"Should you be telling me that?" Ning asked with a surprised face. He hadn't expected her to reveal the truth so easily.
"About little blue? I don't see how that could possibly harm me," she said. "It's not like I told you about my powers itself."
That she did not. Ning was sure by now that she knew what his powers were. After all, he had used them so much in the last competition. While she on the other hand had used nothing until the very last fight.
By then, Ning had become too busy with his fight to spare a glance at her group to see what their powers were. In fact, he had been too tired to even care.
"Still, I'm surprised you can even see her. I wonder why? " she mused to herself.
"I have an idea," Ning said as he moved his fingers towards the little blue girl, who looked like a fairy out of a fairy tale. It was hard to pinpoint her characteristics as she moved through the wind like a formless being.
Even as Ning's fingers arrived next to her, the little spirit gave him no heed at all. She just kept on dancing in the wind.
"She won't talk to you," Saph said. "She doesn't talk to anyone, not even me."
"Does she have no intelligence?" Ning asked with an inquisitive look.
"She does, but not in here," Saph said. "Her intelligence is drowned in this place as much as her power is."
"I see," Ning said. "I would love to see her when she has her wits about her."
Ning was genuinely curious about the little blue. He wondered what bonded spirits were. Were they a type of energy to grant powers? Or were they something born of energy and could thus grant powers?
If what she said was right and the two of them were in fact bonded, which gave Saph her powers, then Ning was confident that the spirit was bonded to her soul.
That would make little blue the closest thing to a naturally formed system. That made Ning very, very curious to learn more about her.
"So? What's your reason?" Saph asked. "What's the theory behind why you can see her?"
Ning gave her a smile as he said, "Now, now. I'm not going to reveal my powers so easily, am I?"
Saph giggled a little with him "Fine, keep your secrets," she said. "now, if you'll excuse me, I need to be on my way to taste this very delicious cake that a couple has prepared for me."
She waved goodbye and left the area.
Ning kept the smile on his face as he made his way back to the house he had left Drake and Nova in.
The sea of question marks couldn't stop him from reaching the house in less than 10 minutes. What did stop him was something without a question mark.
"Another one?" Ning thought to himself when he saw a black hooded girl standing in front of the house, talking to Drake.
Ning recognized the girl. She was the golden-haired girl from the other group who had always stayed in her black robe, covering her face with a hood until the end when she had lost it.
The only other girl from their group was the green-haired Elf, who no longer had hair on the left side of her face after fighting against the Midnight Phoenix.
"She found another robe already huh?" Ning thought to himself, but quickly took back his words when he got closers.
That was no robe. It wasn't a hood or a cloak either. The closest thing Ning could call it was a large, thin blanket that the woman had wrapped around herself.
"Please just leave," Drake's lazy voice came from the door. Ning was surprised he even bothered showing up at the door given how hot it was. Which only made him question if the girl in the blanket was in her right mind or not.
"Come on, don't be like that. Is she your mistress? Are you hiding her because of that?" the girl asked.
'Mistress?' Ning got curious now.
"What's going on?" he asked as he walked toward the woman.
The woman turned her head around and saw Ning. Then her smile grew sinister as if she had caught someone red-handed.
"There you are," she said. "Mr. Leader. You have quite the taste in women. You must like damsels who can't do anything by themselves. That must let you feel like a hero when you do save them eventually."
"Uhh... What?" Ning was confused, to say the least. He turned toward Drake to get some sort of hint to see what the talk was about.
Drake mouthed a single word at him. Nova.
Damsel. Mistress. Wanting to play the hero. The girl's words started making sense to him.
"Who are you and why are you here?" Ning asked the woman.
"The name is Bellatrix. You may call me Bella," she said. "I came here because I noticed a girl I never saw before in the 2nd competition buy food for herself. It took me a while to realize that she was the last member of your little group that you kept hidden."
"Tell me, is she your mistress? Is that why you kept her around despite her inability to fight?" She asked.
"Miss Bellatrix," Ning said.
"You can call me Bella," she said. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵✦𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮✦𝓷𝓮𝓽
"No thanks," Ning said and continued. "Miss Bellatrix, did you come around to harass my companion just because you thought she didn't get here out of her own merit?"
"I don't need to think it. I know it," she said.
"Well, if you think that anyone can reach the place we are at now without pulling even a little weight, you must be dumber than you look," he said. "As far as I remember, you didn't do anything in your fight either, and simply left all the work to the lion."
"Since that was the case, can I call you its mistress?" he asked. "Its damsel in distress?"