After defeating Kirsch and the other magic knight squads, Grim, Luck and Finral returned back to the black bulls base. And just like that time passed swiftly.
"PARTY TIME PEOPLE!!"
Waking up to the sound of Yami's loud voice echoing throughout the entire base, Grim almost fell off his bed as he woke up with a start.
'Tch, fuckin loud mouth.'
---
Joining the others downstairs, Grim saw that everyone was in a very festive mood. Ignoring Yami's current outfit and his overly positive mood that was quite off putting, everyone else seemed to be the same as they were the day before.
"GRIM!!" Seeing the black haired boy walk into the room, everyone's heads turned to look at him.
"What?"
Hearing Luck's voice call out to him, Grim yawned lightly and joined the others.
"You excited for your first festival?" Vanessa asked.
"My first festival? You do know that I've been to the festival before right?"
"Yeah, but not as a magic knight."
Shrugging his shoulders Grim brushed her off. It wasn't that he wasn't excited about the festival, but as someone who had seen it during his days working in the restaurant he didn't really see the mass appeal. Besides finding out which squad was the best the whole thing was kind of a waste of time in his opinion. Besides, he could just read about the winner in the paper.
Chatting with the members of his squad for a while, Finral finally opened up a portal to the festival location.
"Lets go!!" Yami exclaimed charging ahead.
---
"WHHOAAA!!!" Due to it being his first festival and not knowing what to expect, the moment the squad arrived at the festival Asta's eyes were filled with stars as he gazed at the surroundings.
"AWESOME!!"
Looking around the area, Grim couldn't help but sigh. Instead of wasting his time at a festival like this he'd prefer to do some magic knight missions.
"Alright you party animals!" Yami yelled drawing their attention. "The rank announcement starts at 8, so go wild until then!!"
"YES SIR!!" Everyone saluted before running off.
Just as Grim was about to leave by himself, he found himself being pulled by Asta towards another direction.
"What are you doing?" He asked as Asta dragged him towards the distance.
"I want you to meet someone." Asta grinned not explaining what he meant.
Now normally Grim would push him off and get an explanation out of him, but seeing the excited look in his eyes caused Grim to just sigh and go with the flow.
"There they are!!" Asta shouted at the sight of Finral and 2 strangers that Grim didn't know.
"They're here!" Noelle smiled at the two strangers.
'When did she get here?'
Ignoring Noelle's sudden appearance, Grim took a closer look at the two strangers that Asta had dragged him towards. The two strangers were male and female around the same age as Asta, they both had black hair and seemed like your average commoner. If there was anything about them that stood out it'd have to be the fact that the guy was missing a leg and was using crutches. The girl on the other hand looked fine physically.
"Kahono! Kiato!" Asta yelled once they saw him.
"Heya." The guy said while the girl just waved and smiled.
"So this is what a festival on land looks like. Thanks for inviting us Asta." The guy smiled while the girl nodded furiously.
"Haha yeah." Asta grinned and scratched the back of his head.
"Lalala." A melodious voice rung out as the group of teenagers looked to the side and saw a woman singing while playing a lute and ridding a magic carpet.
Looking at the singing woman, Grim noticed that the smile on Kahono's face wavered slightly.
'Is she jealous?'
"Oh yeah!" Asta suddenly exclaimed remembering that Grim was here with them.
"This is the guy I was talking about last time we fought." Asta said introducing Grim to Kiato.
Looking at Grim up and down, the smile on Kiato's face grew as he held his hand out. "Nice to meetcha."
"Sure." Grim nodded and shook his hand not understanding why Asta brought him here.
"Did you bring the leg?" Asta asked Kiato.
"Yep." He nodded picking up a jar with a severed leg in it.
'Okay what the fuck!'
Seeing the severed leg in the jar caused Asta to nod as he said "alright then." Before opening up a little capsule with some red liquid in it.
'Isn't that the healing blood that I gave him from the lesbo queen? I completely forgot to ask for it back.'
Popping the cork out of the capsule, red vein like blood crawled out from the capsule before gathering around Kiato's leg and Kahono's throat.
[Blood Healing Magic: Curse Breaking Blood Cocoon]
"M-My leg!! Its back!! Its really back! I can dance again!!"
'...Gay.'
While Grim was silently judging Kiato who was dancing with joy, Kahono suddenly burst into tears. hugged Noelle and starting thanking Noelle profusely.
"Thank you!! Thank you so much!!" She cried.
Then to make the situation even more awkward, Kiato did they exact same thing but to Asta.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!"
Caught off guard by the hug, it took a minute for Asta to respond.
"Actually the one you should be thanking is Grim."
'Eh?'
"Without him I wouldn't have even been able to get this bottle. Now that I think about it, he also saved my magic knight career..."
'Did... Did he just realize that now...'
"Hahaha, wow, from a certain point of view Grim saved all of our dreams." Asta laughed not realizing that Grim was looking at him with conflicted eyes.
On one hand he understood that Asta used the Bitch Queen's blood to heal his friends and he couldn't fault him for that, on the other hand he used GRIM'S Witch Queen blood on people that Grim couldn't give two shits about. He didn't know these people, their futures didn't impact him nor would they benefit him. Hell, they could both still be crippled and he wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
"Um Grim?" Asta called. "You okay?"
"...Still debating."