NOVEL NEXT Chapter 257: Piggy Back.
“Uh…” ‘I’m not sure who should be more embarrassed between the two of us…’ “Actually I still have my first mark… Well… Now I have 20 but that’s not important. Anyway, I don’t have any maps. I was wondering if you had any. The guilds all fight in a mock war after the first weak right? While I’m here I might as well start getting ready for that. Oh, and do you know if there's a place I can easily get to the roof from here?”
She immediately ate her words, pausing for a long moment before answering. “Right… Uh… You can look at the maps in the library over there… No roof access… If you wanted to get up there you might try climbing out a window on the fourth floor…”
‘Did you really just tell a child to climb out the window on the fourth floor of a government building?’ I awkwardly left without either of us saying anything more, heading to the library. Unfortunately the map there wasn’t a very good one, only showing where the campus buildings were, and not giving any hints of terrain or anything useful for battle. On the upside, I now pretty much knew my way around campus at least, including where Air’s dorm was… And Yamaria’s…
[Girls dorm age 15-16 Purple mansion]
‘It’s kinda far away… How does she have so much control over the young girl's dorm already? I doubt her sister is actually helping her, she was pretty adamant about that.’’
“Hey, Siya.”
I felt a surge of manna as a reflex but soon calmed my hot blood. “Gild…” I groaned.
“Who else!” He cheered. “Good to see you made it through on your own. Come on, I’ll take you to your brother.”
“How did you–”
“I have my ways.”
“How very vague…”
“Forget about it, follow me.”
“Ok…” ‘He’s a lot more energetic today…’
He led me up several flights of stairs designed for giants before stepping out a window on the fourth floor and finding Airsidh not long after, casually leaning back and watching the show with a glass of beer. “I saw you’re fighting, not bad… Although I wonder how many times you could afford to fight head-on like that.”
‘I’m already exhausted… My body is still burning because I thought it was a good idea to take a direct hit to see what I could do…’ I sighed. “That can wait… Do you know a guy with the last name Allshadora?” Gild paused, his eyes widening, but he didn’t say a word, waiting for my brother to answer the question as if it was some kind of sit-down.
“You mean Kai? Why do you want to know about him?”
“It's not that I want to know about him exactly… More like I was wondering if you could introduce me to him.” ‘If I could get him into my guild too, that would be even better. He is a bit older, but that might be a good thing. And I bet it wouldn’t hurt my odds of recruiting his younger sister either.’
“Siya… Don't you think… you're still a little young for wedding talks?”
I raised my palm to my face without a sound, speechless, and unsure of how I was supposed to respond. “I want to ask him for a favor, not to marry me… If I was looking to get married it probably wouldn’t be into a family like that anyway…” ‘Actually… I haven’t thought about it.’ I looked over at Gild. ‘I mean, all the nobles are pretty sucky…’ “If a commoner proves themselves would it be alright for a noble to merry one?”
Gild suddenly took a step back and turned away, clearing his throat to watch Lu’s battle and nervously chuckling after receiving a quick glance from my brother.
He raised an eyebrow but kept his eye focused down below. “We can talk about this later, you want to meet to Kai? He’s in our guild, should be easy to find. Right now he’s probably at the arena for the bodybuilding contest. It looks like… This will be Lu’s last fight for a while anyway…”
I walked closer to the edge of the roof and looked down, focusing my eyes. Unlike me, she never once bothered dodging. She took every attack head-on and countered just as hard until her opponent was either beaten into submission, or she forced open a hole in their defense. The people she was fighting were no slouches either. After cleanly knocking one out she took over 50 marks from him, and after that no one dared go near her. ‘How is she still going this strong after last night…’
“What kind of family would you like to marry into?”
I let out a slow growl. “I thought we were talking about that later…”
“It is later.”
I placed a hand on my hip, turning to him and rolling my eyes, gesturing towards the window we used to get up there.
“Ok, ok, fine.”
I slowly followed behind them. ‘It feels like he’s off his game today, no, in general, I think he just acts different when he’s around his friends if only a little. It’s almost like he’s nervous…’ I focused my eyes on his back, stepping through the window. ‘No… It would have to be something else, maybe he’s tired?’ “You said we're going to a bodybuilding show?”
“Show… I guess you could call it that. You’ll see. You might even try it. The academy holds contests like this to let people show off, and you get a ton of marks for winning, so it can be worth it sometimes. Of course… You can always just wait around and challenge the winner to a duel after they are all tired out from competing.”
‘Yeah… I see why he doesn’t get along with the nobles…’ “What do the older kids do during this first week?”
“Oh, we have the same rules, some of the people down there fighting are older kids like me, but we have a few extra rules. We aren’t allowed to challenge kids younger than us, and if we lose to a kid in a younger age group we have to give up all of our marks. Furthermore, we are allowed to challenge teachers, if we win we get a golden seal that basically just says your awesome. Oh, mostly though the older kids will be fighting in the arenas, not out in the open like this, and guild leaders receive marks based on prior guild rankings from previous years as well, making it easier. For instance, I started with all thousand marks, so I didn’t have to do anything. Because I’m awesome.”
“So… You have to reform your guild every year?”
“Yeah, well technically. To encourage more guilds it becomes easier to form them for the older age groups.”
I groaned. “That’s such a pain…”
“I know right?”
“You two are related, that’s for sure…” Gild interjected.
“Of course we are. Can't you see the resemblance? Only someone related to someone as handsome as me could be as beautiful as someone like her.”
I kept walking without losing a step, slowly lifting a hand to my cheek. ‘Wait, I’m not blushing? I’m not even embarrassed. Have I become immune to his teasing? Hm… So maybe he’s not off his game, but it’s me?’
Gild rolled his eyes. “Oh right, sorry, I forgot you were so perfect that even your relatives benefitted. I’m sure she’s just the best… At everything… In every way.”
He lifted a finger. “It’s actually quite the conundrum. You see, we are both the best, very peculiar.”
“Crazy how that works…”
I felt myself start to chuckle, making Gild grow a smile on his face too, replacing the dull annoyed face he was making just seconds ago. It was a nice moment… Until my brother shot me a glance that left me with an uneasy feeling…
He suddenly let out an overdramatic sigh. “That said… There are some things she has over me for sure. How for some reason she doesn’t have a body odor no matter how much she sweats, or how she doesn’t have to deal with hair anywhere but her head. Oh, and get this her voice is so cute that she actually calms the horses just by talking, and she’s so sweet she even feeds her horse treats like hony-covered bananas.”
I didn’t bother checking… Without a doubt… I was as red as a tomato… Gild looked back at me with an awkward expression, telling me he didn’t know how he was supposed to react either. All I could do was cover my face till he looked away. ‘How does he even know that stuff…’
“I get that you’re observant… But it seems like that’s a bit much… And… Should you really even be saying stuff like that?”
‘See… Gild gets it… Well… Either that or he just feels bad for me after seeing me react to it…’
Airsidh shrugged. “What the hair thing? That’s not from me. She still takes baths with our mom and one time she brought it up while she was talking about how–”
“Agh!!!!” I groaned, jumping onto his back and covering his mouth. “Shut up already! No one needs to know about any of that!” Without losing a beat He hiked me up and placed his hands under my legs, carrying my piggyback and making me take my hands away, grabbing onto his shoulders for balance. ‘MOM! What have you done? Why would you give him ammunition?’
“You don’t even know what I was going to say?” I couldn’t see his face… But I just knew it had a smirk on it as if this was his goal from the beginning… I sighed, falling limp on his back and giving in.
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you… Is it that fun for you to tease me? How far were you going to go if that didn’t get me embarrassed huh?”
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll find out eventually. Although, you still don’t know what I was going to say.”
I groaned again. “If it’s about me bathing, or my body… Or just me in general, then I’m probably better off not knowing what you were going to say… AND SO IS GILD!” I shouted chopping him on the head, only hurting my hand from his thick skull. “I can’t believe he would say stuff like that in front of someone else…”
As I met Gild's eyes he gave me a pitying look and I quickly glanced away.
“You… Really overdid it this time…”
“Oh, so there is a line after all is there?”
“OF COURSE THERE IS!” I channeled manna into my fist, stopping just short of seriously hitting him, tensing my arm, and letting out another groan before I let all the tension fade away. “You’re playing a dangerous game…” I grumbled.
“And you’re finally standing up for yourself, I’m so proud.”
I sighed. ‘I don’t want to actually hit him… I don’t want to ever hit someone that’s family, not for real… So… “If you don’t apologize I’m pulling on your ear…”
“You know I could just do the same thing back right?”
“How are you more of a child than Lu…”
“My naturally high charisma keeps me young.”
‘Right…’ I paused for a moment, closing my eyes to clear my head. ‘Oh, I know.’ “Gild, slap him, I know you want to.”
Airsih smiled as he looked back at me. “Right, like–”
A loud slap resonated through the air and they both stopped moving, dead silence only being broken by a soft gust of wind. ‘I can’t believe that actually worked…’
After another brief moment, he simply continued walking… As if nothing had even happened… And it was all just in my imagination…
“why are you still carrying me… Put me down!”
“What, you didn’t want to be up there? Why else would you jump onto my back like that?”
Gild sighed. “Perfect reasoning as ever my lord…”
“Let me down…” I whined again.
“Nope.”
“Why noooooot.”
“Don’t feel like it.”
I let out a low growl, giving up as I rested my head on my arm, leaning over his shoulder. “Why are you like this…” ‘He still didn’t apologize… Although, seeing him get slapped like that… Yeah, I’m over it.’
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