Precedence System: I Take My Rewards In Advance

Zishan was still wondering why the Lieutenant had reacted that way to cupcakes when the first horn sounded across the western encampment.

It was deep enough to pass through the command tent and vibrate against the table in front of them. Another followed from farther away, then three more answered from different sections of the camp until the noise spread across the defensive line.

Whatever conversation had been left inside the tent ended there, because the Sergeant rose from his chair while the Lieutenant turned toward the entrance with an expression Zishan had not seen from him throughout the entire interrogation.

Outside, soldiers were already moving.

Some left their tents halfway through whatever they had been doing, while officers shouted at groups near the main road to clear the center. Even several wounded soldiers standing near the medical section turned toward the western entrance, and the ones capable of walking began joining the lines forming along both sides of the road.

Zishan pushed himself up from his chair as well. His abdomen still hurt when he moved too much, and his shoulder reminded him that the Eternal Wellspring Bloodline had not magically erased everything Larper and the stampede had done to him overnight.

”What the hell is happening? Another attack?”

”No,” the Lieutenant answered as he pulled the tent flap aside and watched the soldiers outside. ”Those horns aren’t for an enemy.”

Zishan moved closer and looked past him. ”Then, who needs this many horns to make the military stir up a reaction like this?”

The Sergeant had already fixed part of his uniform before stepping outside. ”A High General.1”

That explained why almost every soldier within sight had stopped whatever they were doing, though Zishan still didn’t understand why a High General needed an entrance dramatic enough to make him think a king had arrived.

He followed them out of the tent and found the western defensive line far more active than it had been a few minutes ago. Soldiers were forming proper lines beside the road, officers moved toward the command section, and even people who had spent the morning carrying supplies had put their work aside.

The sound of the horns continued from the direction of the main entrance.

Zishan looked around for several seconds before asking, ”Which High General?”

”Elinox Holmes.”

He waited for something in his memory to react to the name.

Nothing did. It seemed like he did not inherit the memories of this body’s predecessor somehow.

The Sergeant noticed his expression and remembered that Zishan had barely spent enough time in Cyrune to learn how military ranks worked. Moreover, according to the report, he lost most if not all of his memories, so he couldn’t blame him. He still asked him regardless. ”You’ve never heard of her?”

”I didn’t know what a High General was until you told me one was coming.”

The Sergeant accepted that with a small nod.

The Lieutenant stayed focused on the road while he explained, ”Elinox Holmes is the daughter of Grand Duke Holmes and the youngest person in the recorded history of Olmost to reach the rank of High General. She was promoted recently.”

Zishan listened until one detail seemed to be missing. ”How old is she?”

”Eighteen.”

His attention shifted away from the road. ”What?”

The Lieutenant finally looked at him. ”Eighteen years old.”

Zishan was nineteen.

He looked down at the uniform he had been so proud of wearing when he first received it, then at the insignia identifying him as a Volunteer Auxiliary.

An eighteen-year-old girl was already a High General.

”What Level is she?” he asked.

”One thousand five hundred and ten.”

Zishan became silent for a few seconds.

The Sergeant probably expected another ridiculous question from him, though Zishan was still trying to understand how somebody younger than him had already climbed more than fifteen hundred Levels while he had spent several hours feeling proud about reaching Level 50.

He had thought his growth was ridiculous.

Now somebody was coming through the entrance who had another 1,460 Levels over him.

”Level 1,510...” Zishan murmured, looking toward the gathering soldiers again. ”At eighteen years old?”

”That’s one of the reasons her name is known far beyond Olmost,” the Lieutenant said. ”There have been talented people in every generation. Some reach high Levels early, others awaken rare Mana Affinities or Skills that make the major guilds fight over them. Elinox Holmes reached the point where people stopped comparing her to anyone her age.”

That sounded familiar.

Zishan had spent most of the morning watching two officers struggle to understand his own Status, except Elinox had lived with that kind of attention for years.

He was about to ask something else when the first riders entered the main road.

They wore Olmost military armor, though their equipment carried more damage than Zishan expected from an escort arriving at its own encampment. Scratches ran along breastplates, several shields had been split along the edges, and one soldier had a fresh bandage wrapped around the side of his head. More mounted soldiers entered behind them, followed by officers and several dozen troops marching beneath the Olmost banner.

There was no decorated carriage among them. Elinox Holmes simply walked with the soldiers, wearing the uniform of Olmost with the insignia of a High General resting near her chest.

Zishan had expected someone intimidating the moment he heard her Level.

Instead, the first thing he noticed was that she was beautiful. The kind that could be apocalyptic.

Her hair was an unusual shade somewhere between silver and pale blue, falling well past her waist despite parts of it being arranged neatly enough that it did not interfere with her movement. A few thinner braids had been worked into the sides, keeping most of it away from her face. Her eyes were a soft violet color, and her features looked almost too refined for someone who had supposedly spent years climbing through the military.

What caught his attention next was the way she walked.

There was something graceful about every step, though it never made her look delicate. The military uniform, the sword at her side, and the way the soldiers around her reacted gave that grace a completely different feeling. She looked elegant while carrying herself like someone who would not hesitate to walk straight into a battlefield.

Graceful and valiant.

Zishan couldn’t think of a better way to describe it.

Then, he had a strange feeling in his heart. He felt like he had seen her somewhere before. No matter how he tried to keep the thought away, his mind kept insisting it.

Zishan stared a little longer, trying to figure out where the feeling came from. He searched through the faces he remembered from Cyrune, then went farther back through his memories from Earth.

Nothing matched. That strange familiarity would not leave him at all.

’Where the hell have I seen her?’ This was the part that bothered him.

Someone who looked like Elinox Holmes was not the kind of person he should have forgotten. After a while, he brushed those thoughts aside as he noticed another thing.

Nobody tried approaching her casually.

So he asked, ”What did she do to make everyone this nervous?”

The Sergeant gave him a sideways glance. ”You’re asking that after hearing she’s Level 1,510?”

”Commander Holtz is strong, too. People don’t act like they’re scared he’ll turn them into fertilizer because they stood too close.”

The comparison earned him a longer look from the Sergeant before the Lieutenant continued explaining.

Elinox Holmes had awakened five confirmed Mana Affinities while she was still young. The first was Gravity, already rare enough to place her among the most valuable young Mages of her generation. Wind came after it, followed by Lightning, Light, and then Water.

Zishan stopped watching the procession long enough to make sure he had heard correctly. He had four affinities himself now, though most of them had come from rewards that no ordinary person could reproduce. Elinox had five that the world openly knew about, and from what the Lieutenant said, there had been rumors for years that she possessed more.

”Gravity, Wind, Lightning, Light, and Water...” Zishan repeated under his breath before focusing on the first one again. ”What can Gravity Magic actually do?”

”That depends on the Skill and the person using it. Increasing weight, altering the direction of gravitational force, controlling movement within an area, crushing targets under greater pressure. There are many applications.”

Zishan’s eyes followed Elinox as she approached the main command area.

That sounded extremely unfair.

He wanted it.