Page 4072

The longer was he able to keep his movements a secret, the better. That was something that he had been refining for many years now: suppressing his own aura. His time in the higher realms had been a reminder that, even now, there was yet more to learn. Some of the ancient masters whom he'd encountered had been almost unrecognizable to Tenebrach, who'd met most of them personally.

That was another grave threat to older servants, he knew. Hubris. The sense of having achieved mastery over all.

There was no such thing, Sermung had decided. Hence why Tenebrach's confidence was routinely unfounded.

Alright, you're hurting my feelings, now.

The land of forever rain was a sorry sight, indeed. Pain covered everything. Lingering and crying out. What could have become of the Rainlords? Nothing good, certainly. They would never have allowed this to happen, otherwise.

But they also had a long history of enduring beyond all odds to the contrary. Their subjects, too.

And it seemed he was too late. The trail of misery, while obvious to his senses, was not immediately active. It did not have the kind of radioactive heat that always permeated the collective auras of warzones.

Abolish had indeed already moved on. All the way into Intar?

So bold.

Intar was no pushover, even without the Vanguard's help. A slumbering giant, perhaps, but a giant, nonetheless. The ancestral heart of the Mohssian Empire.

While it was probably true that the country could not field any warriors who were effectively one-man armies, they had the benefit of technological advancement the likes of which could only be achieved by one of the richest and most populous nations in the world. Even Morgunov, for all his boasting, was unlikely to compete with such a massive engine of scientific progress.

In fact, that had been quite the point of contention in the past, earning considerable ire from the Mad Demon, who was of course kept at arm's length by any respectable community.

Even Xander was frequently frustrated by them. They demanded much, promised plenty, and ultimately delivered very little. Some within the Vanguard believed that be the Intarians' incompetence, but Sermung knew better. He'd snuck into their facilities over the years and observed some of their projects with his own eyes.

They were biding their time. Perhaps those machines would even be turned against Vanguard, one day.

Page 4071

It had been a while since he'd felt the sky all around him. Wind on his face and in his hair. The world sprawling out around him. Nothing but clouds below and the faintest glint of stars above as evening approached. He'd been stuck in one rock form or another for too long, as of late.

It was important to appreciate these moments while they lasted, he told himself. Live presently. Not just obsess over the future--or the past, occasionally.

The clouds below were rearing up quickly--but not quickly enough. Much as he wanted to enjoy the open air a bit more, time was wasting.

A suit of armor crackled into existence around him. Crystalline and clear but for the way it shimmered, it covered his whole body and increased his descending velocity in an instant, leaving a snapping boom in its wake.

It certainly wasn't necessary. Not in pan-rozum. He could just turn his body completely to crystal and be a literal flying brick. He'd done it plenty of times before.

But this was an older technique. One he'd developed early on, then later refined thanks to his old mentors. Many of them had grown up in some manner of knightly tradition--just as he himself had done--and so they always had a preference for it, even when other techniques began gaining more popularity among newer generations of warriors.

And it still had its uses, of course. In some ways, it even felt superior. Plus, an overreliance on pan-rozum was a genuine threat to older servants, Sermung had found. Over the centuries, he'd seen so many great warriors come and go, and he couldn't help noticing how they often seemed to suddenly "forget" much of what had made them great in the first place once they were finally able to use pan-rozum regularly.

It was like watching a lifelong swordsman give up the blade completely, just because he'd gotten his hands on a gun. There was something tragic in that, even if it was in some ways understandable.

He rocketed down through the clouds, letting his senses guide him toward his destination on the horizon.

Teleporting would have been faster, of course, but he wanted to address this trail of misery before his eyes.

And there were always wrinkles with that power, too. Invitations to onlooking threats. He didn't want to alert them to his presence just yet.

Next page on April 3rd

Thanks for reading, everyone.