One Last System

"For now, that's all that I managed to discover. In the end, I can only hope you will find those letters before Sangakarts' boogiemen will find you."

"Best of luck, 

Mia." 

'This girl...' A thought flashed through my head when I finished the last word of the last letter. 

I gently put the letter back on the pile, taking a moment for all of the information I learned to sink in. 

'She is really trying too hard,' I thought, clenching my fists. 

If there was anything that struck me out in those letters, it was Mia's desperation to prove herself useful for me. 

She appeared not to realize that my only wish was for her to stay safe instead!

Deciphering all the letters took me a considerable amount of time. Just a single glance through the window proved that the sun was long hidden behind the horizon. 

It was something that I noticed a long while ago when I had no other choice but to start burning candles just to see the content of the letters. 

But between traveling in my lonesome and being able to connect with Mia, even if it was only by reading the words she wrote, I had no doubt which I preferred. 

'Still,' I thought, shaking my head to get rid of those unnecessary sentiments. 

Now that I was in the same city as my girl, it was only a matter of time before we would unite. Yet, before it could happen, there was an opposition that I had to tackle, the opposition that Mia informed me about in her letters. 

"Sangakarts, you poor bastards," I muttered under my nose, only to close my eyes and lean back in my chair. 

"Still, as clear as those letters make our situation to be, it still pretty hard to believe in such thing," I muttered to myself, glancing over at the pile of letters stacked on the desk. 

Due to how disturbing the content of those papers was, I dared not to hold them while thinking about what I had just learned. A single bout of anger that would cause my fingers to tighten would easily lead to the destruction of those precious mementos. 

'Wait, no,' I shook my head, noticing the same mistake that I continued to commit over and over again. 'I can't let this reincarnator bias sway my view,' I told myself. 

The history of nations of the earth was so colorful that when a certain author made a novel based on that very history, his novel ended up adopted to a series. A series that quickly received the moniker of "Game of Backstabbing."

It was a story based on an early medieval period of a certain island country. And that alone spoke just how rotten the history of earthen nations was. 

'I can't let my simplistic view of cultivation worlds be swayed by what I learned from the novels,' I told myself, clenching my hands over the armrests of my chair. 'If humans on earth could be so bloody, traitorous, and crafty with their schemes, why would the humans of this world be any different?' 

That was the crux of this topic. 

As someone born in the modern age, I grew up with a natural distrust towards all kinds of conspiracy theories. And just by looking at what Mia told me in her letters, there was a pretty massive conspiracy rooted deeply into the heart of the Tuxi sect. 

Yet, the longer I thought about it, the more real it appeared. 

"Damn, it's so tiring," I muttered, leaning back on my chair to the point when its front legs lost touch with the ground. Hanging on the fragile balance of only two legs, I reached out with my hand and grabbed the topmost letter from the pile. 

I only realized what I was doing when I took a long sniff of the paper, hoping to smell some faint hint of Mia's fragrance. 

Just holding this piece of paper made me feel closer to Mia. Yet, when I realized that I just tried to smell said letter, a blush instantly took over my cheeks. 

'No, that can't do,' I told myself, putting the letter back on the pile.

There would be a time for me to enjoy myself like that. Sadly, though, it wasn't the time for that yet. 

'I need to figure out what I should do next,' I thought, putting the front legs of the chair back in their place as I leaned over the desk. I then reached out to the side to grab the bottle of booze before taking a long sip of the liquid.

"Damn, it's disgusting," I muttered, fighting off my instant desire to spit the booze out. 

I never thought about it before, but it appeared that my taste buds remained the same as they were on the earth. Yet, instead of a blessing, it was actually a curse. 

After all, my nation was known for the centuries-long traditions of brewing strong drinks. And when comparing the average drink, I could find in the shops on earth with the booze I managed to find in this world...

My initial drive to spit it out summed up just how massive the difference in the quality of the alcohol was. 

Still, despite how awful it was, I downed yet another drink, hoping for the booze to clear my thoughts a little. 

"Just what the hell am I supposed to do right now?" I asked myself in a hushed tone. 

Now that I was aware of the Sangakarts aim of silencing me, I couldn't just do what I wanted. 

'Thinking about this, how come they didn't attack me yet?' I asked myself, troubled by the matter. 

'If they did, I would at least know my situation. So the question is, why didn't they attack me already?' 

There were three possible reasons that I could come up with. 

First, they were too busy with other stuff to bother with springing up a trap on me. This was the likeliest possibility given how Mia admitted to her attempts to divert their attention to herself. 

The second option was far simpler. And it assumed that the people set to silence me were preparing for the strike right as I thought about this topic. 

'I would love if it turned out they simply missed my return,' I thought, only to shake my head over how naive this thought was. 

Even if that was the case, it wasn't something that I should seriously consider. Rather than helping me prepare for the worst, this line of thinking would only make me complacent towards the potential danger this Sangakart group posed. 

'Well, the main question is whether they can actually harm me.'

I smiled at my own thoughts. 

Most likely, they had people of a greater cultivation base than me. Yet, just like I noticed on my own and later confirmed in Mia's letters, that didn't mean their power was actually greater than what I was capable of. 

'Still, confronting any enemy right now would be a stupid move,' I thought, shaking my head and standing up from my chair. 

Even though they were extremely silent, my ears still managed to pick up the delicate noise of someone's steps. 

A single look towards the window confirmed that it couldn't be the auction hall clerk that I requested to come to visit to retrieve the letters. 

It was way too early for her to come yet. 

Knock, knock. 

Two gentle hits against the doors leading to my room announced the opening of the new chapter in my life. A chapter that would likely devolve in a pretty bloody direction. 

"Excuse me!" a masculine voice reached me from beyond the doors. 

'I had my reasons to hold back on killing before,' I thought, clearing the hints of my presence in the room and stuffing all the letters into my robe. Then, I grabbed the bottle and made sure it was properly closed. 

"I-I'm cooominnn," I uttered in a loud, sloppy voice, doing my best to act as if I was drunk beyond any salvation. 

'But I guess I have no other choice but to abandon the morals of the developed civilization,' I thought grimly, pulling out a small item from my storage ring.

It was a small pebble of a slightly reddish hue. A smoldering stone that I found during my month-long journey to the outerpost. A stone that people of this world used to start fires. 

'Well, I guess it's time for me to go,' I thought, weighting the bottle in my hand. 

'If there is anything good about this disgusting booze,' I thought, a vile smile appearing on my lips, 'then it's its alcoholic content,' I added in my mind before swinging my arm and throwing the bottle right towards the doors. 

The glass of the bottle turned out to be pretty brittle, shattering right at the moment of impact and covering the doors with its content. 

"FuuuuCK!" I shouted, still pretending to be drunk as heck. 

I silently made my way towards the wall beside the room's window and placed my hand on the stones that made it up. 

With a single thought, my mana rushed forward. 

The gap that stopped me from advancing my cultivation further was massive... But that didn't mean I was weak. Sitting on the level of a mature enlightened, I was pretty close to the peak of what one could achieve in this world. 

'Let's dance!' I thought joyfully, flinging the smoldering stone right towards the doors wet with the alcohol. 

At the same time, I released the energy from my hand, disintegrating the stones that blocked my way outside. 

The doors instantly erupted with fires fueled by the alcohol permeating the wood. And before the doors could fall apart, I dived right through the hole in the wall, sinking into the shadows of the night. 

'Let's see how good you guys are at playing cat and mice with me!'