Nothing made sense to Olivia, no matter how hard she thought it over and tried to put the missing pieces of the puzzle together.

  For a moment she sat silent, going through her exhausted memories of what had happened between her and Alec after the vampire assassins had been dealt with. After that final, catastrophic strike from the blue-haired teen that had nearly flung her sky high before she’d even fully realized what was happening.

  But nothing came to her, all she could remember was the bone-deep exhaustion that had made itself at home in her body from head to toe and how comfortable her sleeping bag had felt in that exact moment in time.

  Truthfully, she didn’t even know how long it had taken her to fall asleep, that was how tired she had been after a full day of running and then a fight for her life.

  …Life.

  “Noelle!?”

  Her head whipped left and right as if she would somehow see her sister from within the room that she sat in. Her eyes wide and frantic, even as a voice within her own mind told her that it would be ridiculous for them to place the both of them in the same room, especially considering the damage that had been done to Noelle.

  Therefore, when she saw Noelle sitting in her own bed at her side, covered in dull green bandages with a still pale complexion and a soft, shaky, smile; she paused dead in her tracks. Her eyes were wide, unable to believe what she was seeing was actually reality and not some sick, twisted illusion that someone had cast over her.

  “I’m right here. It’s my job to worry, not yours.” Noelle giggled softly, though the younger Kio sister was able to tell that the action still hurt her sister a little.

  “Wha- You took a water beam through the abdomen! Of course I’d worry!” Olivia argued on instinct.

  Yet now the mystery of what the hell had happened while she was asleep only grew stronger, for Noelle to not only be in the same room as her, but –moderately– healed and awake as well.

  She didn’t dare to think that her sister was anywhere near top form, not with her complexion as pale as it was and not with those particular bandages wrapped around her. As a daughter of the Kio family, mocked or not, not being able to recognize Vitalo-Wrap when it was so blatantly being used was out of the question entirely.

  “I’m a mage, I’m built tough. I’d worry about you taking that shot a lot more than me.” Noelle responded easily, ignoring the small twitch of her sister’s fingers if she even noticed it at all.

  ‘Built tough? Your body may be better at dealing with mana, but I know for a fact that a [Gold-rank] Knight could take hits that would drop you and stay standing.’

  Despite her annoyance though, Olivia couldn’t help but be thankful that her sister at least felt good enough to try and –somewhat futilely– proclaim mages better than the martial combatants of the world once more. It meant that she at least had some energy to spare, even if it could be put to much better uses.

  “Uh huh.” She deadpanned before flinching slightly as the pain from her sudden movements caught up to her.

  She should have known better than to react so hastily, and now she was paying the price for it. The price, as it turned out, was far, far more painful than she had ever expected it to be.

  “Careful, neither of us are exactly back to full-strength.” Noelle cautioned, despite the fact that the state she was in was far, far worse than Olivia’s own.

  “I know I know.” Olivia mumbled on instinct, raising a limp-wristed hand to shoo off Noelle’s doting. “Speaking of, why are we in the same room?”

  “I asked that actually. There was a healer in here when I woke up.” Noelle cut off her sister’s question, having seen her open her mouth and knowing her well enough to at least take an educated guess on what she was going to ask.

  When her mouth closed once again, she knew that her guess about Olivia’s question had been right and gave herself a mental pat on the back well done.

  “She explained that because we were siblings, it was likely that seeing one of us up and about without the other there would lead to some panic. So, to try and avoid that beforehand they put us both in the same room after they were done dealing with the worst of our wounds.”

  Ok, Olivia could understand the reasoning behind that. Especially since she had instinctually panicked and done something stupid when she hadn’t immediately seen Noelle, lending considerable credence to the idea.

  The hazy memory of a report of an entire room being demolished in the Adventurer’s Guild branch in Zveil’s capital pushed itself to the forefront of her mind before sinking back into the depths of her memory once more. She was sure that incidents like that were exactly why they chose to do this, especially when you had siblings of considerably higher rankings involved.

  “Makes sense.” She muttered quietly while nodding.

  She wanted to add in a comment about Noelle’s reaction if Olivia hadn’t been in the room as well, but she didn’t want to do anything that could potentially inflate her sister’s ego if she could get away with it.

  “Yeah…I’m glad that everything turned out alright in the end. Even if I would have preferred not to be outplayed by a mass of water.” Noelle huffed, crossing her arms carefully and puffing one of her cheeks up.

  “It did trick you pretty well. Do you think it was close to becoming a Lord?” Olivia questioned, remembering the uncanny way that it had caught onto the trick of Noelle’s protection and thought of a way around it.

  “Uncomfortably close.” Noelle responded grimly, the most serious and sober that the younger Kio had ever seen her in her entire memory. “Another couple of months and it would have been enough to officially qualify, I’m certain of it.”

  “Goodie.” Olivia groaned with a roll of her eyes and a small shiver. “At least its dead now.”

  “Youuuu’re welcome~” Noelle hummed smugly, expecting praise from her sister, only to falter when nothing came her way.

  “Really?”

  Noelle’s bright expression chipped and cracked as her eyes moved away from Olivia, then back to her, and then away once more, the older woman seemingly unable to keep her gaze on her sister for more than a second at a time. Slowly, seemingly unbidden to the woman herself, a light blush of embarrassment spread over her cheeks.

  “Oh, and I heard about how I managed to get here so quickly. Thank you.”

  “Eh?” Olivia blinked in stupefaction at her sister’s words, her expression wide-eyed and slack.

  “Looks like my lessons on Mana Enhancement and Magical Contracts paid off after all!” She grinned brightly, propping her elbow up on her drawn-in knee and resting her chin on the heel of her palm.

  “Eh?” What was she talking about? She never even once mentioned those things to Alec?

  “Next time, instead of having to run all the way back here with me and that cute boy on your back, I’ll be sure to drill the teleportation formula into your head so you can use that instead. Promise!”

  “Eh?”

  XXXxxxXXX

  Three Hours Later, Dragon-Scale Academy

  Alec huffed in exhaustion as he sat down on the side of his bed, his growing fringe stuck to his sweat-soaked, bandage-wrapped forehead and the dull, wooden practice blade in his grip finally allowed to fall weakly to the floor.

  The bandages around his hands made it a bit awkward for him to keep his regular grip on the handle of the blade but he’d made do. He’d fought tooth and nail, and lied quite egregiously, not to be trapped in the Guild’s infirmary for a reason after all.

  The fact that staying in the infirmary would mean that the healers would, undoubtedly, ask more questions about the nature of the mission and what had happened had nothing to do with his decision to stay out of it. Definitely not.

  Already he’d been forced to write a report on the events of the mission considering that it had led to a [Gold-rank] placed in the care of the Guild’s healers and somehow only a single, incredibly injured and exhausted, [Iron-rank] left standing. If the Guild’s healer’s hadn’t been involved he wouldn’t have had to do such a thing, at least not to his knowledge, but unfortunately they had.

  Luckily the details of the battle with the Water Elemental didn’t need to be twisted in the slightest and the reasoning behind the vampire assassin’s appearance, and who had dealt the final blow, was easy to twist to give Olivia her well-deserved moment in the spotlight to try and help her out. After what he had learned from her about her feelings towards her family and all the emotional turmoil that he had accidentally caused her, it was the least that he could do.

  Not to mention that it meant that after they had patched up the worst of his wounds and half turned him into a walking mummy, they had allowed him on his way, chalking the lack of mana they could feel in him to the sheer exhaustion that clung to him like an almost physical cloak.

  They had been right at the time, of course, but he helpfully left out that they also wouldn’t be feeling mana from him for a little while now. A consequence of what he had, had to give up in order to actually get the Kio sisters back to Zenik as quickly as he had.

  Which brought him back to the current moment, where he stared at his bandaged palm and flexed his fingers. His face scrunching in effort as he tried to bring up the small spring of mana within him that Alexandar had helped to unlock, only for it to wisp out of his grasp each time like a mirage. His body once more, in a way that it had not been since leaving Kret, perfectly ordinary and unassuming.

  It was…an odd feeling, he had to say. He had gotten used to the quiet feeling of mana within him, of drawing on it when he needed to push himself or instinctively when he got spooked. Now though it just sat there, placid and impossible to grasp no matter what he tried, not that he was surprised by that. He had been the one to decide the terms of his own Magical Contract and so it wouldn’t exactly be easy to loophole it, not that Alec was exactly in a rush to try.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  There was a lot that he didn’t know about magic and contracts, Alexandar hadn’t been the most forthcoming person in the world for such knowledge but he was also far from a [Sorcerer] or [Mage] himself so he could see why the man hadn’t been in a rush to tell him of any particular intricacies. So, he had no clue what would happen to him if he tried to break his contract with himself and had no real desire to find out at this exact moment in time.

  Even his attempts at trying to bring his mana to the surface, currently, were about as half-hearted as he could make them. More of a bored inquisitiveness than an actual, true grasp at answers like he would have expected out of Angelica.

  ….Or Peter if left bored for long enough. He’d seen that spiky-haired dumbass do more than his fair share of potentially dangerous things in the past just because he was bored.

  Alec always maintained that something had to be watching over the Kroll siblings for Peter to have made it so far in life with no mutilating injuries, let alone with as few scars as he had.

  There was an argument to be made that the ‘thing’ watching over him was just the bluntly spoken Felicia, but that also didn’t explain just how he got away with as much as he did.

  Three short, loud, knocks on his door dragged his attention back to the here and now with startling speed, leaving him just a moment late in getting up to open the door. Which, rather unexpectantly, led to a further three knocks that went up in force with each and every one.

  “I’m coming!” He called out, quickly jumping to his feet and answering the door.

  At least as quickly as he could with his tiredness and injuries.

  “Can I help- Olivia?” Alec blinked owlishly in surprise and mild alarm as he opened his door only to stare directly into two burning red orbs.

  Why was she here? How was she here? Shouldn’t the healers have kept her in the infirmary for a lot longer?

  “You.”

  ‘Uh oh.’

  “Uh, me?” He tried to respond lamely, only to jerk back as she jabbed a finger into his chest.

  She took two strong steps forward and he took two equally long steps back to try and make some room between him and the pearlescent-haired ball of wrath that had once been Olivia Kio. So busy was he in backing up to give himself a bit of space to try and respond properly that he never had the time to notice her reach behind herself to grab the handle of his door and slam it behind them.

  “Oliv-!” Whatever he was about to exclaim never went said.

  The click of the lock on his door seemed to make his tongue go numb for a reason that he was utterly unable to comprehend, giving the young woman a look of equal parts alarm and confusion.

  “There. Now no one is going to interrupt.” She huffed.

  “Interrupt what?” He asked cautiously, still able to feel the anger wafting off her like steam off a freshly cooked stew.

  “Me asking you what the fuck you think you’re doing?” She scowled, crossing her arms and glaring at him as if he had lit her childhood pet on fire.

  It was so vicious that for a moment he almost wondered if he had done such a thing, before his more rational mind caught up and slapped him upside the head for being such an idiot.

  “I…practicing?” He questioned, pointing between his hands and his wooden blade as if that alone would somehow prove his claim true.

  “First of all, you’re as bandaged as I am, that’s a completely stupid idea.” She growled, eyes trailing down his form and stopping subtly each time she caught yet another bandage over his form.

  “I…Y-Yeah.” He muttered, unable to really come up with an excuse to defend himself against that particular argument.

  It was a bit hard to argue against logic when your argument basically just boiled down to ‘I was curious and bored.’ after all.

  “Second of all, why on Zetia’s Twin-Continents, did you put in the official report that I was the one to land the final blow on the assassin’s and bring both of you majority of the way here?” She hissed, her arms already unfolded and at her side; her fists so clenched that he was legitimately worried her nails were going to draw blood soon.

  “Well you did take out the assass-“

  “Don’t you dare-“ She stopped herself for a moment to try and take a calming breath.

  It, expectantly, did not work.

  “Don’t you dare try and weasel your way out of this with a technicality. I had nothing to do with the death of their leader, that was all you, and I certainly had nothing to do with getting the three of us back here as quickly as we did.”

  Alec opened his mouth again, his practiced excuse already on the tip of his tongue. Living with three friends, that were practically siblings to him, from childhood had given him great practice in reflexive lies to place the blame on someone else and protect himself, though this was admittedly a much different situation to back then. Unfortunately for him, however, despite the fact that Olivia didn’t have that same instinctual reflex to lie and deflect blame when put under pressure, she had grown up with actual siblings and could spot such lies from kilometers away.

  Even before they were spoken aloud, it would seem.

  “No. Shut up. Me briefly fighting him in the middle of the fight and screaming at you does not count as assisting the killing blow.”

  His expression fell flat, and he clicked his tongue on reflex as she cut his excuse off before he could say anything, averting his gaze as her glare sharpened and she took a step to press into his personal space yet again.

  “Did you just click your tongue at me calling out your bullshit?” She interrogated him, placing both of her hands on her hips.

  “….Perhaps.”

  “Godsdammit Alec, I read that report you wrote!”

  “You did!?” Alec startled at that knowledge; he didn’t think that anyone except actual employees of the Guild would get to see such a thing.

  He had, rather embarrassingly, forgotten about the fact that she was a member of the Quest and thus was allowed to look over the reports made by others to fill in points that they may not have had full knowledge of or been missing for.

  “Yes! And you basically wrote yourself out of it entirely! What the hell were you thinking!?”

  Alec pressed his lips together and looked away from her for a moment before he let out a long, tired sigh and looked down at her once more. His expression somehow both tired and worried in a way that just confused the pearlescent-haired girl.

  “You were telling me about how your family looked down on you for not being good at spellcraft right? It's not quite the same but…I thought that this should at least help.” So many of their issues in the two months that they had known each other had been caused by their lack of communication, so the least that he could do is actually talk to her now that she was here and asking.

  As much as he would have honestly preferred her to just accept the situation happily and not question it.

  “That’s- I-“ She seemed to struggle to stay angry for a moment, clearly having not expected him to have a –mostly– altruistic motive behind his tampering.

  Finally, however, it seemed like she re-found the flare of anger inside her and stomped her foot lightly once to jump-start her angry tirade once more.

  “I don’t want their approval to come from things that aren’t true, Alec.” She huffed while leaning back and crossing her arms once more. “I want them to realize that I’m worth just as much as they are through my own efforts and achievements! I…What you did came from a kind place but it's not what I want.”

  As she stressed that last word, complete with a hand over her chest and a softening of her glare, he couldn’t help but feel that same guilt from two days earlier settle into his gut once more. It made sense, what she was saying, and he honestly felt pretty silly for not considering that point of view earlier but….well he had no defence. He had just been looking for the quickest, easiest way to try and settle the frantic, vibrating feeling beneath his skin and that had been what he’d settled on in the heat of the moment.

  “Ah. I….didn’t think of that. Did it at least work?” He attempted, looking for some kind of positive point within this seemingly eternal list of mistakes that he had made.

  The slight, embarrassed, blush that crossed her cheeks as she was suddenly the one to avert her eyes gave him some hope at least.

  “Yes. It did. Which is why I’m so annoyed at you.”

  “Oh, well that’s good at least.” He said truthfully with a small grin, resting his weight on one leg and a hand on his hip.

  “Don’t try and put some kind of happy spin on this, Dius.” She snapped, getting a nervous laugh and a weak surrender from the teen in return.

  ‘Ah back to last name already? One step forward and two steps back….’

  “Ok ok. I won’t, promise.”

  “Good. And I hope that you’re prepared because I’m going to absolutely beat you black and blue in sparring for this little stunt.”

  “Oh, no doubt.” He nodded, absolutely assured that she would be able to follow through with her threat. “Especially at the moment.”

  “Huh? What does that mean?” Her glare was back with a vengeance, but far more on the suspicious side of things than truly angry.

  He’d count that as a win in his book, even if it was more of a pyrrhic victory than anything else.

  “Well…to get the both of you back within one night I…may have had to make a Magic Contract with myself.” He admitted slowly, feeling her anger slowly returning as her own mind no doubt churned through the possibilities faster than he’d ever be able to.

  “What the hell did you offer in exchange for speed like that, Dius?” It wasn’t a question, despite her inflection and wording, he knew that for a fact.

  No, Olivia was demanding that he tell her. And he had the sinking feeling that she wasn’t exactly going to take ‘no’ for an answer.

  ‘Note to self. In the future just don’t say anything and leave it be.’ He deadpanned internally before finally answering her.

  “Well, uh….In exchange for being able to move that quickly, I’ve lost access to my magic for the next two weeks.” He admitted, once more idly trying to draw on his magic and finding nothing there in its place.

  “I- You actually went that far?”

  “Well, Noelle’s condition was getting worse and… I just didn’t want anything worse to happen. It, uh, took some getting used to. I crashed and dropped you a couple times over the journey…” He admitted sheepishly, scratching his cheek.

  “That explains all the injuries on me that weren’t there when I fell asleep.” She muttered with closed eyes and a small nod of her head.

  Alec gave a shaky smile at her seemingly calm response, only to yelp in pain as she reached out and flicked him in the head so hard that he stumbled back and fell onto his bed once more.

  “Ah! Shit! Gods- Did you just use magic!?”

  “Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. You’ll never know.” She grinned smugly down at him, buffing her nails on her shirt uncaringly. “Looks like I’ll just have to make the most of these next two weeks.”

  “H-Huh?” He gave a confused look up at her, only to freeze up at the way her eyes almost seemed to dimly shine in the shadow of her fringe and the corners of her lips stretched just a little too far to be comforting.

  “You think after that conversation that we had and this humiliation that you’ve made me suffer that I’ll just leave you be? Oh no no no, Alec. Good luck getting rid of me during your cooldown because I’m going to be helping you out from sunrise to sunset.”

  “That sounds…vaguely threatening, Olivia.”

  “Good.” She reached forward and grabbed the front of his shirt, hauling him off his bed and towards his door quite handily.

  Without his own mana there wasn’t really much that he could do to fight back against her mana-enhanced strength, despite his best efforts.

  “Let’s start now, shall we?”