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Chapter 114. A Second Bout
🕑 Added 2025-07-09 14:44:49 +0000 UTCFiloria had not felt so happy after Rafael's ominous words. She couldn't tell why she thought those words were ominous. Her and Helare might have their differences, but this was surely not one of them.
The boy was planning something. Something that would leave them both devastated.
She needed to tell someone. She needed to tell Helare.
But Helare seemed to know too. When the princess sparred with the boy that evening, their interaction was more subdued than it had been in weeks.
Filoria noticed, as she had been noticing many things about them this whole week. The princess knew, and she wasn't going to do anything to stop it. Somehow Filoria found that hard to stomach. She would not allow it.
“What is going on, princess?!” she ambushed a still wet Helare in the process of drying herself up after her bath.
Helare didn't seem surprised by the ambush.
“I've noticed you keeping a very close eye on us recently. Did you notice I was distant with Rafe today? You can't throw around vile rumours of—”
“What on Primus are you talking about?! I'm asking about the fact that he is planning to leave!” Filoria found herself shouting.
Helare finally got surprised, her eyes bugging out for a bit as she studied Filoria critically.
“You know that too?” the princess asked. “So he really is preparing to leave? Soon, do you think?”
Filoria was confused by the question, by how subdued it sounded. Did Helare not care the boy was leaving?
“Yes, soon. Any day now I think,” Filoria answered.
Helare sat back on her bed with a free fall, sighing in well-hidden exhaustion. She rubbed at her right temple and grimaced. She sighed again, long, slow.
“I wish he could have given me one more month. I had everything prepared,” she complained.
“What the fuck are you talking about? Aren't you going to stop him?” Filoria asked, starting to get angry now.
Helare sighed again in answer. “No.”
“What?! Why not?!”
The princess frowned at the question, looking up at Filoria.
Filoria tried to school her expression to neutrality. She knew how to deal with the princess. Or at least she had known how to deal with the princess before. Now, the woman was revealing surprising depths. That princess would let something she wanted to be hers slip through her grasp? The princess of Primus, or PriMa’la as the purists wanted to name the planet?
Was she even the same person?
“First off,” the princess said slowly, “because we cannot. We cannot stop him except by using violence. And that would be akin to me taking him as a slave. Which he said he'd rather die than allow. Second, why would I even want to stop him?”
“Why would you want to stop him?” Filoria asked incredulously, her mouth open but barely producing any sound.
Why would the princess want to stop Rafael from leaving? Because she loved him. Or coveted him at least. Didn't she? Did she? Did Filoria Benhaven covet the boy she'd almost killed as well.
“Why do you care about him so much anyway?” the princess asked.
The question slammed into Filoria like a sledge hammer and sent her reeling mentally. She had just asked herself a very similar question. Why was she so invested in making sure the boy did not leave Primus?
Filoria had grown up a peasant. She was not the sharpest tool in the box when it came to politics. But even she knew that giving someone like Helare a weakness like the one she suspected was afflicting her was like courting death. She had to think fast. She had to think of a plausible excuse for her obsession with the boy.
“It's about the project. The reason you brought him here. To create more weapons for trading,” Filoria said.
The princess stared at her skeptically. But the princess backed down first.
“We have amassed a lot of wealth because of Rafe's work,” Helare said.
Again, there was that name she had taken to calling him. It grated on Filoria so. She was not allowed to use that name. Yet.
“Wealth?” Filoria asked. Then her mind remembered something and snugged right onto it. “Yes. He had all those credits with him. We need to take those from him.”
Helare only shook her head. “Even if the system tries its hardest to cheat us with its prices when we sell to it, we have managed to get more than ten times the amount of credits Rafael said he had at the beginning. And not to mention the other items we've also received thanks to the trades. He is like a one man factory. He works so fast it's hard to believe he is still an F grade crafter. But his products are clearly F grade, so there is that. Anyway, he owes us nothing. We have to let him leave.”
There was a sigh there at the end.
She also didn't want him to go, Filoria interpreted, but she couldn't do anything about it. Or she had chosen not to do anything. Filoria absolutely loathed people like that. Her father never gave up. She never gave up. But these people who had it easy? Born a princess, never having to struggle for a thing, and giving up? Giving up? What absolute trash.
Filoria would never give up like the damn princess. She didn't need her anyway.
****
Helare had not given up yet. She had to play it carefully though. She had been honest when she said everything had been planned out, but then Filoria's passion had started to alarm her.
Was the girl only after Rafael's credits? It was doubtful, but Helare had no choice but try and believe it for the time being. She couldn't afford any more destabilizing factors to her plans.
It wasn't that she was no longer interested in discovering what was wrong with the dungeon.
For example, even after Rafael had drained a lot of the mine, there was no sign of the veins drying out yet. This dungeon instance was going to last much longer than previous ones. That was curious, but this whole thing about monsters spawning in this and other dungeons around the world did not concern her. She was still concerned about the connection to other worlds though.
Rafael wanted to go home. That was her only reason. The only reason she was still interested, and by the gods Helare was not interested in her mission anymore.
If Rafael's current method, whatever it was, failed, she'd be there to help him. If it succeeded, well Helare was hoarding credits. There was no more reason to spend all her credits trying to find what was wrong with the dungeons before the other research groups. No matter if Rafael left her now, she would still have a means of finding him.
She couldn't leave Primus just yet. She still had to return to the palace, try and speak with her father. She had missed her reporting period for a few weeks in fact, hoping he would notice and send for her at once. She was not shocked he hadn't.
Not that it mattered. She was going to go to the capital one more time. She was going to say farewell to her homeworld. She had a very tight timeline in which to prepare everything before the promotion event which she was determined not to attend.
She hoped to get a chance to take Rafe to the city once. To show him her world and her people. He probably did not know about the uglier side of their history, and she'd like to keep it that way. She'd like him to not hate her world.
Despite their genocidal side, The Ma’la were jovial people. She really believed Rafe would love to see the winter solstice festival. He was a warrior, but he probably wouldn't appreciate the gladiator games that had been introduced in honour of the chosen’s duel with the burned hero. He was surprisingly soft hearted.
And she didn't hate that about him. She didn't hate anything about him. Helare felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She felt them heat up and she buried her face in her pillow.
The next day Rafe was still around. He was still doing that thing where he talked to her as little and as officially as possible, but he was still there. She could look at his face for one more day.
When his eye-catching sparring with Collab ended that day, Helare stopped her drills, panting and sweating, and prepared to be close to him for a few minutes again. It wasn't to be. Filoria inserted herself in front of him first.
Helare was confused, and from Rafael's frown, he was too. She went closer to hear what was happening.
“You can't leave!” Filoria was saying, rather loudly.
“What are you talking about?” Rafael looked around shiftily, trying to assure everyone who met his eyes with a smile.
Then his eyes met Helare's and his shifty look turned into one of dread.
“You must be mistaken, lady Filoria. I never ever said anything about—”
“Duel with me,” she said.
“What?” Rafe asked.
“If I win, you stay. If you win…” Filoria's fists were balled and shaking. Helare couldn't see her face but she was sure it was clenched. “You're not going to win anyway,” she finished.
“If I win,” Rafael said, his voice harder than Helare had ever heard it before. “You leave this matter alone.”
There was a protracted moment of silence as Filoria thought through her options. Helare watched the tense moment. Then Filoria let out a deep breath and shook her head.
“...yes.”
And just like that they had their second bout.
