Cain POV

  He was immediately alerted when he felt Julius in danger. He insisted on holding an official disciple ceremony for this reason. Just in case Julius ever found himself in danger, he wanted to respond quickly.

  Unfortunately for him, he was stuck in the middle of the Sentinel's Guild Hall, which was surrounded by dozens, if not hundreds, of enchantments all layered over the building. The absolute worst place to be, knowing that he needed to head toward Julius quickly.

  He didn’t say a word to Oliver and immediately shot to his feet. Oliver knew right away that something was wrong, and he jumped up as well. Cain didn’t really have time to explain, and let his kinetic energy flow around his body.

  He left Oliver’s office and zipped through the hallways of the guild. He was forced to stop several times to get through the security checks. As much as he appreciated the guild’s interest in protecting the guildhall, he wasn’t appreciating it at the moment.

  He wanted nothing more than to crash through all of the enchantments, but he held himself back. To be honest, it would have taken him more time to break them by force. He was strong, but the compounded efforts of several Tier 6 enchanters weren’t something even he was capable of overcoming easily.

  After way too much time, he was finally able to exit the guildhall. He reached for the connection between him and Julius. It was alerting him that Julius was in bad condition. It almost felt like the connection was frayed on Julius’s end. If that was the case, then it was entirely possible that he had sustained some kind of soul damage.

  He couldn't help but wonder if this timing was coincidental. Cain often visited the Sentinel Guild during this time of day. If someone wanted to delay him, it would be the best opportunity to do so. He cursed at himself for being unaware of the possibility.

  That was probably the worst-case scenario. Cain believed in Julius’s survivability more than anyone else under Tier 4, but soul attacks were nasty business. Even with the boy’s healing skill helping, Cain doubted that he could withstand the full brunt of a truly skilled soul mage at Tier 4 or higher.

  He threw himself high in the sky and used the connection to find Julius’s relative position. It wasn’t perfect, but the connection should give him a general direction to follow. He had already contacted Freya that Julius was in trouble.

  He didn’t need to explain anymore. He sensed her blasting toward Cain’s position with wrath and concern evident in her aura.

  The good news was that Julius was still alive. That meant he had survived the initial ambush and was likely fighting his attackers. Cain hoped that Julius could hold on for longer. The connection between them was becoming increasingly tenuous by the second, and he was having trouble pinpointing his exact location.

  He threw out his perception in a wide net. Unfortunately, his perception was stopped by the multiple layers of enchantments placed around the capital to prevent this exact situation. He tried to brute force it, but was limited by what he could do.

  If Freya had been in his place, she would have likely gotten better results. He cursed at his bad luck. As he was flying through the sky, he stopped and looked to the side when Freya’s form appeared out of thin air.

  Her teleportation had managed to tear apart several powerful anti-spatial enchantments surrounding this particular district. He could already sense several alarms going off around him, notifying the citizens of the threat.

  Freya didn’t care about this, though. She immediately appeared next to him. “What happened?” She asked frantically.

  “I’m not sure. I got notified that he sustained a serious injury. Likely something to do with his soul. But the connection is so frail that I am having a hard time tracking him down. Can you find him?” He asked his wife.

  She nodded and closed her eyes while she stretched out her senses. Unlike him, she was very perceptive, and if anyone could find him, it would be her. He waited for a little bit; each second felt like an eternity.

  It didn’t take long, but when she finally opened her eyes, he released the breath he was holding. “Did you find him?” He asked.

  “No, but I have a good idea where he is,” she replied with a severe frown.

  “You can’t sense him?” He was surprised.

  “No, I can’t sense him. But there is a weird, empty void where the Empire’s enchantments should be. I think someone messed with the capital’s wards and sectioned off part of the capital. My guess is that whoever attacked Julius is responsible for this.”

  Cain didn’t need to hear anymore from Freya and immediately grabbed his wife by the waist. She sent him the location, guiding his senses with her own. He was about to blast himself toward Julius, but he spotted her pausing and looked concerned.

  “What happened?”

  “The wards are back up, but something is different. I think someone detected my perception and snapped the enchantments back into place. They are stronger than before. I’m not sure what they will do.”

  “I don’t care,” Cain said with a blank expression on his face.

  He didn’t waste another precious second and felt the world blur away as he launched himself toward Julius’s suspected location. He was partially aware that his movements created massive shockwaves behind him, activating even more alarms in the capital, but he wasn’t concerned about that.

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  He reached the end of what seemed to be this area’s array. Normally, it would have been fine to travel through this area, but the enchantments must have already labeled him as a possible threat, and he felt countless woven strings of enchantments and mana crash down onto him. Large golden runes flashed in the sky as pressure rained down on his soul.

  He let the kinetic field around his body explode outward. He held nothing back as he used concentrated blasts of kinetic energy to physically destroy whatever enchantments tried to stop him. Freya helped as well. She took care of the more annoying ones, stripping apart with grace, whereas he was a troll in a glassware store, bashing anything in his way.

  It wasn’t as easy as they made it look, either. There was a reason why nobody tried to fight in the middle of the capital. With all of the enchantments, the Empire’s enemies would find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer force of the enchantments.

  Luckily for him, he had a number of skills that helped him avoid being tied down by these enchantments. He made use of them all and ensured that nothing got in his way. One particularly stubborn enchantment attempted to bog him down, and he accidentally used too much power.

  The enchantment was shredded, but so was the ground that the excess energy blasted into. He watched as an entire street was ravaged. Freya, thank god for her quick reaction, barely managed to teleport the civilians out of the way before Cain crushed them.

  He let out a sigh of relief. A crater a hundred feet wide was the only evidence that he had used his kinetic energy.

  It took some time, but he had to tear through several different sectors of the capital’s enchantments before he finally reached the one where he felt Julius. He sensed a barrier around the area on top of the preexisting enchantments.

  He felt Freya was attempting to find a way to dismantle the barrier, but Cain had a simpler solution. Kinetic energy rippled through his body, and he leaned forward, smashing his fist into the barrier.

  The entire barrier collapsed under the sheer weight of his blow. The aftershock would have been bad, but he was prepared and absorbed most of the kinetic energy, keeping it in reserve. The force still managed to crack the surfaces of the nearby buildings and shatter the windows. However, the barrier was gone, and Cain shot himself toward the direction he sensed Julius’s unraveling soul.

  His heart shook when he caught a glimpse of a woman impaling Julius through the chest with her arm. But he increased his kinetic energy and moved toward it. A blast of mana ripped out of her, and he watched in horror as Julius’s entire chest was blown apart and scattered in a mist of crimson.

  It was only then that she reacted to his approach. Fear and panic flashed in her eyes, and she deployed some kind of item. A glowing necklace around her neck shattered, and in its place was a verdant green dome of dense light. The field of light surrounded her like a protective cocoon. That was the only reason why his fist didn’t eviscerate her instantly.

  The two mages next to her weren’t as lucky, and their bodies were shredded apart simply by the weight of unrestrained Cain’s presence and anger. They didn't even get a chance to throw up any defenses.

  Cain’s fist met the green dome, and he was shocked when the light resisted for a brief moment before folding inward. He was able to do nothing as he watched the woman vanish from his sight.

  Cain cursed at his bad luck once again. If he had been a second faster, he might have caught her. Unfortunately, she had used quite a powerful item to delay him. That item must have been quite an expensive one to withstand a second of his power. It was as if she had known Cain would come and had prepared accordingly.

  He looked over and saw that Freya was already next to Julius. Or rather, what was left of him. Seeing his personal disciple, the boy he already considered family, in such a brutal state angered him. He felt his face twitch, and the entire city block below him was flattened and crushed.

  There was no sound, just a sudden pulse of force and a ripple of his aura. Every building was disintegrated into dust. The glass windows didn’t even shatter; they just evaporated. An eerie silence pervaded afterward.

  Luckily, Freya had already anticipated something like this would happen and teleported anyone within half a mile away the moment they arrived. It wasn’t a particularly busy sector of the capital, but there were still plenty of people around. She didn't even bother to scold him like usual; she understood why he had done it. He had a feeling that she was one second from doing it herself; the icy aura exuding from her made even his skin crawl. However, she held back, if simply for Julius's sake.

  He took one step and appeared right beside Freya, who was already healing Julius.

  “How is he?” Cain asked her. He could still feel faint flickers of Julius’s aura, which meant the boy was alive at least. That was saying a lot, considering the boy had only half a spine and a small portion of his head left. The rest of his body had been destroyed.

  Cain wished he could say he was shocked that Julius was still kicking, but honestly, he wasn’t too surprised. If there was one thing he was certain of, the boy was a cockroach.

  “Bad. I’m trying to stabilize him, but the injuries to his soul are what worry me,” she said with concern etched deeply in her face.

  “Do you think he is fine to travel?” Cain asked with a glance at the incoming aura signatures. It would appear that other people were coming to investigate what was going on, most likely the city guards. He scoffed. A little too late now, isn’t it? He thought internally.

  Their slow reaction to this situation displayed a level of incompetence that made Cain furious. How had someone managed to attack his disciple in broad daylight without any city guards coming to check? Not to mention how someone managed to manipulate the capital’s own defensive array network to essentially isolate an entire sector of the city?

  The Empire was more incompetent and corrupt than he had been led to believe.

  “It will probably worsen his condition. But his Concept of Space should help with it. I also have an entire rune circle already prepared at our place. So I think it's worth the risk,” she said. However, he noticed she sounded more unsure than usual. She would normally be very cold and rational in situations like these, but he sensed her fluctuating emotions. She was more worried than her appearance would indicate.

  “Let’s get him safe, then. I don’t want to waste time explaining to these idiots what happened,” he said with a glare at the incoming presence. However, as he said this, he felt an enormous explosion of mana off in the distance.

  It was a massive eruption of mana even to his standards. He felt even more of the capital’s array network activate and collapse onto this new threat. Then another explosion rocked the capital, and Cain realized the attack on Julius wasn’t just an isolated incident. He had detected several other explosions of mana while he had been making his way to Julius, but had ignored them for the most part.

  Whoever had attacked him had other plans as well. Assassinating Julius had merely been a part of these plans. He thought about running to help, but one look at the disfigured body of Julius made his decision. He needed to be at his precious disciples' side at this moment. He also had to ensure Freya’s protection while she healed him.

  He glanced over at Freya, who had also sensed these explosions. They only needed to meet gazes for a brief second before he knew that they came to the same conclusion. Julius was their priority at the moment. The Empire could handle its own mess for the time being.

  So with one last look at the chaos brewing off in the distance, Freya ripped through the damaged anti-spatial enchantments, whisking them away from the scene.

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