"Hello, I'm Miwa," the woman says, introducing herself to Vega with a small bow.

"I'm Vega!" Vega replies.

"It's nice to meet you, Vega."

My disciple and I look around the small but cozy kitchen of Miwa's house. Unlike the smithy she’s rented out and shares with several people from Hard and Hell difficulty to use at set times, the house we find her in now is hers alone, and spread out on the table in front of us are the ingredients she’s prepared.

Vega’s already been told what her surprise will be and seems all the more excited for it. After saying goodbye to group 4, she was overcome with joy the moment she heard what we would be making.

Meanwhile, group 4 got only a few short words, Biscuit and Noodle being the only exceptions. Though maybe Tess and Lily were exceptions as well, after all, Vega seems to have recognized them as the top dogs of our pack.

"We will prepare the dough first. Do you want me to do it, or do you want to do it yourselves?"

"We’ll do it. Vega, sleeves up, and let's wash our hands before we start."

"Yes, master!" The little half-demon says, washing her hands as I lift her up to the sink, and then I do the same, waiting for Miwa's instructions afterward.

I'm a terrible cook, it's not really something I generally enjoy, but here, in this moment it seems like a fun idea.

"See the bowl I prepared? Add a bit of sugar and yeast and mix it with warm water. Then we let it sit for anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes. The yeast might not be very good anymore, so the dough may not turn out all that well. But there is nothing we can do."

"Not a problem, you already warned me. Vega, you’re in charge of mixing, okay?"

"Yes!"

I take the yeast and sugar and put them into the bowl with warm water following Miwa’s instructions.

Vega gets off to a clumsy start, so Miwa steps in and guides her hands in a more stable motion. She then has to stop Vega from eating the raw dough.

Once she’s done mixing the dough, Vega washes her hands again, making me lift her up to the sink, and Miwa covers the bowl with a towel.

"While we wait, you should add flour and salt to a bowl and we’ll blend it with the dough when it's done." Miwa gives Vega the proportions, though Vega manages to spill some flour on the table.

When the dough is ready ten minutes later, I take it and add to the bowl with the flour and salt.

Vega sits on a chair, watching nearby, fixated on my every movement as I blend it all together with some oil. The mood between us is still a bit awkward because of what happened during and after her sparring match, but being so young, she quickly shrugs it off and starts enjoying herself in fairly short order.

This time it’s my turn for Miwa to teach me the proper methods, and I knead it on the table which she coats with a dusting of flour to make it less sticky.

Somehow I can’t help but find it relaxing, I even take a small chunk of dough and fling it at Vega.

The little half-demon giggles and shoots a mana projectile at my face which I disrupt. Though playful, her attack is strong enough to kill someone from Easy difficulty.

I continue kneading for 5 minutes, and Miwa corrects me multiple times, even asking how it's possible to make a dough so stiff and ugly. Behind her back, Vega furrows her brows and forms more projectiles, but I disrupt them before she can send them rushing at Miwa.

Next, Vega oils the bowl, and we put my kneaded dough inside, cover it with a damp cloth, and put it near the heated oven so it can rise. This will take an hour or so.

While we wait, Miwa talks to me about crafting, her expression extremely lively as she speaks. Meanwhile, Vega noms on some kind of snack she found and now that I think about it, probably stole from Miwa.

***

An hour or two later, we are done and the pizza is finished, and we have the result we expected: the Perfect Pizza.

"Master, should it be so black on the bottom?"

"It should not," Miwa says carefully.

My minion and I made this pizza. We topped It with cheese, a few pieces of salami, and a tomato sauce base. It was Vega's idea to use my flames to cook it, so I tried to mimic the temperature of the oven-like thing Miwa set up with a few mana stones inscribed to produce heat.

I just surrounded the entire pizza with the heat while keeping it afloat with an arm made of mana.

The result is impeccable.

"Master, it's very crunchy." Vega says as she bites into it.

"If you’re not careful, you’re going to break your teeth," Miwa warns.

I never made pizza before, but my first attempt turned out much better than I expected. Maybe it is because I had my minion to help, and a tiny bit of assistance from Miwa, yup.

"Master, why are you not eating?"

"You shouldn't be eating it either," Miwa says, pointing out useless things.

In response, Vega scoots over to me and offers me a bite of her pizza, which I accept. That makes her smile, so I take a piece off my plate and eat it as well.

While devouring the crunchy pizza, Vega makes satisfied noises and wears a smile even more radiant than the one she wore when she was eating candy back in our house. It's the same smile she wore when I invited her to eat with me for the first time. I did invite her to eat with me even now to Miwa's confusion and Vega's happiness.

Yes. The pizza might be somewhat lacking. Some of the ingredients are a bit stale, especially the cheese. There’s not a lot of tomato sauce, and the salami is too greasy, not really suitable for use as a topping. The dough is pretty good, but it didn't rise enough, so the pizza is dense and now burned as a result of my inexperience.

But at the same time, it's a meal that Vega and I prepared together, and that seems to make the little half-demon happier than if it was a perfect meal.

Together we devour it all, and when we are done, we leave, saying goodbye to Miwa.

"How long?" I ask, walking side by side with my minion.

"Five minutes."

"I see. Take this." I say, pressing a small bag of inscribed mana stones into her hands.

Most of them are basically a series of ciphered trials; she’ll only be able to access their contents if she can solve the intricate inscriptions I prepared and fix the parts I blocked.

It's a form of training that will serve to improve her control and open up new lessons to help her on her way as she’s ready to master them. Most of the stones are tiny, smaller than my pinkie nail. It's the stones we got off Nevan's dead friend in the Veil Ignition Station, and I still have a lot of them. Their size will make it simple for her to smuggle them as needed.

Vega freezes on the spot, and I follow her gaze.

There at the treeline is Savant, casually passing through. His long hair tied into a ponytail, his green eyes fixed in their typical expression. Clinical and sharp as a scalpel.

At that moment, he notices my signature and looks towards us. At me and then at Vega.

My minion stiffens and moves behind me, her arm reaching out and grabbing the hem of my shirt. I can sense her heart beating wildly out of fear.

Savant turns his eyes away and disappears into the trees, and only once she’s sure he’s gone does Vega relax a bit. An expression of shame mars her face as she realizes what she’s done.

"Are you fine?"

"Yes, master, but that man... he is..."

"It's fine. Just another person I need to deal with."

"Is he?"

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"Yes, it’s nothing you need to worry about." I place my hand over hers, and she lowers her natural barrier, allowing me to teleport us further away. We reappear in a place with a nice view of the entire common area.

We wait in silence as her timer ticks down.

"Thank you for inviting me here, master. I know you could have gotten more training if I hadn’t been here."

"It's fine. I still got plenty of training even with you here."

"Is it really ok?"

"Yup, it was me who invited you here so why should you be worried? I’d rather you tell me how you liked the other members of my group and my favorite food?"

"Pizza was amazing."

"Liar."

"It was! As for your group, I liked Biscuit, and wolfy was fun. Maybe Lily was ok too; she would be a great demon."

"Possibly yes but don't say such scary things."

"But I'm happy that my master seems to have people they can trust and that you are doing well in the tournament. You have to win the remaining events and then the entire tournament."

"That's the plan." I grab one of her horns and shake her head gently, "This time it’ll probably be a while, years maybe until we see each other again. I might contact you or send a message when I get the 6th-floor rewards, but until then, do your best."

"I will be much stronger the next time we meet."

"Kaboom?"

"Kaboom!" Vega nods happily.

"Sounds like a plan."

In response, Vega turns her eyes to the side, and I know she is looking at the portal back to her planet.

Minion rushes to me and gives me a quick hug, squeezing as hard as she can. When she lets go, there is a bright smile on her face.

"Master is the first person who ever missed me. You even summoned me so early... Thank you. Now you have to win the tournament, and I have to get stronger. I’ll make sure to find a good healer and reliable minions, just like you!"

"I wish you all the best, minion. Take care."

"Yes!"

With one last bright smile, she disappears, passing through the portal.

After she does, I reach into my pocket and pull out a folded piece of paper she must have placed while she was hugging me. Slowly I unfold it, revealing a clumsily drawn picture. An image of several stick figures standing next to each other.

One of the figures has two big red dots instead of eyes and is seemingly standing on the body of a giant black something. Probably a wolf. With a pool of red around it, probably meant to represent blood.

And off to the side, stands another stick figure. This one is much more delicate and detailed, showing off the time she must have spent on it. It has black spaghetti-like hair, and by way of eyes, it has two dots, one brown and the other gray.

Yellow flames burn around it as it stands in a heroic pose. There is even something floating in the air next to it. A burrito-shaped blob.

Well, I guess I know what Isabella and Vega were spending so much time working on in secret.

Very carefully, I fold the paper and put it back into my pocket.

Now then, I have someone I need to speak with.

I activate an anchor I left on one of the men from the Hard difficulty group Channeler invited to the sparring match. When I appear beside him, I find him in the presence of the other Hard difficulty attendees from the match with Vega.

"Hey," I greet them.

None of the three seems to have sensed my anchor or my use of the skill, so they jump in place. Their expressions change from smiles to nervousness.

"Hello."

"Oh, hey."

I ignore them and turn to a quiet man who appears to wear the most nervous expression, "What were you talking about during the sparring matches?"

"I... ehm... just about people we know."

"Were you? Who exactly?"

"You heard, right?" He laughs awkwardly.

All trace of the bravado he had while Vega was fighting dissipates, and his arrogant expression has faded, and the man grows extremely tense.

"Go on, tell me," I invite.

"I... I was telling Blue and Jai about how your teammate, that Korean boy, how he atta... spoke with us after the 3rd challenge against his Avatar." He shifts from foot to foot, and unconsciously, he moves mana inside his body.

I laugh, "Oh, I saw it too. It was quite pathetic, right? He almost cried after losing those items."

The man’s expression warps into a look of pure shock.

"I’ve been keeping an eye on him for a while, and he’s always like that. Wallowing in confusion and trying to imitate the people around him. Then acting like a little kid anytime something goes wrong. And damn near constantly comparing himself to the others. It’s pathetic, isn't it?" I say, smiling at him.

"Yes..." The man laughs awkwardly, but I notice that he is calming down.

The smile he gives me is more honest now as he continues, "Man, I didn't know you had the same experience. But it makes sense seeing how you deal with other people. Of course, I don't mean it as an insult!"

"It's fine. I guess it does make sense others see me like that. I don't like people all that much. Well, most of them."

"Yes. But it was amazing what your Avatar did, even though it lost me some shards." He laughs, and his expression reverts to the expression he wore while talking about Min-Jae, "And that boy, yes, such a crybaby. Man, I swear we laughed at him for an hour..."

His body turns into shiny particles as he dies.

Reappearing a few steps away, he has a confused expression and throws up right after. Cold sweat pouring down his forehead.

Hyperventilating, he falls to his knees with a pained expression on his face.

"F-fuck... what..."

"I killed you," I say, coming to a stop in front of him. It's interesting that Hard difficulty attendees endure it so terribly.

"What?! But why!"

"Well, 'killed' might be the wrong word since you can't die here, but you know what I mean." I take a step closer, and he turns into a cloud of shiny particles once again, reappearing a bit further away.

I place an anchor through my extended domain and teleport in front of him.

Just like he did before, he throws up and falls to the grass, shaking and squirming in pain.

"Man, this is pathetic. It's not even that bad, so man up or something, okay?"

"P-please, stop. What did I do!? Tell me!" he coughs.

"Nothing terrible, really. Min-Jae kind of deserved it. But something about the way you’re trashing him pisses me off. Anyway, I have to go. After I kill you the third time, the system’s going to teleport you much further away, and I'm too lazy to look for you. But if you want me to find you again, keep talking shit."

I don't even wait for his answer, and I release another highly concentrated kinetic energy from my Vortex Core tearing his body apart and he explodes into a cloud of shiny particles.

Using one of my anchors I teleport away and watch the countdown until the start of the fourth event.

The 4th event - Duels will start in 1 hour!

Participants will be sorted into 16 groups. 12 containing 148 participants and 4 containing 147 participants.

The winner of each group will advance to the final round, and have a chance to be crowned winner of the 4th event.

Note: No [Restriction] can be placed during this event.

Note: It's possible to forfeit your duel by giving up or focusing on the command "Forfeit."

Finally, the duels are starting soon, and I decide to check my stats one last time.

Name: Nathaniel Gwyn

Difficulty: Hell

Floor: 6 - Astral Prison

Time left until forced return: 3y 359d 23h 58m 51s

Traits (2/3): Mana Circuit 2/3, Mana Wavelength Iris 0/3

Lvl 237

Strength: 113

Dexterity: 110

Constitution: 268

Mana (Stage 1/3 - Vast Mana): 1015 + 1015

Primary Class: Focused Channeler (Epic)

Sub-class: [Initiate of Pride]

Active skills:

Focus - Lvl 49

Perception - Lvl 45

Redistribution - Lvl 48

Resonance - Lvl 45

Mana Domain - Lvl 38

Tether - Lvl 36

Infusion - Lvl 29

Mana Crown - Lvl 22

Mana Manipulation - Lvl 45

Constructs:

Reinforcement (Construct)

Thermokinetic Mana Heart (Construct)

Mana Regulator (Construct)

Mana Sovereignty Mantle (Construct)

Vortex Core (Construct)

Passive skills:

Mana Reservoir (epic)

Arcane Resilience (epic)

Phoenix Embrace (epic)

Mana Overload Absorption (epic)

Cognitive Fortress (epic)

Titan's Backbone (epic) 1/3

Shards: 123,129