Chapter Thirty-five
In the middle of the night a week later :
Isaea took sat down on the foot of Suzuka's bed, setting down a few notebooks she had carried inside the room just next to her.
"I don't know where Master is, but hopefully she left some of her wisdom in these so that I may be able to alleviate some of the more surface-level conditions."
On the other side of the room, Gydion teetered back and forth in a chair at his desk whilst reading some elementary-level magic handbook. Isaea looked at the boy, beckoning him over with a snap of the fingers.
Gydion huffed to himself before leaning his head over to his left side, looking at Isaea with a tinge of annoyance.
"What is it? Can't you see I'm trying to study here?"
Isaea rolled her eyes at his rude remark and spoke to him in a rather unusually candid tone.
"Can't you attend to your charge a bit better? I don't mind caring for her, but this is clearly your job. With the amount of time, I'm spending making sure she's not uncomfortable I could have already found something in the Master's documents."
Gydion stopped teetering on the chair, now fully giving Isaea his attention.
"Listen. While that may be true that I am her knight, that doesn't mean that I am obliged to take care of her health when better options than I already exist. All I need to do is focus on making sure no bad actors come in and try something, which as it happens, is exactly what I am doing. If anyone enters the study that I don't know my Liquid metal will alert me."
Gydion then pointed down to the chair legs that he had been teetering on. Thin lines of his liquid iron trailed down the legs and in between the grains of the wooden floor.
"Well well. Looks like the hounds' progeny has some value after all." Isaea scoffed.
His words were not without merit and so she could do nothing but accede to them. Of course, had she been present when the punishment was bestowed, she'd know that the extent of his duty does not measure between conveniences.
Seeing that Isaea did not press further, Gydion smirked to himself whilst resuming his idle study.
Isaea got up from the foot of the bed and sat closer, at Suzuka's side. She picked up one of the notepads and began to scan through the pages quietly.
Night turned into day as she continued to study the words of her Master without much success in finding what she was looking for.
"There is no way that Master does not have some text detailing the intricacies of organics. I need to keep looking."
By this time though, she had accumulated a couple of four to five-foot piles of books and journals ranging from between fifty-five thousand words to two-hundred thousand.
~... I can feel my mind slowly going fuzzy from reading through so much in such a short time I should probably take a short break. It is morning after all.~
With that thought, Isaea closed the book in her lap and set it atop one of the piles. She then gave a glancing look at the still sleeping Suzuka before getting up and exiting the room.
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I can feel a presence next to me on the bed even when I sleep these days. Even now I feel the cool radiating from them. If I had to place the feeling it'd be like sitting next to a block of dry ice. So I'd say not that bad at all considering. My guess is it's either Gydion or Isaea. The former begrudgingly fulfilled his duty whilst the latter tirelessly spent her hours searching for ways to make me feel just a tad better…
Makes me smile.
Well, I guess I should try something else besides resting since nothing good seems to be coming from it and Grandma is still away.
I opened my eyes and sat up. The first thing to notice was that my hair was… well it was all over the bed.
Hah, guess it's just the price of aesthetics -w-
I scooped up my hair behind me and began the slow process of getting it into two ponytails. All the while I walked over to my wardrobe and picked out my usual attire. Gydion looked over and watched me for a bit but turned away as I started to disrobe to change.
"You headin' out Suzuka? I thought you were feeling unwell?"
"Yeah. The pain's honestly getting worse by me just sitting there so I thought that maybe I should expend some of this pent-up energy."
"Ha. SO, does that mean you're gonna meet up with old man Cain?"
I visibly flinched as he mentioned Cain's name. It's been a week so and I'm not feeling well so he'll go easy on me, right?
"Ahahaha! What are you talking about Gydion? Of course, I'd meet up with the old man! He's my martial teacher! Haha…!"
Gydions left eyebrow rose as he once again turned to look at me.
"Oh yeah? I thought you bounced out of your last training session with him."
"..."
"You know he's gonna chew you out, right?"
"...So?"
Gydion moved like lightning past me to the door, leaning in the entrance with a stupid grin on his face.
"Well, I guess I'll have myself a good show, after all it's not often that someone spurns the old man."
I mean I guess that's true, but what the hell are you expecting to happen! Huh?!?
"Y-Yeah! I guess we'll see ha ha ha…"
After that I finished getting myself together, taking a moment to look into one of the three standing mirrors that were next to my closet. Naturally, I had the mini-me outfit that Tryamon made everyone that worked with her in the tower wear, but I also had a leather belt with pouches and metal links for me to attach things to. I figured it'd be good to get in the habit of carrying around things that could help me in a situation where I wasn't surrounded by people who'll take care of me.
My hand wandered down to the side of the belt where an empty slot for a sword sheath hung.
"I need to ask about where I can go to get a sword made for me. Hey Gydion. Do you know where I could get a sword made?"
"Erm… Yeah, I know a few people who could, but all of them aren't that great, aside from my father of course."
I pivoted on my heel in both directions one after the other just to make sure nothing was off.
"Your dad? I didn't know he made weapons. Maybe you could introduce me to him? So that maybe, y'know, he could make my weapons."
Boots! Better not go meet Cain barefooted…
I looked down at the bottom of my closet, sifting through fifteen sets of boots and heels for the many and varied outfits that Isaea and Kannaya had ready for me to wear.
"Nothing…"
Not a single one of these is useful! You crazy fashion freaks could have at least gotten me something actually useful! I guess roman sandals it is then ;w;
*Tap*
*Tap*
*Tap*
*Tap*
*Tap*
*Tap*
"What the hell is takin' you so long? Just put something on so I can watch you get beat down."
"What's your problem? You don't need to be so mean to me you know."
That being said I do know why he's being like this. After all it's because of Cain that he ended up with this particular punishment, but even so. I guess he forgets that he was the one in the wrong back then.
"Tch… Whatever. I'll be waiting outside so just hurry up and finish."
Gydion turned his back to me and walked out a moment afterward, scratching the back of his stupid head. Guess he felt bad a bit after I gave him some reproach. Honestly, he is lucky that I didn't really go at him for how mean he just was!
Anyways.
I strapped up my sandals and left out of the room.
Together Gydion and I decided that it'd be best if I exhausted as much energy as I could so we raced all the way down the tower to Cain's special training room. I completely smoked him, by the way. I'm just too heckin' fast! But yeah!, What makes the room so special is that it is like a pocket dimension that you can do the wildest things in! Well mostly because it is a massive bleached space with nothing in the way of terrain unless he wishes it to be so.
I led in entering, slowly pushing the door open so that there was a crack just large enough for me to peep inside to see if Cain was even here at all.
"Let's see how screwed I am…" I said unconsciously which caused Gydion to cackled like a jerk.
Before I could even realize what happened or analyze the inside of the room Cain shouted his eardrum destroying shout.
"IS THAT A RAT I HEAR?!"
The sheer volume caused the hairs on my arms to stand on end on top of both of us jumping at least like a whole meter into the air. I turned around and slapped Gydion in the shoulder with the back of my hand before grabbing him and throwing him through the door.
I am not going to take the brunt for his mess up. Besides this is proper karma for him being a rude ass. After I did that I plugged my ears with my fingers as I watched Cain run over and ultra combo Gydion from in front of the door into what seemed to be the center of the arena.
"Good thing I can't hear the screams or else I might actually feel ba-"
Before I could finish my sentence a hand burst through the door, grabbing me by the waist to pull me in. The thing was that Cain had actually blocked the door itself with his massive size.
I trembled with an uneasy smile on my face as he slowly pulled me through the door, holding me a whole five feet off the ground.
"H-Hey Master Cain! I was just coming by to train! I-I'm so glad you're here!"
"Hoh…? Is that so? Then you won't mind going through an extremely enhanced version of the training regime I've constructed for little Gydion would you."
And it was at this moment, that I knew, I fucked up.
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