In the central palace, the tournament was still going on and after six rounds, only three contestants from aran's team were remaining. Everyone else had already lost.
On the night after their sixth fight, the team was hanging out and having fun drinking. But Rollo was still furious about aran leaving to look around the city after losing the selection round,
" I don't think it was right to bring him here. He not only lost the selection round but is behaving as if he is on a vacation. Doesn't any of you have anything to say ?" Rollo started to shout as usual.
" Stop it rollo. Why do you always act like that? Didn't you lose the selection round the first time you participated?" Alexia asked.
Rollo knew that she will bring up this subject during the conversation and that was why he never said anything when aran was there. He didn't want others to find out about that.
" Come on guys. This is not the time to argue about that. Last time we got 6th place. But this year we have at least come in the top three. This is the second last tournament we will be participating in. Whatever we want to achieve, this is our chance " Captain said.
Since this was their fourth year in the academy and they weren't allowed to remain more than five years in the academy, They were about to leave in two years. Winning first place in the swordsmanship tournament before leaving the academy was one of their biggest goals and they had to achieve it before they leave.
Although Rollo wasn't liking the treatment aran was getting in the club, just because he was Fenris's brother, he also wanted to win the tournament at least once. So he decided to listen to the captain.
As they were talking, Rollo suddenly got up and went to the private training room which was allotted to him after continuously winning five rounds. After him, the other two also went to their training room to prepare for the next fight.
******
When aran saw the bandits he was looking for coming back to their rooms, he took out a scroll from his ring and gave it to arrax who was sitting beside him and signalled both arrax and Elissa to move.
As they heard his signal, Arrax began to run south, towards where the tower with the pure primordial stone was, and Elissa began to run towards the base through the safe route aran had shown her.
Aran and Elissa ran towards the base and closed the distance between them and the base. When they got close and Elissa was about to step into the territory of the defensive formation, Aran told her to stop. After stopping, Since she didn't know about the defensive formation, she started to wonder what happened and asked
" What's wrong? Is there a problem ?"
" Yes, We will have to wait here for a moment!" Aran replied seriously.
" But why?"
" For the right time!"
" For the right time? Are you serious? "
" Shhhh, Stay still and don't move! "
As aran said that, Elissa remained silent without asking anything. Since it was aran's plan, she believed he knows what he was doing.
The defensive formation around the cult base was one of the strongest formations in the world. If someone enters it without the entering seal, then the formation would have burnt him to death. Aran knew the only way to enter the base, was by breaking the formation by destroying one of the towers.
Since aran was already planning on getting the stone, it wasn't a big issue for him.
Although the tower was very strong and one need to be at least in the peak master stage to destroy it, with arrax it wasn't a big problem. But still, Since arrax wasn't at his full power, he had to go close to the tower and make a short-ranged lightning blast with his full power to break the formation.
Aran had already planned it and that was why he had sent arrax and was waiting for arrax to break the formation so that they can safely enter the cult base.
As Arrax ran towards the tower, he slowly changed his form into a human to make sure that no one recognizes him being a dragon. After the transformation, he looked a little like aran with Elissa's tan skin. This was an idea he had come up with on his own.
With his lightning speed, Arrax reached the tower in less than two minutes. As he got there, he focused his lightning power in his hands to create the strongest lightning blast possible for him at his stage. Without wasting any time, he used the lightning blast on the tower with full power.
As the lightning blast touched the tower, it created an extremely loud noise shaking the whole town and the tower crumbled down breaking the formation. As the cult members heard that, they left everything they were doing in the middle and ran towards the tower.
Without wasting any time, arrax used his dragon vision and found the stone under the crumbled tower. He walked towards there and moved the bricks and found the stone.
As arrax was about to use his lightning speed again to leave from there, suddenly many attacks flew towards him and as he continuously dodged every one of the attacks, the number of attacks increased and before he know it, he was surrounded by more than twenty advanced stage cultivators and two master stage cultivators.
As Arrax looked at them, he realised that there were no openings for him to run away without transforming. Since he can't risk his identity, he had no other choice but to fight them until the signal comes.
***
When Aran, who was waiting for Arrax to break the formation heard that explosion he instantly told Elissa to move.
" What was that just now? " Elissa asked with a little panic.
"Doesn't matter, just move, we don't have time to think about that! " Aran said and started to run towards the house where the strongest bandit out of fourteen of them was staying.
When aran ran without answering, she also followed him. Aran continued to run without wasting a moment and as he got close to the house, he charged into the house of that bandit.
As the bandit saw someone, wearing black charge into his house with a sword, he got panicked and tried to attack that person but aran easily dodged it since he was expecting that. Before the bandit could make his next move, someone else entered his house following the first person and attacked him.
As Elissa got into the bandit's house, she immediately used a sword technique and swung her sword. Since the attack was too fast the bandit couldn't block them. After attacking the bandit and severely injuring him, as she was about to finish him off by cutting his head, another sword defended the bandit, blocking her sword swing.
It was Aran! He was using his sword to defend the bandit from Elissa killing him. As she saw that and was about to ask aran what he was doing, aran said
" You don't have to kill him, "
" What? Why not? Haven't you read the crimes he has committed? And also the mission was about catching them dead or alive. So we don't have to care about killing him! " Elissa said Because she was already furious and wanted to kill as many bandits as she can but aran denied it.
" Yes. I have read the mission. But that doesn't mean we have to kill him! " Aran said and swung his sword cutting off the bandit's hand which had his storage ring. He used his living storage ring to store the half-dead bandit in his ring.
After that aran reached for the bandit's hand on the floor and took off the ring from it and gave it to Elissa.
" We can talk about this later, but please don't kill them. You have trusted me till here, so trust me with this and only then, we have the sword techniques deal that you told me about! " Aran said.
Hearing that Elissa couldn't understand what aran wanted and she was having second thoughts about that. She wanted to kill the bandits so badly, but she also wanted the deal. After thinking for a moment, without any other choice, she decided to accept aran's deal for the sake of her goal of becoming the greatest swordfighter.
" Some bandits might be running towards the explosion. I will take care of them, you go for the ones who are still in their rooms. Collect their rings and take them to your living ring alive! "
As aran said that, he started to run as he activativated his vision. Seeing aran run, Elissa also ran towards the bandit's houses which aran had already shown her before attacking.
Out of all the thirteen remaining bandits, four of them were moving towards the explosion and the others were still in their rooms.
Aran immediately activated the rapid blood technique to increase his speed and ran after them who were moving towards the explosion.
Since the cult base had hundreds of houses, it was hard for the bandits to move faster but with the vision, aran knew exactly how to catch up to them.
As aran used his full speed, he instantly caught up to one of the bandits. As he ran towards him with the same speed, he used a low-ranked sword technique to make some cuts on his body before the enemy could even react to it. He also managed to cut off his hands before he could fight back.
After storing the bandit in his ring and collecting his storage ring, aran continued to run towards the others.
Since he can't store a storage ring inside another ring, he had to keep them in his pockets. The living storage rings are specially created to store living beings. So aran knew that the people won't die inside the storage ring. But it will take a lot of mana to get out of the storage ring on their own.
Since the bandits were heavily injured and the mana flow was weaker inside a ring, they had to wait for days before they could completely heal their wounds without any pills and then they have to summon enough mana to break out of the ring. So the bandits had no way to easily escape.
As aran continued to go after others and took down the last three bandits, he immediately moved towards the designated spot in the base, where they had decided to meet after the mission was done.
When aran got there, Elissa was already waiting there. As he saw her, her black clothes had turned red drenched in blood. She had already taken down the 9 of them in that time.
When aran saw her, he asked
" Are they alive ?"
" Yes, they are! Now lead the way " she said.
Since they had completed their mission, now they had to focus on leaving that place immediately. Although Elissa was still furious about not being able to kill them she was trying to accept it for the greater good.
" Yeah, follow me, " Aran said and started to move.
As Elissa was following aran, many memories flew into her head like a river. She once again remembers the last time she had to face the bandits and she remembered her comrades who died for her. After all the time she had planned on revenge, now she was just leaving everything for something she wanted.
Although Elissa tried to give hundreds of reasons and justify what she was doing, deep down she was still furious and couldn't accept what she was doing. Before she knows it, her anger just explodes like a volcano.
As Elissa was running she uses a sword technique to make a mana blast, to get the attention of the bandits. When the bandits heard that and looked in the direction where the sound came from, they saw someone running away from the cult base.
" Here! the enemy is here !" A cult member who saw her began to shout.
As Aran heard that blast and the enemy shouting, he had already gotten out of the base. Thinking that he had finally got out and the enemies can't reach him, he turned around to see how far Elissa was. But as he turned around he was shocked! Because instead of following Aran, Elissa was standing there with her sword, facing the cult base.
" What are you doing? Run! We don't have time !" Aran shouted but Elissa just ignore it. Before he could think about what was happening and what to do about her, he saw a fireblast flying towards him.