At Re-kari's request, we kept his return a secret. His previous life had been turned into a heroic story and he was afraid to ruin it. As he put it himself, a dead Hero was forever great. I couldn't blame him for thinking that way and, while Hestia and Verka initially protested, we ultimately kept the news to ourselves. I could even understand it; it was his new life and the last thing he needed was to live in the shadow of his own legend. Catching up with the latest news took him a while and Rose offered to do it. She used the opportunity to make it an exclusive history lesson and invited Thomas along with some of his friends who wanted to hear it. Of course, catching up was also a painful experience. He learnt about the deaths of Iris and Lilly. About the unending war waged by Arcadia and, finally, about Vestargo, the fact that an untold number of people died in the forest of his rebirth. He took it calmly since he couldn't do anything about it.

  He even reminded me that the Castle of Blood Dungeon wasn't any better. He was right, of course. If that bloodthirsty Dungeon could have done what Vestargo did, he would have certainly industrialised killing Mortals. Fortunately, the Castle of Blood wasn't that clever.

  Using the mana he received from me, Re-kari started building a fairly complex Dungeon. Normally, it would take years to resettle those lands but, for strategic reasons, I decided to accelerate those plans not only because of Re-kari but also because of Lapis. The Ruins of Azuria were almost restored and the Dungeon was once again resembling a proper city. Azuria was also conveniently close to the shore of the Northern Ocean. The rebuilt city would need to be established as a military base, a trade port, and a key city of the Ancient Forest. For Re-kari, he was conveniently in a place that could sustain multiple satellite settlements. Sooner or later, the Empire would need the resources of the Ancient Forest and when that time came, we would be ready.

  That, however, left me with a problem that was fairly hard to solve. My Empire just lost a convenient border in the West. The artificial straight line of the Ancient Forest wasn't a particularly solid border. Not in the slightest. I stared at the map and twiddled my thumbs. There was a fairly solid natural border through there. But extending to it would mean claiming even more land for Arcadia.

  "Why is this fucking river so far?" I finally leaned back and pulled the bridge of my nose.

  "What river?" Tia tilted her head.

  "This one... What is it even called?" I tapped the map and pointed at the biggest river below the Ancient Forest.

  "Honestly, I don't know..." She closed her eyes and shrugged. "Silvermist River."

  "You just made that up." I looked at her with suspicion as she smiled cutely. Her cat-like ears twitched happily.

  "Yes." She admitted shamelessly but I just took a pen and wrote down the name on the map. "I like the sound of it."

  "Now it's on you." I grinned back. "It shall be forever known as the Silvermist River."

  "So, what about it?" She smiled.

  "I'm afraid that this is our safest option for the new Empire border. Or at least the best defensible position out there."

  Tia got a slightly more serious look as she thought about something. Her ears twitched and she hummed to herself.

  "I agree. A river is a good natural border. So what's the problem?"

  "I will have to annex even more land. And my only pretext for it is a desire for a smoother border..."

  "It's not like there is anyone to protest, you know?" She tilted her head. "Just don't tell anyone. We will fortify the border, draw the maps, and patrol the river."

  "Hmmm..." I rubbed my chin. "Maybe I should tell that to NATO members?"

  "Why not? They will accept that anyway."

  "Huh..."

  "Yes, it's that simple." She assured me with a chuckle.

  "Hmmm..." I crossed my arms in front of me, leaned in my chair, and looked at the map again. "Moving our border to Silvermist River is advantageous for many reasons."

  "For one, we would gain direct access to the Western Coast of Aderon, we would basically make the North ours, and we would have an unimaginably vast Empire." She giggled.

  "We will also have Holy Grove within our borders," I added thoughtfully. "I bet that Luna still wishes to gain access to its libraries."

  "I'm more than sure about it..." Tia nodded with a serious expression. "Who knows how much knowledge is sealed there?"

  I nodded. For obvious reasons, Luna couldn't say which memories she had lost or even how many of them were gone.

  "Or what kind of knowledge?" The Nekomi added after a pause with a worried look. "I can imagine that the archives of Kitsunes would contain more than one secret that, potentially, could doom Arcadia."

  "It is possible." I nodded. "That's another reason why I need to keep tabs on that island."

  ???

  Cassmira looked at the vast flatlands of the Shadow Realm with a mix of confusion and an irrationally growing fear. The fear was manageable because she had been warned about it but also she was confident that she was safe on the rational level. However, it was still an odd experience.

  "You look pale, Cass. Are you sure you are fine?" Luna asked her in a casual tone.

  "I think so." Cassmira sighed. "This is probably the first time I'm doing something dangerous even though I know that any danger is mostly hypothetical. It's my very first trip to, essentially, a hostile zone."

  "Well... Yes and no." Luna tilted her head. "We are in the shadow of the Dungeon so this is not exactly a true Shadow Realm. It's like saying you know everything about Dungeons because you lived a year in Avalon."

  "Oh..." She cringed, slightly disappointed, but, recovering, she shrugged, Cassmira looked around. "How is the search going?"

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "Poorly..." Luna sighed. "The most frustrating thing is that both Cahrona and I can sense the existence of a Ley Lines Cardinal point nearby. Ughhh..."

  The Kitsune groaned and while normally Cassmira would be amused, she knew how important it was to restore the natural flow of mana. Luna looked tired and though Cassmira couldn't guess how exactly she was trying to find the node, she assumed it was some kind of mana search skill. After all, Luna was a Sage. One of the most powerful magic users in Arcadia. The Kitsune dropped on a recliner chair and looked as if she wanted to take a nap. The Princess watched the groups of Praetorians and Legionnaires roaming the area in seemingly random directions. However, those were search patterns that, in theory, should be effective. She started wondering why exactly they were looking for ‘whatever a Cardinal point was’ in such a manual manner. There must be some other ways of finding where the Demons hid the node.

  The expedition was much more boring than she expected. Back in Avalon, the perspective of getting to see the fabled Shadow Realm was intriguing. Looking around, the number of soldiers committed to defend the three of them was enough to conquer a country. And yet, after an entire day in the Shadow Realm, Cassmira was bored. Scared, yes, but that was only because of the natural aura of this place. To kill time, Cassmira started considering how she would try to find the nodule, node, ley line, whatever. Her tracking skills were impressive considering that she was a Moonlight Sentinel. The Archer part of the class was quite self-explanatory but the other, a Pathfinder, was truly an incredible class on its own. The master advancement of the Ranger class, a Pathfinder was a master hunter, tracker, and survival specialist. It was kind of cheating that she obtained that class from Theon, but she really liked the description. She also loved shooting a bow so everything worked in her opinion.

  So she had a fairly wide range of skills that could help her potentially find the nodule. However, she wasn't exactly tracking a fleeing enemy or hunting monsters or animals. Yet, there were ways of finding prey that tried to stay hidden. Cassmira tapped her lips and summoned her bow and a whistling arrow. She drew it and aimed over her head. When she fired it, the high-pitched whistling spread unnaturally through the nearby area. If Cassmira hadn't closed her eyes, she would have noted that Luna watched her with curiosity. However, Cassmira was fully focused on her Radar skill. The whistling arrow, infused with her mana, created Sonar waves she could observe on her radar as they spread. She hadn't expected any results, she only did it as proof of concept but, as waves hit everything in the area, they discovered a lot of hidden things.

  Then, they exposed a massive structure hidden just a half kilometre away.

  "I think I found it, Luna." She snapped open her eyes in shock.

  "Excuse me, what?" Luna gave her an incredulous gaze.

  Instead of repeating herself, Cassmira took out a normal arrow this time and aimed at the structure she found. She channelled her mana and infused the arrow with the Arcane Flame. She released the projectile in silence and it smoothly sailed through the air until it crashed into the barrier. Luna watched the sight in absolute disbelief. Cahrona, who was walking towards them, mirrored the stare with the same astonishment as the Kitsune.

  "How?" She demanded, slightly angry.

  "I used sound waves to find the barrier." Cahrona smiled with uncertainty.

  "Just like that? A simple sound wave found what we couldn't with the most complicated searching spells?" Luna groaned and rubbed her face.

  "I read about the Demon's barrier during my private lessons with Scion Stella. Since then, I have been thinking about them. From what I understand, it's a singular barrier with a long list of effects. Because of that, it's nearly impossible to detect with magic because it's designed to warp detection magic and pretend to be an empty space." Cassmira started explaining reluctantly. Not because she was shy about it or didn't want to tell them, but because she knew how embarrassed they were going to be once she finished explaining. "But... This is a single barrier."

  Cahrona furrowed her brow and glanced at Luna who was standing with her arms crossed and a serious expression. Then, she turned red as the realisation dawned upon her. She raised her slender arm and shot a spell that exploded a few dozen metres above her head and created a circular wave that spread around. It hit the barrier and Luna covered her face.

  "Oh, by the Heavens, we are so stupid." The Kitsune finally groaned in shame.

  Cahrona dropped on the nearby chair and started laughing. "Gods, we have so overcomplicated this. The answer to our problem wasn't a more intricate detection spell but just a simple and crude triggering of the defensive response from the Demon's barrier..."

  The Succubus raised her slender arm, shot a similar wide range spell that splashed over the invisible barrier without doing anything except perfectly pin-pointing its location, and chuckled to herself as her hand dropped and she covered her eyes. Her cheeks were as red as Luna's.

  "I feel so stupid right now..." The Kitsune sighed heavily. "This was so obvious!"

  "What would Theon call it? Fucking obvious?" Cahrona giggled.

  "Yeah..." Luna grimly agreed. "Let's just crack that barrier open."

  ???

  A few thousand kilometres away from the Arcadian borders, a man was nonchalantly walking towards another city. A lute was strapped to his back and he had his hand on his neck. He was whistling a cheerful melody and a white goose was waddling at his side.

  "Honk."

  "No! Of course not! He's alive." Jester straightened and hissed in indignation. "How could you accuse me?! I'm not some monster!"

  "Honk." The goose, of course, didn't believe him.

  "What do you mean by that?!"

  "Honk." It was like a shrug.

  "No! I've told you already that he is alive." Jester stopped and placed both his hands on his hips. Then, his expression betrayed that he wasn't certain. "Probably."

  "Honk! Honk." The goose mocked him.

  "No! Don't be silly! I gave him a permit." He raised both his hands into the air and waved them frantically. "Look. Of course, I didn't like the guy but even I must admit that he knew his game."

  "Honk?"

  They resumed their march. That far to the south, the weather was warmer. Spring bloomed everywhere and the air was full of sweet scents.

  "You know what? Fine. I'll explain." Jester continued down the trail for a moment in silence gathering his thoughts. "So as an enemy of the Empire, that guy... Ummm... Gwindor?"

  "Honk." The goose corrected him.

  "Oh, yeah. Gallindor. At first, I planned to let him play a bit and then, bam, a dagger in the dark and we would be done with it. But he surprised me!" Jester grinned. It was a maniacal smile. "That dude was good. Subterfuge, betrayal, torture, cold-blooded murder, you name it. He knew how to enter and vanish, he knew who to kill to make everyone run like a chicken without its head."

  "Honk."

  "By the throne, no! I didn't kill him." Jester rubbed his illusion face and sighed. "I wanted to kill him but decided otherwise. Like I said! Subterfuge, betrayal, torture, cold-blooded murder, he had everything covered! So, you know... Game recognised game, so, while he lost some points for being an enemy of Arcadia, he is still easily S-tier. So I am... Ummm... Let's just say I gave him the idea that he still might be useful. Knowing that dude in the crown of Arcadia, he will use the Elf."

  "Honk!" The goose tilted its head.

  "Well, yes. We won't see him anymore." Jester agreed without a single remorse.

  "Honk!"

  "You see? See? That's the problem. 'It's going to be harder now', that's exactly why I sent him away! Because of him, there was no fun!"

  "Honk." Now it sounded more like laughter.

  "Oh fuck you. Yes. He took all the fun for himself. Happy?"

  "Honk." The goose smugly waddled forward.

  Another city of Ibrevell would soon learn the horrors. But this time, they wouldn't be protected by the vengeance of a betrayed spy.

  I wish you all a great day and as always I wait for your comments.

  A big thanks to who edited the chapter!

  The map of Aderon is on my Discord :)

  https://discord.gg/G6SVrBeDdG