Three days after that conversation, I was standing in the hangar.

The Lightning Queen, Novak's personal yacht, loomed before us.

It looked like a sleek black dagger. The hull didn't gleam, it was matte, coated in a thin layer of graphene that absorbed both light and radiation.

Forty-three metres long, up to ten wide at its thickest point, the kind of 'guard', where the manoeuvring thrusters were mounted on an extended rail, and six metres high, including the landing struts. In folded mode, it sat even flatter. The engineers had clearly been inspired by a blade when designing it. This was a vessel built to slice through space. Fast, precise, and comfortable.

The ramp lowered smoothly as we approached.

"Good morning, sir," the Queen greeted us. Her soft voice sounded directly in my head through the interface.

"Hello, Queen," Novak replied.

Today, he looked more serious. That unexpected burst of cheer had vanished, replaced by the stern image of a general once again.

The all-black matte armour he wore, perfectly matching the ship's hull, only added to the severity.

"Greetings, Jake Sullivan. Welcome aboard," the yacht addressed me next.

"Pleasure to meet you," I replied. "Is this kind of hospitality standard?" I asked Novak, but it was she who answered.

"For the master's students and his guests — always."

Novak didn't respond, nor did he intervene in the conversation, so I wasn't sure how to treat her, as a machine, or as a personality.

Clearly, the yacht was run by an AI, not really sentient, but there could very well be a personality emulation module built in. And the last thing I needed was to have this ship get offended.

Best option, I decided, was to shut up and observe.

The Queen didn't press me with questions, either.

The ship's interior looked like a hybrid of Japanese minimalism, clinical lab-white sterility, and military-grade functionality. The layout resembled the crawler that had taken me on my raid, but roomier.

Two platforms for donning armour, four private cabins, a central hall with a holographic table and four leather chairs, each flanked by corner lockers. The walls were fitted with fake windows, monitor screens, and at the far end, an open doorway led into the cockpit.

Novak didn't bother going into the cockpit. He sat down in one of the chairs in the central hall and retracted his faceplate. I followed suit, the master didn't need to close his helmet for a short stroll in a thin atmosphere, so this was clearly a cue for how I should behave too.

"Queen, we're flying to Yellow Pine School. You have control."

"Thank you for your trust," she said. "Cadet Sullivan, please choose and occupy a seat."

She even made me buckle up.

"Distance to target: two thousand one hundred and eighty-four kilometres," the Queen reported. "Estimated flight duration: fourteen minutes and forty-three seconds."

It was a short flight, so no drinks were offered, although I was sure the corner cabinets were stocked with everything from tea to premium bourbon.

Still, fifteen minutes was too long for silence. And time with Novak was precious, so I decided to ask him something flight-related. To avoid offending the Queen, I chose my words carefully.

"I understand the Queen is unique, but in general, are ships of this class used for long-range raids?"

"Among others," Novak said. "I fly the Queen. Occasionally she takes my senior students for a spin, but overall, we tend to use more utilitarian transport — military shuttles, mostly.

"Most people just rent," he added. "Very few can afford a personal shuttle, let alone a yacht."

The Queen eased into motion. No perceptible shift in gravity or inertia, only the changing scenery on the fake windows.

They were, of course, just high-definition displays, not actual windows, same as the one in my room, but the depth and lighting were so convincing that the brain accepted them as real instantly. The image was coming from external cameras, and at first, I thought we were lifting off vertically. But after a few seconds, I saw the edge of the platform tilt, and the hangar walls began to slide past.

"Can I ask what it cost?" I said, mostly to keep the conversation going.

This marvel of engineering couldn't possibly come cheap. That scrappy chunk of chitin Novak gave me this morning was worth 1.3 million! And that was just part of a bug corpse.

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"The Queen cost me eight billion," Novak replied. "You can get a shuttle for two, but if you're buying, it's better to commission a custom ship, one that complements your cultivation."

"How do you mean?" I asked, not following.

"For starters, ports that allow you to channel techniques. The Queen can conduct and even amplify my Fist and Lightning techniques. And of course, the shield.

"Mace cultivators prefer heavy-armoured orbs, Blade types love scythes, and Point…"

He nodded toward the ship.

"The Queen was originally designed foe Point users, but heavily modified for my needs."

That was impressive.

"I thought a cultivator was a weapon in and of themselves," I said.

"That's true, but I can't go full-force while at the helm. And stepping outside the ship for every fight… gets tedious."

I glanced back at the artificial viewport.

The angle had shifted again. The horizon had appeared on screen: red and green from the local sands and plant life.

Verdis, despite being a moon, was no barren desert. It had atmosphere, thin, unbreathable for humans, but if there was air, there was life.

So far, this was still the orderly world of the Black Lotus School.

We were flying over neat squares and rectangles of fields and pastures, dotted with the occasional barn or processing complex.

The hologram above the table between Novak and me lit up, displaying a translucent overlay. The Queen's interface projected a map of our route: a blue arc covering a fifth of the moon, stretching from one blinking point labelled Black Lotus School to another marked Yellow Pine School.

The fields outside blurred into a solid green canvas.

I twisted in my chair to glance at all the monitors.

The rear ones showed the school complex shrinking rapidly into the distance; the front — a starlit sky.

I looked at Novak. He, too, was staring at the monitors, either lost in thought, or giving me space to process the situation. His armour absorbed light almost as well as the ship's hull, a genuine black hole in humanoid form.

+200 to dramatic flair.

"Anything special I should know about Yellow Pine?" I asked. "About your colleague?"

Novak thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"Nothing in particular. You can trust her with everything except your real origin. We'll stick with the official version — amnesia."

Five minutes in. We'd already covered almost half the distance.

Verdis rotated furiously beneath us, yet most of the monitors now showed only stars. We were flying high.

Another five minutes, and we were nearly there.

The rear monitors had switched to the starfield; the front ones now displayed a fast-approaching mountain. Its peak was capped in snow, and just below the white crown stretched a vast forest. Yellow patches were scattered throughout the treetops. The lower the forest went, the greener it became, and at the base of the mountain, nestled in the valley, was a sprawling complex of towers and domes.

"Which came first?" I asked. "Black Lotus or Yellow Pine?"

"If you mean the schools, roughly the same age. The Spirit Temple is older than both, but still younger than the Army & Fleet Academy. If you're talking about the plants, though, they've been cultivated on Earth for thousands of years. But this School has a one particular pine growing here.It's nearly two thousand years old. Eighty-three metres tall."

Honestly, I had no idea whether that was impressive for a pine tree. If there was some hidden meaning in those words, it went straight over my head.

"Prepare for landing," the Queen announced.

The hologram over the table faded, and all the windows shifted their angle at once. Now we had a side view of the mountain.

The focus was on a massive landing pad built right onto a cliffside terrace. It wasn't the only one, there were several platforms, but none of them currently held any ships.

I assumed these were for visitors. There had to be hangars somewhere nearby.

The Queen descended with the same grace she'd shown during takeoff. She probably didn't even need to announce the landing. I didn't feel the slightest bump when we touched the ground.

Novak rose and, once again leading by example, lowered the faceplate of his helmet. He was the first to step onto the ramp.

I followed. The view from the landing platform was, perhaps, even more impressive than the one from Novak's window. Or maybe that was just because I'd grown used to it?

Someone was already waiting for us.

Standing near the edge of the platform was a girl in black-and-yellow armour.

So many black-and-yellows around here. I'd gotten my colours by chance, but at Black Lotus, black was the core. And black looked cool. Yellow… not so much. Poor souls, stuck trying to stay on-brand with school colours while still looking badass.

The interface identified her: Tamila Soro, early stage three.

She bowed.

"Master Novak. Cadet Sullivan. Master Mendoza is expecting you. Please follow me."

She gestured towards a small, sleek, almost entirely glass flyer shaped like a teardrop, parked right at the edge of the platform. Only the structural frame and some of the inner components were opaque and metallic, the rest was made of reinforced glass or composite material. Inside were just four seats, with the front two clearly reserved for pilots.

Though there was only one pilot.

Next to the Queen, the glass flyer looked like a toy, but there was no doubt about its reliability. On the contrary, I thought the transparent design was, in its own way, better than fake windows. At least here you'd get a real view. And I had no doubt it would get us exactly where we needed to go.

Once we were seated, Soro lifted off without a word, almost straight up. The flight was smooth but rapid. Inside the glass pod, I could actually feel the shift in pressure from the acceleration. Subtle, but definitely there.

There were about five kilometres between the landing platform and the building where Mendoza lived. We covered it in less than a minute.

Barely had we sat down, and already we had to get out. Not even time to enjoy the view. Though I was able to take in the building itself, whose roof we landed on.

The mountain formed one of the building's walls. From the roof, it was possible to begin climbing higher, and judging by the worn stone, someone did that regularly.

"This way," Soro said, pointing to a door that led down into the structure.

It reminded me of Novak's rooftop. Behind those doors there'd be an atmospheric airlock and a few platforms for removing gear.

I guessed correctly.

Soro removed her armour alongside us. Underneath the black-and-yellow plating, she wore a yellow jumpsuit, and had a thick mane of bright red hair. I couldn't help but wonder how she even managed to fit all that under her helmet.

Still impeccably polite, Soro led us to the lifts. We descended several levels and found ourselves in a corridor between several private apartments.

Behind one of those doors, a woman was waiting for us, a woman who had recently joined the ranks of Earth's most powerful cultivators.

I was a little nervous.

Sure, Novak was stronger, and scarier, but I'd gotten used to him. This beast, on the other hand, was still a mystery to me.

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