In a quiet garden somewhere in Da Ming's Inner District, two men met in disguise, settling down to py chess like middle-aged men enjoying their afternoon leisure. Both wore dark tinted gsses and fake beards, their pin robes helping them blend in with regur court officials.

  The chubbier of the two arranged his pieces with careful precision. Once satisfied with their perfect symmetry, he moved a pawn forward two squares and rexed, finally feeling things were going his way.

  "I owe you my thanks," said Mandrake. "I've been trying to deal with these parasites for decades."

  "I didn't do much," Ciel replied, advancing his own pawn with a soft click.

  They traded more moves, pieces falling one by one as falling flowers perfumed the air.

  Mandrake watched another of his pieces get toppled. "What is your pn with Gongsan Port?" His hand, shaken by anxiety, pced his knight on a critical square in fear of his opponent's craftiness. "You said you had a method to remove them, but I never expected sending them to investigate a random port to be part of your strategy."

  Ciel continued his assault on the board, each move only making his old friend more anxious. "It's called killing three birds with one stone," he expined, remembering how he'd told Yi Tong the same thing. Oddly enough, both father and son preferred the exact same tactics. "First, those officials will eliminate each other trying to pass the vetting process. Second, we'll see how they operate; any hidden assets or Bckwing troops we missed will show up as they scramble to survive. And third, we'll solve whatever's wrong with Gongsan Port."

  The Emperor blinked in surprise. "Wait, there's actually something wrong with Gongsan Port?"

  "That pce sits at the busiest intersection in the country, where sea routes meet nd roads," he answered, ignoring a chance to capture a piece in favor of pushing for checkmate. "Traffic through there should be at least ten times higher. Something has to be going on."

  ---

  Far from the garden--yet not far enough for comfort--an intruder crept toward the manor, carved with the Five Petal Flower emblem upon its gate. Though cloaked in invisibility by robes crafted by Acceltra's greatest artificer, she felt naked; her instincts screamed danger at this simple mission in the clear afternoon.

  Her touch graced the wall, feeling every ridges and crevice beneath the fingertips. There were many purchases to climb over. She gulped. And with one foot pced against the brick, she vaulted to the air in an Aura-fueled leap. The lithe figures fairly shimmered her invisible cloth waves with every ballet of motion, ending back in stillness as she nded on the wall’s ledge, hanging from there like a cat.

  She observed a path forward, but one thing almost made her toppled over.

  A mountain of properties id at the Grand Marshall’s front porch, towering high enough she was shocked not to notice it earlier. The invader stopped and stared. Her mind creaked as rusted gears. She recalled how Amy left her invention all over the houses for her to clean up but this blew even her adopted mother out of the water.

  Hikari Seyfert was, in simple terms, an obsessive compulsive organiser. Her office back on the Western Continent sparkled with symmetrical cleanliness. All her tools had their own tray with a separate box. She even sprayed jasmine floral incense over her office to keep herself rexed as she neatly arranged her family lunchboxes.

  The titanic pile of disaster challenging her almost made the spy bck out. She hyperventited beneath her robe, and fought an urge to banish this monster to the hell it belonged. Her dizzy gaze shifted toward the tree leaning over the side and she plotted her path.

  Hikari leaped over the garden, angling herself to avoid any trap which might be id. But in her distracted mind, pgued by the horror of that abominable mountain, she forgot to check the wall for any hidden tricks. The error would prove critical ter, but Hikari had no way of knowing then; for no arm rang to disrupt the peace, the night continued peacefully as she crossed the threshold of fate.

  She hung upon the tree branch and vaulted over to the roof with catlike agility. There she slowly observed her next direction. Couple more solutions went by, but given the sun still hung over the horizon she decided to stake out. The spy id ft on the roof and produced the same listening device she had used to spy on the Celestial Brides yesterday.

  But before Hikari could continue her snooping, a chilling voice reached her; the same voice she had eavesdropped on yesterday.

  "Nice job," said Nuan Yulong, the Marshall's Dragon, nding on the roof with a ctter of tiles. "You really made a fool of me a day ago."

  Hikari cmped her mouth shut, but Nuan's next words shattered any hope of talking her way out of this confrontation.

  "No need to py dumb. Ciel lined this pce with detectors. The entire roof is a sensor, so unless you're an overweight bird or a weightless, invisible dragon, I suggest you spare us the insult and come out of hiding."

  The spy—accepting her time was up—rolled out of her invisibility artifact and aimed her finger at her opponent, Bck Mana crackling at the tip.

  BLACK MAGIC RANK II: SLAUGHTER

  The mass of malcontent darkness fired from Hikari's index fingers, but Nuan shoved it aside with a casual wave of her hand. The Marshall's Dragon's Aura floated in the air like a tyrannical hum of a ravenous dragon. Her amber eyes, pupils narrowed to slits, pierced into the Bck Mage like burning torches.

  The agent of the West, not realizing the significance of fighting a Celestial Bride, conjured another spell.

  WHITE MAGIC RANK III: BIND

  Blinding light circlet spun through the air like a flying windmill, curving toward Nuan, who blocked the sealing spell with a raised arm. Unamused, and to the caster's horror, she tore the binding from her limbs, shattering it like gss before it evaporated into shining vapor.

  "A dual-color mage, huh," she commented. "White and Bck: considered two of the most lethal combinations aside from Red itself." Her gre sharpened. "But as far as we know, no one with your skillset is active in the Yulong Empire, which means you have to be a foreign agent."

  Hikari immediately bolted from the roof. Her body trembled. Somehow everything about that woman pushed her fight or flight response to an overdrive. Despite her many close-call, this experience felt bone-chillingly different. She recalled Nuan’s movement and came to a conclusion: there must be something about her Aura. The way it suspended like an air-pocket couldn’t be natural.

  She nded on the porch, ignoring any detector for the sake of quicker get away. And without hesitation, she leaped over the wall. Instead of escaping free, her body met resistant; some mystical blue field as vicious as jello warped around her body. It hugged tight, submerging her into the blue dome covering Ciel’s house like an insect to the honeyed Venus Flytrap. Hikair struggled, pouring Aura into her body to escape, but the more she struggled the tighter her binding came.

  Cocooned in the air the only thing she could do was tearfully looking at the Marshall Dragon, who hadn’t moved a step away from the roof.

  Nuan grinned with amusement. She gently pushed herself from the roof. Her mighty Aura magnified such a simple move into a galeforce speed, deccelerated by the small swirl of Aura beneath her feet, where she came to a stop right before the girl strapped inside Ciel’s trap as an insect in the spiderweb.

  Then the door to the estate creaked open and Xia walked through the gate.

  Both Brides gathered in front of the invader and observed the trapped invader. Hikari, from their point of view, wasn’t too bad to the eyes. She had a fit but tomboyish build and unique grey hair, a cool girl type which heavily contrasted with her current squirming position in the trap.

  "Let me go!" Hikari twisted and squirmed in her bonds. "What's so fascinating about—" She bit off the words as their evaluating gazes made her skin crawl.

  But neither Xia nor Nuan paid attention to her distress, they had bigger issues to discuss.

  “Are you thinking what I am thinking?” The First Wife rubbed her chin, not taking an eye of this new target.

  “She did look pretty cute,” added the Second Wife. “Moreover, she has both Bck and White Magic.”

  “Really, two contradictory magic on top of Aura-user? Even your sister couldn’t necessarily match her. The only other combination which excelled more at killing people would be Bck and Red.”

  “So we can clear her strength check, the pretty check, but--”

  “But this left the personality check,” Xia completed Nuan’s evaluation. She turned toward the utterly lost Hikari and smiled sweetly. “Hey, what is your name and who sent you?”

  The intruder’s mouth opened in shock, but she shut it tight a second ter determined not to slip a single word. Unbeknownst to her, it was the reaction they wanted.

  “Oh, so she is loyal,” commented the First Wife. “How promising.”

  “Not for us at the moment,” the Second Wife frowned.

  “No worries, I believe Ciel has a truth serum to make her cough up the information.”

  The grey hair intruder gulped, but what came next took her by surprise.

  “Hey,” Xia’s smile shone like a sun contrasting against the darkening night. “How about this? We will free you from the barrier and let you go scott free on one condition.”

  Nuan nodded enthusiastically.

  Both women pointed to the trash pile and spoke in complete unity: “Can you please clean that up?”

  Hikari blinked. She knew, right then and there, the world had effectively gone insane.