Blessing of the Seas

After dinner, Yelena didn’t immediately go to her dorm and instead followed Bennett and, by default, Luna to their dorm. From what Luna saw from her new Skill, it was basically just everything a Flame user could hope for.

As the two of them began to talk some more, she started to grow more tired, eventually closing her eyes and leaning against Bennett.

When she opened her eyes again, Bennett was dead asleep below her, as she’d rolled on top of him at some point and he’d wrapped his arms around her. After a few moments of enjoying the warmth before she moved herself from his arms, albeit a bit reluctantly, and slid on the mattress, which was nowhere near as warm as Bennett. After getting off the bed, she quietly exited the room and went into the kitchen.

Hmm… How do you make that coffee again? Something to do with those black beans? Luna thought.

Luna looked at the jar of dark, bean-like plants that were crushed into a type of powder that was put into what Mia called a coffee filter.

After a few attempts, she eventually gave up and instead just made herself a bowl of cereal, which she finished off in only five minutes.

As she put her bowl in the sink, she couldn’t help but to think, I thought I was worried about Bennett the past day… but he was just completely fine when he woke up. Honestly, I don’t get it. I worry so much about him, but when it comes to him, he’s always already up and running before I can finish worrying. It’s mildly infuriating. I can worry about him when I know he’ll just wake up the next day, in perfect condition. I sometimes don’t get the reason I heal him sometimes.

Because, A small voice said in her head. With you, he can release his full potential, without worry of death.

I guess that’s true, I don’t know just how strong he can be, without worrying about HP constraints, since most of the damage he can deal is massively increased based on the amount of HP he consumes, at least numerically. I just wonder how strong he can be.

Luna got the feeling that they may have to test just how strong he could get sometime soon.

***

Bennett cracked open his eyes, staring at the ceiling. After a few moments, he sat up, not seeing Luna anywhere.

She must have woken up earlier than me, he thought.

He felt Luna send him something akin to impatience, confirming his suspicions of her waking up earlier. He yawned before going to take a quick shower, then got dressed before coming out to see Luna sitting at the table, waiting for him. He blinked at her as she gave him a disappointed look before hopping off the chair and walking over to him.

“Yeah, yeah, we can go get breakfast, no need to look all disappointed in me for waking up after you,” he said, rolling his eyes. He lifted her up and she shifted herself into a comfortable position, looking a bit annoyed at something.

He looked down at her for a few moments, slightly concerned, but shrugged before opening the door and making his way down the halls, passing his sister’s dorm, which the door seemed to burst open the moment he passed, his sister barrelling out before falling on her face. Bennett saw Bastion’s head poke out from behind the door frame, looking a bit confused.

Bennett, confused, bent down and patted his sister’s head. “You alive, Lena?”

She lifted her head dizzily, looking up at him. “Oh, hey, Ben. Didn’t see you there.”

“Uh huh. But you knew I was walking by. You look like you just woke up.”

Yelena huffed out, “But I wanted to see you. I’m bored in the mornings.”

“Maybe you should just get ready for the morning. Don’t we both have Engineering?”

Yelena sighed. “I know you’ll be let in, along with Luna. But I doubt I will…”

“You have that Hellfire thing, so they might find it interesting,” Bennett consoled. “You’ll be fine.”

His sister let out a groan, but stood up and sulked back to her dorm. Luna poked his cheek as she left and he looked at her once again, and she seemed to look even more annoyed.

“Uh… are you okay, Lu?”

She let out a huff and poked his cheek again. He frowned, unsure of what to do. She stared at him for a few moments, and he was just simply confused. “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong, I’ll admit that.”

Luna shook her head and pointed at his face, water spraying into his face. He gave her a disappointed look. “Did I forget something or what?”

She nodded and pointed to the window on the other side of the hall. Unsure of what she could mean, he looked out and saw the large lake that Ulayla had taken him, Yelena, and Luna to. Floating in the center of it-

“Ah. I forgot to see how Ulayla was doing yesterday. Noticed she didn’t come to dinner.”

Bennett debated whether or not he should just jump out the window, since they were on the third floor…

“Hold on, Lu,” Bennett said, opening the window.

She let out a sound that sounded like “Huh?” before it transformed into a shriek as Bennett jumped out of the window, summoning Blood Claw, which he used to slow himself down against the side of the wall until he reached the second floor, where he used Flicker to dash down the rest of the distance, making it halfway to the lake. At this point, the Dragonborn had noticed them and poked her head out of the water curiously. As she recognized them, he watched as she splashed the water a few times before effectively becoming a torpedo, getting to the edge of the lake faster than he could have ever expected, nearly crashing into the shore.

She flew out the water, nearly getting Bennett and Luna wet, landed and seemed to shake herself off, which was very amusing to watch. Of course, it was quite effective, since her short hair (Never noticed she had short hair, now that I think about it, Bennett thought) didn’t really hold that much water. Ulayla then stood up straight and put her hands on her hips.

“I’m all better now, Mr. Scythe!” she declared, flapping her wings. “Something like a simple cut won’t stop me!”

“Wasn’t the skin of your wing nearly cut from top to bottom? Sorry about that, by the way,” Bennett said, letting out a distressed sigh. “I guess you just have no sense of self-preservation…” He said the second part under his breath and Ulayla tilted her head at him, which led him to believe she either had unbelievable neck muscles, or her horns were just as light as the rest of her body.

Probably a combination of both, let’s be real here, seeing that if I’m not careful, she can just bat me around like some sort of human-sized doll.

The mental image nearly made him laugh and, apparently, Luna got the same mental image from him and nearly spit out her tart, which, for once, he wasn’t sure where she’d gotten it from.

He shook the thought out of his head and pat Luna’s head. “Oh, yeah, it’s breakfast now… but you should probably dry off.”

Ulayla looked down at her wet clothes and her wings drooped. “I’m putting in a request for waterproof clothes.”

Luna, clearly bored, simply waved her hand at Ulayla and all the excess water in her clothes were pulled out and she threw the ball of mildly dirty water into the lake. Ulayla looked mildly impressed, as in she suddenly leaned in closer to Luna, who gave her a strange look as she kept slowly chewing on her tart.

***

Bennett stared blankly at his food, clearly uncomfortable as Luna sat on his lap and Ulayla next to him. She would’ve sat next to him, but Ulayla had suddenly taken the seat next to him and she had to take the next best place.

“Why is this happening to me right now?” Bennett grumbled, sounding like he wanted to cut the table in half. “Luna, can’t you just sit next to Yelena?”

Luna, shook her head, eyeing the Hellfire coming out of Yelena’s finger as she tried to apparently roast her pie with a satisfied expression. Bennett looked at his sister, then back at Luna, confusion slowly turning to realization.

“Oh. Lena, quit it with that. I’m pretty sure Luna’s scared of your Hellfire, so she won’t get off my lap-”

Luna smacked at Bennett’s mouth with a tentacle, but he dodged without looking at her. Yelena frowned, looking at her finger.

“Huh… I didn’t think Luna would be scared of fire…”

“Girl, that’s Hellfire,” Tyreese said, rolling his eyes. “Even Flame Mages are scared of that thing of destruction. It’s, like, nearly impossible to put out. I’m sure that she’d have some difficulty dealing with it. It just burns everything around it, without giving two shits if there's oxygen or not-”

Tyreese then was smacked over he head by Mia, then glared at her. “What did I do this time?!”

“You’re talking too much,” she said, taking a sip of tea. “Shut up.”

“You’re hitting people too much, so you literally cannot say anything about people being annoying. What type of civilization did you live in?”

She didn’t answer, instead eating her own breakfast. Luna looked over to Jasmine, who was silent like usual. Recently, Luna had been losing track of Jasmine and sometimes nearly forgetting about her, so Luna was getting mildly suspicious of something. She had a theory, but she’d have to be in a very specific situation to test it out. But if she was right…

“Now, may you let me eat?” Bennett asked in a deadpan voice, looking down at Luna while trying to ignore Ulayla’s fork and her attempt to feed him. Luna held back a giggle and, eyeing Yelena warily, she sat next to her.

Bennett then shoveled pudding into a bowl and then into his mouth, looking very annoyed, but not with her, based on the way his emotions were projected. Yelena noticed this and poked his shoulder.

He sighed. “Sorry, I’m feeling like I’m about to fall over half-dead since somebody decided that I didn’t need blood last night.”

He poked his skin with a fork and a small amount of Maya slid out from under his skin before grabbing his entire spoon and seemingly eating it before receding. The entire group stared at his arm in confusion.

“What the hell did you need that much iron for? According to more than enough sources, there is not that much-”

Before he could finish his sentence, Maya came back out and seemed to spit out a silvery-black mass of carbon, based on what Luna remembered about biology.

There was dead silence. Then Bennett shook his head. “Okay then. I guess I’m not finishing my food.”

~~~

Bennett carried Luna to their next class, Yelena with them, looking a bit nervous. As they went to the floor that Elemental Engineering was on, Bennett seemed to be more and more excited, but was actually pretty good at hiding it, since Luna had a difficult time detecting it herself… though, to be fair, she wasn’t really trying to in the first place. Bennett looked back at his sister, who seemed even more nervous than the last time he last looked at her.

“There’s no need to be so worried about the class. I’m sure you’ll be okay,” he said to her, feeding Luna another tart. “Also, how do you even manage to eat so much, Luna. It’s honestly crazy to me.”

Technically, I only eat to replenish MP faster, but these taste good, so I don’t care that I’m wasting some… However, I can still overcap and effectively become a useless container of MP unless I discharge it.

Luna simply shrugged and, being lazy, she let Bennett hand-feed her, which he gave her a disappointed look when she did this, but, as he didn’t stop, she took it as him being fine with it. After finishing off the last one, she waved at Yelena encouragingly as she could manage. Yelena slightly smiled, but seemed to lose herself in her thoughts again. By the time she finally shook herself out of her stupor, according to Bennett, they’d arrived at Elemental Engineering, where somebody else was standing in front of the door, looking annoyed at the person at the door, who was arguing with her.

“Who was she rude to this time?” Bennett muttered.

Her head snapped towards Bennett and she said, “Firstly, I’m not constantly rude to everyone around me.”

“Sure doing a good job at that,” Bennett muttered, shaking his head, hair raising slightly with static electricity.

Luna made an attempt to push his hair back down, but ended up causing her own hair to rise. He frowned before shaking his head again, and her hair suddenly fell back down. Annoyed that her hair was messed up now, she began using her tentacles to straighten it again as the person who had previously been arguing with Juli looked at Bennett with interest.

“You’re the new Lightning Mage, huh? Along with the new Water Mage?” The boy asked. “Bennett and Luna? Then your sister… Yelena? Flame Mage? We have a few of those already…”

Yelena sighed, but Bennett added, “How many do you have that can use Hellfire?”

The boy immediately seemed to be in a state of shock. “Hellfire? You’re serious?! Wait, that’s actually so useful for so many projects that need higher heats-”

He began to trail off under his breath and Bennett gave his sister a smug look, a perfect replica of the same look she’d give him. She poked his cheek but couldn’t stop herself from smiling.

Juli tapped her foot, annoyed. “Can I go in now? I’ve been arguing with you for nearly five straight minutes about this. I am supposed to be here.”

The boy was too lost in thought to listen to her and she frowned. A few moments later, as he kept talking under his breath, she let out a huff before walking backward into a rip in the void, disappearing. Luna felt her presence reappear in the room behind the boy though, so she didn’t go far.

As the boy kept muttering, Bennett cleared his throat. “Uh… what exactly are we supposed to do now?”

The boy there started, clearly having forgotten about them. “Oh right. I almost forgot. Yeah, you can go in… I’ll just guard the door, I guess…”

The three of them then entered the room, leaving behind the musing boy.

***

Ulayla hit her head on the desk, knowing that she was more likely to break the table than her head.

I was being weird earlier, wasn’t I? I was still a bit embarrassed about yesterday… I hope he didn’t think-

“-Ulayla, wake up!”

A hand just barely grazed her nose as Ulayla reacted to the voice, leaning back before she was slapped awake. “Wha- what? Did I fall asleep?”

The other Dragonborn in the classroom, who also happened to be one of Ulayla’s childhood friends (Crazy how stuff like that could happen), was looking at Ulayla with a smug expression.

“Thinking about something?” she asked, clearly already knowing the answer.

Ulayla coughed. “M-Maybe?”

“Hm… what about someone?” The Earth Dragonborn raised her eyebrows.

Ulayla managed to glare at her. “No, I’m not actually,” she responded, but her voice cracked in the middle of the sentence, so she was most likely very unconvincing.

“Uh huh. I don’t believe you. So, who is it? That Bennett boy? The Lightning Mage?”

“N-no! Why would I even-”

The Dragonborn nodded. “Mhm, Mhm. I see. I definitely believe you.” Her wings flapped a little. “So, what is it? Did he overpower you somehow? Or is it his looks? Or have you already done the-”

Ulayla, slowly growing redder as time went on, interrupted. “First of all, absolutely no I have not.”

“Yet.”

Ulayla glared at the girl, but knew that this was an argument she was bound to lose. “Look, I seriously doubt that he’d ever even like me. I’m sure there’s already someone he likes…” Ulayla thought of Luna, who always looked uncomfortable when Bennett wasn’t around, hardly interacting with anyone else. But when he was around, she was far more… outgoing. “And someone who likes him back as well.”

“Okay? It’s not like it’s a problem; I’m sure it’s possible to like more than one person at once. My dad has two wives, for example.”

Ulayla shrugged, but stared into nothing again, effectively ignoring her class. “Sure…”

“Whatever. Anyways, what were we supposed to be doing again? Something to do with preparing for something?” Ulayla’s friend called over to their teacher.

The Dragonborn man frowned at them before shaking his head. “I’m not going to explain what’s literally in front of your face.

Ulayla looked at the board in front of her and sighed. “Right. Learning to reign in your instincts, since us Dragonborns are effectively balls of hormones condensed down into the size of a Human.”

“Exactly. Eventually, it’ll become second nature to you-”

Ulayla mentally groaned. Maybe I can get Bennett to like me, somehow. But that’s a long endeavor for me to take on… but worth it.

***

Luna stared at the container that Bennett held out in front of him, which had a very angry looking Bloodbolt completely still within it. Of course it crackled occasionally, but it was just sitting in place, being angry. Bennett was sweating, trying to keep it from exploding, as he’d said multiple times.

“Could you hurry up now? I’m almost completely out of Mana and I’d rather not consume any HP since it’ll just explode,” he said, gritting his teeth.

Luna sat in her usual place on his arm, using Revitalize to increase his MP regen, but it was clearly doing nothing to help the strain on his concentration. She’d already attempted to try and use Blessing of the Sea to help, but it didn’t let her, which was mildly annoying, especially since they only needed 1% more for the next Bond Ability.

“Yeah, I get it- wait, you can use HP to charge it?” the girl studying the Bloodbolt asked, surprised slightly.

“Yes, it’s called Bloodbolt for a reason. Now hurry up before I just blow the bolt up. There is at least 150% MP in this thing, which is…” he seemed to read something in his vision. “90% more damage- actually, scratch that, it just Leveled up, now it’s 120% more.”

“Huh… is it capped?”

“No. There is no cap. Now can you please hurry up before I just let it go.”

Thirty seconds later, the girl huffed. “Let it go.”

Bennett cut off the MP flow, which was quite obvious from the way the Bloodbolt flickered out of existence not even a moment afterwards. The girl closed her eyes for a moment and Luna felt a slight pulse of MP radiate from her. Bennett shifted uncomfortably, as if he’d been able to sense it as well, but based on what she felt from him, he hadn’t. More likely, Maya felt it and was not a fan of it.

Then the girl stomped her foot, glaring at the air. “I couldn’t understand anything about that. All I could tell was that it was made of Lightning and something else. It had no more data than that?! How is that even possible?”

“It’s made of Lightning and Blood,” Bennett said, giving the girl a slightly wary look while stepping back slightly.

“I get that, but I can’t sense the Blood, which is annoying me. It makes me wonder if it even-”

As she started muttering to herself, Bennett looked down at Luna, who shrugged before yawning. Bennett gave her a displeased expression as she reached into the pouch around his waist and pulled out a tart. Yelena, who was standing nearby with a ball of very angry looking fire covering her left arm, gave them a strange look.

“How do you even snatch so many of those without anybody noticing?” She asked, tilting her head slightly.

“Magic,” Bennett said nonchalantly.

Yelena gave him a bored look. “It’s also magic when I incinerate every hair follicle on your body.”

“That’s going a bit far, don’t you think?”

The flames on her arm grew slightly brighter and Bennett sighed. “People just don’t pay attention to me enough. Like how I took your third pie from your plate this morning.”

“You literally have a tiny demon attached to you by the hip and a Dragonborn who’s the definition of- Wait, that was you?!”

Bennett gave her a smug grin and his sister scowled. “I wanted that…”

Bennett rolled his eyes. “You’ve already gained at least a pound from all the food that you’re eating in the morning.”

Yelena balked. “I have?!”

“Yes, you have, dear sister.”

Yelena proceeded to have a mental argument with herself, which Luna had guessed from her rapidly changing expression.

Thank the gods I don’t have a voice in my head still; It’s painful to listen to someone yap all day, Luna thought.

~~~

“Wow… this Water is… interesting,” the girl in front of a very uncomfortable Luna said, seemingly as slowly as possible. “It has… latent… healing properties? How though…”

Bennett shrugged. “At a certain point, I stopped questioning Luna’s abilities, which either tells me that she just does things that I understand too often, or there’s something wrong with me.”

“Probably the latter,” Yelena stated, looking at a jar with some sort of liquid that was contained in a vial and was bubbling. “What’s this?”

Juli, who’d somehow appeared next to her, said, “Liquid Lightning. Painstaking to make, apparently. How the hell does that even work? Lightning is just an electrical charge caused by changing pressures and the difference in charges of two different materials. How does one manage to even make that?”

A boy with goggles stared at her. “I’m not going to ask how you even learned that information, but the Headmaster gave it to us to experiment on… Wait.”

The boy looked at Bennett. “I wonder if it’s possible to make liquid Blood Lightning…”

Is it just me, or does making liquid Lightning sound very dangerous and painful? Luna thought. She sent a tinge of worry to Bennett and he pat the tentacle she’d involuntarily wrapped around him.

She debated letting go, but, in favor of his safety (Definitely his safety), she didn’t. Yelena looked at Luna suspiciously before shrugging and tapping the vial, proceeding to shock herself, letting out a yelp.

Bennett, seeming to realize something, looked around. “Wait, what exactly are we supposed to do here?”

The girl who was studying Luna’s water now (Wow, that sounds a bit… Interesting, Luna thought), looked up. “Just… whatever. We don’t have… many rules. We do… have projects… though.”

Luna felt a faint sense of despair originate from Bennett, but he seemed to not visibly react much. She slightly tightened the tentacle around him, but eventually lost herself in her own thoughts.

So, there’s no real regimen here, huh? We basically just do whatever we feel like doing. I’m not sure how to go about that.

“Anyways,” Goggles said. “Welcome, I guess. Also, can I take a closer look at your lightning?”

“...Water.” The slower girl kept looking at Luna with mild interest.

“Hey, I wanted to look at his lightning!” the girl who’d been sensing his lightning before complained.

Goggles rolled his eyes. “You’re more likely to sexually assault him than stick to that. Can’t fool me.”

Another boy said, “You could call them by their names. Anyways, Yelena, I think, can I study your Hellfire? I have a small amount of it myself, but I can’t call it up as casually as you can, so I don’t get much of a chance to experiment.”

Yelena, after looking at her brother for a few moments, nodded. Bennett, however, looked slightly annoyed, but seemed to shrug it off after a few moments. He looked at Luna for a moment… then two… then three.

After a few seconds, he sighed. “You’re gonna have to let go of me. Plus, I can barely breathe.”

***

Yelena watched her brother as he generated a much larger amount of electricity than usual, though he was sorely unable to control it, causing a nearby beaker to simply explode. After staring at it for a moment, the boy in front of him poked his head back behind the insulated shield he’d quickly thrown together after the first two times before telling him to start again.

“Huh… This burns way hotter than most Hellfire I’ve seen. How hot does it say it burns?”

Yelena blinked, looking at the boy studying her very hot sword. “Uh… 800%? Not sure what that means.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Really? No temperature? Just a percentage? Interesting.”

Does this guy speak in 1-3 word sentences most of the time? What type of class is this?

“...Yes. Is that a problem or something?” she inquired.

“Nope. It’s just really interesting. Most of the time, it will list a certain temperature or something like that. But since yours doesn’t have that, it just burns hotter than usual. Huh.”

Yelena’s eyes drifted over to Luna, who was glaring at the girl who was holding one of her tentacles, looking like she wanted to smash her skull into itself, but was forcing herself not to. She was instead just sitting completely and utterly still, though she shook slightly, which she took as her being annoyed. However, Bennett was giving her a flat expression from the other side of the room and, based on the way Luna glanced at him before letting out a huff and turning back around, she was most likely being overdramatic.

He knows her far better than he should, especially since we’ve only known her for about two weeks. And, to be honest, she’s also overly attached to him, which, as someone who also is, I do not like one bit. But, I guess I can deal with it.

Luna suddenly looked at Yelena, face full of confusion. She then looked at her arm, which her Hellfire had begun spreading up, incinerating her sleeve. She barely held back a shriek and immediately extinguished the flames garnering surprise from the boy who had been studying the flames on her sword.

“Wait, you can just extinguish your Hellfire? Just like that? That’s… rare, to be generous. Hellfire is notoriously difficult to put out. And it spreads like… well, hell. The fact you can just stop it like that is impressive in itself.”

“Is it? I thought it was just like normal Flame and you could just, like, ask it to go out. Is that not normal?” Yelena asked.

He shook his head. “Of course not. If that was the case, then there’d be a lot more Hellfire Mages. The fact you’re so easily able to control it… It’s honestly impressive. I wonder if it’s hot enough to make some sort of Mythril alloy… maybe with Adamantium or Vibranium…”

Yelena got the strange feeling that she was being inspected to test if she was a good test subject or not. To be honest… She was feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Bennett, help me please.

***

Bennett tried to ignore the annoying pulses of… well, annoyance from Maya, which he was baffled at. Every time the boy got too close to touching the arm that Maya usually resided in, she’d somehow open his arm up and lash at him, the boy barely managing to dodge.

“What is your problem, Maya? He’s not doing anything!” Bennett complained, grabbing Maya again and shoving her back into his arm, though she was very much not having it. “You’re worse than Luna, I swear… Anyways, sorry. Again.”

Bennett suddenly felt a massive wave of disdain from Luna and wisely didn’t look over to her knowing she’d probably smack him later. Understandable.

Looking back at the boy, he seemed to not mind the angry lashes from Maya as he looked at the vial of blood in his hand, which had belonged to Bennett… at least in Bennett’s eyes. According to Maya, apparently, Bennett’s blood belonged to her.

Maya, calm down, will you?

She poked him from inside of his skin and he let out a yelp of pain. Glaring at his arm, he muttered a curse before taking Maya out in her entirety. The boy jolted back, falling back in his chair and nearly knocking the back of his head into the side of the table.

Maya, with the rare sound of her voice, let out a laugh in his head, and her entire body nearly liquified as it shivered. Bennett stared at her, then to the boy, then back at her before walking to the other side of the room, passing Luna, who looked at him strangely, resting her against the wall, and walking back to the boy, helping him up.

After the boy got back onto his feet and shook his hair free of dust, he squinted at Maya, who was across the room, now a slime-like blob of blood that was trying in futility to roll back to Bennett while also sending him fury beyond anything he could ever imagine…

“You’re about as terrifying as a literal slime- ow!” he yelped again as the small amount of her that was still left in him poked his chest. “I hate you so much. Why did I ever decide to even get you-” Poke. “Ow. In my next life, I’m ignoring you.”

Maya finally rolled back over to Bennett and, in anger, cut open his leg painfully and forced herself back into him, which he couldn’t say wasn’t uncomfortable. He felt her rush through his body until she was back in his arm, completely dormant at that point.

Well, she’s angry. I’m probably going to have nightmares tonight.

“Well, that problem is solved… temporarily-”

Bennett was then spun around by the shoulders and faced the boy who’d just taken a sample of his blood.

“What was that? Isn’t that the Scythe that’s been hanging on the wall in Combat for gods know how long?! How did you get it? What is it made of? What’s it description-”

From across the room, a box smacked into the boy’s forehead, knocking him back a few steps. The box spun through the air and Bennett caught it, looking at it in confusion before realizing the thing was heavy. Heavy to the point that electricity was crackling over his arm just from the struggle of lifting it. Annoyed a bit, he pulled some blood from Maya, which seeped through his skin to form a Blood Claw, which easily held the box. He then set it down before giving the blood back to her, shaking his aching arm.

The boy seemed to rise up from the dead to stare at his arm for a few moments, baffled. “Huh? Did you just… what? That was a block of solid Mythril. There’s no way you could have lifted that without breaking your arm. And that blood claw thing…”

The boy lifted Bennett’s arm and Bennett stifled a sigh.

I get the feeling I’m going to be a part of many experiments…

*A few miles off the coast…*

This place… Melony thought. Is strange. I feel… somewhat pressured to leave. No wonder ships never come here.

She floated around in the water, enjoying herself while the Headmaster struggled to do much else than flail around helplessly.

“Could you help?” He demanded, trying to right himself.

“Nope! You chose to come here, even though you don’t know how to swim.”

She swam further into the dark area, leaving him behind.

This place… it feels like the ocean itself is trying to keep us away. Just how did that man find this place?

___

Warning. Approaching a highly dangerous area. Leave or forfeit your life.

___

…What? The system itself is warning us to stay away? What could possibly be here-?

Suddenly, the darkness in the water was interrupted by a weak pulse of light, almost like a line cutting through the dark.

“You saw that, right?” The Headmaster asked. That huge amount of MP?

“Yes.”

The Headmaster had somehow righted himself and was slowly approaching the light. They swam for nearly five minutes before the darkness was suddenly brightened by another pulse, far closer this time.

“The light… it’s in the shape of… chains?Bonds?” Melony said, cooling the water around her in anticipation. As they got closer, the darkness was slowly dispelled, until they reached some sort of… air bubble in the water.

She looked at the headmaster for a few moments before they both dropped in, but, instead of falling, they seemed to float. As Melony surveyed her surroundings, her eyes widened as she looked at the center of the area…

There were chains that seemed to span forever, going out into the water… but instead of chaining something to the position they were centered on, they were completely and utterly shattered, fragments floating around, even the smallest letting off enough strength to give her a severe headache.

Oh. Oh no. I thought that Luna was some sort of weak God… but these chains… are meant to lock down something… huge. Or something immensely powerful. But… even that’s understating the use of these. These are meant to draw every tiny bit of MP from a creature. And… if these were meant for Luna… no, I could be wrong. I have to be. But how could Bennett have found her randomly in the ocean, so close to our home? How could I have never sensed this, in all my years of living here, even before I had children? And now, if Luna was chained in these and broke out? …Then my son is with something that could very likely have the power to destroy the world itself.