"Still, I'm curious how in the world did Sam managed to acquire fairy dust?" Lotus muttered with a frown, "Fairy dust changes after a certain period of time. If you use it now, you'd be seen as anonymous fairies. Well, that shouldn't be a problem since you are supposed to be acting like it."
"You know about the fairies?" Yuu raised a brow in surprise.
She nodded, "I had a client who is a fairy once. However, the situation was different back then, otherwise he would not have trusted me at all."
"The situation?" Grim looked up curiously from his can.
"That fairy was caught in a fight between a water fairy and a wind fairy. During that time, their queen was struggling to mediate between the two sides and it kicked up a storm. The fairy was caught in the storm and lost their fairy dust." She explained, "Fairy dust is as important as our smartphones are to us. Every day tasks requires them to use fairy dust to do so aside from Magic as the other source. All that fairy wanted was a healing balm for his injury, so I made one for him out of plants. In turn, he told me about the Fairy dust in place of Thaumarks. It was quite an unusual experience."
"For that to have happened..." Jamil grumbled, "It looks like your skills with alchemy have always been rather good as your luck, then..."
"I don't know about alchemy part, but..." she thought carefully to herself, "It was just ointment I made from a few plants. So it should be considered regular medicine."
Thinking about the balm reminded her of an old memory in the past. It was something that little Mo taught her back when she was still a child. A plant that helped ease the pain and the scent of the other herbs combined. That balm helped ease the pain of a broken limb but it could also get addictive because it was so potent. That's why she didn't tell Maisey the recipe no matter how much he begged. Instead, she only shared the recipe with the palace's healer and her parents. Since then, she had discovered a safer recipe, but it is still kept under wraps by them.
"Fairy dust should be guarded by some of the strongest fairies in the kingdom." Lotus added as she thought carefully before she sighed, "Well, I'd like to be out of their crossfire when this comes to light."
Seeing Lotus having opened a book that she pulled out from her coat, they were shocked as she paid them no mind after having talked so much. Leona huffed, "Same. All we need to do and prepare a different route away from the subtropical area. Done."
Yuu nodded, "Then, I'll go with Ruggie while we escape from the gala."
Hearing them plan out how Leona and the Scarabia boys would be executing their plans bore her out of her mind as she had thought that the group would have a more interesting plan for her to challenge against, but it was anything but interesting.
.....
"Mother and the other craft fairies won't change their minds, then." Peony sighed in disappointment upon hearing this.
"That's right." Oberon shook his head sadly, "If it was in the past, I would've helped your mother protect this gem, but it is clear that your school needs this stone for temperature purposes. This is difficult."
"Between the politcal relations with the school or mother, you mean." Peony nodded her head too with deep thoughts, "This year too, mother deserves a great fairy gala celebration after having to do so much work this year. I wasn't even at home to help her either, so I can assume that her workload have increased greatly. It wouldn't feel right to tell her what not to do and what she could do after working so hard..."
"Do you still have the stone from when you were a child, Peony?"
Peony nodded, "I do. I plan to gift it to mother this year with your letter too. I've finally finished refining all of our mana into the spiritual stone and have smoothed it. It's currently sitting in the safe of one of the dorms I made a deal with. It's what mother has always wanted for the past six years. I've also done what you told me and embedded a protective charm into the stone."
"Let's use that to switch with the magic stone." He suggested.
"I thought the same." Peony sighed in relief, "I've been waiting for those words. However, what will you do, Father? That letter took you two weeks' worth of breaks to come up with the contents. The fairy gala is just around the corner too."
"I'll come up with something," Her father waved lightly with a huff hiding his embarrassment, "After all, if I was so incapable, how could I have got the attention of your mother?"
"Even though you said that..." Peony furrowed her brow upon hearing her father's shamelessness and pouted in disbelief, "You never did mention how you and mother met. Not to mention, every time I asked mother, she would just get tongue-tied while blushing, avoid eye contact while lying, and even change the topic with sweat. Hardly, any of the fairies lived long enough to remember both of your days before your union to recount it to me too. The most they could recount has ways been how grandeur the wedding was and how absolutely stunning mother was in the wedding dress."
Not to mention, Puck recounted a period of time when both of them ended up being unfaithful to one another, but it seemed to have been because her father's jealousy helped push him to use the love potion creating a chaotic mess and the one who provided that potion was none other than Puck himself! Luckily, she was not there when they were having the fight as she heard the fight was so horrible that it had endangered the fairies on many occasions!
"That's it!" Her father turned to her as something finally dawned on him and he petted Peony on the head as he hurriedly spoke with plans running through his mind once again, "You've done well, my dear daughter! Your father is a bit busy right now, so I'll send you a message through Chili when I have the time! Pyro! Pyro, where are you?!"
.....
Thinking back, the only times the old man ever called her daughter was when he was forced to praise her as such, she helping him create time to spend with her mom, or having helped him come up with an idea to a dilemma concerning mom. Not to mention, he kicked her out shortly after saying that! Was that really still the "Great and benevolent" King of the fairies that her beloved mom love this dearly? Then again, who told her that a king needs to act as great a man as he is a ruler?
"Stupid old man..." Lotus grumbled quietly as she flipped the pages of her book.
Seeing the annoyed look on her face, Yuu wondered what Lotus could be thinking about as he overheard her whisper and turned his head back to the map before noticing Ren having also done the same and the two guys shrugged their shoulders before turning back to the scene where Kalim was lecturing a sleepy lion once again.
When she was done, she yawned as she grumbled in dismay having realized that her period of recuperation was one of great boredom once again. After spending so much, she has been reading, studying, reading and researching to the point that she has finally gotten tired of so much work for the day.
"So tired..." She sighed after having read through two books and sticking the fifteenth needle into Grim.
"Why are you the one saying that?!" Grim cried, "Get these things off of me!!! Yuu!!! S-Save me!"
"Hold still while I try to see if I can neutralize some of the blot of yours." Lotus warned him, "I don't wanna keep you immobilized with a needle while I'm working on this."
"Does it really matter?!" Grim cried out teary eyed, "I'm already stuck here!!!"
Yuu shook his head with a small sigh, "This is what you get for trying to get me to control him, Grim. Just hold out for a bit longer, okay?"
"Nghaaa...." Grim cried tearfully while not daring to move an inch out of fear.
Seeing the cat pinned to the table like some lab rat but without the large pins, Vil sighed in dismay as he grumbled, "You'd think they take away his nurse's student assistant position for this..."
For the past week, he has been looking for information alongside Rook while they had gone shopping for materials to rebuild their dorm in the town. However, no matter who he sent, no one was able to gather information about her. If it was a fairy, then maybe he'll get an answer. However, if he wanted to act, he needs to act fast while the fairy gala is still ongoing!
When Lotus and Ren returned from the Ramshackle dorm, Lilia called out to them with a bright smile, "Welcome back, you two! How were the plans?"