[Five hours ago.]
[Mirabella’s soul sea.]
Deep within her ditative trance, the passage of ti had beco a blur of endless energy circulation and searing heat.
"Wake up, Master!!"
SLAP!!
The physical shockwave of the impact translated directly into her ntal space, breaking her deep-dive cultivation state instantly. Mirabella’s eyes snapped opened from the slap, she and Adira turned angrily to Cupcake, who stumbled back in fear, her feline fur standing on end.
"You?" Mirabella growled, the imnse pressure of her disrupted aura flaring dangerously around her.
"Wait!! Calm down Master!! I tried all possible ways to wake you, but all failed, so... So I slapped you." Cupcake quickli explained.
Mirabella stared at the cat with a slight frown, letting the violent system warnings of a forced awakening fade from her vision: "What day is it?"
"The Day of the competition." Cupcake answered in a low voice, and Mirabella jumped up in shock. The ticulously planned tiline had completely unraveled.
"What?!!" She yelled in shock, the sheer panic of missing the crucial Glory Flag event hitting her.
"Yes!! That’s why I slapped you!! I am free right?!" Cupcake yelled too, clearly planning on ways to escape slapping her master by leaning heavily on the urgency of the situation.
Mirabella glared at Cupcake, suppressing the urge to beat her familiar, and turned to the Egg. Despite four days of continuous, draining fire-elent exposure, the progress bar had barely moved. "There isn’t even the thinnest change of spirit energy to this fucking thing!!" She exhaled, the frustration of the terrible return-on-investnt gnawing at her.
’Four days, and I got nothing... I should head back outside, when I have ti, I will check up on it again.’ Mirabella thought, cutting the energy feed to the stubborn crimson shell, and vanished from her soul sea, snapping her consciousness back to the physical world.
___
[Ragon city - Duke’s mansion.]
In the quiet of the master bedroom, the heavy, dead air was suddenly displaced by a sharp intake of breath as she fully re-synced with her physical body.
"She is waking up." Delphine said, staring at Mirabella, who was still seated on the bed, her dark uniform rumpled from four straight days of motionless ditation.
"Finally!" Hayatobi stepped forward, standing beside Delphine, staring at Mirabella, whose eyes slowly opened.
"....?!"
She blinked staring at the two before her, quickly reading the room’s tense atmosphere: "Seems I am late." She said, stating the obvious with flat calm expression.
"Late??? Today is the competition, we have only five hours to get there!! And it’s in the other side of the map, with tens of thousands of Miles ahead." Delphine yelled at her, her royal composure cracking under the imnse geographical stress. The ga world of Galaxy Fall was monstrously large; traversing regions without fast-travel was a nightmare.
"I know, but Ragon city have a teleportation tower, right? This will take us back to Dragon Empire, then we can take another one to the Island, am I wrong?" Mirabella asked, getting to her feet, stretching her stiff limbs.
"I am so hungry, and thirsty." She said, moving her gaze around the room, spotting a plate of dishes, and drinks on the table.
"I prepared this in advance." Delphine said with a smile, hoping to show her appreciation, as Mirabella walked past her, without even wasting a second, she started eating. Survival instincts overrode etiquette.
"About your question... Ragon City’s teleportation tower is destroyed... So we have a lot of distance to cover, when I found you guys, It took six hours, mainly because I was stopping to deal with so pasts and figuring which routes you took... But heading back, it will lightly take four or five hours." Hayatobi explained, detailing the harsh realities of moving through hostile, high-level zones without a functional fast-travel node.
"Huh? I thought... I thought it will take three hours?" Mirabella asked, with food in her mouth.
"Please, Miss Mirabella, swallow your food before speaking." Delphine said, a smile on her face, slightly taken aback by the crude display.
’So Mirabella has this side of her? I thought she is just aloof and cold every single day.’ She thought, watching as Mirabella ignored her, focused on eating like a soldier in a war zone who didn’t know when her next al would be.
"If I am the only one, it will take two hours at most, But I will be taking both of you, that’s the best I can do." Hayatobi answered, sending a ssage through his cosmic brain, calculating the imnse energy drain required to physically warp two extra passengers across the map.
"Once we arrive at the academy, we can use its Teleportation tower, going straight to the Island. I think we can complete all this in five hours at most." He explained, turning to the two girls, outlining the critical speedrun strategy required to make the opening ceremony.
"That’s if we move now."
"I understand."
Mirabella finished a plate of food, staring at the remaining food with a sad expression: "I don’t like wasting food." She sighed, pouring herself a glass of water, gulping everything down.
’Oh well, Cupcake will have the rest then.’ She snapped her fingers and the plates of at vanished from the table in a ripple of light.
"...?!"
Hayatobi and Delphine frowned lightly, exchanging a bewildered glance.
’Did she just moved everything to her storage? Won’t that be a ss?’ Delphine thought in confusion, fundantally misunderstanding Mirabella’s abilities. In Galaxy Fall, the standard spatial storage was a void space with zero gravity, whatever you placed in there will be floating in the void, placing an open plate of food in it, will surely scatter the whole food, letting it float endlessly in a ruined ss.
Unaware to the two, the food hadn’t gone into an inventory slot; it appeared directly in Mirabella’s soul sea, a stable, personalized dinsion, and Cupcake instantly dug in, thrilled by the sudden feast falling from the sky.
"Hehehe, seems the Master forgave for slapping her." Cupcake muttered between mouthfuls, while Adira just tilted her head to the side, watching her with ethereal amusent.
__
Back in the physical world, the countdown was ticking.
"Ok, both of you, stand behind and hold my shoulder, don’t let go." Hayatobi said seriously, as Mirabella and Delphine moved forward, standing behind him. A complex, glowing array of spatial runes began to burn into the wooden floorboards beneath their feet.
"What about Ragon city? If we leave, won’t the devil cult attack again?" Mirabella asked, staring at Hayatobi.
"Not exactly, they already got what they’re after... Besides, the troops are already on the move, they’ll arrive here in one week. We should get going." The Master Teacher stated, finalizing the coordinates for their massive spatial jump.
The two nodded in understanding, bracing themselves for the nauseating g-force of high-tier teleportation, and the next mont, the runes flared blindly, and they all vanished from the room, leaving the city behind.
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