Fel dropped to the ground, it was a close fight. If Invicta hadn’t telegraphed all his attacks and wasn’t so lax in his defence, Fel would’ve certainly been defeated. The difference in raw power was simply too great. He had to use his entire stock of grenades to make up for the difference in fire-power; they were supposed to last him the year.

The referee took off his visor, exposing a penetrating set of blue eyes, “So?”

“Erm, I’ll leave it up to Siyla. This was her problem in the first place, I only helped out.”

“Very well,” He turned to Siyla on the stands, “What would you like from Invicta?”

A gleam of appreciation flashed through Siyla’s eyes, she really wanted to get even with this persistent asshole. But, what exactly she should do, that was a difficult question. While she could go as far as she wanted too, looking at Invicta’s backing, it wouldn’t be a good idea to go too far. She had to leave some for them.

Extending a graceful finger, she pointed at the medallion lying on Invicta’s face, “I want that.”

An uproar consumed the stands. That medallion was a bona fide Tier 2 artifact from the ancient era, ranked #12 among the Silverwheel families’ belongings. Siyla however, thought it was only a quasi Tier 2 artifact as Invicta suffered no backlash from using it. Unfortunately, that was the very aspect of the artifact that made it so valuable.

A bead of sweat dropped down the referee’s forehead, this girl had a fierce appetite, “W-well, if that’s what you desire then it is done.”

The crowd grew even rowdier. A few richly clothed youths even banded together and confronted Siyla, “Wench, take that back now. Don’t reach too high.”

“It’s only a medallion. What’s the big deal?”

“Only a – are your eyes blind? Can you not recognise a true treasure even if it’s laid bare before you?”

“Of course I can. It’s an artifact that automatically absorbs and refines metallic energy, storing it for future use.”

One of the young youths patted his companion's shoulder, “Let’s not talk to this country bumpkin any further, her ignorance will taint us. She’ll learn in due time.”

The companion brushed off his companion’s hand, swirling a wisp of flame around his finger, “No, these commoners have become too rebellious in recent years. If we don’t teach them a lesson now, then they’ll get out of hand.”

From below, the referee shook his head, “These nobles never learn do they?”

Snapping his fingers, he conjured a blast of air, sending the stubborn youth flying.

“The stands aren’t an arena you know? If you want to fight, fill in the correct applications to the administration.”

That seemed to shut them up. Whether it was it strength talking, or they just stuck to the rules, it was hard to tell. While the nobles seemed to be unruly on the surface, they followed the guidelines closer than anyone else. Though, seeing the dirty looks the nobles were giving her, she knew that she had to keep her guard up in the future.

Clapping his hands, the referee called for everyone to disperse. The show was over. As everyone was filing out, he shook Invicta awake and requested that the medallion be handed over.

With an eerie silence, Invicta undid the wards on it and tossed it over. His face was listless, eyes gazing into the void. After he surrendered his artifact, he stood up and trod off into the distance, swaying from side to side, a haunting shadow looming over him. Fel didn’t know why, but he was far more fearful of Invicta in this state. In his eyes, Invicta didn’t seem to be a broken person at all, instead, a man filled with grim determination with pure spite driving him onward.

However, while Invicta’s strange behaviour offset the duo’s mood, it was quickly shoved to the corner of their minds, replaced instead by endless joy. Mysvain made a killing off his betting and offered to cover the costs for repairing Fel’s equipment. He had learnt much from redesigning it with Fel and had even implemented a few of its designs in his own work; it was the least he could do.

When they arrived at Fel’s pagoda, Fel was half-expecting a sudden invasion of his lightning Mage friends, however, they never appeared. They went straight back home from the arena. Verris was serious when he said Mages were busy people.

Sitting together with Siyla at the table, he poured a cup of tea and laid it to the side, beginning to chat about various topics, like what they did before they met up at Mysvain’s place and what happened during the duel. However, after a little while, Fel discovered that they didn’t have much to talk about. While they were companions, they were pretty much mashed together and had little history together.

Fel took a sip of tea, putting it down, “Siyla, why do you keep following me? It’s not like you’re contractually bound to or anything.”

Siyla froze in place.

“I mean, with your capability, you could be successful wherever you go. I'm not very powerful at all, as I'm useless my tools and don’t even know what a spell is. You could do much better than-”

SLAP

Fel was almost fell backwards from his seat.

As Fel’s vision cleared, he found Siyla to be weeping silver tears with her face blushing a metallic ivory.

“Shut up.”

She leapt up from her chair and stalked off to a random bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Fel placed a hand on his stinging cheek, digesting what had happened. Strange, he had just stated facts, yet Siyla slapped him in return. Dejectedly, he sipped the last of his tea and made his way to his room, wondering why his heart skipped a beat as he saw Siyla’s distressed appearance.

In the corner of Fel’s mind space, Aerl was glaring daggers at Fel. Sighing at his scientifically impossible level of denseness. Though Fel bragged that he was a social person, he definitely wasn’t.

In the midst of night, Fel heard a knocking at his door. Panicking, Fel whipped on some clothes and got to the door, opening it up, revealing a depressed Siyla. Her cheeks were plastered with powdery, dried silver tears and her large wings wrapped around her person.

“Umm, come in."

She made her way to a cushioned seat with short, quick steps, plopped herself down and cradled her knees. Fel on the other hand, walked over to his bed and sat opposite to Siyla.

“Sorry,”

“What?”

“I said sorry ok.”

“Um, sure.”

Siyla looked as if she was about to slap Fel again.

“Just don’t say ever, ever again.”

“Sure.”

“Do you know why?”

“Ye-” A sliver of killing intent wafted over to Fel, “No, no clue.”

She walked up to Fel and grabbed him by his collar, pulling him close, “You really are an idiot.”

---

Fel jolted awake, wrapped in soft, steel-grey feathers with a silver-haired head nestled on his shoulder. Oddly enough, they weren’t under the douve, and were instead lying on top of it. When Fel tried to extricate himself from Siyla’s grasp, the wings only tightened around him. He could only wait for Siyla to wake up.

Soon after, Siyla eased her eyes open. Coming to her senses, and noticing how tightly she was hugging Fel, she quickly let him go, though this time, she didn’t shunt him off the bed.

“Morning.”

Siyla blushed and looked away, “I’ll get something to eat.”

“You can cook?”

Ignoring this, she dashed through the door, slamming it behind her.

Not a second later, a headache-inducing wave of, high-pitched screeching flooded Fel’s mind, almost incapacitating him.

“Aerl, what the fuck?”

“You lucky bastard, I bet you didn’t even remember what happened last night.”

“I did… vaguely. Maybe it’s a little hard to remember in between your screeching?”

“Tch, I’m not gonna talk to you for a week.”

“C’mon, we just hugged for the night, what’s the big deal?”

“Hugged? More like cuddled! And that’s further than I’ve ever been, and I’m over a thousand years old!”

“Weren’t you sealed in a book or something for a good portion of those years?”

“Shaddup, even without counting those years I’m still around 100!”

Ignoring Aerl’s cries, Fel got into something more presentable and walked to the living room, thinking of how childish Aerl was. Though as he contemplated on how he and Siyla only hugged, albeit for extended amounts of time, he gained quite the blush himself, inciting another round of screeching from Aerl.

Sitting at the dinner table, Fel found an array of dishes presented upon it. However, when Fel looked at the ‘food’ he found that, though it was arranged in an appealing manner, the meal consisted of metal, shaped as steak and various vegetables.

The perpetrator walked out of the kitchen with a jug of grey liquid.

“Siyla, you know that I can’t eat metal right? I mean, you’ve seen me eat organic food right?”

“No, those are mine,” she pointed to a corner of the table with a few, very much edible, dishes on it, “Those are yours.”

Moving positions, Fel dug into his food, finding that it was pretty decent. It was an impressive feat considering that Siyla’s main diet consisted of various unknown metals. On the other side of the table, Siyla was skillfully using her cutlery to slice apart the pieces of metal and bring them to her mouth. How she did that with metal was a mystery.

After several minutes of dining, Fel broke the silence, “So what do we do now?”

Siyla poked at a fruit-looking piece of metal, “I’ll stay here, it’s boring in the metal zone. Invicta and his goons are there too.”

“There isn’t much metal energy here though.”

“No worries, I’ll just have to eat more physical metal then. Besides,” She took Invicta’s medallion from her pocket, “This thing might come in use.”

“Fine, but about last night-”

Before Fel could complete his sentence, the earth trembled, throwing furniture to the floor and sending plates flying from the table. Looking out the window, Fel saw great fissures spread across the air, revealing a large barrier over the Academy.

Soon after, the earthquake settled and a howling alarm rang out along with a cold, mechanical voice.

“Alert, large-scale Death Wave has erupted 1km from the Academy. Non-combatants, evacuate to your nearest shelter. Combatants, assemble at the energy zone.”