Because I am currently taking martial arts lessons and my teacher said that until I get a true feeling for a weapon, being able to defend against them would be a pipedream."

"And that was the reason why you were walking around school with this toy…"

Watch it…

"...this whole week?"

"...yes."

Stupid training!

Because I was so focused on training my intent and my space affinity, I forgot that we were still in a world where even holding a finely detailed prop could get you in trouble.

Although I kind of tried to not make it obvious, one of the strict teachers found it anyway.

Leading me to this situation.

Skia…

Papa can't save you at the mome-

"HEY! WATCH WHERE YOU ARE TOUCHING IT!"

Oh shit! Did I say that out loud now?

The teacher looked at me like I have finally gone mental, which I haven't.

But I appreciate the worry.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?! This isn’t a fantasy story where you-”

But man… having one of the two daggers being held so roughly and inspected by such an obvious amateur felt extremely insulting.

And with the current training I’ve done till now, feeling the places she is touching without looking was only adding salt to the injury. But I don’t know if I should be happy that I’m already there with my training or puke at how truly bad she is holding this.

I expected a month or two to start feeling the space around me but I guess with a 100% affinity, that would happen the fastest way possible.

The only thing that made me not that happy was that Alyssa was faster again thanks to her dreams. And it even seemed like she was growing even faster, almost reaching the second level of the [Discipulus] realm. But that wasn’t the bad part. It was the good part. Because I can see my junior grow and I promised Gramps that I will take care of her.

But the bad part was that my junior was just soooo annoying about it. I thought she had such a huge crush on me that she wouldn’t dare get faster than me, which thank god she isn’t, but that would brag about it so much that I was ready to ‘Stahl’ her out of the building, which shocked even Lady Eguchi.

Oh! And I started to call her Lady Eguchi now. The reason was a couple of them. I started to have a lot of respect for her, she was an amazing teacher, her lineage is that of noble people in Japan and…

Who am I kidding… she whooped my ass so well when I kept being so disrespectful, that I genuinely started to feel the respect. It was just as they say. To get respect, you have to earn it.

Even though I don’t think they meant it like this…

Wait! I forgot that the teacher is still ranting after my short outburst, which she really deserved!

“Are you even listening?!”

“No, I’m not.”

“How dare yo-”

“Ma’am, with all due respect, we were attacked by people with superpowers last week, the entire world is in a chaotic state because they were attacked as well, the government has no plan on doing anything for this, heck they may even be on it, and you have no idea how depressing the thought of not being able to defend yourself is when you are legally unable to get a gun.”

“But that sti-”

“Also with the fact that this ‘knife’ can’t even damage anyone since it is a… fake knife… you do not have any reason to take the knife away from me.”

With the intent training I’ve done, I could make my weapon as blunt as ever, which was very easy, to begin with.

Intent is only great in quantity and quality. Take away the quantity so much that you might call the object in debt of that intent and you got yourself a reverse effect. In this case, the knife intent taken away by the knife will result in an object with no intent.

So I took the intent away from Skia while having to swallow the urge to take back my argument about it being a fake weapon.

But I had to hurry. Not only do I need to continue with my intent and space training, but I also had to take away the knife. Even if It was easy to take away the intent of the knife, holding in that intent was so much harder for me.

So I took the knife and gave back its intent, having a much easier time breathing.

“Where do you think you are goi-”

“Ms Lenberg, please calm down. The boy is just too cautious.”

A strong, deep voice resonated throughout the teachers' office, putting everyone to a halt. The voice was so attention pulling that even the teachers who were in a hurry, stopped to see who was it that tried to but in this conversation.

“Ah! Principal! Good that you are here! This student just disrespected me with his… this nonsense…”

“Nonsense?!”

“....this NONSENSE about training to defend himself against those superterrorists! But with the way he has been acting all week long, he will only scare more and more students. Please! Help me to make him understand that actions like these won’t help you out anymore!”

This fucking bi-

“Ms Lenberg. I should remind you that I am also someone with abilities and I earned my capabilities by doing what you call nonsense…”

HAH! That’s what you get for trying to go against me! I knew that the principal was on my si-

“But Laith, you have to understand that we don’t have the luxury of making the students more anxious than they already are. I don’t want to see such an act again. Am I clear?”

Traitor! I thought you were on my side! You know, from Awakened to Awakened. From sponsor to sponsor.

I was even thinking about giving you weapons for free. You know, for your guild.

“Am I clear?”

“...yes.”

“Good.”

“Not ‘Good.’! He has learned nothing at all and you let him go just like that? I’m not so sure how you, young man, did become principal but in my 34 years of teaching have I never seen a student be so disrespectful to their teacher and get away with it just fine.”

Oh wow! What a drama queen with all the special effects like a tear and whatnot. I’m just curious who will break it down to her that the man in front of her was actually centuries old.

“Ms Lenberg, I have witnessed what the student here has said and I don’t believe that it is disrespectful for him to tell the truth. Everyone is scared of something. Even if I am scared of some things and I am fighting, train my body and mind to not be helpless against my fears. Let him defend his fight against his fears. And maybe everyone here should do it as well. No one will ever be fearless but you can at least not be helpless against them.”

Wow! He didn’t even have to tell his age with the amount of experience in his words visible enough to make the oldest [Mortalis] realm humans feel like they were in front of a mentor.

But don’t be fearless but be able to fight your fears…

Huh… I am not sure how I should take that statement. There were truths in that statement but was I fighting my fears?

Or fighting my destined future?

But my thoughts couldn’t last for long since more and more students gathered in front of the teachers’ office, most likely wondering what the heck is going on here and what the Principal, the one that elegantly flew from the sky to the ground and stopped a fight between superhumans just like that, declaring he would defend this school with everything he has.

Of course, students would be interested in what was going on here with the principal present. But that attention seemed to end the moment someone screamed out loud.

“Ayo, Look! The Leech is getting into trouble?”

“What? Are you for real? The leech that every teacher loves because of his unbelievable grades?”

“There is only one Leech, idiot! He must have really fucked up if he is now getting in trouble with the principal.”

What the fuck are you all looking at? First time seeing someone getting yelled at by a teacher? Just piss off already!

I could see various faces through the door. Alyssa with a slightly worried look, Jenise looking at me with a look that said ‘What did you do?’, Felix and Gina with their confused expression and…

Fucking James and his gang laughing out loud, cracking ‘Jokes’ like it was a comedy night.

Fucking bullshit! If I could only yell out that fuc-

But before my thoughts could form correctly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Looking to my right, I saw the principal looking right at me with a serious look. And with his strong yet quiet voice, he started to say something only I could hear at the moment.

“Control yourself, Laith. It seems your ability is leaking into your knife. Look.”

What the hell is he talking about? I was perfectly in cont-

No way!

It seems that the anger I just felt made the intent inside Skia grow exponentially, almost making it shine.

But that shine was important! That means I got the first of five stages of Intent right!

That anger was the way to reach the end of stage one intent.

I’m now not sure if I should be happy or mad at James.

Let’s just stay neutral.

But I recalled my intent back. Unlike taking the intent away from an object, giving them your own intent which you would train is harder to do but easier to hold. The reason was simple.

Any object that has no consciousness will always want to stay true to its intent. So if you take away an object’s intent by pulling, they will want to call it back. That’s the reason why I kind of struggled to hold on for much longer, taking Skia out of Ms Lenberg’s hands.

Putting in your own intent is harder because you weren’t born with that intent so moving it at first is a lot harder than pulling on something that was there from the beginning but it will be a lot easier to have it stay in a place because you can decide to pull it away or not.

So what I did for my intent training was to take away the intent of my weapons and hold it like that, only to push it back with my additional intent. It was a continuous cycle of giving and taking until my intent grew strong enough to coat the whole knife.

What I found out about my intent is that, unlike others that have a specialised intent like sword intent, fire intent and so on, my intent is usable on all weapons but still with the best quality there can be for any weapon intent. I believe it is the result of my ability to merge them into one. Without that merge, I’d not have any intent at the moment but that was fine.

This would make working with my intent a lot easier.

And that final push to the knife made me end the intents growth of the first stage. This is the stage that even [Mortalis] realm martial artist could reach in older times. The concept of sword qi, aura and so on came from the fact that they worked so hard that they could coat their weapon with only their understanding of that weapon.

And unlike them, I was cheating by using my ability.

I may be really broken.

“I’ll excuse myself then.”

“Don’t forget what I said. And everyone else! Get back to your classes before the lessons start. This isn’t an attraction but a serious conversation so show some god-loving respect! Now, get going!”

And just like that, they run away like cockroaches with only Alyssa standing there, waiting for me.

What a sweet junior I have.

"Heed my words, Laith. Training your body also has its consequences. Train your mind and don't be impulsive. The last thing you want is to turn into a monster."

"Yeah… I got it."

He was right…

Although I really want to bash James in the head, this would create problems I do not want to have trouble with.

And although this time, I finally got the push, it could be disastrous if I was to only rely on my emotional state to train myself.

"Come. Let's go."

"Okay!"

But those thoughts were thrown to the back of my mind as I left the teachers' office with Alyssa following right behind me. I got a class to attend.

So basically, I had all the time I wanted to think about the first batch of weapons I had to send to Big Sis Ange.

And the time to plan my first mission.

"You are kidding me…"

"I don't think Big Sis Ange would joke around about that…"

"I'm well aware that she wouldn't but I'm not so sure about you, mister! I mean, a mission sent by the Association Director personally doesn't come without their risks."

"I know that my missions won't come without a price but I believe it's worth it that I could grow."

"What growth? Although you have solid statements, this won't stop Angelina from using you as a political chess piece."

"But that's ideal for me."

“It’s sweet how you want to help her against her competitors by you, the wonderboy, being on her side while stealing materials and information from the Association but do you believe with the limited time you had with Akira that you are smarter than the director?”

“Of course not. But I’m abusing the fact that her mental age hasn’t progressed 24.”

“How do yo- That old bastard! Pulling so many strings again!”

What did she mean by pulling so many strings again? Did Gramps anticipate that with the knowledge of her mental age that I would make this deal?

How much god-like can a person be?

Ah, yes… he exists…

“So that’s what he meant by mission… I’ll allow you to go on a mission under one condition.”

Hearing even the little mutter at the beginning, I decided to ignore the fact he already knew about my mission. But the condition she said intrigued me.

Will it be her condition? Or his?

“And that is?”

“You’ll learn to teleport yourself with your Space affinity.”

“What!? I thought you said that we wouldn’t be able to do it until we are [Illustratus] realm Awakened!”

I remember really well that Lady Eguchi mentioned the reason most Awakened only start to fly or teleport when entering the [Illustratus] realm and it had something to do with Will control, killing off my dream of flying through the sky or teleporting from one place to another.

An Awakened, as I mentioned once, has perfect control within their realm and once someone enters the [Illustratus] realm, they can move their Will at sonic speed with 100% accuracy. This was vital for flying and teleportation because the act of teleportation and flying would become useless otherwise.

You don’t want to waste time learning to fly about 3-10 cm up, right?

Or you don't want to waste time learning to teleport only to move a metre or two, right?

That was the reason they usually start learning this when they enter the [Illustratus] realm.

So my question here was… why should I learn that now?

“Akira was the one saying it was what you should do before starting to work on something as dangerous as this. But I'm sure about one thing and that is that he didn't mean for you to enter the next realm first. He'd have said it otherwise."

Then why the hell does that old bastard want me to learn teleportation? Moving with my own feet a couple of metres is faster than teleport. As I said, sonic speed Will control with 100% accuracy not available in my realm.

But Gramps would never make me do something without a reason. So there are three possible reasons for that.

First, he wants me to learn techniques before entering the [Illustratus] realm but that didn't make sense with the condition of it being before my first mission.

Second, a mere 1-2 metres will really save me on that mission. I'm not sure what he thinks will be the situation but if that was the case then I really need to learn it. But I don't think that is the true reason for him to say something like that.

So that leaves me with the third option…

Another theory.

But for that, I have to confirm something first.

"Lady Eguchi, could you please tell me exactly how teleportation in my realm would actually work."

"Dear, the concept of teleportation stays the same in every realm. It's just that the limitations on teleportation decrease with each realm you advance. Teleportation, as we awakened know it, is the act of swapping yourself with the space you want to be in. This makes it possible to not accidentally fuse with whatever was in the space before your teleportation. So what you do is form an extremely dense amount of Will in the shape of your own body with everything you want to teleport yourself with and move it to a certain spot. Feel the space around you and where your Will is at currently and then swap that space. The swapping is something you have to feel and the reason why Space affinity is a hard affinity to train."

“So the reason is that I won’t be accurate and fast enough to teleport?”

“Exactly. You have to stay connected with that condensed Will to switch with that space.”

“Is it possible to do this through a portal?”

“Technically, yes but why would you do this when you can create a portal? These are all things you can only learn once you are in the next realm.”

“Yes, I know that but what if I used a medium to move my condensed Will from far away?”

“Then it should be possible but your Will won’t be infused in an object for too long and you still have to have some kind of connection.”

“Then it is perfect because all the weapons that I named are infused with a lot of my Will which I can control from afar thanks to my ability. So technically-”

“You could create a condensed form of your Will from afar fast and accurate enough to make teleportation a vital move for you. But how did that old bastard even know about it?”

The hell would I know? That old geezer is acting like he knows everything yet never does jack shit about it. I really think about what his problem is sometimes but that is something I don’t have the time to think about.

I don’t want to waste five to ten years of my life.

But I know one thing and that is he had the same thought process as I did right now.

I thought about what Lady Eguchi said once when mentioning the teleportation and flying problem.

I could only move a metre or two when teleporting while only able to fly a couple of centimetres meaning it had a limitation of range. And since reaching the next stage will take longer than we have time now, I thought about something else.

My first idea was to be at two places at the same time. But that would be impossible until I could break Space down enough to place my own space in different places.

So not what I wanted to do.

My next idea was on the problem of my Will being too slow to be vital in a battle so I thought about loading consumable items with my Will and making them explode into little parts, scattered all around the area I’m fighting to then teleport anywhere I want to, but just as Lady Eguchi said, that item won’t hold my Will for long so that idea wasn’t going to work anymore.

But then it hit me.

How about the first and second ideas combined.

And that was easier done than said with the help of my ability, that would make any weapon I recognise as my own become part of me.

So you see where I’m going with this.

All my weapons inside my soul are already a part of me. Part of my body if you could say that. And each of them was filled with my Will without me even doing anything.

It wasn’t that I am filling them naturally inside my soul but that my whole Will reserve is shared among my weapons. So this would mean that the more weapons are outside, the less Will I have inside my body but the amount of Will I have at disposal won’t change like that.

It stays the same.

Enough to cover the volume of my body near that weapon with condensed Will and switch places with it.

Such a convenient thing to have. I could even say that I was born to use my Will like that.

And the best part is that the enemy will only feel the Will inside my weapons and no connection that I have with that weapon at all, not being able to predict which weapon I’ll teleport to next.

“Hehehe… I got a crazy idea I want to do right away.”

“You’ll learn how to teleport first!”

BUMP

“Argh! He- wait… that didn’t hurt?”

“Of course, it didn’t! Why do I want to hurt you? Don’t answer that! I can already imagine what you have been going through…”

Disappointment flashed Lady Eguchi’s face as she tried to cover that expression with her hand. Her eyes closed but the slight annoyance was still obvious to see. But it felt so different to get hit by something that didn’t hurt. It was playful like mum would do it sometimes when I was acting mischievously sometimes.

But that was beside the point! She was right! I had to start with my teleportation training first before working on anything else.

I shouldn’t get distracted by anything else. Even if that idea is making my mouth water up as fast as possible.

BUMP

“Oi! Focus on your teleportation training!”

“Alright! I get it! Then should I start with it now?”

“Yes, go right ahead to move a perfect form of your Will while I go check on Alyssa. Any moment and she will accidentally blow up a couple of trees again.”

“Alright!”

Now…

I’ll just have to create a copy of myself with everything I’m wearing, holding and want to take with me. Not easy if I was unable to feel that Space but now, I should be able to do my own body and my clothes.

So just concentrate…

Concentrate…

And here we have it.

A clone of myself in the colours of my Will. although it was visible to my eye, it was fine for now. I should get used to creating this faster and faster. Not like I have any other chance but to be faster.

I mean, I can’t just ask my enemies to hold the fight so I can form it, right?

So that’s where I start my training.

First, I’ll repeat the process of forming my own copy with my Will as fast as possible near my real body.

I don’t have to form it any further than a couple of centimetres since I will not form iftar away from the weapon I’m teleporting to. In fact, being as close to the weapon as possible may actually be more helpful than at first thought. I could immediately go into action with that weapon or make the enemy think of that as well. If I have more options to teleport to, I could even fool the unfortunate soul that is fighting me like this.

But those things can wait. I still had to get used to calling out my copy as fast and precise as possible. It wasn’t as easy as said to be because what it had to be was for it to be an exact copy of my own body and clothes.

Feeling the space of me and my clothes was doable but making a form like that out of my Will as fast as possible was the hard part. But after 7 hours, which felt more like an eternity to me, I managed to cut down the time from 5 seconds to 15 milliseconds. Not fast as one would be with when they were in the [Illustratus] realm but this should be enough for now since I’ll only get faster with each time I do it.

Alright! I’m getting somewhere! But now comes the part I have no idea how to execute.

And that was to switch my space and the space of my copy.

How the hell am I supposed to do that?

I mean yes switch space real easy to say but really weird to think about it.

I could think of computer data being switched be simultaneous but that would be a lie.

Nothing is truly simultaneous.

Unless you are a god-like being that is ready to mock you because you can’t create a small version of the sun just to simulate day and night.

Fucker…

Focus, Laith! You don’t have the luxury to continue losing time as much as you did before.

So trying to focus my mind, I tried to come up with a way to switch myself with it.

My first idea was to drag myself towards the space of my copy and the copy towards my space at the same time.

Like taking two items from a table and switching their places. So, I pushed the two spaces with Will fueling the two.

And I was moving! That’s great!

The only problem is that I was moving slower than I wished it to be. I could move myself quicker, that wasn’t the problem.

Heck, I could even move Space faster than this. But the problem here was what Lady Eguchi mentioned.

Accuracy. And if I wasn’t accurate with my push of space, the best thing that could happen was for me to lose all my limbs.

The worst thing may not be death as well. I could get thrown somewhere while suffering the worst torture of my life.

That’s why I’m trying to do things slowly.

VUUM

What?! Why was I stopped midway! I was just so close to even starting switching with my copy.

I was even almost touching noses with my copy.

“Stop what you are doing!”

“Why? I thought it was great progr-”

“Progress happens when you stay alive after your actions! What you were doing was suicide!”

What! What the hell was suicide here?

I was shocked, hearing that I almost died by my own hands. I was thankful that she rescued me from having my last breath but what came after that gratitude was something else.

It was a little bit of anger.

“Huh?! Then why didn’t you tell me how to teleport instead of letting me do it by myself, only telling me the gists of it?”

“You think I’m so stupid and teach you a technique usually impossible to master in your realm only for you to be the dog of the Director? My mental age may not be as old as I really am but that won’t make me do irrational decisions as the Director did. God, I shouldn’t have accepted this at all!”

“At least tell me what I did wrong!”

I shouted back at her, out of pure frustration. That mission will help me get enough points to buy vital information! That mission will help me grow! Why are you standing in the way instead of pushing me further and becoming stronger so I can look after myself!

“Haaaah~... just as irrational as that old bastard… Fine! I’ll tell you only if you promise me you won’t try to switch spaces like that again.”

“What? Then how am I supposed to do my mission?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t! It’s dangerous to do… forget it. Nothing will go through your thick skull. Just don’t try to do that again until you are in the [Illustratus] realm.”

Fucking bullshit! I understand that she is worried but too much worry won’t make me stronger. And I have to be stronger!

But she was one of the strongest humans alive and for a good reason. So if she wanted to, she could have just made me not do it by force.

So I accepted, not even having the choice, to begin with.

“Fine… I won’t try and switch with my space again.”

I caved in…

Such a bad taste in my mouth…

Truly, I hated the fact that I’m unable to practice teleportation now.

But how am I going to learn teleportation if I can’t practice the part that I needed the most right now?

How am I going to do my missions and earn more points?

How am I going to make the Association get indebted to me?

Shit…

“Haaa… The reason you could have died was that your space wasn’t dense and compressed enough to push against each other. If both are equally dense, they will destroy each other. If one of them is denser though, the denser one will push the lesser one aside and make boost you to the spaces ‘empty’ space. That’s why it seems instant but isn’t. You are just moving faster than light thanks to the universal law of preserved space. There will always be space to fill an empty place and if your space is moving at that time, you will be brought to that place with the space in the same form. That’s also why you can change your stances during teleportation.”

“So my space just had to be dense?”

“Your space has to be slightly compressed as well. If you can compress yourself slightly by compressing your space, the moment you are put in that space, you can fill it back easily. There were even Awakened ones that used this filling as an attack by compressing more and more to then have the effect of a shock wave be created when they expand back.”

So compress yourself and move faster than light…

“Is it something like a wormhole? Wait! Can I do a wormhole as well?”

“Technically yes but no. A wormhole is connected from the start to the end. If you teleport though, there is less to no connection to the start and end at all. You are not going through a pathway faster than light but pushed to the right position by the universe itself.”

I see…

Wait… that gives me an idea.

But now comes the difficult choice. Do I tell her my ideas? Or test it out at first.

I could try to do it in another way.

“How hard is it for a [Discipulus] realm awakened to make a wormhole?”

“Not that hard if you are satisfied with a couple of centimetres in 3 milliseconds at best. Just compress your own space enough to travel through a tight spinning hole in space and when exiting decompress with no shock waves created. But I won’t accept that as teleportation. Only if you can move at least 30 metres in that time frame with no linear path taken will I accept you having learned teleportation. So go back on space training.”

“Alright…”

My face was showing disappointment but I was struggling to not smirk at the moment. The fact that she even said how it was done was the icing on the cake.

Almost too good to be true. I can swear it felt unnaturally so but I wasn’t complaining.

It was time to do a little bit of training!

And if I was right, I will not only develop my space affinity and go on missions but found a way to implement my ‘Crazy Idea’ in real! That’s actually why I’m truly excited.

The possibilities just fuel my mind with new weapons.

Weapons that have existed before.

Weapons that have never even been tried out before.

Weapons with concepts only I can use and abuse.

Weapons that are able to show people a new world.

So many ideas yet so little time and even less strength to execute them.

I have to get stronger. To find my parents and Gramps. To live in comfort. To live with nothing holding me back besides myself.

To be truly free!

The sun rose in a street populated by over 20 million people. The Forbidden City in the beautiful city of Beijing covers most of the sun from the point of a street near the west side of it.

And through the alleyways where the shadows were almost moving on their own, what seems to be a young woman was standing there with her hands stained in cold blood. The blood has yet to dry with drops falling down these slender hands but each drop would only vanish into the shadows that were unnaturally lively today.

“You are overworking yourself again…”

“I have no choice. If not for that letter, I’d not have known that these bloody Tossers would plan on creating a pseudo-Soul realisation with half of the population at risk.”

“Yes, but you could have called for help. Alexander is already viewing the Association in a favourable light, I am already working for the Association and you have enough [Transcendens] realm Awakened at your disposal yet still choose to do everything alone. You can’t do that… you are not-”

“Not him? I know. Mr Hashimoto was a legend. Revolutionised the whole Association, cleaned it up from most of their corrupt workers and created the AIN, which became the strongest point of the Association, with unbelievable technologies and spells that no one ever heard about. I’m not like him. It has been only a year but I am already in a situation where my position is being questioned and more spies have infiltrated the Association. Last week's tragedy is something I could have prevented! Yet I was too incompetent to see do anything but to fight the aftermath…”

The shadows move around the young woman, Angelina Edwards, as she was looking down

“Deary… I understand that you want to be better than you are but please just relax for a moment, you could do much more with a calm mind. What do you think your fat-”

“DON’T EVEN DARE BRING UP THAT MOTHERFUCKER!!”

The shadows around Angelina swirled furiously as the emotions in her heart started to show their true colour.

None.

There was no colour.

For there to be colour there has to be light.

And everything in that alleyway was covered in a world of pure darkness with beasts screaming, roaring and howling throughout this field of pure darkness.

‘Soul realisation?... no… but she is almost there.’

“Tenshi no Hane…”

And thus, The feathers of angels fell down this cold, dark world, not even giving the wild beasts of the dark a chance to fully manifest. Feathers were carried through the alleyway by the wind as the woman who called these feathers was approaching Angelina with an apologetic expression.

As she approached the centre of this dark world, she could see the person covered by her own shadow as she was curled together into a ball. Angelina didn’t react to the person approaching her. She never even noticed. Her mind was somewhere else.

A different memory.

Angelina,

known as the most influential person on this planet,

was crying.

Her face scrunched up as she was scared.

“No… he isn’t here, little one… he isn’t here… he can’t take you back… he can’t take you back…”

“My dear, calm down… calm down. I’m here…”

With a slight pause, Akiko Eguchi was pondering on what to say exactly to comfort this frightened girl in front of her. She knew Angelina more than anyone would but a slip of the tongue and she already put her in that state.

“...Aunty Akiko is here… Aunty Akiko is here so calm down.”

“Aunty?...”

The shadows retreated as the feathers vanished one by one. You would have never expected that Angelina was in such a state right after butchering evil cult members.

No one would.

VUUM

Taken aback, Angelina looked around to only see a beautiful flowery field with a wisteria tree right behind them.

“Whe-”

“Ashikaga flower park. A place very dear to me and where I always go to when I’m sad. And with the tree behind us getting older and older, I found myself coming here more often than I used to, healing this tree every time I come to cool down my head.”

Her pitch-black eyes flickered with light as she was looking at the beautiful scenery in front of her while Akiko did nothing but continue to hug this human ball in her embrace.

“Beautiful, right?”

“Yeah…”

“Are you calm enough to talk now?”

“Yeah…”

“Do you want me to continue my hug?”

“Yeah…”

“Haaah~... spoiled little child… alright.”

Taking a deep breath, Akiko continued to embrace the person in her arms, trying to stay as silent as ever, watching the scenery with slight nostalgia in her eyes.

Moments turned to seconds.

Seconds turned to minutes.

And minutes piled up more and more.

And after half an hour, Angelica finally felt calm enough to behave like usual.

“Thank you… it has been hard… remembering…”

“Yes, I know. But that’s why I’m there for you. Ready to talk now?”

“I believe it has something to do with Laith’s mission?”

“How could you tell?”

“Because I was against it as well… but the letter…”

A hint of surprise flashed on Akiko’s face as she looked at the young woman in her arms. Did she receive a letter as well? Why?

What was he planning again?

“What did it say?”

“That the mission was about smuggled weapons and that only Laith could make out the true story with his ability…”

“His ability to understand how to use weapons?”

“That’s not his full ability but a part of it. It seems that he thinks Laith can understand weapons more than just how to perfectly use them. He thinks Laith can get more information out of the weapons as long as he gets into contact with mostly faulty weapons so he meant that sending him there would be-”

“Give me the letter.”

“Yes, aunty.”

An order followed by the obedient reply from the Director. Seeing this, people would have a hard time understanding why her employee was ordering her boss but those that knew about Akiko wouldn’t even mind getting ordered like that.

“That fu… he told me that before the first mission, the boy should be able to teleport.”

“What!? But I need to have this mission get done before The Break is about to happen! We don’t have the luxury to wait for him to advance to the next realm! That may take years!”

“That’s why I don’t understand what he wants exactly. But it does seem possible with his ability.”

“What do you mean?”

“Takes too long to explain so how about I show you and you will help me with his training? I have another child that is just as problematic as the boy and he is already the centre of our discussions…”

Pondering for a bit, Angelina soon agreed. Seeing the child in her embrace agree only put a smile on her face, squeezing the unfortunate soul a bit too much.

“Not so tight! Not so tight!”

“Ah! Excuse me. I was just so happy to have someone help me out. I can’t understand how Akira was able to teach them for so long…”

“Are they that problematic?”

“No. they just make you want to choke with how fast they are. The girl can already distort space to the degree of moving the earth beneath her feet to be even faster than she usually is.”

“No way! I thought it has only been a couple of days.”

“Yes, it has been only a couple of days and they are already growing so fast that I am honestly depressed that I took for this much three weeks.”

Angelina looked at Akiko with a look screaming that she can’t be serious.

Akiko was the fastest learner in the field of Space magic with her high affinity and her hunger for more knowledge. And the tale of how she accidentally made a hole between Space, connecting two countries was well known in the Association.

“Well… I should be free this weekend.”

“Want to go and see how they are doing now? Or do you still have something to do, Director?”

“No, Lady Eguchi. I do not have to do anything for now.”

Both smiling, they looked at each other. Their roles may be weird for each other but that was only a laughing matter for the two of them, not creating any kind of discomfort for them at all.

“Then let’s go.”

VUUP

But as they reached their destination, they never would have thunk that what they were seeing in front of their eyes was what was possible.

The wonderboy has yet outdone himself.

Again…