Tournament Prep (1)

"Um… what?" I activate 'Eye of Absolute Certainty' to confirm if Nyx's words were the truth or not. 

Seeing that they were false, I tilt my head. 

No matter how you slice it, Nyx is a female. 

She's dressed in short-cut shorts, a tight, long-sleeved black shirt, black stockings, and dress shoes. Nyx has a cute face, silky lavender hair, and a very feminine appearance. Nyx was even a minor member of Aaron's harem in the novel, and was confirmed to be female… I wonder what's going on here? 

Nyx must have realized I was looking at her with confusion because she turned away in anger, her cheeks flushed red. 

"W-what are you thinking about? I really am a guy!" She says meekly.

"Ehm…" Her words would be more convincing if I didn't have the 'Eye of Absolute Certainty' to see for myself, "you know, I can tell you're lying."

"Ehh?" Her face flushes bright red at my words, "H-how? The magic spell should be perfect! Nobody should be able to tell!"

"Ah, about that," I point at my right eye, which has the 'Eye of Absolute Certainty', "I have a skill that allows me to see just about everything."

Nyx looks dejected, as if all her hard work had been rendered useless, so I quickly move to assure her, "You don't need to worry though. I may not understand, but I'll keep your secret."

Nyx looks up with a surprised expression before looking down again and muttering in a barely audible tone, "T-thank you…"

Although I'm fairly confused as to why she's acting this way, if Nyx is claiming to be a guy, there's probably a good reason. 

While I had her page open, I peek at her stats, and they are great, no, they were incredibly good. Most of her stats had been high in mobility, as well as her skill set. 

I sigh as I look at her. 

While I would have no problem inducting her into my harem, it seems troublesome while she's pretending to be a guy, unfortunately. It really makes me want to uncover the truth behind this whole situation as soon as possible. 

I think back to the Nyx from the novel. She was a fairly late addition to Aaron's harem, being put into the story around chapter eight hundred, in the second year of the 'Knightford Academy' arc. By that time, she had apparently cut ties with her kingdom… perhaps that has something to do with the reason she needs to pretend like this?

I decide to look into it later and opened my suitcase on top of the bottom bunk, "I already called bottom, you got the top bunk, okay?"

She nods and runs over to me with a large brown sack in her hands. She sat down on the floor next to me and began pulling out clothes and folding them on the floor. As I watch her, I lift my suitcase with wind magic.

"Here, use the bottom bunk for that," I gesture for her to use my bed to fold her clothes on.

"Y-you don't have to do that, I-" I stop her before she can finish.

"Nyx, you're not being a bother. I'm telling you to do this because I want to, understand?"

She nods as she picks up her sack and places it atop my empty bed. I use wind magic to continue holding my suitcase as I begin folding my clothes and placing them into my wardrobe.

I cast acceleration on myself and I quickly finish putting up my clothes, so I help Nyx in the meantime. She opens her mouth to protest, but she decides not to say anything. For around five minutes, we simply sat on the bed folding clothes.

"Hey, Raine." Nyx looked over to me while we were putting the clothes up.

"Hmm." I look up.

"You may seem cold on the outside, but you're quite nice."

"Yeah." I take her final stack of shirts and place them into the wardrobe, "I get that quite a lot."

I brush my hands together to rub the dust off. Nyx does the same as she walks over and plops on top of my bed. I retrieve my coat from the desk, create a wooden chair with earth magic, and set it next to the bed before sitting down. Nyx uses a towel I had given her to polish her longbow, which was composed of shiny silver and gold.

I look into my coat and bring out my dual white pistols. I take a cleaning rod I made from my coat pocket and start cleaning the inside of the barrels. Nyx watches me as I thoroughly scrape out every trace of dirt or decay from the weapon.

"The paper said the tournament was tomorrow." I say to Nyx while I'm cleaning my gun, "Do you want something to help you win easier?"

Nyx thinks to herself for a moment before replying, "No thank you. I would like to win using my strength."

She speaks so confidently that it almost makes me smile with pride. 

I feel like I have been growing more attached to my life in this novel recently. I've been feeling a lot more emotions that were foreign to me in my previous life. 

I put the cleaning brush and the two firearms back into my coat pocket and take out a notepad I had been keeping.

"It's getting late then, you should get some sleep. I'll take a top bunk so you don't have to worry." I jot something down in my notepad and put it back up.

I toss my coat onto the chair in front of my desk and erase the chair I made from existence. I walk over to the edge of the bed and bend over to take my boots off and climb up the bedside ladder and onto the top bunk where I lay down. 

Below me, I hear the sound of Nyx removing her shoes and laying down on the bed. She shuffles around a bit before stopping, and before I know it, she falls fast asleep. 

I relax my body and clear my mind and I fall asleep too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wake up sometime around midnight. The room is dark and Nyx is still asleep. 

I take a peek out the window, which has a clear view of the school's courtyard and arena, which is located in the middle of the building. 

I sit down at my desk after turning around and casting a small ball of light above my head. My coat needs some improvement, so I set the vest to the side and get to work. 

I make the decision to add something to boost attack or movement power since the armor was already fine, but nothing comes to mind.

Since I'm not particularly strong, I would likely lose a majority of hand-to-hand or melee encounters, especially considering the strength of the top fighters. I require a means of maintaining my distance from my opponents while also allowing me to dodge constantly. 

I think for a moment before coming up with the ideal solution to my problem.

I set the coat aside and start construction on a weaponized pair of vambraces, like from a certain sci-fi franchise from my past life. 

I use earth and fire magic to superheat and shape light titanium plates into a solid shell for the outermost portion. I use fire magic to fuse the plates together, and then I use water and wind magic to flash-freeze them, rapidly cooling them. 

I create a sturdy mounting platform for the weapon and then remove a telepathically controlled pistol from the "War God's Perfect Arsenal." After sawing off the grip, which has a long retractable blade, I join both next to each other on the base. I then create white and black spray paint using a mixture of earth, wind, and water magic, and I use it to design the vambrace.

I picked up the thin piece of equipment that I had just created and slipped it onto my wrist. I adjust the straps at the bottom in order to improve the fit, then try to extend the blade to see how it works. 

My design is successful; a long, black blade that was about a foot long reaches out from the vambrace. I decide to make another one, but this time, I would add metal knuckle guards to the bracer to assist with throwing punches. 

This takes about half an hour. 

During the midst of my construction of war crimes, I begin hearing cute groans coming from behind me. It looks like Nyx has woken up due to all of the noise I'm making.

"Raine," Nyx says in a half-sleep voice while rubbing her eyes, "what are you doing?"

"I just built something that can help me during the tournament." I take off the bracer and turn around to show it to her.

"Oh." Nyx wraps her arms around her legs.

She is sitting in an upright position with her knees up and her head resting upon her lap. She no longer stares at me with a drowsy face, her face showing she's wide awake. 

Nyx frowns and asks me a question.

"I'm fighting second tomorrow. Do you think I'm strong enough to get into class A with you?" She speaks in a longing tone that makes my heart skip a beat.

"Hmm," I think about it for a moment, "everyone here at this facility is either a fourth-rank magician or higher, so you would have tough competition."

She looks down when I say that, "Oh, I kne-"

"But," I interrupt her before she can finish her sentence, "you're strong, Nyx. You have far more strength than you give yourself credit."

She looks up at me with wide eyes, but, as if realizing something, she looks back down, "You're probably just saying that to make me feel better."

"No, but it's true." I look her directly in the eyes, "In fact, everyone from our kingdom has already broken into the second class of magic, even you."

During the opening ceremony, I was incredibly bored, so I decided to freeze time after the old guy left. While time was frozen, I took a look at everyone's stat pages, even our kingdoms. I was only scanning through the stats, so I didn't really pay attention to the other aspects. 

There were some very strong individuals among the members, but our team was especially strong. Even though Nyx was probably the weakest in our group, she still had more strength than most members of the program.

Nyx looked up at me in shock, "How do you know?"

"I told you," I cover my left eye with my hand, only having my right eye exposed, "I can see it clearly."

She purses her lips when I say that. I only had 'Eye of Absolute Certainty' in my right eye because it was that type of skill. However, this didn't bother me as I had the 'Eye of the Reader' in my left eye. 

She gets up and walks over to her desk chair and moves it over to mine. I shift my chair over so she could touch the desk and she gets closer.

"Raine," She looks into my eyes with conviction, "Please, could you help me create something to help me in my battle."

I smile, "Of course. I thought you'd never ask." 

I move all of my equipment on the desk over to my left to clear it. 

"For starters, let's analyze your specialties." I say with an analytical tone, "You're small and agile, yet you have good upper body strength, perfect for using the bow. Your mana capacity is exceptional, which will allow you to be able to engage in long-range magic battles with ease. With all of that in mind, a defensive or escape tool would be best."

For Nyx to wear under her regular gear, I make a modest, dark stealth suit. I made this suit with a blend of latex and lightweight polyester to make it flexible and comfortable. I then give her a pair of gloves that were endowed with the "world hole" enchantment that I had taken out of my interdimensional storage.

I then created several small titanium and graphene armor plates and began measuring them on her body. Her face goes bright red as I went along her body with the different metal sheets. 

She makes some cute noises as I was fitting her, so I get incredibly flustered while doing it. 

I then create an outer layer of armor to cover her body after that's finished. I connected a light leather suit to the armor plates and a customized weapon to the back plate. It was a tiny, elliptical object with the appearance of a jet turbine. 

I synchronize it with Nyx's thoughts using light magic, and it releases a purple glow. I add magic-powered thrusters to her boots so she could flee more quickly.

"Raine, what is this thing on the back supposed to do?" Nyx asked inquisitively.

"Well, in theory, it should be able to generate a force field capable of being controlled freely while also increasing your movement speed," I reply casually.

Nyx stares at me bewildered at my explanation as I start spray painting the leather portions of the armor green. She's probably wondering how I can just disclose the weapon's capabilities so nonchalantly, but I don't pay it any notice. 

After completing the leather, I change my paint to black and prepare to begin spraying. When I think that, perhaps this color should be representative of her character. I look up in thought for a moment before finally deciding on a secondary color. I spray her armor plates in a deep blue color with specks of red splattered on each plate. 

In the middle, I paint the image of a flame being lit on a stick. Because today is the day that the flame that burnt her former life goes out and is replaced with a new flame in her present self. One that will carry her to victory.