Ranthia had, once again, underestimated Ariminum.

  It was supposed to be a fairly straightforward investigations job—personal, not an Adventurer job—but Ariminum was so massive and so piled up that finding useful rumors and information was a pain in the neck. Everyone was always gossiping—seriously, how did so few people seem to have nothing better to do—but most of the rumors were idiotic.

  For example, the official explanation for the [Healers] at the town gates was an outreach program to help apprentice [Healers] get difficult early levels while it helped prevent plagues. That was sensible, though wasteful in the casual way that only governments and the wealthy could be. Less sensible was that this was somehow connected to the ongoing war. Honestly, it was the same as when she travelled years ago and heard fools blame the formorians every time seasonal rains washed out underused roads. Not every problem or change in life was due to some far away war out west that only the legions cared about!

  Anyway, constant rumors everywhere Ranthia went. Which was why Ranthia was on a completely different investigation than the one she had started on.

  Her personal project would keep, but she stumbled onto something that wouldn’t. Or possibly she was just putting off the other investigation at the first convenient excuse. She was thrilled for an opportunity to cause the best kind of chaos: chaos that promised to ruin a complete jerk.

  Pompous Secondius Shiticus—or whatever his full name was—was a minor official with the city tasked with handling permits for merchant stalls. No one was fond of him; the man was abrasive and self-important in that way that those with the tiniest bit of prestige and power tended to be. But, for Ranthia, the true problem was the rumors that he was using his position to coerce women into sex, while telling each of them that he was only interested in her and intended to marry her.

  The man was, naturally, already wed too. Just in case there was any doubt that he wasn’t wholly reprehensible.

  Ranthia had proof that the rumors were true within a day. It was easy enough; he wasn’t exactly subtle about it. Guilt proven, Ranthia was left with simply figuring out how she wanted to handle the situation. The man wasn’t quite awful enough to just kill and call it a day; as tempted as she was, the knife wasn’t the proper solution to every problem. Especially not when his shallow web of lies gave Ranthia an idea.

  Why use violence when she could instead unleash some happy chaos?

  Okay, so unleashing chaos could take time. That was a downside.

  In Ranthia’s defense, there were a lot of pieces to manage. She had six different women in Ariminum to juggle, plus the man’s actual wife—who almost never left the house—and she needed the jerk’s plans to coincide with her own plots. Each woman took a different approach too (which definitely never got confusing when coupled with Ranthia’s inability to learn any of their names).

  But, at long last, things had come together.

  Ariminum had businesses that just had tables where people sat down and ordered food that was cooked on demand. Restaurants, they called them. Because apparently Ariminum’s wealthy class were too good for food stalls on the streets. The café that Ranthia and Hexara sometimes visited technically was probably one of them, but Ranthia had already clung to her scorn and so she decided that it was—somehow—an exception.

  The restaurant’s sign depicted a blue fish that was impaled on a harpoon (because nothing stimulated the appetite quite like a reminder of how brutally the food was acquired) and Ranthia, arm-in-arm with one of the six women, strolled into the building with a smile on her face. It wasn’t originally part of the plan to be present herself, but it was what was required to make things work. And she was mostly reasonably certain that her presence wouldn’t derail the plan.

  The actual plan was comedically simplistic. The asshole was at the same restaurant with his wife on their once-every-32-days night out. Ranthia had—by salvaging and reusing messages he had previously sent to his various lovers—managed to convince four of the six victims that they were to meet him there. The last was being brought by her mother (Ranthia’s skin had almost literally crawled while she convinced the older woman that she needed to spend more time with her daughter because a mother-daughter bond was precious).

  Still, it was all worth it. Ranthia had ensured that she was a bit early, so the eventual commotion would be focused further back and well away from where she sat. There were so many fish options available that Ranthia ended up just ordering what her ‘date’ picked; it was a bit overwhelming to someone that usually just followed her nose to whatever smelled good.

  A short time later, the food arrived. Okay, and yes, the beautifully seasoned fish on the bed of soft grains was really good. Ranthia wasn’t too proud to admit it. She had expected the place to be in-line with the food stalls, but it was clearly a cut above. It was good. Maybe not as good as a fresh pot of rabbit stew prepared just the way she liked it, but it was close. And she wasn’t even fond of fish!

  Ranthia was so focused on her food that she completely missed the first sounds of angry confrontations. In her defense, she was used to tuning a lot out in Ariminum. Crowds gave people a sense of false privacy and there was so much that Ranthia didn’t care to hear. It was just yet another moment like that.

  At least up until her ‘date’ leaned to the side, looked, then gasped. It was kind of hard to miss the woman muttering an apology before she stormed further back into the restaurant with a furious look on her face.

  Ranthia shrugged it off and switched to the woman’s chair so she could watch the goings-on while she finished her fish. She was hungrier than she thought.

  Good chaos escaped the confines of her plans swiftly. Great chaos took on a life of its own and spread in ways she could never have predicted. Ranthia decided in retrospect to declare that night a tier higher, tentatively titled fantastic chaos.

  As it turned out, one of the waitresses was the man’s daughter from a previous engagement that he broke off when he came into money. The kid—…roughly Ranthia’s own age—had been quite vocal about coming to see what sort of man her father was. Ranthia heard her clearly, even over the other seven women that were screaming obscenities at the man.

  That would have been great chaos, but by absolute fluke the man’s boss was present in one of the private rooms of the restaurant. He investigated and was… displeased to find the man’s indiscretions ruining his own night out with his family. At that point Ranthia had to pay—with an extra three rods as an apology—and leave before she called attention to herself. It was almost impossible to contain her own laughter.

  Plus, she had already polished off both her own plate and the one that her ‘date’ had abandoned.

  [*ding!* [Ranthia’s Covenant with Xaoc] has reached level 59!]

  It was inevitable, even for her, but Ranthia knew she needed to visit a [Healer] once she returned to town.

  The job had—by happy fluke—required eight days’ travel from the capital. Someone with more money than sense wanted an obnoxiously rare flower for some nonspecific purpose and Ranthia lucked into being there when the job came in. And then she immediately ran out of luck when an unseasonably heavy summer rain began almost the very moment that she passed the gates out of Ariminum.

  At least it made her trek cooler, even if wet leather was unpleasant. Her travel cloak was good, but the rain was entirely too aggressive for her to keep dry.

  The flower, naturally, required a climb to reach it. Even with her vitality she almost missed it through the driving rain, but there were the orange-and-yellow petals that she sought. Ranthia immediately started her ascent, eager to be done with the job.

  And then, just when she was almost in range to reach the plant, the section that she was climbing just collapsed. Ranthia’s reflexes offered no solution, there wasn’t anything within reach that she could grab that wasn’t falling with her. If anything, she had to tamp down on the absurd urge to throw an image out and shift to it—channel time aside, she was in her real body; that would have just been an act of suicide! All she could do was try to roll so her right shoulder was pointed at the ground first, to protect her potion pouch. It was reinforced, but that wasn’t going to help much if she landed on it.

  The impact would have been bad enough, but an accursedly positioned rock just had to be there.

  Ranthia was proud of herself for not screaming on the way down. She wasn’t quite able to stop herself when her arm broke—badly—on impact. Sometimes severe injuries had a delay before the pain hit, but not that time. Ranthia was keenly aware of the fragments of bone that tore into her muscles. Of the impact that knocked the breath from her lungs. And of the agony that threatened to overwhelm her.

  She had an escape route and her mind knew it. She fought through the agony and soon had a mirror image positioned next to her body and channeled to shift into it. Just like that, the pain became nothing more than a distant (traumatic) memory. Ranthia shuddered as she examined her true body from the outside. The break was bad, and she was pretty sure that she had cracked a rib or three. The injuries weren’t the sort that she could let herself recover from naturally.

  “Lesson learned, you’re only invulnerable when you’re not in your real body.” Ranthia chided herself, before she eyed the plant.

  She was not leaving without it. The pay was too high, and it had just become more important than ever.

  Honestly, she was wildly embarrassed in retrospect. When her mirror image slipped, she just threw a fresh image up top and successfully shifted to it before she hit the ground. At least with her abilities the journey back home only sucked at night; by day she walked in a mirror image’s body pain free while [Reflective Motility] kept her real body plodding after her.

  At least until she reached Ariminum. She didn’t want to heavily broadcast her abilities, so she gritted her teeth through the agony while she stood in line and tried to ignore the visible discomfort of those around her. Seriously, it wasn’t like her pain affected them!

  The [Healer] on duty looked green while he stared at her arm—seriously, some people were obviously not cut out for the profession they chose—but the guards refused to allow him to do anything for her arm and just had him screen her as usual. She knew, from other Adventurers, that there was a dual-classed [Healer] with both Light and Dark somewhere near that entrance that many recommended, but it still took her entirely too long to find the building.

  Surprisingly, the [Healer] treated her before payment even came up. Ranthia sagged in relief as her arm shrank back down to its normal size and the angry red color receded. Other scars and artifacts of her Adventurer career faded away as well. A tightness in the back of her head that she had grown accustomed to, from the time some idiot tried to bash her skull in with a vase, vanished. Dozens of little aches and inconveniences.

  The [Healer]’s services were suspiciously cheap; it only cost a little over half what she was about to—gods willing—make off the job. The [Healer] just muttered something about an Oath and evaded answering her question any further, but Ranthia shrugged it off.

  She sure wasn’t going to complain and she wasn’t really that curious about what drove people to hate money.

  Things with Hexara were mostly going great. They had decided to keep their relationship open—though it wasn’t exactly casual—and Ranthia had long known that Hexara was seeing someone else “non-romantically.” Yet the woman was oddly embarrassed about what that meant and refused to explain. Which was fine! Ranthia was curious, but she wasn’t going to push the woman that she loved (not that either of them had said the L word in that context).

  At the moment, Ranthia was preoccupied with haggling with a merchant that wanted such a completely ridiculous price for three onions that Ranthia was half-tempted to call the guard on him. Twenty-eight coins was outrageous! Hexara and Ranthia were supposed to be shopping for ingredients so Ranthia could cook them a simple dinner later that evening, but Ranthia could practically feel her girlfriend’s exasperation.

  Sure, she could have found a different merchant with less naked greed, but Ranthia was determined to batter the man down! Or at least, she was, until they were distracted.

  “Oh, hey, fancy running into you here Hexy!” A rather pretty girl in a very flattering tunic greeted Hexara after she ran over.

  “Oh, uh, hi…” Hexara replied in a quiet voice. Ranthia’s girlfriend had an odd, almost flighty, look on her face.

  “Oho, who’s this lovely lady?” Ranthia asked after she flipped off the greedy merchant and abandoned his stall. This promised to be far more interesting!

  “Hi! Hexy knows me as Sunrise. She’s one of my favorites, y’know!”

  The woman was perky but something about her voice just… did things for Ranthia. She had never heard a combination of bubbly and sultry before, but it definitely worked.

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  “Nice to meet you, Sunrise! I’ve just got to know; how do you know Hexy?”

  Ranthia seemed to be the only person in Ariminum that wasn’t allowed to call Hexara ‘Hexy’. Hexara’s co-workers and now this mystery woman used it, yet when Ranthia tried Hexara got weird about it and insisted Ranthia not call her that.

  The new woman looked at the visibly embarrassed Hexara and the obviously interested Ranthia and grinned mischievously.

  “She’s my favorite client!”

  Sunrise name-dropped the brothel she worked at—which Ranthia promptly forgot—and strongly hinted that Hexara had spent the night with her a few nights ago—the night that Ranthia was late back from a job and ended up locked outside of the city for the night.

  “You should stop by sometime; I’d be happy to take care of any friend of Hexy’s! Or maybe the both of you could visit me together someti—” Sunrise tried to entice them.

  “Sorry, we’ve got to go! Maybe another time!” A red-faced Hexara declared loudly, cutting Sunrise off, before she grabbed Ranthia’s arm and tried to hurriedly drag her off.

  Ranthia found the whole thing hilarious, but she wasn’t about to openly laugh at her girlfriend’s expense.

  Seriously, why was Hexara so embarrassed about visiting a brothel? It wasn’t like Ranthia was going to judge her for having needs!

  A massage from Sunrise turned out to be even better than Ranthia had expected. The difference that Skills made! The sunny woman’s other skills were pretty great too, of course.

  Ranthia had often sought out the mysterious pale woman who had inspired her so much and she only redoubled her efforts once she adjusted her schedule a bit to enable visits to Sunrise. Ariminum’s night life was always more active than Ranthia would have expected, but she felt like she should have found some sign of the magnificent dancer. Worse, no one seemed to know who she spoke of when she tried to ask around either.

  Which was a damned shame, Ranthia would have traded a lot to be able to see the woman’s dance again. She felt like she was hitting a wall with her own dance practices, even as her own combat style started to slowly incorporate some of what she practiced. If only she could have seen that dance again and paid attention to the details that she had glossed over! She just knew there was something else there that she hadn’t yet grasped.

  Eventually, Ranthia concluded the personal investigation, despite her best efforts to find other things to do. She had learned quite a bit about her mother’s new husband—even if she couldn’t explain why she cared—and was wildly unimpressed with the man. The only good thing was it was clear that she’d never be expected to call him father.

  The man owned a food stall company, one with numerous stalls across the city. The puffery claimed that he cooked everything himself before dawn every day, then the stalls sold it to hungry customers. But that was clearly just puffery.

  Ranthia had learned that almost all of the stalls actually were stocked with day-old foods from other businesses that were bought cheap and resold high. The primary stall, which was typically run by her mother, received food prepared by a level 61 [Laborer] who was obviously a bought and owned slave.

  To Ranthia, it was a scam. The important and impactful customers bought the ‘good’ (more like passable) food from the main stall. The owner claimed that he had high praise from such customers, which kept a steady enough stream of them coming and gave the food stalls a reputation. Meanwhile the poorer folk, those with inferior means, could only purchase the more profitable junk quality food and any complaints that they had just didn’t spread very far.

  Unfortunately, this meant that the man’s entire livelihood was a scam that Ranthia expected would inevitably collapse. It was just a question of when. …And a question of what would happen to her mother when it did.

  The man himself was eminently lazy. He vocally claimed to work hard, though Ranthia discovered that his ‘workshop’ where he allegedly cooked was just a lounge where he drank and harassed female slaves all day while her mother and everyone else worked. Disgusting, but not surprising.

  What was weird, however, was the other thing that Ranthia discovered while she snuck around. It seemed that her mother and the worthless man that she had married had adopted a couple of children. It felt extremely out of character for both of them and kind of made Ranthia’s blood boil a bit; her mother cast her aside the instant anything about her changed, yet she was willing to take on other children?!

  Ranthia agonized over her decision for days, but finally decided that she should warn her mother about the man she had married. She was so angry at the woman, but she also didn’t necessarily believe that her mother deserved to suffer for her husband’s fragile business model. …And the children that they had adopted certainly didn’t, even if Ranthia struggled to truly see them as innocents.

  Once again Ranthia ambushed her mother at night, while the woman was alone and on her way home after a long day. The cruel woman hadn’t even waited up for the poor youth that was struggling with the supplies left over from the day (which made Ranthia second-guess herself, but damnit she was already there…)

  “I have nothing to say to you, leave me alone.” Her mother snapped the instant that she saw Ranthia.

  “Please, I just wanted to warn you…” Ranthia tried, though she trailed off. If her mother refused to hear her out, fine. At least she had tried.

  “Fine, about what?” The woman asked while she folded her arms in front of her chest.

  “It’s about your husba—”

  Her mother cursed at her and stormed off without hearing her out.

  Eventually, sometime after the woman left, Ranthia decided that it was fine. It was her mother’s funeral when things finally collapsed. She had tried to do the right thing, and she was ready to absolve herself from the whole ordeal. It plainly wasn’t her problem.

  Leveling rates slowed the higher your level got, but Ranthia was wholly ready to admit that the opportunities for levels while she lived in Ariminum were significantly worse than those she had in Sardonia. There just were far fewer opportunities to push herself or get into unreasonable situations.

  Ranthia had mixed feelings about that. Part of her still desired to flash through the levels as rapidly as she could, to become stronger; to become harder to kill. This was fueled by rumors that some of the Sentinels had their third classes. She wasn’t quite sure if she believed the rumors—they were kind of hard to believe when she hadn’t ever seen anyone at a higher level than her former guildmaster—but the potential fired up her competitive spirit. She had a long way to go.

  And yet, at the same time, she had something special with Hexara. She wanted to spend as much time with her girlfriend as she could and part of her feared breaking Hexara’s heart. Adventuring was a wildly unsafe career path, no matter how much Ranthia loved it. Hexara had actually—gently—already tried to encourage Ranthia to find a different career when she discovered that the numerous little scars and marks that had covered Ranthia’s body had vanished after her visit to the [Healer].

  At least Ranthia’s second visit to the same [Healer] had been far less noticeable, even if it had been a far more gruesome injury.

  Some days Ranthia was almost a little tempted to retire, just to make Hexara happy. Not that it was a real solution. Hexara made decent money, but Ranthia somehow doubted that Hexara could—or would want to—support both of them. And Ranthia had no other skills. Even if she pushed her classes to level 256 and 128, respectively, her class up options were sure to continue along the path she was on.

  And the idea of abandoning her Mirror [Mage] class made her sick to her stomach with nervousness.

  It was hard to imagine another path, at least not a serious one. She loved exploration. Her heart sang every time she defeated a monster that had proven problematic. She enjoyed the gratitude from her clients on the rare occasions that she got to experience it.

  Sure, the idea of being a [Cook] had some appeal. Briefly she was able to entertain the daydream of having her own food stall, of taking a class to support it. But it was a struggle to find enthusiasm for the idea of doing that day after day. She liked making soups and stews and she loved to share them with those she cared about, but it wasn’t a career that she had passion for.

  She was an Adventurer, and it was just too hard to imagine a life where she did something wholly without travel. Gods, she probably would have already left Ariminum if not for Hexara. The wanderlust had never left her, but she hadn’t yet seen everything in the area, at least.

  Winter had arrived once again. Ranthia had barely returned from a job slaying a neovenator—she was literally in the midst of turning the job in along with one of the dinosaur’s claws as proof—when the clerk quietly informed her of a new job that had just come in.

  Ranthia had, for a while now, heard rumors from other Adventurers about a stretch of woodland where unusual monsters kept appearing. And now they had a small village adjacent to the area that was claiming that its farmland was being burned by mysterious monsters. Ranthia silently apologized to Hexara, but the job was just too interesting. She had to know if there was any truth to it.

  Plus, she needed to hurry; by the time the season turned, some Ranger team was all but certain to have come through. Assuming the village hadn’t lost its entire crop and been forced to evacuate by then.

  Ranthia had smelled the smoke long before she arrived and by the time she finally reached it, the village’s walls were aflame. Panicking men and women threw buckets of sand at the flames, while two others bravely attempted to fend off the threat with low-quality bows and archery that was plainly outmatched.

  Their opponents, at first, seemed to be a pack of dogs—too small and stocky to be wolves. Yet smoke trailed from their mouths, they left ash when they moved, and, of course, there was the glow each possessed. It was as if they were embers made flesh.

  Ranthia had started channeling just in case when she smelt the smoke. On arrival she vaulted over the (honestly, far too low) wall in a location that was less ablaze than most and immediately shifted to a fresh mirror image. She wasn’t about to throw her real body at the threat, but she didn’t want to waste time trying to hide her abilities better.

  “Protect that!” Ranthia snapped at one of the villagers, before she leapt onto the roof of a house that was far too close to the wall and used it to spring over the wall that the beasts were actively blasting with fireballs and clouds of hot ash.

  Ranthia’s skin seared as she closed in with the first beast, but she drove her [Blades of Darkness] empowered knife through its spine before it could retreat from her.

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Hellhound] (Inferno, level 127)!]

  What on Pallos was a hellhound?! Not that she had time to worry about that. Even with [Blades of Darkness] her knife was uncomfortably warm in her hand and her skin was near blistering. Ranthia tried to throw another image out near one of the monsters, but the cloud of ash that surrounded the beast destroyed the image before she could even put it to use.

  This wasn’t going to be quite so easy, even if the pack was only eight—er, seven—monsters strong.

  Another hellhound barked and this—somehow—resulted in a fireball that Ranthia had to dodge. Ranthia leaned into her dance moves as she closed in. Ambush tactics weren’t going to cut it, she needed to stay light on her feet while she closed in so she could evade their own attacks. Ranthia sent out three more mirror images in rapid succession, each positioned away from the monsters—and within Ranthia’s line of sight—with the hopes that they might draw some of the pack’s attention. Though it was a challenge to have them evade while she focused on her own efforts as well.

  She had to replace the first image before she reached the next monster. Her first slash on the hellhound wasn’t a kill, though it turned away and shook its head while it dealt with the loss of its left eye, which allowed her to finish it off with her next attack.

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Hellhound] (Ash, level 113)!]

  The next two came to her, trailing ash and radiating punishing heat. Ranthia took one out mid-lunge while she sacrificed her sandal to deliver a painful—for her—kick to the other to buy time. Unfortunately, her current image was in no condition to press the attack, so even as she got the kill confirmation she started to channel.

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Hellhound] (Fire, level 77)!]

  The instant her channel completed she went through the process to shift to an image that wasn’t under attack. The image that she abandoned was eliminated by a fireball she had almost missed entirely after she shifted. No longer burnt, Ranthia took a moment to pull mana from her arcanite before she rushed to close in on the nearest hellhound, even as chunks of smoky leather flaked off her charred sandal.

  For a single beautiful moment everything seemed to align in a wondrous way Ranthia hadn’t experienced before. Her dance-like moves felt perfect. Her pivot and slash with her knife naturally flowed, and her knife ended the hellhound’s existence… or, at least it did once [Cross Strike] applied and drove the wound just a bit deeper. But everything felt graceful and right!

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Hellhound] (Inferno, level 122)!]

  And then she danced straight into a cloud of searing ash.

  Ranthia cursed aloud and hurriedly focused through the blistering pain to channel until she could shift to the last intact image she had up—damnit she needed to be better about keeping track of that—before she started to pull from her arcanite again. She had screwed up earlier, she should have kept drawing from it to keep her mana up before it got nearly empty, and she wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

  Drawing mana from her arcanite came easily, since she was attuned. All she had to do was basically tense a metaphorical muscle with the intent to pull from it and the stones set into her vest and her gauntlet dimmed as their power waned. She had enough arcanite that a single refill of her mana didn’t expend all that it had to offer, but it wasn’t like she had an endless supply.

  She had thinned the pack by half, at least, which gave her more ability to replace and maintain her lost images. The dogs weren’t very intelligent and kept distance between them, which made it far easier for her to close in and eliminate them one-by-one without getting overwhelmed by their attacks. Soon there were three.

  Then two.

  Then one.

  And then, with a final shift…

  [*ding!* You have slain a [Hellhound] (Ash, level 114)!]

  It was done.

  [*ding!* [Reflective Motility] has reached level 190!]

  [*ding!* [Persistent Imagery] has reached level 167!]

  [*ding!* Congratulations! [Sudden End] has reached level 126!]

  [*ding!* [Dark Affinity], [Knives & War], [Blades of Darkness], and [Strengthen Blade] have reached level 126!]

  [*ding!* [Cross Strike] has reached level 89!]

  The villagers were grateful, though there was a certain bitterness behind their gratitude. The fields that had once borne their precious crops were naught but ash and the village’s walls were largely a lost cause. The men and women that lived there either needed to endure an especially expensive and harsh winter, or they would need to abandon their homes. Not that it was an unfamiliar risk for those that sought to tame a new piece of Remus’ wilds.

  Still, Ranthia’s job was done, and it wasn’t like she could wave her hand and replace their lost food. Honestly, she was more than a little distracted by her own grumpiness. She had a couple of spare pairs of sandals—she was capable of learning from her mistakes—but she was a bit morose that she’d need to get some of the studded leather strips of her skirt replaced. She was reasonably certain that the rest of her armor only needed some maintenance, but there was no chance of simply repairing several of those burnt strips.

  Ranthia collected some parts from the strange monsters—she was not about to try eating the meat of something that seemed to be almost as much element as beast—and set off for her journey home.

  Ranthia left her armor with the armorer that created it, then hit the Adventurer’s Guild next. She wanted a bath—she swore she still smelled smoky—but it would keep until she turned in the job. It wasn’t like it ever took terribly long to turn in a job.

  …At least that was her hope until she was told to turn it in to the Guildmaster himself.

  “You’re Rank A now, congratulations.” The Guildmaster informed her almost the very instant that she finished her report to him.

  “…Just like that? No test?” Ranthia asked, taken aback.

  The man gestured to the monster pieces that were arrayed on a tray on his desk.

  “You cleared out a group of monsters that we have no records of at all. I’d been waiting for an excuse to promote you, this qualified. One of the clerks will update your guild symbol downstairs; I’ve already sent word.”

  “…Thank you.” Ranthia managed, still more than a bit surprised at it being such a non-event. Everything in Sardonia had been such a big deal at every step of her career, and yet reaching the apex was just… a few words.

  At least Hexara was happy to celebrate with her.

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  Nozomi Matsuoka.

  Sarah "Neila" Elkins.