The Bookkeeper

The air was calm and quiet when Raiden and Freya sat cross-legged in the training room, their nerves calmed as their grey and dark eyes locked onto each other’s.

Raiden’s odachi sword was undoubtedly his favorite weapon, but with it completely broken, he needed something else, and he couldn’t imagine anything better than mastering mana the way Freya does.

"I don’t know how to put it in words, but just like everyone, I can release it within each part of my body," Freya said in Noorian, gently scratching her cheek nervously as she still didn’t understand how exactly she used her mana.

However, Raiden was ready for this moment. He was going to guide her to the right path. She had to tell him.

"Not everyone can feel mana in every part of their body, Freya." Freya gave him an awkward smile. "It is a fact that we are made of mana..."

The moment he said that, Freya’s eyes widened in realization. She leaned slightly toward Raiden. "That’s it... I think I remember now."

Raiden gave a silent fist-pump of triumph. "I can remember spending hours meditating in the wilderness with my mentor to build my mana reserve."

Her eyes widened even more with excitement as she rushed to get all the words out, as if they would escape her. "Since we didn’t have any natural resources in Noor, I had to absorb mana from the mana beasts and lost familiars that wandered through the desert."

Raiden’s expression shifted into confusion. If he could remember correctly, Levi said Freya’s mentor vanished ten years ago—when she was seven. She was left to wander the wilderness at that age? How brutal was the mentor? And what puzzled him most was whether they had even gotten a glimpse of how strong Freya actually was then.

"How did I defeat her then?" he muttered under his breath.

"What did you say?" Freya asked with a curious expression.