///Sometime earlier///
"My lady, please wait!"
Tia stormed ahead, ignoring the trouble she gave her bodyguards by doing so.
'Come on, it's so unlike you!' she screamed out in her mind, gritting her teeth in silent frustration.
And yet, even though she tried her best to live her life in a way that wouldn't trouble others, right now?
Right now, she couldn't care less.
'I know the chances this is the place he went to are slim. I know that the chances of me just happening upon him even if he really came here are even slimmer, but…'
Tia's jaw started to hurt from how hard she gritted her teeth.
'I just can't give it up!'
Whoever this man was, he could hardly be called a man. A monster was a much better fitting name for him!
And yet…
He was still a man. And whatever it was that he did to the mana around him—it clearly had some sort of purpose.
The problematic part?
As a seventh-stage nascent soul cultivator, Tia was goddamn sure this monster's cultivation didn't measure up to her own.
'He was a sixth-rank soul tempering stage cultivator, and that's already at most!' Tia, even after the hurried packing of her formation and then rush to the city, continued to process all that she saw in her head. 'And yet… he flew!'
For a young duchess-to-be like her, it was no secret that flight was only possible for those who reached the ninth stage of the sky step realm. Even then, it hardly reached the level of true flight, a domain restricted only to birds, some monsters, and then dragons.
And yet, as if to spit at what should be common sense, that man… He took flight!
Not in a way Tia would expect to see it, but still! And by all means, he managed to travel at speeds that she could only imagine, making it all the less likely for him to ever actually enter Vistra, and all the less likely for him to still be in there.
'Is this going to be it?' Tia clenched her small fists, struggling not to let her frustration take over her head completely. 'Just a glance at one hell of a mystery and then nothing?'
Suddenly, the girl stopped, standing perfectly still in the middle of a busy road.
A decision that would surely come to cost her dearly… if not for her guards rushing up to catch up to her and then spreading all around to stop the traffic from trampling their young lady.
'Just a single glance at a whole other world of cultivation and then nothing? Is that really all this world will afford me?!'
For the first time in her life, Tia found something that managed to pique her curiosity enough to make her break free from the restraints of the role she dutifully played since the earliest she could remember.
Burdened by the obligations of her status, she continued to do her best to match up to the expectations resting upon her.
And it just so happened that right when she finally could take her cultivation somewhat easier than usual, she chanced upon something that broke all that she considered to be common sense!
"Young mistress!" Ian finally reached Tia's side, standing up to her right as he near instantly leaned down, resting his hands on his knees as he breathed heavily.
Even for all the cultivation that he boasted, the run their entourage completed wasn't something anyone could do easily. Most of the cultivators were used to manifesting their powers in an explosive, instantaneous way rather than a prolonged period of endurance.
"What is it?" Tia snapped at the man, turning her head to her right, pretty much the same moment as the bubble of emptiness on the street, one created by her bodyguards pretty much pushing everyone else out of this particular part of the street… broke, when the doors to one of the buildings that just happened to be within said bubble opened up.
Absorbed by the chief of her guard, Tia didn't have the chance to look up.
"If you have nothing to say…" she snapped again, turning on her heel and ready to leave…
Only to slam right into the stranger that came out from the building.
"Ah!" Startled, Tia jumped back, raising her face to look up at the unexpected obstacle. And then…
"IT'S YOU?!" A guttural scream escaped from her lips, her face twisting and freezing at the same time as she lost her balance, stumbling back and then falling backwards, straight onto her noble ass while pointing with her hand at the man she just crashed into.
///Back to the present///
"It's you?!"
This single, unexpected scream coming out from the mouth of a cute stranger suddenly sent the people around her into a frenzy.
And with Theo not only stuck in the middle of it all but also marked by the girl's—who he just crashed into—pointed hand…
"GET HIM!"
Before the girl herself could utter another word, one of her men screamed out, pulling his sword out while already rushing at Theo.
'Fast!'
Alarmed, Theo could feel his blood and mana boil, the honed instincts of his second life mixing with the critical response of his old life, resulting in a tangled mess of mana rising all around him.
The cultivator attacked without hesitation, striking with his sword straight at Theo's throat while a bunch of others rushed to pin him down against the wall of the building he just left.
With his pupils dilating in response to the adrenaline exploding in his bloodstream, Theo had no time to respond in any logical, well-thought-out way.
All he could do was rely on his instincts, on his reflex.
Yet, right as his mana rose, several glyphs already forming in the air, invisible to the naked eye yet no less threatening by this fact…
"STOP!"