The gentle afternoon sunlight, like melted honey, slowly flowed across the lawn of the lord’s manor courtyard, driving away the last trace of lingering spring chill.
A damp scent of freshly turned earth floated in the air, mixed with the faint, hopeful sounds from distant fields—the clatter of shovels turning soil, the pounding of hammers rebuilding homes, and the long-lost, lively conversations of the townsfolk.
Days of tireless labor and reconstruction truly seemed to let this land finally exhale a long, difficult breath from a nightmare that had lasted too long.
Within this revived vitality, Helga yawned as she walked slowly through the corridor toward the courtyard.
Her steps were light and unsteady, as if treading on cotton. Her oversized mage’s robe was rumpled and clung to her body, stained with suspicious spots of ink and dust.
Her thick, curly brown hair had utterly betrayed the restraint of her hairband, several rebellious locks jutting up at her crown, while more strands clung messily to her sweaty forehead and the sides of her neck.
She rubbed her aching, swollen eyes hard, trying to temporarily drive away the ancient magic runes still swirling and tangling in her mind.
When Leila barged into the library and dragged her out from the pile of books, Helga had felt a strange sense of having been away from the world for ages.
How many days had it been? She couldn’t remember. Time lost its meaning amid those profound and mysterious magical symbols. Only hunger and fatigue would occasionally tap at her nerves like a tiny hammer, reminding her she was still among the living.
She was starting to understand those ancient magic scholars now. The pursuit of knowledge was indeed such a fascinating thing! Helga felt she had grown stronger; the magical theories from the grimoire had thoroughly armed her.
Magical knowledge—every mage’s dream, the path to truth! And standing on the shoulders of the Magus King, naturally, she could go even further!
The courtyard door was slightly ajar.
She pushed it open and entered.
Sunlight poured down without obstruction, making her squint instinctively. After a brief moment of glare, her vision cleared again.
At the center of the lawn, Eileen Raven—the master of this barony, newly revived, and her dear friend—was sleeping soundly with her head resting on a young girl’s lap.
That girl was Lilisha.
Helga recognized her, that doll-like, exquisitely crafted and taciturn companion. They had fought side by side, even against the King of Shadows. This doll was incredibly strong—so much so that Helga had often felt the urge to take her apart and study her.
At this moment, Lilisha was wearing a black-and-white maid dress, sitting with a posture as upright as a temple statue.
Her eyes were lowered, and her long brown hair cascaded like a waterfall, part of it softly covering Eileen’s shoulder.
One of her hands hovered above Eileen’s silver-white hair with absolute steadiness, not trembling in the slightest, as if she would not allow even a stray breeze to disturb her master’s rest.
Eileen was sleeping deeply.
Sunlight danced on her overly pale skin, outlining the dark, heavy shadows under her eyes that could not be ignored.
The feverish excitement she had shown a few days ago while inspecting the territory had long since faded, leaving behind only deep exhaustion etched between her brows and on her tightly pressed, bloodless lips.
Her breathing was shallow and long, her chest rising and falling gently with each breath, as she set aside all the burdens of “lord” and “saint,” revealing a rare, almost fragile tranquility.
This scene had a strange kind of magic, pinning Helga’s feet to the spot, making her heart skip a beat for no apparent reason.
Fatigue, silence, and a faint, indescribable… sense of belonging? She shook her head, trying to dispel the untimely daze.
Yet in that instant, as her gaze swept over Eileen’s peaceful sleeping face, over the halo of silver hair and sunlight, a much stronger, utterly unfamiliar tremor seized her.
The Holy Magus King.
That legendary figure—forever solemn in the grimoire’s portraits, the one who created the miracle of Endymion City.
A faint, elusive outline, a presence of absolute authority and unfathomable calm, overlapped for a split second with the exhausted form of the sleeping girl before her!
It was as if an invisible crown flickered and vanished in the sunlit halo.
Helga squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them again.
An illusion. It had to be from staring at those damned ancient runes for too long—her mind was playing tricks on her!
Eileen was just Eileen, a somewhat scatterbrained, mischievous, yet unexpectedly resilient young lady.
She had inherited the Magus King’s knowledge, sure! But could knowledge really transfer temperament too? The thought was so absurd, Helga almost laughed.
As she wavered, Lilisha looked up. Those glass-like heterochromatic eyes locked precisely onto the intruder’s position.
The doll girl raised her forefinger to her perfectly shaped lips.
No words were needed; a crystal-clear command was delivered through her gaze: Silence.
Helga instinctively held her breath. All her wild thoughts were instantly suppressed, leaving only a subtle embarrassment and a deeper… sense of guilt.
She tiptoed over to a leafy oak tree, leaned against the rough trunk, and tried to shrink into the shade—yet her gaze kept drifting back in that direction.
Time flowed in silence.
Only the rustle of wind through new leaves and the faint sounds of the territory’s revival far off broke the stillness.
No one knew how long had passed before Eileen’s long lashes fluttered, and she murmured something barely audible.
She slowly opened her eyes, her gaze at first heavy with sleep and confusion, taking a while to focus on Lilisha’s calm face above and the dappled sky beyond the branches.
The instant her awareness returned, that fragile tranquility receded like the tide.
Eileen almost immediately furrowed her brows, rubbing her forehead with a hand, her voice hoarse with sleep and a trace of barely perceptible annoyance: “Lilisha… Why didn’t you wake me if someone came?” There wasn’t much real reproach in her tone—more like a habitual complaint at being caught in an unguarded moment.
She propped herself up on Lilisha’s steady arm and sat up.
Her silver-white hair slid messily off her shoulders. Her gaze quickly found the figure trying hard to minimize her presence in the shade.
“H-Helga?” Eileen recognized her, raising her brows even higher, her brief irritation replaced by helpless amusement. “Good grief… Did you just crawl out of some ruin?”
Helga’s face turned beet red in an instant, burning hot.
She awkwardly tugged at the wrinkled hem of her robe, trying to smooth out the stubborn tufts of hair—of course, it was futile.
“E-Eileen! That’s not important, mages always look like this when they’re doing research! Knowledge is just such a captivating little fairy!”
She protested with tiny fists, but her flushed cheeks betrayed her.
Helga cleared her throat, striving to make her voice sound less guilty and disheveled, even adding a touch of deliberate playfulness, “So, Lady Eileen, what instructions do you have for me, since Miss Leila called me over?”
She tried to hide her embarrassment behind the familiar comfort of magic talk. “Do you need my magic to drive out monsters, or to wipe out bandits? Just say the word!”
Eileen looked at her feigned composure, her hands and feet at a loss, and couldn’t help but smile.
The crushing pressure of endless paperwork and the frustration from clashing ideals seemed to ease a little in the face of this clumsy scene.
Leaning on Lilisha’s arm, Eileen stood up, straightened her slightly creased skirt, cleared her throat, and put on her best “dignified lord” face.
“Ahem, don’t be cheeky.” Eileen tried to suppress her smile, drawing a roll of sturdy parchment from the thick bundle Lilisha handed her. “I have serious business for you. Come take a look at this.”
Helga, feeling as if she’d received a royal pardon, hurried over.
Curiosity quickly replaced embarrassment.
Eileen deftly untied the string and, with a flick of her wrist, unfurled the entire blueprint before Helga with a crisp “whoosh.”
Afternoon sunlight poured unreservedly over the surface of the blueprint.
At a glance, all Helga’s embarrassment, wild thoughts, and even days of accumulated fatigue were instantly shattered by a powerful shock!
She gasped, pupils contracting sharply, as if her soul were being drawn into the intricate lines and symbols on the blueprint.
This wasn’t an ordinary magic array.
It was enormous, precise, and… utterly beyond imagination!
The core area of the blueprint clearly outlined the main villages and towns of the barony.
But what truly stunned her was the three-dimensional network overlaying it, formed by countless nested and interlocking geometric shapes.
Brilliant mana circuits, drawn in bright silver mithril dust, crisscrossed like the veins of the land, tightly connecting every village and every planned new settlement.
Countless tiny nodes dotted the network like stars, annotated with dense ancient magus runes—Helga could barely recognize a few.
The most revolutionary design lay in those connecting “lines.”
They weren’t the traditional single, thick main trunks radiating from a central mana source. Instead, they were countless thinner, interlinked, and mutually supporting secondary circuits! These circuits cleverly avoided the fatal flaw of distance attenuation, using ingenious energy diversion, buffering, and inter-node support mechanisms to ensure that, no matter how far from the center, mana transmission efficiency remained nearly constant!
This completely overturned the current design philosophy of large-scale energy-gathering arrays!
The “Radiant Wall” magic array the royal capital was so proud of looked like a child’s doodle in the sand compared to this!
“This… this is…” Helga’s voice was hoarse, her fingers trembling uncontrollably as she reached for the exquisite parallel circuits on the blueprint, afraid her dirty hands would defile this miraculous plan. “A foundation magic array? No… that’s impossible… even the capital’s ‘Radiant Wall’ doesn’t have anything like this…”
“Nothing’s impossible.” Eileen’s voice sounded beside her ear, calm and matter-of-fact, as if stating something obvious. “This was inspired by the knowledge left by the Magus King. Endymion City… that legendary eternal city—its foundation was a cyclical network built from countless such ‘parallel units.’”
That wasn’t the point! Helga was shaken—she knew exactly what set this magic array apart! Its mana transmission efficiency was almost unaffected by distance!
“Distance? In the face of a perfect closed energy loop, it’s never a problem.” She paused, her voice tinged with genuine, almost reverent admiration. “Who would have thought that after a thousand years, magical technology has actually regressed? If only the Holy Magus King had unified the continent, perhaps things would be different.”
Perhaps influenced by the Magus King’s inherited memories, Eileen unconsciously spoke from what most people would call the “villain’s” perspective.
Helga suddenly looked up at Eileen.
Sunlight outlined Eileen’s profile, and deep in her golden eyes, it was as if a galaxy swirled, reflecting the intricate lines of the blueprint.
In that instant, the image of the weary girl in the courtyard blurred once more, and the shadow of the Magus King—deep as the sea, seated high upon the throne—flashed again in Helga’s mind.
“So,” Eileen drew her gaze from the blueprint and fixed it on Helga’s still-stunned face, her tone resolute, “I want you to help me lay these ‘parallel units’ beneath every village in our territory! I want every one of our people to have clean magical stoves, stable lights at night, and warm fireplaces in winter—just like… just like the respectable citizens of the capital.”