Lilithia finally got her recommendation letter.

The whole process was actually pretty complicated—mostly endless paperwork—but when she heard the Tulip Empire’s magic academy had something like “auditing students,” she finally let out a breath.

You paid your own rent and tuition, but you could use the academy’s public resources. Some rare stuff you had to buy yourself.

The academy library being free to students—that was what Lilithia really cared about.

More importantly, you could earn military merit through this academy.

And become a noble.

Lilithia set herself a small goal. The situation in the Tulip Empire was obvious now. With the birth of Sword Saint Fiore, external expansion was a given.

That was tied to a concept Lilithia only learned about later.

Once someone reached the level of Saint or Sage—those below them basically had no power to resist.

For example, in the neighboring Crystal Orchid Empire, rumor had it they had a “Free Sage,” someone who’d never entered the Tower of Sages, yet still stepped into the Sage realm. If that person cast a certain spell, they could kill the Tulip Queen from across the continent. If there were no hidden safeguards in place, Her Majesty would probably just drop dead on the spot.

Of course, any nation that could call itself a kingdom had at least one or two trump cards that could deal with a Sage. But how could tricks ever compare to having someone of equal level?

Use those trump cards a few times and they’d be gone. To a being like that, the only hassle was if their first strike failed and it was hard to get a lock for the second.

Only when a country itself had a powerhouse of that tier did it qualify to evolve from kingdom into empire.

Fiore breaking through to Sword Saint had probably taken everyone by surprise, right? He was only twenty. For a very long time from now, he’d shine across this world as the famed Sword Saint.

Then again, who knew. This era already had a Demon King and a Hero. Every time that happened, it was the prelude to chaos. Saints and Sages falling wasn’t unheard of either.

What the hell kind of world was this?

A Saint or a Sage was basically an X-weapon, wasn’t it? Without an X-weapon, you could forget about independence. Once you had one, you could expand on a massive scale.

Reading through related materials in the academy library, Lilithia’s face grew darker and darker.

You’ve got to be kidding. Someone actually became a Saint in two years?

In a sense, protagonists really didn’t give a damn about logic.

Just how unbelievable did things have to get before people were satisfied?

No—come on, she was a protagonist too, at least a little. If a transmigrator wasn’t the main character, who was? She kept telling herself that her transmigration definitely wasn’t random. Some terrifying existence—maybe a god or something—must’ve had a purpose when it sent her here. So she was bound to bring huge change to this world. She was certain of that—she had to be certain of that. Only by thinking that way could she find the strength to reach for the sun.

What made her different from everyone else?

She had knowledge from another world—no, a worldview from another world.

She’d always been afraid. Afraid that changing this world would bring some horrific consequence crashing down on her. But now, she understood: she was supposed to change this world.

Sword Saint Fiore… If his deterrence really was on the level of an X-weapon, he could probably flatten a mountain with one swing, right? Lilithia started speculating on this world’s peak combat strength on her own.

But right now, the most important thing was—

She stared at the crystal ball in front of her. This was the classic setup, wasn’t it? In most stories, the protagonist ran into one of these not long after transmigrating—a crystal ball that tested your magic level or talent.

She needed to know what her current level was.

When she placed her hand on the crystal ball, a blood-red pillar shot up. She glanced at the manual.

“With this height… so that means I’m at Apprentice level? In other words, my mana capacity is at apprentice grade, and the spell I use the most is Blood Transmutation?”

She took her hand away.

Uninitiated, Novice, Apprentice, Junior Mage, Intermediate Mage, Advanced Mage, Archmage, Grand Archmage, Magic King, Sage.

You’ve got to be f–king kidding, that’s ten tiers.

She was at the third one? How was that any different from being trash? Damn it, so that meant Fiore was already at tier ten?

Lilithia hugged herself tightly. Would she just vanish if he so much as breathed on her?

She knew she shouldn’t waste time, but she still burned a whole day in the library, hunting down descriptions of Saints.

When a martial artist could condense their will and body into “Qi,” then further condense that Qi into an “Eye,” they were called a “Martial Grandmaster,” equivalent to an Archmage.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Try being human, will you?

Two years, seriously!

How many tiers did you skip?

You jumped the three hardest tiers in one go! That’s not how you run cheats! Lilithia really wanted to curse him out. If Fiore were right in front of her, she swore she’d flame him to death.

Lilithia returned to her rented dorm. Just thinking about how the rent was eight gold coins per day made her feel scammed. Sure, the place was nice—the shelves and everything were fully furnished—and in terms of quality, it was about on par with a pretty decent hotel room. But honestly, it only felt… okay.

She’d handed over the crafting method for her blood-drinking tools, hadn’t she? And they still wouldn’t comp her housing?

She was starting to understand what the Empire was really after.

They just needed a scapegoat.

This kind of weapon was apparently banned by the Tower of Sages. There wasn’t a written decree, but it was treated like some unspoken rule. So even though the Tulip Empire was capable of making it, they hadn’t. And right then, as a private individual, she just had to be the one to make the thing.

If the Tower of Sages came knocking, she’d have no choice but to scream for Fiore. If he couldn’t rush over in time, she was dead.

That was the price to pay… Lilithia didn’t believe that even if the Empire handed her over, the Tower of Sages would just let the Tulip Empire wash its hands clean, but at least it would give them some room to maneuver. Some space to negotiate, right?

Which meant everyone sitting up there had dirty hands to some extent.

But people like her, who threw their lives on the line and weren’t geniuses like Fiore, had to shoulder these kinds of risks if they wanted power. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen it coming.

So next, now that she was in the magic academy, the first thing she had to solve was money.

The academy had a lot of public facilities she could use—alchemical furnaces for brewing potions, enchantment platforms, forges. But all that was just hardware. The real problem was… materials.

Besides that, she needed to find methods other than just draining her mana every day and letting it recover naturally. She should at least go sit in on some classes first…

…

Lilithia slumped in spirit as she realized something: the traditional way mages increased their mana was usually “meditation.” But she couldn’t enter a meditative state at all. Devoutly sensing the omnipresent mana, communing with it emotionally…

What was that even supposed to mean?

To her, magic was just a high-efficiency energy source. A high-grade energy that could change its properties according to human imagination and will. That was how Lilithia understood it.

“Communing” with mana?

What kind of nonsense was that?

This path was a dead end for her.

Lilithia realized that with normal training methods, she had no way to get stronger. So… did that mean she could only walk the crooked path?

It wasn’t like she hadn’t expected that.

The answer was still in the spell Blood Transmutation.

Don’t forget the principle behind Lilithia’s blood-drinking equipment: extract the target’s blood and use it to replenish her own strength. So what if she rewrote that a bit?

Mana could be converted into life force. Which meant life force could be converted into mana. Strictly speaking, Blood Magic should count as a branch of Life Magic.

So what about stealing mana from outside?

That sounded exactly like something a villain would do, didn’t it? Sucking mana out of other people had to be addictive. Maybe, by the end, she’d have turned into the final big bad.

But… being the final big bad didn’t actually sound that bad.

Because this world had a sun.

It had Fiore.

If she really became the ultimate villain, then she’d let Fiore be the one to stop her. Let him be the one to cut her down. They’d be like the sun and the moon—both hanging in the sky, but unable to shine at the same time.

Since she was going to make this change, she already knew where she had to go.

The battlefield against the Demonfolk. Or the battlefront between the Tulip Empire and other empires. She needed to find a way—at least, from the current standpoint, a “reasonable” way—to extract mana from other people.

Otherwise, catching up to Fiore was nothing but a fantasy.

But before that, she’d stay in the magic academy and attend class properly. At the very least, she had to fill in the gaps in her understanding of this world. Deepen her grasp of magic itself. Beyond that whole “communicating with mana through your feelings” thing most mages here believed in, she needed to understand the essence of magic.

For the Tulip Empire as a whole, and even for the magic academy in the city of Tulip, her presence changed nothing.

All it meant was that there was now one more girl who never missed a class, spent two extra hours in the library after every lecture, and showed up in the forge every day.

She didn’t affect anyone else.

She didn’t join any tournaments. She didn’t get into fights. She just quietly took on commissions from other students—blacksmithing, potion brewing, things like that—earning money and polishing her craft in the process.

A transparent character.

She pushed her own presence down to the lowest it could go.

Her plan was to keep it that way. Once she met the minimum requirement to go to the front lines—that is, once she reached proper Mage level—she’d apply to be sent to war.

But—

“Lilithia,” the staff member said, “even as an auditing student, the points you’ve earned from completing various tasks are quite high. However, starting last school year, the academy’s policy changed. We emphasize that everyone must have real combat ability. So you have to take part in the assessment too.”

Lilithia’s face twisted into a bitter melon.

In the end, this was all Fiore’s fault. Him becoming a Sword Saint had given everyone in this empire way too much confidence. So now even the academy’s teaching policy had gotten aggressive?

Lilithia walked over to the mirror.

And suddenly, she felt a little excited.

This was it—that kind of protagonist event.

After being in this world for so long, she was finally being forced, by something she couldn’t control, to do the sort of thing protagonists did.