Flying to the Valkyrie Tower was easy enough.

  Kai could cross half the Lancephil to get to the Ashari desert without even breaking a sweat. Wind, distance, and terrain meant little to him anymore. But doing it while carrying someone was a completely different experience, especially when that someone turned out to be terrified of heights.

  He only realised it once they were already in the air.

  Amyra screamed.

  Not once or twice, but for what felt like the nth time, her voice echoing between mountain ridges as Kai dipped sharply to avoid a jagged outcrop.

  “Why are we that high?!” she yelled, fingers digging into his shoulders.

  Before Kai could answer, something else screamed. A harsh, grating cry ripped through the air behind them.

  Kai glanced back, and sighed.

  Litho vultures.

  A whole pack of them followed after them, and despite his hopes that would leave them alone, they were persistent.

  One of Amyra’s earlier screams have caught their attention. Now nearly two dozen massive winged beasts were in pursuit, their stone-armoured bodies cutting through the wind as they closed in.

  Their wings scraped against the mountain walls as they followed him through the narrow ridge, screeching hungrily.

  “Great,” Kai muttered under his breath.

  They had been flying over a small town just moments ago. That was the only reason he hadn’t engaged immediately. Dropping a litho vulture from the sky could easily turn it into a falling boulder, and he wasn’t about to let that happen over commoners.

  He had given the beasts time to break off.

  They hadn’t.

  Instead, they had decided that today was a fine day to become predators, not realising they would end up being preys.

  Kai counted them quickly. There were twenty-four of them.

  But before he did anything, he calmly said, “Don’t panic. Just hold on.”

  Before Amyra could ask how she was supposed to do that, Kai shifted her weight and swung her over his shoulder. She let out a startled yelp as he twisted midair and came to a dead stop, turning to face the oncoming pack.

  The vultures shrieked, diving straight at him. Two spell circles bloomed into existence around his hands.

  The next second, the sky tore apart.

  [Ice lances] screamed forward like spears of death, followed immediately by crescent-shaped [Wind Blades] that sliced through the air with an unrelenting force. The litho vultures’ rock-plated armour protected their bodies, but Kai wasn’t aiming there.

  He targeted their faces.

  At that distance, at that speed, there was no room to dodge.

  The first vulture’s skull shattered in a spray of blood and stone. Another had its head torn clean off by a [Wind Blade]. One by one, the beasts collided with the spells head-on, bodies folding in midair before crashing into the mountain walls and sliding down in broken heaps.

  Blood painted the cliffside.

  Feathers and fragments of stone rained through the narrow ridge.

  Only after half the pack had been torn apart did the remaining ultures finally understand what they were chasing.

  Their screeches shifted—from hunger to terror.

  The survivors veered sharply, wings beating in frantic retreat as they fled back into the open sky.

  Kai watched them go, then exhaled slowly. He didn’t chase after them.

  They were common beasts in this region, and aside from their rock armour, there was nothing particularly valuable to harvest from them. It wasn’t worth the effort.

  Once the air finally stilled, Kai glanced over his shoulder.

  Amyra had her eyes tightly shut, fingers locked into his shoulders as if letting go would send her plummeting straight into the mountains below.

  He smiled faintly.

  “It’s okay,” he said gently. “They’re gone.”

  She cracked one eye open, then the other, scanning the empty sky before letting out a shaky breath. Instead of loosening her grip, she held on a little tighter.

  “How long to the Ashari Desert?” she asked.

  “About an hour,” Kai replied. “I’m going to increase our speed. Do you want to stop and rest?”

  She hesitated for only a moment before shaking her head. “No. Don’t stop. I’d rather just get there.”

  Kai nodded. “Then hold on.”

  Before she could question that wording, he rose higher into the sky. The wind surged around them, tugging at their clothes and whipping through their hair as he accelerated.

  The world below blurred.

  Stretches of land vanished beneath them in seconds—rivers turning into thin silver lines, towns and villages shrinking into scattered dots. Amyra kept her eyes closed, and honestly, Kai thought that was for the best. At least she wasn’t screaming at every dip and turn.

  For her sake, he avoided sharp manoeuvres, flying straight and steady, letting speed do the work.

  He had flown across the kingdom countless times before, but today, something felt different.

  As the land rushed past beneath him, it finally sank in.

  All of it was his now.

  Every field, every road, every village and city he passed beneath his feet belonged to the kingdom he ruled. The weight of it hadn’t fully settled yet, but the thought was both humbling and exhilarating in equal measure.

  Soon, the colour of the land began to change.

  Green faded into ochre, rivers thinned and disappeared, and the air itself grew warmer as mana thinned. The Ashari Desert stretched out ahead, vast and unforgiving.

  Amyra opened her eyes at last, feeling the shift immediately.

  “The mana…” she murmured.

  “It’s almost non existent here,” Kai said. “Welcome to the desert.”

  They both looked around as the desert stretched endlessly beneath them, golden dunes rolling into the horizon.

  “We’re here,” she said, her voice edged with disbelief. “Are we going straight to the tower?”

  “Yes,” Kai replied. “You can look around. It’s… pretty big.”

  At once, he adjusted his course and flew deeper into the desert.

  Like before, the Valkyrie Tower remained hidden from the world. The Ashari tribes knew of its existence, but Kai had no intention of letting random Mages spot it from miles away and grow curious. Some secrets were safer when they stayed that way.

  As they flew, the Ashari Desert unfolded clearly below them.

  He spotted Rakhaal—the old orc city—now reshaped and partially rebuilt, its streets filled with tribals living together under uneasy peace. Beyond it lay scattered settlements, small desert villages clinging to oases and trade routes.

  Then Kai noticed something new.

  Far off at the edge of the desert stood a small settlement that hadn’t existed before. If he had to guess, it was Adil’s work—a place built for those who chose not to live under the tribal council, and had followed after him.

  Amyra noticed it too, her gaze following his.

  They continued on, the air growing denser with mana as they approached their destination.

  Then it happened.

  A wave of mana swept over their whole body. The empty sky ahead shimmered, and reality folded. Where there had been nothing moments ago, the Valkyrie Tower now stood.

  It all happened so fast that Amyra gasped.

  Smooth black stone formed its body, shimmering faintly under the desert sun, etched with intricate seals and circular sigils that pulsed softly with embedded enchantments. The view of the tower that looked like a rising flame caught his attention again.

  Kai didn’t comment on Amyra’s stunned reaction, because he understood it clearly. He simply descended toward the entrance.

  Two figures were already waiting.

  Kael and Neris—men who had been with him during the Ashari expedition and had stayed behind to oversee the tower. They stood at attention, clearly waiting for him for hours.

  As Kai touched down, both of them bowed deeply.

  Amyra let out a long sigh of relief once Kai landed, her grip finally loosening.

  At the same time, Kael and Neris straightened and spoke in unison, “We welcome you, Your Majesty.”

  Kai blinked once, then let out a small breath of amusement. “It seems you two have already heard the news.”

  “Yes,” Neris replied immediately. “We received drones, and some of the tribals returned after the war ended. They told us everything. We knew you would be victorious, Your Majesty.”

  Kai nodded, a faint smile crossing his face, and gestured toward the tower entrance. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

  They moved as one.

  The interior of the tower was just as Kai remembered it—vast with spacious hallways, mana quietly humming through the walls. But there were differences now. The ground floor was clearly maintained. New tables and benches had been placed along the walls, and a few shelves held simple books and maps on the ground floor.

  Noticing his gaze, Kael spoke up. “Some of the tribals like to come here to sightsee. And a lot of children were curious about Lancephil. We couldn’t let them onto the upper floors, so we added some furniture here.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Kai nodded. “That’s fine.”

  They continued toward the lift. Other than the changes on the ground floor, nothing else had been touched. The structure, the seals, the sealed corridors—it was all exactly as he remembered. And that suited him well. The lower floors were never the reason he had come back.

  As they approached the lift, Kai asked, “Did you register everything in the tower?”

  “We did our best,” Kael replied. “As you instructed. We weren’t able to go through everything—it’s far too massive—but we managed to register over half of the contents in the grand library and several of the adjacent rooms.”

  “Good,” Kai said. “I’ll review it once we reach the library.”

  With that, all of them stepped onto the lift.

  The platform began to rise smoothly. Amyra looked around in fascination, her fingers brushing the walls as mana shimmered faintly beneath the stone. She leaned closer with widened eyes as the floors passed beneath them and the tower carried them upward into its depths.

  Kai smiled at the sight.

  He realised that she had rarely left Veralt. And all of this must have felt like a strange, yet thrilling adventure to her.

  When the lift came to a smooth stop and the doors slid open, all of them stepped out and moved toward the grand library. As Kael moved to open its doors, Amyra drew in a sharp breath at the chamber filled with towering shelves and artifacts lining the walls.

  “It’s… massive.”

  Kai smiled faintly. “It is. We’re going to spend a good amount of time here. I don’t know how long, but you’ll have plenty of fun, assuming you’re not already bored of magical studies.”

  “No,” she said immediately, shaking her head. “I’m not bored at all. It’s really interesting. Magus Elias taught me a few things too.” She glanced around at the towering shelves, eyes practically sparkling. “Can I look around?”

  “Sure,” Kai replied. “Just don’t get lost.”

  Amyra nodded and moved off between the rows, her footsteps soft against the stone as she began exploring the library on her own.

  Kai turned back to the two men. “Show me the registry.”

  Kael and Neris led him to one of the central tables, where two large tomes rested side by side. Kael placed a hand on them and explained, “We tried to register everything into a single volume, but it wasn’t possible.”

  He pointed to the tome on the left. “This one contains the books—titles, classifications, and their exact locations in the library.”

  Then he gestured to the second tome. “And this one is for the artifacts.”

  Kai nodded. “Thank you. Is there anything else I should know?” He paused, then added, “The aethum mine—is it alright?”

  “Yes,” Neris replied. “I check on it from time to time. Everything is normal. We can begin mining whenever you wish, your majesty.”

  Kai didn’t respond immediately.

  The mine had slipped his mind amid everything that had happened since the war. It had been buried under far more urgent concerns. Still, it was something that was better to address sooner rather than later.

  He made a mental note.

  It was time to start extracting those stones again.

  Not only would it help with the growth of the kingdom, Kai knew it could also be used to strengthen relations with the Ashari tribes.

  Rather than transporting hundreds of miners from Lancephil into the desert, it made far more sense to involve the Ashari themselves. It would give them steady work, shared interest, and a reason to stay aligned with the kingdom. He could speak to the tribal heads about it later.

  For now, he looked down at the two massive tomes on the table and said, “You two can go. Amyra and I will be here for a while.”

  Both Kael and Neris nodded at once and quietly took their leave, their footsteps fading down the corridor.

  Once he was alone, Kai sat down, resting his elbows lightly on the table as he gathered his thoughts.

  He needed to be efficient in his reading.

  First would surely be ice-aspected spells. Despite everything he knew, his grasp on higher circle ice magic was shallow compared to his mastery of fire and wind. If Valkyrie had left behind anything for that, it would be here.

  Second, he needed to see if the library had books on soul inscriptions, dead mana, Maleficia or any other similar cults, and anything tied to Malefic itself. If he was going to face an organisation that wanted the world to face an apocalypse, he needed more than what he had.

  With that in mind, Kai opened the registry.

  He quickly found what he was looking for. Ice-aspected spellbooks appeared within the first few sections, clearly catalogued and meticulously organised. Most of them bore the same author’s name.

  Valkyrie.

  She had written them herself.

  Kai paused for a brief moment, fingers brushing over the page. She had probably intended all of this for her son, hoping he would grow into an Ice Mage like her. Fate had twisted that intention, but the knowledge remained.

  And now, it would serve him.

  He moved through the aisles with purpose, pulling book after book from the shelves. In total, there were seven volumes. Some focused on theory—how ice mana behaved, how temperature and mana density interacted. Others detailed proper spell-structure formation, pitfalls in higher-circle casting, and compatibility with wind, water, and even fire aspects.

  The thickest volume was packed with page after page of spell structures alone, layered, complex, and clearly meant for someone who already understood the fundamentals.

  Kai stacked the books on the table and looked at them for a long moment.

  Some of the ice-aspected spellbooks were dense enough that Kai felt a familiar prickle of excitement and unease as he skimmed their contents. Several spell structures were way complicated, layered in ways that demanded patience, precision, and time, exactly the kind of work he had been craving. He set those aside carefully, already planning which one he would begin with.

  After that, he turned his attention to the section on cults.

  There were far more volumes than he had expected.

  As he scanned through the registry and pulled book after book from the shelves, a pattern quickly became clear. Cult activity had never truly stopped in any era. Every few decades, a new belief system would surface, built around desperation, fear, or the promise of forbidden power. The library’s records stretched back centuries, documenting nameless sects, failed doomsday movements, blood rites, star-worshippers, and half-mad prophets whose influence had burned brightly for a few years before collapsing in on itself.

  Yet no matter how deeply he searched, Maleficia’s name never appeared.

  There were parallels, but nothing definitive. No symbol, no doctrine, no lineage he could trace directly back to the dragon or the organisation Regina had served. It was frustrating, but not unexpected. Groups like Maleficia thrived on secrecy. If Valkyrie herself had failed to catalogue them clearly, then it meant they had been careful for a very long time.

  He would find them eventually.

  Moving on, Kai searched for material on soul inscriptions.

  The result was… underwhelming.

  Only three books surfaced, all thin compared to the others he had gathered. One was largely theoretical, another focused on how some souls were more powerful, and the third was written in an overly cautious tone, as if the author feared even committing the knowledge to paper. Kai flipped through a few pages, already sensing that none of them would offer anything groundbreaking.

  Still, he stacked them with the rest.

  Even incomplete knowledge had value. At the very least, they might help refine his understanding, or serve as a reference when he finally began dissecting the soul inscription embedded within Amara’s astral space. For that, however, he already knew his best resource would be his master’s research.

  Dead mana, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

  That section alone could have filled a smaller library.

  Kai found shelves packed with studies on necromancy, corrupted ley lines, dead mana behaviour, and mages who had tried—and often failed—to control dead mana without losing themselves. Some of the books were written clinically, others read like warnings disguised as research.

  A few even described nations that had collapsed because dead mana had been misunderstood or ignored.

  This, at least, would be useful.

  If he wanted to educate the kingdom properly, he would need more than fear and vague explanations. He needed facts, mechanisms, case studies and more than anything—proof.

  Book by book, he carried everything back to the central table, stacking them into neat, growing piles. Ice magic. Cult records. Soul theory. Dead mana. The table slowly disappeared beneath the weight of accumulated knowledge.

  Halfway through, his focus shifted.

  Instead of searching for specifics, Kai began to browse.

  He let his fingers trail down the registry entries, skimming titles that spoke of legendary Mages, forgotten battles, theories on alternate realms, and speculative texts about worlds governed by entirely different magical laws. Some entries made him pause briefly, curiosity tugging at him, before he forced himself to move on.

  But then, his finger stopped on a single line in the registry. He read it once more to be certain what he was reading was true. And it was.

  Personal Diary of Hendricks Klandel, the Legendary Beast Tamer.

  ***

  A/N - You can read 30 chapters (15 Magus Reborn and 15 Dao of money) on my patreon. Annual subscription is now on too.

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