By the time the hoverboard descended and Elias stood in front of the glass-walled lab, he had already reached his limits.
His face was reddened as he held the walls for support, taking in deep, hurried breaths so that his breakfast stayed in. He stared at the smug girl who refused to look straight at him, and he could bet that she most definitely did all this on purpose.
Women were so infuriatingly petty!
She was strapping her hoverboard to her back now, her face almost expressionless, but Elias could swear that he could see the edge of her lips curling faintly, showing exactly how much she was enjoying this.
"Uhh… we are here now," she coughed, holding him by the hand before turning and dragging him along towards the doorway, bouncing excitedly.
"Hey, I can walk on my own!"
Her hand tightened around him. "Lalalalala… I can't hear you! Speak a little louder!"
Elias sighed, letting himself get dragged along.
Why the hell was he so devastatingly handsome? He seemed to have smitten this poor girl's heart a little too much. How else was she so damn clingy?!
It was such a hassle being so good-looking.
Before he stepped inside the glass-walled building, Elias had already spotted Mr. Ferborn inside, wearing a lab coat while bent over a table with his goggles on.
He looked intensely concentrated.
Stepping inside, Elias could finally see what he was doing with perfect clarity. He was running what looked like a driller shaped like a biro across a little metallic slate, his eyebrows furrowed together as his eyes continuously ran over a parchment across the table before rolling back to drill into the blank metallic surface.
Like he was drawing a diagram from a notebook?
Occasionally, faint golden sparks of flame danced around him from whatever he was working on, followed by a sound like the bursting of fireworks.
Elias let his eyes carry across the room in curiosity.
There were numerous objects across the lab which he quickly recognized as artifacts, and also a lot of artillery fixed on high shelves and stored like relics. The glass walls continuously flashed with numerous tabs, making it look like one hell of a giant monitor screen.
And then there were those metal-like slates. Like a lot of them.
Some of them were burnt up and lay charred on the ground, others lay scattered on the floor in little pieces of broken shrapnel. And columns of smoke emanated out of a few, swallowing the room in a mildly choking haze.
He squinted his eyes. "Does your Master have a weird habit of playing around with metal scraps? Some fetish?"
She only smiled, observing her Master for a moment before turning back to look at him.
"Don't worry, you will be finding out soon anyway."
He tilted his head slightly, a little skeptical of such a vague answer. "What do you even mea—"
He had barely finished before the metal slate Mr. Ferborn was working on exploded.
BOOM
Pieces of shrapnel flew across the room in a forceful blast.
"Crap!"
Taken by surprise, Elias was barely able to react on time…
But he didn't need to.
In front of him, Valerie was now holding a large metallic shield that extended just enough to envelop the two of them, the glossy surface of the metal lined with numerous engravings that seemed to light up when the shrapnel bombarded it, ringing each time with something suspiciously close to the sound of a fire alarm.
Her face was annoyed, a large column of dark smoke emanating in front of them from the point of the blast. Elias watched in fascination as the shield in front of her began to compress, folding in on itself till it took the form of a silvery metallic bracelet on her wrist.
By the time the shield was gone, Elias was startled to see Mr. Ferborn already standing right in front of them, his face amused and his white coat still sparkling clean, almost as if the explosion hadn't ruffled him in the slightest.
The sockets of two stationary humanoid constructs behind him flashed a brilliant purple at the same time, walking towards the mess on the table and clearing it away.
Mr. Ferborn began to clap, a curious smile curling across his lips.
"Bravo, Verdan! Bravo! While I already know you made it out alive, seeing you right here in the flesh evokes a different feeling… hmm, what should I call it?" he said, rubbing his chin as if deep in thought.
Then he snapped his fingers as if he had gotten the answer.
"Right, a ghost! It's almost like I am seeing someone who, by all logic, should be dead but isn't. Pray tell, Verdan, are you really alive, or just cheating death by resurrecting as some kind of ghoul? You don't seem to have the urge to eat brains or feast on human flesh, do you?"
Elias felt his eyebrow twitch before he could stop it.
This damn baldie.
"You don't have to bother so much. There is no way I am dying before you, old man."
Mr. Ferborn's eyes seemed to glint with faint amusement.
"Still the same snark I remember. There is no doubt then, you are still the same you, only much worse. Did the disasterpiece perhaps increase your talent for spouting out rude words through trauma?"
His eyes narrowed curiously.
"How about I test your brain waves to be sure?"
Elias grinned now, his face proud.
"Really? Guess all the personal training I did over the mirror is finally paying off. Good to know someone is finally acknowledging the results of all my hard work."
He then waved his hands.
"And you don't have to test my brain with your dumb machines." A smug smile crept across his lips before he could stop it. "For such a super brain like mine, asking those things to taint it is an insult to my person."
Mr. Ferborn's eyes widened in bemusement before he began to laugh, his voice carrying across the lab.
But Elias only grew more irritated, unable to understand what was so funny.
And hell, this man laughs like a banshee.
"Humph, you seem like a very narcissistic person, Junior Brother," a voice answered him, and it came from Valerie, who had at some point walked towards the exploded pieces of shrapnel cleared to one side of the table, her eyes fixed on it in thought.
Before he could answer her and give her a lecture about how this was simply nothing but plain fact, she had already turned towards Mr. Ferborn, her voice filled with urgency.
"Master, exactly how long will it take?"
Mr. Ferborn stopped laughing now, sighing deeply.
"At the current pace, it would take me five days before I successfully inscribe the refined circuit on the Eldruvian steel. Optimizing the nodes is proving to be such a difficult affair."
Her face turned a little troubled.
"But the tournament is in three days."
Mr. Ferborn furrowed his eyebrows.
"How about I enhance your Runic Artifact and try to add some more nodes? It could still be enough to at least give you a fighting chance against the students of other Flux Artisans."
Elias simply couldn't understand this conversation no matter how much he tried, although it wasn't difficult to infer some things.
Like the fact that the slates scattered across the lab were called Eldruvian steel, and how Mr. Ferborn wasn't going to make her a new weapon in time for the tournament.
But wait, which tournament exactly?
Elias shook his head.
Why was he even asking this when he had just arrived here minutes ago? It's not like he would magically know about a tournament he was just hearing of, you know?
He watched as Valerie's eyebrow twitched before she stomped towards the door in what had to be an attempt to mimic a tantrum.
"I am going to get myself a chocolate latte at Gurë's Cafe."
Her voice resounded again just before she stepped out of the door.
"And tissues, lots and lots of tissues. Because guess what? I am going to be crying the entire time I am drinking that chocolate. Like really, really bawling my eyes out. So don't look for me, okay?!"
She disappeared out of the door, Elias looking at the spot she left with a strange expression.
Behind him, Mr. Ferborn laughed awkwardly.
"Hahaha… funny one, isn't she?"
Elias could tell this was simply a mock attempt to hide his embarrassment. Turning his face to the scientist, Elias narrowed his eyes and asked the one question that had been on his mind ever since he arrived at Vertnar Moor.
"What do you want?"
The smile on Mr. Ferborn's face froze. Then slowly, he raised one of his eyebrows imperceptibly.
"What do you mean?"
Elias shook his head.
"Don't play dumb with me. Even from when you chose to save only Lizzy and abandon the rest of us to die, it was already quite obvious you are a man least moved by empathy."
His voice came out hard.
"Yet when I told you that I wouldn't want to be your student back at Arvenelle over the phone, what I expected you to do was send Lizzy straight back to me even if she was still unconscious, without a moment's thought. Yet you kept her here, even helping her to recover when you didn't need to go this far."
Mr. Ferborn smiled now, his eyes glinting amusedly.
"Of course, that's because I was naturally convinced that you will still end up as my student. After all, to enter the Academy, you will need me. And I am the only one that can help you."
Elias furrowed his eyebrows.
"And how are you so sure I will agree?"
The smile on Mr. Ferborn's face widened now.
"Boy, the first time that I met you, I could see it all on your face, hidden behind every gesture you made. The hunger and the passion to awaken, the envy you had towards those standing in the limelight. I saw selfishness and ambition hidden in the depths of your eyes, and I knew that irrevocably, this choice wasn't a choice at all."
His eyes narrowed.
"If the only thing standing in your way to that place of legends is to become a student of mine, then for you it becomes an inevitability. Because you would do anything it takes, no matter the costs, just to make it there, won't you?"
Elias chuckled, almost like he had heard something funny.
"No matter the costs?"
Mr. Ferborn furrowed his eyebrows.
"You seem to be mistaken a lot about me, so let me set it right. I. Do. Not. Trust. You."
Elias took a step towards him.
"Now if only I was involved, then maybe the consequence of this distrust is something I can live with. But asking me to become your student is technically the same as asking me to entrust my sister into your hands."
Elias laughed now.
"The cost? You think I would risk her safety just to enter some school for wannabe heroes?! Laughable! The Academy can go to hell for all I care. That's the last thing I give a fuck about if it compromises Lizzy's safety. And you… I cannot trust you, Mr. Ferborn. I do not know you, and the few memories I have of you simply make you a horrible person."
Mr. Ferborn looked at him, his face strangely calm.
"If those are your worries, you can simply send your sister to some far-off city since you seem so wary of me. That should be enough to bring this matter to rest, shouldn't it?"
Elias replied, shaking his head.
"That's such a hassle. I would rather she is kept close to me, or somewhere I can afford to reach her easily. But definitely not here, and definitely not with you. So I can't remain here, Mr. Ferborn, nor can Lizzy."
Elias stepped backwards.
"So regrettable, I decline being your student. Sure you will find someone a lot better than a talentless guy with defective strings."
Mr. Ferborn narrowed his eyes at him.
"You are bluffing."
Elias frowned, his face unable to hide the twinge of annoyance.
While he couldn't deny that he had once planned to serve under Mr. Ferborn moments before this, in the end he still had to reconsider his options.
Especially when the man in question wasn't exactly being straightforward about his intentions.
Elias didn't answer him, only asking a particularly vital question.
"Where the hell is Lizzy?"
Elias felt Mr. Ferborn's eyes hover around his face for a moment, then the old man's shoulders slumped, a sigh escaping his lips.
"My mum died."
Elias stopped the retort forming on his lips, taken aback by the abruptness of his words.
While that genuinely deserved a bit of empathy, Elias couldn't tell what this had to do with him or why the old man was telling him this.
"She died the same night of the invasion at your hometown." His voice was filled with raw hurt and grief now. "She died protecting a group of refugees escaping from a swarm of Echoforms at one of the Corrupted Death Zones in the borderlands."
Elias didn't interrupt him now, letting him finish speaking.
"What I want to know is why. Why she did something like that when she could have left them behind and escaped to safety. I want to know why she did something so noble, yet so stupid."
Elias wanted to retort and say that it was simply because she wasn't a heartless brute like he was, but he held back his words and asked another question.
"And how does having me as your student connect to all of this?"
Mr. Ferborn smiled now.
"Oh, it does. It freaking does. You wanted some honesty, boy? Fine, I will give you some fucking honesty. I want to always look at your face and that of your sister every second of the day, remembering the choice I made. I want it to remind me till I feel it cutting through every centimeter of my heart, bit by bit until it consumes me."
He laughed bitterly now.
"At the end I may feel regret, or maybe I will feel nothing at all. Who knows? But this is the only way I can have my answer, and I am reluctant to let it go."
He cracked his neck, stretching his shoulders. Elias couldn't help but tense, unsure of what he was about to do.
"Nova, initiate an unequal contract," Mr. Ferborn's voice called.
[Contract initiated. State your terms.]
A mechanical voice boomed across the lab from the speakers, the hologram of a golden, flower-like totem rising right above Mr. Ferborn's head.
"The moment I think of causing harm to both Elias Verdan and Lizzy Verdan, exclusive to the case of self-defense, I will die."
[Contract assessed. Do you wish to implement the contract?]
"Yes!"
The mechanical voice had barely finished before his answer rang out, the totem shooting right into his body and forming a golden tattoo on his forehead, the tattoo shining with illuminating brilliance.
He then turned to Elias, who was watching all of this with a hint of complicated emotion in his eyes, his voice ringing out one more time.
"Let's try again, Elias Verdan. Will you become my student? Yes… or no?"