Mehran Sattari and his partner stood around a jade pillar in the middle of a hilly, forested terrain, browsing through the information projected to them through their wristbands.

Through the territory hub, they’d designated part of the miniature forest to be cut down. The more tokens that were spent on the task, the less time it would take for the desired changes to take place within the territory. In addition to clearing part of the forest, they’d set up agricultural fields, each about twice the size of a taekwondo sparring ring; the beginnings of a road network spread out from a budding trading outpost stationed by the river.

Clearing the forest had added a new resource type to their territory hub: lumber. It appeared on their resource list alongside animal products, crops yielded by the farms, and tokens from the trading post. Mehran decisively scrolled through the infrastructure available for exchange and traded for a new dock and a number of dedicated barges at the trading post.

Once he selected where the new structures would be placed, the hub flashed, and a loud splash sounded from the river. Mehran gestured for his partner to follow him away from the territory hub, through the forest and towards the river, to confirm the changes wrought by the hub.

Stepping out of the treeline, they wove around the miniature buildings of the trading outpost — each no taller than a doorway — and arrived at the bank of the river. Next to the small dock that had appeared there, canoe-sized barges bobbed up and down in the water.

Mehran smiled, opening his mouth to speak, when—

Sssssthunk. Sssssthunk.

Mehran reflexively jerked back as something came flying for his eye.

But too bad, too late! In a flash of white light, Mehran and his partner were transported out of the Illusion Stage.

Finally!

“Good shot, Rhoswen!”

“All thanks to you.”

I laughed off her platitude before flying us over the forest towards the territory hub. Thanks to Rhoswen’s sharp eyes, we found it quickly. Once we landed, we tapped our wristbands against the jade pillar, waited the thirty seconds it took to register our takeover, and immediately used our “Virtual Banking” perk to transfer all our stolen tokens to this hub.

Rhoswen checked what hubs were available for transfer through “Virtual Banking” and remarked, “Two of the territories we raided have been reclaimed already. We should move quickly.”

“Check over the infrastructure they’ve got here. How’s the yield?”

Rhoswen took a quick glance at the hub’s information. “It seems the trading post currently generates twelve tokens per minute. Each barge costs two tokens to send out and will return with seven tokens once time has passed.”

“No, no, forget that. How much did they have saved up?”

With some amusement, she said, “Ten tokens.”

I clicked my tongue. “Why are they such poor bastards? Isn’t Mehran from a big noble family? Shouldn’t he be more talented at this?”

“If being from a noble family was enough, you’d be playing this exam properly, wouldn’t you?”

“I am playing properly. Everything is within the rules. Aren’t they the ones who designed enough leeway for me to act like a bandit?”

“I find it quite charming,” said Rhoswen. “I never knew you could be so talkative.”

I pursed my lips. “Isn’t that your fault? You and the collar. I feel like a dog.”

“But you still put it on.”

Whatever.

I used my wristband to skim through the territory’s information. There were a lot of statistics like “food surplus” and “public hygiene” and “disaster relief planning,” which apparently imposed some kind of penalty on resource gain if not managed properly. Then there were other metrics like “quality of living,” “sustainability,” “education level,” and “market confidence,” which would give a percentage bonus to the territory owners’ final token count at the end of the exam.

All of it, of course, was stuff that I didn’t know how to manage.

“Let’s just send the barges out for now,” I decided. “Guard here a while, see if you can grab any infrastructure for defending hubs or discouraging entry into this territory. I’ll go scout for our next target.”

Rhoswen nodded, hands and eyes already flicking through the territory hub’s administrative options. She didn’t so much as blink when I kicked off the ground and flew high up into the sky.

I hadn’t been keeping track of how many territories we’d raided like this already, but judging from the two hundred or so tokens we had in hand, it wasn’t a small amount. And through that process, I’d learned something very important.

Rhoswen and I had great synergy.

I wasn’t just talking the combination of my scouting and her shooting, but also about our way of thinking. Two people with different tactics could have completely different judgments about the same situation; for example, if two fighters faced an enemy, even if they had the same skills, because of their different temperaments, one might choose to charge while the other chose to flee. But Rhoswen and I had similar judgments about where and when to strike. She favored ambushes and clean strikes the same way I did. When I felt cautious, she was cautious, and when I was bold, she was bold. And on top of that, she listened to my plans.

She was such a good partner, I couldn’t help but wonder if the collar had other effects she wasn’t telling me about, or if her Unseelie thing let her pick up on more than I thought. If not for the fact that she was leaving me in charge of everything, I’d be a lot more suspicious of her.

I did a loop around the borders of the forested territory before returning to Rhoswen. By that time, the territory hub had amassed more tokens from the barges and the trading post. It sure was nice seeing our numbers go up. Rhoswen had also taken the liberty of constructing traps around the hub, and she’d bought a perk that would extend the hub’s new owner registration period by a full minute. That way, if someone claimed this hub while we were hunting down someone else, we would have that much more time to snatch a different hub and transfer our hard-earned tokens away.

“Have you found a suitable target?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, putting away my wings. “There are two fat sheep next to us, if we have the ability to shear them. Take a look.”

I beckoned her to move closer before projecting the territory management screen from my wristband and selecting our upgraded “Intelligence Network” perk. Immediately, it displayed a map of our currently claimed territories, all the territories neighboring it, and some statistics about each territory.

I pointed to our neighbor with the second-highest token count. “This one is Xander’s team. His partner is pretty concentrated on the task, but Xander’s still got his sword on him and is acting pretty watchful. If he senses your first shot, it might be hard to catch him off guard again, but as long as we ambush him properly, it probably won’t be a big problem.”

Then I pointed to our neighbor with the highest token count, outstripping Xander’s territory by far.

“This one is Nastaran and Dagian’s territory. They’ve developed it like crazy. If we claim it and sit on it for a while, the passive profit from their infrastructure would give us a big boost. They seem pretty casual and unguarded too.”

Such a tantalizing prize practically had me drooling, but Dagian was one of the people Rhoswen was cautious of, so I thought I should hear out her judgment first.

Rhoswen hummed thoughtfully. “Nastaran’s talent is showing itself. It would indeed be a great profit to take her territory. Dagian, however, is somewhat difficult. She is more aggressive than Xander. If our first attack does not succeed, there is a chance she will strike back and even attempt to counter-invade the area we retreat to.”

High risk, high reward. “So what do you want to do?”

Rhoswen met my eyes and raised an eyebrow challengingly. “If things go awry, how confident are you in running away?”

I thumped my chest with my fist. “I’m a master at running away. If I can’t do it, then who can?”

“Then I elect to take the risk.” The red light in her eyes flickered as she smiled. “After all, the greatest pleasure of a hunt is taking down a worthy prize.”

Her mental framing was peculiar as usual, but I was in alignment with her here. I licked my lips and held out my hand. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

Lifting Rhoswen by her harness, I flew us east. One token was deducted from our total count as we crossed the border to their territory, a hilly grassland with a large branching river delta.

Dagian and Nastaran had grown their territory further than Mehran; in addition to farmland and irrigation systems, they also had a few port towns, boats, an orderly road system, and small villages dotted around the hills.

Dagian and Nastaran’s territory hub was located on a marshy islet in the fan of the river delta, where the land was much flatter. On one hand, it left them exposed; on the other, it was difficult for us to get close without being spotted.

Rhoswen signaled me to bring us as close as I could, so I flew us low enough that the angle of the hills kept us out of Dagian and Nastaran’s lines of sight. Then I landed us in the cover of the hills where the land just started flattening and the river began to fan out.

Unlike before, when Rhoswen made her shots quite casually from mid-air, she was quiet and careful as she crept up the side of the hill. The tall grass hid her figure. She held her bow horizontally as she drew back the string.

The arrow she formed this time, instead of glowing red, was longer and much darker, sleek as a thorn. Its shadowy form blurred at the edge like it’d slip out of focus if you looked away for even a second.

Different enemies, different tactics, huh?

“Nastaran’s fighting abilities are weak, so I will focus on eliminating Dagian first. Tell me when this area is not in either of their lines of sight. Especially Dagian.”

“Understood.”

I examined Nastaran and Dagian’s fields of vision. Our hill was within Dagian’s peripheral vision, so I elected to wait. As I watched, Nastaran swiped through the territory hub’s UI, selecting a research institute to be built in the largest city they had. Dagian turned her eyes to watch a new miniature building pop up on the plains.

This unlocked a new screen where Nastaran could designate topics of research, each of which would require tokens and time to complete research on. There was also a chance of failure for each research project. Nastaran directly dumped around twenty percent of the territory’s tokens into researching agricultural techniques and flood control.

My heart ached a little bit thinking of that loss. From her perspective, it was good, because successful research would give a long-term bonus to the token and resource yield from her territory… But for me, who just wanted to plunder and flee, it felt like watching my meal get eaten right before my eyes.

Dagian, meanwhile, had been perusing coastal infrastucture for where the river met the sea. After some thought, she chose a location to set up a port. Once she confirmed her selection, she raised her head to look towards the sea.

“Now,” I said.

Rhoswen exhaled and released her bowstring. Her arrow was so fast it all but vanished from her hands.

I had confidence in her shot. She had the skills, and we’d successfully done this so many times already.

But at the last moment, Dagian’s hand darted up and snatched the arrow out of mid-air.

Her head turned sharply towards us like a hawk. I grabbed Rhoswen’s harness and leapt up into the air. The arrow in Dagian’s grasp was dissipating, but she didn’t wait for it to scatter before she made her move. Nastaran looked up from the territory hub in time to see a huge pair of golden wings unfold from Dagian’s back and phantom talons form over her hands, and then Dagian burst forward with such power that the shockwave knocked Nastaran to the ground.

I was fast in the air, but Dagian was faster. In moments she’d caught up to us, lashing out with a powerful palm strike. I decisively folded my wings, letting Rhoswen and I drop mid-air just in time to dodge the huge phantom claw that struck out.

Rhoswen, meanwhile, flipped in her harness so she was hanging upside down. She fired off a rapid series of shots, forcing Dagian to halt her forward assault.

Taking advantage of the pause, I circulated my aura and hurtled forward as fast as I could. The exam’s time was limited; as long as we left decisively and proved difficult to deal with, I was sure that other teams would give up on chasing us. There were better things to do with their time.

Dagian, however, didn’t give up completely. Hovering mid-air, she flipped through a series of mudras with her hands before pointing at us. The artificial sun in the sky grew incandescently bright, searing Rhoswen’s eyes, but through Nastaran’s gaze, I still saw it when dozens of fiery spears formed out of the sun’s golden rays. With a flick of Dagian’s wrist, the spears rained down on us.

Rhoswen hissed beneath me. Squinting, she rapidly fired her bow, letting off three arrows at a time. They collided with the spears mid-air. The spears that weren’t completely halted by the impact were deflected to our sides in streams of heat that brushed against my skin.

Under that assault, I shot over the border back into Mehran’s former territory. Dagian’s second wave of fiery spears crashed against the border barrier milliseconds later, dissipating in silent bursts of heat and light.

Dagian looked through the barrier at us. Her deep purple hair fluttered valiantly in the wind like a hero’s banner. Her wings subtly changed in shape, and a second pair grew from her back; a glowing greatsword materialized in her hand.

“I can keep her busy,” I muttered. “You give me supporting fire.”

“Mm. Retreat west?”

“Yeah. The terrain there’s better.”

Before Dagian could cross the barrier, though, the band on her wrist began to blink and vibrate like crazy.

Dagian lowered her gaze to the glowing jade, and after a moment, accepted the incoming transmission.

“Dagian, forget it!” Nastaran’s voice rang out. “We’ve got things to do. Just blast them if they have the guts to come back!”

Dagian cast one last long look at our fleeing figures before she reluctantly let go of the greatsword, letting it fade away.

Then, under Rhoswen’s gaze, she smiled.

“This is an interesting strategy you two have come up with. Come back and challenge me any time.”

With a genial wave, she turned around and flew away.

I let out a deep sigh of relief and dropped to the ground with Rhoswen.

“That was intense.”

Rhoswen lowered her head and stroked her bow.

“In the end, I’m still weak,” she muttered.

I heaved a deep sigh. “Tell me about it.”

Although I’d picked up a lot of things since coming to this world, I was really lacking in skills that had sufficient firepower, were suitable for being shown off to the public, and that I was proficient in. It felt like I was constantly relying on little tricks to scrape by… It was stifling!

“Let’s go shoot someone else,” I said moodily.

“Do not take it to heart. Not every hunt will be successful. Why not challenge ourselves one more time?”

I raised an eyebrow.

“You want to go for Xander?”

“Yes. The harvest would comfort our broken hearts.”

Rhoswen made so many great points.

So just like that, we went north and raided Xander’s territory instead.

To Xander’s credit, unlike his partner, he managed to deflect Rhoswen’s first arrow with his sword, but the second one flying in its shadow caught him off guard. He had just enough time to raise his hand in a rude gesture before he was eliminated from the Illusion Stage.

Xander’s territory was in decent shape; in addition to a port city and some road infrastructure for trade, he’d also set up quarries to extract minerals and obtain income for the territory. After we acquired his accumulated riches, I finally felt mollified.

Now that we were nearing the halfway point of the exam and had accumulated some wealth, I felt it was time to consider our next steps.

We’d taken out quite a few teams up until now, and news was undoubtedly spreading. It wouldn’t take much thinking to realize that Rhoswen and I had to leave our tokens in an unguarded territory hub every time we went to raid another team, and then it would be easy for someone to come and steal the results of our hard work.

We needed a way to keep our tokens safe while we moved around.

“Rhoswen, let’s move to phase two: investment.”

Rhoswen nodded and used her wristband to summon the map given to us by the “Intelligence Network” perk. After a quick scan, she pointed to a few nearby territories with low token or resource counts. “These places are developing poorly. How about taking a look?”

We spent some tokens strengthening the defense of Xander’s territory hub before we left it behind and flew for our next prospective target.

The territory we landed in simulated a coastal biome with warm, mild weather. I soared over the sand dunes before Rhoswen spotted someone. I let go of her harness, and she dropped down onto their shoulders, tackling them down to the ground.

It was a bit of an aggressive opening move, but we couldn’t have them attacking us just because we’d silently invaded their territory, right?

The student underneath Rhoswen shouted and struggled as I landed on the ground next to them.

“Hello! Don’t worry, this isn’t an attack; we just have a proposal to discuss with you,” I said kindly. “We couldn’t help but notice that your territory is struggling to obtain resources and tokens at the moment. As it happens, we have extra resources and are looking to invest in promising partners. This could be a good deal for both of us. Would you like to hear more?”

Rhoswen eased her grip on the student beneath her. He spit up a mouthful of dirt and pushed himself up, blond hair hanging over a dark expression. Wait, he looked a bit familiar…

“Is this some kind of sick joke?” he spat. “You’re the one who stole all my tokens!”

Ah, that was it! He was in the second team we took out at the beginning of the exam. He hadn’t left much of an impression since Rhoswen had sniped him so easily.

“So, you don’t want the tokens…?” I asked. Maybe that would be for the best; his attitude suggested troubling things for our potential cooperation.

He scowled. “Okay, I didn’t say that. But what exactly do you want in return?”

Although my enthusiasm was waning, I dutifully went through with the proposal I’d come up with. “We can transfer a certain amount of tokens to you. Think of it as an investment. Use it to boost your territory’s productivity as much as you’d like. But if you take it, you should prepare yourself to pay us back with interest. Say, ten percent of your profits. If you don’t want to pay up, though, well… Rhoswen and I wouldn’t mind taking our share by force again.”

The blond student narrowed his eyes. “You mean to say, you want to loan me… the very tokens that you stole from me.”

I clicked my tongue. “Should I take back the offer?”

“If you’re such a fan of snatching things by force, why should I trust that you’ll abide by our distribution agreement?”

See? Troublesome. “You don’t have to trust us, if you don’t want the loan.”

Rhoswen watched him go through a myriad of expressions before he grit his teeth. “Ten percent is too much; we can do five percent at most.”

“Nine percent.”

“It’s not easy to amass so many tokens, you know. Six.”

“You think this is a charity?”

The student ground his teeth together again.

“Eight percent,” he finally said. “I can do eight percent. But only if you apologize.”

I fell silent. It wasn’t a bad deal, but… I didn’t want to apologize. When had I done anything wrong?

“We’re not apologizing,” Rhoswen said, demonstrating once again that she and I were on the same page. “We can do seven percent.”

“You hate apologizing that much?” he said incredulously. “It’s not that hard! All you have to do is bow down and say, ‘Sorry I took your tokens and nearly ruined your exam,’ and then you can have things your way! You can’t even pay a little lip service to us?”

Okay, but wasn’t it his own fault for not thinking to guard against thieves and bandits? When I saw the exam design, it was practically the first thing I thought of! If it was such an obvious consideration, how could he blame me? Nithemoore students were just careless! Even KP-04 hadn’t knocked it into their heads that all safety and order was nothing but a collectively humored illusion.

Honestly, no matter what I felt, this was where I should have persuaded him anyways, or even found a way to soothe his hurt feelings without uttering a lie.

But instead, the impulsive words that came out of my mouth were, “Rhoswen, I don’t really want to do this anymore.”

In the blond student’s eyes, Rhoswen’s expression softened. She reached out and stroked my hair.

“That’s fine, Acacius. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Wait, what?” said the student. “You’re changing your mind so easily during a negotiation? Were you even sincere when you approached me?”

“Should we go back to our phase one strategy?” Rhoswen asked gently.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll leave this part to you.”

Sensing something, the student conjured up a wave of water around him like a shield. Another gesture of his hand, and four watery blades condensed in the air, pointing in the direction of his hand.

In that time, however, Rhoswen had already drawn her bow.

Her red arrow punched through his defense like it was glass, and just like that, he was expelled from the Illusion Stage again.

I laughed. Without asking, I grabbed her by the harness and launched us into the air, heading for the location of that student’s partner, their perspective shining in my senses. Rhoswen drew back her bowstring and sent them to join her partner outside.

We merrily plundered their territory hub and set off for our next prospective investment target. But it turned out that it was someone we’d raided before, too, so our negotiations failed there, too.

I comforted myself by taking their tokens before considering what to do next. This warranted a change in strategy.

“Rhoswen, I think we need to set our sights a little higher,” I concluded. “Someone who’s ambitious and willing to accept an investment… But it still needs to be someone we can threaten into cooperating.”

“Our track is full of strong-willed people,” Rhoswen sighed. “Give them an inch, and they’ll scheme for a mile. No one suitable comes to mind.”

I thought for a while.

“No, there is someone.”

“Who?”

“Roxana.”

I grinned.

“Since she’s been with me through KP-04, she should know I’m very driven about my goals. If she doesn’t cooperate properly, who knows what kind of grudge I’ll hold outside of the exam. It’s a bit underhanded of me to act like that, but… if she wants to be friends, she should be able to accept this much bad behavior from me, don’t you think?”

Rhoswen’s gaze lingered on my smile.

“Indeed,” she said. “To be close, one must be able to accept all the hidden parts that the other is reluctant to show.”

She held a hand out to me.

“Let us test whether Roxana meets the standard.”

I laughed. “Don’t say it like that. You’ll set her up for failure.”

But I graciously took her hand with a bow, like I was accepting a dance. Rhoswen let out a giggle, fingers tightening ever so slightly, so I impulsively pulled her into a little spin.

She followed along easily. I couldn’t see her expression with [Incarnation] active and all, but I guess underneath that formal and imposing demeanor, she was a playful person too, huh? I grabbed her other hand and spun us through a few simple dance steps before lowering her in an exaggerated dip.

A soft, low laugh escaped her. “Enough fooling about, Acacius. Let’s go.”

“But you only gave me one hand to hold,” I said innocently. “How am I supposed to carry you like that?”

“Hmm… Around the waist is fine.”

“Oh, what a princess.”

But I was in a good mood, so I wrapped my hands around her waist like how I’d flown with Luka. We rose into the air, and I savored the feeling of the cool wind on my face.

“Help me out, here. Which territory do you think Roxana would have claimed?”

Rhoswen hummed, and then she pointed to the west. “An ambitious person would have coveted the equivalent of the Baschets’ land.”

“Let’s give it a try.”

The landscape blurred beneath us as I flew. Each territory border we passed through deducted a token from our stash. I scanned through the perspectives that entered and exited my range; then, as we entered a territory with a simulated grassland biome, I found her.

It wasn’t that I identified her through her partner’s vision; I’d recognized the lavender shade of her hair as she brushed the bangs out of her eyes. Roxana’s partner, however, couldn’t see her clearly at all; their distinctive perspective consisted only of blurred shades of light and dark.

Roxana turned her gaze to Jules, and her face was reflected in the shades of her sunglasses.

“You were right, Rhoswen,” I said. “She’s here, and she’s partnered with Jules. Let’s go say hi!”

Flapping my wings, I shot forward. But Rhoswen startled in my arms. “Jules? Wait—”

I didn’t want to. “Roxana!” I shouted. “Incoming!”

I veered in for a landing.

Rhoswen tore my arms away from her waist and pushed off of me, backflipping away from where Roxana and Jules were standing. Thrown off course, I landed hard on the ground, digging two deep furrows in the dirt where my shoes dug in.

“Acacius?” Roxana said.

I brushed the dirt off my suit, combed my hair back into place, and grinned. “Hi. How’s it going?”

Roxana seemed stunned. She stared at me for a long moment before slowly swiveling to look at Rhoswen, who had landed lightly some distance away, crouching like a mountain cat.

“Is this… a visit or an attack?” she said.

Rhoswen, for her part, was looking at Jules. Even though Jules was blind, she had lifted her head to face Rhoswen as well. A strange tension hung between them, and the light above them shifted. The sun was still shining, but the sky above felt darker somehow, and the shadows writhed between them like a solar eclipse.

“Well now,” said Jules, breaking the silence. “I’d give you my welcome, Acacius, but it seems you’ve brought me a difficult guest. What exactly did you intend by bringing the Tamlane to my door?”

Chapter 50 Chapter 52