Isaac looked at his watch. It was the 25th of August.

The sun shone on the smooth stone surface of the arena.

Isaac and Aaron were preparing for a duel. They had the whole arena to themselves, one of the benefits of staying in the manor.

Gabriella was a bit farther away. She raised her arm.

Aaron had his hand on his pistol’s holder, and Isaac was ready to activate his all-purpose watch. They stared at each other.

Gabriella lowered her arm. “Start!”

*Pow!* Aaron fired the first bullet.

Isaac quickly blocked it with his conjured shield. He advanced while Aaron kept firing.

Suddenly, Isaac started running toward his friend.

He was ready. As soon as Aaron stopped shooting, Isaac threw his electrically charged shield straight ahead.

*Whoosh*

Aaron dodged to the side, but Isaac was already onto him with a new conjured spear.

However, Aaron responded fast. He cast wind magic with his right hand, blowing Isaac back.

Isaac stuck his spear against the ground, but bullets were fired and scrapped him.

Isaac couldn’t move. If he retracted his spear, Aaron’s wind would blow him away. And if he didn’t, Aaron’s training bullets would continue hitting him.

“Yield!” Aaron shouted.

Gabriella stayed silent.

Isaac’s eyes reddened. “I’m not done yet!”

“Then I’ll put more strength in my bullets!” Aaron fired harder bullets by changing the mode of his weapon.

This time, wounds appeared on Isaac’s body. However, he did not surrender.

He didn’t leave his spear and chose the second option.

Isaac tanked the bullets and extended his arm.

The wind mage didn’t make much of it at first.

However, a red beam came out of his friend’s hand.

*BOOM*

Isaac hadn’t held back his magic at all. The beam hit the ground beneath Aaron and caused a massive shockwave.

“Shit!”

Aaron lost control as his body leaped into the air. He was now spinning 5 metres above ground.

A shadow passed by Isaac as it flew up.

It was Gabriella.

She cut the wind with her sharp dark wings, swiftly flying up, then bringing Aaron back to the ground.

Isaac approached them with a smile. “I won.”

Gabriella and Aaron looked at him.

“What?”

“Isaac, you should have surrendered! His bullets hit you.”

“So what if they hit me? Even if they were at maximum power, I’d have taken them head-on in a fight. In case you forgot, I can regenerate.”

Perhaps due to the magic influencing his emotions, Isaac didn’t comprehend that his acts were wrong.

…

Saturday, August 26.

Seth Rayn brought Aaron into the woods outside of Titan City to hunt game.

Aaron looked through his sniper’s scope.

On top of a particular tree branch, a small bird sang as it demonstrated its beautiful feathers.

*Bang!*

The bird’s left wing got hit. It tried to keep its balance to no avail before falling into the mud beneath it.

Seth took the bird by the leg as it struggled futilely to escape his grasp.

“Nice. Let’s go back to the truck.”

The retired magician walked back to his truck with his staff in one hand and a bird in the other.

Upon arriving, he threw the bird into a cage with two other wounded birds. There was also a cage with a fox and one with two rabbits.

On the road back to the manor, they made terrible cacophonous noise. The fox banged on the cage’s walls every once in a while.

“Do we really have to keep them alive like that?” Aaron pitied them.

“Well, they need to stay alive so that Isaac can kill them and increase his red mana points.”

Aaron pouted. “I mean, he already had like 50k red mana points last time he told us since he absorbed every single soul in Hellish City. These animals will only give him 300 at most.”

Isaac had increased mana points a lot when freeing Hellish City’s souls. His amount of mana points could last him for a very long time, however-

“And it's these 300 that he’ll use for training. His magic is unique. It doesn’t replenish by itself like you and me.” Seth looked at the road.

A pop-up appeared on the window to indicate a branch was in the way. He drove around it.

Aaron remarked, “Yet it increases every time he absorbs souls and can stack.”

He looked outside his window. “I wish I had such magic.”

This last sentence annoyed the old mage. “Isaac Tremblay’s magic has a catch: it plays with his emotions.”

“So what? That’s just a small price to pay, isn’t it?”

It was getting late. As the air got colder, the sunlight dimmed.

"You remind me of Ejiro when I first met him. He had to leave his home guild, Cryanok, in the Central Continent by force when he was 5.”

“Why?”

The master sighed.

“It was a quarrel among aristocrats. His parents got killed. So, he left for the South Continent and got placed in an orphanage there.”

Aaron turned. He looked at the aged man.

Seth Rayn was staring at the road, revealing neither a smile nor a scowl.

“For the better part of his life, he was formed as a mage under the Cryanok Guild’s eyes and eventually made a name for himself as part of the ‘South DA.’”

Suddenly, he frowned. “The Cryanok Guild is one of the guilds in our Democratic Alliance that I despise the most. It seems like a democratic guild on the surface. But in truth, it's an oligarchy.”

He paused.

“Ejiro started an investigation denouncing that on the news.”

“How did the Guild react?”

“It’s simple. The Cryanok Guild gave him an offer, demanding he come back to the mainland.”

A grin appeared on Seth’s face. “Ejiro wasn’t stupid. He ran away to the West DA and found me. Whenever you needed help with an injustice back then, I was your guy.”