Percival stood before Lucas with his menacing aura making it hard to breath. Despite only being a golem, it seemed the monster lord kept its presence and a part of its consciousness. Lucas was certain that it was only a part since if it kept whole, he’d be dead by now.

  “How can you talk?” Lucas asked as he was getting up. He was about to document the progress of his work, but he noticed that his voice recorder was destroyed.

  “Magic,” Percival replied flatly.

  Lucas just gave him a flat look. “... now what?”

  Lucas never considered what he was going to do after creating Percival’s golem. He didn’t even know if he should publicize his success since there’s an entire evil organization after Percival’s core.

  “Now, we conquer the world!” Percival declared, while Lucas just gave him a flat look in return. “Can’t a dead monster have some fun?”

  “I’m more amazed at the fact you kept your consciousness,” Lucas replied.

  Percival laughed and Lucas watched as a purple wisp came out of Percival’s chest. “It is not what it seems human,” the wisp talked.

  Lucas turned back to the golem and noticed that it was still functional but it now lacked the menacing presence of the monster lord. Lucas held out his hand and watched as the golem turned into a marble.

  “Wait...”

  “Do not worry, the golem retains my power even without me,” the wisp stated. “I am merely the ego that is now free of that wretched form.”

  “Are you...”

  “If you’re asking if I retain my power in this form, then no,” the wisp revealed. “I am merely an ego with no power, but I can do this,” the wisp went into the infantry golem and began to move. “I would appreciate it if you would create me a body with my preferences,” the wisp stated.

  “... I am very confused.”

  --------------

  Septimus shattered a marble pillar with a swing of his hand. “Three executives and one senior executive has died, yet there are no leads on the missing core!”

  “Calm yourself Septimus,” Octavia spoke. “They are replaceable. It will all be worth it once we retrieve the monster lord’s core.”

  “We have been searching for nearly a year!” Septimus roared as his shadowy visage lashed out. “Now the government is aware of our search for it!”

  “It does not matter if they are aware,” Octavia replied. “They will still be powerless once we obtain it.”

  “I no longer trust Quadratus with this task,” Septimus stated. “I will send my own hounds.”

  “Be sure that this does not cause conflict between our ranks.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “I don’t know this was possible...” Lucas muttered as Percival’s ego floated above his desk. “Is this why Viper runner is after you?”

  “I don’t know who they are, but it is likely,” Percival replied. “Undead monster lords often retain the ego of their previous life. A benefit of the stage we reached.”

  “Were you a mage?” Lucas asked.

  The floating purple cloud shook. “No. I was a sword master.”

  Lucas looked at the cloud in confusion.

  The cloud sighed. “Don’t be ignorant boy. Mana isn’t the only power in this world,” Percival revealed. “Elves use spirit power, Dark magicians use demonic energy, priest use divine power, and martial artists use aura,” Percival listed. “And unlike mana that requires a certain degree of talent for it. Aura can be learned by everyone.”

  “If it is so great, why doesn’t everyone know about it,” Lucas questioned.

  “The ignorance of a whole society is always the actions of its leader,” Percival stated.

  Lucas crossed his arms. “Are you saying our emperor is the cause?”

  The Vulcan empire, led by Arthur Vulcan III, is a powerful empire that encompassed a whole continent. The empire was divided into nine sectors. Central, the sector at the center of the empire and the place where the castle of emperor resides. The four main sectors surrounding Central. The northern sector, a frozen tundra where the whole sector is a mountain range covered in snow. The southern sector, a vast dessert with countless unexplored ruins. The western sector, a collection of thousands of islands and a deep sea. The eastern sector, a rich plain with wide forests and a fertile land.

  The remaining four sub-sectors are a combination of the main sectors that surrounded them. As an example, the sector where Lucas lived in, the south eastern sector was a combination of a dessert and forests.

  Every sector except for Central has a minister directly reporting to the emperor.

  “If the shoe fits,” Percival said. “It is true that mana is the strongest form of harnessed power, but each one has their own advantages.”

  “Which one do you think would fit me the most?” Lucas asked, hopeful that even if he couldn’t be a mage, he could strive to grow somewhere else.

  “Seeing as you have no elven bloodline, no religion, and no hidden malice. Aura would be your only choice,” Percival answered.

  “Wait,” Lucas remembered the market incident. “Something happened to me back then. I summoned a golem like I was possessed.”

  “That was me,” Percival revealed. “I possessed your body. I used the opportunity when you touched my core with your bloody hand to form a pact and what little mana your body had, that’s how I’m here talking to you.”

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Then during...”

  “The domain inside your head?” Percival interrupted. “That wasn’t me. I am Percival the sword master, that was Percival the monster lord.”

  “I’ll call your Perci to avoid confusion,” Lucas responded.

  “Fine,” Perci grumbled.

  Lucas stared for a while as nothing but silence remained in his office. “What now?”

  “Carry on with your life,” Perci before floating away.

  Lucas raised an eyebrow. “Okay...”

  As he was told, Lucas carried on with his life. He continued with his work, fulfilling his weekly quota and working on commissions for his golems.

  But the biggest change was in his cultivation training. With Perci’s guidance, Lucas stopped his training with mana cultivation, and switched to aura cultivation. Perci assured him that the training would still give him access his to spatial core, the true name for a mana pocket, so Lucas didn’t hesitate to switch.

  However, even if Lucas started training to be an aura user, that didn’t mean that he would stop studying magic. Artifacts and runes still used mana, so it was still an essential part of his life that he couldn’t abandon.

  And unlike mana, after a month, Lucas formed an aura circle.

  “Hell yeah!” Lucas exclaimed as he panted in exhaustion after a harsh training session.

  “Well done human,” Perci floated beside him.

  “Thanks.”

  “Now, we mu-” Perci was interrupted by Lucas’s phone ringing.

  Lucas ran to the bench where his bag was. “Hold on.”

  Checking the caller ID, Lucas saw that it was his mom calling him. Answering the call, he waited for his mom to speak.

  “Hello Lucas?”

  “Yeah mom?”

  “I was wondering if you could go with Rose to her school trip,” his mom said. “My back has been acting up recently, so I couldn’t go.”

  “Is Rose alright with me?”

  “Yes. She agreed to it since she really wanted to go.”

  “Alright. I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you sweety,” his mother said. “Keep an eye on her, alright?”

  “Sure will. Take care of yourself mom.”

  The call ended and Lucas grabbed his bag to leave the gym. If he remembered correctly, Rose’s school trip was in the afternoon, three hours from now. Lucas still had time to shower and put on something presentable before heading to her school.

  “I’ll continue my training when I get back,” Lucas told Perci as he headed to the workshop to shower.

  Perci just floated where Lucas left him.

  Floral magic academy, a prestigious all female school that nourishes future mages. Ensuring that not only are they are powerful, but beautiful and elegant while doing it as well.

  Rose Atican was accepted to this university after getting a 61% on her mana conductivity and 51 on her mana capacity. Her mother was very happy for her, but they kept this news to themselves since her mother wanted to spare her brother’s feelings.

  Rose didn’t object though since her mother made it up to her by promising to take her shopping and buying everything she wanted. And a few months ago, she fulfilled that promise. She even bought her one of the newest golem lines in the market. Only for Rose to find out that all the money came from her brother’s success.

  She didn’t particularly hate him, but that didn’t mean she liked him either.

  “Is your mother here yet Rose?” her friend, Hanna asked her as she approached with a slightly older and beautiful woman behind her.

  The woman had snow-white hair and ice-blue eyes. She was wearing a blue track suit that hid her smooth white skin. Despite her clear attempt to hide her face with a baseball cap.

  Rose immediately recognized her.

  “You’re Merida Winterbelle.”

  Merida sighed. “Busted already?” she spoke with a very noticeable northern accent.

  Hanna chuckled. “She is my cousin.”

  Hanna, who looked plain in comparison to Merida with her brown hair and eyes, was a distant branch family of the Winterbelle family.

  “Why are you here?” Rose asked in curiosity.

  The Winterbelle family was a great family that lived in the Northern sector, so Merida was a long way from home. And Rose found it hard to believe she was purely here to visit Hanna, who seemed to be a very distant branch family.

  “The family has business here, so I came along,” Merida replied. “It just so happened that Hanna here needed a guardian to accompany her.”

  “Wow!” Rose was awestruck meeting one of the rising starts in the empire.

  “What about you Rose? Hasn’t your mother arrived yet?” Hanna asked.

  “It’s not my mother coming,” Rose grumbled as the world decided to have perfect timing.

  “Rose!” her brother called out to her.

  His long black hair was tied into a neat ponytail. Lucas was wearing a three-piece suit with a white coat along with a gray vest and slacks. He looked quite presentable, but out of place since they were going on a school trip to a magical creature reserve.

  All the students were wearing their tracksuits, even the guardians with them were wearing sportswear.

  “Trying to impress the ladies?” Merida spoke upon seeing Lucas.

  “O-Oh,” he bowed awkwardly. “Not exactly. This was the only spare clothes I had at the office.”

  Rose sighed. “This is Lucas, my.... older brother.”

  Hanna bowed. “I’m Hanna Blanch and this is my cousin Merida.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Lucas bowed again.

  Wanting to change the topic, Rose began pulling her brother to the buses. “Let's go get some seats!”

  As the adopted siblings were walking away, Merida eyed Lucas with interest.

  As the bus was filling up, Lucas couldn’t help but feel awkward. The lay out of the bus was that each row had two seats with two rows facing each other with a foldable table attached to the wall between them.

  Lucas was seated beside his sister with Merida sitting across him, giving him no choice but to stare at her. He was also an aisle seat, so he couldn’t stare out the window to avoid looking at her.

  “Quite the predicament, isn’t it?” Merida mentioned, seemingly noticing his situation.

  “Y-yeah,” Lucas awkwardly replied.

  “What kind of work do you do Mr. Atican?” Hanna asked.

  “I work at Waywood as an artifact repairman,” Lucas answered.

  That seemed to catch Merida’s interest even more. “Have you met Iris then?” Merida asked. “They’re a very hard person to meet. Waywood won’t even reveal anything about Iris. Not even their gender.”

  “Maybe Iris is a woman. Sounds like a woman’s name,” Hanna commented.

  Merida shook her head. “Iris isn’t their name.”

  “It’s the name of the flower they use on their logo,” Rose added.

  It wasn’t a surprised to Lucas that Rose knew about the origin of his logo since she was aware about it being their mother’s favorite flower. But she didn’t know he was Iris, nor about his golems. All she knew was that Lucas was a well-paid repairman in a big company.

  “I’ve never met him before,” Lucas answered.

  “Him?” Merida raised an eyebrow. “So Iris is a man.”

  Lucas already didn’t like where this was going.

  After a while, the bus finally drove off. The bus was filled with chatter among students and their guardians. And with the majority of them being women, Lucas had to close his eyes to avoid being accused of staring.

  “Why are you closing your eyes?” Rose asked in annoyance.

  “Preserving my freedom,” Lucas replied, making Merida and Hanna chuckle.

  “You don’t need to go that fa-” Merida suddenly stopped what she was saying and stood up.

  A moment later, the bus suddenly stopped. “Is something wrong?” Hanna asked.

  “Stay here,” Merida said as she rushed off the bus.

  Looking out the window, Lucas saw a massive portal in middle of the road. “A dimensional rift...” Lucas muttered.

  Dimensional rifts were gateways to other worlds, allowing whatever was on other side to pass through.

  In most cases, invaders.

  Lucas watched as humanoid creatures with snake heads came through the rift. They wore sophisticated white armor and carried metal scepters with green orbs on them. Tank like vehicles also followed behind them, further implying that they didn’t come in peace.