“That was some bullshit!”

  Julius stifled a laugh when he heard Aubrey cursing up a storm. Obviously, she wasn’t very pleased by her result and wanted the entire world to know it.

  “Hey, you made it further than me,” Edgar said to her reassuringly.

  This made her pause and look over at Edgar. Unfortunately for Julius’s big friend, he had lost in the previous round. Once again, it had been a tough matchup, and Edgar wasn’t able to come out on top.

  However, Edgar wasn’t that upset about it. According to him, he had managed to get a lot further than he had ever expected he would. He initially believed he would only barely get into the Top 100 or something.

  “Yeah, and it was against the Sage of Falling Sword’s personal disciple. There is no shame in that. You even forced him to use that skill at the end of the match. Nobody else had managed to do that yet,” Lily added with a supportive hug to her best friend.

  Aubrey sagged into Lily’s arms and pouted. “Still, I wanted to win.”

  “You have improved more than any of us in these past several months. You should be proud of yourself,” Lily continued to praise Aubrey and patted her head.

  Aubrey enjoyed the pampering for a little while before she turned to look at Julius. “You'd better win this thing,” she said with a glare.

  “Why only me? You got no faith in Derek?” Julius questioned with a look at their other friend.

  Derek opened his eyes, taking a break from his meditation exercise to return Julius’s gaze and glance over at Aubrey briefly. “I don't take any offense to that. I think we all know that Julius is the one with the highest odds of winning.”

  Aubrey shrugged. “I don’t know. After his last match, I saw that his odds took a huge hit. Apparently, people are starting to think that he isn’t as strong as they thought he was.”

  “I’m telling you guys, he was really skilled,” Julius argued for the seventh time. Apparently, they hadn’t believed him when he told them how good his opponent was despite his plain fighting style.

  “You were just fooling around once again and almost lost because of it,” Aubrey grumbled.

  “It wasn’t that close,” he scoffed.

  “He shaved off half of your spine as well as half of your back.”

  “He surprised me.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”

  “He did!”

  Lily coughed into her hand to get their attention, then smiled brightly at Julius.

  “Anyway, don’t worry about your odds. I think they have decreased by almost half. Thus, I have already told Marcus to increase our bet on you. Do you guys want me to add anything on your behalf?”

  “Seriously? Isn't House Violet rich enough already?” Julius asked with an exasperated sigh.

  Lily preened. “We are rich because we don’t give up chances for free money. If people want to underestimate you because of one small fight, then we are going to capitalize on it,” she said, puffing out her chest.

  “Ruthless,” Aubrey whispered quietly.

  “What about Derek’s odds?” Edgar asked.

  “About the same as they were at the beginning,” Lily replied.

  Derek also had his match today, and unlike Aubrey, he came out on top. It was a little dicey in some moments, but ultimately, his opponent hadn’t been able to withstand the power of Derek’s lightning. They had eventually been defeated, and Derek moved on to the next round.

  Now there were two of them in the Top 8. Honestly, the fact that there had been four of them still in the tournament up until this point was quite the achievement.

  “You know who you are facing in the next match, right?” Lily suddenly asked Julius.

  The rest of his friends all quieted down upon hearing Lily’s question. They all knew who Julius’s opponent was. She was skirting around her real question.

  “What are you trying to ask?” Julius asked her, not meeting her gaze.

  “Well, with all of this stuff about your family coming back up, I was just wondering how you were feeling,” Lily said to him.

  “You know how I am feeling. You’re a psychic after all,” Julius pointed out.

  “Yeah, except I can’t. You normally don’t care if I sense your emotions and thoughts, but you are keeping me out for some reason.”

  Julius paused. Had he been locking her out? If so, he hadn’t realized it.

  His next opponent was none other than Garrett Greyson.

  Truth be told, he didn’t know how he should feel. A part of him wanted to be angry, and another part of him didn’t really care about the Greyson Scion. His beef was with Wesley Greyson and the others involved in the attack on Estate Hyperius. He doubted Garrett had anything to do with it.

  Still, Garrett was Wesley’s son and had already been a thorn in Julius’s side, especially during the second stage. It would be a lie, he said he didn’t want to thrash Garrett just for that reason.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “See? You are hiding your emotions from me,” Lily pointed out.

  “Let him figure it out on his own. Give him some space,” Edgar said to Lily gently.

  She pouted but listened to Edgar.

  Julius gave him a grateful nod and looked off into the distance. He didn’t know what he was going to do. There was so much stuff going on. Edwin was still unconscious. The Conclave was still messing around in the Empire. Clan Genshen was still out there and possibly still out for his blood. He didn’t know what was going to happen to House Greyson. Then there was all of the stuff with Cassian that awaited him after this.

  Add this to his upcoming advancement, and he was being overwhelmed.

  He sank back into his chair and tried to sort everything out. He was so stressed that he didn’t even realize he had taken out a pork bun from his storage ring and was munching on it. He didn’t know until Aubrey tapped his shoulder, asking for some, too.

  He gave one look at his bun and another at her. He didn’t really want to give it up since he only had one more left, but considering she had just lost, he understood that she needed it more than him anyway. He passed over his last bun with tears in his eyes.

  She took it from him and gave him a small hug before tucking into the chair beside him, enjoying her bun with a grin.

  ***

  A couple of days had passed by like it was nothing. He and his friends had just returned from a crafting competition that had been going on. He was surprised at how much they all enjoyed it. Despite sounding quite boring at first, it turned out to be quite fun. They all promised each other that they would go see the finals in a couple of days.

  The others had already gone to bed; after a long day like that, they wanted some rest. Unfortunately for him, he rarely felt tired anymore and was wide awake.

  He was going to head to the training halls to train some more, but reminded himself not to fall back into his old routine. Instead, he decided to get some food and snuck into the kitchens to make something. To his surprise, he wasn’t the only person there. Derek’s mom was there as well.

  He had already come across her in the kitchen, so it wasn’t entirely unusual, but never at this time of night.

  “Oh, Julius dear, what are you still doing up?” She asked him with a soft smile, looking up from when she was chopping up some nuts on a cutting board.

  Julius liked Aliyah. She was a wonderful woman, and it was evident why Derek was such a nice guy.

  “I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I would make something to eat,” he said with a smile of his own.

  “What’s wrong? Nervous about your match tomorrow?” She asked with concern. Since she was Derek’s mother, she knew some details of Julius’s history. Not everything, but just enough for House Zenith to support him against House Greyson and Clan Genshen at least. They were also helping take care of Edwin, so they knew that Julius was worried about his former mentor.

  He shook his head. “Nah, I just don’t sleep as much anymore. It’s my skills.”

  He was a little miffed about that. He used to stay up because he wanted to train and forwent sleep for that reason. However, with so many skills and his body getting stronger, he didn’t have that choice. His body didn’t require as much sleep anymore.

  He sometimes made sure he didn’t use [Phoenix Renewal] during the day so that he didn’t get an energy boost. It was getting that bad.

  She nodded sympathetically.

  “When you get to Tier 4, you will require even less. Especially with your skills. At Tier 5 or 6, you might even be able to forgo sleeping altogether. That might not be necessarily a good thing, though.”

  He nodded in agreement. He didn’t want to give up sleeping. He liked sleeping. There was nothing more cozy than waking up snuggled in warm blankets on a cold morning.

  “Hopefully, I can find a way to sleep regardless of my tier,” he stated as he walked over to the cabinet, checking if there was anything good in there.

  It wasn’t a shock to see that it was fully loaded. House Zenith always had the best stuff. It really paid off to be rich and influential.

  “Since you are here, do you want to give me a hand?” She asked him.

  He closed the cabinet and grinned. “My hands are yours to command.”

  She rolled her eyes and waved him over.

  “Come here. Since you saved Derek, I think it is only fair that I share my grandmother’s famous toffee recipe,” she said with a whispered hush, as if her grandmother might have been listening to her.

  He held his chest dramatically. “Are you sure? That sounds really precious. I don’t know if I can accept such a thing.”

  “I think she would be fine with it. As long as you don’t share it with anyone else, it should be fine,” she said with a wink.

  He crossed his heart. “You have my word.”

  “Good, now do you know how to make a caramel?” She asked him.

  “I’ve made it a few times.”

  “Good, it's a similar process. An important step is to control the heat, so make sure that you are careful,” she said to him as she handed over a pot full of ingredients.

  Julius looked at the pot and gave her a questioning look. “What’s inside here?”

  “Oh, just some butter and sugar,” she answered as she placed the nuts on a tray and placed them in the oven to roast.

  Julius looked at the pot once again. He didn’t know if she was serious. This was because this butter and sugar looked far from the normal butter and sugar he was used to. The “butter” was a dull orange rather than the usual yellow. The sugar glittered like a pile of diamonds.

  “Hmm. Did you do something with them?” He asked curiously.

  “The butter is made from the milk of a special animal called a Sunset Gleaming Cow. However, the sugar is something I infused with mana myself.”

  Seeing that Julius was still curious, she used some mana to pick up a bowl on the other side of the kitchen and placed it in front of herself. Julius leaned over and saw that it was like the normal white sugar he was used to.

  “You want to see how to do it?” She asked him.

  He nodded enthusiastically. Infusing sugar with mana? He had never heard of such a thing.

  She smiled at his keenness and controlled her mana to seep downward into the bowl. She was very careful and gentle with each movement of her mana.

  He was fascinated by her extraordinary level of control. She made it look so easy. But he knew that it was far from being that simple.

  It took around a minute, but eventually each granule of sugar was coated with her mana. The sugar shimmered in the light.

  “Are you paying close attention? This is the hard part,” she said to him.

  That was the easy part? He scoffed to himself. He doubted anyone other than other Tier 5s or skilled Tier 4s could follow up to this point.

  Still, he nodded and used every bit of his senses to keep a close eye on her every movement. Once she made sure he was watching her, she gradually began the infusement process.

  He stood there in awe when she literally breathed life into a simple bowl of sugar. He didn’t even think it was possible to achieve something like this. The mana gently penetrated each granule until they sparkled like diamonds, turning almost transparent when it was finished.

  Afterward, she looked at him with a knowing grin and floated another bowl of sugar over to him.

  “You want to give it a try?”

  He stared at the bowl and glanced over the one she had just infused with a look of disbelief. He had barely caught a fraction of what she did, but he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge. So he rolled up his sleeves and smiled at Aliyah.

  “Just you wait. I’m going to infuse the hell out of this sugar,” he said with a grin.

  She laughed and backed away, letting him get to work.

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