The heat of a sea-level settlement was something he was used to. The distinct smell of humidity invading his nose as the lizards on the ceiling clicked their tongues and the crickets sung their songs, together with that feeling of stickiness covering his skin, was all too natural for him.

But even if one would get accustomed to the heat, the sweat, and the noise, it would be impossible to be accustomed to a putrid and dark cell.

Thom had spent the last two days locked up in one. It had been worst the first day— when his wounds were still open, and the filth would slowly enter his seared flesh as he slept.

He would still lightly tremble when his mind trailed off to that day.

He was reminded of his own voice screaming out in agony as he repeated that he worked alone, in short breaths, that he was sorry, that he had acted out of pure impulse. The bladed whip getting stuck between his ribs when it impacted on his chest, only to be pulled out and butcher his skin, was something he would keep in his heart as a memory to study and to grow.

He had thought long and hard about his decisions that day.

"Shit man..." He smiled. "I should have just stayed at the farm. Who knows, maybe I could have supplanted Marz' son. Not that anyone would miss that runt. Asshole... He hid away my pillow that day. And I'm pretty sure he was cleaning the ground with my fucking toothbrush... Hm?"

As he was rumbling about inconsequential happenings, his shoulders twitched and the sound of someone entering the room reached his ears.

He would have liked to say he heard footsteps, but it wasn't the case. He could only see the lights from the torches flicker, as a completely silent image made it's way to his cell. At first he couldn't recognize that figure at all, but it soon became apparent that it wasn't a stranger.

Tap

"..."

A blonde woman stopped in front of his cell, looking down at him as the light showed half of her face. A pair of yellowish, completely unexpressive eyes met his own. Her small nose tilting slightly downwards, her ears pointed back and almost sticking to her hair, and a small mole besides her almost flat-lined mouth.

As Thom's eyes turned glazed and he was about to open his mouth, he was interrupted by a slow gesture of her hand, directing to her face.

The sound of liquid being drank ringed out.

"Ex... Excuse me, miss?" Thom stood up as he sighed, feeling the atmosphere crumble into pieces.

The woman didn't answer, however. She continued to drink her coffee, which smelled nicely enough that Thom's stomach started to rumble.

I haven't really had much food these last few days...

"Is that... Coffee?" He pointed to the cup.

The woman nodded.

Thom noticed she was slightly taller than him. He had never been a tall man, so this didn't come across as a surprise. What did seem rather surprising about her was how well-eqquiped she was.

"Where did you even have that? Did you open the door while holding that or...?"

He had many questions, but the woman in front of him didn't answer any of them no matter how long of a response time he gave her. He sighed as if giving up, and eyed the empty cup.

"You sure like coffee if you're drinking it at night." He joked softly, and held one of the bars with his hand. "I didn't get your name, but you were with that man when I went to execute my... Less than savory plan. And less than succesful, too."

"Valta."

She answered in a very low tone, but it was enough to identify a whisper of amicable intention in it. The woman didn't smile, or do any gesture of any kind. Thom could only observe her stone-cold face after having been given a name.

"... Right. What is it? Did you come here to kill me off? Have you all figured I haven't been lying?"

The woman shook her head, and looked around as if searching for something. She stayed silent, and having not found what she sought, placed the cup on the floor.

Hey... She just noticed there was no place to put the cup and tossed it on the ground, didn't she?

Thom's upper lip twitched.

Valta raised her head, and went to grab something inside her satchel. Thom tried to give her a side-eye to find out what she looked through, but was discovered and the woman turned around to prohibit him from seeing.

Thom chuckled slightly while she turned back to face him. She extender her hand and gave him a small rectangle wrapped in a package.

"Is this... Food?" He held it and asked with visible disbelief.

Valta nodded:

"I may have troubled you." She said. "This is compensation."

"Oh, more trouble than this?" Thom looked around as his finger wavered in the air. "I don't think you have to worry."

Valta shook her head once more, and crouched to pick up the cup. When she stood back up, she tucked a lost strand of hair behind her ear, and sighed trough her nose.

"Eat and rest."

She said, and with the same lack of noise that she arrived with, she left.

"..."

Puzzled enough that he couldn't take his eyes off the spot she had last been in, Thom swallowed dry. More trouble than being tortured and imprisoned? If so, a hard day would expect him the next morning.

He untied the wrappings on the package he had been given, and smiled bitterly as he discovered it's contents.

Inside it, a solid block of fruity, soft and chewy candy could be seen peeking trough the cover.

A sweets lover, is it...

•••

Public executions were a common thing in the Kingdom, a place where the only way to put criminals into order was trough the universal and inevitable fear of death.

However, Miel didn't wish to taint the name of the Alleeba Family by having a prisoner break an axe with his neck at the execution row. Although death by hanging was also a possibility to consider, and one that was much cleaner, Miel didn't want the man to pull any trick on him at such moment either. It would throw the public into disarray, and maybe even stir curiosity from a major power in the Kingdom.

Because of that, the table had come with a better solution, inspired by an inaudible comment made by the cold duchess, Valta Lockhart.

They had prepared a small ring at the very center of the headquarters' training yard, and the audience would be whoever wanted to attend from the middle brigade. Roughly half of 2,500 people, enough to make for a good public.

The only reason why not everyone in the army had attended was because: one, there wasn't enough space. And second, because most of them were on duty.

However, almost the entirety of the army went crazy as soon as the words "Erina is fighting" were mentioned. And around the cords held by stakes at every five feet surrounding the ring, the feverish excitement was clear.

In the middle of said ring, about 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, two figures could be seen.

An unknown man with black hair, holding a pitch-black sword on his right hand. He was using no armor on his chest, neither a shield, but no one would call this unjust. Mainly because Erina didn't have any armor of her own, but also because armor or shields would do no good against that girl. If the man knew this or not, it made no difference for anyone on the crowd.

The only other interesting thing on this man besides his sword was a red pearl embedded on the choker at his neck— a translator stone crafted by Kuulkiam smiths and enchanters.

On the other side, the sensation of the Upper Battalion, and part of the core battalion, stood there with a smile. Black short hair to the shoulders, pale skin, and a pair of muscly, well-trained arms. Although her face looked rather girlish, the woman known through Goldblack as the small goliath had a physique that many men would envy.

Only her forearms and calves had leather armor. There was a brilliant smile on her face as she pressed her massive, ebony greatsword on the ground, and cut the breath out of Thom's lungs.

Standing just a few feet of each other, Thom could feel the oppressing aura this girl was exuding. Perhaps because of how nervous he was, or because the crowd cheering her name even before the match started had thrown him into a very tight spot.

Thom didn't know, as he hadn't been told, that this akward too long of a moment did have a purpose. Before a match, the two fighters would normally jeer at each other to fuel rage before battle. But as of now, he couldn't know that, because the girl in front of him only kept seizing him up and smiling.

Then, after a weird minute in which he didn't know where to point his eyes, she opened her mouth and whispered:

"Hey..." Her voice was low and soft. "If you're a Clawgold you should say it now, friend. I may be an exiled but I've seen how they fight."

Thom was stunned for a second.

"I don't know what that is..." He muttered lowly while placing the sword on his shoulder.

Now that he had obtained [Copper Skin] as a passive skill, he was more than sure he wouldn't loose a fight against anyone. It wasn't just that he wouldn't be damaged by weapons, his skin couldn't even be scratched. It might now be covered in millions of scars, but he had a feeling he wouldn't see a new one appear in a good time.

The girl sneered at his cocky attitude.

"I'll be honest, dude. You don't seem like a bad guy. If I'm being honest, that Piston was a dick. I would have killed him too if given the opportunity. Of course, not in such a daring way as what you did. I don't mind the death of a bunch of soldiers, even if it was like that. Soldiers know they can loose their lives at any moment... But I like that you were thoughtful enough to spare the servants, even if that costed you your freedom. Ah... I'm not the type to make plans and think through stuff, but I figured that.... You know. You have something greater in mind, don't you?"

Thom didn't answer to the girl's ramblings. He couldn't afford the luxury of being too confident and giving details that could damage him in the long run, so silence was the only thing the girl was given.

"Jeez. Are you Valta? A no would have sufficed." She made a honestly concerned face, and pouted slightly while retiring her face. "What I'm saying is, I can make a deal with you."

Thom's eyes opened wide. He looked around and saw the public arriving at the scene— would it really be safe to discuss such a thing out in the open?

"... I'm listening."

"It's always better to have the least amount of dead people. And if I can save your life, I know I can be happy. If you agree to one thing, and only one thing, I promise I'll tell the captain you're a member of the Clawgold clan. That way, not only will he let you live, he would also allow you to work here if you'd like."

"After I've killed a vassal of the duke?"

"Are you really that unfamiliar with everything?" The girl tilted her head to the left. "Even if you had killed the duke himself, little people could hold you accountable for it if you belonged to the clan. Believe me."

The girl seemed irritated as she said those words, it didn't take much for Thom to piece the information together. If the girl was part of that clan and it was indeed as powerful as she said, his life could be saved down the line. However big the sacrifice, if it was possible to get on this girl's good grace, he wouldn't need to flee again.

"Then... What's your request?"

The girl extended her right hand forward, taking her greatsword with the other one, and smiled. Her mildly puffy cheeks went red as she did, and her eyes became a fine line that expressed nothing but happiness.

"Be my friend!"

Thom felt an arrow strike his heart, and he took a step back in utter defeat. His chest started to hurt as his sight distorted— what kind of wicked spell was this? Thom gathered all of his strenght and did his best to hide how taken aback he was.

Could this really be it? Could this girl really be this innocent and sweet as to allow a murderer to live just to get a friend?

However it was, Thom's heart wasn't strong enough to resist it. That face that called him so strongly towards his past, to the face of his own sister and the warmth of that smile, he couldn't resist it. He stretched his hand forward, grabbed the girl's palm, and nodded.

"It's... A deal."

The girl chuckled as she smiled, and let go of Thom's hand. It rested back on the pommel of the greatsword, and she sighed deeply while unburying it from the coarse dirt.

"Miel will be here in a minute. Thirty feet away from me, go."

Erina placed the hilt of the massive sword on her shoulder, and walked away with an uncovered back as if she had no treachery to worry about. Thom, although dumbfounded, simply turned around as well and walked fifteen feet away from the center of the ring.

The highest seat of the grades was quickly taken by a slim person of golden hairs who's sex was hard to tell, and besides him was a short fat man and a tall bulky knight. Although Thom could not identify the former, the latter was Chamgue. He felt that seeing him again had greatly worsened his mood.

You're a target, shithead.

He centered his eyes back on the fight, and breathed out to relax himself.

The crowd soon started to go silent, and Miel gave a small amount of words before signaling the bell to be rung. Something along the lines of "I hope we see a man's head roll today.", but Thom didn't care enough for the rest.

When the bell rang, he shot straight forward without thinking.

"Op!" She exclaimed, barely starting to run.

How slow!

Slow, the girl was incredibly slow. Once he had already crossed the line at the center, she had just started to dash. It was a competition between lighting and a drop of water to see which would reach the ground first in a storm, and Thom wasn't going to loose it.

Chance!

As soon as he was there, Thom sent a savage stockade at her belly, which inmediately connected and made her turn to a side, avoiding being impaled. At that moment the young man jumped up, using the momentum he spun in the air, and viciously landed a vertical slash down the girl's chest to the end of her waist.

A splat of blood soaked her clothes as they ragged, but Thom didn't stop there. After having fallen to the ground, he slashed at her legs, and made a cut on her thighs before she could back down.

I've got this! If this is their best fighter, I've actually got this!

Thom looked up expecting to see the girl's pain-ridden face, but the only thing he found was a smile.

"Good one!"

Was the last thing he heard before everything went dark.

For half a second he was unconscious, and then he was flying. When he recovered, he barely managed to stabilize himself, before he could feel a warm pain spreading throughout all of his torso.

Dodge—

But a diagonal slash came crashing down towards him before he could move his sword, making another deep wound.

"When?!"

After a slash came a direct hit from the girl's fist to his face, which made him fly against the ground and be thrashed for several feet before he could finally land face-down.

"Augh... Cough...! A-Agh..."

Thom pushed his hands against the ground, and saw a great amount of blood oozing from the wounds on his stomach. They hurt, there was no doubt of that, but they were merely flesh sounds.

She... Was serious about being friends, I guess.

He could feel the power behind her attacks, there was no way he had received only that much damage. While Thom's attacks had been sent to damage her organs or cut her limbs, her blade had only delicately graced his skin, which was supposed to be indestructible, and yet, this much damage was done.

"Huff." The girl smiled as she walked closer to him. "Certainly not weak, but unrefined." She said.

"Tsk!"

Thom launched his body forward from the ground, and stabbed at the girl's shoulder.

It landed, and a great deal of blood dripped from the wound. Thom stayed in place with his chest going up and down, as if that single move had costed him all of his stamina. In truth, he was expecting the girl to retreat after the hit. However, she stayed silent, seizing him up, and giggled.

A shockwave extended trough the arena, and Thom's eyes spun in their place. He had begun to stare at the girl's leather boots, and soon, a booming sound extended troughout the courtyard, followed by an uproar from the public.

Thom's head was suddenly being pressed against the floor— no, he had been sent with such strength against the dirt that it felt like it had been continuously pressed for half a second.

This time, his lights started to go away slowly. As blood started to pour from his head and the girl crouched in front of him to hold his hand, his consciousness started to fade into nothing.

How weak could I be that I had no time to react? Even being playful, she completely destroyed me. I wonder... If I was thinking I was strong... Back when I killed Piston.

"Good fight."

She whispered with a light-hearted smile, and tucked the sides of her hair behind her ear like a child.

Promptly, his world turned black.