Chapter 91: Flame Practice

On his way back, Ethan decided to use the other direction as he was rather in the mood to walk.

The path he took ran through the South grounds, past open campus fields and towards the gym annex.

Ethan was still turning Nora’s information over in his head when he heard voices from the other side.

There, under the tree beside him stood there students. All in casual clothing, speaking in hushed voices as if afraid someone might hear them.

"—saying Aria is definitely going to win this," one insisted. "She’s the strongest in our grade. I can’t picture a situation where she lost."

"That’s what you said during the dungeon evaluation. She got second place." Another one said, scratching his head. "I must admit. She’s really pretty but you sure all that power’s not just for show? I meant she got packed by the group with the necromancer. And he’s F rank."

The third one huffed. "That was a fluke. The necromancer was probably carried by his team and they probably got lucky. Everybody knows that. When they returned, he was the only one that wasn’t injured. He probably went into hiding and left them alone with the monster."

The other two hummed in agreement. There was no way someone like Ethan stood a chance at winning this. There were various kinds of monsters in this school. Winning once doesn’t automatically guarantee you winning again.

The first one spoke again. "Marcus’ been louder than usual too. Says he’ll be the one on top and show the rest of us where we belonged."

The third one snickered. "Third place delulu right there"

Hearing that, the three of them laughed before Ethan quickened his pace and left.

Others were free to think whatever they wanted. Whether or not he contributed to the devil clear was non of their business anyway...

He kept walking without slowing his face. His face staying completely indifferent to the fact that he just made himself a waking target.

’No way the MCA will suspect someone in the academy. After all, we weren’t allowed beyond the premises outside dungeon evaluations.’

That thought, no matter how naiive it sounded, managed to calm him down.

Aria’s possible grudge was noise to him sure. But a part of him hoped that they wouldn’t end up against each other as it would only mean defeat.

When he finally made it to the East side, he took a turn past the East grounds.

Then he saw her...

Right in the centre of the field, Lila stood there, flame on her hands, the ground in front of her on fire and with a very concentrated look on her face.

Ahh, she’s training...

She created a small fire in her palms, stared at it for a few moments and Ethan watched as a pillar of flame erupted and disappeared into the sky.

Ethan moved closer and did not say anything yet. For a moment, he just watched as she repeated the process two more times, seeing the pillar grow wider and brighter.

She had indeed gotten better. Her improvement was impossible to ignore....

Where earlier bursts had been bright and messy, this ones were cleaner. Though still bright, it was more organized than the last time he saw her use her flames.

He could tell through the way the fire moved. Flames didn’t leak out of the edges like it did before. He could see it moving along the pillar in clean waves.

And honestly, it was kind of beautiful...

Lila turned when she felt like she was being watched and when she saw him, her eyes widened in surprise. "Ethan. You’re back?"

He nodded. "We had a light conversation. Don’t feel like training today either." A pause. "I see you’re busy..."

"You got eyes. That’s good." She raised an eyebrow. "How long have you been standing there like a creep?"

"Long enough to be genuinely impressed with what I’m seeing..."

A thin smile formed on her lips. "Yeah well, flame control still needs work."

She was about to turn back and continue when she asked again. "So, what are you going to do now? It’s still barley past noon."

He shrugged and walked over to the low wall adjacent to her. "Watch."

"Hm?"

He sat. "I did say I wanted to see how good you’ve gotten. Plus, you used to watch me all the time. Think of this as roles being reversed."

She laughed. "Alright then. But don’t complaining if I accidentally shoot you a fireball."

He smirked. "My life is in good hands then..."

She turned and continued, moving on to flame constructs.

She built a curved shield of fire that was long enough to reach her knees, held it for a moment and dismissed it, watching it collapse into a whip of flame that she grabbed by the tail and whipped.

**CRACK**

The whip cracked against the air, slamming against the floor and leaving a line of blacked earth. She tossed it up into the air and Ethan watched as she turned it into a lance and spun in between her fingers.

"Wow. You can change its shape continuously."

"That’s what better control gets you." She kept spinning it. "It gets cold after a while. Meaning that i can’t use a series of constructs the entire fight. Eventually the fire is going to cool off, and the flames will slowly die out till it vanished."

"I call it Cool down." She tossee the lance at him, and it tore past his left cheek, racing towards the building on the other side and dissipating before it reached.

Ethan looked at the dispersing flames and back at her. "Show off."

"Aww don’t be like that. I’m just giving my audience a show~" she winked at him before continuing.

She went on for some time, flame bursts, constructs, even turning the fire on her arms into projectiles.

"You’ve gotten very good at this."

She shout him a look. "Don’t try to sound impressed."

"I’m not though. I’m actually impressed." Ethan said tilting his head.

She deadpanned. "Oh yeah? Well sorry, you said it with such a straight face I couldn’t tell."

He watched her move... he movements were fluid, the steps were graceful and her control only got better. It wasn’t until after a part of her tank top started burning that they decided she had done enough for the day.

"Why didn’t you wear your jumpsuit if you knew this would happen?" Ethan asked, handing her his jacket.

"That thing’s too tight. Plus it’s fireproof leather. Do you know how hot it gets in that thing?"

"But still... it’s really uncomfortable seeing your clothes burn off."

A mischiveous grin slowly spread on her face... "why is that?" She slowly began bringing down the zipper until a dangerous amount of her breasts were exposed. "You’ve seen them before haven’t you~"

Ethan gulped, and caught her hands before she brought the zipper lower. "This isn’t the time for your jokes Lila."

She laughed and zipped up. "I know. I just couldn’t resist."

Saying that she turned back to the direction of their dorm with Ethan following behind.

***

Later that night, after they finished having dinner and Lila was asleep in her room, Ethan sat on the edge of his bed with his system screen opened, looking at his stats with a defeated look on his face...

The screen was showing him beautiful information right now but a part of that info was locked behind a restriction the system came up with overnight.

He let himself fall onto the bed. He really needed to grind if he wanted access to the locked devils in his shadow.

Unfortunately, the only way to do that aside from the slow progress working out and undead training gave him, was to clear another dungeon.

But the system wouldn’t give him an objective if he asked. His only other option was the tournament.

He got to use his abilities and his undead so that would count as something worthy enough to move his Exp...

"Speaking of tournament..."

He pulled out his phone, and opened the file that was sent to them.

He wanted to check if there were any rules, instances or loopholes that would come back to bite him later...

In other words, he was looking for the ’fine print.’

He scrolled through every page of the rules— Ava wasn’t kidding when she said there would be at least ten pages of this shit.

"Crap."

At least three of the pages did nothing but lay emphasis on how strict tournament rule enforcement would be against restricted class students. After the third one, he clicked his tongue in annoyance.

"They’re treating us like we have some kind of disease..."

He kepts scrolling, line by line, page by page taking in but necessary and unnecessary information as he went.

Then, he saw it...

On the bottom corner of the last page sat the very thing he was looking for.

He smiled. "Found you."