Tempris said while dangling from his neck with her tiny arms locked around him like a koala who had found her permanent tree. "Why would I be scared? I know you won’t forget your promise."

She perked up as if remembering something important. "Oh that reminds me, some bearded guy came down here earlier to yell at me. But I was really brave. I looked right at him and said that when Mister finds out you hurt me he is going to beat you up so bad."

She rested her chin on Jax’s shoulder and casually scanned the bloodstained floor behind him with the curiosity of a child browsing a toy store. Her eyes drifted over soldiers playing dead and men quietly crawling away in terror until she spotted her target and pointed cheerfully at the corner.

"There he is." A sweet giggle escaped her lips as she looked at the decapitated head of Loid resting on the stone floor next to his armless stump of a body. "That is what you get, you smelly old fuzz face," she declared proudly at the ruined Grand Magus as if scolding a naughty pet.

Jax couldn’t meet her eyes as he spoke. "I am sorry for leaving you. I am sorry for not being there when you needed me the most."

Tempris reached out and covered both his cheeks with her tiny hands, gently forcing him to look directly at her. "You know, Mister, I lied to you before. I was super scared in there. Not because of the cage or the scary guys. I was just really terrified that you decided you did not want me anymore."

Her voice got smaller. "It was just a teeny tiny thought but it made me cry so much. I was so silly to think you would actually leave me alone."

She wiped a smudge of dirt from his cheek with her thumb and gave him a bright smile that had no business existing in a room this bloody. "So please do not look so sad anymore. You came back for me just like you promised and that is the only thing that matters."

She added with the urgency of someone whose priorities were perfectly in order. "Now can we please just go back? I am really hungry right now."

Jax finally smiled as he felt completely forgiven by a child who had every reason to never trust anyone again. But that warmth was quickly followed by a heavy realization settling into his chest as in just a few hours he would be parting ways with her for good. He gently patted her head and let out a soft sigh.

"Your stomach is going to have to be brave for a little while longer because I need to get you far away from all this danger first."

He turned to the two girls standing behind him and said. "Let’s go. And I am hoping this time everything goes as per the discussed plan."

Some time passed and Jax along with the others were dashing out of the royal estate with Tempris wrapped in a cloak to keep her hidden. Delphine was running beside Jax when she caught sight of something in the distance that made her voice spike.

"Professor, why is the main palace engulfed in flames?" She squinted harder. "Wait, never mind the fire. Why are these people literally slaughtering each other openly? Are we caught in the middle of a rebellion or..."

Her words completely died in her throat the moment she saw that signature devilish grin slowly returning to Jax’s face.

She said with pure horror. "What exactly did you do?"

Jax just chuckled darkly. "I simply did what I was hired to do. I planted the seeds of absolute chaos and it looks like they are blooming beautifully. So I would say I aced the diversion test."

Delphine was struck silent by his entirely childish satisfaction at the destruction of a civilization. It was an unexpected addition to his personality but a frustrating one because the more she attempted to study his mind the more distant and unfamiliar he became. Realizing that knowing this man was a journey with no real destination she just sighed and focused on the escape.

They finally made it out of the imperial estate or at least what remained of it. Jax spotted the city walls in the distance but before he could even open his mouth Lavinia was already sprinting directly toward them from the other direction.

She forced the group to a halt as she arrived, bent over with her hands on her knees, breathing so dramatically that it sounded like she had just outrun death itself.

Then she immediately stepped right into Jax’s personal space and said softly. "Professor, I was so incredibly worried about you."

But before she could get any closer a small dragon tail suddenly whipped out from under Jax’s cloak and Tempris firmly pushed Lavinia back with it while giving her a territorial glare that served as a very clear warning to keep her distance from what was hers.

Jax ignored the little turf war and said. "We don’t have time to waste, we have to move as per the plan I told you all. Delaying it means our loss and we will be stuck here forever or worse something can happen that we haven’t accounted for."

Lavinia instantly dropped her romantic act and frowned with genuine concern. "But we have a huge problem, Professor. An entire army of mages and elite warriors has locked down the borders. There has to be at least a thousand of them waiting for us."

She awkwardly rubbed the back of her neck and added. "You know how I mentioned earlier that Athanasia and I were fighting and running for our lives? Well technically Athanasia has taken the fighting part as she is fighting all of them completely alone right now while I was busy sprinting away for my life."

She offered Jax an outrageously innocent puppy-dog smile to excuse her cowardice while he gave her nothing but a blank and exhausted stare in return.

—x—X—x—

On the outskirts, Athanasia felt like she was fighting a literal monster horde. The empire’s top rankers had been mobilized to find them well before Jax decided to set the palace on fire and for over an hour she had held them back all by herself.

But now she was trapped inside a circle of thousands with nowhere left to retreat. The Grand Marshal walked to the front of the army with a victorious glare and spoke with the finality of a man who believed this was already over. "It ends here. Surrender now before we pass judgment right here for the comrades who fell by your hands."

Athanasia was entirely out of mana. The fight was over. Her only remaining trump card was her true power but using it was entirely out of the question. Death was a much better alternative.

Ready to accept her fate she lifted her hands to yield. She locked eyes with the Grand Marshal to say the words that would end everything but before a single sound could leave her lips a blade flashed across her vision and the Grand Marshal was brutally cleaved into two separate pieces right in front of her face.

Beside the collapsing halves of his body stood a woman with a sword whose presence alone made the entire front line of the army freeze in place as if the air itself had turned to ice.

As the two halves of the Grand Marshal wetly collapsed to the dirt, a deeply exhausted voice came from behind the ruined corpse.

"Are you raising your hand to ask a question? Or is it just stretching? Or did you actually just try to quit?" Jax scolded her flatly while walking through the gap that Clarice had just created. "Because I do not remember teaching you that. Surrender is just suicide with good manners, Athanasia. And if that is what you just tried..."

He pulled out the small evaluation book he had been given for their assessment and held it up so she could see it clearly.

"Then I am deducting your marks."

-x-X-x-

A/N: Ordici_T, spawn1996, Leo_Muhammad, Littleboy18794, Outsxder and tony_adams_4787 dropping golden tickets, thank you guys 🙏🔥

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