Flight Test

"It's done?" Loki asked curiously while looking at them.

"Yep." Kisuke nodded at Loki before turning back to Ais and asking, "How do you feel?"

Ais and the Dragon silently stared at each other for a minute or two before the former answered, "I can clearly feel her..."

'So it's a girl?' Kisuke thought as he suddenly grabbed the Dragon by its wings and took her off from Ais's arm, "Now, let's test something to confirm everything is functioning as intended."

Ais tried to reach out to grab Lysa back, but she was already out of reach as Kisuke had immediately walked away with her, "What are you going to do?"

Kisuke didn't answer her and reached the window, opening it. While the rest were just watching curiously, Kisuke peered through the window and confirmed his intentions, "Yosh. This looks good."

Although she didn't know why, Ais suddenly became very nervous at what Kisuke was doing, "W-what looks good?" And that nervousness was also transferred to Lysa as she started shaking.

Kisuke ignored Ais again and placed Lysa on his palm as he grinned at her, "Today is a happy day, Lysa-chan~! As my congratulatory gift for the successful contract and your name bestowal, allow me to let you experience a high-speed flight~! It's going to be fun."

Knowing his capabilities and personality, Riveria was able to guess what he was about to do, "W-wait, Kisuke... Think about this. You don't have to do this. It's obvious that there are other ways."

"There are, but this way, we'll see how effective that feature is," replied Kisuke as he placed a protection spell on the shaking Dragon. With a glint in his eyes, Kisuke took his hand holding Lysa back before swinging it hard towards the window.

Within a fraction of a second, Lysa had already disappeared from everyone's view, leaving a horrified screech of a young Dragon, "NO!!!" Ais yelled in horror as she hurriedly peered through the window in an attempt to find her new friend.

With Lysa's fear resonating within Ais, she immediately turned around in anger, but before she could speak, Kisuke's hand chop landed on her forehead, "You idiot. The first thing you should do when you feel that your familiar is in danger is to ascertain her location. You should be able to do it easily. Don't get too clouded by the compounding emotions."

Since Lysa is much more important, Ais hurriedly did as Kisuke said and closed her eyes. However, due to the maelstrom of emotions, she couldn't properly do it and it immediately showed on her face.

"Calm down. The first thing you should learn is to separate your own emotions from your familiar's. If you can't do this, you won't be able to make proper judgments. It's similar to when you face strong monsters that you don't know if you can defeat, so you should be able to do it with relative ease."

Ais immediately understood Kisuke's point and took a deep breath to calm herself down. After figuring out which was the fear that Lysa was feeling, she was able to tell her approximate location and she was still moving away from this place with an astounding speed, "I found her!"

"Good. Now call her name while thinking that you want her to be by your side."

Ais nodded and closed her eyes again, "Please... Lysa!"

An instant later, a golden Magic Circle manifested in front of her, and soon, a screeching Dragon appeared on top of it. Lysa stopped screeching the moment she realized that she was already back and that was the same for Ais as she tried to hug her, but the young Dragon dodged her embrace because she had something else in mind.

Without any hesitation, she started shooting beams of light from her mouth at Kisuke as she flew over to him with angry eyes.

"Fuhahaha~! How was the view? Since you never went out, it must've been nice~!" But Kisuke just laughed out loud while swatting away the beams of light with his bare hand.

Bete's mouth couldn't help but twitch seeing how Kisuke could casually deflect attacks that could potentially seriously harm him. But a second later, he sighed and thought, 'I already stopped comparing myself to them... But one day... one day.'

Ever since he saw how Serafall trashed Ais without much effort despite the latter trying her hardest, he'd already dropped down his competitive spirit and that was the same for everyone else. However, that didn't mean the Loki Familia lost their motivation, but instead became even more fervent in their Magic and Ki training now that they saw a possibility. The possibility of becoming even stronger than the heroes of the past.

Seeing that her Magic attacks had no effect on Kisuke, Lysa went physical and started biting the hand he's waving. But even with her teeth, which are way sharper and stronger than most monsters, she couldn't pierce Kisuke's skin. Nevertheless, she didn't stop biting and kept on gnawing his hand.

"Ais. You'll be paying for all the damages." Loki suddenly announced after looking at the holes that the Dragon and Kisuke had caused.

Ais snapped her neck towards Loki, "W-what!?"

"Your familiar, your responsibility."

Ais immediately became dejected as she was still knee-deep in debt with her weapons that kept being broken. Since everyone had decided to not go on an expedition for some time to continue their training, she didn't even have much of an income aside from occasional trips to the upper and middle parts of the Dungeon, "It can't be... It's not even my fault..."

Meanwhile, Kisuke let Lysa 'playfully' bite his hand while saying, "You shouldn't be afraid of such a thing. The Dragons I know can fly faster than that so it should be possible for you when you grow up."

That sentence immediately caught everyone's attention, "...Why do you sound like you have Dragon friends?" asked Loki.

"Technically speaking, Tanis-chan is a Dragon and a friend so she's one," answered Kisuke as he patted Lysa's head that already stopped nibbling at his hand. She became curious about Kisuke's Dragon friends that could fly fast.

Loki thought that Kisuke was just dodging the issue of his words and made it clear, "What about those who could fly fast?"

Kisuke smiled at Loki's question. Ever since his confrontation with Ouranos earlier, Kisuke had already decided to tell a few more things to Loki so this direction of the conversation was what he wanted and what he intended.

"Oh, that? Just a couple of astonishing friends~."