"While the Devil is more focused on training the body to become a weapon, with me you'll find out what it's like to control everything around you. You showed a surprising aptitude for control of the battlefield. That doesn't mean you have to become Support, as the Devil pointed out to me. You can, on the contrary, become a warrior capable of influencing an entire war, just standing still. You have an affinity with the Mana of Earth and Moon. But I can grant you, through study and meditation, an Affinity on a par with Life and Pure Destruction. A type of Mana long forgotten within the universe."

A real Queen?

Lumia looked at Alexander and felt her heart racing as it only happened when Helial was near her. She felt a strange invigorating sensation go through her body and give her a vitality she had never had before.

Lumia loved her brother, more than anything else in the world.

Helial was the cornerstone upon which the frail life on which was built the life the little girl tried so tenaciously to cling to. Lumia had always chased him, trying to catch up with him and keep his pace. She had undergone such a gruelling training that no one could have survived to tell the story.

The willpower that characterized her was a gift she had torn from the sky with teeth and nails. She had taken the tenacity with which his brother had raised her and, having increased it exponentially, she had worn it like an indestructible armour, which, instead of being bruised, became more and more hard and impenetrable after each fight.

But perhaps Lumia had always fought a battle lost from the start.

Tsukuyomi's noble attempt to become Iblis's moon, always reflecting the light of the greatest Devil in the universe, had ultimately blocked her growth, according to Alexander. Tsukuyomi's talent had never been so inferior to that of Amaterasu and Iblis. The only problem had been the life she had chosen to lead, not her talent.

Iblis had saved Tsukuyomi's life countless times, preventing her from growing and confining her power to the blinding shadow of her own person. It was probably precisely for this reason, in order not to destroy that light, that Tsukuyomi had decided never to fully demonstrate what she was capable of. The Devil was the reason she would never get stronger than Amaterasu.

Alexander feared the same thing would happen to Lumia. If Helial hadn't been there to protect her, Lumia would have already been killed by Hades. Yes, surely Lumia should have been infinitely grateful to him but, continuing to follow him, she would never have blossomed. She would always be a flower under a glass dome.

And this event, meeting with Alexander, could have led Lumia to live a life for herself, and not acting solely in function of Helial. This could have been the beginning of Lumia's story, about Lumia as Lumia, not about Lumia following Helial.

Was that what now made her feel like an electrical discharge was running through her body and giving her a new life? This otherworldly feeling was perhaps what it meant to reach a higher state of life, an existence she had never thought of before.

“Ah, anyway, forgive me. When it comes to creatures below Immortality and without too much Karma on them, predicting even years or centuries of their life is quite simple. In your case, I have already begun the process of creating the Perfect Foundations. If you feel a weird sensation, that's probably it; but don't worry, it should be pleasant, nothing special. Give me another five minutes and we're done. We are already late", Alexander added, looking at the chaos of people around him, “the battle must go on."

Lumia stopped fantasizing, took a deep breath and indulged in laughter.

Alexander was struck by the freshness the smile of the girl with silver hair contained. He felt his heart rise for a moment, as if he had never been locked up in the Octagonal Room for so many centuries. He felt as if he had returned to the battlefield, with one of his generals in front of him.

Scratching his head full of golden ringlets, he muttered to Bucephalus, transmitting his voice: “Maybe you're right. Even if I remain only in the form of a Soul, I'm not sure that it is no longer worth fighting. Being a hermit was pretty tiring. I think I will soon ask Iblis how to crystallize my Soul inside an indestructible object, to live in his same way."

"Which would completely change the course of the fate of the universe, inserting a variable the size of a galaxy," sighed Bucephalus, strangely worried about all the problems Iblis would have shortly thereafter.

“Which would give me a chance to have a lot of fun with you. Don't you miss your King?"

Bucephalus smiled. Or at least, he would have smiled if he had been in his Human form.

Lumia, who had not been able to hear the conversation, found that silence rather superfluous and thought that while she waited for the process to end, she could take the opportunity to speak to the man in front of her.

"Can I ask you a question?" Lumia asked.

"Can I ask you a question, MA-S...?"

"Master", finished the girl.

"Of course," Alexander nodded, pleased.

The little contact with other living creatures and the lack of company clearly showed.

"Has time been stopped?"

Alexander smiled and shook his head. “Time cannot be stopped. Its flow can be roughly predicted, it can be accelerated and slowed down. But never stopped, go backwards or forwards by skipping the timelines in the present and in between. The past is immutable, the future can be influenced if you already know the shape that events will take. In this case, I have just slowed down time so much that it appears to be standing still. For such a trick, the presence of any high-Level people also counts. The higher Level a person is and the greater his Karma, the harder it will be to influence the time around him."

Lumia looked up for a split second, where Cesar was sitting, and then in the direction of the enemy Immortals. So, they didn't have enough Karma or such a high Level that they could fight the man in armour? What kind of monster did that young man have to be to have all that power?

In a flash of black light, a child with a bowl-shaped haircut appeared next to Alexander, with a rather irritated expression on his face.

Before Iblis opened his mouth, Alexander was pleased to be able to show an example. "You see? The Karma and the Level of Iblis are so great that it is impossible to use the same trick on him with the same effect."

Rolling his eyes to the sky, the Devil could not help but correct him: “However, in battle there is no point in making time go by so slowly as to make it seem still. It would just be a waste of Mana. Just slow down time for a moment and you will create an opening that is impossible to counter."

Iblis's words became even more solemn: “The Mana of Time is something tremendously deep and dangerous, in some ways even more than Life and Destruction. If it hadn't disappeared ages ago, probably one of his representatives would have been formidable and almost invincible."

At that point they both turned to Lumia, waiting for her reaction. But the little girl had only an incredulous look on her face as she pointed an index finger at the boy.

“Are you Iblis? That Iblis? The Iblis of the legends that are present only in the oldest texts of the Royal Library? Iblis, the Lord of Destruction?"

At that point, Alexander and Iblis realized that Lumia had never been told by her brother about the true nature of the Devil. They exchanged a look, not knowing what they might say. They had been taken completely off guard.

For her part, Lumia could not believe what she had just deduced. It certainly does not happen every day to have to deal with what had been defined by some Immortal scholars as the apocalypse of the universe and to receive from him teachings and even a weapon of inestimable value. Nor was it very usual to understand that the man who had so naturally shown her all the moves to do with the scythe must be a monster as powerful as the Devil, along with his scary black horse.

The King of Kings and the Lord of Destruction found themselves momentarily dumbfounded in front of a girl of about twelve who looked at them with stubborn bewilderment.

“Well”, Alessandro began, “don't worry. The Perfect Foundations are almost complete, you should be able to fight without problems soon. The important thing is that you stay focused."

It was just after these words that Lumia fainted.

Bucephalus instantly took on his Human form and materialized behind the girl, grabbing her just in time, before she tumbled to the ground.

"Idiots," snorted the legendary steed.

Iblis and Alessandro shrugged and put on another kettle of tea, waiting for Lumia to wake up.

If anyone in the Colosseum could have seen the scene unfolding before their eyes - a fainted girl with a large scythe beside her, a horse that had turned into a Human to savhee her, and the two greatest monsters in the universe sipping a hot tea in the middle of a battle - he would have thought to be mad.