After the nature arena battle ended, Rai and Raina were guided back outside the arena where the trio and Echo were waiting for them.
"Great job in the battle, babe!" Anas said to Rai, giving her a kiss.
"It worked out thanks to my new friend, Raina," Rai replied.
"Umm, hi... I'm Raina, nice to meet you," Raina introduced herself nervously.
The rest of the boys introduced themselves to her. All of them were impressed by her performance.
"I'm impressed that a Silvermoon Academy student was actually decently strong," Karasu said.
"Maybe we shouldn't underestimate them after all," Nex commented.
"We have an hour of free time before we need to arrive at the ANGEL stadium for you two to have the 1 v 1 tournament. Let's enjoy it while it lasts," Anas suggested.
"But I don't have that much, I can't really afford many things," Raina said, kinda embarrassed.
"It's fine, I can pay for you. And you also don't have to return the favor," Anas replied.
After Raina heard that, she bursted into tears and thanked Anas profusely.
The group decided to visit Last Star Land since the ANGEL stadium was also on the east side. While there, this reminded Nex about the gifts.
"Hey Rai, I wanted to give you this when we got back from Eclipse, but we forgot about them," Nex explained as he gave her the hair tie that he won.
Karasu and Anas also gave their gifts to her with Anas giving her ruby earrings to match her necklace and Karasu giving her an orange bow tie. Rai thanked them and moved her gaze towards Echo which confused him.
"Where's your gift to me?" Rai asked innocently.
"Girl, I was still in the arena beating people's butts," Echo explained.
"Well then, get one for me now," Rai said as she pointed to a game booth which Echo reluctantly agreed to.
Raina was shocked by his behavior as she thought Echo looked the scariest one out of the four.
The booth game was practically made for Echo as the game is to use a whip to hit off all the tin cans four times in a row. The vendor said that no one has ever won, but the reason was never because the game was hard, but because the game was rigged on the last 3 cans as each weighed 20kg.
Echo easily cleared the first 3 tries and the vendor thought that Echo would lose on the last one, but to his dismay, Echo yawned as he won the game and took the rabbit plush off of the vendor's hands, leaving the vendor in shock.
"Here, happy now child?" Echo asked as he tossed the plush to Rai and she nodded.
Raina, seeing this scene, whispered to Karasu, "He acts like her big brother,".
"Don't mind him, he is just like that," Karasu replied.
"Hey Raina, is there any prize that you want?" Nex asked.
Raina looked around for a bit and she saw a necklace with a sapphire dolphin charm on it.
The game was a two player game where both players need to throw balls at as many targets in 30 seconds, with the necklace needing 45 targets to get it. Anas paid for the fee as both Nex and Karasu hit 81 targets combined, getting the highest score along the way. They gave Raina the necklace as they headed to the stadium.
While walking, Echo sensed something, but he saw no one out of the ordinary. He whispered to the trio that they may have company and they all kept the guard up as they got to the stadium.
The boys said goodbye to Rai and Raina and they decided to make a plan to stop whatever is following them. Nex and Karasu would go get seats for them and also try to find anyone suspicious while Anas and Echo went to find Mr Blaze or principal Agnus to tell them the situation.
After Anas and Echo found Mr Blaze and told him the situation, he said that he'll go and relay the message to principal Agnus as the tournament was about to begin.
The two of them headed to where Nex and Karasu were. Their seats were near the royal family and behind the scouts.
"I feel something is off about the scouts, but I don't know which one. They are all too close together for me to pinpoint one," Echo explained.
"One of them might aim for the king," Karasu suggested.
"We need more proof before we do anything. Even if one of the scouts does something suspicious, we cannot act without probable cause," Anas explained.
Just then, "Welcome everyone back to the Starfall Crown! We are lucky to have the royal family with us for these 3 days! Everyone give them a round of applause!" Principal Dominic shouted and the whole crowd clapped for the family.
The first matches were nothing special, Rai and Raina easily won theirs while Ashton and his buddy made it through to the semi-finals.
Rai took a second to beat Ashton's friend and it was now time for Raina to fight Ashton.
"I may have lost to that slave, but I'm not losing to you, Silvermoon Academy nobodies!" Ashton mocked arrogantly.
"How fast do you think he would lose?" Karasu asked.
"Maybe in 10 seconds, but that's a generous guess," Anas replied.
The match ended right as it started, Raina sent a ripple towards Ashton and he wasn't strong enough to hold much of the water with his magic and he lost in about 5 seconds.
"Told you, but Raina does need to control her ability of she wants to work within a team, that's probably the main reason why she couldn't get into Celestial Star Academy," Anas said.
It was now time for Rai to fight Raina. The boys were unsure who would actually win as Raina's water has an advantage over Rai's fire, but Rai is much stronger.
"It all comes down to whether Rai's power can overpower Raina's water," Anas explained.
The match ends with either the opponent loses the strength to fight on or push out of bounds.
As the match starts, Rai formed two dragon heads and shot fireballs while Raina formed a tidal wave. The fireballs left two holes in the wave as steam rised from the holes. Rai created heatwaves to evaporate the rest of the water, leaving a cloud of steam on the arena.
Rai continued with her scale heat shots and fired them rapidly. Raina countered them by shooting small squids to block and counter attack Rai.
Both of them were at a standstill until the cloud started to fade away. Rai spotted Raina's silhouette and shot a heatwave beam towards her. Raina was barely able to form a water wall to minimize damage, but Rai moved towards Raina and put her gauntlet in front of her face, ending the match.
"Congrats on the win, Rai," Raina said to Rai.
"You put up a good fight. How about you join the mercenary group my friends will make in the future?" Rai asked her.
"Are you sure that they will accept me that quickly?" Raina questioned.
"Of course they will. Trust me," Rai replied and Raina nodded.
"Our winner for the first year's branch goes to Rai!" Principal Agnus announced.
"And now it's time for the battle between her and the only daughter of the royal family, princess Corolla!" Principal Dominic continued. The crowd cheered as Corolla jumped down from her seat.
"I can see you have a fire in your eyes, pun intended by the way," Corolla said.
"I hope we will have a great battle," Rai replied.
The royal family cheered for Corolla, hoping she would show how impressive the family is.
The match began, Corolla's eyes glowed with a pink light as she spawns thousands of pink petals towards Rai. Rai responded with her dragonflies, burning the petals down. Corolla continued her barrage with snapdragon darts. Rai blocked with her heatwave, but she was getting tired from exhaustion.
Corolla, trying to end this, formed petals around her, she chanted "Petal Blizzard!" as she sent the petals towards Rai. Rai tried to block with her heatwaves, but was overpowered by the sheer force of the petals.
"You did great against me, thought you would lose immediately, but you're stronger than I expected," Corolla said as she helped Rai up.
But before anyone could react, hundreds of zombies appeared on in the arena and in the crowds. A scout suddenly jumped down near where Corolla and Rai were and mutated into a giant zombie. Both of them were drained, the teachers were trying to protect all the students and both principals were focused on escorting the royal family out.
Before the giant got to them, sapphire spikes formed in front of it and killed most of the surrounding zombies. After the giant took another step, giant bone arms grabbed and lifted it into the sky.
The giant struggled as it tried to get out, but then, it was bisected by dark chains and was tied up with crimson red strings.
Echo and Nex checked up on Rai and Corolla while Karasu and Anas interrogated the zombie.
"Who do you work for? Speak or die," Anas said as his eyes glowed a dark blue, but the giant only made random noises.
"It's a pillar, but with the brain of newborn. Crow, you can kill it," Anas told Karasu.
Karasu formed his scythe and cut its head off and the rest of the zombie decomposed.
"Are you two alright?" Nex asked the two girls.
"Yeah, we're fine. Thanks to you four," Corolla replied.
"Dead bones, bring the princess back up with the royals," Echo commanded which Nex listened to and followed the instructions.
Once Corolla got off the bone platform, king David came running back and hugged her.
"Oh thank the angels, you're safe!" King David cried out.
"The people you should be thanking are the four students down there, they took out the pillar in minutes," Corolla said as she pointed to the arena.
"Haha, it must be the four idiots from my school that I told you about, your majesty," principal Agnus told king David.
"Interesting, I would like to have a meeting with them at the royal palace, send this message to them and no one else can come to our meeting," king David told principal Agnus.
"Maybe I should at least be in the room with them since they're still children and having an adult around would make sure they wouldn't disrespect the royal family," principal Agnus said.
"Very well, only you are allowed to join the meeting, but no one else, no more exceptions," king David replied.63Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU15F03Uf2K
and then Add to home screen.