“I suppose the royal court will find the culprit, Aney. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Find? There were no traces of aura near the spring, or else I would have already found that bastard myself. So how is the royal court supposed to do it?”

  “Then what do you propose?”

  I simply spread my hands. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could even suggest… We moved swiftly forward, passing villages with dead inhabitants.

  “I sense auras!” I said after a few hours. “Many first-level auras, but there are a few quite strong ones.”

  “Can you tell exactly who they are?”

  “Unfortunately, no, we’re still too far. But they’re right in our path—we’ll be there in about half an hour at our speed.”

  I wasn’t mistaken. Half an hour later, we were stopped by a checkpoint set up on the road by the Healers’ Guild.

  “Stop!”

  A mid-level Battle Ancestor halted the gah.

  “Who are you, and where are you coming from?”

  “I am the rector of the magic academy. This is the academy’s team, and we are heading to Lhote to participate in the tournament. And yes, if you were about to ask—we have seen it all. Countless dead people!”

  The Ancestor hesitated slightly and waved his hand.

  “Proceed to the healers’ tents for examination. That’s the protocol.”

  Raman silently turned onto the roadside and slowly headed toward the healers. Around the white tents, there were hundreds of stretchers with dying people gasping for air like fish on dry land. It was unbearable to look at. I jumped to the ground and approached one of the patients—a boy about ten years old. Pulling out a vial of medicine, I poured it into his mouth.

  “Hey, young man! What are you doing there? Step away immediately!”

  I looked at the elderly healer approaching me.

  “I’m helping the sick before they die! You don’t mind, do you?”

  The boy began to breathe easier just as the healer reached us.

  “What did you give him?”

  The old man watched the patient intently as life quickly returned to him.

  “Medicine I made myself,” I gestured toward my team. “Or do you think my group miraculously passed through the infected area and survived?”

  The healer now looked at me with goodwill.

  “You have a point. Do you have more of that medicine?”

  I pulled out all the supplies I had previously prepared from my storage.

  “I’m not sure if it’s enough, but I can prepare another batch in an hour. However, I’ll say this upfront—these medicines won’t cure them completely. They will only suppress the symptoms for a few days. I still haven’t found a way to eliminate this poison entirely.”

  “So you’re saying it’s poison? Isn’t it a lung disease?”

  Damn! And you call yourself a healer?! I shook my head from side to side.

  “This is not a disease. It’s a toxic substance in the air that blocks the blood’s ability to carry oxygen to the organs. Otherwise, how did not only people die but also all the animals? Back there,” I pointed in the direction we had come from, “there’s nothing left alive—at all!”

  “Young man! Please refrain from making such bold claims. Unless, of course, you are a high-ranking healer! Our guild has its official position on this matter. We appreciate the medicine, of course, but spare us your attempts to impose your views on us.”

  He ordered the lower-ranking healers to distribute the medicine to the patients and walked away from me. I approached the rector and the team, who were being examined by a middle-aged female healer.

  “Everyone is healthy!” she concluded.

  “Excuse me,” the rector tried to argue, “we are definitely still poisoned!”

  “Poisoned? You must be mistaken. We only check for cases of lung disease here. If you are suffering from poisoning, you should seek help from the alchemists instead. Sorry. You are free to go—the Healers’ Guild has no reason to detain you. Farewell.”

  Raman tried to argue with her, but I stopped him by placing a hand on his shoulder.

  “It’s pointless, Rector. Something weird is going on here—no one will listen to you.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” The team members were confused. “How can we find an antidote if even the Healers’ Guild doesn’t believe us?”

  Neither the rector nor I had an answer for them. Helplessness—that’s what I felt at that moment.

  “Let’s go. There’s no point in standing around,” Raman urged us toward the gah.

  “Listen,” he continued as we moved, “let’s ride a little further and discuss our next steps there, okay? Because, to me, this all seems like some serious nonsense.”

  We agreed—there was nothing else we could do.

  “Maybe we really should turn to the Alchemists’ Guild?” Irgen was the first to suggest when we stopped several dozen kilometers away.

  Everyone looked at me. What did I have to do with it?

  “Rector Raman, do you know what level of alchemist Kruk is?”

  “I assume, as a God of War and a member of the celestial race, he must be at least seventh class.”

  “In that case, the Alchemists’ Guild won’t be able to help us—at least not the guild within this kingdom. Maybe in the Empire…”

  My words, of course, didn’t boost anyone’s optimism.

  “Alright! I’ll prepare as much medicine as I have ingredients for and distribute it among you. Each vial should last three or four days. Then I’ll try to find a more effective antidote, okay?”

  Without waiting for their response, I climbed out of the gah and settled under a tall, sprawling tree with my alchemical cauldron. Irgen approached me as I was preparing the third or fourth batch.

  “Forgive us, Captain. We… we’re just scared, even the rector.”

  “It’s nothing…”

  “No, Captain, it’s not nothing. We’re all adults, quite strong mages for this kingdom, yet right now, we’re acting like frightened children. And that’s normal—each of us saw how those people died. No one wants that fate for themselves.”

  “I wouldn’t want that either…”

  “Wait, Captain, I’m not done. We haven’t known you for long, of course, but we all understand what kind of person you are. For instance, even in this situation, you were the first to sense that something was wrong with the air. You prepared,” she nodded at the cauldron, “and are still preparing, even if temporary, medicine that’s keeping us alive. Could any of us do the same? Even the rector? No, unfortunately. So now everyone realizes that their lives depend on someone they can’t even call a friend—you don’t become friends in such a short time… And that knowledge both frustrates and terrifies them. So forgive us if we’ve done something wrong, Captain.”

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  I looked up at the sky, where the sun’s rays occasionally pierced holes in the dense canopy of leaves.

  “I’m afraid too.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Not of death. Everyone dies—the only difference is how. I’m afraid of failing at what I’ve taken on. Like right now—I have no idea where to even start with the antidote…”

  “Oh, I see…”

  I poured the finished batch of medicine into vials and started a new one.

  “Yeah. That… Give me a few drops of blood? I want to check something again.”

  Irgen silently extended her hand. I pricked her finger with aura and extracted a few drops. Spreading them into a large transparent pink smear, I began my analysis. The fire beneath the cauldron burned brightly, a crimson magic circle slowly rotated around me, and I calculated the number of green contaminants per unit of blood, comparing them with the sample I had examined earlier from Zimer.

  Practically the same count as many hours ago. That meant they weren’t multiplying—at least in the body, which was already good news.

  I had one option, but I wanted to save it as a last resort. I could try filtering their bloodstream with my God’s Mana. But that was, first, dangerous—I had no idea what consequences it might lead to—and second, I didn’t trust them enough to reveal my biggest secret. As for other methods, I had no ideas.

  I isolated a single green contaminant with aura and sliced it into several pieces. They twitched for a while in convulsions, then blackened and crumbled into gray dust. Well, mechanical destruction was possible. But given that there were thousands of them in a single drop of blood, this method was unlikely to be viable for even one person. And there were eleven of them.

  I poured another batch of medicine and returned to studying the poison. This time, I took alchemy ingredients one by one, extracted their active substance, and treated the green pests with it. Thousands of samples, and not a single positive result. I was losing hope.

  The production of medicine stretched far past midnight, but in the end, I had thirteen hundred vials, which I distributed among the team members and the rector. None of the alchemical ingredients from the storage had any effect. At the very least, this meant that a simple component wouldn’t destroy the poison. I needed to experiment with complex ones, which required a lot of time due to the sheer number of possibilities.

  “This should last each of you about a year,” I said. “I have no doubt that in that time, I will find an antidote that will fully cure you.”

  “And what about you?” Raman noticed that I hadn’t kept a single vial for myself.

  “It didn’t affect me,” I shook my head. “It seems the poison is too weak for Battle Ancestors.”

  I lied in my last assumption, but no one noticed. They were just happy that, at the very least, they would survive with the medicine.

  “Shall we go?” I asked Raman.

  The rector took the reins, and we continued into the night. I lay down on the bench to rest and simply closed my eyes so no one would bother me.

  What could destroy proteins in the human body? Temperature… no, this filth had the same temperature as the victims’ blood. Acids, alkalis, salts… no, those are inorganic compounds, and this filth moved and had something resembling an aura. Radiation? No, that’s an absurd theory… Damn it, what is this thing?

  I turned my consciousness toward the storage, where two stone slabs lay, and approached the cracked one. I was curious about what was inside. Inside was a human foot. The same yellowed bones with a pattern of green veins. Were these parts of the same person?

  If so, how many of these slabs existed on the continent? Or even in the empire? Ten? Twenty? And how did these bones end up inside the stone?

  I really wanted to break the slab to examine the bones up close, but I couldn’t do that inside the storage. Bringing this thing to the surface would mean unleashing another catastrophe. I couldn’t do that just out of curiosity, even if it might provide a clue to creating an antidote.

  I sat up sharply on the bench.

  I know another person with patterns on their bones. Myself!

  And though my patterns had structure and were geometrically precise, that was merely a result of the rules by which I used my mana.

  Mana, damn it!

  Monster mana, for example, is deadly to humans. It destroys protein molecules by heating up inside a person’s body to several hundred degrees. So maybe these green patterns were some kind of rule of an unknown type of mana?

  What even is mana? Does it have a physical form before interacting with a mage’s mana circles? My God’s Mana and monster mana definitely do. But human mana? I couldn’t sense it, that was the problem—so I couldn’t study it.

  But if I assume that this green filth is some kind of mana, can it be destroyed?

  “Raman! I have a dumb question.”

  The rector flinched on the driver’s seat from the suddenness.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Can mana, as a physical object, be destroyed?”

  “Magic theory says no—only transformed…”

  “If that’s the case… Everyone!” I shouted loudly, enough to wake those who were sleeping. “I have good news for you. You won’t die. According to my preliminary findings, you’ve been poisoned by foreign mana—similar to monster mana. So, there’s even a way to get rid of it: by becoming an Archmage!”

  “What?! Captain, do you even understand what it takes to become an Archmage?! Maybe one in a million mages can achieve that!”

  “Oh, come on, already crying about it! Fine, then—I’ll give you a recipe for medicine. It’s simple enough that any second-class alchemist can brew it for you, and you can live with it for the rest of your lives! Cowards!”

  I angrily sat back down on the bench.

  What is wrong with these people? Giving up without even trying. As if it was an impossible task.

  An Archmage was as powerful as a War God of the highest rank. I planned to conquer both of those paths in the future.

  Although… could my rune circles help? They easily converted monster mana into my own…

  No, I wouldn’t tell them anything for now. Let them suffer!

  I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

  A few days into our journey, we had covered half the distance to Lygote and stopped to rest for a day in a small roadside town.

  Well, “rest” wasn’t exactly the right word.

  There was a weak dungeon nearby, and I had an idea, so everything worked out perfectly.

  “Captain! Do you really want to send us into a dungeon right before the tournament?”

  The team’s outrage seemed endless.

  “Don’t worry, I have enough recovery pills for all of you!”

  “Rector, please, at least you say something to him.”

  Raman shrugged indifferently.

  “He’s training you, not me. So why are you complaining to me?”

  “Everyone!” I commanded firmly. “Two months ago, I promised you a monster hunt. So, choose—either we go into the dungeon now, or you fight me. And this time, I won’t be gentle!”

  The team very reasonably decided that the first option was much preferable, so they quickly set off toward the dungeon.

  At the entrance, I showed my gold adventurer guild plaque, so we were let in without any trouble.

  None of the mages had ever been inside a dungeon before, so they all looked around warily, even on the first level.

  No, this wasn’t interesting.

  “Let’s go, nothing to do here,” I said, using my aura to scatter the first-class monsters and leading everyone toward the passage to the lower levels.

  The dungeon was almost identical to the one in Vangan, even the types of monsters were the same. Eventually, we stopped on the sixth level, where the primary opponents were packs of Gato. Not bad—strong and fast opponents, just right for the team. I led them a few kilometers away from the passage and commanded:

  “Attention, form a circular defense!”

  After that, I burned several thousand insects in the sky.

  “Folks, the most fun part of our walk begins! Shields up!”

  Billions of insects fell to the ground, and I soared into the air above my team. Within seconds, the first swarms attacked our formation.

  “Wood mages—thorny bushes around the perimeter, slow them down!”

  “Gras! Ice blades across the area! Triple the perimeter, there are plenty of monsters!”

  “Irgen, aim further, you’re burning down all the defensive barriers!”

  I shouted commands from above. But to their credit, they fought desperately and wisely. Not a single creature managed to get close enough to jump at them. The battle lasted several hours, during which all the monsters on the level—more than three hundred thousand—were destroyed! I handed them daggers.

  “And now for the most pleasant part—collecting trophies!”

  “What do you mean, Captain?”

  “Don’t slack off, start gathering the cores.”

  I approached a monster carcass and pulled out an orange core with my hand. Everyone grimaced and hesitated.

  “Captain, maybe we don’t have to? We already fought…”

  “As you wish, but know this,” I waved my bloodied hand around, “there are about one hundred and fifty thousand gold worth of cores here. If we divide it among the team…”

  “How much?!” Irgen was the first to grasp it and rushed to the nearest carcass. “You’re mine! Hahaha!”

  Oh, my girl, I used to do this with the same enthusiasm, though for a different purpose. Unfortunately, they didn’t have enough experience or strength to collect the cores efficiently. At this rate, they’d be here for a week…

  “Alright, I’ll help you. Otherwise, I’ll fall asleep waiting.”

  An hour later, everyone stood before a massive orange mountain.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, that’s three hundred thirty-four thousand six hundred and forty cores. So, each of you gets thirty-three thousand four hundred sixty-four cores.”

  I used my aura to split the pile into ten equal shares and handed each their portion.

  “And now, let’s head back up.”

  “Captain!” Irgen’s eyes burned with excitement. “Can we stay just a little longer?”

  It seemed she wasn’t the only one with that desire.

  “Enough for today. Ramen will kill us—we’ve been in the dungeon for more than a day already, and we still have to climb back up. I’ll take you again after the qualifiers.”

  So we set off on the return journey.

  “Sell the cores in Lygote. The prices here will be about twenty percent lower. Almost half the city’s population are adventurers who practically live in the dungeon.”

  “Captain,” Irgen beamed, “you know so much about dungeons and adventurers…”

  “You saw the plaque, didn’t you?” I pulled out my golden adventurer guild plaque and showed it to her.

  “Whoa!” Gras joined the conversation. “Have you spent a lot of time in dungeons? How deep have you gone?”

  “Well, I have some experience. My longest solo raid was in the Vangan dungeon. I spent two and a half years there.”

  “How long?!”

  “Two. And. A half. Years.”

  Everyone stared at me in shock. It seemed my authority among them had just skyrocketed.

  “How deep did you go?”

  “To the thirtieth levels.”

  “Whoa! Are the monsters there strong? What’s the strongest monster you’ve ever defeated?”

  “Well, I fought the strongest ones when I was at the mid-level of a Battle Ancestor. I haven’t tested my current strength yet.”

  I tried to dodge the question.

  “Captain,” Irgen didn’t let me, “so what’s the strongest monster you’ve defeated?”

  Silently, I pulled out an eighth-class monster core. Everyone stared at the transparent, rainbow-colored stone the size of a human head.

  “What is that?”

  “A monster core of the eighth class.”

  “What?! There are eighth-class monsters?”

  “Yeah. I only found out about them in the dungeon. And even more—there are ninth-class monsters, but with my current strength level, it’s too early to go that deep.”

  The rest of the way to the city, where the rector awaited us, we walked mostly in silence. Everyone was lost in thought. Only Irgen gleamed like a freshly minted gold coin, refusing to share the group’s contemplative mood.