Chapter 126. Dumpster Fire
Rhys charged at Feran, boarding the flying sword he’d stolen earlier mid-step. Feran’s eyes gleamed with a feral light fitting of his name, and he slashed at the air, sending slices of fiery energy at Rhys as he closed in. Rhys cut them down with slashes of Trash Aura. To his surprise, the Trash Aura ignited when it met the flame, burning both up in a conflagration rather than simply clashing and dissipating. He frowned. Was it because trash was inherently flammable? (Or, at least, flammable garbage was, but it was all the same to Rhys.) It did make sense. If he struck at metal with acid, the metal would melt. If he struck ice with water, the water would freeze. Hit fire with trash, and the trash burned up.
He closed the gap, and the two clashed. Feran was at least Tier 3, and their strength matched, but Feran’s swordwork was inferior to Rhys’s. They exchanged a few blows, and then Feran summoned a fireball in his free hand and threw it at Rhys. Rhys knocked it away with his Trash Intent sword, but the bright light blinded him for a moment, and that was all Feran needed to put some space between them. He dashed into the sky, summoning another fireball and instantly lobbing it at Rhys.
Rhys slashed it down, chasing after Feran, but now that Feran had distance, he kept it. They raced over the sky, all while Rhys’s internal clock ticked on. The Empire would send reinforcements eventually. The longer Feran dragged this fight out, the closer the Empire got.
“I thought you all followed the Emperess’ path. How do you wield fire, then?” Rhys accused Feran, trying to distract him and slow him down. The bugs weren’t a good match; they’d just get burned up en route.
Feran brandished his sword, then went back to throwing fire at Rhys. “I’m of noble blood. Unlike the common folk, we’re allowed to pursue our own paths.”
“What about your cores?” Rhys asked.
Smugly, Feran grinned. “She takes them ceremonially, and they ‘belong’ to her, as do all cores, but it’s only a ceremony. At the end of it, she returns the cores to us. This is the core I was born with. In fact, it’s considered shameful if you need to rely on the Empress to acquire a core with better talent for your child, among the nobility. Your bloodline should possess enough talent on its own, without any intervention.”
“And your noble house is?” Rhys asked. If this Feran wasn’t Lira’s enemy, and he suspected he wasn’t, then it seemed highly likely to him that he belonged to the same noble house as Lira’s enemy did. It was a step in the right direction.
“You must truly be from outside the Empire if you can’t recognize House Infernon.”
“Your family sure loves names that end in ‘n,’ huh.”
“Huh?”
Rhys waved his hand in between cutting down fireballs. “Nothing. What’s a noble like you doing on guard duty, then?”