Aizu Wakes Up

The group started to walk again because they had the intention of leaving the volcanic zone as soon as possible.

Yale was again carrying Aizu on his back because everyone had accepted that she joined them as part of the group.

The main reason was that Yale wasn't willing to leave her alone, and the nobles didn't want to separate from Yale.

That time the change of area wasn't as abrupt as before. From a volcano, they reached a mountain range.

There, the terrain was still tricky, but at least the heat issues disappeared, so all of them felt better than before.

On the second day after starting walking, when the group had just reached the mountain range, Aizu finally woke up.

"Where am I?"

Aizu asked that while being half asleep because she didn't recognize the surroundings and didn't remember what had happened to her.

"You finally woke up."

Yale looked at Aizu when he heard her voice. At that moment, the group was resting, and Aizu wasn't on Yale's back.

"I was starting to think that you will remain sleeping until we left the Special Realm."

Yale felt relieved as Aizu woke up. The Special Realm was dangerous, so carrying an unconscious person the whole time wasn't a great idea.

"We are currently in a different zone from before. You were heavy injured when I found you in the volcanic area."

Yale knew that Aizu was still confused as she had just woken up. He felt that she should remember all after he mentioned it to her.

Aizu reacted at Yale's voice, although she was still confused.

Then, as Yale expected, she remembered what had happened before.

Aizu also remembered that when she was about to lose her consciousness, she thought that she had a hallucination in which Yale saved her.

However, after hearing Yale and noticing that he was really there with her, Aizu understood that it wasn't a hallucination. Yale had indeed saved her when she was almost dead.

"You saved me again, thank you."

Aizu said that with a shy voice, Yale was always helping her, but she felt that she wasn't able to help him enough in exchange.

"You are welcome. You are my friend and my disciple. If someone dares to attack you, I will step on your behalf."

After Swordmad always protected Yale as his master, Yale felt that he should also protect his disciples.

Although Yale didn't want to be treated as a master by Aizu, he wouldn't let others harm her if he could avoid it.

Moreover, in front of the nobles, the master-disciple relationship was the best way to make them accept her.

Aizu blushed at Yale's words despite him only speaking of her as a disciple and a friend.

Nurvey was staring at Aizu, but since Yale didn't say anything ambiguous and his words were something reasonable to say as a master, she stopped staring at her after a while.

After some silence, Aizu asked again.

"Is the guy who attacked me dead?"

She remembered how the bulky guy attacked her when she was exhausted after learning the legacy and how Yale attacked him when he had jumped out of the magma pool.

"I killed him, and his corpse disappeared in the magma. You don't need to worry about him."

Yale said it with a calm voice. He wasn't affected by the fact he killed someone.

That fact shocked Aizu because she ended in that state partially due to a lack of resolution to kill the opponent. Although she was attacked by surprise and was exhausted, she could have used her recently learned Fire Shield once to defend herself from the attacker.

If she had used it, the battle would have been very different because the Fire Shield would have severely damaged the other party.

However, she had hesitated a bit because that could kill the other guy, and in the end, she was the one who almost died there due to her hesitation.

Aizu also lacked experience in real battles betting her life, which had turned into a lack of resolution that had been mortal to her. She had only survived due to Yale's Time Healing and the precious bracelet she had found before in the Special Realm.

"I remember now! That guy was a noble! If someone of his clan finds about that, you will be in a big trouble."

She shouted that after she remembered the guy's identity, she feared that saving her provoked that Yale had offended a noble clan.

"That guy was from my clan, and I am grateful that he is dead. He was the shame of the whole clan. He is better dead than alive. Thus, you don't need to worry about that."

Serka felt a bit bad because Aizu had almost been killed by a fellow clan member, although that member was a scumbag worse than a beast in her eyes.

Serka didn't want that Aizu thought that all the members of the Zhan Clan were like that guy.

The noble clans despised the commoners and felt superior to them, but they had their honor, so they would never attack commoners as long as they didn't break the rules.

The nobles felt shame when a member of their clans acted shamelessly and affected the clan's reputation due to doing vile acts against the commoners.

If proof of that kind of acts were found by an elder of the clan, the offender would face death for tarnishing the clan's reputation. Furthermore, it would be a public execution.

Thus, the shameless bastards in the noble clans only did it when the chances of being discovered where almost non-existent, like in the Special Realm.

Aizu didn't know that Yale also had noble blood and was also from the Zhan Clan.

All the members of the group had decided that the matter about Yale being someone from the Zhan Clan would be a secret to Aizu.

After all, she was an ordinary girl, knowing too much about the affairs of the noble clans could be a problem for her in the future.

Yale also felt that it was better to avoid speaking of his mother's origins to anyone else. Enough problems he already had with that shameless group knowing it.

If Aizu, for some reason, were to reveal it to someone else, the dangers might increase even more. Moreover, besides Nurvey, who almost didn't speak, the other girls Yale had met before liked to talk too much.

Aizu immediately bowed towards Serka after hearing that she was from a noble clan.

"Sorry for being rude, it wasn't my intention to disrespect you. I didn't know that a member of a noble clan was here."

Aizu was still scared of the nobles, although Serka had told that she didn't need to worry. Aizu had started to feel fear toward the nobles in her days in the Special Realm as she had seen how some nobles acted to those who disrespected them.

Fortunately, those nobles she had met weren't shameless bastards like the group Heruk joined or the guy who attacked her before.

"You don't need to be surprised, nor you have to be so scared of us. Serka isn't the only member of the noble clan here, all of us are members of a noble clan or the imperial family."

Kermu said those words because having someone in the group who was always scared of the others wasn't a good thing for the group.

Of course, with the "all members" part, Aizu excluded Yale as she thought that the nobles had recruited him because he was awesome. That was indeed the original situation before Serka discovered his identity.

Kermu also said his words in that way to avoid lying to Aizu nor reveal Yale's secret identity at the same time.

After those words and seeing that Yale acted with the nobles in the same way he interacted with George, Zack, and she herself in the academy, she managed to relax, but she could only admire Yale for his guts.

If Aizu knew that Yale was also a noble, she wouldn't be able to continue treating him like before due to the bias she had towards nobles. Even if Aizu stopped acting nervous in front of the nobles, she still feared them. Thus, the decision to hide Yale's secret identity from her was a wise one.

The situation turned a bit tense after Aizu woke up, but Yale didn't dare to leave her alone after seeing how she was almost murdered, and he couldn't go with her to the exit because he would lose his own opportunity in the Special Realm.

If he lost that much time and separated from the group, his chances of obtaining something more in the realm would be almost inexistent.

The fact that the others had accepted that she joined them was already enough for him.

They continued with the journey, and Aizu felt quickly that the physical prowess of all the others was higher than hers, she even noticed that Yale was far stronger than he had been before going to the Imperial City.

She felt that her luck in finding the bracelet and the Fire Shield spell was already very good, but she guessed that Yale had obtained even more benefits than her.

In fact, since she was traveling alone, remaining alive and finding two legacies was already an exceptional performance for a commoner in the Special Realm.

However, without Yale's help, she would have died like other lucky commoners did since the empire started to open Special Realms. It didn't matter how much luck one had inside the Special Realm, going out alive was the most important thing.