One Last System

"Whoa!" the man backed off two steps when faced with the wrath brimming out of Mia's scowl.

His face filled with surprise and even a hint of an innate fear that any man would have in the face of a furiously unsatisfied woman.

"Where did all those fucks come from?"  he then muttered while opening his eyes wide.

'Oh Mia,' I thought, closing my eyes for a second to prevent the man from seeing me roll them. 'You just never stop to prove how best of a girl you are.'

I took a deep breath.

Mia's sudden lash surely gave both me and this strange person a nice shake, but I still had several things to think about.

One of which, made my soul shudder when I realized the implications hidden behind it.

'What could a person that has this kind of power hope to gain from meeting pathfinder?' I asked myself, opening my eyes wide as I stared right at the man's face.

Yet, rather than focusing on my eyes, I pulled out the perceptiveness of my mana sense, limiting it to just a fraction of its range. And as if it was a mathematical equation, with the decrease of the radius of my mana awareness, the intensity of it skyrocketed.

'Whoa!' I nearly stumbled on my feet.

My eyes felt like they were about to burn out... even though my vision itself didn't change.

It was the effect of the projection my mana awareness generated over my other senses. And just by glancing at the man before me, it felt as if I was straight right at the sun.

But not comfortably from behind the cover of several kilometers worth of atmosphere and then hundreds of kilometers from space.

It felt as if I stared at the sun while standing right on its fucking surface!

"Are you okay?" the man asked, his voice actually possessing hints of a genuine worry.

"Just who the hell are you?" I muttered, squeezing my eyelids as far as I could. And it was only at this moment that I realized that upon facing the true degree of the man's might, I instinctively drove my mana through my formations, erecting the mage's tower even before I could consciously make a decision to do so.

And what was even worse, this man didn't seem to be bothered by an avalanche of mana that ensued whatsoever!

"Oh, I'm worried you are not privy to learning the answer to this question yet," the man replied in a casual tone.

I took a deep breath.

Now that I realized just how insignificant I was before this man, all my ploys at pretending to be a tough guy, all my hopes of potentially defending them...

They were all akin to a fly mobilizing all of its resources to declare war upon an industrial excavator.

'Wait,' I suddenly forced myself to stop. 'What the hell is going on with me?'

The processes that were going through my head... weren't like the usual me. I surely had my faults, but accepting the inevitable was never a trait that I could be ashamed of or boast about!

A single thought along this line I could understand. But a continuous orgasm over how insignificant I was in the face of the power this man had at his disposal...

'Fuck, stop it!' I screamed internally out, nearly allowing my thoughts to fall right back into the same path.

And then it dawned upon me.

The man standing just a few steps away surely was strong. But his might... couldn't be that much greater than what I could produce.

Sure, I could tell that his cultivation reached its actual peak. The difference between him and me was just that big.

But...

But that was it.

No matter what, this man was just a cultivator. And his means were limited to what one could achieve with cultivation and cultivation alone.

And contrary to him, cultivation was just the supply for my other means of claiming power, not the main source of it!

"I won't lie, I nearly fell for it, you fucker," I muttered, keeping my eyes closed while I raised my hands.

I brought my hands down and to the sides, slapping my own cheeks with all my might.

'UGH...' a cry of pain nearly wrestled its way out of my lips. Yet, the ensuing flash of unbearable displeasure cleared my mind.

And now, I could tell.

This man's cultivation was at least a thousand times greater than mine. And going by the usual standards, he likely reached, just like I assumed earlier, the peak level of cultivation one could obtain in this world.

Yet, it wasn't his cultivation, his immense power that affected me.

It was some sort of mental attack that twisted my perception of reality.

'And I likely only made it worse by focusing my perception on him,' I thought, admitting to my own faults.

So, unwilling to repeat the same mistake, I pushed the boundaries of my mana perception as far as I could, diluting its intensity to its bare minimum.

And then, I opened my eyes and properly looked the man in the face.

"What are you talking about?" the man asked, taken aback by my former statement. "It's you guys who are acting weird!" he accused, taking a step back and changing the look on his face to one I would use when staring down some aggressive punks down the alley.

'How is Mia?' I thought, turning my eyes to the side to check up on the girl.

To my surprise, she didn't appear to be affected by the mental invasion at all. She still glared at the man with the same fury that she infused her words with.

"I will ask this just one," I said, suddenly feeling grateful to the instincts that made me raise my mage's tower. With the man standing well within the range of my disturb ability, I now managed to regain some of my wits.

"What the hell do you want from Pathfinder?" I asked, using a calm tone that didn't fit my harsh manner of asking.

"The same answer as before," the man uttered, squinting his eyes as he took a step forward with a confrontational look on his face. "You are not privy to this knowledge."

"I'm afraid it's not for you to decide," I said, running the ongoing events through the filter of all the knowledge that I had about this world.

And then, my lips curved up as I looked at the man with a strange sense of satisfaction... and excitement.

"Your royal highness."