Keith grit his teeth and red at her. He liked riddling people and ying around with the clues and made up answers but he didn''t like being on the receiving side.


    ''Karma really is a bitch…'' he thought as he tried toe up with an answer.


    "You managed to seed in your third awakening?"


    "Huhuhu, I wish. If you fail once, you don''t have another chance of awakening the third time. Not unless I take down someone who has awakened a third time, like those fake dogs role-ying gods." she said and then grinned, the corners of her lips tearing until it reached her ears.


    There was no blood and instead, it just looked like a squirming mass of flesh.


    She thenunched herself towards Keith and so did the Ken clone. Both of them flew towards their target but midway through their flight, they werepletely consumed by a huge burst of mes.@@novelbin@@


    The mes weren''t orangish red like they always were and instead, they were pure white in color. This was thanks to Vincent using the awakened ability boost on himself, which also carried over to Keith.


    Keith sensed a presence behind him and immediately rolled to the side, barely escaping arge sword that sliced at the ce where he originally stood. The mes he had been shooting for the past two seconds was not gone, but Keith could not find anyone.


    Not a single human being other than the sword that was magically floating in the air.


    Not the girl and nor the Ken clone. Even the ownerless flying sword fell to the ground and was consumed by the shadows beneath it.


    "Do you like this game? Hehehe, I''m having fun!"


    Keith didn''t respond and stood silently as he expected another sneak attack, but nothing came. Instead, he saw the mystical sea of shadow crawl up a tree and soon after, a face formed on the tree trunk.


    It was the face of the same girl he had seen a few moments ago and she began to speak with a creepy smile on her face.


    "You want to know how my shadows can bypass your baby girl''s armor right? It''s because of Balmond. I made a deal with him and got this in return, a blessing from the wannabe god of war. Do you understand now?" she asked and Keith immediately nodded.


    "Yeah, he''s the only one stronger than her when ites to pure strength. Thews they integrated with, go against each other and in a way, they do kinda counter each other. Based on the scenario, both of them can one up the other."


    The face chuckled and sunk back into the tree trunk, just to pop out of another tree that was right beside Keith.


    "Boo!"


    Keith turned to look at her, but he didn''t attack or dodge preemptively. This was mostly because he didn''t sense any danger from her.


    "So boring… but anyways, Have fun with the third prince. I''ve decided to help the second prince since it''ll be more fun this way. What do you think? Let''s y this game okay? The one who get''s their prince to ascend the throne, will win this bet." she said excitedly, which only made her look even more creepy due to the torn lips.


    Keith thought for a while and nodded, "Ascend the throne huh?"


    "Yes yes!" a voice came from Keith''s right, to which he turned around to see Ken''s copy once again.


    "Why in the hell do you keep switching?" Keith asked and cursed inwardly before making up his mind, "But sure, we can have a bet but that''ll depend on what the stakes are. Just so you know, I''m not a huge risk taker."


    Ken clone nodded, "Stake? It''s obvious isn''t it? Death of course! Or if you wanna do something lighter, then let''s make it so that the losers will be exiled from the empire. What do you think?"


    "Exile seems alright, we can do that…" Keith said and Ken clone nodded before adding in more rules, "Just to make things fair, both of us are not allowed to directly attack the royal family, grand dukes, or any of the nobles.


    I''m telling this because, we both have really strong escaping capabilities, but the other''s don''t. If we take this seriously, we could easily just attack the king or anyone of the opposite team to help our teams win and this is not fun.


    If you attack the second prince directly, I''ll kill your sister and brother inw."


    It was a clear threat and Keith could sense it. He let out a sigh and nodded, "I won''t attack the second prince… even though that was my n. Alright then, like you said, we''ll y fair for the most part. Stay tuned with My Virtual Library Empire


    Don''tin if I get more soldiers from the other nobles."


    "You won''t and cant. Not anymore" Ken clone said and went straight into the sea of shadows. A few secondster, the the forest went back to normal; with normal shadows and a fresh environment.


    Keith let out a soft sigh and sat down on the ground as he leaned against a tree.


    ''Compared to regr people, I''m really strong… but I''mpletely helpless when I go against those who took a step further than the second awakening…'' he thought and let out another sigh.


    The amount of helplessness he felt for the past few minutes felt really hard to digest even after the entire ordeal had disappeared.


    Keith dived into his spatial dimension and unlike how he went in most of the times; with a mental image. This time, he used his physical body instead.


    He didn''t tell the three girls anything and instead, he simply spent some time with Miya until she got tired and went to bed.


    Then, he walked out of the hut and saw both ra and Amelia waiting for him there.


    "Now''s a good time to talk right?" ra asked and Keith nodded before making a makeshift chair for the three of them using just the soil. It was a simple concept ofpressing the soil to extreme levels until it''s hardness was close to that of a stone.


    He sat down, and so did the other two. Keith recounted everything that happened and then got to the main topic before he asked them for their opinions.


    "- once he poisons the first prince, I thought of abducting Zander and killing him in secret but now I can''t do that anymore. If I do, she''ll kill my sister and also my brother inw." he said and while ra nodded, Amelia had a frown on her face.


    She tilted her head slightly as he stared a the ground, but after a few more seconds, she looked up at Keith, "This is an unfair rule right? I mean, she has a hostage while you don''t. If she breaks the rules, then there''s nothing we can do to punish her or anything of that sorts."


    "Yeah… but there''s nothing I can do about it now, can I? And this is the first time I''ve felt this helpless after a long time… If I''m being honest, I feel extremely frustrated. Anyways, since there''s nothing we can do other than just y along with what she wants, I need ideas." Keith said and leaned forward a little.


    "A way in which we can beat the second prince without having to teleoport him to this ce and killing him here. I can''t touch them, like attack them and stuff, so it does get kinda annoying.


    All I need is ideas to help the third prince win."


    Amelia nodded and used a thin stick to make a few ns on the ground.


    "Well, the most simplest and straightforward one is to have a huge army." she said and made a huge cross on the number "1" that she had drawn a minute ago.


    "The next way would be to make a team that takes care of just the supplies. While it''s very crucial for the war and can work well thanks to the funds we have from Princess Leora, it most probably won''t hold much weight. After all, your sess depends on the amount ofnd you manage to conquer."


    She made arge circle around the "2" and the poked the "3", "As for the next option that we have, it''s to hire mercenaries but they can very easily switch sides which is not really optimal when we''re in a long war that could potentiallyst for one to five years.


    If possible, it''s best to not use this method at all but there are situations where we could hire these men temporarily. This really is hard.. Nothing elsees to my mind."


    Seeing her best friend and boyfriend whacking their heads, ra decided to share her thoughts too, even though she was not too confident with her ideas since she had never taken any sses regarding warfare or strategies.


    "Umm… can''t we use the first method and reverse it? Like, go with quality instead of quantity? Having ten thousand men who are the best of the best is better than having a hundred thousand who are barely average… or am I wrong?"


    Amelia nodded in response, "You''re not wrong, but when ites to wars… it''s very important to have numbers. Also, we don''t really have the resources to train our soldiers into bing war machines and even if we solve the problem of resources, we are still limited by time."


    "No wait, this n should work." Keith said and caressed his chin, "I didn''t tell you guys about the time boosts did I?"