Headmasters' office

“I caught an eagle today, it’s safe to say that they’re going through with their plans.” Said Hinata as she was staring at space seemingly focusing on something.

“I guess you can say that’s good, let’s just hope it all goes in our favor. The leader seems incredibly meticulous, and I can’t shake this feeling that this is going to blow up in our face.” Irian and a few other leaders were currently having a meeting on how to proceed with the next two days of the tournament.

“You leave that to me; just do your part and it’ll be fine. I have a feeling that I’ll find out some useful information about my home.” Hinata wasn't born in Aevis, but she never spoke to anyone about her past. Mainly since she had no idea what to even think about the bits and pieces of memories she retained.

“On a side note, is that kid Solstice the son of Ariel?” Hinata has been going through tapes of matches from today trying to see promising candidates for the future.

“Yes, he is, sadly.” Tyrion said with a slight frown on his face, the plan still didn’t sit well with him, but he couldn’t change anything about it.

“I see, that’s a true shame. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, you’d do well to remember that Tyrion.” Hinata was young but had the wisdom of a sage, she often gave weird quotes to people she talked to that had never been heard of.

“I’ll do my best.” With that the meeting was adjourned and everyone began to prepare for the next day of the exam.

—- undisclosed site

“All I need you to do is kill this person two days from now. As long as you complete that I’ll give you what you want.” Alpha 2 said to a man in all black leather.

“I don’t usually kill kids, but I guess the rewards are too much to pass up on. I’ll do it once you initiate your plan, I don’t like attention.” A feminine voice came from the assassin, the assassin was around 5’2 with a fairly slim build and seemed to be a mix of Drow and human.

“Just make sure he dies; we’ve got a lot riding on this, and that kid is going to be an issue if he gets stronger.” Alpha 2 threw a device on the table, and it showed the clip of Solstice grabbing an axe and shattering it with no effort at all.

“Any other information on him? Can’t really go off of a short clip like that.” Like most people in her line of work, they liked to make sure to plan out every detail of their attack and know everything about their target.

“Lots of magic, part dragon, strong and fast as hell, it would be wise to kill him in one stroke. I watched him fight a pseudo-S-Ranker three years ago so I can only assume he’s either S-Rank now or also pseudo, he learns incredibly fast.” As soon as Alpha 2 said this the assassin went bright eyed.

“You’re joking right?”

“Hardly, part of me wanted to end him there but I had bigger plans.”

“That reward is barely cutting it now, but I’ll still do it. Just make sure you draw enough attention.” With that the assassin merged with her shadow and vanished without a trace.

—- Night before day 2

Everyone who made it to the next round of the tournament were either forced to sleep in temporary dorms or inside Inns for the night. Seeing as how Solstice had no money, he decided to sleep in a dorm but to his surprise he was stopped outside of the building by Lily.

“You’ve changed, but so have I.” Lily said with a smile on her face, she had almost completely shed her shy exterior for someone who was much surer of herself and carried herself with confidence.

“I’m glad you found whatever reason you needed to move on.” Solstice knew that she had struggled coming to terms with her brother's injury, only the strong prevail in the face of adversity and clearly, she had enough to move on.

“Before you go can we get food together? I want to hear about what you’ve been up to since I last saw you.” Lily had been waiting outside of the men’s dorm in hopes of seeing him and while waiting kept rehearsing what she would say. Solstice was going to refuse so he could rest but his stomach betrayed him and performed an incredibly loud mating call.

“I know a good place close by that my brother and I loved to eat at.” Lily grabbed Solstice by the hand and dragged him to a tavern in the nicest part of the city.

“Whatever you want I’ll pay for it, I just want to hear you talk.” Lily knew that Solstice was a quiet person and never really spoke too much outside of training so her first step of her plan was to make him talk more openly with her, little steps.

“I eat a lot are you sure?” Solstice being part dragon had an absolutely massive appetite and wasn’t sure if she knew what she was getting into. Little did he know that Lily kept in contact with Bela and covered every base she needed to, little did she know she was encroaching on Luna’s territory of being obsessive.

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Like that a few hours passed and around 25 plates later Solstice was finally stuffed, while in the core room he never had to eat since the mana basically fully replenished everything about his body. Throughout the dinner he had spoken about how much stronger he had gotten and how he was nervous about the tournament. Both of them knew that this occasion was a trap, but nobody truly knew how it was going to turn out.

“If you need help during the attack, please let me know.” Solstice grabbed Lily by the arm, he never forgot his promise with her brother so he would never let her get hurt, or Luna for that matter.

“My father is letting me participate, so obviously I’m strong enough. Just make sure you’re going to be okay and don’t overdo it.” Lily grabbed his hand that was gripping her and held it tightly. She noticed how rough and how many calluses only his right hand had, it frightened her knowing how intense and painful his training had to be for him to be this way.

Watching Lily from a distance was Luna who the moment saw her touching his hand immediately got jealous.

“If that bitch wasn’t waiting outside his dorm that could’ve been me.” A subtle killing intent was radiating in the corner of the tavern, but nobody noticed.

Slowly getting more and more flustered, Solstice finally got up and said he had to go back to the dorm and rest.

“We all have long days ahead of us so we should probably get some shut eye yeah?”

“You’re right, if nothing happens tomorrow do you want to eat here again? My treat of course.” Lily had an incredibly vibrant smile plastered on her face and Solstice couldn’t possibly say no. But before he could say anything Luna appeared out of nowhere and shut it all down.

“Sorry Lily, he promised me that he would go eat with me somewhere else.” Luna couldn’t allow the same thing to repeat again so she had to intervene no matter what.

“Well, if it’s a princess who wishes to eat with him who am I to interject, goodnight, Solstice.” Everyone knew Luna had a deep love for him, she didn’t wish to be enemies with a princess of an entire race, so she knew when to back off.

“I’ll walk you back to where you’re sleeping!” Luna instantly locked her arms with him and dragged him in the opposite direction of his dorm.

“Luna, this isn’t where I’m supposed to be at.”

“I prepared better lodgings for you, so just follow me.” Luna squeezed his arm even tighter and laid her head on top of his shoulder as they walked down the road.

After a few minutes he saw that he had arrived at a hot spring which instantly made him try to free himself. Luckily Luna knew exactly this would happen and had her shadows appear and help her restrain him.

Out of nowhere around five elven royal guards appeared and restrained him.

“Solstice, I love you so much, but you stink so much. We’re both going to go in here and enjoy ourselves, okay? I rented this out earlier today for us.” Luna had possibly the biggest smile on her face anyone had ever seen before.

“We can’t! What would people think!” Solstice was trying with all he had to get free but these people restraining him were clearly as strong or even stronger than he was.

“I’m doing this for us my love. Now come on!” With that Solstice was stripped down and thrown into a spa, after a few minutes of knowing he can’t fight it he began to cooperate, and they even let him wash himself.

Finally, Luna appeared in a towel covering her whole body and slowly stepped into the same giant tub as him,

Solstice saw this and went beet red before turning away and making sure his manhood was covered all the way.

“Disperse.” As Luna said this all of her shadows vanished and left them to be alone.

“I wanted to talk to you privately about something serious.” Solstice had never heard Luna be truly serious about something and clearly what she had to say was something big.

“I found out through quite a few people that the attack is going to be the day after tomorrow. So at least we can prepare well.” After hearing her say this Solstice visibly relaxed a little, he still had to get used to his explosive increase in power so maybe through fighting another one or two matches would allow him to control his physical power more.

Suddenly Luna had a spike of anger which surprised Solstice and even Victor who was sleeping.

“The part that I’m having problems figuring out is this. You’re going to be used as bait to drag them out, and basically sacrificed.” As soon as the last word rolled off her tongue a huge killing intent enveloped the entire spa.

“You’re kidding right.” Solstice was clenching his hand so tightly that blood was beginning to drip. Luna immediately grabbed his hand and forced him to loosen up his grip and hold it.

“I know, I haven’t figured out who brought this plan forward but I’m trying my best to figure it out. So please for the love of God don’t do anything stupid okay? I couldn’t bear losing you…” A tear threatened to form in her eye but she sucked it up so he wouldn’t see her in a moment of weakness.

“I told you kid, it’s me repeating all over again.” Victor had an inkling that something like this would happen but he was always with Solstice so he couldn’t investigate anything efficiently.

“Vic, shut the fuck up.” Solstice had always let him say what he wanted but sometimes he didn’t need a comment from the side to make him feel worse. With that Victor smiled and slowly faded back out of existence.

After a few minutes of cooling down they both got ready, and Luna took him to a new Inn that was away from the busy parts of town.

“I know you prefer quiet places to sleep and all that, so I picked this out personally for you, get some good sleep too.” Luna hugged Solstice tightly which was reciprocated for the first time ever, and they went their separate ways.

After a few minutes passed and Luna was a fair distance away a shadow of hers reappeared.

“My lady, I thought you would tell him the whole story.”

“I know you saw how he reacted over just the idea of him being bait, how do you think he would react if I told him who proposed the idea?” Luna knew who brought it up but even she found it difficult to believe it.

“My apologies for a stupid question.” The shadow vanished away again to leave Luna by herself.

“I don’t know what to do….”