Fleur looked around for a few seconds before she saw Loki standing in front of her and scowling.
"I'm not that short…"
Fleur however didn't care, she simply patted his head and spoke in a soothing tone, "Prenelle asked you to meet her in the living room!"
Loki frowned even more and tried swatting away Fleur's hand but when she smiled and easily evaded his attempts until he finally lost his patience and mumbled-
"Loser!"
Fleur froze.
Her brows furrowed but Loki continued as he ran away from the area-
"You lost to me and were forced to waste a month without learning anything! You're lost to a shorty!!! You are a loser!!!"
Before Fleur could say anything or even do something to him, Loki vanished from the experimental room where he was working together with Fleur to make a gadget that Nicolas had tasked them to make.
It was a simple slate that could be used to write and take notes on like a tablet from the twenty-first century, but Nicolas asked them to make it because every other student under him was made to do so and he wanted to show off Loki's skill to them to toot his own horn about how good he was at teaching.
It was also essentially to show the other students how much further runes could be pushed than what they had learned since Loki was asked to add a bunch of extra features and keep them interested in coming back the next year.
Loki's days with the Flamel's were coming to an end and Fawley who had left mid-way to manage his shop had returned to pick Loki up.
"Today is the last day I'm here Nick, Prenelle.", Loki said.
Prenelle looked at Nicholas and then giggled while covering her lips with her hand causing Nicholas to exhale softly.
"Huh? Did I do something wrong?" Loki asked confused as to what about his words seemed hilarious.
Fawley steered the handle of the conversation seeing how both his mentors were busy laughing at his disciple, "Do you know why the competition is conducted Loki?"
"Erm…isn't it to teach a student about alchemy?"
"A good guess young man." Nicholas interrupted but after breathing a little properly and holding back the smile that was on his face, he spoke again, "But that's not the only thing we do. After all a competition isn't finished without a reward. Do you know just how poor the Fawley family was when he arrived here?"
Nicholas pointed at Mr. Fawley who just *coughed* in embarrassment while gripping his cane tighter to try and keep a noble posture.
"He was dirt poor. The second wizarding war hadn't been kind to the Fawleys, in fact, it wasn't kind to anyone except the goblins. When he passed the test, the first thing Prenelle did was drag him to the tailoring room and stitch him some new clothes."
"-Do you still have those?" Prenelle asked as she interrupted and looked at Fawley.
"I- I couldn't bring myself to give them away.", Fawley said while looking away.
Loki was still confused, 'What does this have to do with them laughing at me?'
"What I'm trying to tell you, young man, is that you don't need to pretend that you don't have something you want from us.", Nicholas said with a calm smile.
"But-" Loki tried to keep up his defence but Prenelle interrupted.
"Are you going to let my words about you not being a stuck-up noble be for nought Loki? Was all that time shared between all of us a boorish formal exchange for you?"
"We're two angels Loki. We know we can help you in some way if you ask us what you want! So ask! Don't let this bond you made with us go unused. What are we going to do with our wealth anyway? Give us a little opportunity to show off our abilities by helping you a little."
Loki's mouth suddenly felt dry.
'There are two angels in front of me right now.'
'Even Klein wasn't this lucky, well that is unless you counted the angel that was literally from the pathway that manipulated luck...'
With another snap of her fingers, Prenelle caused a tea set along with a tray of cookies and condiments to float over from the kitchen to the table in the living room where they all were.
There was a comfortable silence in the room as tea cups floated to everyone and the kettle poured into it steaming hot tea.
'I have two problems in front of me.'
'The first one is that I have absolutely no idea how I can perform the two rituals of my fifth and fourth sequences.'
'To become a Sequence 5 Dream Stealer I need to enter the dreams of about a thousand people at once, the more the better.'
'And to become a Sequence 4 Parasite I need to steal the spotlight from an opponent that is at least a Demigod with as many witnesses in front of me.'
'But I can't ask them about that without revealing the contents of the ritual, which would be a dead giveaway that I'm not from the Darkness pathway.'
'The second and the more immediate problem in front of me is Gran's case.'
'I'm pretty sure as long as I ask them to help me out with her case, they'd be more than willing to do so.'
'But if I ask them about it, I probably won't be able to ask them for anything else, but Grandma will be woken up easily…probably?'
'Will it be easy to wake her up?'
'Is the problem related only to Gran or is it a means to get rid of the entire Black Family ancestry?'
It wasn't wasted on Loki that the Greatest and Noblest of the families of the wizarding world had so few Saints and Angels.
There were none.
That left only two options in his mind.
Either someone was hunting the people of the Black Family and killing them before they could get to be a High-level Beyonder, or the True God of the Darkness pathway was doing it to them on purpose.
'But given how Salazar Slytherin had woken up so recently from his slumber it means that someone is trying to kill the Black Family members.'
'And they have been very successful…'
'Or they could just be unlucky like the other noble families like the Greengrass family that doesn't have any angels and saints too but their goddess is recorded in documents dating back to the Second Epoch…'
'But even still, this is the Rebirth epoch…and Nicolas and Prenelle were both able to become Saints and Angels…so why not anyone else?'
Loki thought for a few seconds as things started getting awkward with the Flamels and Fawley who were both wondering what he was thinking so deeply about.
Finally, Loki sipped his tea and wet his lips before speaking again.
"Can I ask you a question?" Loki asked and Nicolas quickly nodded.
"Do you know why the Black Family has so few Saints and Angels if it is the oldest and noblest house? And what about the other Nobles of Britain?"
Nicolas was a little taken aback by the question as he looked at Prenelle but even she seemed a little confused by the question.
"What do you think? That Angels like us grow on trees?" Nicolas asked with a wry smile. "I don't want to show off, but it is pretty hard to get to where we are if you don't know."\
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A/N : Sorry for the delay, was working on the Tarot Club chapter that appeared on Patreon....had to make it extra good since it was the first Tarot Club chapter. XD
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