Chapter 292: Rematch Against Edgar

Julius stepped back and ducked under Aubrey’s swinging fist with a small grin.

The other girl had gotten much faster during his time away. She must have picked up a new skill or evolved one of her prior ones because now she was displaying speed that she definitely didn’t have before.

Aubrey had never been the fastest of people, and although she had a pretty powerful defensive skill, the fact that it was harder to hit her was a significant improvement for her. It also posed a very annoying problem for her opponents because she still had her mirage skill, which already made it hard enough as is.

Luckily for him, he was still able to detect which clone was the real one. However, it was a much more difficult thing to do as each clone had more substance than before. It was almost easier just to use his aura senses to determine the real Aubrey and the fake ones.

He had been training with her as she got acclimated to her new speed. She wanted him to help her instead of Edgar or Derek because Julius had always been able to perceive where she was easily.

This meant that she had to use her newfound speed much more efficiently than she otherwise would when fighting Edgar or Derek.

He wasn’t using his full speed, either. Shockingly, it wasn’t even his idea; it was Aubrey’s.

She had asked him to dial back his speed when she started sparring. Something he was certain pained her to ask, but he got where she was coming from.

She wanted to gauge her progress against someone relatively equal in speed, and once she showed some improvement, she would ask him to go a little bit faster.

With that being said, it wasn’t easy to dodge all of her strikes. Because although her clones weren’t the real her, the attacks were much more threatening now that they had some substance behind them.

What had once been her best skill at avoiding attacks was now one of her strongest attacking skills. It was kind of hard when almost a dozen Aubrey’s were trying to punch you in the face.

“Oh yeah, by the way, we already signed you up for the Tier 3 tournament coming up,” Aubrey dropped a bombshell in the middle of their sparring, making him lose his concentration and get hit by one of the clones at his back.

He blasted a short burst of kinetic energy at the clone to destroy it and looked at the others with a confused frown.

“What do you mean you already signed me up?”

“Well, after talking with Professor Kellar we were able to figure out how you would be able to participate in the prelims in a couple of days,” Edgar said proudly from where he was working on his aura training with Lily.

“That wasn’t what I was asking about, and you know it.”

“Do you really think we were just going to allow you just not to participate?” Aubrey asked, stepping back, signaling their spar’s end.

“Yeah, that was what I was hoping for,” he said with a firm nod of his head.

“Well, then we would be bad friends. There is no way you shouldn’t at least try. I mean, you have already decided to stop pretending to be inconspicuous. Most of the students in the school already know about your existence if that’s what you are worried about,” she pointed out to him.

“But it sounds like a huge pain,” he complained.

“That’s a poor reason to give up free rewards.”

“It would probably take me winning the entire thing to make it worth it. Plus, I already have rewards House Easten is supposed to give me.”

“What? You don’t think you can?” Edgar asked with a knowing look on his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Lily told us some of the things that happened to you when you were gone,” Aubrey said with an exasperated sigh.

Julius couldn’t help but wince. Marcus apparently had told Lily a tiny amount of details about how he and Stella found Julius a few days ago, though it was unavoidable since he was still a retainer of her House.

While Marcus hadn’t told Lily everything that happened, he might have mentioned that he found Julius getting beat up by a Tier 5 upon their arrival. It wasn’t like he could avoid it either because House Violet was supposed to help interrogate the Tier 5, and eventually, it would come out how he was captured.

This predictably didn’t go over very well with Lily, and she had been giving him the silent treatment for the past few days. She hadn’t even tried to scold him like usual. Normally, she would be yelling at him for being dumb and irresponsible. But instead, she gave him a disappointed look every now and then.

And now she must have told them something.

He looked over to where she was doing her own thing, still ignoring him.

Like it had been for the past few days, she wasn’t even looking in his direction, even though she was totally listening to their conversation.

The only silver lining to it was that Marcus didn’t tell her everything. The man had the mercy not to say to her that Julius had been voluntarily blowing his limbs off while fighting the Tier 5.

If she knew that, he expected she would be giving him much more than the silent treatment.

“And why does that change your mind about me participating in the tournament?” He asked.

“We didn’t change our mind,” Aubrey pointed out. “We always thought you should have signed up for it. Even if you didn’t do that well, it would serve as a good experience for you. But apparently, Marcus told her that you were very strong, which is a huge compliment coming from that man.”

“That doesn’t mean I can win the entire thing,” he argued.

Aubrey was about to respond, but for the first time in a few days, Lily spoke to him.

“How strong are you exactly?” She asked, looking at him with a weird look in her eyes.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek as he thought about how he wanted to answer.

“I don’t really know. But I can say that I am stronger than I was when I left; that’s for certain,” he said in all sincerity.

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“And do you think you can win the entire thing?” She asked, looking directly into his eyes.

He shied away from her intense gaze. “Yeah, I have a pretty good shot at winning the entire thing,” he admitted.

“Then there’s no debating or arguing about it. You are going to participate in the prelims in a couple of days,” Lily said with finality.

At some point, he knew when to admit defeat. There was no way he was going to be able to get out of this. She was very serious about him participating.

But that brought up a new problem. He hadn’t told them that he didn’t just have a good shot at winning, but he was very confident that he would. He also hadn’t told them the real reason he was against signing up in the first place.

From his perspective, Aubrey, Derek, and Edgar were all in their fourth years, which meant that this was the last chance they had to win the tournament. He felt that if he were to participate, he would be taking away their own chances of glory.

He wanted to see all of them succeed, and if he were to join, he would be another competitor.

He understood that he was being very arrogant, declaring that they wouldn’t have a chance against him, but that was how he felt this past week when they asked him to participate. He didn’t feel like he needed to win any rewards, and seeing one of them win would give him greater pleasure. But he also realized that they would smack him in the face if they knew he was treating them like one would a child.