"Would you like to run that by me again?" Myhail asked, his tone made up of mostly bewildered shock with just the faintest hint of bemusement at struggling to comprehend Nova's rationality for her request.

  "Do you think if I asked, would Enetha be willing to let me spar- train with one of Mould Breaker's golems?" Nova asked brazenly, hand planted on her hip while flicking a little bronze curio around the fingers of her other hand.

  [Crackling Eruption][Type: Generator][Rank: SSS]

  -A dark bronze eleven-pettled flower hairpin with a five-centimetre diameter. At its core is a deep red mana crystal shaped into a kite.

  While watching the prince's face go through a wide spectrum of expressions, with the two extremes being disbelief and praying, Nova cheerfully planted her curio inside the bounds of her flowery hair. She flicked her fingers with dazzling splendour, causing a brief ripple of red to wash over her hair, before all the red crystalline dust dispersed from her black hair. It swirled, smushing together around her fingers until forming into ten fire mana crystal rings.

  Sporting a grin with nothing short of sass, Nova gleefully ran a hand over all of her rings, ensuring they were all correctly formed to her mental specifications: "Come now, Myhail, you're acting like I'm talking crazy."

  "Because you are. Isn't there anything else you're interested in outside of punching everything you see? Besides, I doubt Enetha is interested in any person vs person activities at the moment." Myhail's complaint turned reveal went mostly over Nova's head, struggling to follow the guy's words, but the use of 'vs' was the one piece of information she unquestionably understood to a tee.

  "Is that so, Myhail?"

  "Let's put it this way, she had a strong reaction when she was playing a fighting game with me and Inkaro," Myhail murmured weakly, sheltering his forehead with a hand, hoping to keep any more of his nerves from escaping his mind.

  "Inka-oh... you mean the commoner guy that Lizuranti, Enetha, Yuuvia... He sure is swarmed by a lot of shorties, doesn't he?" Nova remarked with a surprising amount of snark as she recalled how Anazenpha recently started hanging out with Inkaro and co after the curio lesson earlier in the day, "I didn't take you for the gaming type, Princeu."

  "Also, why are you surprised by my interests? The Kurtaka Empire prides itself on are combative past times." Nova added that last little tidbit with outstanding pride, practically bragging about her achievements without verbally saying it. Myhail instantly knew what the occasional redhead was trying to pull, and he'd be damned to fall for her bait.

  "Are you really forcing me to choose between inconveniencing Enetha or becoming her stand-in to entertain you? I only agreed to spar with you before because of the dungeon delving assignment."

  "What? No, of course not...." Nova's following silence of the awkward variety did little in the way of making her attempt to sound sincere that much less convincing, until she ultimately slumped her whole body backwards, "Okay, maybe."

  Feeling a little bit of indignation, Nova ran her hands through and messed up her own hair to keep herself in barely-restrained check.

  "Come on, Myhail, at this rate, I'll be impelled to ask that Inkaro guy to spar with me, but he probably isn't the fighting type."

  "Fine-fine, I'll spar with you!" Myhail blurted out desperately. He wasted no extra moments, grabbing onto the princess's wrist with unyielding pressure, much to the girl's captivation as she imagined the impending damage they'd inflict on each other.

  From a little distance off in one of Solicrave Academy's enclosed floral gardens, the gathering of Lizu, Yuuvia, Enetha, Nuenala and Anazenpha were all huddled together on a picnic blanket and eating their respective lunches, aside from Yuuvia and Anazenpha, who shared some of their lunches with one another. Whilst the others were busy dealing with their food, Inkaro was instead digesting the contents of a tapestry node and chain encyclopedia. Catching them out of the upper corner of his vision, Inkaro spotted Myhail and Nova marching their way towards an unoccupied combat arena.

  "Those two sure get along," Inkaro remarked as he maintained the majority of his focus on his reading material.

  At hearing Inkaro's remark, Lizu raised an eyebrow with bewildered elation: "You really think so?"

  "Are they not?" Nuenala asked cheekily while nudging her shoulder into Lizu's. Lizu rolled her eyes at Nuenala of all people for asking such a question. As the yukachuo continued to physically pester Lizu for a response, Nuenala noticed sightless intensity directed at her sandwich from Anazenpha, who smiled when Nuenala snapped the corner of her peanut butter, lettuce and banana slice sandwich.

  After checking nothing would fall out of it, the sandwich bearer handed the smaller piece to the grateful Anazenpha. The offering didn't last long, surrendered to the depths of the abyss within Anazenpha, but the content little smile of satisfaction on the demon snake's face was worth the sacrifice, influencing the other girls to share some of their own food to prolong the girl's expression.

  While being the sole girl who refused to part with even a crumb of the lunch made for her by Inkaro, Lizu calmly said, "No... no, they are, Nuli, just not in the way you're thinking and implying."

  "Oooh, so it's like tha-" Nuenala's retort was cut short by the obnoxious call out directed to the group's direction, much to the girl's aggitation as her metalic tail thrashed weakly in time with her annoyed huffs. Bringing himself into the fray of the girls' picnic, a second-year student made his presence known to all, not that his prior announcement hadn't done that enough already.

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  [Maunox Hephlone is a tall, fair-skinned, nineteen-year-old treykuel male with the appearance of a human; he has slick back and slightly spikey, neck-low pale golden hair. A golden-coloured left eye and a pale golden right eye. Very pointy ears. Parts of his body(forearms and everything below the knees) are made of a nanmu-looking material. And, two small branch-looking horns on his forehead]

  [Maunox is wearing an open, draping, pale golden-looking coat with leaf stitchings engraved over its arms and the entirety of the coat's hem. The coat also has a silver feathery collar. A pale blue buttonless shirt. Silver-coloured trousers. And, pale golden ankle bracelets on his ankles]

  :Attributes:

  [Base]

  [Mana Capacity: SSS]

  [Mana Control: SSS]

  [Mana Tolerance: SS]

  [Advanced]

  [Affinity: Infusement]

  [Proficiency: Weapon Enhancement]

  [Complex]

  [Speciality: Doppelganger]

  [Stigma: None]

  [Class: Magic Swordsman]

  [Grimoire/tapestry/curio limit: 6]

  "Oi-oi, fancy running into you here, Feubread, it's like fate has brought us together-"

  "It's totally a surprise to run into a student at an academy, truly an occurrence you'd be hard pressed to encounter!" Inkaro voiced, raising his voice so high no one could possibly miss his announcement, as he flicked to the next page of the encyclopedia in his grasp. The second year curled up his fingers into fists, especially when Anazenpha giggled. Said giggle was unrelated to the events going on around her, but the second-year would be hard-pressed to notice the distinction.

  "You've got some nerve interupting a conversation between ducal nobles, even if her family's rise to that status is a relatively recent development, don't get full of yourself because you got into the Star Course, Inkaro," Maunox uttered coldly, his tone remaining that for the majority of his speech, and only turning a blend of sinister venom when he said the other guy's name.

  "It's starting to sound like you're looking for a fight here," Inkaro suggested jokingly, while hopping to his feet and continuing to read. Maunox flinched at the tone Inkaro used, knowing precisely what the human was thinking and how it was something along the lines of teasing him.

  "You. Dual Duel. Support Only, Tomorrow." With that last declaration of a challenge, the guy departed elegantly, briefly returning to hand Lizu a sealed envelope, before leaving for real with the very same movements as his first departure.

  Lightly scoffing with a weak level of amusement, Lizu lazily looked at the envelope labelled with the line: "From Little Lizu's Bestest Sisters". She looked over the envelope, flipping it to see both sides and hearing a faint rattling within. Lizu had half a mind to chastise her older twin sisters for putting Maunox in a situation they knew would result in him blurting out something stupid.

  However, Lizu decided to let it slide. After all, she got to see the rare scene of Inkaro being snarky towards someone other than herself. Speaking of Inkaro, Lizu snaked her tail around the other girls and poked Inkaro in the back of the head to get his active attention.

  "Not that I'm complaining for you taking the fall for me, but why'd you jump in if you knew things would turn out this way?" Lizu asked merrily as she reached into her lunch bag to bring out another sandwich.

  "You'd definitely forget about the challenge and automatically be declared the loser," Inkaro stated bluntly without a hint of sugar-flavoured coating to his answer. Lizu recoiled in shame, pulling her collar up and burying her head into the depths of her shirt to hide her sudden onslaught of shame.

  "Ah...," Lizu muttered meekly, having no retort to Inkaro's objectively correct statement but still feeling offended he'd say such a thing in front of everyone.

  "Say... who was that guy anyway?" Nuenala asked secretly in a low voice, to which Lizu whispered something back that made the girl's jaw drop. "What do you mean both?!"

  "But didn't he say a dual duel where only support magic is allowed? So wouldn't you need to find someone else with non-magic means of attacks?" Enetha asked astutely, while being the only one sitting on her folded legs, as Kutina poured the little princess another cup of fruit juice mix.

  Like her chance to finally break into the group had been served to her on a silver platter, Myendi dropped down from above, hair covered in all manner of leaves. Landing on her feet with grace and glamour, Myendi cheerfully and boastfully double fist-pumped, whilst Xythio slowly descended from above as well, hanging from a solid shadow tendril with one hand while cradling a cat in the other.

  "My buddy Xythio here can assist in this little issue of yours~"

  Myendi happily announced her intentions of offering her friend's assistance on his behalf, not that he'd have listened to her behest, unless he wanted to do more cat searching.

  Excluding Inkaro, from him having already spotted them climbing the tree while the others were busy watching food gather, the group turned their head up at Myendi with absolute confusion on their faces at her sudden splicing into the encounter.

  Following the consumption of another sandwich, Anazenpha broke the silence by asking what most of the other girls were thinking: "What were you doing up there?"

  "One of the headmasters asked us to find one of the academy's resident cats," Myendi stated plainly, and to the point that it almost seemed like a lie, despite the proof being in Xythio's hands.

  "Oh-ok," Anazenpha said before instantly resuming her quest of eating all the food she'd received from the others. Following that, the group slowly resumed partaking in their lunches, with Myendi joining in on the feeding Anazenpha activity and Xythio discussing battle tactics with Inkaro.

  Meanwhile, in a nearby hallway, Maunox stormed down the halls, clasping the sides of his head in pride-shattered anguish as his obnoxious display played on repeat in his memory in excruciating, grating detail. It was the kind of anguish a normal person would feel pity for, had it not been caused by the guy's own hands.

  "Stupid-stupid-stupid... why'd I say all that! If Inkaro hadn't been there, I might've challenged Lizuranti to a duel by mistake. And, if that happened, Iunia and Taliana wouldn't let me hear the end of it for challenging their 'precious little sister' as they say... Probably will have to ask Xano to join me for the dual duel."