Starlight Life Of The Sage

Every one of the locals started to back away simultaneously, their bodies shivering.

"That woman is stronger than the City Lord," said the Knight Captain, using the mana communication radio line.

"She's stronger than the head of the Dixon family, too," said the mage in reply. "Probably stronger than both of them combined. I can't even feel any mana from her, but my Patron is screaming at me to not mess with her. My identify could only see the young girl's name and job, but I can't even see *those* when I use it on that woman."

"Hey doesn't it sorta look like… Like the girl and that woman know each other?" said the Magpie leader.

Once more, all of the parties froze in place. They stopped their slow retreat.

"Do you think that that's her master?" Asked the Knight Captain.

"If so, then we've been very rude to her protege. Should we run? If we split up in three directions some of us might live?" Said the Magpie leader.

"Perhaps," said the mage, "But we should probably just wait and see. Outside of her pressuring us with her aura, she hasn't made any aggressive moves. I think running now would only cause problems. Most of us, if not all, would die."

All three parties nodded in acknowledgement. All three parties decided to stay and ride the strange situation out, and all three parties prepared their trump cards to betray one another. After all, the old adage goes: 'You don't need to outrun the bear, you just need to outrun the other campers.'

-

Cara walked slowly towards her disciple, towards the young Zara she spent so many years raising, and she wept. She didn't want to cry, but the hormones in her young teenage body exacerbated her emotional state. She, quite literally, couldn't control herself.

Cara slammed into her disciple and wrapped her in a strong hug.

Zara, on the other hand, didn't know what to do. Her mind was moving faster than ever before, and her face flushed. Her eyes almost seemed to spiral in on themselves.

Her Teacher, the one who raised her like his own daughter, was now a young girl. A strange feeling bubbled up in her heart, a d.e.s.i.r.e to tease someone who was once unteasable… A d.e.s.i.r.e to bully and also a d.e.s.i.r.e to protect.

She had come over to this world, sealing her acupoints and lowering her strength to the early stage of Ascendancy, all for the sake of serving as a Dao protector for her weakened teacher. She did so out of filial piety at first, but now she wanted to do it for a reason she couldn't articulate or explain. Her teacher was, all things considered, rather cute… Almost like a daughter.

Her hands moved like a robots, jerking and awkward, as she wrapped them around her Teacher's small frame, returning the hug.

"T-teacher, umm, what is…"

"Zara," the Sage interrupted, "Before we sit down and talk I want to resolve the current situation here." Cara pointed to the three parties surrounding her. "I want to introduce you as my Teacher, but they have a method of detecting lies. So I need you to, in your next sentence, say something I don't know. Teach me something, anything. Don't worry about them hearing, they shouldn't understand the Xersan language."

Zara's eyes went wide. She blushed deep crimson. To teach her Teacher… To become the older one, the one in charge. The strange sensation from earlier bloomed in Zara's heart. A d.e.s.i.r.e she never knew she had taken shape, blossoming like a lotus. She gave a dazzling smile. "In the years you've been gone, a new method in Elemental Palace cultivation appeared, letting people draw in three elements at the same time. You do so by drawing in fire Qi from the Lower Right Heel acupoint and letting…"

Zara gave a brief explanation on the new method of cultivation, something that appeared after her Teacher's death.

Cara listened in rapt attention and, for the first time in a very, very long time, she learned from another person.

-

It only took a few moments, but after the impromptu lesson, Cara turned to face the three groups.

"I apologize for that outburst," she said with a grin. "This woman is my Teacher. She doesn't speak your language, so you'll have to forgive me for translating. Teacher and I haven't seen each other for a long while so we were hoping to spend some time talking. I would like to ask the three of you to leave. Teacher and I can come visit you all at a later time."

Not a single word Cara said would set off a lie detector. All three of the local groups felt the tension leave their bodies simultaneously, as if a massive burden had been removed. They each bowed, one by one. They all knew the urgency of the current situation. A foreign expert had appeared in the Tin's Soldier Garden, an incredibly powerful one at that… And she had taken a citizen of Tin as a disciple.

More importantly, that 'citizen' was most likely the missing daughter of the Stonelight family, one of the Four Families that held power in the Tin City…

A great many things were going to start moving. Many parties would seek to get the favor of this girl, and her family would, undoubtedly, try to cause trouble.

The Knight Captain didn't care much about the political affairs of everything. He was content that the Great Ape of the Soldier Garden died. He would report the happenings of the day to the City Lord, and then he would leave things at that.

-

The Mage of the Zeitgar family, the weakest of the Four Families, needed to make his report. He also needed to think about how he would make the said report, and to whom he would send it. If he gave the information to the Stonelight family, he could earn enemies from the Dixons, and vice versa. The teal-robed man sweat bullets as he started to leave the Soldier Garden, terrified of what would happen in his future. He was arrogant when in the presence of the Knight Captain and the dogs of the Empire to the east, but in front of the family elders? He was still a child in their eyes. A mere Tier 8 mage held no real power in the Tin City.

As he moved through the woods, he looked over the few followers he brought with him. He realized that, if he wanted to live, he needed to be the one to control the dissemination of information. The Knight Captain and the Empire men wouldn't leak the information to the Families, only his own followers were at risk of that…

Blood bloomed like a rose. A torrent of mana exploded just before the outer boundaries of the Soldier Garden. A teal-robed mage, covered in red splatter stains, walked out of the woods alone.

-

The men from the Empire were of one mind. Their investigation succeeded. They had the answers they sought: the Empire's seventh prince had died in these woods to a magic beast. Their lie detection and recording tools were enough proof. The four soldiers would keep their heads…

And they would be rewarded for finding out even more *shocking* information. Their device that measured specialized radiation levels, not just mana levels, ticked off numbers so high they returned as overflow errors. That woman that appeared at the end was above anything they ever heard of, before. She was probably someone from beyond the Northern Walls, where Mana was more abundant and stronger beings lived.

They did not want to make her an enemy.

-

Cara lead her disciple to her tree home. There were many things they needed to discuss, but one issue was far more pressing on the Sage's mind—And her back.

"Zara, could you please let me go?" Cara asked, trying to pull away from the stronger woman's arms.

"No." Zara wrapped her Teacher's small body even tighter, hugging her almost like a stuffed animal.

Cara's feet were held off the ground, and she was floundering a bit. On her back she could feel Zara's b.r.e.a.s.ts pressing into her. The whole situation was terribly awkward.

"Teacher, from now on, I'm going to be taking care of you. Once you reach Transformation Stage, we can bring you back over to our world," said Zara as she put her head on her Teacher's shoulder. "And while I'm taking care of you, I'm going to be hugging you a lot. Because you're cute, and I wont get this chance later. I just want to stay like this for a little while longer. Then we can talk about the important stuff."

Cara didn't know how to reply to that. She hadn't ever been called cute in her 50,000 years as The Sage. She had only been called cute when she was a baby in her brief life on Earth...

And she had no idea why Zara was being so adamant about something so strange as skinship. Had Zara always been this aggressive? This domineering?

Cara only remembered Zara being timid and shy. When had she changed?

A moment of thought made Cara realize that this change probably came because of her death. Zara always looked up to her as a father figure… Losing a parent was a huge deal for anyone, even a powerful cultivator and world-renowned alchemist.

"You've changed, Zara," said Cara with a smile as she leaned into her disciple. She decided staying like that, at least for the moment, wasn't such a bad way to waste time.