The Shadows (4) - 40

A/N: Just a clarification, because it seems like a lot of people are mistaken about this. The Akimitsu appearance is the albino one with long hair and a forgettable face. The Ashen appearance is the one on the cover of the novel. Sorry if it was never clarified in the earlier chapters. Also, although I've already said it over in Solo Tower Ranker, there won't be any extra chapters for this week, cause I have to stock up on chapters for when I go to New York with my school. This is because I won't be able to write chapters during that 5 day period, due to the fact that we'll be practicing like crazy for our performance at Carnegie Hall, so yeah, I'm just flexing on you guys. (And if you don't know how prestigious Carnegie Hall is, then ya'll just uncultured.)

I woke up in the morning refreshed and ready to go.

Quickly putting on my clothes, I hurried to the study spot.

After transforming back into a human, I noticed that both Marabelle and Primrose were already here.

"So, who won yesterday?"

They both looked up from their study table at the same time, a little bit of fear apparent in their eyes.

'Oh come on, was my show of power yesterday really that scary?'

"So...?"

"Oh, I won." Said Marabelle.

"Well, that was only cause I didn't want to fight you and forfeited." Said Primrose.

'So Marabelle won, that's different from the original.'

"Well, if I'm being completely honest, if you both fought against each other, although it would be close, Marabelle would still win." <Akimitsu>

"What!?"

"How wou'd this fuck'n dainty lass ev'n lay a scra'ch on me?" Shouted Primrose, a little bit, well, a lot of her accent showing.

Immediately realizing her mistake, she hurriedly covered her mouth before muttering that she was sorry multiple times over.

You see, who would have ever thought that the greatest student of the generation, and the future archmage, actually came from a family of sailors, and yeah, I mean actual sailors that worked the masts and stuff in navy ships.

Growing up, she had sailed the seas with her parents, so naturally, her mother tongue was that of a sailor's. Luckily, she had been scouted when the empress immediately noticed her immense spiritual energy when she had been on a trip to the naval academy.

Quickly taking Primrose under her wing, she sent Primrose to the academy to become a future protector for both the kingdom and her daughter.

In which afterwards, with little "accidents" during their journey together in the hero's party, they had realized how precious they were to each other, and had fallen in love with each other and gotten married. (A/N: Yes, I'm talking about Elvira and Primrose.)

This had been one of the sweetest relationships I had ever read about in any novel, which cemented my love for the character of Primrose, as the author had portrayed the love between her and Elvira perfectly, in what I thought was the best relationship in the whole novel, although, the one between Wilhelm and Rohan got a close second place.

(A/N: Okay, if you're going to drop my novel cause it has homosexual elements in it, then fine do it, I mean, I was like that at one point in my life before I had my views expanded by living in a certain country, so afterwards, I realized it was pretty beautiful actually, just like regular straight, vanilla love. Well anyways, if you're gonna drop cause of this, then all I got to say is FUCK YOU!)

My least favorite relationship had actually been the protagonist's relationship, which was a really rocky one between him and who I thought was the weakest member in the hero's party, Adelaide, I mean, I just thought that they didn't fit each other really well and that he could have at least done better.

Even if he had chosen Octavia, that would have been fine, as although she was weak physically, she was from a powerful noble family like Wilhelm (although she was disinherited) and she was basically the Sung Jin-Woo of robots.

The final relationship in the novel, well, at least of the ones that took a forefront in the series, was this really weird one between the 8th member of the hero's party and Ms. Krenshaw, but let's not talk about that right now.

And anyways, I would be taking that guy away, so that relationship would never start.

'Wait, now that I'm thinking about this, does Marabelle maybe want to... no, no, that's impossible.'

"What are you shaking your head about?" Asked Marabelle?

Surprised for a second, I quickly responded with, "Nothing that you need to know about."

"Okay that's fine, but anyways, can you tell us?"

Primrose nodded quickly when she heard this, showing that she wanted to know the exact same thing that Marabelle wanted to know.

"I just practiced a lot, and I mean, a lot a lot."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I mean, there's no secret to success except for hard work."

"Are you sure that's the only reason?"

"Yep!" I said, giving the shortest answer possible.

Hearing this, they both relented and sighed, feeling that I had no intention of revealing my secrets even if they pressed harder, so they focused back on their work.

...

After the study session, I just trained until the time of my first lessons with my final students that I had yet to teach, well, except for the Empress.

The first student was Octavia, who, although was from a noble family and had two stigmas, was disinherited because the stigmas she had were on non-prominent spots on her body, showing that she was weak.

So, like Primrose, she had been taken in by the Empress, but unlike Primrose, she had become more of a test subject, eventually gaining her unique power of technomancy from all the computer parts that had been injected into her body and brain.

Obviously, because her stigmas were weak, she was delighted to find out she had a strong affinity for life magic, so we trained with that for the rest of the class.

The second student was Rentt Matheson, and sadly, he had no affinities, so I just taught him a little bit about swordsmanship, and by that, I meant that we participated in spar after spar (without the help of the AI's protection) against each other in which I crushed him multiple times over, leaving him with bruises and broken bones.

As Rentt dragged himself out the door, the final student walked in, Marcielle, who stared warily at Rentt's departing figure.

Sighing to myself, I couldn't help but groan at the thought of teaching her, as although she was a bright child, let's just say that she was about as hard to teach as Ryker and Wilhelm, but in her own way.

'Well, let's get to it.'