Waking close to midday, Michael took a break from his usual training and common classes and visited his parents. After throwing on something presentable-casual but neat-he called ahead. They were immediately overjoyed at the idea that he was finally taking a day off his “job” to see them.

  The hour-long drive gave him too much time to think. About how different everything felt now about the plans he’d already set in motion-and, for the first time, whether they were moving faster than he was ready for.

  When he pulled into the driveway, both his parents were already outside waiting.

  “Oh my God… look at you.” His mother wrapped him in a tight hug, hands pressing into his back as if checking he was really there. “You’ve lost so much weight. Are you eating enough? You’re not overdoing it, are you?”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” he said with a small laugh.

  His dad stepped in next, giving his hair a rough tousle. “You pick Muay Thai or Jujitsu back up? You look better than you did before college.”

  “Not exactly,” Michael said. “But I have been training one-on-one with a professional.”

  His mother frowned immediately. “Training for what?” she asked, eyes narrowing just a little. “You’re not getting into anything dangerous, are you?”

  His dad chuckled. “Let the kid breathe.”

  “Inside,” his mom said quickly, already ushering him toward the door. “Before lunch gets cold, and before you tell us anything that’s going to make me worry more than I already am.”

  Michael was halfway through the best meal he’d had in weeks, still a little shocked his mom had managed it with barely two hours’ notice.

  “So,” his dad said casually, “how’s the job going? I know you mentioned the nondisclosure stuff is strict, but how do you feel about it so far?”

  “It’s going really well,” Michael said. “Maybe… too well.”

  His mom looked up immediately. “What does that mean?”

  “They want to promote me. To a management position.”

  His dad blinked. “That sounds like a good problem to have.”

  Michael hesitated, staring down at his now-empty plate as he searched for the right words. “It’s just… fast. I’ve been acting like I know what I’m doing. Like nothing gets to me. And somehow, I keep backing it up.”

  He took a breath.

  “But if I step into that role, it’s not just me anymore. If I mess up, people get hurt. Their jobs, their livelihoods-families, even. That kind of responsibility doesn’t undo itself.”

  The table went quiet.

  His mother reached for his arm. “Michael… you don’t have to say yes. You know that, right?”

  “I know,” he said. “But there’s more. The manager I’d be replacing? There’s corruption-real nasty stuff. If I move forward, I’d be the one who has to confront it, and whatever happens next won’t be small. It’ll change that manager’s life permanently.”

  His mom was the first to speak, her voice softer now. “Michael… sweetheart, have you ever heard of impostor syndrome?”

  He looked up.

  “It’s when capable people convince themselves they don’t belong where they are,” she said. “You keep saying you’re ‘acting’ like you know what you’re doing, but people don’t hand out promotions by accident. Someone noticed. Multiple someones, probably.” She squeezed his hand. “Just because it feels fast doesn’t mean it isn’t earned.”

  That somehow made him feel worse, as he has zero experience in this; he would be brute-forcing it. Well, anything is better than having those two run the place.

  His dad nodded. “And as for the corruption,” he added calmly, “that’s not on you. If someone’s been cutting corners or hurting people to get ahead, the consequences aren’t something you’re causing. You’d just be the one bringing justice.”

  His mom frowned. “You’re not ruining his life,” she said firmly. “He made those choices long before you walked into the picture.”

  “Actions have weight,” his dad said. “You reap what you sow. If he planted something rotten, it was going to surface eventually, whether it was you or someone else.”

  Michael swallowed, his throat suddenly tight. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to hear that until now.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. His voice wavered despite his efforts to steady it. “Both of you. For always believing in me, even when I don’t.”

  His mom pulled him into a hug without hesitation. “That’s our job,” she murmured. “You never have to earn that.”

  He nodded against her shoulder, blinking hard before pulling back. “I know. But… when things settle. When I’m stable in this position,” he hesitated, then met their eyes, “I’m going to fix things for you. The debt, the stress, everything. I owe you that. I owe you more than that.”

  His dad shook his head immediately. “You don’t owe us anything, son. We didn’t raise you expecting a payout.”

  His mom nodded, eyes glossy. “Seeing you safe and happy is enough.”

  Michael managed a small, shaky smile. “I know. And I’m grateful for that.” He took a breath. “But I’m still going to do it. Not because I have to, but because I want to. You gave me everything you had. I’m going to give back. And then some.”

  Neither of them argued after that. His mom just hugged him again, tighter this time, and his dad rested a hand on his shoulder, pride written all over his face.

  That night, after too many hugs and repeated reminders to call more often, Michael drove home in silence. The apartment felt quieter than usual when he stepped inside. This was basically a place where he just slept. He sat on the edge of his bed for a long moment, replaying his parents’ words until the tightness in his chest finally eased.

  Well, Michael thought, exhaling slowly as he stood, enough thinking.

  He rolled his shoulders and let mana bleed outward, thin and controlled, the way Nelius had drilled into him. Hovering one object came easily now, second nature even. A faint lift, a steady hold. He drew water from a glass, shaping his mana around it like an invisible bowl, suspending the liquid without spilling a drop.

  That wasn’t the problem anymore.

  Control was.

  He lifted a small metal weight from his desk and set it spinning, keeping the rotation smooth instead of wobbling. A second object rose beside it, then a third. His focus splintered immediately. One faltered, rotation slipping as the others drifted.

  “Again,” he muttered.

  He tried to keep one object spinning while adjusting the height of another. Then he pushed further, guiding them into slow orbits around each other, forcing his mana to divide, recombine, and behave. The strain built quickly, sharp and insistent behind his eyes.

  This was harder than aura training. Aura rewarded brute reinforcement: push more, endure longer. This demanded restraint. Precision. Mistakes didn’t fail loudly; they failed subtly, slipping just enough to ruin everything.

  Sweat beaded on his forehead as he swapped training.

  He spread his mana evenly throughout his body, reinforcing muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons, and organs. Moving across the room without breaking concentration was difficult, but becoming increasingly easier. It held until he added strain. Trying anything physically strenuous robbed him of concentration. The weights lost their balance, deviating from their set path, or his mana spread unevenly, making him nauseous.

  Michael hissed and cut the flow before the feedback could spike.

  It felt like trying to paint with his feet while bench-pressing. Possible in theory, difficult in practice.

  He thought it was difficult as he had never had mana before, but the more he practiced, the easier it became.

  He reset the weights, steadied his breathing, and swapped to hovering marbles again.

  His core held far more mana than someone at his stage had any right to, years’ worth of capacity compressed into a body that hadn’t earned it the traditional way. For these low-consumption drills, endurance wasn’t the issue. Focus was. Mental fatigue crept in long before his reserves ran dry, and he’d learned to respect that limit.

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  When progress stalled, he didn’t force it. He adapted, rotating exercises, refining technique, and returning only when his mind was ready to move forward again.

  By the time exhaustion finally outweighed focus, Michael called it a night. He washed up, set his alarm, and went to bed, knowing the routine would begin again at first light.

  It always did.

  Mornings were for the children.

  Every orphan under his care had to exercise, no exceptions. Even the prince who seemed to be on the path of a mage joined in with the orphans. Those preparing to become aura users pushed their limits under careful supervision. The rest followed the same routine at a reduced intensity. Michael also started teaching them all English, as his goal was for them to bring their own books to learn.

  None of them had consolidated cores. Growing up on nothing but ambient mana had seen to that. That would change one day, once Michael could reliably share his mana, once his control reached the level Nelius demanded, though he had convinced Nelius to share his mana with them periodically to consolidate their cores.

  The results didn’t go unnoticed.

  One of the Crown’s aura instructors, assigned initially to oversee Michael’s own training, began lingering during the morning sessions. At first, he only watched. Then he started asking questions.

  Why did the exercises increase in difficulty instead of repetitions? Why did rest days matter? What exactly was the progressive overload he kept mentioning?

  The questions didn’t stop there.

  The instructor asked about diet, clearly expecting some hidden magical component. Michael shook his head and told him the truth. Protein mattered. A lot, and though Michael gave the kids protein shakes, they could increase their intake of meat, eggs, fish, and legumes.

  Hand-to-hand training raised even more eyebrows. Without the aura involved, as the instructor would just outskill and overpower him, Michael had defeated the instructor during a spar, relying on his modern MMA, increased use of kicks, and the grappling that forced the instructor to admit defeat. Michael did not really mind using techniques that might have seemed dishonorable, as he just wanted to show his techniques.

  Soon, the training of the Crown’s soldiers would change, too.

  Michael also trained with his portals; they felt natural to him, much easier than mana did. Training his reaction time seemed the most important, as he would have almost died if he hadn’t opened a portal on time. As he got more ideas on how to use them despite their current limitations, he also thought about what to ask Elom for next to experiment further.

  And on the day of the meeting with Elom, or his body double, he received a summons from the king while overseeing the orphans’ training.

  Michael stepped through the portal as he always did-and immediately felt that something was wrong.

  Nelius was already there, but the usual trace of smug certainty was gone. In its place was a rigid stillness.

  “Our scouts report the Cendros army is on the move,” the marshal said grimly. “Mages included. The Thorn Brothers are leading them. Three days out.”

  Michael didn’t react, though the news hit harder than he expected.

  The king leaned forward, voice cool. “Care to explain? I was under the impression you intended to confront them-not drive them straight toward us.”

  Michael paused, weighing his words. “I returned the… gift they sent me,” he said evenly. “I didn’t expect them to act so impulsively.”

  Inside, his thoughts were racing.

  “How do you plan to handle this?” Halden asked. “We have new weapons, but not enough to start a war. The crossbows aren’t ready.”

  “And the mage tower’s mana reserves are still below optimal,” Nelius added.

  “Then don’t worry about the war,” Michael said. “I’ll deal with the brothers. As for the army, I have a plan, if it comes to that.”

  The confidence was shown, and the doubt was quieter.

  “I’ll confront them tomorrow,” he added. “You’re welcome to observe.”

  “I want to see what methods you intend to use,” Nelius said immediately.

  “I’ll stand in for His Majesty,” Marshal Halden said.

  “I - I’d like to come as well,” Elion said, a bit too quickly.

  “No,” Halden said flatly. “This is beyond you.”

  Before the tension could rise further, the king spoke.

  “Easy, Halden. All four of us will go.” He stood, expression resolute. “If the Arcanist fails, our downfall is likely regardless of where I stand. My presence won’t change that.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the marshal said, bowing.

  “Then I will see you tomorrow morning. I have things to prepare.” Michael said as he turned around and disappeared into a portal.

  Night had already fallen when Michael arrived, dressed in his tailored suit and his featureless mask, making him look like one of his portals. He opened a portal to the same place as usual.

  Elom was waiting alone.

  He leaned casually against a spherical steel vessel suspended a foot above the ground by a compact crane assembly. One section of the hull was fitted with a thick, transparent panel over a foot of reinforced pressure glass. On the side, an open hatch just wide enough for entry.

  “Good evening, Arcanist,” Elom said.

  “Looks sturdy,” Michael replied, his masked gaze fixed on the vessel.

  Elom straightened. “Straight to business. This capsule is rated to survive pressures beyond those at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”

  “Good,” Michael said. “Because that’s where it’s going.”

  Elom’s eyes widened-then a grin spread across his face.

  Michael had spent hours beforehand with a civilian GPS unit, purchased in disguise, portal after portal, until he was confident he had the coordinates of Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on the planet. Once there, the rest was simple: descend, observe, return.

  Elom explained the controls. They were intentionally minimal. Depth adjustment only, down and up. Michael had specified a one-way descent to reduce failure points. Elom, predictably, had taken that as a challenge and included redundancies.

  Once satisfied, Michael boarded.

  The capsule was cramped by necessity, barely two meters across to comply with portal size limits. He crawled in, sealed the hatch, and strapped himself in. After visualizing the interior space beneath the vessel, he opened a portal directly below it.

  Through the thick glass, he gave Elom a thumbs-up.

  The crane released.

  The capsule dropped.

  For three seconds, there was only freefall, then impact, as the waves testified to his landing.

  The sudden deceleration as steel met water slammed the air from his lungs. The capsule shuddered, but held. Michael unbuckled immediately, ready to open an emergency portal at the first sign of a leak or hypoxia.

  Neither came.

  He pushed the control forward, and the capsule sank.

  Light faded quickly. Within minutes, darkness pressed in from every direction. The capsule’s exterior lights cut through the water-but only barely. The beams illuminated suspended particles and nothing else.

  After half an hour, there was no sense of scale left. No horizon. No reference.

  Two hours in, Michael briefly wondered if the abyss even had a bottom.

  Then the lights caught something solid.

  The seafloor.

  Fine sediment stretched out beneath him, pale and undisturbed, broken only by occasional rocky protrusions, and surprisingly, he had not seen a single fish or sea creature on his descent. No movement. Just immense, crushing stillness.

  Michael let the capsule settle gently into the sediment and memorized the scene.

  Then he opened a portal behind him and crawled back out into the open air, emerging just above the ocean surface where the capsule had been dropped.

  Standing on a horizontal portal, Michael inhaled deeply and focused.

  He pictured the exact position of the capsule on the trench floor.

  A portal opened several meters ahead of him, oriented downwards.

  Water erupted through it.

  Not a splash. Not a wave.

  A column.

  A two-meter-wide jet of seawater detonated on both sides of the portal with impossible force, compressing the air around it as it struck the ocean’s surface and punched through without resistance. The surrounding air was dragged violently toward it, howling as it followed.

  Within the torrent, Michael caught a brief blur of steel a second later.

  Michael fell to his knees as he closed the portal. What is this?! He looked at his trembling hand and further towards his empty mana core. I have never noticed anything negative from using portals. Even breathing felt like a workout. He considered equal to one of the worst colds he had ever contracted.

  As the thunderous roar of the jet stopped. And it started raining as the water shot upwards, defying gravity at about 100 meters, looking like a 25-story-tall building.

  Moments later, when the capsule resurfaced, Michael was worried about taking the capsule away with what he had just experienced. He knew he still had his power, as he hovered in the air by standing on his portal to solid ground elsewhere, but that one did not seem to drain him.

  He looked at the capsule bobbing up and down on the sea as he tried to comprehend what had just happened.

  After a couple of minutes of theorizing, he noticed he had recovered a little mana. He took a deep breath and opened a portal in front of him while keeping focus on his core’s reserves. Nothing; opening the portal did not seem to consume mana.

  He walked back and forth through it a few times, and nothing happened. Confused, he focused back on the capsule, now mostly still on the ocean, as he opened a portal below it. The capsule was swallowed into it as Michael’s eyes widened, even if what he was focused on wasn’t his vision. The little mana that he had recovered was disappearing, though at a much slower rate than before.

  Water followed it through, flooding the ground around the landing site, and it stopped immediately as Michael kept looking at what happened when his mana ran out.

  He was surprised when the portal did not close, but he started to feel worse than he had been.

  Promptly closing the portal, he supported himself with his arms on his knees as he tried to stay standing. So it uses something up from me when I run out of mana. He deduced.

  I guess moving hundreds of tons of water is much more taxing; it is probably dependent on mass. He kept thinking as his cheat, the unlimited use of portals, was shattered.

  After a few minutes to catch his breath, he regained some of his composure and relied on the mask to hide how weak he felt as he returned to Elom.

  “I assume it went well,” Elom said, eyeing him closely, “given that you’re still in one piece.”

  “Better than expected,” Michael lied.

  He raised a hand, and three small marbles floated free, drifting gently toward Elom with what mana he was able to generate. “A gift. Lie-detection marbles. Use them however you see fit. They operate on principles similar to the Translation Cube, but remember, these are one-time use.”

  Elom accepted them carefully, reverently, as if afraid they might shatter at a touch.

  “Until next time,” Michael said.

  A portal opened, and he was gone.

  Back at the ocean, Michael had to figure out how not to have water from the bottom of the sea come out of both sides of the portal on the surface. He needed to have the water projected in one direction. So he had a great idea.

  All I need is a second portal to return the unwanted jet of water to the ocean.

  Not confident in testing it with the full force of the depth of the ocean, Michael tested it with a baseball-sized portal and with the underwater portal being only a few meters underwater.

  When he opened it, he noticed that his mana was still going up, yet slightly slower, while the water poured from the portal like a faucet, quickly arching downwards from both sides.

  Next, he opened the next pair of portals, one facing down towards the ocean and the other just behind the one pouring out water.

  Perfect, now only what I am targeting will be endangered.

  He opened another portal a bit later and went through.

  On the other side of the portal, Michael slouched on his estate. The sniper rifle was fixed securely in place, immobile, perfectly aligned. A round was chambered. The safety was off.

  He didn’t touch it.

  Instead, his gaze lingered on the muzzle, unblinking.

  A second portal, small and precise, opened before him. Through it, he saw the Cendros’ army far below, their camp spread across the land like a quiet infection. Tents clustered together, dim campfires, sentries pacing their routes.

  He could end it now.

  But he wouldn’t.

  Not in the dark. Not unseen.

  This wasn’t about convenience. It was about making a point to everyone, including himself.