Agnes opened her eyes and memories of her last time conscious rushed into her mind making her sit up and scan the room fiercely.

She spotted a grinning face just opposite hers, sitting on Aileen’s bed.

“Good morning”, he said, resting his chin on his palm as he leaned forward.

Her face morphed into one of confusion, “Huh?”

“I left you here last night. You slept and you’re just waking up”, he clarified.

Agnes stared at him trying to read his expression if he was lying or not. No light was entering the room so she couldn’t tell the time of the day unless she left it.

She calculated her chances of leaving the room before he could stop her. They were pretty high. He was a magus and as a general rule of thumb, mana users were physically weak naturally. Except dual specialists of course.

She eventually gave up on the idea of leaving the room as she was still feeling quite drained. She did lose a lot of blood.

She figured out quickly that he was masking his expressions so she gave up on that too and leaned back on her creaky bed, “You know, I usually don’t rush head first to my death like that”

“I could see that”, he replied sarcastically.

“No really. You got on my nerve. And what was that? Date me? What bullshit”, she grumbled. She didn’t even bother trying to attack him again. She wasn’t winning a scuffle with a Magus anytime soon.

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to watch for an opening.

“I figured that was what made you click”, he nodded slightly, “I was being serious though”

“Of course you were” Agnes rolled her eyes barely interested in talking with him.

“I’ve actually never had a girlfriend in my 345 years alive. Before I die, I figured why not?” he explained.

That got Agnes’ attention, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me” he smiled.

“Oh” Agnes paused, “Hell no. I am not dating someone the age of my great grandfather”

“Fuck you. What era is this that anyone gives a rat’s ass about someone’s age?” he asked wide eyed, vividly surprised at her reply.

“Agnes’ era” she quipped.

“Who’s that?” he blinked confused.

“ME!” she retorted in disbelief.

“Oh! That’s your name?! You know, I did say I didn’t know it” he reasoned.

Agnes’ mouth opened and closed in brief succession as she couldn’t find the right words to say.

“Ag…Ag… Agnes. Wow that’s a shitty name”, he found himself saying.

“Excuse you?!” Agnes screamed angrily. Her dad gave her that name! She immediately began to rile up her Ki as his let his guard down.

“Uh, wrong word. Sorry,” he quickly corrected, “I meant to say, it’s difficult to pronounce”

Agnes raised a brow. She was more than offended at this point. But somehow… just somehow she felt calmer. Was it because he said sorry? He didn’t even sound like he meant it though.

She sighed inwardly and let her roused Ki dissipate slowly and continued listening. She decided that she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of riling her up again and instinctively she knew.

He looked like his guard was down but it wasn’t.

“AG-NES. Yup, I think it hurts my throat a bit when I say it” he said nodding, obviously satisfied with his explanation.

“No, it doesn’t” she shook her head in disbelief at his antics, “How does that make any sense? Since when does saying Agnes hurt anyone’s throat? ”

“It does”, he refuted

“No. It doesn’t. AG-NES.  Nope, my throat’s fine”

“Well, your throat is different obviously and it hurts mine,” he stuck to his previous statement.

“For someone who has apparently lived very long, you are very childish” Agnes was stupefied.

“If I was serious all the time, I wouldn’t live this long” He pointed out.

“Actually, who the hell are you?”

“I am Luken. No last name currently. I see you are finally curious about me----”

“Not really”

“---which is good progress. Do you have another name?” he continued ignoring her input.

“Raena” Agnes replied stunning herself, ‘Why did I tell him?’ She had just reflexively answered. 

It kind of made sense as he was in control of the conversation.

“That’s easier to say. I like it. Raena” Luken smiled satisfied.

Agnes found herself staring dumbfounded at him. She wasn’t buying his throat reason at all.

He shifted uncomfortably under her gaze, “Ok, it doesn’t hurt my throat BUT as your soon to be boyfriend, I feel like I have to call you something unique, don’t you think?

“No and I can see that you’re a piece of crap so even if I was looking for a fling, it wouldn’t be you.  Besides I can see why in 345 years, you haven’t had a girlfriend” Agnes nodded in understanding.

“I never said I was a virgin and make that 340 years. I don’t think I knew what a girl was when I was five”

“I don’t think I called you a virgin? I’d be more inclined to believe you were the ghost of my grandpa and what? I knew what a boy was when I was 3”

“What’s with you and grandpas?” Luken scowled.

She rolled her eyes, “Nothing? I think this is the first time I said grandpa this whole conversation”

“Really?” he scrunched up his face, trying to search him memory. ‘I could have sworn…’

“Yup” Agnes replied, stopping his thoughts, “What do you want? This is going nowhere”

“Well, I think this little talk is going quite well”, he countered

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“I beg to differ” Agnes scowled.

“You don’t want to chop my head off anymore, do you?” he smirked.

Agnes wanted to retort but the words stayed in her mouth. Truly, her urge to kill him had pretty much died down. She did want to bash his skull for insulting her name but that was it.

“Ok let’s get back on topic. Date me” he announced again.

“No. I still think you’re a piece of shit, that’s not changing anytime soon”, Agnes replied crisply.

“What? Why?” he asked baffled.

“I am going to act like you didn’t just ask why” She replied, rolling her eyes.

“Ok”, he side-stepped her comment, “I ran various simulations through my head on how you’d reject me but age wasn’t one of them”

“Well, color me surprised” she huffed.

“No really”

“At least you knew you were going to be rejected” Agnes commented happily.

“Well, yes obviously. If you accepted I’d have assumed you were planning to murder in bed sometime in the future”

“That… is actually a good idea, why didn’t I think of it?” she wondered aloud.

Luken burst out laughing, “You know I’m being serious, right?”

Agnes stared at him for what seemed like an hour, “Yes but no”

Luken’s first impression with her wasn’t the best. No, scratch that. They started off on the completely wrong foot but their personalities did go very well which she realized the more he kept breaking into her room and they interacted more.

The fact that they were currently involved made her laugh sometimes as she really couldn’t imagine being with him before. Self-defense or not, he had attacked her and then she almost killed herself by running into obviously deadly magic but that was beside the point.

Of course, his age was never a problem; that was just an excuse she thought up on the spot. The average lifespan in Vetranos was around 200 years with people of that age looking in their twenties or thirties. Usually, the younger they looked, the deadlier they actually were.

And Agnes knew no one could actually manipulate the way they looked, they just aged very slowly compared to people who couldn’t even use mana or Ki.

Come to think of it, he never truly explained why he broke into her room and asked her to date him. He always glossed over the subject… well, Agnes wasn’t that curious anyways.

Agnes sighed as she remembered her stupidity when she first fought against Luken. She really had to work on controlling her emotions. She didn’t even think straight at the time; she just snapped and moved irrationally. It was one of those times where her body moved on her emotions before her head actually thought through it, which was really bad.

Because next time, she wouldn’t be almost dead, she’d be dead. She wasn’t the only one whose body moved before her head did. From what she remembered of her mother, she was very emotionally driven. As in her mother, Sierra, had always acted on her emotions before realizing the stupidity or ideality of the act.

“You know? I once wanted to seal my emotions. They were scary and I couldn’t control them. But your father liked me. This crazy me. This me who murdered people with the slightest provocation. The me who killed people because I got angry for just one second … wait your father is a demon so he does the same thing, doesn’t he?” she had once said to Agnes then burst out laughing, “Never mind. This sounded way cooler in my head”

As to why she was telling such scary thing to a child, no one knew. No child wanted to be told their mother was a murderer even if they didn’t know what the word murderer meant then, they would know later.

Murderer or not, Agnes loved her mother. Besides, Agnes herself was a murder, so like mother like daughter, right?

Of course, Agnes didn’t understand what the fuck her mother was talking about in terms of emotion control at the time but she had personally experienced it as a child.

Because one time Sierra gave Agnes alcohol as she didn’t want to deny her sweet baby anything. Agnes didn’t even ask for the damned drink, she was just curious before the apparently drunk Sierra fed it to her. And in another instance, Sierra broke her father’s spine (which healed back immediately) for walking in their small garden in his demon form; pretty much all the flowers died.

‘Wait. Demon form? I thought demons couldn’t change their form?’ a sudden realization coursed through her mind. She had definitely seen her father take on a human form quite a lot.

‘How?! That makes no sense. I know for sure my father is a demon no… why didn’t I realize this before??? A human- demonic breed? No, that makes no sense. Demons love eating human flesh, it’s their staple food.

Father always looked human half the time so he must have shapeshifted to look like that? But demons cannot change their form. Wait, I can change my form so he’s a half like me? Ugh, again demons do not mate with their food. Scratch that! Maybe he was a human turned demon? How does that even work? Actually, where do demons come from?’ Her face was contorted with confusing as she tried to make sense of what she just realized.

She had many questions that had no answers and it was giving her a headache.

A small movement on her laps jolted her out of her rampaging thoughts and brought her back to reality.

She took some time to calm herself down and remembering about her scheduled outing today, lifted Luken’s head from her lap and moved away replacing herself with a pillow.

His eyes immediately shot open at the switch, startling her, “What?”

“Oh”, she chuckled briefly and tapped her brand, showing him her remaining hours on it, “I have to go buy some stuff”

He sat up and stretched briefly, “Oh” he scratched his head absentmindedly, “Ok. I think I’ll go. They might be looking for me”

She nodded at that, “Got it”

“So I may walk amongst my foes, merge with my being, Invisibility” he chanted softly.

Just like he had appeared, he disappeared from her sight. Agnes smirked and reached out patting his invisible head, “Bye”

His head moved up and down, then judging by the wind, he was out the door. Luken had a dual affinity of water and air meaning he had to chant the full spell when another elemental essence was involved, even if he was a magus.

Agnes stared at the empty room for a few seconds astounded at the lack of security in the colosseum. Well, it was understandable, who protects slaves?

She took out a fiery red jumpsuit from under her bed and putting it on. She equipped the belt with throwing knives and hooked up her scabbard with her sword on it and left the room.

Instead of just buying extra throwing knives, she decided to buy a new sword technique. The one she had currently was too brutish and had no fluidity. That kind of style was good in the colosseum for mowing down opponents but in tense battles where she needed to adapt to the situation, she couldn’t do so as her current sword technique was too frigid. She usually ended up discarding it during battles like that and relying on her throwing knifes and Ki.

But that definitely wouldn’t work every time.

Plus she didn’t mesh with the style at all. She was just using it till now because it was one of the cheapest ones. She had 40,000 points to shop with and was probably going to use most of it up today.

Agnes walked towards the adamantine doors that led to the colosseum market. She wished she could rip some parts of the door out and sell it when she got outside...ok, she did want to go out and see the world but she was definitely in no hurry.

If she sold the doors, she would definitely make a fortune or at least that’s what she heard. She raised her arms up and a green light shone scanning her up and down.

The sound of something unlocking followed and the doors slid open as loud as usual.

The hustle and bustle of the usual market did not exist here. The prices were fixed so there was no haggling at all.

Agnes walked past countless colosseum savages, looking for a particular merchant. He was always around on the days that ended with a 3 (3rd, 13th, 23rd, etc.). She spotted him looking as shady as he always did in a corner of the road.

“Hey Carlos” she greeted with a smile and walked into his tent. He looked as idle as ever.

The burly blood elf looked quite vicious with all the scars on his body but had quite the friendly attitude. He opened his eyes and scanned her trying to jog his memory.

“Oh, Agnes, right?”

She nodded, “That’s me”

“Let me see...” he picked up a book by the side and began to flip through it.

Agnes didn’t dare interrupt him. Everyone knew that Carlos always went a tad crazy if you stopped him when he’d started something.

“Ah-ha!” he finally stopped flipping the book and smiled satisfied, “Agnes Marlston, 10 throwing knifes. Why, that’s a full set dear. What else could you need?”

Agnes let out a nervous laugh, “I forgot to retrieve a few during my match so I’m missing 3”

“I see. As usual buying a full set is 10,000 points. Buying a single throwing knife is 1500”

“I’ll just get the set again in case. I might lose them again after all”

“Aye! I trust they served you well so far?” he asked rummaging through his bag for something.

“Absolutely. They’ve been extremely helpful” Agnes admitted.

“Not against mages though, right?” he chuckled, “Found it” he brought out a black plaque with weird inscriptions on it.

Agnes laughed, “I wouldn’t use a throwing knife on a mage. That’s stupid”

“You speak the truth”, he nodded and raised the plaque up. Agnes tapped her hand against it and the tingling feeling that entered her hand told her some points had been deducted, “I see some people do it though. They should take a lesson from you”

“I’ll pass on giving lessons, thank you very much “Agnes shook her head accepting a set of throwing knives from him.

She immediately turned around immediately to leave. If you got into a conversation with Carlos, you’d end up spending hours with him, unknowingly.

He loved to ramble on, would never say a true word about himself but was a good conversation partner. Which was not what she was looking for right now or so she thought.

As her feet stepped outside his tent, the ponderings she had earlier today entered her mind. She couldn’t help but glance back at the man. She didn’t think he was trustworthy but he seemed quite knowledgeable besides if she never asked anyone, she’d never get answers. She considered it for a second and retreated back into the tent.

“Carlos?”

“Yes?” he had already reverted back to the idle form she saw when she first entered the tent. His eyes were also closed and one would have thought he was asleep if they weren’t acquainted with his ways.

“What do you know about demons?” she finally asked after some consideration.

The man in question gave her the strangest look she’d ever seen.