One Last System

"Because royals... are nothing more but a bunch of fucking failures!"

I said this sentence with full knowledge of what it meant, especially when I rubbed it right into the face of the very first royal I met in my life.

Or at least, the very first royal that I met while being aware of his cultivation rank and status.

Yet, rather than flying into a rage, the man leaned his head over his shoulder while throwing me a puzzled look.

"I can sense your spiritual energy, kid," he said with a smirk hanging in the corner of his mouth. At the same time, though, his eyes turned a bit colder than before. He then sighed. "The only reason why you are still alive is that you don't know any better," he said, shaking his head like some sort of immortal who found the idea of killing a rude junior of his to be too much of an abuse of his power.

"The only reason why I'm still alive is that my behavior doesn't match your understanding of my power," I replied, smiling kindly. "The difference between us, though, is that I already know everything about you," I said, pointing my hand at the man.

My words were honest, although not a hundred percent clear.

It was true that I knew where did the power of this royal come from. It was the very force that I had to nearly kill myself to overcome and create my first mana engine.

I could sense both mana and antimana flowing within the man's system. I could only guess how did he manage to keep the two of them from interacting with each other, bringing in the element of uncertainty.

Yet, ultimately, power was just this. A force capable of bringing forth change.

While this man used the force that antimana would repel mana with to produce his own techniques, I was one step further.

Because I managed to effectively merge those two energies, depriving them of positive or negative status. In the simplest term, my pure mana was in a superposition between those two states, giving me access to the full extent of both possible states at once!

"It seems that we won't be able to avoid a fight, after all," the man said.

His decision wasn't caused by my words, that I could tell for sure. Yet, whether it was my confidence, my voice, or even the expression on my face that convinced him?

That one bit I couldn't be so sure about.

"Who the hell are you, guys?" A deep, low voice suddenly interrupted our dick-measuring contest.

'Damn,' I cursed at myself in my thought. 'I was so focused on ridiculing this guy I kinda forgot to be wary of my surroundings,' I thought, turning my eyes towards the source of the somewhat familiar voice.

And then I froze.

"It's you!" I uttered a small cry. My eyes opened up.

The only reason two reasons why I pushed for the fight were that I could first, easily take that royal down, and secondly, I couldn't allow him to keep looking for Pathfinder.

Yet, as the luck would have it, it was Pathfinder that found all three of us.

"Huh?" the middle-aged man shook a little when he turned his eyes to me.

He looked exactly the same as when we parted ways several months in the past. His clothes were unkempt, his face unshaven.

He appeared more like some sort of a hoodlum rather than a potential royal. And yet, it was the same pathfinder that brought me through the borderlands, taught me the basics of what was the harsh reality of this world, and imparted the secrets of arcane weapons to me.

"Artur... was it?" Pathfinder muttered after taking a quick look at my face. Yet, as the seconds passed, his face twisted in a grin of disbelief. "You grew so much, so quickly...?"

It wasn't that he didn't want to believe what was before his eyes. He was the very first person to see a real degree of how quickly I improved, besides Mia of course.

And this kind of growth rate was something he simply couldn't fathom.

"It's great to see you here," the royal turned around, clearly disregarding me as a threat now that the pathfinder has come. "I'm hoping you won't make things hard for me and will simply reaffirm your oath."

The exact meaning of the royal's words eluded me. Despite knowing that there was something in play regarding Pathfinder's real power, I had no means of knowing what it was exactly.

"There is no oath for me to reaffirm," Pathfinder replied, turning his eyes away from my face and towards the royal.

His eyes then twitched a little.

'Did he recognize the guy?' I thought, trying to read as much as I could from the small details of the situation.

The pathfinder then brought his right hand forward only to open it up, showing its inner palm.

At first, it looked as ordinary as one's hand could be with the exception of many calluses coming from all the training he never skimped on. Yet, with a short blast of bright light, a bullet-sized golden bead appeared right in the middle of Pathfinder's palm.

It appeared to be half-submerged into his skin, like some sort of implant.

The pathfinder smiled. Spare for the time when I crafted my first arcane spear, this was the second time I saw it happening.

And then, the golden bead crumbled away, revealing a bloody hole in the man's palm.

"You..." the royal uttered, his eyes turned wide.

He wasn't surprised. He was shocked beyond belief.

"Now, where were we?" Pathfinder asked, leaning his head to the side... with a fucking charming smile on it!

He burst forward. The man cut through the air like a blade.

All I could see was his aura suddenly exploding outwards only to contract... but in a place where he wasn't. As a result, his body was pulled forth at a speed that managed to take even me by a surprise.

I blinked.

And once I opened my eyes again, Pathfiner's fingers coiled around the royal's throat while a devilish grin of extreme satisfaction decorated his face.

"Not so strong without your father's support, ain't ya?"