Outside the palace gates, Damon and Daichi kept running with bright faces as the warm sun gave a royal greeting. Daichi's tongue hung out in the wind like he was enjoying every second of the day.
They first saw the main road of pale stone, stretching outward like a glowing spine that reflected the morning sun in soft gold.
On both sides of the road, tall elite Noble homes rose with elegant windows casting the sun's beams across the walkways, making the whole district look alive.
Damon kept his eyes on the road, but his face held a certain calm joy to it. "Why don't we do a test as we go?"
Daichi instantly pulled his tongue in as if Damon had cut off his enjoyment. "Between the two of us, you're the only one going to school. Let's keep it that way," he gave Damon a flat, smug look and barked.
Damon let out a laugh. He shifted his weight, keeping his stride steady. "C'mon. I always tell you what everything is when we go out. So to prove to me you're actually listening—"
"Nope. I don't listen," Daichi cut him off, his furry shoulders moving rhythmically as the two invisible bonds kept running. "We're mostly visiting a food shop so there's no way I'm listening."
Damon facepalmed, his shoes lightly tapping the stone. "Just listen, alright? Look over there."
Daichi glanced down the center of the road. Large, hovering royal transports were drifting smoothly along the bright morning lanes, their polished crystal hulls breaking the sunlight into pretty rainbows across the streets as they passed.
"Those are Prism Commuters," Damon said. "They are—"
"They're made for Nobles, people like Cythera, and everyone in this district we're running through," Daichi interrupted reluctantly, his ears down and his eyelids almost closing from sheer boredom.
Then, he gave a quick shake of his fur, his eyes lighting up with mischief. "I might not be listening when we're strolling, but you've been reading more lately. So... I just listen to what you study," he said with a bright gaze.
Damon looked at the reluctant dog and thought, 'Hmm… He deserves a reward.'
For a split second, Damon vanished from Daichi's side, his presence completely wiping from the air even while invisible. A breath later, he reappeared in the exact same stride.
"Good boy," Damon said.
With a quick flick, he threw a cube of fried meat right across Daichi's snout. The dog's eyes seemed to turn slow-motioned as he saw the piece of meat rolling across his line of sight as if teasing him, and his jaws snapped shut, catching it instantly.
'Where did you just go?' Daichi asked around the mouthful of food.
Damon smirked, pulling a grease-stained paper bag from his mini-dimension and shaking it beside his head. "For every question you get right, you get a piece of meat. For every one you get wrong, I get five pieces."
"Huh?! How is that fair?!" Daichi barked back in open disagreement.
"Because it's a simple game," Damon replied, shrugging. "We need high stakes."
Up ahead, the clean walkways suddenly became cluttered. A high-end vendor was carefully setting out rows of delicate, glowing glass planters right near the curb, while a wealthy citizen stood nearby holding a long, trailing leash attached to a strange, floating fox that looked like a ball of fluffy blue vapor hovering lightly above the ground.
"Dude, keep your voice down," Damon's chest hitched with a quiet laugh. He adjusted his stride.
He could feel the massive, compressed plates of his tactical vest becoming tighter against his chest as he swayed to the left. His invisible frame vaulted cleanly over a decorative stone bench, his boots barely making a sound as he landed. "We might be invisible, but people can still hear us."
Daichi didn't even slow down. He smoothly ducked underneath the floating blue vapor pet, causing the creature to bob upward in confusion, before the hound shot a dramatic look back at Damon. "Well, learn how to bend sound then."
Damon snorted, dodging past the vendor's outstretched arm just as the man reached for another planter. "That's why I'm heading to Draven. Let's speed up."
Their invisible frames broke out of the elite district. They slipped into the public heart of the city, approaching a wide ring road where several royal transports wove in and out of the loop, their soft engine hum mixing with cheerful chatter and the rushing splash of a massive silver‑blue fountain catching the morning sun.
At the center of the rushing water stood a tall stone statue of a Guardian Dragon; its wings were carved as if it were frozen in motion. On the pale base beneath its feet, there was an elegant engraving:
The Dragon of Light.
A man wearing a blindfold and in regal purple clothes stood on a raised stone platform beside the fountain's edge, waving a bright yellow flag as he guided the circling vehicles with sharp, practiced motions.
'Your mom put the life of thousands in the hands of a blind guy?' Daichi asked telepathically as they ran past him, slipping between the splash of the fountain and the gentle hum of engines
'I doubt it,' Damon chuckled mentally. 'Probably someone she put in charge put someone in charge that put someone in charge that put Daredevil over there in control.'
'That sounds oddly possible.'
The blind warden tilted his head as if he sensed something, 'Your highness?'
Damon and Daichi ignored it and ran through a grand plaza, covered in celebration remnants from the night before, with huge silver-green and golden banners hanging loosely between the grand structures.
'Was there a party last night?' The hound questioned.
'Seems like it. These are the only people I know that celebrate for no reason. Or maybe I don't know why,' Damon replied mid-stride.
As Damon wove like a lightning bolt through the crowds of advanced citizens, Natural Knights and Suited Ones, he kept the game going. "What's the primary energy source used to craft star-steel?" Damon asked telepathically, dodging past a vendor selling hyper-colourful foods and exotic, scented plants that grew right out of glowing crystal planters.
"Sol-ether extraction," Daichi barked back promptly and leaped over a splintered wooden box.
"Correct." Damon chuckled, pulling a fresh cube of meat from the paper bag and tossing it backward. Daichi snapped his jaws in mid-air, swallowing it whole without breaking his rhythm.
A moment later, they entered the:
Technomagic and Artisan Ward.
The words were written on a curved stone archway framing the open streets.
The buildings here looked more functional; the elegant aesthetics of the elite district slowly changed to clean, glowing laboratories and forge-chambers where Eterna users and Non-Eterna users worked together to bend raw power into armour. The air hummed noticeably louder here, vibrating with the sharp sound of magic being actively shaped.
"Haven't been here in a while. Anyway, second question," Damon murmured, glancing over his shoulder as they flashed past a workshop lined with spears of silver-wood. "Name the five beasts that represent each element. This is a simple one, Daichi. You even saw one on our way here."
A long pause stretched through their bond. Daichi's invisible ears dropped. "Uh... the golden one, the shiny one, and... the big one?"
Damon snorted, a self-satisfied smirk touching his lips as he skidded around a massive stack of raw steel crates. "Wrong. They're all dragons. Such as the dragon of light we saw a few minutes ago. That's five pieces for me."
Without hesitation, Damon reached into the paper bag, pulled out a massive handful of five thick, fried meat cubes, and stuffed them into his own mouth. He chewed slowly, letting out a dramatic, muffled sigh of delight through their telepathic link just to provoke the hound.
Daichi's reaction was instantaneous.
Offended in the most dramatic way possible, Daichi immediately transformed into his bigger form. The massive, invisible hound let out a furious, silent snarl and surged forward, chasing Damon through the lower tier.
Damon burst out laughing, his legs blurring as he pushed his speed to stay just ahead of the giant, snapping jaws of his hound, enjoying the chaos as they tore past some foundries.
"Haha... you're too slow, Daichi," he intentionally provoked the wolf more as they basically parkoured their way through the capital.
Dachi growled louder mentally.
'I just remembered,' Damon thought to himself, checking his pace slightly as the looming city limits came into view. 'We shouldn't even be eating meat on a run, should we? It's bad for digestion. Let me just throw this bag away—'
'No, you won't!' Daichi barked.
The massive hound launched off the stone floor and leaped high into the air in his large, invisible form.
Damon looked up as the giant rippling shimmer descended towards him, but mid-flight, Daichi's outline violently shrank. His body compressed until he was small enough to dive through the narrow opening of Damon's paper bag.
Damon blinked, freezing his arm in mid-air. A few seconds later, the tiny hound scrambled back out of the opening, landing lightly on Damon's forearm with a thoroughly oily snout—still chewing almost mockingly.
Damon stopped his run for a brief second. He looked down into the paper bag. Then he looked at the micro-sized hound. He looked again into the completely empty bag, filled with nothing but a ghost scent of the delicacy that was once there, and then stared back at the small dog.
Daichi just sat on his arm, tilting his head and blinking innocently as he pretended to be completely confused.
"Why do you love meat so much?" Damon asked, his face a mix of awe and mild horror. "It's actually getting scary now."
Daichi licked a stray drop of oil from his whiskers. 'What's scary is you not loving it enough.' He said with a deadpan tone in Damon's mind. Too busy to talk from chewing.
Damon let out a helpless sigh, stuffing the empty bag away as he accelerated one last time.
Ahead, the Great Gates of Woewyn finally rose out of the morning mist. The towering outer wall was a majestic barrier of pale, glowing material, its surface deeply etched with faint silver patterns that perfectly mirrored the hovering planets in the sky above.
The gate itself was a massive barrier of reinforced iron, heavily guarded by a wall of Suited Ones and Natural Knights.
'How do we get past without them detecting us?' Daichi asked.
'We don't. If we did do that, it'd mean the security is weak. You think Mom would let that happen? They'd detect us anyway, but let us pass the second they realise it's... us. Get it?' Damon explained on the run.
The two invisible forms blazed toward the exit, their speed creating a sudden gust of wind. Instantly, the horizontal security barrier began to drop at the checkpoint as the sensors flagged the air movement.
Inside the guardroom, a Suited One slammed his hand down on the override switch, locking the barrier in place so the prince could pass. "Hold fire—cancel the alert," the guard called out to the knights outside, looking at his scanning monitor.
"The energy signature matches the Prince. Let them through." The gate stayed clear.
Every single Knight stood in absolute salute of the Chosen One. In response, Damon channeled a sudden burst of wind that snapped the knights' capes forward in perfect unison as if to say: Thank you.
Damon and Daichi shot past the line of guards, bursting out into the wild, vivid countryside of Woewyn.
'Doesn't even feel like six hundred kilometers,' Damon said telepathically, his tone casual.
'Oh yeah... I'd forgotten it was six hundred,' Daichi replied. 'Damon, can I—'
'No,' Damon said, cutting him off.
Daichi's ears simply dropped.