Book 2. The Grand Gathering. Chapter 21. Overconfidence.
“Just a little while longer,” Fohan thought with a smile, waiting for the remaining sand in the hourglass to all spill down. He glanced at Luren who was waiting patiently near the armchair he was sitting in, a look of approval appearing in his eyes. The preparations for a bloodless takeover of the Valius family had been concluded swiftly and perfectly; his master of shadows never failed to disappoint.
“Luren, are you certain the kids’ camps’ didn’t sniff anything out?” he asked, the last thing he wanted right now was for the Great Martial Schools to get involved.
“They know nothing of our intentions,” Luren assured confidently, on the surface keeping a perfect emotionless mask… but deep inside worrying restlessly about Zhira’s failure to divide that new alliance. “I really didn’t want to resort to extreme measures, but it doesn’t look like I have a choice… He’s got his orders, it’s all up to Zhira now,” he thought in secret, still unsure how exactly he was going to explain his actions to Fohan.
“So all has been set in place,” Fohan said with a devilish smile, the last few grains of sand falling into the lower bulb of the hourglass. “Let us go, it’s time to pay Garon a personal visit,” he said and laughed ominously, his one hundred years of planning and scheming finally beginning to bear fruit.
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“You are getting so angry over so little. It’s annoying, you know?” a familiar voice of a young girl resounded within Siana’s mind. Siana tried to ignore the voice, instead thoroughly concentrating on mastering the first stage of ‘Crimson Blood’, the Qi manipulating Art of the Red Dragon School.
In the past few days, she had finally advanced to the peak of the fifth mortal realm. Originally she wanted to master the basic level of Crimson Blood as fast as possible mainly to impress her big brother, but now… she just wanted to take her mind and thoughts off of Laien.
“Gaah, you are just so… Damn, who cares about your heart issues, at least stop skewering the Crimson Blood like that! You will damage your Qi Origin!” the voice yelled in Siana’s mind, doing so loudly enough to make her head start hurting.
“Stop telling me what to do, Seira!” Siana also raised her inner voice and shouted wordlessly. She did, however, stop meditating on the Crimson Blood, knowing that in the end, Seira was right with what she was speaking about. Yet, did she really need to mention her big brother now? She didn’t want to think about him! After giving her longsword an angered look, she pouted and threw herself on the bed, hiding her face in a pillow.
As a result, the longsword laying at the bed began emanating an annoyed, baleful aura; a sign of Seira’s impatience and frustration. Perhaps if not for their spiritual link Seira wouldn’t have really cared, however, she couldn’t help but sense all and any extreme emotions of her master’s. Not much needed to be said that being constantly aware of Siana’s inner struggle was making her mad.
“Why don’t you tell him clearly what you want? How is he supposed to notice it when you say one thing but do another?” Within the clouds of Siana’s consciousness, a ten-year-old girl with long, fiery red hair appeared. She was sitting cross-legged and was leaning forward with her hands on her knees. Judging from her expression, she was on the verge of losing it.
“What should I do?” Siana thought reluctantly. In response, the spiritual image of Seira smiled and spoke amiably.
“Stupid girl, just approach him and tell him what you expect from your relationship. You want him exclusively for yourself, do you not?” Seira asked plainly, getting straight to the heart of the matter.
“But what if he refuses…?” Siana thought in response. Would she be able to disregard her feeling and return to being normal siblings? She definitely wouldn’t!
“Better that than to keep beating yourself over it until he finds a girl he really falls in love with,” Seira responded with a snort. “I don’t understand what you are so worried about. I get that you keep thinking you can’t compete with his male friends since you are a girl… but isn’t it exactly why they also can’t compete with you?” she pointed out, pretty sure Laien would choose her if he were made to pick between his little sister and a friend of his.
“That’s…” Siana sat down, realizing she really hadn’t tried to think about this problem from a different perspective.
“Also, you both are just kids! What can you know about true love?” Seira pointed out, getting a bit ahead of herself since Siana had agreed with her on the previous subject. “I think the deal you two have now is pretty reasonable. You keep your relationship to more than siblings but less than a couple; your brother is right in that you should interact with other people and only then see if you really want to be together for life or if it was just a mistaken childish curiosity,” she spoke her feelings, for a while forgetting what kind of reaction Siana usually had when her maturity was questioned.
“Are you suggesting I should honestly consider being with someone else than big brother?” Siana asked coldly, the anger surging up within her bringing Seira back to her senses.
“Didn’t he make out with that whole Alex girl? And didn’t you join them?” Seira asked, even herself getting confused about Siana’s reasoning. Was having her big brother kiss another girl and kissing that girl herself fine, but Laien getting too close with his male friends was so unacceptable?
“Big brother obviously didn’t treat her seriously,” Siana replied calmly. She wasn’t that worried about other girls to begin with… and as for herself doing a few naughty things with girls; she was only playing around.
“And how can you be sure?” Seira asked with a shrug of her shoulders. “If he really came to like her, wouldn’t he have started dating her?” she questioned, recalling that it was exactly the deal Siana had with her big brother as she even pointed out to her a moment before.
“I…” For once, Siana appeared to be at a loss for words. She used to hold great confidence in herself so the thought of losing to another girl didn’t even occur to her as something real, but now that her self-confidence had been injured by Anatis and Yin… she became unable to completely dismiss Seira’s words.
“Listen, I’m not telling you to start dating boys randomly. Just consider them as an option and hang out with them! You don’t even have any male friends apart from those you know through your big brother,” Seira suggested, hoping to one way or another get Siana to stop pouting and grieving over silly things.
“How can I? Compared to big brother, they are all so…” Siana thought resignedly. Truth to be told she wouldn’t even look at boys who weren’t at the level of her big brother’s friends… but she couldn’t possibly try doing something as stupid as trying to date Sinra or Yin, could she? Just the thought of how it would play out was making her feel nauseous.
“So?” Seira picked up, getting rather frustrated by Siana’s obsession with her big brother. “They are so what, so inferior? So not to your liking? So annoying? They can’t understand you?” she kept asking, seeing no other way for Siana to deal with her problem than to finally talk about it. “How could they even understand you if you’ve never given anyone a chance and never opened yourself up to anyone else than your brother?” she questioned insistently, set on seeing this matter through to the end right there and right then.
“…” Siana groaned quietly and laid down on the bed, looking at the wooden ceiling with an absent gaze. Was it really like Seira was saying? She could never like any other boy because he never considered any of them to begin with? Was it similar with her big brother…? But unlike her, Laien was actually open to meeting and getting to know new people?
Now that Siana thought about it, just what was she expecting of Laien? Did she really want the two of them to make a decision to spend the rest of their lives together when they were still ten and twelve respectively? Just like Seira was saying, they were still kids! Forget the matter of being actual blood-related siblings, they were too young to be making lifelong-lasting decisions.
“Whatever,” Siana said quietly, her body and mind relaxing by the second. “I will approach him in a serious way after some years pass… for now, I will just do what big brother is doing and take everything easy,” she decided, the unpleasant tension disappearing from her heart.
“Thanks, Seira,” Siana thought wordlessly and chuckled when the crimson-haired girl in her mind puffed her flat chest and smiled proudly.
“Solving a problem or two is nothing, nothing!” Seira exclaimed excitedly, what resulted in Siana suppressing an unladylike laughter. Seira was always acting so high end mighty, but wasn’t she, in the end, a little girl just like she was?
“I will need to apologize to big brother for storming out like that… I hope I didn’t destroy the good mood,” Siana mused to herself. Looking at the past week or so from this new perspective, she really had been behaving incredibly childishly; it was quite embarrassing indeed.
“It’s good to have Seira around…” Siana hid her thought properly, meanwhile finding herself caressing the hilt of her longsword affectionately. When she realized what she was doing she couldn’t help but recall Rudford’s habit to often pat the hilt of his own sword; he must have gotten quite close with his own weapon after over one hundred years.
The sound of somebody knocking on the door woke Siana up after she had dozed off without knowing how or when. “Come in!” she called out and peeked out of the window, noticing that even though it felt as if she had only closed and opened her eyes, she somehow managed to sleep through the whole day; it was already pitch-dark outside.
“Vinny, Lisa! You knew I was here?” Siana greeted her two friends in the hallway. “You know I came back here?” she asked and smiled at the two girls.
“I heard some boys speaking about how they saw you walking with a furious expression on your face and emanating an icy aura, even more so than always. I bumped into Vinny on my way and here we are,” the fifteen years old Lisa answered somewhat awkwardly.
“Big sis got dumped by a boy, she told me that she thinks you also got dumped~” the eight-year-old Vinny commented playfully and peeked at Lisa’s sunken face from the corner of her eye.
“Oy, Vinessa, what are you saying?! You little, lying monkey, come here!” Lisa shouted angrily but failed to grab her cousin who immediately hid behind Siana. Pursing her lips, she sighed helplessly; that was the point where she would lecture her younger cousin, but right now she really wasn’t in the mood for doing that.
“You aren’t even chasing after Vinny, you must be really depressed. Want me to comfort you?” Siana said with a smile, feeling much lighter on the heart now that she had stopped worrying about Laien.
“What is it, what is it? You aren’t even sad! What’s going on, were you really dumped by your big brother or not?” Vinny inquired out of curiosity, in her excitement forgetting to switch Laien’s person to ‘some boy’. It wasn’t like everyone in the Red Dragon School didn’t know Siana was interested solely in her big brother, but her friends would usually avoid pointing it out to her face.
Siana laughed cutely, in a manner which would make any boy blush and start fawning over her. Only when it was a little too late did she realize she once again started rubbing the hilt of her longsword, grateful to Seira for the talk she has had with her. “I’m beginning to turn into Rudford…” she thought with a silent laugh, her behavior confusing her two friends even further.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“I was worried because of big brother, but I think I will be fine now,” Siana explained vaguely, expecting Vinny to keep asking anyway… and the eight-year-old naturally did just that.
“Did some good-looking girl start hitting on your precious big brother? How come you are here and not with them?” Vinny asked away, unable to wait to hear what kind of adventures Siana’s big brother was going through. To her, Laien’s escapades and conflicts with the nobles all over the city, the duels he fought with their strongest disciples, the Prince he met..! His life was like a dream or some kind of fairy tale!
Siana shook her head with an understanding smile, then said rather lightheartedly. “Big brother started getting along a bit too well with Anatis and the boy he had fought against in the semifinals… I couldn’t watch it anymore, so I left early.”
The next second, Siana felt her neck and shoulders stiffen as she heard the loud, excited ‘kyaa!’ from Vinny. “Both those lovely guys and your brother? I wish I could see that! Hey, come on, tell us some more!” Vinny spoke enthusiastically, urging Siana to go on. She had seen how Anatis and Yin looked during the tournament, so her imagination was already going wild.
“I can’t tell you much more though. I left, remember?” Siana reminded with a smile. Now that she was more cool about it, however, she needed to admit that just like Vinny she would have loved to have seen what Laien ended up doing with those two… just the thought was enough to make her blush a bit.
“Aw, too bad. I wonder if something interesting happened after you left?” Vinny suggested innocently, not really understanding what she implying.
“Lisa, what is it?” Siana spoke up, noticing how her older friend wasn’t getting into the conversation she normally would have loved to be a part of. “Did you really get dumped by a boy? What’s going on?” Siana asked, worried if something bad hadn’t happened to Lisa.
Lisa appeared to be startled by the attention, what was quite unlike her. “Y-yeah. But I don’t want to talk about it too much…” she only replied awkwardly.
“Buu,” Vinny voiced her complaint as she very much would have liked to listen to the story. Still, both Vinny and Siana were aware how stubborn and serious Lisa could be when in a bad mood, so neither of them pressed the matter and instead changed the subject.
“Is there somewhere you would like to go to? You know, to relieve some stress. I could use such a place, too.” Siana suggested, seeing with her own eyes how depressed Lisa was at the moment. “Did she really fall in love this time? She has never before behaved like that after a catastrophic date...” she questioned silently.
Lisa gave Siana a long look, pondering about something with heavy heart. In the end, she said plainly and in a low voice. “Some of my more distant family came to the Grand Gathering…” she began saying but didn’t finish the sentence, simply unable to force the words out of her throat.
“Fine, we can go visit them.” Siana agreed to go without being asked. Right afterward, Vinny also called out excitedly. “I’m going too! Say, are there any cute boys there?” Siana muffled a chuckle with her hand, poking Vinny’s side with her elbow. Since Lisa was just dumped, it wasn’t nice to be talking about love around her, at least for today.
“Fine…” Vinny conceded with an unhappy expression. However, just a few seconds later she returned to her bright self. Grumbling over something so minor wasn’t like her at all.
“Vinny, you should stay here,” Lisa didn’t order, yet didn’t suggest either. She simply said it in a shaky, yet forceful manner.
“Be wary of her, she’s being strange today,” a warning of Seira’s resounded within Siana’s head. Actually, even without Seira mentioning it, Siana noticed how strange Lisa was behaving. She was acting in a forced, hesitant way what was totally unlike her usual confident self. “Don’t worry, I will be careful,” Siana replied with a brief thought.
“Why? Why would I need to stay? Why you two can go but I can’t?” Vinny argued back without a second thought. Staying behind when only Lisa and Siana would be having fun? That would be too unfair!
“That is… Just listen to me for once and stay!” Lisa raised her voice angrily, surprising Vinny with the sudden outburst of hers.
Apart from when she was really mad, Lisa never shouted at her. Why now? She didn’t do anything bad! Feeling that she was being unjustifiably wronged, Vinny got angry with her older cousin. “I’m coming with you and that’s it!” she shouted back, adopting a stubborn expression.
Lisa opened her mouth, but then closed it and didn’t say a word. She looked at Siana and then at Vinny, her behavior growing stranger by the second. “Well, suit yourself. Let’s go.” Having said so, Lisa turned around and started walking slowly. She then peeked behind her nervously, trying to confirm if Siana and Vinny are following her or if they aren’t; thankfully, both of them were.
“Don’t let her lead you to any strange places. Even better, don’t go with her at all. This woman reeks of malicious intent,” Seira commented, seeing how Siana followed Lisa thoughtlessly. What was this girl thinking? Seira knew Siana wasn’t stupid enough not to realize what was going on… but then, what was her reasoning for still playing along with this poor act on her friend’s part?
“Lisa must have some reasons. Nothing should happen if I follow her for the time being, I want to see if I can help her out,” Siana explained, but Seira rolled her eyes, not convinced at all.
As Seira saw it, the best course of actions for Siana would be to forsake this friend of hers and report to one of the Elders that something strange was going on. But would Siana agree to do that? Of course, she wouldn’t. Having a stubborn master like Siana really was a quite a headache; there were problems on top of problems with her!
“Hmph. Do as you wish, ‘fourth master’,” Seira said with a frown and with those bitter words as a farewell, retracted her consciousness to the Red Dragon Sword.
Compared to the three previous owners of hers, Seira liked Siana the most. Parting with her prematurely would be a pity… but it wasn’t up to her to decide what her master would do. Even if it was something dumb, perhaps Siana needed to be allowed her mistakes if she was to ever mature into a powerful expert.
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After about an hour of walking, the three girls arrived at the outskirts of the Two Weeks City. During this time, Siana and Vinny chatted with each other while Lisa rarely said anything; her thoughts obviously were somewhere else.
As for why Siana kept following Lisa even though the area she was leading her and Vinny into was getting suspiciously devoid of people… In simple words, Siana was smart but just too naïve and inexperienced. Although she had gone through a lot, she had always relied on her big brother to solve all problems. Even after getting into the Red Dragon School it was always Laien who went out and interacted with the world while she preferred to keep to herself most of the time; this lack of proper awareness was about to come back and bite Siana back a hundredfold.
Merely after walking for another one hundred meters or so the already few people who were still around just went and disappeared, the sudden sensation of danger causing Siana to turn around on her heels. She immediately saw a man covered by a black cloak who was blocking the way out for the three of them. Judging from the man’s aura, he definitely wasn’t someone they could take on.
Siana took a step back, the first thought of hers being of the escape. She looked at the nearby roofs, but could only gasp when she saw numerous black-cloaked characters guarding every escape route possible. “How? There was no one there a second before! And how come all those people disappeared too?” Siana questioned wordlessly, having found herself in a serious peril.
“All according to the plan, ha. Boss, they are here!” the man closest to the girl shouted, paying close attention to Siana and the other two. Clearly, he wouldn’t let his guard down and let the prey run away by an accident. Also, he seemed not to care how loud his voice was.
“No point in yelling for help, then…” a resigned thought of Seira’s surfaced in Siana’s consciousness. Remembering Seira’s warning, Siana grit her teeth; she really shouldn’t have tried to work everything out by herself…! But Laien always did just that, so she was sure she’d somehow manage too. Regrettably, she had had no idea what she was getting herself into.
“There they are, huh? Wolf, how did it go? No problems on the way?” Another black-cloaked man appeared from within the big storage house on the other side of the courtyard. Followed by his three subordinates, the black-haired man walked up to Siana, paying the other two girls no mind.
As the black-haired man approached, Siana felt her heart sink. She suppressed trembling of her body, trying to maintain composure. With her acute senses, which were already quite close to reaching the level of the real ‘Battle Sense’, she could tell very well that this black-haired man was powerful. Even compared to the man blocking the way out and the other three black-cloaked men, who all almost certainly were in the Realm of Heroes, he was incomparably powerful.
“Fifth Realm of Heroes…” Seira commented resignedly, confirming Siana’s presumption. As one of the 81 Heavenly Treasures, Seira had a few special abilities of which one allowed her to sense the power of those who were close enough to her.
“Haha, it went easier than expected. ‘One of the three Great Martial Schools’, what a joke. Their security was so leisure that just by threatening a few disciples of theirs to deliver a few messages to correct people was enough to lure this girl out. By the look of it, she just went with her friend without asking anything, there was no need to prepare this made-up story at all.” the man guarding the way out, ‘Wolf’ answered with a chuckle. He gazed at Siana with pity, looking down on her carelessness.
“The ‘great genius’, ha. Rudford really overestimates his disciples. Maybe there is no need to be so worried about her brother either,” the man commented cheerfully. They had gone through so much effort to conflict the Red Dragon and Twin Phoenix Schools and lost a group of martial masters as a result. They should have abducted one of those siblings much sooner!
“Suck it, Wolf. You’d better be careful when this brat gets here. If you aren’t you will end up being killed by him,” the leader of the black-cloaked men rebuked angrily. He hated it the most when his subordinates didn’t take their job seriously.
“You serious, boss? The brat is at the seventh mortal realm, and only as a worthless spiritual practitioner! How could he possibly kill me?” Wolf asked with a laugh, surprised that his boss would be so wary of a twelve-year-old kid. He couldn’t imagine an average expert at the first or second Realm of Heroes being a threat to him, much less a brat who still reeked of milk.
“Had you seen how this brat fought at the Royal Arena, you wouldn’t be yapping your filthy mouth. With your lacking defenses, that brat is fully capable of killing you with one well-aimed attack. The same goes for all of you. Understood?!” the black-haired leader growled angrily, sweeping his subordinated with a cold gaze. The four men all straightened up and nodded, then bowed their heads slightly as they acknowledged the order.
“Wait… wait a second! ‘Made up story’? What do you mean by that?!” Lisa finally snapped, overwhelmed by the surge of conflicting emotions.
The five black-cloaked men all smiled disdainfully. The man called ‘Wolf’ replied in a manner as if he was explaining something really bothersome to an idiot. “Did you think we would have gone through all the risk of capturing or preparing to take lives of your family at any given moment? What if someone noticed? It was much easier to just lie to a stupid little girl like you. But look at the bright side, at least you didn’t need to lie to your friend to keep her mouth shut and come along, or ‘my family will be killed!’” Wolf shook his head and laughed, enjoying the look of despair on the fifteen years old girl’s face.
“Y-you can’t be… no… no!” After hearing the truth, Lisa started breaking down. At the same time, Vinny started realizing what was going on. Both girls were about to panic, however before they could…
“Enough. Wolf, put the unnecessary nuisances to sleep,” the leader of the men ordered emotionlessly.
Wolf acted instantly and without hesitation. After all, he had been taught to act quickly and obey orders. He moved with a blur, leaving a trace of shadows behind his figure. He delivered near simultaneous blows to Lisa’s and Vinny’s necks, then grabbed them by their clothes and threw them in the direction of the storage house; from which two lower-level subordinates of the black-haired man emerged and caught the two.
“Would have rather killed them, but no can do. This time the goal is to bargain,” the black-haired man said resignedly, not used to letting witnesses live. “Now, what do we do with you, little lady? Will you cooperate, or do we need to subdue you like your friends?” he asked, fine with Siana choosing either of the two options. The end result would still be the same.
Before Siana could answer, however, another group of people appeared. The leader of the black-cloaked men frowned discontentedly when he saw the bunch. “Finally here, you brat. You went and begged Master to let you join this mission, so don’t get in the way. Also, since you finally got your ass over here make yourself useful and take this little missy upstairs.” Clearly, the black-haired leader didn’t hold the arriving youth and the youth’s subordinates in any regard at all.
“Naturally, Master Zhira.” The young man didn’t as much as allow his facial expression to change when Zhira was cursing him out. “Capture her, be careful not to wound her though,” he ordered his own elite servants. Those seven subordinates of his, however, couldn’t be compared to the elite black-cloaked troops led by Zhira. Six of them were merely at the seventh mortal realm with only one being at the eighth; they also trained ‘merely’ in a high-level martial art. Yet, the young man couldn’t see them having any trouble with this little girl. Her brother… was a monster, but was she also one? Unlikely, as far as his opinion went.
“I can’t wait for him to show up.” The eighteen-year-old young man snickered, smiling with a satisfied expression. Had Laien been here, he would have instantly recognized him… and would have regretted not dealing with him properly in the past!
“Young Master Masi, don’t worry. Although we’ve been prohibited from hurting this girl or her friends, there are still many ways to play with them. Just wait for that brother of hers to show up, he will be so furious but so helpless,” the man at the eighth mortal realm reassured. Coincidentally, he was the one closest to Siana so he planned to subdue the girl quickly and maybe have a taste of her when no one looked, but then something he could have never imagined happening happened. A ten years old girl daring to attack while surrounded by so many hostile people? It didn’t even cross his mind until he saw the flash of steel approaching his neck.
Zhira raised his eyebrows, surprised by the speed at which Siana drew he sword and slashed out. He could have intervened… but couldn’t be bothered to react. His black-cloaked subordinates also noticed what was going on in time to act, but they wouldn’t move without being ordered to.
The man at the eighth mortal realm started at Siana with bulging eyes. He saw blood dripping from the blade of her longsword and opened his mouth to say something… but at the exact time, his head slid off of his neck and fell to the ground, the still beating heart of his sending spurts of blood out of his body which fell to the ground a second later.