An instigated threat

"Wha- wha-"

The Initiate was blabbering.

"What… are you…?" Vevian was also utterly speechless.

'Did she appear in body or something?' Savine thought with a groan. 'Why are they acting like that?'

"Hah. I've been telling everyone since the day I came here. No one seems to get the message," Savine scoffed. "I'm God's Chosen. Here to save the world."

The two looked at them blankly.

"What are you even looking at me like that for?" Savine groaned. "Besides, Vevian, just because I can't do things to this idiot, doesn't mean he can walk out of here in one piece."

The Initiate's brain finally digested the situation. Again. He tried to run away, but Savine didn't allow him to. She tripped him and kicked him on the kidney. The fact that she got to be violent in that moment meant that if the Initiate ran away, that would likely spell her death.

"Vevian. God's Oracle says that I can't be unreasonable, but if we let this guy go, he's definitely going to get me and your family killed. Most of the Magi are weaklings like him who will get bullied by any teenage from the lowrungs without their Vasa, but when the bigshot Magi hear about what happened, they'll need to save face.

"What better way to do that, other than razing your family and your house to the ground? The strongest, most influential family in Strati city?"

Vevian gulped.

"But I'll give you a hint. Just because they're Magi, doesn't mean they're invincible," Savine said, kicking the Initiate again. "They're nothing without this stick in their asses. We don't need to fear them. We just need to be careful. And when the stars align, there comes situations when you can capture a Magus and keep him inside a dungeon to rot… indefinitely."

Since she was allowed to talk this much, apparently, she was allowed to use others for her dirty work.

'What a joke,' she couldn't help but smile inwardly. 'I thought Jibril was seeing each and every one of my actions, but apparently, she just imposed a seal on my soul. A seal of divinity that limited her actions whenever some lines were crossed. Otherwise, she wouldn't be letting me do things like this.'

Savine couldn't remove the seal, but she could definitely work around it.

"If you're worried about getting found out, don't. After my family reached out to him about the ideas I've spread, in his greed of monopolizing me, he hadn't informed anyone else about his visit here. He knows that the moment a bigshot hears of me, his golden goose would be snatched away instantly. Hence, he must've kept his visit his biggest secret."

Savine forcing Ney's family telling the Magi of a 'mage girl who knew various profitable inventions' had two benefits.

Firstly, The Magi would be much less likely to hold Ney's family hostage to use against Savine. The act of them selling her out would imply that the relation between the two parties were the absolute worst.

Secondly, it was a small jab against Lihar. The boy was definitely trying to do something against her. He never saw her in good light and with the sudden changes that occurred to her, it wasn't long before he would try to do something.

But what could he do if Savine wanted him to betray her in the first place? And it wasn't like he could reveal the truth, as that meant that he and his family would be the ones to suffer.

"At most, he might've mentioned it to his butler or his servants," Savine continued and meaningfully gazed at Vevian, "whom which you shall promptly learn the identities of before either buying them or silencing them. With that, whether this initiate stays here till the ends of his days, no one would know where he was."

"But the Magi will know!" Vevian protested. "Even if we don't kill him, they can track their Vasas. I told you this!"

He was furiously clutching his golden coin.

The Initiate nodded rapidly, hope glimmering in his eyes. "Release me this instant and I will be merciful to you! I will forget everything!"

Definitely, with the infamous tales of how seriously the Magicracy took their matter of Vasas, it was certainly going to make commoners feel fearful. But Savine was quick to dash his hopes.

"It's all lies, I'm afraid," she sighed. "Tall tales of the Magicracy to keep the people in line. I did wonder why knowledge on magic was so well-spread, that even random passersby on the street knew about them. Seeing their Vasas, I can now understand it was spread by the Magicracy deliberately."

Of course, Savine's research didn't end with only Vevian and baron Yeltsin. She asked around town for anyone who seemed like they knew something about it, but to her surprise, almost half of the citizens knew about the Vasas and the strict surveillance surrounding them.

Usually, in the various worlds, as long as not everyone in the world could use magic, information regarding the arcane were quite scarce. So it was a shock for Savine when even the random homeless knew about them to great detail.

But now, touching the material the Vasas were made of, Savine understood why.

"The material this Vasa's made of is called the Wisdomwood," she said. "It's wood from a tree that grows to enormous sizes, but is very rare. The reason being that it can't grow anywhere near another Wisdomtree. And I'm not talking about a few steps, either. A Wisdomtree needs to be at least a country apart from one another."

Vevian seemed to remember something. Well, it was hard to hide Wisdomtrees. Cities could be built on its branches.

"The Divine Tree?"

"That's how its called here," Savine grinned. "Anyway. If you remember, the countries in this world are distanced from each other in quite an orderly way, aren't they? All their capitals are about the same distance from each other."

Savine meant that the capitals of countries were all built around a growing Wisdomtrees.

"Regardless, even for us in heaven, it is impossible to track Wisdomwood parts using just mana. The tree itself is a living being, see? Do you think it likes having people ripping parts of it off and making Vasas?

"Of course not. In fact, the moment a part of it is removed forcefully, it sucks in all the energy that was inside it, making sure the removed piece is as weak as possible. Even if someone has partial control over the Wisdomwood, it's impossible for them to track its pieces. I'm actually somewhat impressed they were able to take control over the rampant mana using Wisdomwood. The process requires months to complete and stopping during the middle will immediately cancel all progress."

The chances of them not committing to the process and failing was extremely high. It was truly a miracle that they were able to pinpoint the method in such a short time.

Most people would just use the Wisdomwood to relieve themselves of their mana and be done with it. They wouldn't think to constantly, but extremely slowly trickle their mana into the Wisdomwood in order to purify and tame the foreign mana that accumulated inside them.

"You… you-" the Initiate stuttered. "How do you know all that?"

Savine continued without giving the boy heed.

"But look. Even this withered, dried-up piece of Wisdomwood is enough to give an idiot like this enough power to raze this mansion in one spell. Not only does it help him cast spells, it also allows him to instantly tame his mana which is a process that's measured in years; decades in his case."

Savine laughed, but due to the pain from Jibril's warning it devolved into coughs.

'I should really stop my blabbering…' she sighed.

"Ugh, I'll be gone, then," Savine said. "Good luck with the kid, Vevian. I'm sure you'll take the necessary measures. Diligence and meticulousness are key. Your life's on the line, after all."

It was easy to guess what would happen if he didn't.

And Savine wasn't worried whether Vevian would be able to do it or not. She remembered the Military medallions he sometimes kept in his office. One medallion among them was made of pure silver and Vevian boasted that it was usually only given to soldiers that were killed in action.

This meant that whatever Vevian went through was very likely to have killed him.

'Perhaps he got the golden coin from there?'

Savine shook her head inwardly. She pushed herself up and headed towards her room.