In Auralba, the capital of Myrtana, a few people were gathered while discussing the latest unbelievable news.

"Elly was a princess?! Of the Empire?!" Xilia exclaimed for the umpteenth time.

"Seriously, with all that happened, that's what you are concerned about?!" Sera berated her. The same scenario happened countless times already during the last few days, and yet, it seemed they were stuck in a loop with no way out.

Well, it was mostly those two as they dealt with the shock of losing both a teammate and their boss at once. Blum just remained quiet and seemingly depressed, while Warren blamed himself for being too weak to be of any use and has been training unceasingly ever since they came back home.

"Ahem!" Sebas Tian suddenly entered the room and cleared his throat to get the attention. "Ladies, you have a guest," he announced.

They turned around just in time to see a small group of people enter the room. It was Tabbris with a small entourage of his peers from the Phoenix Knights.

"Oh, Tabbris!" Sera jumped up to greet him. "What's the news?"

They contacted him as soon as they got back in the hope he could offer some help. However, the situation was quite tricky and had to be dealt with with extreme precision. If it was something that happened within the borders of Myrtana they could just get the order from the King, however, those two were already dragged over into the Burronian Empire, and now the politics between nations got in the way.

Tabbris just shook his head, "I've spoken with His Majesty, King Robart III, however, he is currently unable to assist us. The city needs to be rebuilt and the armies are needed to establish order. But even if that wasn't so, we can't just march into the Empire, that would be an act of war, something we are desperately trying to avoid, especially now."

"No way…" Xilia gasped. "After all that he had done to help you, you are just going to let them take him?! And do nothing?!"

She was positively infuriated! That was their boss they were talking about! Granted, he had a bit of an eccentric personality and acted like a dick sometimes, but he had helped so many! He single-handedly took down the Giant for Innos' sake! That was surely worth something!

"Listen, I don't like it either," Tabbris said with a soft voice to try and calm her down. "If it was possible I would have gone to save him myself, but it's just not realistic! The situation is extremely unstable already. The Empire threatened us with a war over their missing princess, so if this keeps them pacified, it is worth it," he explained.

"We cannot survive another assault, especially not from the Empire," he added.

"Why not?! You did just fine against the monsters! How is battling other humans any harder?!"

Tabbris pinched his glabella and exhaled in deep frustration, "You might not know it, but the Empire could crush us in a matter of days if their entire force clashed with ours…"

"What?! Are you serious?" the two girls exclaimed in unison.

"Yeah… The fact that we are seemingly equal is because a great part of the Empire's army is preoccupied with fighting real monsters. Anywhere between 50-70% of their soldiers and mages have to be constantly on standby and ready to fight at a moment's notice in case their south border gets attacked."

"What are you talking about? Why would they have to do that?"

"And how do you know all this? Isn't it supposed to be a secret?" Xilia added.

Tabbris just grimly smiled as the two ladies attacked him with questions. He might as well tell them what they wanted to know to get them off his back.

"It's because we have spies in the Empire. And as far as we know, the Empire uses short breaks between monster attacks to fight battles with us. It's apparently so that we don't grow too strong and overpower them. But that's most likely just nonsense," he added.

"They have many more resources than we do, but they are still running low and have to cull their own population every few decades so that the rest of their nation doesn't slowly starve. If they have just a handful of extremely powerful warriors it is way better than having countless weaklings. It is unfortunate, but such is this world. They are stuck in a small space between monsters, extremely dangerous Elven lands, snow-covered mountains, and us. And since we are the easy target… You get the idea."

"That's horrible!"

"How can they be so twisted with their actions?! Does that mean they took Gerald just as an excuse for war?!"

Tabbris sighed, "Most likely. The King said he will send a message to the Emperor, but that's as much as we can do. Whatever happens now it's completely out of our hands."

"That asshole! Why did he have to get himself captured?!" Sera shook her fist toward the ceiling.

"Weren't you with him? How come you didn't help?" Xilia teased to get the dark thoughts out of her head.

"I told you I couldn't! One second we are calmly walking, and then BAM! We are on the ground, tied up and left to dry like some salted meat."

"And what they did to poor Toby!" Xilia added. "I just hope Quina's potions can heal it."

"I hope Gerald's not suffering too much…" Sera said. "Damn it! If anyone was torturing him, it should have been me!" To be fair, she was neglected quite a bit, despite being Gerald's first real contact in this new world.

Achoo!

"Damn, it's cold in here! I'm going to get sick."

Apart from the chill environment, Gerald's time in the dungeon wasn't too bad. He had plenty of time on his hands and could focus his attention inward.

A nice surprise of whatever that white orb did to his Soul was that it burned off most of the corrupted parts, leaving the rest of it in a pristine condition. And even though he lost almost half the size, his magic seemed to be flowing much smoother. The strain also appeared to have lessened, allowing him for near limitless low-level magic usage.

And to think he once got exhausted by just 10 simple spells! Haha, what a loser!

All jokes aside, it was really about time to start with this Cultivation thingy. Even if it was slow, at least trying it out would give him some experience, and, who knows, he might figure out something helpful.

Apparently in the Empire, the higher nobility referred to Mana as Focus. Why they decided so had two reasons. The first, and also the most obvious, was because… they had to distinguish themselves from the common pleb, so to speak. Cultivators used the word Focus to signify their superiority and also to easily recognize a fellow Cultivator.

The second reason was even simpler! It was because focus was required to focus Focus. It was probably because of the funny sentence structure that they decided on the name.

Although unwilling, Gerald had to admit, it was pretty funny. Especially when trying to explain it to someone who wasn't in the know. "To get stronger you need a lot of time and focus to focus Focus." Oh yeah, that would make a whole lot of sense.

Yeah, well… Gerald remembered he had a few things to do first and the Cultivation could wait a few more days.

He took a bunch of blank scrolls, Crystals, magic ink, and whatnot, and began making various magic writings. If he wanted to take down this place, a lot of preparation was required.