Chapter 24
If audio player doesn't work, press Stop then Play button again
Greyson woke up fairly early in the morning feeling refreshed after a good night's rest in a warm bed. He got up and went to the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash his face and brush his teeth. He walked back to the room and saw Lucius yawning while stretching.
"Morning, Lucius." Greyson greeted.
The cat was still slightly confused as he had just woken up so he only nodded his head in response. Greyson started preparing his clothes and supplies for the forest again. Right as he was leaving, Lyle was also awake and walking out of his bedroom. Lyle looked up and faintly smiled.
"Be careful in the forest! I'll see you when you get back!"
Greyson smiled in response while nodding his head as he left. He walked down the steps and was walking out of the dorm when his least favorite voice chirped up.
"Hey, Greyson, wait!"
Greyson turned around to look and sighed when he saw the face he was expecting. It was the annoying Arwen who just could not seem to let go. Greyson was happy for awhile because he was busy all the time, thus he did not see other students often including this unfriendly face.
"Arwen, hello. I'm kind of in a rush maybe I'll catch you later?" Greyson responded coldly with his face completely showing that he was hoping to never catch himself meeting Arwen again. With those words spoken, Greyson turned back around quickly and continued walking. When he turned around a menacing glint flashed through Arwen's eyes, but he quickly controlled himself and grabbed Greyson's arm to stop the younger boy.
"No, wait. I know you have been training in the forest, so I wanted to give you a gift as an apology." Arwen tried his best to sound guilty and look like child who had done wrong. Greyson looked over at him in impatience and inwardly rolled his eyes at the completely obvious lie.
"What gift?" Greyson decided to play along.
"Oh, it's super useful for keeping your surroundings quiet in magic beast forests like Black Hollow. This is a pouch that contains a mixture of herbs which disgust most magic beasts and will cause them to avoid you. It will keep you safe in the forest as you train." Arwen earnestly explained as if he were not the spoiled young master who hated Greyson's guts. Greyson heard his words and only half-believed, but he decided to take it anyway in case it was real. He turned to walk away again after receiving the gift before he realized he was forgetting something.
"Ah, that's right. Thanks I guess. It might be useful." He nonchalantly waved his hand without turning around. Arwen saw that he was not showing his gratefulness at all and grit his teeth in anger. However, thinking of the pouch that he had just given, he smirked in anticipation.
"Hey, you should throw that pouch away now." Lucius whispered into Greyson's ear.
"Hm? You know there's something wrong with it?" Greyson looked over.
"Well I don't know specifically what this pouch is supposed to do, but I definitely know he is lying to you about its supposed effects. The smell is extremely appealing to me so I imagine that instead of making magic beasts avoid you it would attract them towards you. That boy with a stupid look on his face is obviously trying to set you up and have the magic beasts prey on you until there is nothing left. That way people will think it was an accident and, even if they suspected, he would be nowhere near you. Pretty good plan for a boy of his intelligence. It's too bad he didn't know that you had me. Now aren't you so thankful I'm around?" Greyson heard his words and felt cold sweat form on his back before rolling his eyes at Lucius's words at the end. While he was grateful that he discovered the plot, would it kill Lucius to speak without bragging about himself?
He coldly glanced at the pouch. He held onto it as he traveled to the forest, then dumped in into the stream that ran through the dense woods. Looking around for a shadow, he quickly used Shadow Escape to get away from the smell. Thankfully, the smell was very contained inside the pouch and didn't rub off on Greyson's clothes so he soon forgot about the pouch as he ran to his practice spot.
Four days passed by in the blink of an eye and Greyson finally had a good handle on his spells. It was not yet perfect, but he could at least use them interchangeably without too much difficulty. He could move the paralyze function to any spot of his body, only he had to do it while standing still. he could not move it freely on his body while moving. Feeling that his spell usage has gotten smoother, Greyson felt the need to look for a challenge. Lucius was too powerful, but maybe he could find a novice level stage 5 magic beast if he was lucky. Although he had many elements, he could not suddenly overpower an intermediate level magician or beast because after their mana manifests into form, their power increases by a large margin.
Excited to test his fighting power, Greyson started hopping around in the trees using Air Steps trying to find an opponent. He ran into a couple of magic beasts that were his level and many that were below, but he wasn't having any luck finding an opponent that was just a little stronger. One entire day was spent uneventfully and Greyson felt annoyed that he had such bad luck. He only had two more days before he had to go back and show the Head Teachers his progress on his spells. Holding in his dissatisfaction, he forced himself to sleep so he could get an early start the next morning.
Spending another half a day jumping around, he managed to get 20 magic beast cores from weaker magical beasts before he felt exhausted and had to take a break to meditate. Choosing a large tree, he sat down on a thick branch and began to meditate to replenish his energy.
Half way through, however, his meditation was cut short by a loud roar from a beast. Feeling curious, Greyson opened his eyes and tried to follow in the direction of the noise. He finally reached an opening and saw a battle occurring before him. Looking around, Greyson quickly understood the gist of the situation. There was a little girl, probably no older than himself, that was fighting with an agitated Fire Mountain Bear. The bears were normally a violent species with the fire element to attack and the earth element to defend. Their bodies were also extremely sturdy and hard to penetrate. Behind the young girl was an injured bear cub locked inside a cage, and the angry adult bear seemed to be cub's mother. Understanding the situation, Greyson was torn between helping the young girl or the cub because he could feel sympathy for the mother bear. While he hesitated, the little girl was starting to lose the battle.
"Lucius, should I help her? I feel like I should let the cub go, though. It's just a kid who wants to stay with his mother. I can understand the loneliness of being without parents. But, the girl is a human and she looks as young as me. I feel like it would be against my conscience to just let her die."
"Well, the bear is an intermediate level stage one beast while the girl is a stage stronger than you. I don't really see how you can help."
"What? Even the girl is stronger than me? Well, no matter, isn't there anything I can do?"
"Hmmmm... well how about you start shooting fire arrows to distract the bear and the girl, then I'll set the cub free while no one is paying attention. Once the bear is free, I'll help you drive off the mother. She will probably back down once her cub is free anyways." Greyson agreed with the plan and finally decided to take action. When the first fire arrow hit, the girl was already almost about to take a fatal hit. The arrow did not do much damage to the bear and only served to irritate it more. Its bloodshot eyes turned to glare over into the trees and made eye contact with Greyson. He felt its hatred at that moment and decided to just keep shooting at the bear to slow it down. Maybe the girl would help as well?
Arrow after arrow rammed into the side of the bear before it let loose another loud roar and started charging towards the tree that Greyson was perched on top of. At that point, Greyson stopped shooting his arrows and used Air Steps to leap from his tree to the opposite side. Once he landed on that tree, he continued shooting his arrows.
"Hey, aren't you going to help?!" In his frustration, he finally shouted at the young girl who was still frozen in surprise. The girl snapped out of her daze and through a nasty glare at Greyson before summoning a large wind blade. The blade shot out towards the bear and managed to make a cut into its thick hide. The bear continued howling only to suddenly hear a weak cry that made it stop and turn. To its surprise, the mother saw her cub limping over to her. Her anger quickly diminished and she ran over and began licking her injured cub. She thought about turning and hurting those kids anyways, however, a small silver kitten had laid itself on the boy's shoulder while releasing a menacing aura. Bloodline suppression! The bear felt instinctive fear and the urge to bow before the cat. She quickly picked up the cub with her teeth and started to run far away.
Seeing the fight was over, Greyson sighed loudly and slumped onto the ground. His mana levels hadn't completely recovered before he helped so he was once again empty. Before he could start meditating, though, the little girl suddenly turned around and glared at him.
"Why did you butt in?! You ruined everything!" The little girl suddenly screeched. Greyson looked at the girl wide-eyed in disbelief. Now that he could calmly look at her, the girl was red-haired with light brown eyes. She had a cute and small face and was dressed like a little doll. Although she was a little distressed looking from her fight, it could not hide the noble air around her. However, he could not appreciate this girl at all because her arrogance reminded him of Arwen.
"I HELPED you. That's what that was. You were about to the lose the fight." Greyson spit through his clenched teeth.
"Maybe you did, but you also let the cub go! The whole reason I went through all that effort of fighting was for the cub and you just let it go!" She ignored his words and continued accusing him.
"You shouldn't have hunted a young bear like that anyways and break up the family." Greyson looked at her with disgust showing in his eyes.
"Hmph, you're such a weakling. You actually care about stupid beasts like that." She sneered at him.
"You know what, I obviously made a mistake. I should have just let you die." He looked at her and felt regret. He got up and quickly turned around to leave. What he didn't expect, though, was that this annoying girl would continue to follow him.
"What do you want?" He asked in impatience.
"Were you just going to leave a defenseless and battered little girl like me in the forest by myself. I'm obviously beaten up and bleeding and will attract magic beasts. You could just leave me?" She humphed and lectured him.
Defenseless? Greyson felt his lips twitch.
"You are stronger than me! How could I be any less defenseless than you! I'm all out of mana, too." He could not believe the thick skin of this girl.
"Well you have to make it up to me for letting the cub go and making all my earlier fighting pointless. So guard me while I meditate and recover!" She didn't listen and commanded him. Listening to her, Greyson felt exasperated but he was too exhausted to fight. He plopped down on the ground and began meditating. Lucius would help guard him, so he ignored the girl and continued to recover his mana. The girl frowned at him and was annoyed that she was ignored, but she also knew that she should take this time to recover. She sat down a couple feet away from Greyson and meditated as well.
The sun slowly set and the forest became dark. Greyson and the little girl had both recovered their mana. Greyson had less mana to recover so he opened his eyes first and glanced over at the girl near him. He saw her bruises and cuts that had dried blood over them. Although he was not really feeling that guilty because he felt he was right, he did see why she might be upset because she went through all that effort of catching that cub only for him to let it go. In order to make it up to her, he got up and started to walk over.
The girl heard him approaching and opened her eyes. Her eyes reflected her confusion.
"What do you want?"
"Let me heal you. I can use light magic, I have a spell called Heal and it works for more surface level injuries."
"Hmm... okay, you owe me anyways." She sniffed. Greyson decided to ignore her because it would only anger him. He reached over her and a light shimmered and enveloped her. All her injuries began to slowly heal. It took around an hour for her injuries to recover and half of Greyson's recovered mana disappeared. He huffed out and sat down again to meditate. Since he was ignoring her, he didn't realize that after he closed his eyes again that she looked over and smiled. She appreciated his effort, but she just felt awkward and didn't know how to say it. Even she felt kind of ridiculous. At night, she realized that he had fallen asleep after his meditation so she took out a blanket from her spatial necklace and laid it on top of him.
"Thank you." She whispered softly.
Lucius's ears twitched as he was woken up by her, and his eyes narrowed. He still felt that she was a brat, but maybe she wasn't that bad. But that necklace...
Please report us if you find any errors so we can fix it asap!
Greyson woke up fairly early in the morning feeling refreshed after a good night's rest in a warm bed. He got up and went to the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash his face and brush his teeth. He walked back to the room and saw Lucius yawning while stretching.
"Morning, Lucius." Greyson greeted.
The cat was still slightly confused as he had just woken up so he only nodded his head in response. Greyson started preparing his clothes and supplies for the forest again. Right as he was leaving, Lyle was also awake and walking out of his bedroom. Lyle looked up and faintly smiled.
"Be careful in the forest! I'll see you when you get back!"
Greyson smiled in response while nodding his head as he left. He walked down the steps and was walking out of the dorm when his least favorite voice chirped up.
"Hey, Greyson, wait!"
Greyson turned around to look and sighed when he saw the face he was expecting. It was the annoying Arwen who just could not seem to let go. Greyson was happy for awhile because he was busy all the time, thus he did not see other students often including this unfriendly face.
"Arwen, hello. I'm kind of in a rush maybe I'll catch you later?" Greyson responded coldly with his face completely showing that he was hoping to never catch himself meeting Arwen again. With those words spoken, Greyson turned back around quickly and continued walking. When he turned around a menacing glint flashed through Arwen's eyes, but he quickly controlled himself and grabbed Greyson's arm to stop the younger boy.
"No, wait. I know you have been training in the forest, so I wanted to give you a gift as an apology." Arwen tried his best to sound guilty and look like child who had done wrong. Greyson looked over at him in impatience and inwardly rolled his eyes at the completely obvious lie.
"What gift?" Greyson decided to play along.
"Oh, it's super useful for keeping your surroundings quiet in magic beast forests like Black Hollow. This is a pouch that contains a mixture of herbs which disgust most magic beasts and will cause them to avoid you. It will keep you safe in the forest as you train." Arwen earnestly explained as if he were not the spoiled young master who hated Greyson's guts. Greyson heard his words and only half-believed, but he decided to take it anyway in case it was real. He turned to walk away again after receiving the gift before he realized he was forgetting something.
"Ah, that's right. Thanks I guess. It might be useful." He nonchalantly waved his hand without turning around. Arwen saw that he was not showing his gratefulness at all and grit his teeth in anger. However, thinking of the pouch that he had just given, he smirked in anticipation.
"Hey, you should throw that pouch away now." Lucius whispered into Greyson's ear.
"Hm? You know there's something wrong with it?" Greyson looked over.
"Well I don't know specifically what this pouch is supposed to do, but I definitely know he is lying to you about its supposed effects. The smell is extremely appealing to me so I imagine that instead of making magic beasts avoid you it would attract them towards you. That boy with a stupid look on his face is obviously trying to set you up and have the magic beasts prey on you until there is nothing left. That way people will think it was an accident and, even if they suspected, he would be nowhere near you. Pretty good plan for a boy of his intelligence. It's too bad he didn't know that you had me. Now aren't you so thankful I'm around?" Greyson heard his words and felt cold sweat form on his back before rolling his eyes at Lucius's words at the end. While he was grateful that he discovered the plot, would it kill Lucius to speak without bragging about himself?
He coldly glanced at the pouch. He held onto it as he traveled to the forest, then dumped in into the stream that ran through the dense woods. Looking around for a shadow, he quickly used Shadow Escape to get away from the smell. Thankfully, the smell was very contained inside the pouch and didn't rub off on Greyson's clothes so he soon forgot about the pouch as he ran to his practice spot.
Four days passed by in the blink of an eye and Greyson finally had a good handle on his spells. It was not yet perfect, but he could at least use them interchangeably without too much difficulty. He could move the paralyze function to any spot of his body, only he had to do it while standing still. he could not move it freely on his body while moving. Feeling that his spell usage has gotten smoother, Greyson felt the need to look for a challenge. Lucius was too powerful, but maybe he could find a novice level stage 5 magic beast if he was lucky. Although he had many elements, he could not suddenly overpower an intermediate level magician or beast because after their mana manifests into form, their power increases by a large margin.
Excited to test his fighting power, Greyson started hopping around in the trees using Air Steps trying to find an opponent. He ran into a couple of magic beasts that were his level and many that were below, but he wasn't having any luck finding an opponent that was just a little stronger. One entire day was spent uneventfully and Greyson felt annoyed that he had such bad luck. He only had two more days before he had to go back and show the Head Teachers his progress on his spells. Holding in his dissatisfaction, he forced himself to sleep so he could get an early start the next morning.
Spending another half a day jumping around, he managed to get 20 magic beast cores from weaker magical beasts before he felt exhausted and had to take a break to meditate. Choosing a large tree, he sat down on a thick branch and began to meditate to replenish his energy.
Half way through, however, his meditation was cut short by a loud roar from a beast. Feeling curious, Greyson opened his eyes and tried to follow in the direction of the noise. He finally reached an opening and saw a battle occurring before him. Looking around, Greyson quickly understood the gist of the situation. There was a little girl, probably no older than himself, that was fighting with an agitated Fire Mountain Bear. The bears were normally a violent species with the fire element to attack and the earth element to defend. Their bodies were also extremely sturdy and hard to penetrate. Behind the young girl was an injured bear cub locked inside a cage, and the angry adult bear seemed to be cub's mother. Understanding the situation, Greyson was torn between helping the young girl or the cub because he could feel sympathy for the mother bear. While he hesitated, the little girl was starting to lose the battle.
"Lucius, should I help her? I feel like I should let the cub go, though. It's just a kid who wants to stay with his mother. I can understand the loneliness of being without parents. But, the girl is a human and she looks as young as me. I feel like it would be against my conscience to just let her die."
"Well, the bear is an intermediate level stage one beast while the girl is a stage stronger than you. I don't really see how you can help."
"What? Even the girl is stronger than me? Well, no matter, isn't there anything I can do?"
"Hmmmm... well how about you start shooting fire arrows to distract the bear and the girl, then I'll set the cub free while no one is paying attention. Once the bear is free, I'll help you drive off the mother. She will probably back down once her cub is free anyways." Greyson agreed with the plan and finally decided to take action. When the first fire arrow hit, the girl was already almost about to take a fatal hit. The arrow did not do much damage to the bear and only served to irritate it more. Its bloodshot eyes turned to glare over into the trees and made eye contact with Greyson. He felt its hatred at that moment and decided to just keep shooting at the bear to slow it down. Maybe the girl would help as well?
Arrow after arrow rammed into the side of the bear before it let loose another loud roar and started charging towards the tree that Greyson was perched on top of. At that point, Greyson stopped shooting his arrows and used Air Steps to leap from his tree to the opposite side. Once he landed on that tree, he continued shooting his arrows.
"Hey, aren't you going to help?!" In his frustration, he finally shouted at the young girl who was still frozen in surprise. The girl snapped out of her daze and through a nasty glare at Greyson before summoning a large wind blade. The blade shot out towards the bear and managed to make a cut into its thick hide. The bear continued howling only to suddenly hear a weak cry that made it stop and turn. To its surprise, the mother saw her cub limping over to her. Her anger quickly diminished and she ran over and began licking her injured cub. She thought about turning and hurting those kids anyways, however, a small silver kitten had laid itself on the boy's shoulder while releasing a menacing aura. Bloodline suppression! The bear felt instinctive fear and the urge to bow before the cat. She quickly picked up the cub with her teeth and started to run far away.
Seeing the fight was over, Greyson sighed loudly and slumped onto the ground. His mana levels hadn't completely recovered before he helped so he was once again empty. Before he could start meditating, though, the little girl suddenly turned around and glared at him.
"Why did you butt in?! You ruined everything!" The little girl suddenly screeched. Greyson looked at the girl wide-eyed in disbelief. Now that he could calmly look at her, the girl was red-haired with light brown eyes. She had a cute and small face and was dressed like a little doll. Although she was a little distressed looking from her fight, it could not hide the noble air around her. However, he could not appreciate this girl at all because her arrogance reminded him of Arwen.
"I HELPED you. That's what that was. You were about to the lose the fight." Greyson spit through his clenched teeth.
"Maybe you did, but you also let the cub go! The whole reason I went through all that effort of fighting was for the cub and you just let it go!" She ignored his words and continued accusing him.
"You shouldn't have hunted a young bear like that anyways and break up the family." Greyson looked at her with disgust showing in his eyes.
"Hmph, you're such a weakling. You actually care about stupid beasts like that." She sneered at him.
"You know what, I obviously made a mistake. I should have just let you die." He looked at her and felt regret. He got up and quickly turned around to leave. What he didn't expect, though, was that this annoying girl would continue to follow him.
"What do you want?" He asked in impatience.
"Were you just going to leave a defenseless and battered little girl like me in the forest by myself. I'm obviously beaten up and bleeding and will attract magic beasts. You could just leave me?" She humphed and lectured him.
Defenseless? Greyson felt his lips twitch.
"You are stronger than me! How could I be any less defenseless than you! I'm all out of mana, too." He could not believe the thick skin of this girl.
"Well you have to make it up to me for letting the cub go and making all my earlier fighting pointless. So guard me while I meditate and recover!" She didn't listen and commanded him. Listening to her, Greyson felt exasperated but he was too exhausted to fight. He plopped down on the ground and began meditating. Lucius would help guard him, so he ignored the girl and continued to recover his mana. The girl frowned at him and was annoyed that she was ignored, but she also knew that she should take this time to recover. She sat down a couple feet away from Greyson and meditated as well.
The sun slowly set and the forest became dark. Greyson and the little girl had both recovered their mana. Greyson had less mana to recover so he opened his eyes first and glanced over at the girl near him. He saw her bruises and cuts that had dried blood over them. Although he was not really feeling that guilty because he felt he was right, he did see why she might be upset because she went through all that effort of catching that cub only for him to let it go. In order to make it up to her, he got up and started to walk over.
The girl heard him approaching and opened her eyes. Her eyes reflected her confusion.
"What do you want?"
"Let me heal you. I can use light magic, I have a spell called Heal and it works for more surface level injuries."
"Hmm... okay, you owe me anyways." She sniffed. Greyson decided to ignore her because it would only anger him. He reached over her and a light shimmered and enveloped her. All her injuries began to slowly heal. It took around an hour for her injuries to recover and half of Greyson's recovered mana disappeared. He huffed out and sat down again to meditate. Since he was ignoring her, he didn't realize that after he closed his eyes again that she looked over and smiled. She appreciated his effort, but she just felt awkward and didn't know how to say it. Even she felt kind of ridiculous. At night, she realized that he had fallen asleep after his meditation so she took out a blanket from her spatial necklace and laid it on top of him.
"Thank you." She whispered softly.
Lucius's ears twitched as he was woken up by her, and his eyes narrowed. He still felt that she was a brat, but maybe she wasn't that bad. But that necklace...
Greyson woke up fairly early in the morning feeling refreshed after a good night's rest in a warm bed. He got up and went to the bathroom at the end of the hall to wash his face and brush his teeth. He walked back to the room and saw Lucius yawning while stretching."Morning, Lucius." Greyson greeted.The cat was still slightly confused as he had just woken up so he only nodded his head in response. Greyson started preparing his clothes and supplies for the forest again. Right as he was leaving, Lyle was also awake and walking out of his bedroom. Lyle looked up and faintly smiled."Be careful in the forest! I'll see you when you get back!"Greyson smiled in response while nodding his head as he left. He walked down the steps and was walking out of the dorm when his least favorite voice chirped up."Hey, Greyson, wait!"Greyson turned around to look and sighed when he saw the face he was expecting. It was the annoying Arwen who just could not seem to let go. Greyson was happy for awhile because he was busy all the time, thus he did not see other students often including this unfriendly face."Arwen, hello. I'm kind of in a rush maybe I'll catch you later?" Greyson responded coldly with his face completely showing that he was hoping to never catch himself meeting Arwen again. With those words spoken, Greyson turned back around quickly and continued walking. When he turned around a menacing glint flashed through Arwen's eyes, but he quickly controlled himself and grabbed Greyson's arm to stop the younger boy."No, wait. I know you have been training in the forest, so I wanted to give you a gift as an apology." Arwen tried his best to sound guilty and look like child who had done wrong. Greyson looked over at him in impatience and inwardly rolled his eyes at the completely obvious lie."What gift?" Greyson decided to play along."Oh, it's super useful for keeping your surroundings quiet in magic beast forests like Black Hollow. This is a pouch that contains a mixture of herbs which disgust most magic beasts and will cause them to avoid you. It will keep you safe in the forest as you train." Arwen earnestly explained as if he were not the spoiled young master who hated Greyson's guts. Greyson heard his words and only half-believed, but he decided to take it anyway in case it was real. He turned to walk away again after receiving the gift before he realized he was forgetting something."Ah, that's right. Thanks I guess. It might be useful." He nonchalantly waved his hand without turning around. Arwen saw that he was not showing his gratefulness at all and grit his teeth in anger. However, thinking of the pouch that he had just given, he smirked in anticipation."Hey, you should throw that pouch away now." Lucius whispered into Greyson's ear."Hm? You know there's something wrong with it?" Greyson looked over."Well I don't know specifically what this pouch is supposed to do, but I definitely know he is lying to you about its supposed effects. The smell is extremely appealing to me so I imagine that instead of making magic beasts avoid you it would attract them towards you. That boy with a stupid look on his face is obviously trying to set you up and have the magic beasts prey on you until there is nothing left. That way people will think it was an accident and, even if they suspected, he would be nowhere near you. Pretty good plan for a boy of his intelligence. It's too bad he didn't know that you had me. Now aren't you so thankful I'm around?" Greyson heard his words and felt cold sweat form on his back before rolling his eyes at Lucius's words at the end. While he was grateful that he discovered the plot, would it kill Lucius to speak without bragging about himself?He coldly glanced at the pouch. He held onto it as he traveled to the forest, then dumped in into the stream that ran through the dense woods. Looking around for a shadow, he quickly used Shadow Escape to get away from the smell. Thankfully, the smell was very contained inside the pouch and didn't rub off on Greyson's clothes so he soon forgot about the pouch as he ran to his practice spot.Four days passed by in the blink of an eye and Greyson finally had a good handle on his spells. It was not yet perfect, but he could at least use them interchangeably without too much difficulty. He could move the paralyze function to any spot of his body, only he had to do it while standing still. he could not move it freely on his body while moving. Feeling that his spell usage has gotten smoother, Greyson felt the need to look for a challenge. Lucius was too powerful, but maybe he could find a novice level stage 5 magic beast if he was lucky. Although he had many elements, he could not suddenly overpower an intermediate level magician or beast because after their mana manifests into form, their power increases by a large margin.Excited to test his fighting power, Greyson started hopping around in the trees using Air Steps trying to find an opponent. He ran into a couple of magic beasts that were his level and many that were below, but he wasn't having any luck finding an opponent that was just a little stronger. One entire day was spent uneventfully and Greyson felt annoyed that he had such bad luck. He only had two more days before he had to go back and show the Head Teachers his progress on his spells. Holding in his dissatisfaction, he forced himself to sleep so he could get an early start the next morning.Spending another half a day jumping around, he managed to get 20 magic beast cores from weaker magical beasts before he felt exhausted and had to take a break to meditate. Choosing a large tree, he sat down on a thick branch and began to meditate to replenish his energy.Half way through, however, his meditation was cut short by a loud roar from a beast. Feeling curious, Greyson opened his eyes and tried to follow in the direction of the noise. He finally reached an opening and saw a battle occurring before him. Looking around, Greyson quickly understood the gist of the situation. There was a little girl, probably no older than himself, that was fighting with an agitated Fire Mountain Bear. The bears were normally a violent species with the fire element to attack and the earth element to defend. Their bodies were also extremely sturdy and hard to penetrate. Behind the young girl was an injured bear cub locked inside a cage, and the angry adult bear seemed to be cub's mother. Understanding the situation, Greyson was torn between helping the young girl or the cub because he could feel sympathy for the mother bear. While he hesitated, the little girl was starting to lose the battle."Lucius, should I help her? I feel like I should let the cub go, though. It's just a kid who wants to stay with his mother. I can understand the loneliness of being without parents. But, the girl is a human and she looks as young as me. I feel like it would be against my conscience to just let her die.""Well, the bear is an intermediate level stage one beast while the girl is a stage stronger than you. I don't really see how you can help.""What? Even the girl is stronger than me? Well, no matter, isn't there anything I can do?""Hmmmm... well how about you start shooting fire arrows to distract the bear and the girl, then I'll set the cub free while no one is paying attention. Once the bear is free, I'll help you drive off the mother. She will probably back down once her cub is free anyways." Greyson agreed with the plan and finally decided to take action. When the first fire arrow hit, the girl was already almost about to take a fatal hit. The arrow did not do much damage to the bear and only served to irritate it more. Its bloodshot eyes turned to glare over into the trees and made eye contact with Greyson. He felt its hatred at that moment and decided to just keep shooting at the bear to slow it down. Maybe the girl would help as well?Arrow after arrow rammed into the side of the bear before it let loose another loud roar and started charging towards the tree that Greyson was perched on top of. At that point, Greyson stopped shooting his arrows and used Air Steps to leap from his tree to the opposite side. Once he landed on that tree, he continued shooting his arrows."Hey, aren't you going to help?!" In his frustration, he finally shouted at the young girl who was still frozen in surprise. The girl snapped out of her daze and through a nasty glare at Greyson before summoning a large wind blade. The blade shot out towards the bear and managed to make a cut into its thick hide. The bear continued howling only to suddenly hear a weak cry that made it stop and turn. To its surprise, the mother saw her cub limping over to her. Her anger quickly diminished and she ran over and began licking her injured cub. She thought about turning and hurting those kids anyways, however, a small silver kitten had laid itself on the boy's shoulder while releasing a menacing aura. Bloodline suppression! The bear felt instinctive fear and the urge to bow before the cat. She quickly picked up the cub with her teeth and started to run far away.Seeing the fight was over, Greyson sighed loudly and slumped onto the ground. His mana levels hadn't completely recovered before he helped so he was once again empty. Before he could start meditating, though, the little girl suddenly turned around and glared at him."Why did you butt in?! You ruined everything!" The little girl suddenly screeched. Greyson looked at the girl wide-eyed in disbelief. Now that he could calmly look at her, the girl was red-haired with light brown eyes. She had a cute and small face and was dressed like a little doll. Although she was a little distressed looking from her fight, it could not hide the noble air around her. However, he could not appreciate this girl at all because her arrogance reminded him of Arwen."I HELPED you. That's what that was. You were about to the lose the fight." Greyson spit through his clenched teeth."Maybe you did, but you also let the cub go! The whole reason I went through all that effort of fighting was for the cub and you just let it go!" She ignored his words and continued accusing him."You shouldn't have hunted a young bear like that anyways and break up the family." Greyson looked at her with disgust showing in his eyes."Hmph, you're such a weakling. You actually care about stupid beasts like that." She sneered at him."You know what, I obviously made a mistake. I should have just let you die." He looked at her and felt regret. He got up and quickly turned around to leave. What he didn't expect, though, was that this annoying girl would continue to follow him."What do you want?" He asked in impatience."Were you just going to leave a defenseless and battered little girl like me in the forest by myself. I'm obviously beaten up and bleeding and will attract magic beasts. You could just leave me?" She humphed and lectured him.Defenseless? Greyson felt his lips twitch."You are stronger than me! How could I be any less defenseless than you! I'm all out of mana, too." He could not believe the thick skin of this girl."Well you have to make it up to me for letting the cub go and making all my earlier fighting pointless. So guard me while I meditate and recover!" She didn't listen and commanded him. Listening to her, Greyson felt exasperated but he was too exhausted to fight. He plopped down on the ground and began meditating. Lucius would help guard him, so he ignored the girl and continued to recover his mana. The girl frowned at him and was annoyed that she was ignored, but she also knew that she should take this time to recover. She sat down a couple feet away from Greyson and meditated as well.The sun slowly set and the forest became dark. Greyson and the little girl had both recovered their mana. Greyson had less mana to recover so he opened his eyes first and glanced over at the girl near him. He saw her bruises and cuts that had dried blood over them. Although he was not really feeling that guilty because he felt he was right, he did see why she might be upset because she went through all that effort of catching that cub only for him to let it go. In order to make it up to her, he got up and started to walk over.The girl heard him approaching and opened her eyes. Her eyes reflected her confusion."What do you want?""Let me heal you. I can use light magic, I have a spell called Heal and it works for more surface level injuries.""Hmm... okay, you owe me anyways." She sniffed. Greyson decided to ignore her because it would only anger him. He reached over her and a light shimmered and enveloped her. All her injuries began to slowly heal. It took around an hour for her injuries to recover and half of Greyson's recovered mana disappeared. He huffed out and sat down again to meditate. Since he was ignoring her, he didn't realize that after he closed his eyes again that she looked over and smiled. She appreciated his effort, but she just felt awkward and didn't know how to say it. Even she felt kind of ridiculous. At night, she realized that he had fallen asleep after his meditation so she took out a blanket from her spatial necklace and laid it on top of him."Thank you." She whispered softly.Lucius's ears twitched as he was woken up by her, and his eyes narrowed. He still felt that she was a brat, but maybe she wasn't that bad. But that necklace...
