The harpy screeched, but instead of anger or hunger, it was something different. Her eyes had completely left Orion and his classmates and were fixed on something below them.

  Something that was moving toward them.

  Orion didn’t even need to look down to know who it was. It made sense, considering she occupied the entire seventh floor, and her office had windows that directly overlooked the field they had been flying over.

  Still, he couldn’t help himself. At any other time, he wouldn’t have taken his gaze away from the very dangerous predator floating just a few feet away, but the harpy was no longer a concern.

  Not with High Priestess Seraphina there.

  She is flying without a broom, Orion noted idly. I would have thought it’d ruin the image of a witch, but somehow, she’s scarier like this.

  Indeed, Seraphina made a formidable sight. There was no great halo of power; no roar escaped her lips. And yet, her eyes burned with a terrible light, and even Orion, the last believer in the coven, felt a sense of awe building within him.

  “The flock has broken the treaty, then, for a Matriarch to attack us,” she murmured. Her voice was soft as silk, reaching everyone without needing to shout. It was as if the air couldn’t help but bow to her desire to be heard.

  [Verification Principle] informed Orion that it wasn’t even an active spell; it was simply a consequence of her power.

  The harpy, to her credit, didn’t try to justify her actions. She’d obviously been intending to hunt and eat the students, and whether that was because she’d been overcome by her animal instincts or because of a more conscious action, it didn’t really matter.

  She turned and tried to flee, moving much faster than when she had swooped down on them.

  A second later, she was gone. A single feather drifted down, gently carried by the wind. Everything else simply ceased to exist.

  Not now.

  A strange distortion warped the air then, making everything seem both closer and farther at the same time. Orion could see the snowflakes descending from a tree to the ground on a mountain a hundred miles away, yet he knew that if he reached for them, he would never be able to touch them.

  It was a disorienting and, more importantly, immensely complex piece of magic. [Verification Principle] could barely comprehend a tiny portion of it, and even that much overwhelmed Orion’s mind with concepts ranging from wormholes to sound refraction and more.

  “As has been the rule through history,” Seraphina thundered, her voice echoing through the mountains, “any attempt upon the Lunar Sanctum’s students shall be returned tenfold.”

  It was more a statement of fact than a declaration. There was no doubt in her voice that her will would be done, and given the unnatural stillness gripping the mountains for miles, everything else knew it too.

  Seraphina raised her right hand, her fingers forming a claw, and raked it through the air with the sound of a shattering vase.

  Far in the distance, a mountain crumbled upon itself. Its entire southern flank shattered, cascading as a rain of debris and, in the process, destroying a large portion of a cave system.

  Through the spatial warping, Orion could see that those caves had been inhabited by harpies.

  Whether some had survived the cataclysm, he’d never know, as the spell suddenly fell away.

  Seraphina’s gaze swept over the children, both motherly and terrifying at once. She appeared satisfied with her observations, for her eyes smiled—her mouth, as always, was concealed by her veil—and she began to float down, with everyone’s brooms following after her without prompting.

  Once everyone had touched down and dismounted, Seraphina approached Madame Thurgood, whose head was bowed in despair. She bent close to her ear and whispered something, to which the teacher nodded hesitantly before turning toward the class.

  “What happened today should never have taken place, but rest assured, nothing shall harm you as long as you reside within these walls.”

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  After seeing her casually commit genocide, no one doubted her. She didn’t seem to need their confirmation; one moment she was there, and the next she was gone.

  The class took several minutes to feel comfortable speaking, as the rapid succession of events disoriented them.

  Personally, Orion was stuck on what little he had managed to learn about her magic. Sure, the casual ease with which she had destroyed half a mountain—and there was a cloud of dust and debris rising in the distance to confirm that such a thing had indeed happened—was incredible, and he was certain that once he was calmer, he would reflect on it, but all he cared about at the moment was that she had not only wielded such power but had done so by applying physics.

  That spatial manipulation could not have been accomplished through prayers. Rather, I’m sure she came to it in a traditional way, but her comprehension of the underlying concepts was solid. [Verification Principle] could not grasp the entirety of the spell, but that much was clear. She knew what she was doing.

  “Are you okay, Orion?” Luna asked, shaking his arm to gain his attention.

  Blinking, he nodded. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You’ve been staring at that cloud for a few minutes,” Dorian answered with a chuckle, though it came slightly strangled.

  They all knew, of course, that the Sanctum was the premier power in the province. It ruled with an iron fist, even going so far as to poach the greatest magical talents for itself.

  However, there was a difference between theoretical understanding and witnessing the High Priestess obliterate a mountain along with the flock of harpies inside it, simply because one of them had attempted to harm the coven’s students.

  I suppose she had to. The harpy certainly didn’t seem willing to talk as it descended upon us, and she has to maintain control over the entire region. Given that there are dragons somewhere around here, this is likely the most efficient way of keeping that primate.

  “I was just thinking,” Orion finally replied with a shrug, though inside, he couldn’t help but be surprised at how much that close shave had unsettled him.

  Seraphina had deployed the equivalent of a nuclear bomb and then returned to work as if nothing more needed to be said. That was the world he now lived in.

  Orion’s plans for his future initially included traveling around the Magocracy, followed by exploring the rest of the world.

  To do that, he needed not only to graduate from the Sanctum’s mandatory schooling but also to achieve a level of personal power high enough to defend himself against possible threats.

  As a scientist, he had never prioritized combat. While he recognized that some covert military organization could exploit his research and publications to develop advanced weaponry, it was not a concern he had given extensive thought to; he only occasionally wondered about the possibility of accessing that black budget funding.

  He could not, at least not without dedicating himself solely to what some fool behind a desk with too much power believed he should be spending his time on.

  But now that he had seen with his own eyes what the true powerhouses of this world were capable of, and how little they thought of using that power… Well, it was clear that he needed to adjust his plans.

  Facing that ghoul years ago had been a wake-up call, as it forced him to focus on something specific: light mana. This focus had produced results. His understanding of that type of energy had grown until he could reliably summon it, and, as demonstrated by his success in stalling the harpy, it had become something potentially dangerous.

  However, it was not enough.

  It would have been fine if this world were more peaceful, or if he had been content to remain within the Sanctum his entire life, never achieving anything significant.

  But neither was true. The world, as seen in the tired lines on the faces of the merchants hawking their wares in the Silverpeak market, or even more obviously in the tent city that was still expanding outside of it, was not that idyllic.

  Although humans were not the only race here, other sapient life forms appeared to follow similar principles. Where power and resources existed, conflict would inevitably arise.

  Initially, Orion envisioned the world as akin to a post-Cold War Earth, where the presence of nuclear weapons—or in this case, tier four and above mages—was sufficient to stall most active conflicts.

  The ghoul and the spy had been dangerous, yes, but not enough to provoke open war.

  What he had seen that morning... The sheer casualness of it, in particular, had changed his entire understanding of power.

  If Seraphina could unleash that kind of magic upon an unsuspecting community merely to punish them for the actions of one member of their species and could still be seen as a wise leader, what did that mean for the less stable ones?

  Did the Vampire Lord go through villages at night, reducing them to ashes after draining all their blood? Did the High Lich perform large-scale necromantic rituals to twist the blood and flesh of hundreds simply because no one could stop him?

  Was power truly all that mattered? Orion didn’t think so, but reality had other ideas, and he wasn’t the type of man to ignore it when it was in his face.

  “My laser was a good attempt. I had to finagle it a little there at the end to make it work, and it didn’t do enough damage on its own to stop the harpy, but it did something.” That much he knew, because the System had rewarded him with an Attunement point.

  The exp had been mediocre, only slightly better than when he had protected the classroom, despite developing a new spell midway. This meant his contribution to fighting the harpy had been quite limited, but something was better than nothing.

  “So, lasers are a good first step. I need to improve my shields, too. But more importantly, I need some experience. I could barely do anything with how quickly that damn bird moved.” To be fair, Orion’s Body stat was decent for his age and class, but he now realized that without decent reflexes, he’d be a sitting duck in any fight.

  So, how do mages fight? It can’t just be that they throw spells at each other and hope for the best.

  He considered the possibility of sensory enhancement spells, but although he lacked the expertise of a biologist or neuroscientist, he knew enough to realize that improper stimulation could lead to serious side effects.

  Eventually, he might develop such a spell, but it would take years of careful experimentation. Not something to pursue while stressed.

  And so, Orion had no recourse but to ask for help. His mother first, then perhaps Set, whom he knew to be much more than he seemed. If nothing else worked, he had a favor to cash in with Magistra Eire.

  He knew she would be able to guide him. However, he was reluctant to use that favor. It was what shielded him from Morliana’s attention, and without it, he’d once again be a viable target.

  Thus, he went to Asteria, hoping she could guide him in the right direction.

  “So you want to learn about magical combat,” she said after hugging him for all he was worth—news about the danger he’d been in had spread very quickly, apparently.

  “Yes, I don’t want to be helpless again,” he said, adjusting his lab coat once she let him go.

  Asteria held his gaze for a moment, as if to test his resolve, before nodding with a sigh. “I knew this day would come, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be so soon. Still, the world is becoming more dangerous, so it might be a good idea to get a head start.”

  “So you have someone who can teach me?” Orion asked hopefully. Once, the Sanctum’s spells would have been useless to him, but with [Verification Principle], reverse-engineering them into something that made sense would only be a matter of effort.

  “Oh, moonbeam,” Asteria said with a mysterious smile. Suddenly, Orion was reminded that this woman had defeated a knight with a single spell and terrorized an entire military base into submission. “I am more than enough to teach you.”

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