“You’re a sweet cat, aren’t you? Just like your Master…. Haha.”

Shadow struggled under the girl's shoe, it tried to scratch and bit her to escape, but its infant claws and fangs couldn’t pierce the thick shoe fur. Ivy laughed at the beast’s futile attempts of escape.

If it wasn’t for it being only a few months old, she would never try to play with a shadowcat. Actually, she couldn’t care less about the pet, her actions only meant to bait the stupid boy into attacking her so she could have a reason to beat him up a little.

Ivy hated how much attention and protection the boy got. She was one year younger than him and had already advanced to Invoker, but still wasn’t enough to overshadow the death Candidate.

If she was the one with the death affinity she wouldn’t waste the Duchess efforts because she was afraid of killing. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Ivy only had a poison affinity, she only got the despised and being used end of the stick, while Reaper held all the glory in the House.

Ivy’s father tried to convince her daughter not to antagonize the young Master, if not because of his deadly element, because he was the Duchess’ son. But Ivy wouldn’t listen, the Duchess never reprimanded her before, why would she start now? Anyway, she wouldn’t kill the boy, only break and scar him a little.

When Ivy thought about the Duchess, she felt another spike in her heart. How could she be Reaper’s mother? He didn’t have a small finger of the woman’s majesty and power, he was the true meaning of worthless.

Ivy smiled wickedly and placed her hand above the pet’s tail. She closed her eyes and searched for the connection with her element. It wasn’t difficult to find it, although she secretly desired to be a death Mage, the poison element suited her. To establish the connection, she only had to let the feelings of contempt and disgust ran freely inside her.

Once she felt the toxic feeling of poison, she pushed it towards a finger to form a faint green-ish mist before pinching the finger with a needle.

Instead of blood, a green liquid dripped in the shadowcat’s tail, making it hiss and moan in pain. Ivy only watched the domesticated beast curiously as the poison continued to fall on its tail.

“You can’t even resist a weak poison… How will you become a medium tier (MT) beast? I guess you’ll be stuck as a weak cat, just like your Master…”

A strong desire of killing the pet rose in the poison Mage. She couldn’t resist it and moved her Poisonous Finger towards the shadowcat’s head. However, her intentions were interrupted by the pet’s Master.

Reaper saw the torture scene and became enraged before pushing Ivy away from Shadow.

“Your Origin hatter psycho! Stay away from Shadow… It’s okay Shadow, it’s okay. I’m here now… Let me see if she hurt you… If she hurt you, I’m gonna hurt her too!”

“Hahaha… And who will young Master call, to hurt me? You aren’t suggesting that you, a Candidate can hurt an Invoker, are you? That would be… Hilarious…”

Reaper fumed with anger, he had endured Ivy’s bullying for years but he couldn’t take it anymore, she had gone too far. He remembered how his instructor feared him earlier and decide to embrace that feeling. If his destiny was to be the harbinger of death in the hands of his mother he would embrace it, but everyone would have to fear him too, he wouldn’t accept the bullying and mistreatments anymore.

He felt a strong sorrow build up inside of him before his vitality started dropping, he felt sick but pushed through it. Soon, the uncomfortable feelings vanished and he could calmly think of what to do.

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The Mage in front of him had already advanced to Invoker, which meant she could cast elemental spells and he would die after being hit by a poison spell. Despite being formed by the combination of death and water energies, a strong poison could affect and even kill him.

Reaper was only a Candidate, the first and weakest level of an Elemental Mage. Fortunately, his element was special and even a Candidate could perform some tricks. The instructors told him about some techniques that even he could use, but how they worked exactly, nobody knew.

That was one of the downsides of having an extremely rare affinity, there would be little to no knowledge about his elemental spells. To complicate matters further, practicing the death element was prohibit in the Serion Kingdom, which meant that once a death Mage was found it would be hunted down by the Royals.

Reaper pushed all the unuseful thoughts aside and focused on what he knew, which was that he could use his connection with the death element to decrease the vitality of others. He didn’t know or wanted to know how to do it before today, but after this morning’s incident, he guessed it.

The feelings that overwhelmed him when he absorbed the death energy from the wolf connected him to something deep inside, he could still feel the terrifying presence. Reaper concentrated and search for that connection again.

Surprisingly, he found it easily, almost giving up on it when the dreadful feeling poured into his heart. Reaper steeled his heart and pushed through the dark feelings, before he realized, he was already moving towards Ivy.

Instinctively, Reaper knew what to do and didn’t delay it, his unexpected attack didn’t give time for the poison Mage to react. She tried extracting energy from the poison crystal in her ring to cast a fast spell, but Reaper’s hand got to her chest before she could.

Since he wasn’t counting on having a second chance, Reaper had to inflict as much damage as he could. Because of his affinity, he knew that a person’s life energy would be concentrated near the heart so he put all his effort into reducing the vitality in that part.

When he touched her, Ivy felt sick and tired, dropping her attempt of casting a spell completely. Reaper saw the opportunity and kicked her towards the room's wall.

Reaper was already leaving the room with Shadow in his arms when the furious Ivy stood back and ran towards him. She felt outraged and humiliated by the Candidate, if he walked out unscathed she would be mocked by the entire Castle.

Ivy didn’t care about limits anymore, she had to take vengeance and clean her reputation of his stain. She extracted a large amount of poison energy from the ring and started to form a Poison Dart above her hand, only stopping when the ring’s energy was dried up.

Their attendants were watching the fight since the beginning but didn’t dare to interrupt their Masters. However, Ivy was going too far, she even extracted all the energy of a MQ crystal, turning it useless. If the Poison Dart hit Reaper, nobody could say if he would survive, not even with his high resistance to negative effects.

The attendants started to scream, pleading for her to stop.

After seeing Reaper’s scared expression, Ivy was finally able to smile again, a wicked smile of course.

.........

Alice was looking for Reaper to show him her newly crafted bubble crystal jewels when she heard a big commotion.

After seeing the desperate Dolan screaming in the entrance of Ivy’s room, she ran fearing that something bad would happen. She knew that Ivy didn’t like Reaper but never thought the poison Mage would do something serious against him.

She entered the room and was met with the scene of Ivy forming a Poison Dart to attack him. Alice was speechless by the amount of poison energy the girl had put into the attack, even standing inside the room was difficult. If she hit Reaper with it, he would die.

Alice’s heart skipped several beats, the situation passed slower in her head. She had to do something or the crazy girl would kill her friend, but how could she stop Ivy? She only started her advancement to Invoker and wasn’t considered much compared to the poison Mage.

She prayed that Ivy would see sense and would dismantle the spell. Unfortunately, the girl was too far gone in her vengeful feelings and pushed the Dart forward.

Before Alice could process, she was already running towards Reaper. He was very close to the door so she would end up hit if she stepped closer, but she didn’t care. Alice only thought about protecting him.

The need to protect Reaper grew strong in her heart. Before this moment, Alice already knew about her feelings for him, but nothing was more important in her heart than being free and being herself, but in less than a second, everything changed.

The strong protective feeling towards Reaper became as important as her freedom. In the milliseconds that Alice moved forward and the Poison Dart traveled towards him, she realized something, the part of her element that she didn’t understand yet became clear and she was finally ready to advance.

A bubble appeared from Alice’s necklace and grew big enough to circle her and Reaper. She hugged him tightly as the Poison Dart clashed against the bubble.