Love For Family And Friends

"Is that so?" Malleus raised a brow and turned to Ren, "Get his wound treated before he returns to his room, Sebek."

"Understood."

As Sebek left, Lotus tossed a stone over to Lilia and responded, "The princess may not be present to talk, but this stone should help. It's called a Son stone. With this, Peony should be able to speak with you. It's like a cellphone. Just insert mana and it works. Just please don't break it. I don't have enough spares and this is the only one I have left."

"Really?" Lilia looked to the stone curiously and inserted his mana into it.

"Hm? This stone... Malleus?" A voice responded followed by a loud voice calling for Peony.

"This voice..." Silver furrowed his brows in surprise.

"It sounds like you're busy..." Malleus noted curiously.

"Ah, well. It nothing that important... probably. Anyway, I take it that Lotus finally gave you the stone?"

The two looked to looked over to see Ren welcoming Sebek back and proceeded to tend to Lotus's knee which looked terrifyingly horrible right now with the white of her bone protruding.

"I hope that child finally got around to treating it. Seriously, he just pretends not to be injured at all throughout the mission."

"You knew that I would ask where you took Lotus, didn't you?" Malleus responded with a huff.

The voice chuckled, "Night Raven College is said to accept trouble making students, but it would seem that Lotus is correct. The students here are just those with high ambitions and that's not necessarily bad. Of course I thought you'd ask about this. I don't plan to give my people such a hard time either, you know."

Malleus sighed, "Putting that aside. That girl..."

"You want to spare her life too?" the voice responded with a sigh, "The prince of Briar Valley is as kind as the current queen. However, even the queen of Briar Valley has reluctantly allowed this.

"That's not it" Malleus responded, "Her mind. Lotus said that you broke it."

"I see. you want me to fix it back?"

"No." Malleus shook his head, "I want to know why she wanted to harm everyone around her and why harm the fairy queen?"

There was a moment of silence before she sighed, "Fine... Lotus is with you right now, right? Send him away."

Malleus looked up to see that Ren had just finished patching up her wound and was being praised by Lotus making Sebek seemingly jealous before he nodded, "Lotus, the princess and I have something to say."

Hearing this, Lotus looked up and nodded, "Then, I'll go back to my room."

"Do you need any help?" Lilia questioned.

"No worries. I'm good. The room isn't that far from here, remember?" Lotus smiled pleasantly without a trace of pain on her face.

After she left for a while, Malleus turned to the stone and responded, "He's gone."

After a brief silence, her voice spoke up, "The girl wants to use the chaos to find someone."

"Find someone." Lilia raised a brow.

"That's right." She responded, "I can't explain much, but... I'll try to explain it to you anyway. She's part of a group of assassins sent here to find a child with the last name Hui. Apparently, the child was stolen by the villains outside of the village one night and his family was destroyed. Now, the main branch of his clan is after his life to prevent a potential comeback from him and had secretly cooperated with outsiders. They believe the student is now fifteen years of age and a freshman of Night Raven College. Hearing that my mother was holding an event and causing some trouble, they want to use this chance to create chaos and take advantage of it. This girl is a student of the hired assassin and was lost in the negative emotion and blot to stray away from a righteous path similar to becoming magicians. Her original goal was to kill to create chaos. Not destroy the world. However, it would seem the appearance of the Pomefiore students' beauty and some of their demeanor caused her a lot of jealousy and being suppressed by the staff guarding the dorm got her angry enough to want the same respect. As a result, she was willing to do anything to get the same outcome, so she killed and consumed. The result was a crazy girl who wants to destroy the world and become the only beauty. So silly."

Hearing this, Silver and Sebek was stunned! They didn't think that a girl would become so crazy to the point of killing and destroying the entire world for such a stupid and selfish reason!

"Is that student they're looking for still in the school?" Lilia questioned with a frown.

Peony hesitated, "I can't confirm that. I can check on all the students in the school, but a cultivator is an old practice in the far east. It is so old that the far east don't practice the original of it anymore. Only their society is still practicing the original version of it, albeit improvised. I can check all the students in this school, but the chances that one of the people are in here with the same ability is like finding a needle in a haystack. Moreover, if he was sent away at a young age, the chances that he has practiced the art is lower than 1 in two hundred orphans, like him. He needs the knowledge and practice to be found at a higher chance. If he didn't start using our practice, I will never have found him no matter how hard I try, unless I give all two thousand students an individual physical diagnosis, which I clearly can't. Moreover, these people also isn't certain is the child is a boy or a girl. They believe that it would be a boy because his family boasted that they would have a son before their child's birth and I've been at that place just once. I can confirm they don't have the skills or technology to predict the gender of their child before birth."

"What will you do?" Lilia questioned, "The girl has gone crazy and the queen has been cursed."

"I need time and mana. A lot of mana." Peony responded, "Now that the culprit has been taken care of, I can break the curse, but there are two students in this school in dire need of help earlier. I've lost a large amount of mana. If I tried to break the curse now, I will run out of mana and, instead of overblot, I'll perish on the spot before I even succeed. Then, I need the time to integrate the mana through my body."

"How long will it take before you finish gathering enough mana?" Lilia asked.

"Not enough time." Peony responded, "I'm not in the fairy kingdom, so I'll need three months to recover the amount of mana that I lost. The finish of fairy gala is in two months. I can cut it close and break the curse before the three months time, but I'll lose my life in the process. I know my parents best. If that happens, mother won't bring back Spring and my father won't even hesitate to support her decision. We know the result of that."

"Why would those people still try to harm the fairy queen..." Malleus questioned in confusion quietly.

Peony sighed, "Because we cultivators... don't have the same life span as other humans."

"What?" Sebek looked up in confusion.

"Cultivators don't have the same life space as humans once they began cultivating. Our habits and needs become different than other humans." Peony explained, "Cultivators rarely need the chance to eat or drink. They can live for weeks, months, or even a few years without food or water depending on how powerful we grow to become. We can live from decades to hundreds or thousands of years depending on our strength. As long as we have mana, we don't need food or water to sustain our body. Resting is the same. So, even if the world doesn't have spring, it would not matter to these people as long as there is mana. Not many are as righteous as other humans. So we're no different from humans in the medieval era or even further back. For us, we have our own desires and values. As long as they aren't affected or our lives won't be put into danger we won't need to care about others. You'll need to search carefully to find those who do if you want to find one. Those who do amongst those who wear masks. For me, I won't be able to sit back if the lack of spring affects my people and my family."

"That's because your value is your family and your people." Lilia nodded.

"Unfortunately, not all of my people are fairies and, even so, they all require food. So, Spring is very important to us as well." Peony concluded, "You could say that they will hinder my plans and it's an attack on my people since they planned to target my people. Tch..."

"Eh..." Malleus noted in surprise, "I remember that Lotus said you also got injured as well."

"True, but it's not a big deal. After all, I was the one who shown Lotus how to use the acupuncture and all the medical knowledge." Peony responded.

Suddenly, a high pitch voice called out scolding the princess with a hint of fear and irritation.

"Ah! There you are, my lady! Get down here this instant!"

There was an awkward silence in the air before as Malleus raised a brow. Lilia smirked as he thought aloud, "It's no big deal, huh?"

"Shoot!" Peony hissed in alarm, "I need to get going now! If there's anymore questions, you can always ask me with this stone. It's called a mother and son stone, so just inserting your mana is enough to activate it and let me know that you called. Think of it like a phone."

"My lady, I'll count to three! If you're not down here by three, we'll have no choice but to call her majesty!"

"But, she's not in the perfect condition too-! Ah! Bye!" She responded hastily before hanging up.

With that said and done, Lilia chuckled taking advantage of the silly atmosphere, "Well, ain't she a lively one? Still, I'm surprised by how difficult these trespassers are... And the princess also has such a strong opinion against her own kind. What do you think?"

"Perhaps, she does not see them as part of her own clan or family." Silver concluded with a frown.

"Hmph! In the end, they still represent her own race. She should still honor that fact." Sebek noted with a frown.

"Ren?" Malleus glanced over to Ren curiously.

"Huh? W-well..." Ren hesitated before he responded, "From what she said... I don't think it's about blood or race. I think the reason she is so strict and willing to give out such difficult decisions is because she's already decided that they cannot compare to the importance of the bond she has with her current family and friends who have always been caring to her. To carry out harsh decisions require strength in both body and heart. I think her strength to go against her kind is from the bond she has with those close to her as she always speaks of the queen of faeland. I believe she did this to protect the fairies and her mother from the potential threat that is aiming for the life of her loved ones. So compared to the importance of them, making enemies is not as scary in her eyes. With her bold personality, perhaps, it's not impossible to say that she's willing to walk through mud and thorns for them out of love."

"Value towards the bonds shared between family and friends." Lilia hummed in deep thoughts, "If so, she will have a difficult path to walk across. At first thoughts, these are naive thinking, but they're also very strong ones when being careful around it."

"I see. So, love for family and friends..." Malleus nodded, "Indeed those bonds are very important. This is the first time I've witnessed this type of person put it in a literal meaning... As such, the enemies are not part of 'her people'. Her way of carrying out her actions personally was very likely always a way of showing loyalty to her foster family and respect towards her own kind."

"Father." Silver whispered, "Did that incident a few years ago really happened to such an extent? I don't think Sebek nor I have heard about it..."