Setting trap in motion

It had been a while since Diana talked with Balor. He made all the necessary documents for Diana and Pixel. He had just finished making them when his dearest disciple came into the lab to share notes with Balor

His name: Alan Atwood.

Balor introduced them as he did not reveal Diana's identity to his disciple but used the made up alias Layla Rae. If one saw carefully they would notice a twinkle in the disciple's eyes.

But unfortunately, that shine went unnoticed by the group. Later Balor told his disciple to guide Diana a bit in alchemy and share notes with her and left to take some rest.

Balor had left the lab for some time now, leaving Diana and Alan to some harmless experiments as Alan thought Diana the basics of alchemy.

It had been a while since they were doing these experiments while Alan thought her how to extract the important components out of herbs and what's used to make potions.

He also thought about the difference between potion, elixir and pills, and how they are graded into different levels of category for different quality levels.

"I would like to read for a while," Diana said after sharing notes with him all afternoon and evening. Soon she was gonna leave for dinner and before that, she wanted to use this opportunity to study the manuals in Balor's office to gain more insight as it had collected notes from Balor and her father when they worked together in this very lab.

"Sure, go ahead and use the reading room there," Alan said pointing towards the door in the lab leading to a small study filled with bookshelves and a table to use.

"You can even read the books in there if you want further knowledge on the subject we just talked about," Alan mentioned casually while Diana walked towards the study room.

A couple of hours had passed by for Diana and right now she is reading manuals and books on alchemy and notes from her father. Finding it peculiar how qi played an important role in all of them and none had any methods of alchemy without qi.

She was engrossed in studying when she heard whispers coming from the lab. She found it weird that the other person talking was a woman.

She found it not right to listen in on their conversation so she signalled Pixel to hear on the conversation using her sensitive hearing, while Diana went ahead and opened the door to a tiny slit just enough so that Pixel could record the conversation with much more clarity and then left them alone as she continued to study.

She sure found this Alan guy fishy and something about him didn't sit right with her but she couldn't pinpoint what exactly.

So in order to find out more, she decided to record his conversation with that highly suspicious woman and listen to it later to find out more.

She knows she was being nosy in somebody else's business but she had a very curious mind and sometimes, especially when her gut told her, she prefered to go with her instincts.

She got engrossed again in her study leaving Pixel to multi-task when...

'Crash... Shatter ... Badam'

The Sudden noise of violence caught Diana's attention as she broke out in cold sweat, unaware of what was going on in the other room. With eyes wide, Diana slowly walked towards the door, using the tiny slit she had opened to take a peek.

What she saw left her in a cold sweat, as her body trembled.

In the lab, Alan and a mysterious woman were engaged in combat.

While the woman was using a dagger to engage Alan in close combat, Alan was trying to avoid that by using needles imbued with qi thrown at the woman to keep her at distance.

Diana didn't understand what was going on or who was using what move. But she understood one thing and that is, the woman is overpowering Alan and his life was in danger.

The woman in black had made many cuts on Alan so far, while he did inflict damage on her too, it was much less when seen by someone who didn't possess qi.

But if an expert saw this combat they would notice that both sides had been harmed equally.

It's just that the woman was much more resilient and had much greater endurance compared to Alan and that's why she could so easily overpower him.

Diana at this moment was observing everything while wracking her brain trying to find a solution to get out of this mess. She was hoping this fight will end soon with injuries on both sides at most and that's easy to handle.

But her overthinking brain was also thinking about the worse thing that could happen right now making her sweat profusely. It was only fed more by the Woman's combat prowess and how Alan was losing, a lot more than just this combat.

She wondered what would happen with Balor walking in right now at this very moment. Thinking about how he can easily solve this issue without anyone losing anything.

Diana was getting more and more paranoid while subconsciously hoping Balor to come and stop this fight. Without even her knowing she was trusting Balor too much subconsciously looking up to him as a wise grandfather she never had on Earth 0.

But this didn't stop her from being paranoid either. Her thoughts were all over the place. She was so out of touch with reality that she didn't even notice that Pixel had contacted Balor already via her gadget used in this world to communicate over long distances.

There was already one such device in this room and had Balor's resting place's contact information. This device resembles mobile phones from Earth 0, a lot but they were very different and instead of towers forwarding signals used some kind of magic technology on the planet they were on.

It was much faster and more efficient than a mobile phone. It had a very good coverage no matter where you are on the planet and didn't have any bad connection, just because there was too much air traffic like on Earth 0 where a connected call could have issues just because too many people were using their mobile network simultaneously.

Balor was notified about the combat happening in the lab, the actual combat was much closer to coming to an end than thought by Diana.

Balor was on the way to the lab but he would still need about 10 minutes to reach here and seeing how Alan was already on his back on the floor and the woman's blade on his throat, things were not looking good for him.

Hell is just about to get real for Diana soon, or is it something else? Only time would tell...