One Last System

The smoke was raising over the place formerly known as the Tuxi outerpost.

Normally, I couldn't care less. But right now, this was the place where I was trying to start rebuilding the world one piece at a time.

And the closer we got to the city, the more confident I was to tell the reason behind the smoke.

'Someone's burning it down,' I thought, feeling how a strange, dark feeling welled up in my stomach.

There was still a small chance it was all just an accident. A stray discharge of mana lit up a piece of wooden rubble allowing the fire to spread through a part of the ruins.

Yet, once we got close enough, I could confirm that not to be the case.

'The fire is rising from several different parts of the town,' I thought. 'This can only mean that someone is going around, setting buildings on fire!'

"Arty, slow down a bit!" Mia called out, doing her utmost to keep up the pace that I unknowingly keep on increasing.

"Ah, sorry," I quickly slowed down, giving the girl a chance to run along with me rather than chasing my back.

Since I was faster than Mia, there was this option for me to rush ahead to check the situation and possibly prevent it from getting worse.

But…

'Levi should still be in there,' I thought, curling my fingers into fists. 'And if the shit is going down despite his presence, this situation isn't something that can be easily handled!'

I saw Levi's ability on its full display when he didn't even break a sweat when taking down a proper royal. As such, I would be hard-pressed to imagine what kind of power would appear in the city for Levi to struggle to contain it!

Our run ended once we reached the first buildings of the city.

Just like most of the area, they were long abandoned and way too far from the general area of my interest for any of the cultivators to pick it up as their own, private house.

And yet, it was the distance separating them from the more densely packed parts of the city that protected those few buildings on the outskirts from the three separate storms of fire that raged about in the town!

'Not good,' I thought, inspecting the level of devastation as I jogged through the streets.

Soon enough, we stumbled into the first few corpses.

Out of the total of seven bodies that I found lying in pools of blood on the streets, I could only recognize a single one. It belonged to a cultivator that stood up and asked a question back when I was explaining the situation.

'To think that his courage back then would be the only reason why I know who he is now,' I thought, feeling the darkness in my soul vibrate.

It resonated with my emotions. It feed on them and added even more fuel to their fires in return.

Thankfully, I could manage it.

For now, at the very least.

"We need to hurry," I muttered in an empty voice with a bleak look in my eyes.

Since people died, Levi really had to struggle. And quite possibly, he either had no other choice but to run or ended up dead as well.

There were quite a lot of things for how this situation could play out in my absence, so there was no use in trying to figure it out in advance.

'Wardens,' I thought, releasing the formation stones from my personal pouches before raising all of my formations.

Seeing how bad things were, there was no way I would get into the center of the events with just my basic defensive arrays formed.

I slowed down my pace for a moment, making sure all my formations were deployed properly. I then ran a quick check to ensure there were no broken pieces in them, allowing all pieces of my mage's tower to work flawlessly.

"Get ready," I muttered, right before we took a turn around the corner.

And there it was, the center of the action.

It used to be one of the housing projects that bordered the auction house from the side.

Used to, as right now, it turned into a plaza covered with the sot and burned-down rubble from all the buildings that burned down.

Thankfully, the auction house itself still stood, with Levi barring any of the invaders from approaching.

He wasn't in a good state, though. There were two cuts on his face and three more on his chest, all five of them marked with some of his blood.

His breathing was heavy and his control over his mana wasn't as stable as I remembered it to be.

And most of all, he actually held on to a meticulously crafted sword, created by someone at the peak of the arcane weapon mastery.

"You came back at the perfect time," Levi muttered, struggling to move his lips.

He didn't even turn his head to greet me, keeping his eyes locked on the group of enemies that stood before him.

There was a total of eight of them. Seven soldiers and their leader sitting down on some rubble behind his underlings.

'Aren't those guys…' I squinted my eyes, only to then pry them open a moment later.

I knew those guys. They were the ones to injure the dragon that I helped. They were also the ones that this dragon went to chase after as well.

And most important of all, they were the very same people that both me and Mia encountered before, back when they fucked up our plans of saving the sect disciples that we found and rescued from their former oppressors!

"Seeing the state you are in…" I spoke out, moving my eyes away from the dragon hunters and towards Levi.

"You are done with your greetings?" the leader of the dragon hunters butted in, standing up from his makeshift seat.

And as his head rose above the level of his subordinates, I could now see it quite clearly.

A dragon's skull protected his head while two of the dragon's long claws were mounted on each of the man's forearms.

And from each of those articles, I could sense a familiar mana coming.

'So that's how you ended up, buddy,' I thought, recalling the dragon that I helped and which helped me in return.

It was likely due to my decision back then to abandon him that led to that majestic creature's demise. And from the looks of things, it was also the reason why the coming fight would likely be far harder than it was originally necessary.

I took a deep breath before averting my eyes from the leader of the dragon hunters and turning them back to my former master.

"Seeing the state you are in, I can go all out, right?" I asked, leaning my head over my shoulder and putting a small, empty smile on my lips.

Levi finally turned his head and sent a glance my way. He then relaxed a bit before breathing a long sigh.

"Just don't break the reality again," he said before turning his eyes back towards the dragon hunters in front of him. "Outside of that, do your best."