"So I lost..." She said sounding surprisingly cavalier.

Elizabeth looked fine as far as Samuel could tell, even her soul gave him no insights and that bothered him, as he chewed on why he answered.

"Yes."

"How? I cannot remember anything..." She said as she brought his arms to his face clenching and unclenching, her serenity at odds with Samuel's current inner turmoil.

"The enemy you faced was several levels above you. You had no chance. The difference was so much that even if I were in control of your body with my vast experience and knowledge, I would have still lost." He said rapid-fire.

Samuel was obtuse about a lot of things but one thing he still thought of to this day was the first fight he had ever lost.

He was about Elizabeth's age but in the essence condensation realm and he was proud of it.

A little too proud. Pride in one’s own power was alright, but arrogance was far more dangerous. Something he learned from experience.

He did not bother learning or participating in the sect's methods thinking of himself to be above everyone and everything. He only did sect jobs because they paid a lot and Samuel thought himself a master of all trades and tried his hands on every highly regarded profession he could think of.

Now, just thinking of his younger self made him cringe. The memory of his humbling still lay very very vivid in his mind, it was in fact a major reason why he had such a bad outlook on masters and disciples before meeting Elizabeth.

But none of that was important right now. What was important was that the trauma of his first loss haunted him to this day and while he believed he grew from that experience, it also crippled him in many ways.

In fact, after that fight close to a hundred years ago, he had never gone all out ever again, always tempering his power to make sure he had enough to run away if he needed to. That was just how defining his first loss was.

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If not for Lucia... There was a reason Samuel owed a debt to her he could never repay.

If she suffered a fraction of his anguish, Samuel needed to be there. He needed to be Elizabeth's Lucia even if he had no idea what was going on in Elizabeth's mind.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was having an out-of-body experience because she could not believe what had happened in her first match was real. It felt more like a dream and she could not say whether it was a bad one. That was just how surreal she felt right now.

She could feel how much her master was fretting over her, however, and she needed to calm him down. And since she was currently feeling beyond herself she decided to do something very daring.

She pushed her face up from his thighs and pressed her lips against his. Samuel was at first shocked by the action but he let it happen.

A kiss was special.

The cultivator's world was a pervert's paradise, everyone was very interested in genitalia and other secondary sexual characteristics because it was the most common way for cultivators (disciples made up the vast majority of cultivators) to increase in strength.

A kiss, however, gave no such benefits. The contact of lips held no such inherent value. What it acted as was a sign of affection, it was the surest way to convey love to your partner as instead of going on them for some sort of power-up you instead take their lips to show you cared about them beyond that.

Obviously, some people did not think of it as such and Samuel was unique in that Elizabeth could feel her power rising as she lapped up his saliva but both were beside the point.

She did this without knowing that even a kiss from him could nourish her to show him that she was fine and that she loved the care he showed him.

Knowing how obtuse her master was there was a real chance that he would not realize this. Whatever, he was at least going to calm down because he could figure out that if she was doing her usual antiques she was fine.

But her soul was actually hanging on a razor's edge, her wins in the tournament so far were a big reason why she could go back to her bubbly self.

She felt that if she kept getting wins she would bring enough value to Samuel not to be a burden to him, something that had only amplified since Eishath had joined.

Her first fight was over so swiftly that her mind coped with it by making her take it as a dream and move on.

Her tribulations were yet to be over and the truth of the matter was, she had not the will or the arrogance to come out on the other side a better cultivator. But the die was cast and she was vehement to walk it.