‘Oooh~ It looks like something really happened’ Cathia kept prying Talia’s expression to make her give more details. Talia tried to avoid it by turning her face, but each time Cathia moved to keep her gaze on her. She was like a playful cat, tormenting her poor prey. She was purposely blocking the path leading to the corridor where the stairs were.
“Something happened up there, right?”
“M-Maybe.”
“Ummm, is that so? You don’t mind giving me more details, don’t you?” Cathia completely cornered Talia, causing her to have a drop a sweat on her face. After a few seconds, Cathia was still standing in front of her, not letting her the chance to make her way to the stairs. Before her, Talia was quite bitter about the situation.
‘I’m the strongest Protector, the number one of the ten Ylas! I was called the Otherworldly Blue Devil and my apparition on the battlefield was enough to make my enemies shiver! However, it seems that such thing is totally useless before the mother of my girlfriend…” Talia was not being prideful about what happened during the past 50 years. Nevertheless, she could not help but feel a bit bitter about how powerless she was when she was facing Sanya or even Cathia.
In the end, Talia decided to give up. She raised her face, which was a bit red as she realized what she was about to say. Cathia was quite surprised with her sudden reaction. She first thought that she would have to ask her daughter about it, but it seemed that Talia was about to answer her.
“C-Cathia!... I love your daughter! We are dating!”
Cathia’s face turned expressionless causing Talia to feel nervous as she waited for her reaction. Honestly, she was not really sure if telling it to her without Sanya was a good idea. But, the pressure was too much and she was not sure that she would let her go.
After several seconds, which seemed like years for Talia, Cathia opened her mouth, only to say one thing.
“At last.”
“...Eh?” Talia had a dumbstruck face as she was not sure what she just heard. What did she mean by ‘at last’? Noticing her reaction, Cathia gently rubbed her head.
“It’s been more than 3 years since you knew Sanya, nearly 4 years. I never saw this girl being so attached to someone like this, to care so much about someone. Each time I was looking at the two of you, it reminded me of my youth with her father.” Talia was silent as she was listening. It was not the first time Cathia was talking about her husband to her, but this time it's seemed different from before. Cathia’s gaze wandered in the air.
“I can clearly see it in her eyes when she is with you. She is as happy as I was when I was with her father. So, I knew it was only a matter of time before the two of you started dating. You know, I don’t really care about the gender of my girl’s lover. What I want is her happiness. In fact, if instead of you she brought home some random dude, I would have been quite pissed off.”
“Since my husband passed away, Sanya rarely smiled. She really was attached to him, so what happened was too much of shock. Since then, I tried my best to make sure that we had a stable life. Because of this, I had not much time to try cheer her up. It's for this reason that I am grateful to you. You were here for her when I could not.” Catia hugged Talia for a few seconds before releasing her.
“Take care of my daughter.”
Talia took her words to heart and an intense feeling burned up inside her. Cathia approved of their relationship and even gave them her blessing. Talia’s eyes were shining with a desire to protect, making Cathia to nod in satisfaction, but also to be surprised inwardly. It looked like that Talia’s personality changed over the last week. However, this was for the best as she would not have to worry about the future.
Cathia moved from the way to let Talia pass. Now that she knew what she wanted to know, she could let her go get Sanya. “Go get my daughter.”
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Talia smiled in response and took a step forward.
Suddenly,
A familiar sensation swept all over her body, making her accelerate her thought process to the maximum speed! From Talia’s view, the world seemed to have frozen. No, it was not frozen, it was just moving very slowly.”What is going on?! This sensation! What is he doing?!”
Talia spread her mana in all the directions, trying to detect something. She could shape magic directly with her mind, but mana was still stored inside her body. The transparent mana was enveloping an area of around a few hundred of meters around Talia. The density of the mana impacted its visibleness. The denser it was, the more visible it would be. Talia wanted to check the situation, so she didn’t need a large amount, resulting in its low density. In fact, even with this low density, she found something. Talia’s senses sharpened as she scanned the world around her.
'There is one place isolated from this world...Wait, it’s just above me! Sanya’s room!’ Talia was becoming more and more confused. She totally knew what was happening. The problem was that she didn’t know why it was happening. She continued to think about it as she was invoking magic in parallel.
Unlike her mind, her body was moving at very slow pace. She could not move at the speed that she wanted because it would cause sonic booms as she would have to surpass the speed of sound. Cathia was still here, so the shockwaves would be harmful to her.
Talia’s body started to shine in a faint blue light. Blue particles were floating around Talia in a slow motion, which was still faster than the rest of the world. The slowness of the magic made Talia impatient.
‘Seriously, what is thinking, this stupid big lizard?!’
--------------------------------------
“Seriously! What is going on with this world?!”
Inside Sanya’s room. A man who looked to be in his twenties had his head in his palm while being sitting cross-legged on a round couch. The man could be considered very handsome by earth standard. His body was quite tall, at around 1m80 and muscular lines were visible under his clothes.
“I picked up a depressed and powerless girl because my senses were telling she had a great potential. You don't say! A year later she absorbed the crystal core of an Arklan! A few dozen years later she ate a whole freaking Seraphin!”
However, some of his features showed that he was clearly not a human. On the top of his head two pairs of black horns, one big and one smaller were pointing backward, amidst his long fiery crimson hair. He was dressed in a lossy wide sleeve white robe that was reaching his knees. The white robe was attached with a black leather belt, and he was wearing something like a black shirt that reached all the way up to the base of the neck. The lower half of his body was covered by a white trouser with its ends inside his black boots. He was wearing a few colorful bracelets. A scaly red tail was sprouting from the back of his waist. The end of the tail finished with three sharp points.
“And when I try to reach the head of the state, I end up talking for hours with a crazy guy that tries to get information out of me about the origin of the abilities and the secrets about others worlds! Some kings and emperors kneeled down before me and even revered me as a god! Meanwhile, this shameless four-eyed mortal thought that I was some kind of database!”
The man’s figure was a bit transparent. In fact, the whole room had strange things here and there. It was like someone took a part of a room, made it a bit see-through and added it on top of Sanya’s room. For example, the man was sitting on a couch, but the couch itself seemed to pass through the bed. This gave the feeling of the holograms that could be seen in movies.
“And finally, when I want to discuss with my subordinate’s girl, who is a simple human, I see her wielding the Radiant Bell like she has been using it for months! Hahaha!” Saying this, the man slapped his own tight as he could not control his laugh. His vertical slit red eyes were focused on the only other being in the room.
“Hahaha! Really, Did the World Transition only happened 40 years ago or has it been several millennia? Truly refreshing!”
“...”
Sanya didn’t know how to reply. She was currently enveloped in something like a transparent sphere. It was reflecting the light in the seven colors of the rainbow, just like a bubble of soap. In parallel, the choker around her neck was shining in a golden glow. the source of the light was the numerous tiny-sized tunnels inside the bell. These tunnels were emitting a golden colored light.
Sanya looked alternately at the sphere around her and the man that just showed up. She felt both anxious and surprised. She was feeling anxious because she didn’t why this man just appeared and why he started laughing after speaking nonsense. However, she knew that she would have to deal with it alone as Talia was not here. Nevertheless, she had a small guess about the identity of the person.
The reason why she was surprised was only about one thing.
“You are the one called Lord, right? The Head of the Protectors of Worlds?” Sanya felt her heart sped up as she spilled out every single word out loud. The light of the bell changed in intensity as she tried to control the shape of the barrier around her.
Everything had happened several minutes ago.