The moment Reno left the dorm’s training room, he heard the doorbell ring.

When he went over to answer it, he checked to see who was at the door.

“Who’s there?”

Upon hearing a voice, the android that was delivering Cassia’s food responded.

“Food was ordered by Cassia Arwen for this dorm shared by Reno Mochizuki and Cassia Arwen.”

Reno then opened the door and received the food the android was carrying. The android then bowed and left to go back to the cafeteria.

He then called out to Cassia that her food had arrived. “Cassia! Your meal’s here!”

After waiting for some time and not getting any responses, he then just carried the food to her door and placed it in front of it.

‘She must be busy with something, I’ll leave it here for when she’s ready”

Right as Reno was about to leave, he heard a pained grunt coming from Cassia’s room followed by her screaming out in pain.

Getting worried for Cassia, he rushed inside to see what was happening to her.

He saw Cassia on her bed with blue mist surrounding her and sparks of light flashing around the blue mist as if they were sealing the blue mist. The strangest thing was that the entire room seemed to be undisturbed even with everything happening in it.

Nothing was out of place in the room except for Cassia and whatever was happening around her.

Reno initially wanted to rush right in and save Cassia but something was ringing in his head that was telling him, to stay away.

It might’ve been common sense or maybe his sixth sense but he knew what he was seeing was way out of his league.

While Reno was contemplating what to do, a small burst of the sparks of light occurred and around 3 or 4 miniscule sparks were about to land on Reno.

Being wary of the entire situation, Reno drew his sword and stood at guard the sparks of light flying at him.

[Parry]

When the sparks of light touched Reno’s blade, he flew out of Cassia’s room into the hallway wall and spat out tons of saliva.

“What the fuck! How the hell did I take so much damage!? Not only was I parrying but it was just some sparks sparks of light.”

Reno quickly checked to see if he felt any internal damage but he felt fine.

Realizing it was not the time to be surprised, Reno ran to the kitchen and got a whole dish of water, went back to Cassia’s room, and then tried to throw it on Cassia in an attempt to wake her up.

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Before the water even reached Cassia it instantly turned into water vapour.

Reno was getting even more worried and was brainstorming other ways but before he could try to put any of these ways into action, Cassia opened her eyes and all the phenomena around her vanished, as if they never appeared.

Cassia breathed out a sigh of hot air. ‘I’ve condensed around less than 1% of my energy but progress is still progress’

‘I wonder if my food has arrived yet.’

She got up and turned around to see that Reno was outside her room which caused her face to turn red.

“R-Reno! Uhm, you see, I was just meditating, yea, meditating, that’s it!”

Reno was dumbfounded. ‘Meditating!? Isn’t that supposed to bring inner peace, yours seemed to have caused war instead’

He didn’t believe that it was something as simple as meditating but he had no right to question Cassia.

Reno just showed her the food that had arrived for her and then was about to leave.

Cassia grabbed the back of Reno’s shirt to stop him from leaving. “Uhm, just in case, please don’t tell anyone I was meditating here alright?”

Reno nodded. He had his secrets and obviously, Cassia had her own. He knew she had some special circumstances from the day she moved into his dorm.

“I won’t tell anyone but in exchange, make sure to give me some of the food you ordered. That feels like a fair tradeoff to me”

Cassia seemed surprised. ‘You won’t tell anyone about it for some of my food, is it that simple!?”

Cassia had seen her uncle and others like him give off lots of valuable items such as weapons, skills and more just to buy the silence of others in the past but Reno was fine with such an arrangement for some of her food.

Cassia was worried and racking her brain for anything else she could offer Reno.

Reno saw her face and got an idea of what she was thinking as she was easy to read.

“We’re friends so just this food is enough, any more and Grania would never let me live it down”

Cassia then stopped racking her brain. ‘Friends are like this? They’ll help you keep important secrets for something as simple as food?’

“Let’s eat before it gets too late”

Knowing he wouldn’t get anywhere waiting on Cassia, Reno took up the food and led her to the kitchen.

She followed him and helped him to get plates from a cupboard while Reno started sharing the food.

The food that Cassia had bought was a grilled steak, a bottle of orange juice, and a pumpkin pie.

It was originally only for one person but Reno shared it equally among the two of them.

Cassia had originally sat a distance away from Reno but after some protest from Reno, she sat right beside him.

She was very nervous but as time went on, she got less tense.

Reno was just eating the food, sharing some stories that the original Reno and he had while saying how good the food was in between these stories.

Cassia chucked at most of these stories because of the way that Reno told them while almost choking on orange juice at times.

‘Friends… I thought it would be impossible for me to make any due to how shy I am, even my uncle said that it would be difficult but I think that Reno and even Grania are my friends, hopefully, they see me as a friend too.”

Reno and Cassia had finished eating after around 35 minutes and were then washing the dishes and cleaning up.

Cassia mustered up a whole deal of courage and tried asking Reno a question.

“Uhm, R-Reno, you would say that we are friends, right? Or is that too bold of me?”

Reno was surprised. ‘How pure is this lady, even friends are a big deal in her eyes it seems’

“Yup, we’re friends, not as close as Grania, but we’ll get there eventually, unless you disown me or something haha”

Cassia was happy. “I won’t disown you! Trust me!”

Reno nodded his head. “If you say so”

The two then finished cleaning up and went to their respective rooms after saying goodnight to each other.

Reno had a cold shower, brushed his teeth, shaved, and then got into his pajamas before basically diving into his bed.

‘With theory focus I’ll reach proficiency four of parry tomorrow, I’m getting stronger as fast as possible, hopefully, it’s not too slow a speed”

With the power that Cassia had shown, Reno had another rude awakening of how flimsy his life was.

If someone else heard what he said about not too slow a speed though, they might faint.

To be able to reach from proficiency one to three in an hour would be taken as a joke by anyone. That’s how unbelievable it was.