As Orin and Edward were running towards Richard's hut, they made sure to prepare all their equipment while running. Orin unsheathed his sword and Daronmade sure to hold a knife in each hand.
Once they reached the hut, they saw a carriage approach it. The carriage was moderate in size but looked to be quite expensive compared to the average one. The carriage came to a halt and two men walked out of it.
One of the men they recognized as the man Orin had stabbed in the shoulder, except he wore a strange metal plating on his shoulder, which seemed to be covered in strange markings. The markings vaguely glowing blue.
The other man sported a nice suit and expensive robes, clearly emitting an aura of cupidity from himself. His face showed a smug grin that would tell anybody that he viewed himself in higher regards than others.
Orin vanished in front of Edward's eyes as he quickly appeared before the large man. He held his sword pointing at his throat and stared viciously into his eyes. Edward followed and stood face to face with the richer man.
"I assume yer Bo?"
"Maybe I am. Are you boys the one who crippled my employee?"
"Maybe we are, maybe we ain't. Point is, we're here ta free Richie from yer «Deal»."
The richer man, who they now knew to be Bo, looked slightly surprised, yet still gave Edward a mischievous grin.
"So, Richieboy has decided to make friends with two little kids in his dying efforts to get rid of me? Never thought he'd go low enough to send two children straight to an early grave, along with his own. And let's not forget his own family's."
Orin quickly aimed his sword at Bo, forcefully restraining himself from immediately stabbing him.
"Woah, careful boy. You know, someone could really get hurt if you wave that thing around all willy nilly."
"Yes, and that will be you if you do not silence yourself immediately. Now get down on the ground before I stab you like I did to your henchman last week."
"Oh my, so this puppy got some bark, too. I like it. You boys could do me well by working for me. I'd pay you enough to never worry about anything ever again."
Bo lifted up his hand and snapped his finger. As he did that, two more muscular men dressed in suits came out from the carriage, holding a woman and a young girl by their arms. Both of them were tied up around their hands and feet, while also gagged with washcloths.
"As you can see, I brought the guests of honor to witness the show. Now show them something good, Benny!"
The burly man who stood next to him grinned and quickly punched Orin in the gut with the arm that he wore the metal plating on. Orin was pushed back several meters and barely managed to maintain his footing.
Bo moved backwards and stood by Richard's family. He then raised a knife from his pocket and held it pointing at his daughter. Seeing this, Orin began feeling a sharp pain in his right eye. His vision flashes between an empty white and seeing normally.
He clenched his hand over his eye, failing to grasp why he was suddenly losing control of his vision. The last couple of days' worth of combat training between him and Edward had been spent trying to control the visions he would see while fighting.
While Orin was distressed, Edward bolted towards the large man, now knowing his name to be Benny, and threw one of his knives at him. Benny moved his right arm to block it. But strangely, the knife bounced off it, as a blue light eminated from the shoulder plate.
The blue light started to shape itself around the base of Benny's arm. Just slightly past his shoulder, blue light had started to form spirals that shape around it. Edward ran past Benny and started throwing more knives, until but one knife remained.
The light that started spiralling around Benny's arm would keep emanating and shaping until it had fully coated his arm like a gauntlet of sorts. He clenched his fist and moved to punch Edward. The punch landed and Edward flew backwards, crashing into Orin.
Edward started shaking Orin, trying to get him back to his senses. Orin's normal left eye stared aimlessly forward. His starry right eye, however, was shaking violently, slowly spilling black mist that would swirl itself together and start pointing up before dissipating.
Yet even though Orin was there among the others, he once again found himself in the same daydream as when he first had a vision of himself. Standing in an open field, not another person in sight.
There was no sign of life around, except for the two Orins standing there, as well as the grass on the hills. The grass flowed elegantly with the wind. As he stood in confusion, Orin attempted to speak to himself, yet would not utter a word.
It was not as if he could not speak. It was more as if the words themself could not find their way out of Orin's mouth. And so he stood in silence, trying to get his older self to notice him. Yet, the older one would only stare forward, barely blinking as his eyes locked onto something in the horizon.
Orin looked in the same direction and upon further inspection, he noticed a sillhouette. It seemed to shape a large stone with something poking out, along with the silhouette of a smaller boy next to it, clinging to whatever was sticking out from the top of it.
"This future is not for you to see just yet…"
Orin heard the voice coming from his older self, however deeper and somehow more calm than his traditional demeanor. The voice almost sounded content, yet determined for a further goal; Sad, yet happy at the same time.
Orin once again tried to speak up, but could not find the words. He looked up at his older self with an expression of curiosity and consern.
"Just you wait. You will come to understand soon enough. JUst give these dreams time to flesh out. And do not let the monster within this cursed eye consume you. Now go and help out Dara before you both die to some minor ruffian!"
Orin could see the terrain turn to black mist as he felt himself falling through the ground. He saw the darkness open up to reveal what appeared to be a maw, yet the insides of it he could not comprehend.
He heard what he could only assume was a growl, yet it sounded like anything but a growl. As he thought the maw would consume him, a beam of light tore the darkness open and he fell through it once more, now back to his senses and back in the fight.
"Ora, yer finally back!!"
Orin could see that Edward had bruises and wounds on several places on his body and face.
"I kept ya safe while ya were out of it. But now ya gotta tag in, 'cause I'm down ta only one knife left."
Benny stood before them with his gauntlet of light even larger than before dashing toward them, aiming to punch them. Orin was able to see a vision of his older self move, yet only to dodge it, not to punish.
So he dove to the right, while Edward took the full force of the blow, not moving to avoid it. However, Edward did not take the force by accident. As soon as the punch landed, he turnbed with it to reduce impact and positioned himself in a steady offensive stance.
He then immediately lunged forward and chomped his teeth on the gauntlet, which seemed to make the light around his mouth disapear, as the blue light seemed to somehow shatter. Everyone's eyes were filled with shock as they saw such a marvellous move from Edward.
"How did you break that!? This doesn't, make sense! Boss, what do we do?! These can't be no ordinary kids!"
Bo looked at Benny with a mischievous grin.
"Don't you worry, I got it handled. If you kids wanna meddle with my business, then I'll spare Richard's family of their final goodbyes."
He moved his knife closer to the young girl's throat. However, before he was able to make contact, he found himself unable to move a single muscle. He then quickly fell to his knees and the ropes tying Richard's wife and daughter somehow loosened.
As Bo had fallen to his knees and on all fours, Orin and Edward saw Michael sitting casually on his back. He looked over at Richard's family and quickly inspected them to check for any injuries.
"You two hurt?"
They were at a loss for words, and could only shake their heads to signal the word no.
"Good! I'd hate to get innocents harmed in my students' business. Now you can just sit back and watch."
Bo suddenly spoke up from under Michael.
"I don't think so. Your insolence for disgracing me will not go un punished. I obviously took precations for something like this! NOW FIRE!!!"
Not even a second later, what could be seen on Michael was faint signs of arrows flying at him, yet every single one seemed to immediately disintegrate as they got close to him. Bo was in shock, as he would never have predicted that this would have happened.
"Who the hell are you!? How did Richard get to know such powerful mages like you."
"Powerful? The only actual mage here is me. Those two boys are just talented as hell and good at improvising. But keep that on the down low, don't want them knowing that already. As for myself, I am the one and only dragon og the lair, Michael Stylus!"
"M-M-MIchael Stylus?!?! The youngest and strongest dragon!?"
"I wouldn't exactly say strongest, but thanks for the compliment. Strength is subjective. I'd say Coveto fits more for strongest in terms of destructive power. I'm more of an all-rounder, y'know?"
He looked in the direction the arrows came from, muttering a little to himself, calculatingly.
"So if all the arrows came from over there, with no real sign of any of them coming from different angles, I can't confidently say that they came from a large group of archers. This could only mean that they came from one or very few archers using magic to fire several arrows. And with the lack of deviation from each others' functions…"
He lifted his hand and snapped his fingers, as Cassandra was approaching.
"Cass! Right on time. I got a task for you. Fix up your fellow students and fire a blast that way."
He pointed in the direction the arrows origin. Cassandra walked up to Orin and Edward and proceeded to recover their injuries and stamina with her magic. Though Benny grew impatient and tried to punch her, so she jumped out of the way and could only recover the boys' stamina.
She then moved over to Michael and made a spectral moon appear, just like during their training exercise a week prior. She fired it in the direction Michael had pointed and it quickly disappeared from their line of sight, before smoke could be seen in the distance and a bang echoed in the winds of Whistlefreid.
"Great job, Cass! Now we can let the others do their part. It was their choice to help out their new friend after all. Make sure that those two are safe. You hear that, little one? You and your parents are being saved by those two over there. Make sure to give them a good thanks when they'e done, okay?"
Richard's daughter nodded and smiled, as Edward and Orin were outmaneuvering Benny. Edward was repeatedly firing off smaller shots of his sphere projectiles while Orin was grazing Benny with small cuts as he moved around him. He then came to a stop and looked at Michael.
"Master! I was not able to demonstrate this earlier to you, but now I have the chance to. You may have already seen Ed's spheres, but you still have yet to witness my speed with my magic."
He turned back to Benny as a fist was rapidly approaching him. Everyone around suddenly found Orinabove Benny, as he had seemingly flown or jumped up at blinding speed. Though it was not flight Orin had demonstrated. Rather, he was flinging his own body like a ragdoll by launching himself.
Though he had no control of his movement midair, he was able to move in various directions, avoiding all of Benny's strikes. And while Benny was distracted. Edward surrounded his hand with new spheres and punched him in the solar plexus with full force.
As Benny was stunned from this punch and about to fall unconcious, Daron sank his teeth agressively into his shouler plate, shattering both it and the shoulder itself, deeping his already disfunctional arm broken beyond any repair.
Benny fell unconcious on the ground and the two of them ran to Michael, who kept Bo restrained. They both collapsed from exhaustion and were caught mid-fall by Michael and Cassandra. As they were onconcious in his arms, he nodded for Cassandra to lead them into the hut to be reunited with Richard.
"You did a good thing this last week, my students. The house may not be done, but you've done more than good enough to pass the test. Seems like there really is a lot more to you than I thought. In two years' time, you may already have reached his level…"