It had been a long time since Blank last set foot in the capital.

The place held many... memories for the old man. He just didn’t know whether to call those many memories warm ones because, in all sincerity, many weren’t.

But... although he wasn’t fond of many of the memories, he still had to admit he liked the place.

Right then, Blank’s eyes snapped open.

’Yeah, right.’

His lips curled into an icy smile, narrowed red eyes focusing ahead as the sound of scattering wind assaulted his ears and fluttered his black bangs around the eye slits of his mask.

Blank’s ten converged circles — a delicate interweaving that consisted of a large red thread wrapped around by tinier threads of blue, yellow and green — spun as he increased the speed of his gliding above the world.

The pure mana in the atmosphere around him was corrupted as he wrapped air mana, which buzzed from his converged circle, around himself. He wore air mana like a coat. A coat that possessed invisible wings.

And with those wings, he soared above the atmosphere, heading straight toward the direction of the Imperial Palace.

As Blank soared through the skies, he could see countless clouds below.

The clouds were tinged golden, their previous colorless states diluted by the beautiful reflections of the setting sun.

The old man chuckled as he felt the heavy air brush against the skin of his neck.

Flying.

He was flying.

He loved the feeling of flight. The way the air blew against his skin, the way the atmosphere melted away the problems in his heart, the way he felt... free.

Once again, he closed his eyes.

Flying was a feat that wasn’t impossible for Air Mages above the 8th-circle. But then again, how many Air Mages were above the 8th-circle?

They weren’t much. And if they were, they wouldn’t really be mages, mostly ascenders like him that still roamed around Cryst. Although he made sure to kick out almost every ascender from Cryst about fifteen years ago. But fifteen years was a long time. And he’d been in the Eastern Continent for about ten years. There was no telling how many ascenders would’ve grown in that amount of time.

He sighed.

There was no need to be in a frenzy. He could feel the moment any soul attempted convergence and elevation. The threads of their beings oftentimes cut off with the planet Cryst, so their fates weren’t tied to the world.

It meant they could do anything in this world if they gathered enough faith. They could do anything to this world.

And Blank had been acting as the shield of Cryst, protecting the world from harm. Although he didn’t really do it out of some lustrous sense of heroism, no. He did it because he still had something to do in this world before he ascended.

He needed to complete his elementless magic, an art he was learning to harness from the friends of the ancient elementless mages. From the Elves.

Blank had begun learning it about thirty years ago, when he was still a graduate of the Imperial Academy. Back then, he had fought an Imperial Prince and maimed him, so he ran away, evading the Emperor’s forces.

The ship he smuggled himself onto was supposed to take him straight to the Northern Continent. To the Empire of Kafer, where the Emperor and First Great Lance, Delarus, was a man he’d already befriended during an expedition to the continent, when he still thought Delarus was the one who poisoned his Master, Kairo, during their moon cleaving battle for the title of First Great Lance.

Blank’s battle with the man was heated, and, as a 7th-circle mage who could tap into Core Bearer’s Force, he unleashed fury on the Emperor of Kafer. But he was beaten.

Blank winced.

"Nasty battle, it was," he whispered.

He was still a youth. One who’d ended the Great Orcan War before his physical body turned 14. He had every right to be arrogant and believe he could win. All his opponents in Jalozi had been mere breeze to him.

But he was humbled that day. And after the fury of their battle had subsided, Blank... or Charles, had been made to know that Delarus wasn’t the one who poisoned Kairo.

That discovery led to a lot of changes in the Kafer Empire. The Nobles Delarus thought he could trust had betrayed him, all to make him their champion and First Great Lance.

When Delarus discovered that Kairo was poisoned by a deadly poison that ate at him even when he ran away from the Northern Continent to the Southern and stayed there for years, eventually dying because of the poison, Delarus went mad. And he slaughtered all his nobles.

Blank thought that was the moment they became friends. And their friendship only deepened when Blank discovered that Delarus was from the same place as him. The same world he was desperately trying to go back to.

He was from Earth.

But upon talking with the man, Blank discovered that Delarus wasn’t sent here the same way he was. Delarus was...

Blank shook his head rapidly.

"That’s enough of those damned memories."

Anyway, as Blank ran away from the forces of Jolari, the Immortal Emperor of Jalozi, the Ship he fled with that was meant to reach Kafer broke down in the middle of a storm. And it crashed.

Blank fainted.

And when he woke up, he found himself on an island in Elyrus, the Ancient Equator.

The Elves had found his body on the shores of their border and had taken him captive.

That was, Blank thought, around the time when he stopped traveling with Ships. And his lucky encounter with those Elves changed the trajectory of his fate.

His desperate hope gained weight when he discovered the existence of elementless magic from them. A magic that could control pure mana itself, form spells with it, and control the laws of the world and potentially, the universe. He discovered its secrets, its history, and what happened to the ancient ones who’d practiced it. He discovered a way back to Earth. Back to his family.

Charles sighed.

"I shouldn’t have traveled to the Eastern Continent. It’s because of that bastard Delarus, now my advancement in the tiers of elementless magic is halted," he whispered. Then frowned. "I need to head to Elyrus soon. To advance, and to investigate that..."

Blank had begun to emerge from above the clouds. And as he did so, he cast an air spell without chanting.

Windcloak. He hid his presence.

He saw a large building, far from the bustling of the capital. High up in a low hill, away from the districts of noble housing and the distant smell of ale. The building closely resembled a Castle.

It was the Imperial Building that housed the brat, Kelmont.

Blank grinned under his mask.

’Should I sneak up on him?’

That question wasn’t much of a question, really. There was no way he would miss the chance of shaking the kid.

Some may argue that Blank was getting too old for this behavior. And truly, he was old, if one counted the forty-something years he lived on Earth before getting hit by that damn truck. But he felt that was unfair.

But then again, he had lived for a good fifty-five years on Cryst. And that fact always scared him... what if his wife Marcelle and his children were already dead and buried before he found his way back home?

Could Elementless Magic bend time as it would space?

He put all these thoughts at the back of his mind, and wore his mischievous grin as he landed on the window of Kelmont’s chamber.

Wiping the window, he took a peek. And sure enough, he found Kelmont sitting alone on his bed and glancing above at the chandelier of his room, a depressed vibe permeating from him.

’Tsk.’

What did that kid know about depression? Charles had known real depression throughout his first twenty years after reincarnating in this world.

He began to wonder why the hell he even chose Kelmont to rule Jalozi again?

He scratched his head.

Ah, yes. He didn’t care at the time and just chose at random. He needed a pawn to control the Empire. But he hadn’t really made good use of his pawn since the time he integrated Kelmont into the seat after killing Jolari and Lucifer, the fallen angel who gave Jolari his immortality.

Well, that was what he was here to do.

He’d already gone through Ananca on his way from the Eastern Continent, and through his moles in the Imperial-whatever-they called it, he’d convinced the Emperor there to put the war to a halt.

Now he was here to tell Kelmont the same.

And also, there was this resonance Charles felt about a month ago. It felt like a convergence and elevation, but it wasn’t really. It was more like a transcendental being visited this world.

’Eh.’

Blank shook it off, knocking at the window.

Kelmont, inside, looked startled as he saw Blank’s mask. His eyes widened.

’Hmm, there was that 5th-circle kid I traveled with. He was weird, possessing the bearing and mana reserves of a 9th-circle. Even my eyes couldn’t peer deeper into him.’

Blank smiled, waving to the startled Kelmont.

’What was his name again?’

"Open up!"

Kelmont rushed to the window and opened it.

"S–sir!"

’Aha!’

Charles smiled underneath his mask as he entered the room. And the first thing he asked the still shocked Kelmont was:

"Have you ever heard of a young man named Maxwell?"