81st of Season of Earth, 56th year of the 32nd imperial era

Blackfist entered Newt's cavern four days after his seclusion began. The former townlord cracked his neck dramatically, and while his aura had weakened, the man stood taller, somehow bigger, even if there was no physical change to his appearance.

"A second realm mageknight." He beamed a smile, the eerie green light making his appearance sinister. "How about we spar a bit?"

Dandelion was at the first stage while Newt was at the ninth. If one followed conventional wisdom, Newt overpowered his challenger by nearly fifty percent, enough to trivialize the fight.

Newt looked around. The cavern was spacious, the chamber wide enough for salamandra's fangs despite their size.

"Here?" he asked, and Blackfist nodded, brandishing his metal staff.

Blackfist motioned Newt to come as soon as he got into position. The taunt was primitive, but Newt had no reason not to attack a weaker opponent. Not until he found himself sprawled on the floor with no idea what had happened.

"Sorry, I went overboard." Blackfist offered Newt a hand, and the youth took it, the world spinning as he got up. "The acceleration of mental processing is very handy."

"What happened?" Newt asked, dazed.

"We sparred, and you helped me a bit."

Newt once more focused on Blackfist, his mana signature reassured his realm was nine layers beneath Newt's, yet the blow felt like a macetail had clubbed him. He took in the man's muscular frame, and while one's physical prowess mattered greatly in the first realm, the effect diminished with the second and disappeared with the third.

"How?"

"Age and training." The former townlord shrugged. "Once you get a couple of decades of fighting under your belt, you will get better. You could also find a master-grade instructor."

Newt nodded. Training for one evening with the bandits had helped him figure out some things, but the fight with Blackfist was useless, since he went down before he could learn anything.

He looked at the man's staff, a very odd choice of a weapon, and regretted the man wasn't a swordmaster, tips from someone as skilled would have proved beneficial.

"What now?" Newt asked.

"Now I sculpt my realm. As for you, you have the instructions on how to set up an alarm spell seal." Newt frowned in confusion at the words, but Blackfist continued. "If you can make it work, you can also use your time more constructively, but even if you fail, practicing scribing should be a better pastime than napping or staring at the ceiling."

Blackfist left the cavern humming, and after several moments of shock, Newt got to work. He pulled out the piece of chalk from his backpack, muttering about how Blackfist had already planned to make him scribe the seals, but didn't tell him in advance.

Still, those complaints vanished as he started drawing.

A practiced seal scribe could draw the most basic alarm in a matter of minutes. Newt took three hours to make it work. But it did work, and that was all that mattered. Newt grinned as he watched the lines glow with mana coursing through them. The problem was, the chalk was visibly flaking. The seal would only hold for several hours, but even that would buy him some time to work on his realm.

Newt closed his eyes and entered his realm. The final raging storm had settled the day prior, leaving behind a wide expanse of empty black sand on a gentle slope. The first task on Newt's list, the most boring and the most labor intensive project, was to create separate streams for lava.

Proper branching helped keep the lava accessible for fire-based seals, but still a relatively minor part of Newt's realm, even if he had nearly a hundred streams by the time he finished his work.

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Newt alternated between scribing the alarm seal, sleeping, and sculpting his realm, entering a rhythm sometimes broken by Magmin's rants.

"Why split lava into so many smaller streams? Aren't you just slowing your growth? Why all the squiggles?"

Newt answered patiently while working, each success seemingly reducing the amount of focus needed for the new seals.

"This looks boring from the ground, but really nice from up high." Magmin complimented Newt's work, or so the youth supposed. "The glowing orange-red against the black backdrop is really striking. Good coloring sense."

Newt had little choice when it came to lava's color, but he liked the color scheme. Black was the color of his home, Salamandras' castle, while the dancing flames symbolized his family's tradition of fire manipulation. Both felt right.

"I'm heading out for Thunderbluff." Blackfist startled Newt out of his meditation. "I should be back in two to three weeks."

Newt opened his eyes and looked at the man. He was at the peak of the second realm and felt a lot more powerful than before. He smiled a happy smile, his bearing casual, and yet Newt sensed a hurricane of violence ready to be unleashed at a moment's notice. Blackfist severed all avenues of attack against him even before they formed in Newt's mind.

Newt nodded, and the man headed out, leaving the youth to contemplate what he had just seen.

He's always ready for a fight. The realization left Newt stunned. He imagined a man like that a jittery bundle of wrecked nerves, but Blackfist was casual, relaxed, and murderous, like some legendary raptor evolution or something.

Is that just experience, as he called it, or is there anything more? Newt recalled his father and their few spars, but he and Blackfist were worlds apart. Blaze the Tenth was powerful, a peak third realm knight, and Newt was younger and weaker the last time they trained, but Blackfist gave off an impression he could fold Newt's father in half even though he was a whole realm beneath him.

I'm just imagining it. I couldn't correctly gauge dad's strength back when I was a kid.

After assuring himself all was well, Newt redrew his alarm seal, then went back to work. In the twenty-five days he had been shaping his realm, he had completed around a third of the available expanse.

At the rate he was going, he would finish around the sixtieth of the season of water, a full moon before the winter's end. His pace seemed somewhat better than what Stronggrow taught as the standard of four to five moons to sculpt the second realm. The third would take much longer, seven to ten years just to sculpt, without taking into account expanding it with manarium crystals, which was the fastest approach while remaining economical, assuming anything about the awakened could be considered economical.

Newt sighed and closed his eyes, terrified by the prospect of efforts and expenses his future labor would require. At least Magmin's realm would supply him large quantities of mana, easing the financial strain on his family.

Twenty-three days later, Newt awoke and shook his vial of glowing fungi, then jumped back when he saw Blackfist sitting on the floor, looking at him.

"I am no longer a townlord of Hailstown. The process was surprisingly simple, as long as you could grease the axle of the imperial cart." Newt hadn't heard the term before, but understood the general meaning.

"You had to bribe them?"

"Pay predetermined fines, taxes, back taxes, and reimburse people for their losses. But basically, it was a combination of atoning by paying blood money and appeasing the imperial faction for abandoning my post."

Newt searched for hints of sarcasm or disgruntlement, but found none.

"What about you?" the officially former townlord asked. "How are you progressing?"

"I'm happy with the advancements I'm making."

Blackfist nodded. "Unassisted progress is acceptably slow up to the fourth realm, but at the fourth realm, you would need around one hundred and twenty years to fully sculpt your realm without auxiliary means."

Newt perked up, listening to what the experienced man had to say. Stronggrow mentioned the time each of the first five realms would take to sculpt, but never mentioned any outside aides.

"Some tonics and spell seals can hasten the process. But both use cartloads of mana. I was planning to test their effect if I scribed them in my realm. They would be useless later, but should they prove effective, I could draw a bunch of them in my realm and sculpt it, then once I am finished with the rest, I can remove them and replace them with the formations beneficial for my strength or growth."

Newt's jaw dropped. The idea was incredible, and Blackfist was just tossing it out like it was nothing.

"Do not look so shocked. You can do a lot with runic seals, but experimenting and getting things right would take ages. Time is everything for the awakened. Days or years wasted on something which may or may not save you some time while shaping your realm is not worth the effort for the most."

Newt's enthusiasm deflated. Blackfist was right. If some magical way of speeding up advancement existed, someone must have already thought of it. The empire had existed for tens of thousands of years, with countless geniuses rising to the peak of the tenth realm.

As the saying went, there's nothing new under the Eternal Light.

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