"Commander!"

"Commander!"

"Commander!"

The guards, as if injected with a tonic, hastily called out and respectfully bowed, while the nobles straightened their backs and nodded slowly.

With one of the strongest, if not the strongest, commanders present, their worries quickly evaporated into thin air.

So what if that young man was stronger than the Emperor?

The latter, even after revealing part of his strength, couldn't hold a candle to the man who had just walked into the room, it was a comparison between night and day.

Surely the young man couldn't be that much stronger, could he?

Maelor saw this scene and muttered, "Why is everyone being so respectful to that person? He's just another old man."

Jeffrey heard that and almost fainted. He looked around, trying to see if anyone else had heard those words, but luckily, no one other than his group had heard Maelor.

The elder sighed in relief internally. Afraid that this brat might utter more blasphemies, he scolded under his breath, "Stay quiet and don't cause trouble. This isn't a place where you can say things like that."

Maelor rolled his eyes at the elder, causing the nearby Andretas to chuckle at the situation.

"At ease," Senna said calmly as he stepped closer to the dais.

His gaze briefly stopped on Garran, who was being held like a chicken in Nova's hand, before landing on the latter.

He extended a hand toward a nearby door and said, "Shall we?"

Garran hadn't said anything until now, struggling to breathe, but there was a limit to how much he could endure. Seeing his commander make no move to free him filled him with fury.

The Emperor struggled and hoarsely said, "Senna, free me!"

That was all Garran could manage to let out before Nova's grip on his neck tightened, forcing the Emperor to gasp desperately for air.

Senna, though, didn't move. He couldn't.

Any sudden move now could sentence Garran to death. There was no guarantee he could reach Nova before the latter had time to snap the Emperor's neck.

What made it even harder to act was the sheer disparity in power. The Emperor was a ninth ranked mage, yet this young man had subdued him without causing a single injury. The gap in strength was unimaginable.

So, Senna stood still and waited for a response.

Nova gave a small nod. A faint smile touched his lips, one that starkly contrasted with the hand still wrapped around the Emperor's throat, and he said, "After you."

Senna didn't waste a moment. The three of them quietly left the great hall.

The nobles and representatives of the three kingdoms waited for several tense seconds, half-expecting their return, but it never came.

Once it was certain they were gone, the great hall erupted in chatter.

The day's events were destined to spread across the world in no time.

//////////

"Be obedient and stand to the side. I'm not done with you yet."

Thud.

Nova tossed Garran aside as if discarding trash and sat down. He didn't even spare the Emperor a glance.

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But would an Emperor really follow the instructions of a mere citizen?

Garran pushed himself up and gasped for air. Then he said, his voice dripping with venom. "I'll kill you."

Mana coursed through his ring, making it glow as the energy stored within began to surge.

At that moment, Senna shouted, "Garran, stop it!"

The mana converging inside the ring abruptly halted, as if an invisible hand had seized every last strand, and the small amount that had already entered was quickly siphoned away.

Standing further away from them, Nova saw everything clearly and raised an eyebrow in surprise. 'Another way to use Aura… Interesting.'

Garran turned toward Senna, his face twisted with rage.

Even his own commander was telling him to stop?

"What are you doing, Senna? Did you truly switch sides and join this guy's?"

Hearing that, Senna frowned. When did Garran become so dull? Becoming a rank nine mage must've gone to his head, he can't even see the full picture anymore.

"It's I who should be asking what you're doing." Senna walked toward the Emperor and continued, "Haven't you stopped for even a second to think about how someone so strong could just appear out of nowhere? Do the three kingdoms have what it takes to create such a person? If they had they'd already made an elite army and rioted long ago. And if he were from the Empire, we both would've already known about him. Can't you reach such simple conclusions?"

With a sigh, he shook his head and stared at Garran, his eyes filled with mixed emotions.

"I haven't seen you in a while, but now that I have, I wish I hadn't come here. You're disappointing me."

'Seems like those two have quite a bit of history,' Nova thought as he slouched back in his chair, watching them go through what felt like a dramatic play.

Now it was the Emperor's turn to frown. "What are you trying to say, that there's another faction? But that's impossible. Not only our ancestors, even we have explored every inch of this world and haven't found anything."

"Isn't that why I wanted to talk to him?" Senna's usually calm countenance turned irritated at the Emperor's questioning. If there was anyone in the world who could annoy him this much, it was Garran.

The two had known each other for a very long time, and more often than not, they disagreed on important matters. After one of their final arguments, Senna had relocated the army camp, originally stationed on the outskirts of Spira, moving it a hundred kilometers away from the capital.

Still, even after that, he occasionally visited the capital to check on his granddaughter. That stopped the day she told him she wanted to join the army, and he refused to let her.

Which grandfather would want their daughter to enroll in the army and brave through danger?

Senna, at least, wasn't one of them.

In a fit of frustration, he sent her to oversee the arena in Larmida, hoping that the atmosphere, soaked in blood and violence, would dissuade her from pursuing the path of a soldier.

In his mind, the young girl wouldn't be able to endure such a brutal yet controlled environment and would come to her senses, at which point he would quickly bring her back to the Empire and keep her safe.

But that had backfired on him.

His granddaughter hadn't just refused to come back, she quickly learned to manage the arena on her own and refused to speak to him.

With no reason to leave the army camp, at least in his own eyes, Senna hadn't seen Garran in years.

Clap, clap.

Two crisp claps rang out, catching their attention.

"As much as I'd like to listen to all your problems, I'm in quite a time crunch. Mind if we get this over with?" Nova said.

Senna nodded and gave Garran a sharp look before walking over to take a seat opposite Nova.

Once seated, he asked, "Can Garran come sit with us? I think he should hear this as well."

"If that helps him quiet down, then it's fine," Nova said nonchalantly.

The Emperor heard this and felt a mixture of elation that he could finally sit and listen, and anger at being treated this way. Yet, he had nowhere to vent.

He was the Emperor to countless people, most people, but in this room, probably the only place in the world, he had suddenly become the weakest in the presence of these two, and his status had been adjusted accordingly.

With all three seated, Senna took a few seconds to collect his thoughts before asking the question he wanted answered the most.

"Who are you?"

The two old men, though appearing young, looked at Nova with bated breath.

Never in their wildest imagination did they think that today they would meet someone unknown to them, whose strength surpassed even that of a rank nine mage.

'Curious, eh? If I tell them, Senna has nothing to lose. As for the Emperor… he better not try anything funny. I need him alive for the light element. But since it had come to this,' Nova thought.

He let the question hang in the air for a moment, internally amused at the expressions on their faces.

"Since I arrived here, I've noticed how this world has lost all information about the portals and the system. You probably lost the latter a very long time ago too, which explains the absence of any written knowledge about it."

Senna and Garran frowned. They couldn't grasp the meaning of Nova's words.

"Portals? System? I don't know what those are, but you still haven't answered my question," Senna said. Yet, even as he spoke, the words "this world" that the young man had used made the cogs in his brain start turning rapidly.

Garran could only silently stare but his eyes seemed to echo Senna's questions.

Nova stopped beating around the bush. He smiled and said, "I come from another world, and this is the world I ended up in for my current trial."

It was as if a bomb had gone off in the minds of both the Emperor and the commander.

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