Chapter 175: Worrywart

Rith sat on Evin's bed, mulling over whether she should check up on Evin, or not. 

'It usually takes him only three or four hours to be finished with his studies... whatever they may be…' she thought, trying to wipe away the worry in her head.

'But for some reason, he's been gone for almost six hours at this point…' Rith knew how much Evin loved his break time. He preached about it almost every day. Even though he ended up practicing his gestures during most of his breaks after complaining about having nothing to do. Obviously he wouldn't do it silently. He would complain about how sad life is when you have free time, but you can only use it to be productive, since everything else is boring as shit.

And when Rith retorted to him that he should just go to classes if he's bored, the boy would drone off about it being extra shit, or how sad it is when you have a free day, but choose to spend it with six-year-old children.

Even thinking about it all made Rith irritated. And moreover, she didn't even have the time to meet another male cat or Cosmic, so she was extra-irritated. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to calm down.

'Someone like Evin would definitely not spend more than four hours studying. He would probably do it if Nasst forced him to, but I feel like he should at least inform me in that case,' she thought unconfidently.

She knew that Evin wouldn't think so much about this situation like she was doing. As far as she knew, there were very few things that surprised or affected Evin. But sadly, Rith wasn't like Evin.

But she didn't want to go and check it out herself, as it was very taboo to intrude upon a class between a master and their student. Especially if it was a one on one. Evin wouldn't mind at all, but Rith couldn't say the same for Nasst. And most likely, Evin would probably use it to jab at Rith for the following week or so, calling her a worrywart or something along those lines...

"You know what? I'll just go and check them out. See what they're doing. If it turns out that they were just training something time consuming, I'll just apologize to Nasst and ignore the ensuing jabs from Evin," Rith said suddenly and jumped onto the floor. 

With a confident gait, she strode downstairs and reached the Test room's door. But nearing the door, she silenced her steps and tried to listen to what was going on inside with her perked up ears. She had to suppress her urge to open up a small portal to see what was going inside, but thinking of Nasst's golden horn, she contained herself. At that point, she would definitely look like she was trying to peek at the two's secrets.

'That sounds a bit wrong… Hmm…' Rith smirked, awfully amused for some reason.

"Come in," Nasst's voice came from inside the door, making Rith jump from the floor slightly.

'Shit, I want to die. I really want to die,' she hid her face behind her paws in embarrassment, barely managing to stop herself from rolling on the ground. 

A second later, she forced her face to show a business smile and cleared her voice almost inaudibly.

Pushing the door open, she saw Nasst sitting in a lotus position on his armchair, his eyes staring at a large, dark blue blob inside the room, no sign of Evin inside the room.

"?" Rith confusedly looked at the state of the room, trying to understand what had happened.

"Where's Evin?" she finally managed to ask.

Nasst looked at her briefly, before pointing his chin at the blue blob inside the room.

"He's in there? Uhh, could you tell me what had happened?" Rith still couldn't understand what was going on. At least Evin seemed to be safe for the time being, since Nasst was relatively calm.

"Hmm… I'm not so sure myself," Nasst finally said and got into a more comfortable position. 

Rith stood there silently, urging the man to continue.

"I was talking to him about Deconstructing and Brute-forcing spells, right? And I just told him that Time energy can work as a method of Spellbreaking, but only some mages are able to use the energy," Nasst continued. 

Rith nodded slowly. In her opinion, it was time for Evin to properly learn about Spellbreaking as well. She didn't know what kind of work Evin was going to perform for Nasst, but from the looks of it, it surely wasn't a desk job.

"And he entered the World of Time, but I noticed one thing weird about it all. I'm not completely sure of it, but he took on a completely Dark-blue hue for a split second and then just stopped moving altogether."

"With some confusion, I went in a bit closer to check up on him, but I was just more convinced that he was frozen in time. He almost looked like how other people's silhouettes look like in the World of Thoughts. The only thing different about him was that he obviously didn't look like one, and a dark-blue circle had appeared around his eyes," Nasst spoke and paused a bit.

Rith didn't urge him to continue, but she sure wished he hurried.

"No more than a minute had passed and I suddenly feel a portal appearing behind me. Instinctively, I throw one of my more lethal Storm spells, but the next thing I know, my attack had just disappeared into nothingness. A serious attack from a super-imposer, broken down in a matter of milliseconds… It was a great blow to my pride, I'll tell you that. In any case, I tried to run away through a portal, but a thick fog of Time energy pervading every corner of the room prevented me from constructing any kind of spell," Nasst said, a wry smile on his face. 

"As I glanced towards the portal, expecting some big fucking monster to appear… but instead, a little girl, maybe only 13 or 14, appeared in front of me, wearing some clothing that I've never seen before," Nasst paused again.

'Is it…?' Rith wondered.

"Then, with her glowing blue eyes, she looked at me imposingly and uttered: 'Don't bother'. Afterwards, she created that barrier over there with Evin inside it. It's been like this for about six hours now," Nasst finished.

"That must be Lady Twelve Jokes, no?" Rith explained.

Teenage girl, dark-blue eyes, wearing weird clothing… it was obviously the Authority of Time. All the other details matched as well. Evin turned weird after going into the World of Time, and the method of attack she used was Time energy.

"I think so as well… but I've never thought that it would be a teenage girl. I've always imagined the Authority of Time to be some sort of wise old man, with his beard reaching the floors and whatnot," Nasst replied with a shrug.

'I guess most people never see the Authorities that often, huh? Even a super-imposer like Nasst doesn't know about Twelve Jokes,' Rith thought with some pride.

'Wait.'

"Do you think Evin will be fine?" Rith asked, for some reason wondering what her tone of voice should be.

"I'm not entirely sure, unfortunately... but I have a feeling he's alright."

It seemed like a good enough answer for Rith, since she also felt the same way. She was at first scared and overwhelmed by the Authorities' presence back at Kena's city, but after seeing Evin interact with them in an almost abnormally normal way, most of her anxiety towards them vanished. She was sure that Twelve Jokes came here with good intents. She didn't know why, but she just felt like it. Perhaps the Authorities' fame helped a lot with this feeling of hers.

'Perhaps an accident occurred to Evin and now she's trying to fix it,' Rith thought and was reminded of the conversation she had with Evin. The one where Evin mention how he wanted to go search for Selat. 

'Damn… and accident for an Authority really would be a disaster for Evin,' she couldn't help but think with lament.

…