Veridia had read many letters like this over the past few months. Most of them spoke of the war, of troop movements, and of the princes shifting their forces from one place to another. Even after she became a runaway, Veridia still had a wide network spread across Lancephil and beyond. Because of that, information had never been hard for her to obtain.

Through those reports, she had followed the entire progress of the civil war. After it ended, the letters changed in nature. They spoke of nobles who had lost everything, of rebuilding efforts, and of the new steps Arzan had taken to stabilize the kingdom.

But the letter in her hands now was different.

As Veridia read it, her brows slowly drew together. The contents were not about the civil war or the future of the kingdom. They were about something else entirely. Something that made her pause and wonder if what she was reading could even be true.

She read the letter again. Then she read it a third time.

Only then did she look up at Loras, who stood calmly at her side. Over the past few months, he had grown quieter as her condition worsened, his usual cheer fading. Still, his obedience had not changed.

“If this is true,” Veridia said slowly, “I’m sure Arzan is going to do something about it.”

Loras tilted his head slightly. “What can he even do?”

Veridia shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know he will have something up his sleeve. I’ve already told you. He’s not who he acts like. He’s a very old, resourceful Mage, and someone like him would surely have a way. Especially with his ties to the elves.”

A second of silence passed after her response and when she looked at Loras, there was a tight frown on her face.

“I believe that is still not verified, Master.”

Veridia let out a low grunt. “Then you haven’t been reading the recent reports properly.”

Loras shrank slightly under her tone. “What about them?”

She opened her mouth to speak, but the words never came. A sudden fit of coughing seized her instead. She couldn’t control it as she clutched her throat, feeling an uncontrollable amount of pain spread. Loras moved at once, stepping to her side and placing a steady hand on her back. He passed her a waterskin without a word.

Veridia drank from it, the cool water soothing her throat. She felt the faint taste of blood at the tip of her tongue but ignored it, swallowing everything down before handing the waterskin back.

Loras watched her closely. “I believe you should rest, Master.”

“I’m okay,” she muttered slowly. “You don’t have to worry.”

She lowered her gaze to the letter again before continuing. “In one of the recent reports, I found that Arzan spoke openly about his relationship with the elven elder council during his meeting with the nobles. That alone confirms that he considers the elves his friends. And he will surely move to help them in any way he can.”

Loras nodded, taking in her words bit by bit. “But how are we supposed to accomplish anything just by keeping an eye on it?”

Veridia fell silent.

“I don’t know,” she said at last. Because it was true. She actually didn’t know.

There was a pregnant silence that followed her answer. Veridia’s eyes stayed distant when Loras spoke up.

“Master, then are we simply latching onto anything? We are better than that. I still believe we should kidnap someone close to him and force him to heal you. There are many other ways as well.”

Veridia frowned at once. She knew that was the fastest way to get herself killed. She shook her head, aware that letting her anger flare would only worsen her condition. Taking a slow breath, she spoke.

“If you want something from a dragon, and you steal its egg to force it to do what you want, what do you think it will do?”

Loras did not answer the question directly. “Dragons aren’t reasonable. You can’t compare a human to one. And dragons don’t exist.”

Veridia let out a long sigh.

“I’ve told you this already. Powerful Mages and powerful beasts are the same.” Her voice was tired. “What a dragon would do, whether it exists or not, is hunt you down and burn you and your entire family. Arzan will do the same.”

She paused before continuing. “He has lost the patience to handle things reasonably when he can simply rely on his strength. That is what happens when there is no one left to contest him.”

Loras spoke quietly. “But you are there.”

Veridia frowned.

She knew the truth of it, even if Loras did not want to accept it. Even in her prime, Arzan would have been able to defeat her. Their duel had proven that much. Loras knew it as well, but hope still lingered in him. He had grown up believing she was the strongest Mage alive. She had been, once. Not anymore.

Veridia was many things, but she had always known her place in the magical hierarchy.

She did not argue with him. Instead, she asked, “Do you know why I’m latching onto this?”

Loras shook his head. “No.”

“Because it might be a way to make myself useful,” she said. “There’s no guarantee. But Arzan has grown strong, and he stands alone in that strength. Even his Knight isn’t half as strong as him. When a bigger problem appears, he will need someone of equal power.” She continued. “I know he already has an alliance with Elias, but that old man is too busy trying to rebuild his own little kingdom.”

Loras nodded slowly. “So you’re hoping he comes crawling to you.”

Veridia shook her head. “I don’t know what will happen. I just know that sooner or later, there will be a need. And if we keep watching everything, I’ll be able to fill that need.”

Her fingers tightened. “I don’t like this either. Posturing to anyone, especially after my years with Regina. But this is only until I regain my strength.” She lifted her gaze, her eyes sharp despite her condition. “After that, the entire kingdom will see my true strength.”

***

Kai spent the next few days buried in books, using the space his master had left behind in his astral realm. When he was awake, he read in the library. When exhaustion finally caught up to him, he would fall asleep and wake again in his master’s old room, the same stack of books waiting on the table beside the bed. He would pick them up without hesitation and continue reading as if nothing had changed.

With this routine, his knowledge steadily grew. His understanding of spellcraft deepened, and so did his grasp of the other realms. He was no longer just memorizing theory. He was beginning to truly understand how realms coexisted in the world.

In his master’s room, he also found several books focused on soul magic. Those texts brought him a step closer to understanding the inscription hidden within Amyra’s astral realm. The progress was slow, but it was real, and that alone kept him going.

More than anything else, he finally had proper spell structures for higher circle ice spells.

Valkyrie had left many of them behind. Kai found himself drawn to spells like [Frozen Dominion], [Cryostatic Mirror], and [Absolute Zero]. Ice magic was not as destructive as fire, nor did it offer the same level of control as wind. What it did best was restraint. It excelled at locking enemies in place, slowing them, or denying them movement altogether. When combined with other aspects, it opened the door to far more creative uses of magic.

Still, knowing the spell structures and actually using them were two very different things.

Even though Valkyrie had been a great Magus, her spell structures suffered from the limits of this world’s research. They were wasteful, consuming far more mana than necessary, and many of them were overly complex. Kai recognized the issue almost immediately. Several of the ice spells mirrored his own fire spells in structure, and those flaws stood out clearly to him.

That meant they needed to be changed.

With that realization, Kai turned back to the shelves, reaching for more theoretical books on ice magic, knowing that he needed to understand them better before moving to modify them.

Valkyrie had written many of those books herself, and that helped Kai adjust a few spells to better suit his needs. Even so, he was nowhere near having a complete arsenal. Still, he knew it was only a matter of time before he figured the rest out.

Even this amount of knowledge was already a huge boost for him in battle.

Aside from ice-aspected spells, Kai spent most of his time reading about other realms and going through his master’s books on soul magic. One question stood out to him more than the others.

He needed to know where the dead mana was going when Amyra absorbed it. A setup like that meant Amyra had a direct connection to another realm through her soul.

That alone was both fascinating and dangerous.

Such a connection could give her an enormous advantage when dealing with dead mana. At the same time, it could easily harm her. If the realm she was connected to was unstable or hostile, the consequences could be severe. Nothing like that had happened so far, and Kai doubted that Hendricks had failed to do his research. Still, Kai preferred to keep the worst possible outcome in mind.

Even so, he had no clear idea what he could do if something like that actually happened.

There was one thing he was certain of. There was no chance Hendricks had chosen the fire plane. That place was far too hot and far too hostile. Dead mana might even burn there. Worse still, even a sealed connection to it, one that only opened when Amyra pushed dead mana through, would flood her body with heat and scorching gases. Her organs would melt long before anything else could happen.

Was it the earth plane instead?

That was possible. It was said to be habitable, and Kai had heard of Mages traveling there before. But from what he knew, powerful spirits lived in that realm, and they would never allow such a connection to exist unchecked.

So what plane was it?

The wind plane was a possibility, but Kai had very little information about it. As for the water plane, it suffered from the same issue as the fire plane. Just opening a link to it should have flooded Amyra with water. But did it really work like that, or was he missing something important?

Kai knew there were far more realms than most mages could ever count. Still, the realm had to be close enough for a link to form, and stable enough to be used as a place to dump dead mana. At the same time, Amyra released normal, pure mana from her body. That meant this was clearly some kind of exchange, not a one-sided process.

The more Kai thought about it, the clearer it became that understanding the full mechanism would take far longer than he had originally expected.

Fortunately, Hendricks’s diary gave him a way forward.

Kai had carried a copy of it ever since he first saw the inscription in Amyra’s astral realm. During the civil war, he had read through it whenever he found the time, but back then he had no real direction. Now, he did. That made all the difference.

With that guidance, he was finally able to identify several seals within the soul inscription that helped keep Amyra’s astral realm stable. It was likely done to prevent the connection to another realm from disrupting it. At the same time, those same seals gave Amyra a degree of resistance to soul magic.

There was even a chance that lower circle soul spells would simply not work on her at all. But Kai had no intention of testing that theory.

One more detail stood out to him, something he noticed partly thanks to his master’s books. The inscription contained seals that performed calculations. They regulated how much dead mana Amyra could absorb at once. The reason for that became clear soon enough.

Keeping a link to another realm open for longer than a minute was dangerous.

Even with the safety measures built into the inscription, the seals were designed to take only so much at a time. Once that limit was reached, Amyra simply could not continue. Kai had once thought that, with practice, she might be able to absorb more dead mana, but the structure made it clear that there was a firm ceiling. Knowing that limit existed was a relief in its own way.

Kai wanted to study the soul inscription further, but there was a major problem he quickly recognized. The entire structure was built in layers, and some of those layers served no real function. They were not meant to do anything at all. They existed only to confuse anyone trying to understand or dismantle the inscription.

He realized this after recalling a line from his master’s research, which described a method of layering soul spell structures to mislead enemies. Hendricks had used the same principle, but on a much larger and more complex scale.

That meant Kai would have to break the inscription down piece by piece, discard the useless layers, and focus only on the parts that actually mattered.

It was an enormous amount of work. At the same time, it was fascinating.

At his core, Kai was not just a Battle Mage. He was a researcher. He enjoyed creating new spells, testing ideas, and uncovering hidden mechanisms. This kind of problem was exactly the sort of thing that drew him in.

He knew he did not have much time. He needed answers sooner rather than later. Even so, the amount of progress he made in just a few days was significant.

He even found time to work with Amyra directly. For several hours at a time, he had her test different aspects of spells. To his surprise, she handled most of them with ease, as if she had a natural affinity for every aspect she touched. It made him wonder again how Hendricks had created his high humans. The title fit her far too well.

Sadly, those days of research and experimentation did not last.

Before long, Kael came to him with urgent news. A drone had arrived, carrying a request for him to go to Veralt as soon as possible because something had happened to the Elder Tree.

***

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