"Now now, children, stand up. Mr. Schleider, were you going to mention your father to Mr. Brownwitch?"
"Y…yes sir!"
"Ah! Mr. Schleider. I must make a request. Please abstain from mentioning your father to anyone unless you truly trust them with your life."
I didn't really understand what that meant but I didn't struggle with details.
"I understand, sir."
"I believe Miss Nicola was inviting you to see the river of stars. I, as master, permit you" he said after nodding at me.
He left after this. Then Nicola looked at me inquiringly.
"Um…well…I'm not allowed to say anything" I said.
"I know that!" she snapped at me, "I mean, how did the master get to know what we were talking about?"
Oh my god! This didn't dawn on me. How did the master know this? Maybe he had excellent hearing abilities just like his vision? Either way, it didn't surprise me much seeing as how he was the strongest human alive. So I didn't dwell upon the idea and simply decided to trust his words.
"Well, it's better not to dwell on that. Let's go see that river."
She agreed. I didn't exactly know which way the entrance or the back of the stadium was. Nicola did so I followed her without admitting it. We went out of the entrance and then circled around the stadium for several minutes. We were slowly walking so it took a long time.
"You do realize this is precious time that we can use to study for the fourth trial," I said.
"Oh, I already finished and I assumed you did too"
That was quite a confident statement. Although I was confident that I'll a good rank, I wanted to check the books again in case I missed something.
"Yeah, I did."
She grinned. I didn't know she was this irritable when you got to know her. While we were going, we heard the other people mention something about a demon duo.
"Do you know what they are talking about?"
"What do you mean?"
"They are talking about some demon duo?"
She shook her head as if she was disappointed. But what did she have to be disappointed about?
"You really can't think of anything?"
"No, not really"
She sighed heavily.
"Maybe I should have just left you to study. Are you this dumb? They are obviously talking about us. Both of us got the title "The Kryks Demons". So now everyone calls us the demon duo."
"Oh! I didn't think of that!"
"Yes, I figured that out" she mocked me.
I kept quiet the rest of the way. I felt so stupid. Maybe I should have stayed back to study. We arrived at the other side of the stadium. Then, beyond the surface of the moon, I saw a river of stars. I was extremely beautiful. I was speechless. The auras of the countless stars were interconnected which made it look like a multi-colored river that kept flowing limitlessly. I couldn't stop looking at it. It was literally eye-catching. As we watched, a lot of time passed by. Unknowingly, the time for the final trial arrived.
"I hope you don't end up as a C rank and blame me," she said.
"Oh, there is no way I'll end up with a C rank. I'm gonna do so well that they'll be forced to upgrade me to an A rank"
She nodded doubtfully.
"Well, we'll see."
Then we started running towards the entrance on the other side of the gigantic stadium.
and the tournament continued.....