“Quite a nice party you have here. Even Mia being herself is not enough to stop things.” Aoi said to Marry as they watched the party continue after Mia’s peculiar display of music.

“How long has she been able to do that?” Toshiro asked.

“Sincerely? No idea. One day my husband found an old guitar among our things just after she came back, Mia tried to play it for a few minutes, did exactly what she just did and returned it.” Marry explained.

“I wouldn’t mind hearing the entire song.” Toshiro said.

“Mia seems to want it too but she can only do those 30 or so seconds of music.”

“Shame.”

“Wish I could host something like this. Sadly, nobles are their own beast.” Aoi commented.

“Lin often tells me as much. Dealing with the common people is already more than enough for me.” Marry said.

“How is Mia doing? I am curious about her state right now.” Toshiro asked.

“Physically? Never better. She is almost getting her cultivation under control and I can see her being able to cultivate by the end of the month. She seems to like alchemy but there isn’t really anything she wants to do that she can.”

“What does she want to do?” Aoi asked.

“She wants to make a pill that allows you to talk to dragons. You need dragon materials for that and her uncle doesn’t have those available.”

“Why would she want that?” Toshiro asked.

“She promised Onyx, her wolf, that they would have a castle with a dragon protecting it. She wants to surprise him when he comes back.” Marry said like she was describing something both heart wrenching and adorable at the same time.

“I heard about the wolf. They seemed close, by what I read.”

“They were almost inseparable. If you look closely, Mia is always unconsciously doing something like Onyx was nearby her. More than once during training she did something expecting Onyx to follow up.”

“Beast and Monster trainers are a rarity.” Toshiro said, insinuating something.

“And they will continue. I don’t know how but Mia has no idea that she can pretty much command beasts freely as long as they are weaker than her, which is now a lot of things. Mia is the type of girl that would feed every stray if she thought she could.” Marry explained.

“Add the fact that she might go to war if any pet she might acquire gets hurt, it’s better we leave this be, right?” Aoi.

“Very much.”

“In that case I am going to grab some food, drinks and talk with people. Have fun ladies.” Toshiro said as he left the two women. They just smile.

—--

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“So, how is the food?” Mei asked Klaws.

“Good. Never ate a lot of these things. The academy has a lot but I think everything has to be healthy.” Klaws said as he was eating a sandwich.

“Yeah, can’t exactly call everything here healthy, but it is good.” Elara said.

“Boy, it’s your turn.” Choi said as he grabbed a fruit from the table where all the food was.

“Ok.” Klaws said as he moved to a table nearby where people were doing arm wrestling. Quite a lot nobles or richer people came to Mia’s party due to an invitation being sent to their kids and while at first they didn’t really know what to do, challenging the men to a physical contest was usually enough to break the ice.

The rules were simple. No cultivation, magic, spells, etc… Just pure physical strength. Everyone’s wins was being tallied by Choi and the one that won the most would receive a prize at the end of the party. Courtesy of Mia.

The women had their own thing too, just not arm wrestling.

Klaws sat on the table and in front of him was someone he knew he was going to lose to. It was Moon’s uncle. He was among the top candidates to win. Everyone had to wrestle with everyone so things were fair and the man only lost twice so far and only because he didn’t take things seriously. Only Huang and Kaki’s father won more than him but they each lost to someone else once.

“You ready?” Celestial asked.

“Yeah.” Klaws responded.

“Begin!” Choi said. Klaws put all his strength into it but after 5 seconds of feeling him, Celestial slammed Klaws hand on the table, winning and tying for first.

“Hey, do you use weapons?” Celestial asked Klaws as they vacated the table.

“No, why?”

“Good, your hands are not suited to that. If anyone ever tells you the contrary, they are lying.”

“Thanks?”

“Kai, it’s your turn, come here.” Choi shouted, asking for his brother. The tournament would continue.

—-

“Cassandra, you are taking this a little too seriously.” Katia said as she watched her classmate try to win the game put forward to the woman of the party if they so choose.

“I want that prize.”

“You don’t even know what it is.”

“I don’t care. I want it.” Cassandra said as she began to put a fake coin on a scale, trying to balance it with the other side. The game was pretty simple, there were 30 coins with different symbols, text and weights. All you had to do to win was to make your opponent make the scales tip past a threshold. Each of the coins only had a different weight on the scale and how much they weighed on the scale was based on the symbol on it. You just had to figure out how the symbols translated to values and you could play the game without relying on luck. Strangely enough most women managed to quite easily assign values to each coin after playing for a round or two.

“Ha! Atoms, whatever that is, are indeed light. Your turn ma’am!” Cassandra said as she put a coin on her side of the scale.

“Well, we certainly are tied now. Only two coins remain. I will take this one, One ton of bricks.” It was Kretia’s, Katia’s mother's turn. She almost went over the threshold but it held.

“Well, I guess this will be the first draw. One ton of feathers is the same as one ton of bricks.” Cassandra said as she put the last coin on her side, only for it to fall down, making her lose the game. “What? Why?” She asked, very confused.

“This game is quite fun. I would love to play this more. The symbolisms are so diverse, there are some things that even I don’t know.” Kretia’s commented. Mia herself made the game with the help of her master. While she couldn’t enchant things yet, her master could and the game was something extremely easy to make.

“Wait, did you figure out more of the symbols?” Cassandra asked.

“I don’t know, maybe? Until we finish I can’t exactly tell you anything, can I? It’s a game of information after all.” Kretia said as she looked at all the women in the living room of the house half-talking to each other, half paying attention to the game. The only one who wasn’t was Katia, who chose to not play because she could remember every little detail of a game and wouldn’t take long for her to be able to reverse engineer the actual weights of the coins.

“I will have my revenge! Romeo, bring me food. Romeo?”

“Moon went out with him a few minutes ago.” Katia explained.

“What do I not pay him for? For him to abandon me?”

“Lose at least one so we can have a rematch. I will be going for now.” Cassandra said to Kretia before leaving

“Quite the friend you have.” Kretia said to Katia.

“Pretty sure she is drunk. That or happy.”

“For dwarfs, both things are usually synonymous.”