69th of Season of Water, Year 2 AL

  Maelstrom had been a princess all her life. People assumed her birth meant luxury and opulence, and in a way it did. She never had unmet wants, and could do more or less anything she wanted as a child as long as she behaved according to her station.

  It also meant that while other noble scions got higher realm manarium so they could fully expand their realms in a handful of days, she got realm-appropriate crystals.

  She had awakened on her fifteenth birthday, and immediately after her grand awakening party, she started expanding her realm. Even with twelve hours of meditation every day, she still took nearly half a year.

  A part of her resented it. That half a year would cost her five centuries of longevity once she reached the tenth realm. Funnily enough, sculpting her realm took merely two days in the royal meditation chamber. While her family forced her to expand her realm slowly, they wanted her to sculpt it as fast as possible with next to no effort. It sounded weird, but she knew it was because sculpting times would increase with the size of her realm and grew to stupid amounts of time really quickly.

  She took four and a half moons to expand her second realm, and another thirty-six days to sculpt it. Still fifteen when she entered the third realm, Maelstrom showed incredible devotion to training and growing strong, and it was time to resume her earlier education and training.

  With the added duties, her progress slowed significantly. She took nearly a year to fully expand her realm, and another four years to sculpt it. When she entered the fourth, she had years to prepare for the Sage’s Realm Tournament, to learn and live, since working on the final stages of her realm was forbidden, lest she advance and miss the tournament because of it.

  Maelstrom didn’t mind. The tournament was important, and there was a lot to learn, a lot to do. With her aging down to one sixteenth of the original speed, it was high time she focused on adapting the skills she had learned to her new body and mind.

  The quarter-century she spent preparing for it aged her less than two years, and in those years she had learned a lot about herself, and the nature of mana.

  She had to pace herself, to endure and persist to reach the peak. That was all.

  Not once since she had started on her road towards ascension had she needed to worry about earning resources, and that was why her current circumstances baffled her.

  “So, I’m supposed to go into the jungle and fight saurians of my own realm over resources, and I’m not allowed to take the treasures the weaker ones are guarding?”

  “Yes, those are their rules.” Newt nodded.

  He was such a cute, silly pumpkin. Maelstrom wanted to get laid. Sex was off the table ever since she had gotten engaged, and more than a century and a half of celibacy really wasn’t working out for her. Newt must have also had his troubles, and to an extent she admired how he managed to fake disinterest so well.

  She had brought as much wine as she could from back home. Buying more was also off the table without the rest of civilization or people caring for fine vintages enough to make a winery. Still, popping a bottle or two and sharing them on a picnic sounded good.

  “Sure, I can do that,” she said with a smile. “How about we go together? You register as an eighth realm in their eyes, so you can fight manabeasts at the eighth realm, while I fight those at the seventh, and we keep away from those weaker. Do the beasts mind killing?”

  “No, but if we do kill one of them, we must take everything we need. For seventh and eighth realm manabeasts, that means everything quite literally. There’s a lot of bone, flesh, and hide to go around, and while the vast majority of those present eat at a reduced rate or live on mana all on its own, we still need a ridiculous amount of food to feed so many mouths.”

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  “Right, how’s your family? When can I see your chubby baby brother again?”

  Newt blinked. They were both at the seventh realm and spoke at a pace comfortable to them. Still, she could see him use every ounce of speed his realm granted him to regain composure. It was less than a blink for a non-awakened, but the silence seemed to last two or three seconds in her flow of time.

  “My mother is pregnant again. I’d say she and Father were zealous about the recommendations our exalts had made, but she’s already in the second trimester.”

  Maelstrom wanted to say something about her grandfather dating, and that if Newt thought his family situation was weird, he should just look at hers. But the conversation going that way wasn’t in her interest. Not if she wanted to use that wine.

  “Congratulations, I guess!” She offered the most genuine smile she could muster.

  She hoped she had done a better job than Newt did slapping that sardonic thing on his face.

  “Thank you.” At least he was polite about it. “Do you need to make any preparations, or do we go now?”

  “Let’s go now,” she said a tad too eagerly, but the pumpkin remained blissfully oblivious that the one she was hunting was him, not a manabeast.

  They took off into the air, the slowly expanding city disappearing beneath them as they entered the jungle canopy.

  The place was very unlike the settlements back at Eternal Light Empire. For starters, the non-awakened needed all the fruit trees they could get, so nobody felled those. People either built houses around them, or even on them. There were no walls, either. The human immigrants instead scribed spell seals that pulsed with the warning energies of sixth realm manabeasts to ward off weaker and dumber saurians.

  “So, where do we go?” Maelstrom asked as they rose above the jungle.

  “We have one hundred and seventy-three thousand square miles of our territory, with Soaring Freedom at the center. Eighth realms are rare in our territory—” Newt started, but Maelstrom interrupted him.

  “Where’s the fewest people?”

  Newt stared at her, and he seemed to realize something. He smiled. “Towards the south. Not that we’ve had much time for exploration. That’s a part of your, well, our mission, to map out the area a bit and find realm-appropriate hunting grounds for the third and fourth realm kids.”

  He turned southward and led the way.

  “And how many sixth realm manabeasts are around?”

  “In our territory? Hundreds certainly, possibly over a thousand. Finding that out is a part of our mapping effort.”

  Maelstrom nodded. “That means there’s a dozen or two at the seventh realm?”

  “Yes, but you needn’t worry. If you lose, I’ll intervene and buy your life from the manabeast.”

  “We can do that?” She had never heard about mageknights ransoming someone from manabeasts. Either you saved them, or they died; there was little alternative.

  “Well, I can do that, since I can talk with them. But if you find a seventh realm dragon, which isn’t all that unlikely, you should refrain from attacking and stay close to me. They are really strong for their realm.”

  Maelstrom drew closer to Newt, and based on his smile, he liked it a fair bit as they flew together. Visually, the jungle was just an endless sea of green, but with her mana sense, Maelstrom could see the ground level.

  The majority of the jungle was covered in shade-tolerant plants and herbs, most of them with decent concentrations of mana, but that was far from all. In half an hour of leisurely flight, they had passed seven streams and a small river, which disappeared in a deep cave.

  The concentration of mana in the cave was extremely high, revealing at least a seventh realm manabeast slumbering inside.

  “Should I go in there?” Maelstrom stopped, and Newt looked down, frowning before diving lower.

  “Feels like a seventh realm sleeping dragon. It’s wounded and asleep, recovering.”

  He seemed torn. “I don’t know; maybe you could take it, but it would be needlessly risky. There’s got to be weaker seventh realm manabeasts around.”

  Maelstrom bit her lip. “And why isn’t it roaring or something?”

  Newt tilted his head a bit, as if thinking or listening. “It marked its territory clearly, and it’s focused on recovering. Unless someone enters its cave, I don’t think it will get out. Maybe if a fight between other seventh realm combatants broke out right on top of it.”

  Maelstrom smiled coyly. “Well, I was thinking of having a bit of wine first, but we could do that later.”

  Then she stored her clothes into her spatial pouch.