I woke to the sight of a light consumed me, the telltale sign of the trial ending. I sighed as I watched the world turn into nothing.
My thoughts had turned towards my rewards. At first I had not thought much of them, seeing as I hadn't done much and even then I felt as if I was never going to get them. THe reason being that I had felt my death closely approaching me upon my final moments. I had expected to never wake.
The flames had already consumed most of the platform that had been keeping me from the ground and any longer would see me being burned to death.
Yet that was not what had happened, I vaguely remembered a gentle sensation, one that seemed to be even more powerful than my mother. It was scary seeing that my mother was within the top rankers. Sure she wasn't the strongest among them but still she was up there.
Enough that just her alone was a deterrent for any small to medium guilds, they would never even think about targeting us for fear of Mother's wrath.
I took a moment to breathe before I opened my status and looked for any changes.
…
[Your Mana has massively increased]
[Your Mana Manipulation has increased greatly]
[Estell en Hall]
Vitality: 5
Strength: 4
Dexterity: 7
Mana: 9.9
[Skills]
[Frost(rank 2) (1.02%)] [ShortSword Arts rank 1 (52.96%)]
[Mana Manipulation (rank 1 90.39%)]
[current pts:1121]
…
There wasn't much change to my stats except for my mana, that had grown massively. Before it was around the same as my dexterity and that was only because of my intense training and hunting of runes.
Since I had not used many runes in the trial I just assumed that it was the reward. It was a bit lackluster compared to what Mother had gotten from her first trial but it still brought me to the brink of my first colored stat.
I was excited especially since we weren't allowed to purchase our runes from anyone, it was a tradition of the Hall tribe, to grow in strength on one's own.
And it worked, I wasn't complaining, it was just that I felt overwhelmed by the strength that Mihr had shown me. Despite never having any formal training and never having witnessed the depths of despair in training. He was still so much stronger than me.
Even though his stats were undoubtedly lower than my own.
He could take me in a straight fight, it was not only that strange weapon of his but his skill in its use. It was like he was one with the sword, there was no difference between him and it. It followed his orders as naturally as breathing was to me.
He must have some sort of unique skill, though what that is was up for debate. It undoubtedly allowed him to be able to communicate or something with his sword.
Speaking of skills, my basic mana manipulation had finally grown. Much higher than I had expected it to at that. Before it was a measly 28% but now it was on the cusp of evolving into a rank two skill.
"Estell, what have I said about getting lost in your thoughts"
"Huh?!"
It was only then that I noticed that I wasn't on the ground but instead on the back of my mother. She was carrying me for how long and still I hadn't noticed until she had said something.
I was so embarrassed.
"The trial… Did I do good?" I said between my fingers as I looked over to my mother. I tried to not sound too eager for her answer but judging by the giggle that Mother had let out I had failed.
I buried my head into her shoulder and groaned slightly, Mother seemed so obsessed with embarrassing me.
She had done this too much, carrying me and other embarrassing things that I had given up on even getting away from these types of situations.
I felt Mother letting me go and was subtly surprised. She gestured over to a bench and I followed sitting next to her.
"You did fine, better than I even. I'm proud of you"
I gasped, struggling for words. Eventually I just gave up on trying to voice my thanks and found myself hugging myself to her.
"Oh… oh… is that, you didn't tell me there was a boy you were interested in. Is he strong? Handsome?"
I blushed as I found myself turning away.
For a moment I had forgotten that my mother had excellent scenes. Enough to sniff out details with only a whiff.
"No!" I yelled, "no, he's- he's just a comrade, he helped me in the trial."
"To help you he must have been pretty strong then."
"Yeah," I sighed, "he was… wait!" I remembered something, "why didn't you tell me about the rank three Mask. It would have been nice to know."
I glare at her, hoping she doesn't find out about how I was trying to change the subject.
But judging by her smile I was unsuccessful as she seemed to just be humoring me.
"You wouldn't be my daughter if you couldn't take such a small surprise but enough of that, you should know that you can't distract me. So tell me about him, what was he like and for that matter what's his name?"
I groaned, knowing that I couldn't get out of this. That was before I spotted someone. I grinned and gestured for him to come and sit next to me.
"Estell?" He questioned as he walked over to me, "Are you ok, I wasn't able to really see if that last attack hurt you or not."
"Ye-" I was interrupted by another voice pushing me to the side.
"Oh? What's this, are you my new son in law?" There it was, that damned teasing smile.
"No." He said plainly, without emotion. I found myself slightly dejected, even if we weren't it was a bit harsh wasn't it. To turn me down so harshly.
I looked over to Mother and found her smiling, though it wasn't a nice smile. It was hollow, no emotion beside cold sorrow behind it.
"I see, that's a shame," She looked over to me, "Well Estell we should be going come now."
I whispered a sorry and then followed after Mother.