'What? They accept?" Medusa looked with wide eyes at the terrified steward in front of her, while her body was covered with a thick layer of sweat and blood, shining in the shadows of the room where she was training.

It was one of the Sect's secret underground rooms, where the best descendants had the right to train with almost unlimited resources. Medusa was currently trying to acquire a new technique that would allow her to completely destroy Helial and her group.

However, she did not imagine that Helial and the others would accept her proposal to fight just two weeks later.

Medusa's servant trembled and had tears in his eyes. His job was to report every single word spoken by his mistress's challengers, but he feared that she might kill him at any moment.

The woman in front of him, sensing his fear, approached him with an expression full of contempt for that half-man who did not even dare to speak. He looked at him with great annoyance and for a few seconds he remained silent.

The poor man felt that that burning look was penetrating his skin, tearing it to the bones, as if someone was skinning him alive and was chopping his entrails piece by piece. Unable to bear that psychological torture any more, he gave in and slightly opened his lips: "The Human said that ... that... they agree!"

"You already told me this," urged Medusa, with a grimace of contempt, . "What else did they say?"

"And ... well ... the cat and the Human girl added that ..." At that point, the servant's words began to mix with sobs of terror.

***

"Don't you think it was a bit too much?" Lumia asked looking at Snowflake.

The cat was sitting on the ground, licking a paw to clean it and looking in the distance with majesty, as if to inspire the whole palace with its own pose. However, in Lumia's eyes, that was just a lazy cat that loved nothing more than to spoil itself with food and waste his time sleeping.

"What, too much what?" asked Snowflake astonished, as if someone had just accused him of a horrible crime.

"Helial simply said to accept the challenge in two weeks when he heard the news, but when you reported it to the servant, you also added that, and I quote, we would have pissed on their heads one by one, first her, then her parents and all her Clan. "

Lumia spread her hands as if searching for explanations.

"It might have been too much, but I remind you that it was you who said that, and I quote by heart, if that bitch tried to look at your brother for a second too long, it would have smeared him and you asked her to bring warm clothes to prevent her disgusting skin from touching Helial. "

Lumia shrugged and moved a lock of hair with her hand with jaunty look: "I did so to protect my brother."

"Well, me too," said Snowflake.

***

On the other side of the Palace, inside the training ground, Helial felt a shiver through his back, a sign that someone was talking about him. Iblis, who had witnessed the conversation between Lumia and Snowflake, tried to hold back the laughter inside Helial's Soul, though not very successfully.

"What are you laughing at?" asked Helial, troubled by the Devil's behaviour. This time too he received no answer.

The sandy field was constantly moved by several gusts of wind, which generated small golden whirls. Helial stood with his legs firmly on the ground as he tried to think of the best type of training for each member of his team.

Behind him appeared a shadow, which came close to him step by step.

At the touch of a hand on his shoulder, Helial turned and realized that the steps he had heard just before were Caliban's. Helial offered his hand and asked him to help him get up.

The Goblin looked at Helial with a disconsolate expression, before pulling him up and holding him in an embrace, giving him a vigorous pat on the shoulder. "I heard you decided to die," he commented sarcastically, looking at the idiotic smile on Helial's face.

Tilting all his facial muscles into an innocent grimace, Helial returned the slap, risking to break Caliban two ribs, and said: "If I had to listen to your bullshit, I would probably still be moving boulders in that asshole of a village."

"What?" Caliban looked at Helial with a puzzled look, not understanding the meaning of those words. Although the two had formed a beautiful friendship, there had still been no way to talk about anything other than Orma's plots and they didn't know each other's past.

With a wave of his hand, Helial told him not to think about it. "Besides, do you have it?" He said, with a mischievous smile.

Turning his dace to the sky, his eyes closed and locked in prayer, so that someone might give him the strength to face so much temerity, Caliban replied: "Yes." He then extended a parchment until it slipped into Helial's hands, but when the latter took it, the young merchant seemed reluctant to let go and he yanked: "You don't know who you're going up against, do you?"

Slowly unfolding the parchment, a list of names appeared before their eyes.

Medusa

Aiako

Ceni

Atlanta

Margherita

***

In a room suffocated by shadows, pieces of granite and stone flew through the air like bullets, scratching floor and walls.

A tremendous explosion shook the entire basement.

"Do not shoot the messenger. You shouldn't have killed that poor servant. ”A deep voice made its way from the darkest corner of the room.

Medusa turned her bloodshot eyes toward the one who had just spoken.

A man with a tiger's bearing and yellowish feline-like eyes walked very slowly and measured the room, cutting the atmosphere in two with his presence.

He could not have been more than twenty years old and his feline appearance and his heroic face would have made any woman fall in love with him even if he had only given her a fleeting glance. The square jaw and straight eyebrows gave him a majestic and dignified Aura. His body respected the golden proportions and every fibre of his muscles seemed to exude a terrifying force. The feline gaze passed in front of Medusa, before he stopped looking into her eyes after a few moments.

Within the Sect new generation, even if someone would have dared to say that Medusa was only the second strongest, no one would have indicated who the first was. However, this did not mean that the Sect of the Worthy did not possess great talents within its ranks.

Unlike the Clan of the Sacred Eagle, which had begun to count less and less talented people of the new generations, among the representatives of the Sect there were many promising young people.

Aiako, the man of heroic bearing in front of a foaming Medusa, was probably one of them. It was said that he was the only one able to rival Francesca in terms of speed and agility.

In fact, despite his muscular and explosive constitution, Aiako was an Assassin. It was a class that relied on speed and surprise attacks, like Francesca's Ninja Class.

Medusa and Circe's teams had repeatedly clashed inside the arena and Aiako had always lost. But the distance between the two was not as great as one could imagine.

"What are you doing here?" Those words were spit out of Medusa's mouth almost like poison.

"You could have at least warned me that you were going to challenge someone to a death match," Aiako said, smiling.

The Assassin's yellowish irises immediately twitched and his pupils became two fissures.

Fwooosh!

Skill Activated:

Teleportation

Lv: 15

Grade: Blue

Degree of Knowledge: Look into the void

Damage: /

Effects:

It allows you to move for short distances by cutting the fabric of the space.

Cost: depending on distance.

Efficiency: 100%

When your opponent loses sight of you, he loses the battle.

Teleportation! It was a very difficult Skill to learn that belonged mainly to the Wizards and Sorcerers Class; the latter were the real monsters that were born with the innate Ability to Teleport.

But an Assassin, to learn this kind of Skill, would have to spend a tremendous quantity of training only to get to understand its principles. To train it, it would take him a hundred times the effort needed by someone whose Class relied on magic.

The space that had been occupied by Aiako until a moment before was cut by a huge sickle appeared Medusa' hands . The woman's eyes looked like a well connected directly to hell. His hair danced wildly over her shoulders and head, demonically.

It was not strange, for Aiako, to see Medusa in the grip of fury and anger; but this time the young woman really looked like a Devil. An attack like the one that Medusa had just thrown would have killed him in a second, if he hadn't been ready to dodge it.

Therefore, the rumours that were circulating through the Sect were not mere chatter: the loss of her sister had made Medusa mad, and she had become unrecognizable. Aiako found it hard to believe that this was his leader.

Pursued by a woman who had lost her mind, Aiako had to face a series of blows without any chance of a counterattack. Despite this, until now he had not lost a single hair. If on the one hand Medusa had succeeded in putting him immediately on the edge, on the other his terrifying speed allowed him to avoid all her blows.

If Helial had been there at that moment, the first thing he would have noticed would not have been Medusa's madness. He would have immediately noticed Aiako's terrifying speed, which would have left even Snowflake far behind.

If Helial could have seen that scene, he would have thought that the battle against Medusa's Team would be much more difficult than he had imagined and would have admitted that Caliban was right.

***

But Helial couldn't see what was going on and, in the training camp, he kept thinking about what would be the best training for each member of the team to prepare for the fight.