“Master, wake up”

Acma slowly opened his eyes. He wasn’t a heavy sleeper so he woke up easily. He stretched a little before heading to the corner of his room to drink a glass of plain water.

“Do you like some black coffee, Master?”

“Black is good. Make me a half boiled egg with honey”

“On my way”

“Alice, make it two. Two half boiled eggs with honey”

“...”

“Alice?”

“One is enough for Master”

“Don’t be stingy”

“...”

“Alice?”

“...”

No answer came out.

Acma smiled a little and walked toward the window. The dawn still hasn’t arrived and the world was completely dark.

“I finally succeeded”, he said softly.

He was referring to the result he gained at the end of last night’s training session.

He divided his training session to several parts. It began with determining the time needed to summon each contracted trees and it took 10 seconds to materialized a tree from the seed.

The second part of the training was familiarizing himself with the capabilities of the trees.

The third part was a mock battle against a troop he created using the Void Realm function which costs him quite a lot of mana. The strength of those troop were based on the knights and the magicians he fought against while the trees were based on the trees he had contracted. However, the result of these battles weren’t an indicator to the strength of the real Knight of Forest because he lacked an accurate estimation of their strength.

He also faced another problem during the battle, he couldn’t control all his assets simultaneously. He used his will to control either his guardians, his summons or his contract, and as a human, he couldn’t divert his attention to hundreds. He only abled to focus on a few things at the same time. So, most of the time, the battle was run on auto. He would order his asset to attack a certain enemy unit, then that asset would accomplish it as per its capabilities. He also could select his asset into a group and ordered the group to accomplish a certain order. However, he really have a great time controlling and ordering his assets. It’s like wishing for something and suddenly it comes true. And he felt greater when he could sneak among his assets to attack the ‘enemies’.

The fourth part was to train himself since he got several new additions of magic like dark magic and tornado. Since his dark mana was limited, he trained a few spells only. He created a single creature, a skeleton warrior for example, then copied it with Void Realm function which used his normal mana.

He really loved the Void Realm function to create things, but unfortunately, he couldn’t take the creation out of the Void Realm although he could bring items from the outside into the realm.

The fifth part was to compressed the Black Hole. He longed to do this since his battle against Sawa, when he realized that Black Hole enlarged gradually and it took too long to reach its maximum size. Sawa itself managed to destroy two Black Hole although it suffered some injuries. But the fact remains, the Black Hole was destroyed at its initial release. He already tried to do this during a few training sessions in these few days, but didn’t succeed.

After spending almost 50 hours, he finally abled to achieve the initial success in compressing the Black Hole. The answer was a good mental image. It means he had to imagine compressing the Black Hole from the maximum size to as small as possible then casted the spell. He even asked for Alice to help him doing the imagining. He set the final size then asked Alice to show the shrinking process. After he finally able to grasp the process, comes the tricky part which was to materialize the image into the real compressed Black Hole. He also cannot miss the timing to cast, or the spell won’t evoked and he had to repeat the process from the beginning.

By the time he spent 80 hours, he was successful in 85% of his tries. He also managed to train a new way to use the compressed Black Hole which is to cast it on his palm or at the point of his finger and move it accordingly.

There were some differences between the original Black Hole and the compressed one. Firstly, the time needed to cast the compressed Black Hole was longer than the original. It’s about the time needed for the original to reached its maximum size after been casted. However, when the compressed was casted, it would instantly appear. Secondly, the compressed Black Hole needed to be detonated and its destructive power equalled the accumulated power of the original from the casting to the maximum size. Before it was detonated, its suction force was nothing worth to mention. Thirdly, the amount of mana needed to cast a compressed Black Hole was doubled. If the Tier 1 of original Black Hole only need 1500 mana and the Tier 5 needed 50000 mana, the compressed Black Hole at same tier needed 3000 and 100000 mana. So, he needed to cast the compressed Black Hole sparingly during battle since he only had less than 200000 mana.

Only then he return to his villa and slept soundly till morning.

“Master, your breakfast is ready”, Alice said.

Acma turned around and went to dining room downstairs. His breakfast was ready on the table. It consists of a whole wheat pancakes with honey, ginger-mango smoothie and a half-boiled egg.

“Did Uncle Pai or Mr Shi called?”

“They didn’t”

“I see. They’re still sleeping maybe. How’s FREEDOM?”

“It’s not a mechanical exoskeleton anymore. It’s more like an outer skin since there are sensors all over the inner layer and there is no problem to operate it even if Master only wear a few parts and not the whole system. I can’t explain the reason why this was happened but it was a positive change. Its defence also increase several folds while all of its original functions remain”

“The chip inside my spinal cord had disappeared right?

“Yes, Master. But you still can operate FREEDOM like usual and I don’t have any explanation about it”

“It’s okay, Alice. What important is that I can use it without problems”

“Yes, Master”

After the breakfast and shower, Acma went to the underground vault to prepare himself while waiting for a call from Chief Pai. He emptied the vault and put everything into his inventory.

An hour later, a call came in.

“Hello Uncle Pai. Good morning”

[Morning, Acma. Did you get enough rest last night?]

“Yes, I am”

[Good. I didn’t call you last night because I didn’t want to disturb you, but we already have a decision. Most of us will return to Orca Village, but around 50 people will stay here]

“Oh, they didn’t mind about the minatours?”

[They will try to find a peaceful solution with them]

“Let’s hope they will succeed. Uncle Pai, I’ll be there in 45 minutes”

[Okay, I’ll have everyone ready by then]

He put on a black combat suit and headed outside the villa.

40 minutes later, Acma appeared in front of Nokium mine. He could arrive in a second if he teleported, but since it’s still in the morning and he wasn’t rushing, he decided to run. When he arrived, he saw the villagers already gathered in front of the mine. Among them, he saw Duo Nan was talking to the others, so Acma went toward him.

“Yo, Lil bro. You run? Why don’t you just teleport?” Duo Nan asked.

“Big bro, I want to exercise a bit”, replied Acma with a smile on his face.

“Do you even need an exercise?”

“Haha, of course I need it. Where’s Uncle Pai?”

“Chief is giving instructions to those who will remain here. He’s still worried about us. Let’s go find him. Oh, I also will stay here. My squad too”

“Owh. May I know your reason to stay?”

“I didn’t choose, I was selected. Damn, I really want to hit Chief when he chose me. Do you know, he want me to lead the community here. Shit, I know nothing about leading anyone. Lil bro, help me to convince that old man to let me follow him back to the village”

“Uncle must really trust big bro. That’s why he chose you. And he must have a good reason doing that. Why not big bro also trust Uncle’s judgement?”

“It’s not that I didn’t trust Chief’s judgement, I’m just not confident with myself. The elder’s reason is simple, they want us to continue their legacy from here if anything happened to them. They still couldn’t trust those elves. Who knows when they will betray us. And if nothing happened to them, we can find something to do in this place. Can you believe that? They want us to find something to do? This place have a minatours, a lizardmen and who knows what else is here. You know ...”

“Hooooo... Little Duo dare to complain now?”

Duo Nan immediately shrunk his head a little and turned his head to the right.

“Good Morning Uncle Daquan”, Acma greeted.

“Morning Little Acma. Don’t hear this guy’s blabbering. He’s been whining since last night”

“Elder, don’t tease me please. How come I’m not complaining. There’s a minatour that possibly our enemy. Minatour you know. A scary looking cow. Besides, why most of the strongest in the village were chosen to stay here? If we stay at the village, we can defend it better than anyone else”

“You guys are strong, but not strong enough to fight the Knight of Forest. So, rather than letting all of you fighting a futile battle, it’s better to let you grow a bit further. The stronger you are, the better for Orca Village. Relax, although we elders didn’t trust those elves, it’s not like they’re going to betray us tomorrow. Who knows if they’re truly trustworthy as they claimed they were”

Acma was amused with Duo Nan’s flustering over his appointment. He took out something from his inventory and gave it to Duo Nan.

“This is?” asked Duo Nan.

“A congratulatory gift for your appointment”, replied Acma with a smile.

“Seed pouch?”

“Yes, it is. It contains an uncontracted seeds. Big bro can find someone to make a contract with them”

“Although I don’t understand what do you want, I will do it as you said later. Thank you Lil bro. There he is. Let’s greet Chief”

“Morning, Uncle Pai”, Acma greeted.

“Morning, Acma and ... hehe, Leader Duo Nan”, Chief Pai replied and he patted Duo Nan’s shoulder.

Everyone were laughing at Duo Nan who was clasping his head with both of his hands, didn’t want to hear Chief Pai’s word.

“Uncle Pai, is everything ready?” Acma asked, ignoring the suffering Duo Nan.

“Yes, everything is ready. Leader Duo, please take care of your people well. Hahaha...”

“Big bro, take this communication orb. You can contact Uncle Pai anytime”, Acma shoved an orb into Duo Nan’s hand. It was the fourth communication orb he gave other people. Although he didn’t have an unlimited amount of orb, he still have a few more spare orbs. These orbs weren’t just a tool to communicate, it also could be used as a surveillance tool. So, if anything happened, he could remote-controlled them to gather more information, if he wanted to.

“Alice, prepare to teleport”

“Yes, Master”

“Good bye, Leader Duo. Good luck”, said Acma. Chief Pai and the others also bid their farewell.

‘TELEPORT’

A few seconds later, they reappeared at Orca Village, in front of the Orca statue in the muddle of the village.

“Thank you, Acma”

“You’re welcome, Uncle Pai. If you have time, go to the centaurs village and ask for their help to contact the talpid mole merchant. They know me, so I think they will be willing if you want to trade with them”

“We will. Go talk with your auntie before leaving. She’s worried”

“Okay”

Acma walked toward the rear of the group and saw an old woman talking with her friends.

“Good morning, Auntie”

The old women turned her head and smiled.

“Come here”, she said softly.

Acma approached carefully.

“Here you are”

Without warning, Auntie Pai extended both her hands and drilled Acma’s temple. Then she proceeded with pinching his cheeks as hard as he could.

“Aaaaaaaaa”, Acma screamed a little.

“You always doing something dangerous, now you’re going to do something even more dangerous. Tell me, is it dangerous or not?”

“It’s not that dangerous, Auntie. I’ll return safely. I promise”, replied Acma as he hold both of her hands.

He talked a bit more with Auntie Pai before excused himself.

A while after, he arrived at Boulder Town and greeted Shi Ming, Elder Ma and several young monks.

“You’re here already. I was about to contact you just now”, said Shi Ming.

“I’m sorry. I’m teleporting the villagers back to the Orca Village”

Ah, it’s ok. I just want to inform you about those birds”

Shi Ming pointed his finger toward the sky and Acma’s gaze followed.

There were two birds circling the town. From the shape of its wings, it should be an eagle. But even if it were high in the sky, Acma knew their size was huge.

“They’re doing that since they arrived a few minutes ago”, said Shi Ming.

“...”

Acma put on a glasses which have a zooming function. He saw there was a rider on the back of each bird. One of them was a bird people with a beak like an eagle but there wasn’t many feathers on its body. It was wearing a black leather armour and its cloak was fluttering, beaten by the winds. Acma shifted his gaze toward the other rider.

“It’s her”, he thought.

Acma turned his head toward Elder Ma.

“Uncle Ma, I’ll send you back to Orca Village”, he said.

“What? You mean, right now?”

Acma smiled a little and extended his hand toward Elder Ma, but he didn’t reply.

‘TELEPORT’

He said and Elder Ma disappeared. Then he looked at Shi Ming which made the latter flustered and looked a bit worried.

“...”

“I will go now, Mr Shi. If there is anything, just contact me”

Shi Ming let out a breath and smiled.

“I wish you a safe journey”

“Thank you, Mr Shi”

Acma raised up his head and locked on one of the bird.

‘TELEPORT’

“Hi”, said Acma with an awkward smile on his face as he appeared in front of the rider.

“Kyaaaaaaaa”

A scream reverberated across the morning sky.