Chapter 96 Training Alone



As days passed by, Aiden acted like he had said to Emma a couple of days ago.

He woke up, and went to the training grounds, this time without her accompanying him.

He trained until late at night and came back to their room then, sometimes he gave a few tips to Emma regarding how to use her dagger, but he seemed a lot more interested in her as if his mentality had changed completely.

He didn't care about how she dressed, what she looked like, or anything like that, his mind was solely focused on training stronger.

He wanted to get stronger, strong enough to get any answers that he wanted to have.

Strong enough that others couldn't decide what would happen to him.

He wouldn't let others dictate his life, that was what he had decided and he was going to try and do it to the best of his abilities.

His progress with the Everheart was also quite slow and it was almost sure that he wouldn't be able to use it before the tournament, he was still on the 7th step and there were few days before the tournament.

As a matter of fact, the interactions between Emma and Aiden were becoming scarce as they only said greetings to each other, not talking like they would before.

Emma obviously wanted to go back to the old relationship between the two of them, but well... under the orders of her mother, she was asked to not disturb Aiden at all and to simply leave him alone.

Nonetheless, Emma still completely listened to her mother sometimes acting in certain ways to maybe try and get Aiden to talk to her, but it was like she was a hindrance to him.

In the days that passed by, Maelis and Aiden didn't have any contact with each other, she only watched him from far away trying to see what were his daily actions. 

She had also not received any news from her about the mercenary and it seemed like he wouldn't be able to come before the tournament, was he occupied with something?

? ? ? ? ? ? ?, ? ? ? ? ? ? ?.

No one knew, she had stopped receiving any news from him a couple of days ago.

It was a worrying situation for her as she didn't want to have lied to Aiden about the rewards that he would be getting when joining the family.

But she couldn't do much about the situation as she couldn't summon him how she wanted.

Still, the change in Aiden's behavior was quite hard to deal with from her perspective as she thought that it was her fault that he was acting this way.

Well in a way, it was.

But in another, it really was because of that mask she had shown him.

A mask that was connected to his past life, which had made Aiden question everything that had happened before transmigrating to this world.

Without its appearance, who knew what would have happened between Aiden and Emma, one was sure it was that they would have gotten a lot closer to each other.

***

"Aiden, can we speak?" asked Emma, seeing Aiden entering their bedroom as usual late at night.

However, as usual, he continued on his way not paying any mind to her, only responding a clear and concise "no".I think you should take a look at

He knew that if he started acting like he did before then he would start to get naive and believe whatever words.

He knew that if any person from the Nightshade family would be coming that they would be welcoming them with open arms.

He couldn't be foolish anymore, he needed to prepare for their arrival.

He knew that he wouldn't be able to resist what they wanted after he was weak, only level fourteen in a middle-level family without any technique to help him.

***

Then, another week passed by the same way as it did previously, that was until they were both called to meet with Maelis, it seemed like she had something to say to both of them.

It was quite obvious what she was going to say, but well... they still needed to go and see her.

They both of them were walking toward her office with Emma trying to start some conversation, but as usual, it didn't work it was like she was speaking with a rock which only answered with "yes" and "no".

It was like the rock wasn't able to develop any form of interesting answers.

After a couple of tries, she gave up accepting that he had changed and that he probably didn't care about her at all.

But who could blame him?

This wasn't where he came from and he didn't know anything about this world except that he could get stronger by going into trials.

Then, after walking for a bit in silence, they knocked on the door to Maelis's office.

And a voice could be heard on the other side of it.

"Come in."

Entering, Aiden nodded as a greeting and Emma did the same with a more relaxed expression than him.

"You probably already know why I called you here, but I'll still say it. The official date for the tournament has been announced and where it will take place also," said Maelis waiting for both Emma and Aiden to pay attention.

"The tournament will take place in three days, and I'd say that your best course of action is to relax yourselves to be in the best shape possible when arriving there. As the place you will be going is as usual one of the territories owned by one of the founding families."

'Wait, it takes place in one of the backyards of the founding families and she didn't tell me which one it was?' 

Some panic seemed to enter his body but he tried his best controlling it as both Emma and Maelis didn't seem to even notice his reaction.

Actually, Emma seemed excited as this was the first time she was going to the territory of one of the founding families.

Authors Note: will proofread soon