"Here's your lunch, Your Excellency."
Within Prince Charles' camp, a voluptuous young woman with brown hair presented the prince with a skewer of roasted monster meat. The aroma spread through the air immediately, drawing growls from more than a few stomachs nearby.
Charles Dawnlight took the skewer and bit in. The smell hit his nostrils before the flavor did, and his stomach responded accordingly. He ate through the first piece quickly and reached for another. Mages burned through food at a rate ordinary people rarely appreciated — constant spellcasting left the body in a state of perpetual hunger. This was also why common families couldn't realistically support a Mage child. The expense of high-quality meat alone made it prohibitive.
It was precisely this reality that drove so many commoner Mages to sit the academy's entrance examination. According to the standing agreement between the kingdom and the academy, any student who enrolled received a monthly stipend of one hundred silver coins — enough to sustain a family of five for an entire year, even with careless spending. Passing the exam was, for many commoners, the most direct path out of poverty. Plenty of successful graduates had gone on to petition for a Baron's title.
Nearly seventy percent of this year's applicants had come from commoner backgrounds. As for how they managed to Awaken without personal resources or a hired priest — the answer was straightforward. They didn't need to provide either.
Every major faction in the kingdom held free coming-of-age ceremonies open to commoners. Not out of generosity — out of pragmatism. The ceremonies gave them the opportunity to identify promising candidates worth investing in. The practice had continued for centuries, and it had made the Uyzher Kingdom considerably stronger for it. Strong enough, in fact, to qualify for membership in the Council of Heaven — but that was a subject for another time.
After finishing the meat, Charles drank from the clean river nearby. A sensible person might wonder how eating and drinking were possible inside an illusory world. The explanation, as best Charles understood it, was that the world itself was constructed — but the things living within it were not. The precise mechanism behind that distinction was beyond him, but the result was straightforward enough.
"Good work, Stella. Don't overextend yourself though — make sure you rest."
The brown-haired Stella wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. "I'm perfectly fine, Your Excellency. I'm a Mage."
"Even so." Charles kept his tone easy. "Collapsing from overwork isn't something your mother needs to worry about on top of everything else."
He had met Stella at the start of the exam, and her straightforward personality had made an impression quickly. He'd later learned that her mother was ill and that the family had barely enough for food, let alone medicine. Stella had entered the examination because it was the only option she could see. Failing wasn't just failure — it was failing her mother. That was why Charles had recruited her into his group. She was also, in a way, the reason he'd decided to form a group at all. Hearing her situation had pushed him toward trying to help other commoner applicants pass. The number he could actually assist was limited — out of more than seven hundred commoner examinees, only fifty-four had ended up in his group — but it was something.
"Understood, Your Excellency. I'll take my leave." Stella dipped into a curtsy, skirt in hand, and walked off.
Charles watched her silhouette shrink in the distance, then lay back on the ground and closed his eyes. The exhaustion had built up quietly, and now that he had stopped moving, it caught up with him all at once. He was asleep before he had the chance to think about whether it was wise to sleep at all — with the Demon still somewhere in the illusory world.
What he didn't know was that a pair of eyes had been watching him from a distance for some time. The moment the prince's breathing steadied into sleep, those eyes withdrew into the shadows.
Charles' plan had spread, as these things do. Word moved fast in a closed environment with limited distractions. Many people found the logic sound and began doing the same — consolidating their points under a trusted leader, then sitting back and waiting to see where Alzer would surface. As long as he appeared near someone carrying a large point total, they were ready to move.
Alzer had heard all of this, of course. He was leaning against a large boulder now, resting, turning the situation over in his mind. "So he's already made his move. Transferring all the points to himself — not a bad idea."
He sneered quietly.
What Charles had done was dig his own grave. The moment those points consolidated under one person, the trap had been baited. Alzer just needed to set the rest of it in motion.
He stood and stretched, tilting his face toward the overhead sun. The heat was pressing enough to raise a sweat, but it was useful heat. Noon was when alertness dipped — a fact he had encountered once in a story from his past life, about a wealthy merchant whose guards kept impeccable watches at night. The assassins had killed him at midday, in broad sunlight, precisely because no one expected it. Guards who remained sharp through the dark hours tended to grow complacent under the brightest sky.
He wasn't planning to attack Charles in his sleep — the sensory awareness of a third-level Mortal rank Mage made that a poor idea regardless of the hour. But the timing was still useful. He had been watching the camp for a while, and he had also been watching the surrounding area. Most people, it turned out, were asleep.
"Shall we begin, then."
Stella sat beside the river a short distance from camp, splashing water on her face. Then a sound came from the grass nearby.
Rustle.
She went still. Another rustle followed. She turned toward it automatically, studying the dense grass, unable to see into it. She stood, looked in both directions, then steadied herself and moved closer. Just as her hand reached out to part the grass, a shadow launched itself at her.
"Ah—"
The sound cut off before it could become a scream. A hand had closed around her throat, fingers pressed firm against the sides of her neck. She flailed, clawing at the grip, but the hold didn't give. Her vision began to dim at the edges, and not long after, she went limp.
[Remaining Time: 20 minutes]