"Sai?" Shen said over the phone. His guard had just frozen in place after Shen's apology.

"Sorry," Sai said. "I... uh... Will Ananya be fine if she keeps going into your aura?"

"I regularly visit the commoners' military training area," Shen started. "Overall, their reaction improves slightly every time. But we haven't tested it with people who didn't fare well the first time. Repeatedly making untrained civilians feel terror just to collect data sounded like torture or human experiments."

His last sentence made it clear that he would not allow the girl to enter his aura. Yet, the actual answer to Sai's question was, "most likely, yes."

In the Eternal Empire, Shen couldn't remember feeling an aggressive aura even once, which he guessed was his father's doing. However, he had also never heard of a law forbidding cultivators with an aura from having it touch mortals. On a cultivator land, mortals would just get used to it and help each other deal with the stress if needed.

But three days before a decisive battle against alien invaders wasn't the time to experiment on people or start revolutionizing culture.

"My clan's workers have days off," Shen said. "You didn't leave my side in the last stage, so you deserve some rest. I'll give you twelve hours. I wish I could give you more, but I need to test and train you for the incoming battle."

They had been forcibly separated after the tutorial, so Shen won't count those days as days off.

Shen sighed. "I'll also give you half an hour to convince your mother to go underground before I expel her from the camp. The rules are clear, and no one is exempt. If she can't abide by them, she's not welcome. You might leave with her if you want."

In the Eternal Empire, honor came before blood. If you had to act unhonorable to gain an advantage for your family or protect them against the rules, you would be regarded as an outcast at the very least. Almost always, that was illegal and made you a criminal.

Then again, in some cases, protecting your blood even against an honorable enacting of the law was the proper way to die. A husband and a wife were supposed to fight together unto death, and it was understandable for one to forgive the other's failing in some cases. Sai, too, might decide to quit his job and leave with his mother. The man hadn't made any pledges of fielty yet, so it was allowed.

Shen recalled his father's dishonorable actions. Betraying and bankrupting his clan for a shot at saving his son was not honorable, understandable, or acceptable.

If Sai chose to leave, that would be the end of their relationship. It would also turn Sai into an outlaw according to Earth's rules—he was a Guardian and had received the Call to Arms. However, it was a choice he might want to make, and Shen wouldn't stop him.

"What?!" Sai asked with a shocked voice. "You would expel my mother?"

Shen tried to sound kind yet not condescending. "This is not a playground, Sai. This is a military operation created to protect Earth. The rules can be questioned through a simple APP, and I both read and reply to them at least once a day. You can even search for previous suggestions and how I replied to them. I'm open to being proven wrong, although no one has managed it yet. However, the rules can not be ignored. This Rift War is too important for that. I'm sorry, but your mother is an offender."

According to those same rules, when a bureaucratic issue happened, the cause should be fixed before dealing with the consequences. Shen would do exactly that. The half-hour he had given Sai was simply how long he expected it to take him to find the one who had allowed Pihu to work on the front desks, demote everyone involved, and restructure the section's hierarchy. And even that long was only because he had a more urgent matter to deal with—the light right beside him.

Usually, Shen would just report the issue, but his guard deserved at least that level of commitment from him.

"You're dismissed, guard Sai," Shen said, a little more harshly. He had liked Sai's work ethic in the tutorial and had missed the man, but theirs was still a vertical relationship at the moment. Sai was Shen's guard and was supposed to do as told.

Sai kept frozen for a few moments before hanging up without another word, turning, and leaving.

Alicia had both a tiny smile and a frown on her face. She didn't say anything though.

Some troops finally arrived in the area two minutes before the teleportation light fully materialized. It now looked like four humans. Shen was unsatisfied with that response time, but they were not being trained for this kind of thing, so they had an excuse.

The detachment had a hundred Guardians and fifty commoners. The former used the mana cocoon trick to better deal with his aura and stayed fifty yards away from him, surrounding the place. The latter just kept out of his range. They pointed their guns at the light, from rifles to rocket launchers. Three military helicopters took to the skies, also out of his aura.

Despite how long it had taken them to come, at least they had learned well how to set a defensive perimeter.

One of the Guardians, a Pioneer, approached to talk to Shen. She was a middle-aged Indonesian with red E+ plate armor and two small bronze shields attached to her forearms. Shen recognized it as a defensive mage setup—rare but usually valuable. She had long black hair, slightly dark skin, and black eyes.

Ningsih Harta nodded at him and looked at the light. "This does look like a teleport," she said, likely referring to a briefing she had gotten.

Although Shen was the commander-in-chief of the entire operation, he didn't care for formality in communication. Whatever was said had to be clear and not be disrespectful, but appending someone's rank to the greeting or saluting felt like a waste of time.

Then again, the actual modern military personnel assisting him, especially the generals, had been adamant about its importance. Supposedly, it was great for discipline. Shen had acceded to their wisdom, though he had insisted no one had to salute him at least.

"It does, doesn't it?" Alicia said.

"Any idea who's coming?" Ningsih asked.

"Probably Marzia," Shen said. "We'll find out in a moment. Keep your distance, and let me deal with it first."

"Sure, boss," Ningsih replied playfully. "Can you just tell me if we're supposed to attack her for screwing Earth's commerce in her quest to conquer the world? Or should we protect her from the people paying a hundred thousand coins for her head?"

"What?" Shen asked.

"You didn't know?" She sounded legitimately surprised, and Shen's aura couldn't detect any telling signs of a lie. "It's all over the internet. Standard Coins are now magically accepted on all websites that take any currency. Only Standard Coins. It can be fixed or reverted manually, but it requires changing the actual source code. Many websites are running on system magic, and everyone who could fix them is just... missing. But someone used it against Marzia. They created a fundraising page to put a bounty on our beloved Maiden's head. Anyone who wants her gone can donate. It has already raised a hundred thousand coins."

Shen frowned. That made things even more chaotic.

"We'll protect her unless she attacks first," he declared.

He didn't agree with every single law she had enacted, but she was taking Earth on the right path. The world needed to accept the new reality the Alliance had forced on them sooner rather than later. And in said reality, according to Alliance law, Marzia was Earth's ruler, placed on the throne by Earth's strongest.

Marzia had legitimacy.

The Pioneers hadn't known everything that being a Maiden entailed when they cast their votes. Even so, killing her because they had changed their minds was unhonorable at best. Shen wouldn't abide by it.

For him, Marzia's death would only be justifiable if she did something nefarious with her power.

Until now, she hadn't.

"Whoever attacks her while she's under my protection won't live to use the coins," he swore while sending the same message to his generals.

Despite all their training, Earth's troops were still weak. Shen had no doubt he could kill them all if needed. They would be useful against the enemies' E-ranks and weaker D-ranks, but any peak D-rank would have to be dealt with by him alone. The other Pioneers and Earth's hidden elites could delay them at best.

Shen wanted his people to obey his orders because they were just and honorable. However, even the Eternal Emperor needed mighty and the ultimate threat of violence to keep things running. Shen would be no different.

"Understood," Ningsih said, much more seriously this time, and even saluted before retreating to stand with her troops.

A minute later, their guests finally arrived.

Marzia was bodiless and alone in an empty white space. Only the anti-boredom modification on her brain stopped her from, well, getting utterly bored.

She had been told the system didn't like using resources to teleport weaklings. C-ranks teleported instantly, but while D-ranks and lower disappeared from their original location immediately, reappearing took longer.

Depending on their ranks, the distance to the target location, how many were teleporting, and how bad was the teleportation traffic at the time, appearing at the destination could take anything from five minutes to days. Still, even taking days was usually faster than any other form of transportation.

The annoying part was that she could only use the system while there. If she could at least use her smartphone and connect to the internet, she could move on with some plans.

Yet, the worst part was the oversight she had realized while waiting.

When she had teleported away, she had told the system to bring the three Pioneers with her. She had assumed Carlos to be dead because his head had almost been ripped off its body, but what if the traitor had had a single point of HP remaining somehow? What if his state had been a ruse?

Would the system get her intent and bring only her supporters with her? Or would he have come with her while she left an ally behind to fend for themselves? Did she need to prepare to protect herself as soon as she materialized?

Would her preparations even matter with Feng Shen there?

Preparing against the cultivator was impossible; she knew that from Alicia's communication. The silly girl was visibly uncomfortable about being present when Marzia's dad had been killed, and Marzia only felt slightly guilty about abusing it to get updates on Shen. Nothing important or private, it wasn't actually spying, but she knew things that were public knowledge on the Rift War camp that few people outside were privy to.

So she knew Shen could kill her just by willing it if she was inside his aura.

Would he? Marzia didn't think so, and the one thing she prided herself on was judging people. She wasn't omniscient, of course. She hadn't expected Carlos to betray her. However, she had expected someone unexpected to betray her and prepared accordingly.

The issue was that if she was wrong about Shen, she would be dead before she could blink.

Her interactions with the Human Rising Star had been few and far between, all in the tutorial. In there, she had admired how he had dealt with the Pioneers, his honor, his justice. At the time, he had been the best person she had ever met.

However, the past four days had made her wonder. She had been surrounded by snakes and recalled some of the honorable goons her father had dealt with.

The issue was that each "honorable criminal" had their own flavor of honor.

Some would kill their children if asked to, others would kill themselves not to have to do such an act, and yet others would go against the world to protect their kin from any perceived injustice.

Shen seemed to be in between the first and second. He liked things to go the right way, yet he wouldn't kill Alicia even if it would be for the good of all. Or so Alicia had said. Maybe the girl was a fool in love, but Marzia agreed with that assessment from what she had witnessed in the tutorial and heard from other people.

His apology video also showed the kind of practical honor that pursued what was right instead of drowning himself in regret over something he couldn't do anything about.

He had regretted being made a tool yet wouldn't kill himself over it because that would be unfair too. He had apologized, promised revenge, and moved on to ask for help in protecting the world because that was the right thing to do. It didn't matter to him that a lot of people on the planet would rather kill him for the hundreds of thousands of people—in the most conservative estimates—he had killed. He would take the hatred and still shoulder the responsibility to save those who wanted him dead.

As long as they didn't actually act on that desire, of course.

That was important. Shen killed those who attacked him, and Marzia had been cautious to never do anything of the kind. Even the laws she had opted-in into had taken that into account.

When the whiteness finally disappeared, Shen's bald head suddenly appeared in front of her.

Marzia took a sharp breath and hoped she was right because his horrifying aura made her feel like she was about to die.