Chapter 519: Unexpected Offer

Freya POV

She chuckled with amusement when the displays above the arena showed the end of the fight between Julius and Valis’s newest disciple. The old crackpot had surprisingly gone with a totally different disciple from his last one. Way less violent and way more calm.

It was a total contrast to Valis himself.

The older man wasn’t as wild as he used to be. She had seen some of it herself, but apparently, he had been terrible in the past. She heard stories from Galten and other older mentors she had met over the years. Apparently, Valis had been a vicious demon who liked nothing more than blowing stuff up.

He solved every issue with the same method. Overwhelming power, and if that didn’t work, then he would use his next strategy—even more power.

Valis’s brazen actions had created more than a few issues with various countries and organizations over the past several decades. People often didn’t take it kindly when a Tier 6 archmage blew up half a city just to kill a few monsters.

Especially when that person was skilled enough to avoid such things.

It was only because Valis made sure to limit actual human casualties that he was saved from being hunted down by other Tier 6s. He had quite an honorable set of morals if you looked at it from a particular perspective.

For example, he always made sure to save people; it was one of his main priorities, right up there with blowing stuff up. However, he didn’t give a shit about buildings or structures either. He would blow those things up in a heartbeat if it meant he could use a flashy skill.

She had actually been there when he had teleported over a thousand people with an overly complex spell to safety so that he could use an explosive spell that destroyed everything within half a mile. The townspeople were happy that they survived, but they didn’t care for the excessive explosion that followed.

They were even angry enough to complain to the man afterwards.

Freya rarely saw anyone below Tier 5 actually voice complaints to a Tier 6. Typically, they were scared that they would be wiped out or erased from existence. Yet, Valis didn’t do that.

It wasn’t to say that he was very sorry for what he did. Valis barely listened to their complaints and really only cared about practicing his explosion spell.

Although, to the archmage’s credit, he had helped with the cleanup afterwards. He even set up some powerful wards and enchantments around the town as a way to apologize. But Freya suspected it was to train some of his skills rather than from the kindness of his heart.

Still, it would have been a little heartwarming if not for Freya overhearing him mutter something about how there should have been more enchantments and protections in the first place. She almost attacked the man for his audacity.

He honestly thought that the town would have enough protections installed that it could ward off a fully powered spell by a Tier 6 mage. How he came to this conclusion, Freya had no idea.

The man was an idiot and would essentially be a psychopath if he had just one or two more screws loose.

Thankfully, this attitude had slowly transformed over the years. She suspected it had something to do with the death of Valis’s old disciple. His name had been Abrel if Freya recalled correctly.

Abrel had died while protecting a large town from a monster flood.

It had been a bleak fight in the first place. Most of the region’s fighting power had been occupied elsewhere. They weren’t able to protect everywhere at once, but the young man had been out training on his own and decided to help out a town being overrun by a horde of strong monsters.

While Abrel had inherited his master’s bullheaded attitude, he also inherited his master’s strength and heroic spirit.

He singlehandedly defended the town and defeated countless monsters for almost an entire day without rest. Unfortunately, by the time reinforcements arrived, Abrel was already dead; the only thing that kept him going was his stubborn spirit.

Powerful healers tried to save him, but the damage he had sustained had been too much. Not to mention the damage caused to his soul for overdrawing his strength for such a long period.

He was gone, but he had left a lasting memory of courage and sacrifice. The town that had survived thanks to his efforts had decided to rename itself in honor of Abrel.

Valis had been changed ever since then. He hadn’t caused many huge issues, and looking at the disciple, she had an idea of why that might be.

Riven was very different from his master in that he had multiple techniques to handle any problem. Each of them was powerful as well. Four perfect affinities and an unknown number of exceptional affinities were a generational talent, especially for someone with the predisposition of a mage.

The only person she had seen with a similar level of mana control for his tier was someone like Julius, who was not someone to compare to a Tier 3. She had already begun to think of him as a Tier 4. He basically met all the standard requirements of a normal Tier 4. The main thing that he was missing was the actual label.

However, it was nice to see him struggle a little bit against someone around his own age and tier. She felt like Julius sometimes didn’t perceive Tier 3s as a threat. While he had reason to believe that, she didn’t want him to learn that type of mindset.

Once you started to believe that someone’s tier was an actual indicator of strength, that’s when you got into trouble. She had met plenty of unique monsters who had the strength of a tier or sometimes even two tiers above it.

One of the most difficult fights in her life had been against a unique Tier 4 monster. Even with Cain at her side and both of them being at Tier 5, the two of them struggled to fight the unique monster.

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They were actually forced to retreat the first time around. It wasn’t like they were newly advanced Tier 5s either. Cain was at the very peak of Tier 5, while she was pretty close to it.

That only made it even more embarrassing when they had to run away. Thankfully, the second time around had gone a little better, and they finally managed to strike down the beast.

However, not without severe costs.

Cain had lost both arms and sustained pretty bad damage to his mind. Freya hadn’t been able to heal him either. Even after death, the mana from the monster prevented her healing skill from working in Cain’s body. It worked fine for her and her injuries, but Cain was forced to go armless and be half-brain-dead for the next several months until she found a way to heal her husband.

In a lot of ways, Julius reminded her of that same monster.

That was why she wasn’t surprised when he finally figured out a way to get past all of Valis’s disciples’ tricks.

However, the crowd thought otherwise. In their eyes, they had just seen one of the most promising and biggest favorites to win the tournament lose to a boy a few years his junior. Julius had garnered some attention during the first stage, but this was totally different. She suspected that he would be receiving much more attention in the coming days.

She smiled when she saw her husband jumping up and down like a child. He blended in perfectly with the crowd, running around and celebrating with random people he had never met before. In their shared excitement, they had practically become family for the next couple of hours.

She could only shake her head when he finally finished high-fiving a group of guys and even downed a beer when pressured by them.

Cain would always be Cain, and there was nothing more she could have wanted from her husband than for him to be himself.

However, as she was lovingly looking at her husband, she felt something, or rather someone, enter her domain. Her domain was more subtle than most other people’s, which was why she was able to keep it deployed at practically all times.