Nick guessed correctly. Indeed, few seconds later king Alexander Maxwell himself arrived with Ling in tow.

“Angel, this is the leader of all humans in this country, king Alexander. Your majesty, this is Angel.” Nick quickly introduced when the two arrived, “The other one is Ling, he is … well … he is very strong.”

King was not in the mood for chatting. He nodded towards Angel and said to Nick, “Quickly, debrief me!”

“Honestly, I have nothing to debrief you on, your majesty. Already for a couple of days I and YunYun got this unpleasant feeling, like something bad is about to happen and it got only stronger as we came closer to Aurora. I don’t know if it’s normal for Qi masters to feel something like that, but for us it’s the first time.” Nick said, “When Andrew told us that Zia disappeared, for some reason I knew it was the doing of those bastards from the Holy Order. And … I don’t have any proof or can explain any of that.”

“Why are we standing? We can talk while on the way!” King Alexander said and dashed towards the south west, while the rest followed.

Turns out both the king and the queen Hua had similar feeling to the one Nick and YunYun were experiencing – a Qi master’s premonition. A feeling like this was not anything unique and might be even considered common among Qi masters, except this time it was unusually strong and affected people who were connected by one peculiar detail – Zia. Well, YunYun less, but she had this special bond with Nick and therefore felt it strongly as well.

After Nick abruptly left the “Sunshine”, prince Helio decided to report this incident to his father. Although Nick acted strange, he had created quite a few miracles during the past years and there was no need to take any chances, especially if Zia’s safety was in question. When he entered the king’s study, Helio was met by anxious expressions of the royal couple and, as soon as king heard about Nick’s reaction, he immediately departed with words, “Helio, you’re in charge!”

The only thing queen Hua managed to say was, “Ling, you go with him!”

Following his instinct, king Alexander darted through the capital towards the south like a sand tornado and was spotted by Angel. And now there were five people who madly ran across the fertile lands of the Sun kingdom.

“What is the plan?” King finally broke the silence and asked.

Nick shrugged, “We’ll go and get her.”

“So no plan?” King did his best to keep his calm, but that was not easy at all.

“It’s not a question of plan, but question of speed.” Nick said.

“Explain!” King glanced at him sideways and hissed through teeth.

Nick understood why king was like this. A short while ago this father sat helpless in his study when two of his daughters got kidnapped and now, when something similar happened again, he simply refused to do nothing.

“It’s quite simple, actually. If my suspicions are correct, they have almost one full day advantage over us, therefore it all comes down to if we can make it on time.” Nick said.

“Why do you think it is the Holy Order?” YunYun asked.

“Just a feeling. Princess Silja was kidnapped in somehow similar fashion – disappearing without a trace from the most secure building in the country.” Nick said and looked back at her, “But at least we are not barbarians and guessed who the perpetrator is.”

“Don’t you think we might catch up to them at this speed?” King asked.

“I considered it. At some point I even planned to ask Angel to be on a lookout for any people we might catch up to.” Nick said, “But, if you think about it, it’s actually impossible. When I and Angel fled Holy Order back then, it took us two days and nights to get to Aurora. At the time I thought we were incredibly fast, but that was from a perspective of a small child. In addition, the injured Angel carried me in a basket and therefore simply couldn’t cruise even close to his normal speed.”

Nick regulated his breathing and then continued, “Next, we know the kidnapping of princess Silja was executed by elder Sonor personally, but since he is dead, most likely Zia was taken by two or three of his direct disciples. Although they are not as good, they are no random clowns and their speed is probably only a bit slower than ours. Thus, with their approximate eighteen – twenty hour lead we would have to be twice as fast to catch up. Basically, an impossible task.”

“So this is a payback for us killing the second from the Trinity?” King asked, still in grim voice.

“I doubt it. The payback would be more like a massacre in some city.” Nick said, “But I bet they planned this already for several years. My guess is that they were looking for a strong young female with royal or imperial blood and, other than YunYun, Zia is basically the only choice in the continent.”

“Why?” Finally Ling couldn’t stay silent. With his long lasting love towards queen Hua it was no wonder he partially considered Zia his own daughter and now the anxiousness was written all over his usually stony face.

“Sigh.” Nick knew this question would come, but there was no ‘easy’ way to answer it, “While I was still there, those psychos performed a demon soul summoning ritual and thought it was a success. The soul was summoned into a fetus of an unborn child. The mother … was princess Silja.”

Nick heard the bones crack with how the three other men clenched their fists in anger.

“Of course, the whole event was a total fiasco, but the old freaks in Holy Order persuaded each other of achieving a ‘great success’. The problem is, princess Silja died in the process. Therefore we have to hurry.” Nick said.

“But … Zia … she is not pregnant!” Andrew hissed through clenched teeth.

“Yup.” Nick nodded.

But this simply ‘yup’ made all five of them to instinctively increase their run speed even more as they understood the implications.

The following mad run was the longest and the hardest prince Andrew had ever done. While king and Nick periodically exchanged few short sentences, he could barely hold his concentration to keep the absorption of the Qi from beast cores going while at the same time continuously sprinting.

For the king this was not something too hard, although during the last few years he hadn’t been practicing that much compared to twenty years ago. And for Ling, well, no one couldn’t tell what this run was like for him, because his facial expression didn’t change at all except the fury in his eyes showed a hint of what was going on in the depths of his heart.

To Nick and YunYun this rush was almost like any other day, except at a faster pace. Unfortunately there was no way for them to enjoy it as a training, because of the sole reason they were on the way.

After the noon of the second day king Maxwell and Ling finally started to use the beast cores as well. Even though after the trip in the north Nick lacked alchemy ingredients, he still had a decent amount of those, therefore he generously provided the three with what seemed an endless supply while he and YunYun didn’t need any. They just ran holding each others hand and continuously circulated Qi while absorbing it from the surroundings.

To the king’s questioning gaze Nick just shrugged and replied, “We created a new Qi technique that allows us to absorb almost infinite amount of Qi from the nature. If you are interested, I can show you how that works when we are back.”

“Freaks.” King just mumbled under his nose. He knew very well that it couldn’t be that simple and most likely it worked only because of that weird Qi resonance these two had. There was no way for other people to replicate it.

In the afternoon of the second day the group could finally see the forested slopes of the mount Corbus in the distance. Of course, the word ‘finally’ could be applied only in their case – for anyone else it would be impossible to come this far so fast. Although the snowy peaks were barely discernible between the clouds, the fact that they had arrived in this region gave some hope.

Just before the nightfall they left the grassy plains of the Sun kingdom behind, entered the forested mountain slopes and had to slow down.

While casually jogging through the thick forests was an easy task for Qi masters, they couldn’t run at full speed, especially after the mad run they just had while crossing half of the Sun kingdom.

“Let’s stop for a bit and rest. Even after we reach the place, our task will only become harder.” King said and the rest agreed.

They found a small meadow and Nick immediately took out a pot, made a fire and started to brew an energizing tea. This was almost instinctive action he had learned already back on the Nestri continent.

Noticing the five humans stop, Angel landed as well. Before king, Andrew and Ling could even start to admire the colossal bird, Nick called everyone over and immediately started briefing. He didn’t give any chance to the king to say anything and just assumed his ‘usual’ role of the ‘party leader’. While king found this annoying, there were more important things to pay attention to than his own feelings.

“We know there are sentries hidden within the surrounding mountains and the only one who could spot them from afar, especially in the dark, is you, Angel. Unfortunately we can’t kill them, even silently, because there is high probability someone in the Holy Order uses similar Qi technique to the bishop or the goddess Lori and thus will notice the attack. Or course, it is impossible to monitor every singe person in the sect, therefore most likely we just need to get through the outer perimeter of scouts.”

“But we can’t just storm in after that – they might hurt her!” Andrew anxiously said.

“Indeed! Therefore, just before we reach the sect, YunYun and I will take out a noose like this, each hold it in our hands and Angel will grab these and stealthily fly us in.” Nick pulled out a rope and made a simple noose to show it to Angel.

Seeing his displeasure, Nick explained, “I know you just want to dive in and kill everyone, but our friend is captive in there and, before we start the massacre, we need to save her. You only need to drop us off on the balcony and a minute later you can start killing everyone you see!”

Angel’s eyes lit up and Nick continued, “In addition, Angel, you will have the hardest job. You will have to make sure nobody escapes! Including the sentries that we will pass on our way in. Alright, let’s rest for another half an hour and then continue.”

Four hours later, when they were rushing up yet another mountain slope, Angel suddenly descended in front to stop them. Without saying a word Nick and YunYun took out one noose each and held tight while Angel grabbed both in his claws and silently took off.

The three others exchanged quick glances and madly dashed after them. Three more minutes and it wouldn’t matter if they got discovered. This grand rank six monster will already wreck havoc across the whole sect before sentries had any chance to react.

Of course, on the previous day Nick mapped out the Holy Order’s layout according to his own memory, but that didn’t help much. All were clear that if Holy Order really kidnapped Zia, she was held in the corridor system or even in the grand hall within the mountain. Thus the job of directly rescuing her fell on Nick and YunYun, but that didn’t lessen the importance of the task the other three had to perform. They had to face hundreds of sect members and make sure those people would never wake up again.

When all those years back Nick reported to the king Alexander Maxwell for the first time and described the Holy Order estimating the population to be around two hundred, Simon Den immediately disagreed. He had several reports from the only inside man he had, the late ‘Mumbler’, that the sect had close to a thousand members and only maximum of two to three hundred of those were deployed outside.

It only meant that the current task of assaulting the sect head on might even be much more dangerous than starting a stealth operation from within. In addition, they had to make a loud entrance to divert attention from Nick, YunYun and, hopefully, Zia. Of course, a large portion of that weight would land on Angel’s shoulders or rather, wings.

Only now Nick understood how laughable was for him to assume Angel’s flight speed back then. Even with him currently being Qi master, the image in front of his eyes blurred when Angel took off. He and YunYun barely held on to the nooses and prayed that their weight was not enough to rip those.

A minute later from above the treetops Nick already saw in the darkness below him the sect’s buildings and a few seconds after that they stealthily landed on the familiar balcony. It looked exactly the same as when elder Agnes brought him out to breath a fresh air for the first time after arrival in this world, except now it was the middle of the night.