"Hi Rainer, did you wait a long time?" Celine asked with a smile as she saw Rainer sitting on a luxurious sofa in the main hall.
"Don't worry about it, where's Jehako? There's something I need to talk with him." He asked.
"He said something about training with the sword on his own, we even had a little practice fight..."
She replied without showing the slightest hint of doubt.
Celine's indifference was something that Rainer was used to but he couldn't help but think about the fighting scars he found in one of the western corridors, he felt that Celine was hiding something from him.
"So who won the fight?" He asked.
"It was a draw, Jehako is very good at the swordsmanship, you should learn more techniques from him".
"..."
An uncomfortable silence flooded the room,so Celine tried to divert the theme to another point.
"What do you think of your new surroundings? I see that you have made great progress, congratulations." Her rigid expression changed to a smile as if she wanted to forget the previous theme.
"It's true! How the hell did I end up there? You gave me that thing!"Outraged, Rainer threw his suspicions elsewhere and began to complain about what had happened.
...
"It's for your sake, you have a great duty to face and you need to be strong enough to confront any enemy and overcome any obstacle that may appear, since the moment you took this magical treasure as yours, your and many people's future depends on it".
With a serious glance, Celine silenced Rainer, she was right, if it was not for the magical treasure, he would probably continue to living in the Lorren clan without any backing for him, Lerna would always be a small corrosive snake and Yren would have taken Alisha....
Maybe Liann would have helped him but she would never have told him the truth about his parents if she had realized how weak he was.
"It wasn't my intention...it's just that this is hard... not even a month has passed and I almost died in countless situations...luck has been my great ally..." Rainer answered with a head down.
"You're wrong! Luck had nothing to do with it!" Celine approached Rainer and held his head with both hands.
The young woman's hands were cold and her long, thin fingers looked like a fragile porcelain.
While she kept eye contact with Rainer, she denied Rainer's claim.
"All of this was possible due to your strength, you are no longer that weak young man who needed the protection of others around him, you have the power of this magical treasure! In the future you will be unbeatable!"Celine's words were like a sweet poison to any youth like Rainer, who would not like to be praised by a beautiful young woman?
Of course, they would be poison to an inexperienced young man at Rainer's age, but with two lives on his back, the young man knew that being guided by her words would do him more harm than good.
"What the heck is wrong with her?" Rainer thought as he moved Celine's hands away from his face.
Both distanced themselves after the "motivational" talk and Rainer asked about something he always had doubts about.
"How do I train the time power? I've been in contact with it several times but I still don't know where to start." Rainer shared his doubts with Celine who was supposed to know more than anyone else about the mysterious force called time.
"Time is not something to play with, its secrets are unknown even to me after so long, I can only tell you that your moment will come when you less expect it."
His hopes quickly diminished with Celine's response, he had the thought of quickly learning about the power of time and returning with his loved ones but it seemed that not everything was so easy on the surface.
"I'd better leave, if I spend too much time here I won't have enough energy to recover myself..." Rainer said on his way out.
"Be careful out there and focus on getting stronger." She said before Rainer left the room.
...
Celine advanced through the palace until she reached a dead-end corridor, as her steps echoed down the corridor, underground stairs appeared under her feet.
On her right there was the dungeon where Jehako was confined, but she turned without any doubt to the left and entered into a dark room illuminated only by floating lights.
The lights fluttered through the room as if they were alive but none of them came close to the center of the room.
In the center of the room there was a small altar surrounded by candles, she approached and knelt in front of it before speaking.
"Everything goes according to plan, there was only a little incident..." She said to the void before the altar shone softly and a deep voice echoed through the dark room.
...