Whilst her other classmates, around half of them, and various other students from every year group in combative/practical magic-related courses were using the various duel platforms of the training courtyard, Myendi was situated on a bench, located absolutely nowhere near any training grounds, tinkering away at her various glassy, phone-shaped tapestries. Only working on her possession to get out of having to spar with anyone, the female reincarnator put on her best 'doing serious work' face, since she wasn't actually doing anything all that difficult.

  "Aww... only two out of three of my guesses were right; that's like, a losing grade, what a bummer," Myendi murmured aloud, disappointed she ended up not getting a three out of three on her guess from a few days ago. It was utterly vexing for her because it truly didn't matter; so, her getting worked up over it made her look so immature, and being seen as immature was completely uncool to the highest degree.

  "I don't see why you're complaining. If the rules hadn't changed, you would've had the same score and been forced to participate since most of the people in our class have stigmas for absolutely no reason," Xythio quipped dispassionately as he approached, exhausted to his physical limit from being paired up against Nova, then Myhail, and then Noaskou in a row.

  Hearing her fellow reincarnator's words, Myendi strongly swung her head up, managing to make her friend flinch: both from her abrupt movements and the intensely and uncharacteristically serious staredown she imparted on his person. But that bout of seriousness from her swiftly melted away, giving way to her usual goofy persona once more.

  "Tsk-tsk-tsk, my dear Xythio, the main cast being outstanding in every facet of life is a common staple of fantasy schools, so your surprise is unwarranted," Myendi stated astutely, holding up the inert Minagary of Broken Reflection she was fiddling with in front of her sole open eye and pretending it was a monocle belonging to a world-renowned detective. Xythio scoffed at the shameless reference, wishing Myendi would find more appropriate timings for her references, like doing the one she just did during an investigation-like setting instead. "What's wrong, never seen so many geniuses in person beforrrr..."

  Myendi found herself hoisted to her feet by the collar of her form-fitting shirt, pulled up to her face as Xythio pulled at it. "Careful, Xythio, I might get the wrong idea if you keep getting so handsy and rough with mmmeeee-"

  The guy, having had enough of the girl's nonsense, given how exhausted he was, grabbed hold of the vixen-emulating teen by the leg with his free hand, eliciting a startled "eep" out of Myendi. Her surprise towards her friend was only bolstered by the guy's lack of his usual fanfare or explosively physical reaction, leaving the girl pouting a little at how boringly tame it was. As she pouted, Xythio hoisted Myendi over his shoulder, flinging the girl about, which she appreciated, from him being a little rough. That little bit of roughness she experienced was enough to reignite her teasing spirit, which she quickly capitalised on: "You're only proving me right, you know?"

  "Can you not for once?" Xythio grumbled weakly as he carried Myendi towards the training courtyard, catching a few puzzled side glances from the many students the duo had to pass by.

  A little later, and while Xythio was placing Myendi on one of the elevated combat arena slabs, the girl quickly lost her teasing edge when she registered her opponent was none other than Enetha.

  Inkaro eyeballed the pair of ski goggles in his hand as he did some minor adjustments to them using a tool made entirely of gold mana. A task made somewhat more challenging by Lizu deciding his lap was the best place to sit with her entire weight put into the action. The Snow Sweepers are dark blonde metal-framed ski goggles with a reflective pure white visor that has a very thin and functionally unnoticeable pattern etched into it.

  "I know you said you'd finished them, and all, but I didn't expect them to be so normal looking, and to be different types of eyewear on top of that," Yuuvia commented in forceibly asute way. Trying to come off disinterested in getting an excuse to dress up Ana, even if it was just eyewear, Yuuvia sat crossed-legged with her legs squeezed needlessly tight together on a resting bench, as she held the swimming goggles up to the sky, comparing it through the tinted lens of the goggles. The Eye Blockers of Watering are pale sapphire swimming goggles with a deep blue frame, which has a very thin and functionally unnoticeable pattern etched into them.

  "Are these one re-atie?" Anazenpha asked, voice layered-upon-layered with anxious anticipation, that only served to make Yuuvia tense up at every syllable Ana uttered. Although she had asked the question for confirmation, Anazenpha had already placed the sunglasses on her face, but didn't make the slightest effort to open her eyes to test them. The last pair, called the Serpent Sircles of Coolness, is large, pale lavender-metal-framed, circle-shaped sunglasses with grey, practically opaque lenses that have a very thin and functionally unnoticeable pattern etched into them. All the eyewears' names had been decided by Anazenpha over texts.

  "Hard to say, I can't exactly test a tomes as a humalian; so other than G.Galore getting a similar reading to the lenses and visors that your catalyst pill gave off, I really can not say. They probably work as intended, but some fine-tuning might still be required," Inkaro explained in a swiftly distinct fashion. However, swift it might be, simple his words were not, leaving Ana and Yuuvia both equal in the amount of struggling they endured from trying to follow the explanation Inkaro offered up.

  At hearing the guy's confidence for his creations intended for her should work how he'd expect them to, the snake girl simultaneously squirmed happily and nervously on the bench, unable to remain still for a second. However, that balance of positive and negative emotions slowly tipped, leading to whatever confidence she had in the glasses, which she'd only experienced through touch, being drowned in a building dread.

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  A dread conjured from unpleasant memories, which left Anazepha barely able to make a single concise word as she spoke her mind: "Hmmm... I thank it wo-ld better to after sco-ol, safe-her nat hay."

  "She messed up almost all her words," G.Galore commented from within the depths of Inkaro's hood, going unheard by most of those around Inkaro who didn't possess superhearing without magical intervention. "I believe heeding her words would be advisory, Father."

  Lizu snickered softly, having listened to the whole conversation without interupting it until reaching her limit from the pronged attack of G.Galore giving cautionary advice for once and Ana's barely linguistically-sound sentence, feeling endearedly relieved that not everyone was as hard to read and closeguarded as Enetha.

  "Withdrawing caution from the wind, should we?" Lizu playfully jested as she lightly bonked the back of her head against Inkaro's chest, hitting him with just the right amount of force for it to be classified as aggressively passionate. Although Lizu's contented smile, plastered clearly on her face, waded through all possible interpretations to make her opinion for Inkaro as clear as day, the girl still felt something was off as she scrunched up her lips into a frown.

  However, no matter how clear something could be presented before them, some simply succumbed to a truly sorrowful medicalcondition, one so prevalent in their minds that they couldn't hope to overcome the misfortune on their own: observational denseness.

  Meanwhile, on a certain island of an world famous archipelago, Kruyaktroviki, more commonly referred to as the Frostbite Symphony Island by none of the archipelago natives, Kalusozalna stood atop the tallest ice spike he could find, one which dwarfed some of the smallest mountains.

  The climate's blizzard relentlessly tore through the air, howling uncontrollably as it slammed into the kitrunai at full force, shattering against his body when he remained steadfast against it. Paying the frigid wind no mind, he overlooked the snow, frost, and ice blanketed landscape thats uneven terrain was only broken up by the many pillars of opaque, packed ice or the hills buried under piles upon layers of pure and untainted snow.

  Glancing to the sky that looked identical to the ground below, thanks to the sea of snow-packed clouds above, Kaluso commented on them to break the seven-hour silence: "It's hard to tell how long I've been here with all the snow in the air, don't you agree?"

  However, the girl accompanying him was preoccupied with something more pressing to her.

  "It's way too cold here, and how am I even cold? I don't have a physical body anymore!" Louailanye whined confusedly, shivering her butt off to the point of freezing as she buried herself neck deep in her father's fluffy tails, trying to stave off the cold. "Urg... I can't believe mother forced me to come here just because I haven't seen you in a week, that's like nothing... what are you doing in a place like this anyway, Pops?"

  Speaking frankly, seeing how not answering her would lead to a worser outcome should he withhold information and get her interested in searching for it by herself, the seasoned kitrunai decided to divulge some information on his task, if somewhat: "I'm searching for the anomaly Tiliana detected within a mana vent on this island, but I suspect it wasn't any stigmai directly related to the Nightmare one, given how it migrated from the vent she originally detected it from."

  "Heh, sounds like those things I encountered in that mansion, those things didn-ah!" Louailanye abruptly stopped her cocky proclamation as she consciously realised how incriminating what she said sounded, leaving her bulging her eyes anxiously, before slapping her mouth over her mouth at her error. But it was too late to take it back; after all, her father had already turned his head to look at her. The young kitrunai shyly slinked back a little at the unwanted attention.

  "Are you implying that mansion had traces of the Nightmare Stigmai, his harbingers and or subsidiaries?" Although his voice was devoid of any anger, her father's intensity wasn't lost on Louailanye, leading her to sheepishly sink her head into her father's tail fur until only her ears were poking out.

  "It's not like I knew; besides, Inkaro dealt with it, so I didn't think much of it at the time, okay. I thought it was just some shadowy monsters that were extremely weak to any form of illumination or light, honest!" Doing so through the muffled confines of her father's tails that she hid her burning red face in, the young multi-tailed girl persisted in defending her innocence of intentionally getting close to yet another dangerous stigmai, which was far from the truth, but she didn't want to risk getting tail-grounded by being honest to her father.

  "Inkaro?" His entire focus pivoted, not because he was overprotective of his daughter being around boys, anymore, but from the name sounding annoyingly familiar enough to recall having heard but not enough to be easily put to a face.

  Seeing her opportunity to save her tails, even if it risked getting hit with embarrassment-inducing remarks in the crossfire, the young kitsune pounced on the diversion chance before her, enthusiastically so: "Ye-yeah, you know, he was that boy from that festival I went to a few years back."

  At hearing the easy to understand explination and recalling she'd only ever expressed interest in going to one on her own, Kaluso instantly recalled who Inkaro was; well, the past version of him at the very least. "The one you were-"

  Cut off by his own daughter before he could finish, Louailanye burst her tails out from her father's, extending them at great speeds to shove them in his face, saving herself from turning any more red in the face at having to hear her father's inability to not embarrass her for a second.

  "Noo... don't bring up my dark past," Louailanye whimpered defensively, while flopping her ears down to cover her eyes, but failed to do so with their see-through state. "And for the record, I was crying about my camera being destroyed, not that he regected becomeing my vassal."