It was a complete failure.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you could use mana?” Vanessa asked.

  “Was I supposed to?”

  Kel realized that sounded too harsh and quickly added, “Some adventurers can use spells.”

  He had said something very similar to Almas not long ago.

  ‘Use mana,’ huh. Even healers who failed to pass the Tower’s trials had their own title–hedge healers. But there was no such term for half-trained mages. You were either a Tower mage, or a mana user not worthy of a proper name.

  Even if his adventurer rank increased, that problem would never go away. If only he could obtain the Tower’s mark, his life would become much easier. Kel would still have to hide his level, but at least he could use magic openly – without constantly worrying that a spell might be too strong and expose him.

  He imagined himself effortlessly passing the exams, clearing the trials, and quickly rising to the rank of Tower Magister.

  That would be a joke.

  Becoming the head of the very Tower that had expelled him.

  “No,” Kel corrected himself silently. “The Tower expelled the dark archmage.”

  “I thought we were a team,” Vanessa said quietly. “But… I guess none of that matters anymore.”

  Doesn’t matter, Kel agreed in silence.

  And so they waited, saying nothing, for the mage who was supposed to come and take them away.

  When they returned to Ingis’s house, they found Neymar there.

  Kel didn’t ask any questions. What difference did it make, really?

  They told him everything that had happened in the Sande Cliffs.

  “A sand spirit, then?” Ingis said. “Sad, but expected. Unfortunately, fairy tales are fairy tales precisely because they have nothing to do with reality.”

  Kel could have argued with that. Just a week ago, he himself would have said that reincarnation into another world was impossible nonsense–something out of children’s stories.

  And yet, here he was.

  It turned out the boundaries of reality were far more fragile than he had believed. Still, that didn’t solve their real problem. They had no cure. No time. And no idea what to do next.

  Kel could wipe an entire city off the map with a casual wave of his hand.

  And yet he couldn’t save a single person.

  What if I dragged the High Healer of the Silverhand Temple here? he wondered. With his position, he should be able to raise the dead, let alone heal the living.

  Kel could raise the dead as well.

  Just not in the way he wanted.

  He pictured Kiana with the empty gaze of a living corpse and shuddered.

  “Alright. A priest of the Silverhand is an option,” he admitted. “Though I’d have to say goodbye to my disguise. And I’d need to carefully choose the spell intensity – otherwise this body would collapse from the strain.”

  Kel realized, with a faint sense of shock, that he was calmly considering an attack on the temple of one of the Ascended.

  As casually as deciding whether he wanted his coffee with sugar or without.

  Get a grip, he told himself. One wrong step, and you can forget about ever having a peaceful life.

  At least you wouldn’t have to hold yourself back anymore, the same unpleasant inner voice added.

  “I… um, can I say something?” Neymar broke the silence.

  He flushed under their focused stares, but continued anyway.

  “A desert spirit doesn’t have a physical form. It only takes on an appearance when someone looks at it, right? Meaning–roughly speaking–when no one is observing it, it doesn’t exist in any form familiar to us.”

  “Very crude, but I’ll allow it,” Ingis agreed.

  Neymar visibly perked up.

  “What if the root cause of the illness works the same way? It’s there. It definitely exists. But we’re not looking at it at the right moment–so we don’t see it.”

  A thought occurred to the healer’s apprentice–one that had never once crossed the mind of an archmage with an Intelligence stat of 2153.

  Maybe classes exist for a reason after all, Kel mused.

  The path of a mage was creation and destruction. The archmage had discarded creation entirely and achieved terrifying heights in destruction. Naturally, his subconscious searched for solutions only within the domains it knew best. Just like with endurance, this was something that needed fixing. Kel hated limitations.

  But a future healer, driven by the desire to uncover the root of everything, had managed to throw out a brilliant idea.

  “I don’t understand,” Vanessa said, confused.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “All the patients were examined for a short time. Someone came, checked them, and left. Maybe more than once. But there are twenty-four hours in a day. Who said the source of the illness had to manifest itself at the exact moment of examination? It could have been ‘asleep,’ unnoticed–just like the sand spirit. Did I get that right?”

  Kel turned to Neymar.

  “Yes!” Neymar nodded eagerly. “We need continuous scanning, so the patient is under observation every single moment. Then we might actually notice something.”

  “But that would require an enormous amount of mana and prolonged strain on the core.”

  The same problem as with Light Step.

  “I think we’ll find a way,” Ingis said.

  Of course, he was looking at Kel.

  “Where does all this confidence in my abilities come from?” Kel asked the healer when they were alone.

  “Consider it a talent for spotting potential. Take Neymar, for example. He’s going to be an excellent healer. I’ve invited him to join me at least ten times already. But he refuses to leave his mentor–after all, the mentor was the first to take him as an apprentice. Such foolish nobility.”

  Kel couldn’t help but agree.

  The healer continued, “And you, Kelmir, I see strength and immense potential in you as well. I’ll explain exactly what needs to be done.”

  Deep night fell. Kel had already been scanning Kiana’s condition for the fourth hour without a break.

  Nothing had changed. The energy remained the same–flat, weak, the life force of a mortally ill person. No traces of intervention whatsoever.

  Next to Kel lay a book he had borrowed from Ingis: On the Greatness and Nobility of the Ascended. Apparently, he had misjudged things again when he asked to read it, just to stave off boredom while scanning.

  Ingis’s eyebrows, along with Neymar’s standing nearby, rose in unison.

  “Do you even realize how much mana and effort continuous scanning will take?” the healer’s assistant asked. “You’ll barely have enough energy to breathe.”

  Ingis placed a hand on Neymar’s shoulder, and the boy fell silent. But the healer’s gaze on Kel grew even sharper than usual. Still, he handed over the book without argument.

  From the massive tome, Kel could have learned more than from dozens of short game guides. He started reading–but very quickly realized he couldn’t focus. It wasn’t about controlling mana. His mind was simply too crowded with thoughts.

  Kel loved magic. Loved it to the point of madness. And, of course, he loved the feeling of power that came with it. His memory obligingly supplied spell after spell, each more wondrous than the last. He could do so much! Just a few days ago, all he had thought about was running away and living unnoticed. Now, even the idea of having to hide his level brought him pain.

  In his pocket lay the insignia of Targis, still untouched.

  “Maybe… if I’m careful enough, I could become a mage openly? If I figure out the Archmage’s core and its source.”

  Kel frowned. The memory of his past pain was still too fresh.

  “I’ll need to move more subtly.”

  A signal interrupted his thoughts. Weak, almost imperceptible–but Kel caught it. He looked at Kiana and saw a black dot appear in the golden glow of her aura.

  Hiding his presence, he reached for the dot. It unraveled into an endless thread. Kel’s consciousness slid along it unnoticed, trying to trace its source. He crept further and further, like a hunter who doesn’t want to scare its prey.

  He felt something familiar. A warm room filled with the scent of food. A kitchen? At its center sat a woman, enjoying her meal. Dark threads reached out to her, channeling the children’s energy. She reminded him of a spider in the middle of its web.

  Through the miles that separated them, Kel observed her face twisted in pleasure. A very familiar face.

  “Got you, bitch.”

  “The Tower is convinced that lamias were wiped out five hundred years ago. Looks like even their big-brained sages can be wrong,” Ingis said, with no trace of respect in his voice.

  “So what do we do now?” Vanessa asked. “Kill her?”

  “Lamias are tightly bound to their victims,” Kel recalled. “If we just kill her, they’ll die as well. First, we need to sever all the connections.”

  “I’ve never read anything like that,” Ingis admitted. “Then again, I’m no expert on monsters. Kelmir… I assume you have an idea how this could be done?”

  No – Kel was definitely starting to appreciate the archmage. He wasn’t a man; he was a walking library. Too bad Kel couldn’t tell what he knew and what he didn’t until the knowledge surfaced on its own.

  “We’ll need to perform a severance ritual,” Kel said. “After that, the lamia can be killed safely.”

  “Then we should send a request to the Tower,” Ingis said. “They must have preserved knowledge of the ritual. But that takes time–time we don’t have. And dealing with those arrogant fools is pure torment. Kelmir… by any chance, do you know how to perform the ritual?”

  The healer stared at him.

  “I… happen to know,” Kel admitted reluctantly. His disguise was slipping more and more.

  Vanessa let out a sharp, bitter laugh.

  “This is not the time for jokes. Since when does an adventurer have access to five-hundred-year-old knowledge?”

  “I know it. That’s all,” Kel said flatly, not bothering to argue.

  “So what, you’re some kind of undercover magister?” she pressed on. “My sister’s life is hanging by a thread, and you’re claiming to possess information that even the former royal healer didn’t have? A simple village nobody?” Her voice trembled with anger. “If we listen to you and waste time, she dies. I say we call a Tower mage immediately.”

  “This village nobody actually saved your life, you know,” Kel wanted to say. The girl’s words stung unpleasantly, but he understood perfectly how the situation looked from the outside.

  “My sister’s life is hanging by a thread. I don’t have time to wait for the Tower to dig up five-hundred-year-old information, then debate it, argue over it, and finally decide we’ve made some mistake. After all, their brightest minds have decreed that all lamias are extinct. Considering your high rank, they’ll probably send a mage here who’ll start the investigation on their own… in a month or two.”

  “And there’s no guarantee he’ll even have enough power to conduct the necessary scanning,” Kel added silently.

  Vanessa glared at him, furious. Ingis chuckled.

  “You’ve described the Council’s workings incredibly accurately. Vanessa’s right, and you really are an undercover magister.”

  “You know me,” Kel said. “I tried to join once. Got familiar with some of their traditions.”

  Vanessa leaned forward. “So… it will really happen exactly like that?”

  “Yes, my dear. The Tower hates being wrong, and they move very slowly. That’s why I suggest trusting Kel’s information.”

  True happiness.

  Kel could have done everything himself.

  Found the creature. Performed the ritual. Saved the children.

  If not for one problem.

  The damned magical threads.

  The lamia was still inside the Wastelands. Entering them required a special permit–one Kel hoped to obtain from the local baron, Vanessa’s father.

  Forcing his way through the barrier would take an enormous amount of mana. After all, it had been created by the Tower as a whole. To be honest, the constant restrictions were starting to wear on him. Another month like this, and he’d snap.

  Yeah. And having the Tower’s mages and the entire Alliance on your tail would be so much more fun…

  Kel didn’t bother arguing with the inner voice. Instead, he turned to Vanessa.

  “Will you help me get into the Wastelands?”

  “On one condition.”

  “No,” Kel said firmly. He knew exactly what she wanted. “I’ll go alone. And you’re not in a position to bargain.

  “Without me, you won’t get a permit.”

  One day, I’m going to turn her into a rat, Kel decided.

  “So you’re willing to risk your sister’s life just to have things your way?”

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  Kel sighed, then thought, The difference is, I actually have a reason.

  Any extra person limits me. Severely.

  What’s driving you – besides pride?

  “…Fine,” he said at last. “We’re going together. The three of us.”

  “The three of us?” Vanessa asked, startled. “Why?”

  “Because I’ll need a healer. And forgive me, Master Ingis–I respect your experience. But it’s Neymar who’s coming after the lamia.”

  He turned to Neymar.

  “You won’t refuse to help us, will you?”