25 Start with something small, ... like a Castle

Aaron was entering the arena with an unexpectedly good mood. He still did not know what exactly happened to Myra during her trip to the border, but it would just take some time.

It did feel nice that she trusted him enough to honestly share her experiences and all those things about her past that troubled and worried her. It made him feel special and being someone special in Myra's heart in turn made him happy.

He looked at his heavy blade and gave it a few swings, doing his best to get ready for the actual duel. One could usually wield the sword either with two hands or with one. It was longer than a regular longsword, but not long enough to compare with weapons like those clunky two handers.

He could sense the excitement of the weapon spirit inside, a weapon spirit who, unlike those of Nell and Alyn still had no name yet.

With his strength and coordination far beyond a normal human person, wielding the blade with one hand was nothing special to Aaron and he often wondered if he should also wield a shield, or a second weapon of some kind, but in the end, he liked his one handed style.

This time his opponent would be a knight, compared to the mage he defeated last time. The mage didn't really pose a challenge, as his defenses and barriers didn't hold and before he could even go on the offense, he was already defeated. Aaron was curious if the knight would be able to hold out longer.

Using magical power to improve his movement speed and decrease his weight in order to allow him to walk even on vertical surfaces for a short time, did not seem like anything special, but how one would use these abilities was highly dependent on one's skill and techniques.

Mages had their spells, while knights had their weapons and techniques. Obviously a monster like Myra would have both, but comparing a normal student with her, was like comparing the durability of a wall made out of straw to one made out of steel.

Aaron was not from a noble family, but not only was his innate talent and ability to learn good, but he also was lucky enough to have a grandmaster teach him for a while when he was still a child.

While this grandmaster had left after a few weeks, the techniques he taught were not only mastered by Aaron, but he even used them as a basis for his own set of movements and skills.

His opponent managed to block and counter the first few of his hits, but soon he could not keep up with Aaron's movements anymore. Step by step he had to retreat and each time he defended against one of the blows, his situation became more difficult, while he was totally unable to properly retaliate and start an attack of his own.

In the end, he was hit by a wave of magical energy that was released at one of his blind spots from Aaron's sword. Not able to keep his defenses up, his protective badge was hit, ending this round of the duel.

Exaggerated cheering could be heard from outside the arena, where Myra, Nell, Liam and Alyn had watched his fight. Myra was obviously bored. Even though she did her best to look cheerful and she truly was happy for Aaron to win, watching the fights was simply not enough to catch her interest.

'What would we have to do to prevent her from getting any more silly ideas, like going into battles on her own?' Aaron wondered.

He soon realized, that Myra was simply too strong. There seemed to be no challenge in a normal fight, as such they would have to offer her a different kind of challenge. One that seemed meaningful enough to spark her interest and one that was not dangerous, because he did not want to worry all the time.

It did not take long for Nell, Liam and Alyn to ask what Aaron was thinking about and soon after they were all deeply entranced in a discussion about things for Myra to do without blindly rushing off into battles on her own.

It was very simple actually. Myra wanted to keep her family and friends safe. She loved to create and explore. She also seemed to like good food, music and comfort.

First of all, they would need to get stronger. Even with all her strength, Myra could not be everywhere at the same time. They would need to be strong to at least be able to stay at her side even in dangerous situations, or to help her protect her friends.

As personal power was not everything, they would need a lot of influence. You could not be free without making your own decisions and even though Myra was powerful on her own, with a backing from her own 'empire' far away, she really had no real standing in the Luminos Empire itself.

Without influence, you were just a powerful lawless rogue, but nothing more. Even if fighting against a whole empire on your own would be possible for someone like Myra, it was not really an ideal situation.

Of course wealth would also come in handy. There was nothing wrong with being filthy rich when you had big projects.

With these things in mind, unknown to Myra, the little group of friends planned their big projects. It was an odd situation for a group of students to make plans on this scale, but whenever they thought about Myra, not only were they confident that they could achieve them, but they also had a feeling that anything smaller would not be able to hold her interest for long.

The ideas that came up became stranger and stranger. In the end, they didn't even bother to bring up things that made sense anymore. Maybe having fun was reason enough after all?

--

When the tournament was finally over, the results were more than decent for the small group of friends. Myra would not show up in the rankings, but Aaron made it to the very top. His excellent skills that he had worked on for the last years had already made him strong and with Myra's help with his spirit weapon, this strength became even more pronounced during the tournament.

It did not come as a surprise that he would win this year's tournament without other challengers among the students even coming close to his strength.

Nell, Liam and Alyn had a really decent ranking for their own age category. They were never at the very top of their classes before Myra helped them, but now they could compete with pretty much anyone of similar age.

The prices they obtained were not bad at all, just exactly what they needed to start with some of their plans.

"Hey Myra, we have something to discuss!" Nell announced during one of their meetings after classes were over. Usually they would just play games or study after classes, but with everyone gathered it seemed to Myra as if this was not one of their usual afternoon meetings.

"What is this all about? You look as if I am the only one not informed about what's going on." Myra seemed really confused. If her birthday were any time soon, she might have guessed it is some surprise birthday party, but it was still several months before she would turn 15 years old.

With all of their excited faces, it couldn't be something bad either. Nell and Aaron might be able to trick her by acting, but Liam and Alyn were just too honest. She would easily notice if something bad had happened just by looking into their faces.

"We want to start a trading company!" Nell explained. Well, he didn't really explain anything, he just stated what they intended to do really.

"Why would you want to start a trading company?" now Myra was really curious. This was the first time she heard of any plans like this.

"To gather wealth!" Nell's answer really didn't tell Myra more. She felt a little bit dumb when she asked her next question.

"And why do you want all that wealth?"… "To build a castle!"… "A castle?"... "Yes."

At this point, Myra nearly wanted to give up following Nell's logic further, but she couldn't resist in the end.

"Why do you want a castle?" … "WE want a castle not just me, unless you don't want to join us!" … "Fine, if it makes you happy, why not. But what would we need a castle for?"

"It doesn't have to be a castle exactly. We could also found a town or something. We need a base of operations, best would be in some region where no country or empire has a claim yet."

Myra wondered if Nell had hit his head somewhere or if she was in a strange dream, but she let him continue to explain this strange kind of logic anyways.

"If you have your own place, you no longer have to pretend being from a place that doesn't exist. You can also make sure your family has a home and they are not always at risk of being chess pieces in some power scheme for some faction."

By now all of these close friends were aware of her special circumstances. She told Aaron first about her real identity, but once she realized that he was still treating her the same way as before she decided to tell the others as well.

"That sounds kind of odd, just to protect my family." Myra was not really convinced.

"Well, … to be honest it started out with a discussion about how to protect your family members and prevent you from running off to who knows what battleground just because you get bored." Nell admitted after some time.

"Things got a little bit out of hand when we wanted to build a big mansion. Nell said it would be too small for you, why not just set up a kingdom." Liam added bits and pieces of their earlier strategies and discussions, one crazier than the other.

"Wouldn't our own kingdom, or whatever you're planning, have a lot of problems that we don't have now?" Myra always believed that she was the one with odd ideas, but her friends were obviously far better at coming up with crazy things.

"Also what do you mean by me running off to some battlefields." her confused look turned into a frown. "You make it sound as if I would be running off to some dangerous place every other day!"

"Well, you did in the past, without even telling us!" Nell tried to argue.

"One time Nell, it was just one single time! I already told you I'm sorry and won't do it again without informing you first."

"Okay Myra, you have a point! You are right that none of this makes a lot of sense. We were just worried about you." Aaron seemed to admit defeat.

"Of course I am right about it! All of this is totally silly! Good that you finally understand that as well." Myra seemed to calm down with the argument obviously over.

"Could we do it anyways? It sounds like fun, I would really love to see the outcome of creating a kingdom." Aaron had a rather big smirk on his face. After having countless arguments with Myra with all of them ending with Myra tricking him into going against common sense, he finally managed to turn the tables on her.

"That was really sneaky." Myra did not say more. She had used her relationship with Aaron countless times in their arguments before, now that he used the same tactic on her, it was really hard to say no.

Later during dinner, there was an unusually large amount of vegetables piled up on Aaron's plate. Aaron frowned at his plate for a while before starting to eat with a slight sigh. He really preferred the cute side of his girlfriend. This vengeful aspect was rather scary!