"HAHAHAHA," Alex laughed so hard that tears began to form at the corners of his eyes. He was completely naked, but it was as if he didn't care about his nudity or the destruction around him, lost in his own amusement.
Despite his apparent good mood, Amelia's face was still laced with a hint of worry in her eyes. "Are you all right?" she asked as she approached her brother and put her hand over his forehead.
Alex's uproarious laughter abruptly ceased, and his lips twitched, but it wasn't for long as his previous smile reappeared a second later.
"I'm feeling fine," Alex said as he patted Amelia's hand reassuringly. "In fact, I'm feeling great. I've just realized a couple of things, and that's why I'm laughing."
Since he hid it well, Amelia hadn't been able to pick up on it, but for the past couple of days, Alex had been feeling anxious. His progress in his smoke manipulation seemed to have stalled, and it greatly worried him.
He wasn't sure if the problem was coming from him or if it was just that the smoke element didn't have as much potential as he thought, but the fact remained that for the past few weeks, Alex hadn't managed to discover any interesting capabilities of his smoke element.
Usually, due to his sovereignty, it was as if the smoke element whispered in his ear, telling him all of its secrets, but it had been quite a while since he'd heard those whispers. At some point, he even thought that the problem might have been within himself.
After the heat released by Daisy hit his smoke armor, he had realized that the problem indeed came from him! He had been trying to apply common sense to his smoke element, something that he now understood was quite foolish.
For all this time, he hadn't tried to think outside the box to evolve his smoke element mastery. The proof of that was the only technique he created and was sure no one else with the same smoke element could achieve was the smoke knight.
Besides the smoke knight technique, all the other things he could do with the smoke element—like being able to teleport in a smoky environment, the smoke cloaking, the ability to change the physical characteristics of smoke, and other feats—could have been achieved by someone else if they had the same sovereignty over smoke as he did. Basically, those techniques are linear progressions as long as you have a sovereignty.
However, just now, he had realized something that gave him hope in progressing with his smoke mastery: his smoke was conductive of heat, at least the smoke he could control was.
As the heat emanating from Daisy collided with his smoke armor, the smoke constituting the armor had quickly heated up and then its color changed, taking on the glow of steel that had been heated.
Alex was certain that if things had continued this way, the next step would have been his smoke armor melting!
The notion of something made of smoke melting was so absurd that Alex never thought it would be possible, but at the same time, this thought made him realize that applying common sense to the smoke under his control was asinine. After all, from the moment he had become a sovereign, nothing he did with his smoke element was normal.
Being able to change the physical properties of smoke at will to make it as solid as steel, as soft as silk, as adhesive as tar, or to completely mask his presence in smoke so that even his level couldn't be deduced—nothing about those feats was something a normal smoke user could pull off; they were unique to him because he was a sovereign.
In those last moments before everything went boom, he had not only deduced that his smoke was conductive with heat, but also that it could trap this heat. With just this knowledge, Alex already had a few ideas on how to boost his smoke's effectiveness in battle.
He had also noticed another thing, and this was one of the reasons he was in such a good mood currently. Instead of relying on an external source of heat, he could raise the temperature of his smoke himself!
He didn't quite know how to do that right now, which was why he still needed Daisy's help, but he was certain he could achieve this feat.
'I'll have to find a way to make sure it doesn't explode, though,' Alex thought, 'or I'll have to extract the explosive smoke from the mix.'
Ultimately, the reason why his smoke armor had exploded was because it contained the green explosive smoke that ignited on contact with fire. Apparently, it didn't only need fire to explode— even a high enough heat would trigger the same reaction, causing it to detonate. This realization meant he had to be careful with the composition of his smoke armor, especially if he planned to manipulate heat in the future.
Alex refocused on Amelia, only to see her staring at his body with flushed cheeks and a slightly ragged breath. She was seductively nibbling on her lips, and even when Alex's attention shifted to her, she didn't seem to notice.
"Like what you see?" Alex teased with a smile.
"Ah," Amelia gasped in surprise before eventually nodding her head, "very much so."
She took a step towards him and placed her hands on his well-defined abs, "You are very hot."
Alex grinned and wrapped his arm around Amelia, pulling her closer until their bodies were pressed together. "You vixen, are you trying to seduce me?" he whispered.
"Is it working?" Amelia asked with a mischievous smile. By now, she had already removed her wooden mask, allowing Alex to admire her exquisite face and her tantalizing, plump lips. Her eyes sparkled with desire, and her fingers traced slow, deliberate patterns across his chest, as if savoring the feel of his skin.
"I think you already know the answer," Alex replied with a sly grin.
"Yeah, I can definitely feel the effect I'm having on you," she said as her small and delicate hands traveled down from his lower abs to his hardening manhood. "I'm surprised that you are already this hard; I have to say, I'm quite flattered."
As she said this, Amelia firmly gripped Alex's cock with considerable difficulty due to its impressive girt. Her hand began to rub up and down, her fingers barely able to wrap around his thick shaft as she stroked him with a mixture of eagerness and finesse.
"Are you not worried that someone might walk in on you giving your brother a handjob?" Alex suddenly asked, his eyes closing to better savor the sensation of Amelia's hand slowly massaging the length of his cock.
"Firstly, no one knows we're siblings. Secondly, with this thick smoke surrounding us, no one will see anything. And by the time they could see, we'll already be done," Amelia whispered seductively in his ear, her voice as enchanting as a siren's call drawing sailors to their doom. "And thirdly, who said anything about just a handjob? I could take that juicy, hot thing in my mouth instead. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Alex's grin widened, his eyes narrowing with playful mischief. "I'd definitely love that, but are you sure you can finish me before this smoke disappears?" he teased, clearly relishing their provocative exchange.
"Of course I can... wait, what's wrong?" Amelia's flirtatious smile faded as she noticed Alex's sudden shift in focus, his gaze snapping sharply in the direction where the nobles were resting.
"They're under attack," Alex said calmly, his tone losing its playful edge as he focused on the unfolding situation.
Amelia, who had been entirely focused on Alex, quickly redirected her attention. As soon as she concentrated, she sensed the commotion—a large group of attackers had surrounded the nobles, who were now fully awake and scrambling to respond.
"Sorry, sis, but we'll have to postpone this," Alex apologized, his voice tinged with regret.
"Too bad for you, I guess," Amelia teased with a wink, releasing her grip on Alex's member.
"Oh, we'll definitely resume soon," Alex assured her with a wicked grin before pulling her into a deep, passionate kiss.
After a few seconds, he reluctantly pulled away, his expression shifting to one of resolve. With a swift gesture, he summoned a new layer of smoke armor to encase his body and formed a smoke mask for Amelia to conceal her identity.
"Let's go," he commanded, and without further delay, the two of them took off.
Within moments, Alex and Amelia returned to their camp, only to find that a group of about fifty bandits had completely encircled the nobles. Despite their numbers, Alex didn't sense much danger. Most of the attackers were at level 1, with a few slightly stronger ones. Only four were at level 3, and just one had reached level 4.
Clearly, whoever these attackers were, they had no idea who they were dealing with. Had they known that Alex and Amelia were with these young nobles, they would never have dared to attack. At the very least, they would have waited to gather another level 4 combatant before launching their assault.
Unfortunately for them, they had just unwittingly stepped into a world of trouble.
Alex and Amelia's arrival did not go unnoticed, mostly due to Amelia's imposing aura. The moment they appeared, all eyes turned toward them.
As soon as Charles spotted Alex and Amelia, he shouted, "Hey, where were you, damn it! Can't you take your job seriously? We're paying you!"
He cast a disdainful glance at Amelia and muttered under his breath, "That's why I hate hiring incompetents. Instead of protecting me, he was off wasting time with that—"
What Charles failed to realize was that, though he was speaking softly, to someone like Alex, who could hear sounds from kilometers away, his muttering was as clear as if he were shouting.
Before Charles could finish his sentence, Alex was on him in an instant, sending his body crashing against the bark of a nearby tree.
Landing in front of the stunned and coughing noble, Alex glared down at him coldly and stated, "I think I need to make some things very clear here."