Progress was slow as Max ran through the woods. An hour ago, he tried to teleport a few inches closer to Cy’s location before being sent right back to the arches in the middle of the community centre. Unsure of the source, caster, or typing; Max decided to just cut his losses and run.

  The moment he began to sprint, the emergency broadcast sounded again. The twenty-minute timer had finished. “This is an emergency broadcast. Begin procedure EE.” EE? Was that the evacuation order since procedure E was get ready to leave? “And resume procedure F. Max took children as hostages. He will get more violent and desperate as time passes.” The transmission cut. Finally, they were evacuating the community.

  As he got closer to Waterfall Waterfall, the dryads would occasionally poke out of their trees to give him a thumbs up, indicating Cy was still there. The lights illuminating the orange and yellow runes below were getting weaker. His reserves were running out as he used some of the remaining internal magic to strengthen his body and increase his speed. The blue lines were also becoming alarmingly dull in colour. Darius mentioned abusing the lines, and damn they were taking advantage of it as much as they could. Still no red runes though, so it wasn’t for naught.

  The orange runes began to blink rapidly causing Max to stop before a wall of fire ignited a few centimetres in front of him. The wall was thick, strong, and could have easily killed someone. It was much more worthy of praise compared to Lux’s.

  “Hold on a sec.” Max took a few deep breaths, as he wiped the sweat from his face. Whoever attacked him clearly wasn’t interested in listening as pure electricity hurtled in his direction. With a sacrificial dryad jumping out to take most of the hit, Max was able to dodge out of the way. “I said wait a moment!”

  The second Max was back on his feet, he felt another dryad pull him out of the way as it took an axe to the wooden face from Elder Aris. Seeing him inches away again gave Max an idea. Going on the offence for a change, Max slapped the back of the deceased dryad causing a series of runes to erupt from its skin, engrave itself onto the enchanted axe, and make Elder Aris scream as the spreading runes split his skin into delicate patterns.

  “Come on now. Edric didn’t even flinch.” Max tutted.

  “Fuck you.” Elder Aris tried to regain momentum before finding his body was loose again, like noodles. “Again? Give me back control of my limbs! Let’s end this.”

  “Let’s end this,” Max mocked before he dragged a flailing Elder Aris away from one of his blue lines. “Grr, I’m a tough ass, so I need to be an absolute prick to everyone who doesn’t beat the crap out of others. Yeah, you’re a big tough guy, aren’t you? So big and stwong that you teach the kids musical theory in your free time.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Elder Aris struggled with his words. They were severely slurred. He desperately tried to keep an eye on Max. “Hey! Where are you going?”

  “You lot,” Max called out a bunch of tree nymphs as he yanked the enchanted axe out of the unfortunate dryad.

  “Don’t touch that!”

  “An enhancer, nice,” Max weighed it up. He turned to be in Elder Aris’s view before snapping it in half. “Oops, I guess the runes weakened it.”

  “You fucking dick.”

  “Here, hold on to it.” He dropped the remains on Elder Aris before turning to the watching dryads. “Right, you lot. Pick him up.” The dryads did as they were instructed. They held a strong grip over Elder Aris, as they kept him above their heads. “That’s it. Now, follow. Don’t step on the blue lines.”

  “Put me down!”

  “I’d love to, but we’ve got a tight schedule to keep.” Max began to lightly jog as he led the way through the forest. “I’ve got a feeling you’ll just get saved and come after me again, so I might as well take you with me.” And tempt others into coming after them as well. “Since we’ve got some time, I’ve got a question.”

  Elder Aris remained silent. Max had to check he was still there. “Why’d you attack Cy outside of the Elders’ Hall?” Still silent. “What? Did my question surprise you? You thought I was going to ask how you got so good at music?”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “You remind me of Haiddeck. He was cursing like that when I carried him over to his sister.”

  “… You really scared that kid.”

  …

  Max felt a dip in his stomach before pushing his feelings aside and deciding to be nasty back. “I heard from Edric; you were one of the Elders who was strongly sceptical about Cy’s predictions about Niv. Offended that a snotty brat was insulting your new friend, eh?”

  “Shut up. You have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Must’ve been a shock when you found him after the abduction. I’m curious, did the guilt from dragging Cy’s name and abilities through the mud start eating away from you then or earlier when you all realised he was missing?” … “You had me convinced at first. I remember thinking, wow, this guy must really hate Cy’s guts if he’s the mentor of a bunch of pricks and turning a blind eye to what they were doing to him. But then I read a report from Edric that you partially paid for all of his treatments. Even Elder Obi only contributed to the first few…”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “…Elder Edric is one of you…?”

  Max lost his pacing for a moment. “What? You didn’t realise until now?” He could hear some grumbling from above. “You should be thanking me. I kicked out every Nnita the day after I got accept-”

  “What?” The shock had been great enough to get Elder Aris to roll off of the dryad’s grasps. This fall had been hard, but Elder Aris didn’t look troubled by it. “They were all…?”

  He stopped to look at the pitiful Elder. “Of course they were! What? Did you really think the paperwork was enough to keep us away? We made this community!” Elder Aris was at a loss of words. “Tsujuma, kind of a weird name, right? It means magic in one of our languages.”

  “You! But. Then. What?”

  “Pick him up again. We need to keep moving. Anyway, you paid for treatments so he could recover. After you accidentally gave him a heart attack, you banned him from participating in activities. For a while, I was certain you were going to bring up some kind of punishment for Cy if it turned out I was a Nnita. You know, place curses on him too…

  “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you’re just an ass. Still, during my interview, you were the only one willing to face a penalty just to keep the community safe. It left quite a strong impression. Most of us will do anything to avoid penalties, and there you go, begging to get one because you were sure I was a Nnita.

  “Overlooking your irresponsibility with your mentees and your aggressive behaviour, you haven’t caused harm directly to Cy apart from attacking him in front of the Elders’ Hall. I know he mentioned the potential for me to be executed, but trying to kill him feels like a bit of an overreaction in hindsight. I know, ironic coming from me, but why? ... Ah, I think I get it…”

  “…Did you kill Lux because of his bad relationship with Cy?”

  Max ignored him. “Were you trying to keep him out of the interview? Was that it? Get him carried away to Elder Charaka’s hospital and far from the interrogation. Did you want to limit his involvement if it turned out I was using him? Now that I think about it, keeping Cy isolated from everyone else seemed to be a priority for you. Were you trying to get him to retire from the magical world and just take it easy?”

  “Why did you kill Lux?”

  Max felt irritated with Elder Aris’s focus on his former mentee. “Why are you insisting I killed him?”

  “Cause you did kill him, you motherfucker.” Elder Aris somehow managed to struggle out of the grasp of the dryads again. He landed hard on the pieces of his axe.

  Sighing, Max dragged the bleeding out Elder Aris to one of the blue lines. He only needed enough juice to stop dying. “I didn’t kill him. I got him signed up as the main character of a five-stars story.” Elder Aris’s eyes went wide as his mouth flopped like a fish in disbelief. “What did you think we were the only ones who can get roped up in the system’s plans? He got blessed by the Yggdrasil tree, right? It’s not my fault he wasn’t ready to step up to the challenge.”

  “Five-stars mean death,” Elder Aris grunted out the words. “That asshole tried to plead with me using the story as an excuse before he died.”

  “It’s difficult,” Max admitted. “But it doesn’t necessarily mean death. I mean, I managed to survive one.”

  Without permission, the dryads got into a circular formation around Max as others came out to help. They were cannon fodder for the sudden attacks of all kinds of elemental sources, but the sacrifices and the blue lines were enough to keep Max unscathed from the weak attacks. Without hesitation, Max kicked the Elder away from the lines. He declared. “Stop now or Elder Aris dies.”

  The pack of ill-trained mentees stopped as they looked at their mentor with uncertainty on their faces.

  They were all Lux’s friends.

  They were all bullies within the community.

  But unlike the strong and menacing pack when Max first arrived, they all looked shook up. Did they overhear their conversation about Lux?

  Max was about to address the crowd when a suddenly invigorated Elder Aris casted an intense fire spell igniting the Max and the dryads around them. “Don’t hold back,” the Elder barked as he ran to join the others. The flames and his wound would have been Elder Aris’s end if he weren’t being miraculously healed at the same time. The mentees cheered before the flames lowered to reveal an unimpressed Max, who hadn’t moved.

  A thin shield took the brunt of most of the spell while the runes tattooed on his skin did their job.

  Runes engraved into the skin had to be carefully considered. An anti-death rune meant the wearer cannot die under any circumstances unless the rune was somehow broken or disrupted. Anti-sleep meant one couldn’t sleep no matter how tired they felt. Anti- runes tended to not be helpful in the long run with only a handful exceptions. Anti-fire and anti-heat causing the body to auto-adjust to extremely high temperatures were a safer bet if the wearer intended to stay in a world for a long time with minimal suffering. It was painful as the nerves still panicked from fire, but definitely endurable.

  Seeing Elder Aris had fully recovered and his skin was unblemished, Max gave out a command for the dryads. “Find the healer.” The dryads came out of all the surrounding trees within a mile vicinity jumped at the opportunity to act. Below them the yellow runes flashed a few times before the light grew considerably weaker. To the unknowing, it was an acknowledgement of a command. To Max, it was a warning. Soon he was going to lose control over the dryads.

  The mentees took it on themselves to go after the dryads while Elder Aris attacked a calm Max, who merely used thin shields as he endured. With the trees now fallen or considerably thinner from their outer layers being removed by the dryad’s emergence, it wasn’t too hard to spot an Elder Charaka meditating a couple hundred meters away. Max took a step in their direction before seeing Elder Charaka vanish. Max couldn’t use teleporting magic, but they could? Unfair.

  “Is it Charon moving Elder Charaka around?” Max asked casually, while Elder Aris lunged at him with his broken axe.

  “Who cares-”

  “I’m only asking because he’s a budding serial killer according to the system.”

  The comment caused Elder Aris to pause as he took in the information before resuming his onslaught. “I don’t believe you.”

  Max shrugged before opening up the map created by the pink runes. It was getting weaker too. All his tanks of harvested power over the last month were running out of juice. The moment the map opened up, Max closed it before the others could realise what it was. It was easy to spot their lights. Just as it was easy to see the crowds of lights heading in their direction.

  Time to get everyone out of the way.