Not letting himself be drawn in by her tempting figure, Greg let his gaze shift over to the deck of his airship. Six of Olivia's clones were moving about, cleaning different parts of the deck. With the high concentration of mana within the limits of the city, it wasn't just his allies that were affected. The crew of the airship had been hit just as hard. His teacher had been forced to replicate the acclimation chamber, only this time it was done on two whole floors. The navigation floor and, the only floor below it, the cargo hold. The navigation floor was a must if they hoped to keep the airship in the air. Sure, the thing was designed in such a way that it could stay in the air a day or two without human input. But after that time, it would try to land, regardless of where it was. His teacher had raced to make the most of this window to make the navigation floor accessible to the crew once more. As for living quarters, the lowest floor of the airship had become crew quarters for t

It didn't take a genius to realize that this was equally a gift and a probe. They were trying to see just how well stocked he was and if supplies could be used as leverage in future negotiations. The best part for them was that it was a probe that couldn't be faulted. They had only offered him food. If he didn't want it, he could simply say no and that would be the end of it. He couldn't get mad or attack them for wanting to gift it to him. That they were all mundane foodstuffs was, as she had said, because they were the easiest to check for any tampering. They wanted to eliminate any chance that Greg might claim they had tried to secretly poison or harm him in some way. Greg let a smile cross his lips even as he looked back up at the woman. "Extend my thanks to Mage Kenro," he said in a cordial tone. Despite his disappointment at their shortsightedness, Greg saw no reason to antagonize them. Naturally, he had zero plans to use the offered food. Turning them down, however, might lea

Forcing his wobbly legs to move, Greg pushed with all he had and just barely slipped to the side missing the punch aimed straight at his nose. Given that Greg could feel the air disturbance the punch passed barely an inch from his head, there was no doubt in him that his nose would have been broken and gushing blood had it connected. Summoning every bit of spite and anger he could muster, Greg clenched his fist tight. With his forearms still hurting from the ax kick they blocked, the fist wasn't as tight as it could be. Still, Greg put every bit of force he could muster into the punch as he drove it into Olivia's side, right where her floating ribs covered her liver. Had she been a mundane human, the liver blow alone would have laid her down flat, not to mention the fact that Greg had put enough force into that blow to collapse a mundane human's whole chest cavity. Calyn, however, was a second-tier body-enhancing mage, apart from her face twisting into a grimace of pain, not even he

In the ears of anyone else, this might have seemed like a minor charge. Holding back in a sparring session was, after all, normal if not expected. One of the cardinal rules the familiar had sought to carve into his very being, however, was to never leave his fate up to the whim or reasonableness of others. Calyn had never at any point been a threat to Greg's life. Forget Morpheus, Olivia would have been the first one to take her head off her shoulders had Calyn at any point really meant to take his life or do him any permanent harm. Everything short of that was allowed in their sparring sessions. To Olivia, however, it was the principle of the thing. How you train is how you fight, was a constant refrain Olivia had thrown his way whenever he complained about how hard she was pushing him. If he got into the habit of, for whatever reason, going easy on his opponents, then he might as well slit his throat now and spare everyone the wasted time and effort. Besides, what was the point of

When Athalia, the space mage they'd picked from Telako, had made a direct pass at Roka, Calyn had been caught off guard by just how possessive she'd felt in that moment. There was no formal relationship between her and Roka, and yet, it had felt like Athalia was trying to take away something that belonged to her. Luckily for her, she'd managed to get a hold of herself in short order and instead redirected those feelings toward Roka. Rather than getting angry at Athalia for going after what she wanted, she chose to do the same and also made a pass at Roka. His answer that they both belonged to her had been both vexing and thrilling at the same time. Vexing, because Roka was making it clear that neither one of them could expect anything exclusive. He wanted them both... no, he owned them both, and he'd have them whenever he wanted. It wasn't ideal, but Calyn could make peace with the fact. Roka's declaration, however, was also thrilling because it was the first time after months of te