I can tell you for a fact that alchemists, despite what they think, aren’t creating new recipes, but discovering ones that were unknown to us before. Meaning they already exist and we’re not doing anything really new.

  — Excerpt from Notes For Newstar

  Day 2467, 11:30 AM

  “Thank you, Grandmaster Dandelion.” Duke Basalt’s grandson bowed before leaving. He still didn’t defeat his heart demon, but he was getting close.

  Unlike horseshoes, my reputation as a soother in fact hadn’t reached Tidebreaker kingdom at all. But seeing Maelstrom back amongst the people was clue enough for the most influential and desperate to find me. After entering the fourth realm, my life had taken a slightly odd turn.

  After becoming a grandmaster alchemist and working under a grandmaster blacksmith with whom I had shared some of the ideas this world didn’t have, suddenly all the guilds wanted a piece of me and my time. Especially mechanists and artificers.

  So, my time was split between paid internships in various guilds, helping the rich, and expanding and sculpting my realm, which I often did at the same time inside meditation chambers.

  Since I could passively draw not just the trickle of mana the atmosphere had to offer, but draw upon it at my near maximum capacity, I was using manarium crystals while sculpting my realm inside the chambers specialized for making the realm more malleable.

  Despite the advantages of the best meditation chamber royalty had access to, the pace at which I expanded my realm was incomparably faster than the sculpting. My estimate was I could reach the fifth realm in less than a season. As for sculpting, it would take years, fifteen to twenty, since I had two layers of my realm to sculpt.

  Time passed, and thankfully, Maestrom’s grandfather called her back home after two years. She wasn’t a nuisance, but she lingered around me, her girlish infatuation still obvious.

  The day she left, the adventurers’ guild sent a representative to inform me the royal family had made a sizable payment to my account for my discretion. Sixth realm manarium kind of sizeable.

  I returned the crystals. My dignity and whom I chose to be intimate with were not something I would sell, or imply was for sale. With the mess the world was in, all they needed was a bunch of demigods running around, especially if their personalities were anything like mine, or worse, Luck’s.

  Three years passed before a familiar face poked her head in my room.

  “Lady Frostgrave,” I said after answering the door. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  She eyed me from head to toe and back again.

  “Grandmaster Dandelion,” she jokingly bowed, implying I had forgotten to do so myself. It was a joke, but also a reminder that I had grown complacent. Just because my reputation in the city had reached the point where I didn’t bow before anyone below exalts, it didn’t mean it applied to other places.

  So, I bowed back. “Pardon my lack of decorum, Lady Frostgrave, I was just surprised to see you. Please come in.”

  She did without skipping a beat, and instead of perfectly good chairs spaced around a table, sat on the bed.

  “You’re looking good,” she said. “Peak fourth realm, but you give off a presence greater than that. I’d put you on par with the most promising royal scions. Plus, there’s your reputation as a soother and the status you hold in the guilds. I’d say you’ve done more with yourself in these past few years than I did. And I have reached the seventh realm.”

  If she expected me to be impressed with that, she was sadly mistaken. After hanging out with royalty, and instructing eighth realm masters in proper use of weapons, a mere exemplar didn’t impress me much.

  “Thank you for the compliment, and it’s nice of you to stop by if you’re in a hurry.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Why do you think I’m in a hurry?” She smirked, playing innocent.

  “Well, you’re talking at a speed close to the sixth realm, perhaps even the initial stage. And while I can follow the conversation at that pace, I must admit it’s unpleasant.”

  It wasn’t. What was unpleasant was the woman testing me. My mental faculties were already well beyond the fifth realm, and my body close to comparing with hers, despite the huge realm difference, so holding a conversation at her realm wasn’t beyond me, even if our words could’ve sounded like garbled nonsense to most fourth realm mageknights.

  “I got excited,” she lied with a smile. “Anyway, I told you, you should pay me a visit should you ever come to the winter kingdoms. I was surprised and offended that you didn’t think of me, despite spending years in Tidebreaker.”

  “I meant no offense.” I closed the door and went to sit at the table. “But I have had a lot to keep me busy here. And I knew you would eventually learn I was here.”

  “You lied,” she exclaimed. “You dare lie to my face?”

  “And yet I knew that you would see the lie, so you could call it a joke.” I smiled, playing her game.

  “So, what have you been up to?”

  “Lady Frostgrave, if you’ve found me in my quarters on one night a week I spend here, you must know what I’ve been up to.”

  “You’re awfully arrogant for someone at the fourth realm.”

  “And you’re loving every moment of it, especially because I have something to back up that arrogance. Now, will you come and sit at the table, please. It is very nice to see an old friend and someone who has taught me as much as you have.”

  A look of shock crossed her face for the first time since entering, breaking her playful act.

  “You genuinely believe that.”

  I nodded. “Naturally. What I’ve learned from you is the foundation to what I’ve become. Or at least one of the foundations.”

  She got up from my bed, a blast of mana smoothing it, as she approached the table and sat, looking at me more seriously.

  “I was considering having a child.” She said as if it were the most common thing in the world.

  And I reacted like it was, since she was far from the first woman who had approached me with the topic.

  “You and the Duke’s daughter, and a quite long list of others.” I said seriously. I’ve been getting so many offers with mentions of compensation that just kept growing more ridiculous. All I needed to do to settle for life was to become a breeding stud.

  “What I’m trying to say is, thank you, Lady Frostgrave, I’m currently not interested. My potential is nowhere near spent, and I don’t have the time nor the willpower right now to take care of children.”

  “But you don’t have to take care of them.”

  “While I agree that I don’t have to take care of them, or even see them ever, just sowing seeds is irresponsible. Should I decide to have children, I wish to be involved in their development, not just conception.”

  Lady Frostgrave held my gaze, then nodded. “Fine. Do you mind explaining your bizarre logic?”

  I guess, given the circumstances and the social norms, it really is a bizarre decision.

  “I have made a mistake of abandoning my children and letting them do what they thought best while providing little to no oversight.” Fortunately, that much was true both for my real lives and for Dandelion Blackfist’s. Not to mention I literally abandoned the children of my body.

  “That decision has become a weight on my soul, not a heart demon, mind you, but enough to draw my attention at the oddest times. If I’m ever again going to have children with someone, it will be with someone I will raise them with.”

  It will be with my queen.

  Lady Frostgrave listened, her eyes trained on me, as if searching for hints of falsehood, but she found none because I wasn’t deceiving her.

  “You’re a strange man, but I guess that’s true in all layers of your life. Well, with that settled, I also wanted to thank you for that core you found. The reward I got from my order was generous, and what I have gifted you and Newstar Salamandra doesn’t match your contributions.”

  I smiled at that. “No need to pay me anything, Lady Frostgrave. Trust me, I value what you taught me more than what I’ve given you.”

  And that’s not counting the knowledge I shouldn’t try to manipulate people significantly more powerful than me through loop abuse. That one was more important than just about anything else she taught me, and there were quite a few valuable tidbits she had shared with me.

  She didn’t seem to believe me, but accepted my words.

  “What about Sage’s Realm? Do you plan to participate in the tournament?”

  Now that was a difficult question that was actually a nest of vipers of economy and politics. From what I could tell, getting resources to expand the seventh realm was next to impossible without a major organization’s backing. And since I planned to become an exalt or climb as close to the position as possible before dying, I would need those resources.

  “Yes. The rewards are very good and should see me all the way through the sixth realm, but after that, I don’t know. Perhaps I could leverage my success at the tournament as an extra bargaining chip. I don’t know.”

  I shrugged, knowing I had to participate to reinforce my importance during negotiations with orders and royal families. The imperials were out of the question, courtesy of a tainted princess and her future plan to deliver the world to the outer gods.

  “That’s not a bad idea, placing first amongst the hedge-mageknights will bring you enough exposure, let alone if you do well in a main event.”