Shades of the New World

Chapter 146: A coincidential meeting.

The next morning, Evin woke up and read through his little calendar with a bullet list. Something felt a bit off to him, but Evin didn't linger on it. 

'Where's Rith? Is she just sleeping in my shadow again? Since she seems to be very lax about her observations lately, perhaps she's finally finished with it?' Evin wondered hopefully and read through his to-do list.

-Authority Style

-Breakfast

-Finish absorbing Core Shard

-Lunch with Rhea [3

-Gestures

-Gestures

-Gestures

-Die?

-Gestures

-Cry

-Dinner

-Debate doing Gestures

-Sleep

Evin then happily crossed out the 'Gestures' and the 'Die?' and went on to practice his martial arts. Even though Evin thought that he would unlock the second level of the scroll, but he was still stuck practicing the first level. And according to Nasst, usually these things took months if not years to unlock sometimes, so he could only be patient and practice silently. 

Afterwards, Evin ate some milk with a bunch of raw bread. Preparing himself a bit, he took out the Core Shard from his storage and looked at it with some accomplishment. There was only a tiny piece of the Core Shard left in the vial and after today, Evin would be almost 3.9% done (41.8% of his heart being mana-core) with his road to the rank of lesser-imposers. According to his first estimates, he was supposed to reach 4%, but as he was assimilating the Core Shard, the efficiency fell over time and became 3.9% instead. 

'Well, I have the chance to ask Nasst about a new method afterwards,' Evin comforted himself. 

Shaking his head, Evin brought out the last piece of the syringe and the prepared concoction. The Shard inside the vial writhed around in a lively manner, when it saw Evin again. Evin was very scared at first, but over time, he found it cute. 

He inserted the syringe into the vial, and watched as the remaining piece of the shard gathered at the needle tip to be sucked away and then injected into Evin's bloodstream. After the Shard reached his heart, it began to slowly get absorbed into it. Finally finishing after almost four hours, Evin heaved a sigh of relief. 

As he was sitting down on his bed, a portal appeared inside Evin's room and Rith came out. 

"Where did you go?" Evin finally realized that Rith wasn't sleeping in his shadow, and had went out to somewhere.

"What, miss me already?" Rith teased.

"No, I thought you were sleeping in my shadow, so I was slightly surprised"

Rith did not seem to like the answer and pulled out a piece of paper. 

"Congrats. It seems we'll be stuck together for a while since I will have to teach you Space magic," Rith said with a tsk.

"Oh, nice! Finally!" Evin exclaimed happily and went to hug Rith. The Cosmic didn't shy away from the hug and let the boy hug to his heart's content.

"Don't get too happy. You're going to need a lot of time training, and you still haven't met with Nasst yet. I'll decide what to do with your training afterwards," Rith reminded.

At these words, Evin's enthusiasm went down a bit and he nodded seriously.

"But first, let's go see Rhea and have a cup of coffee," Rith said with a beaming smile.

"Don't get addicted, or you'll regret it. You may even collapse and die," Evin reminded gravely. He didn't know how caffeine worked on a Cosmic's physiology, but it surely wasn't anything too positive.

"Oh, don't nag. Come on, let's go," Rith said excitedly and lead the way.

'What have I done?' Evin thought with worry, but still followed behind the cat. He was addicted as well, so he couldn't quite help himself, or the Cosmic. He could only pray that everything will turn out okay.

Reaching the stall's location, strangely, Evin found that the spot was empty. Confused, Evin looked around, before one of the men told Evin that his crush's stall was promoted and that she moved to the higher-class area of the Tribe.

Evin was a bit surprised that Rhea didn't say anything about her promotion, but he didn't take it to heart and asked for directions. 

The high-class area of the Tribe was near the mage-area of the Tribe grounds, so Evin was quite happy for this change, since the place was closer to him. 

As for the residents of that place, they were the wealthier non-mages of the North owned or rented some land in one of the Tribes that were designed to nurture younglings for the Horn Ceremony. Well, it was natural, as non-mage children weren't as independent as most mage children, and needed to be taken care of by their parents or guardians.

Oh, and also, non-mage and mage parents of 3-4 year old young mages also stayed in the higher-class areas of the Tribe. Overall, it was a great chance for Rhea's coffee business to become more popular. Those people were much more likely to spend some coin on unique and weird drinks.

'But that means that my alone time with Rhea would become less' Evin thought with some regret. Shaking his head, Evin strutted through the streets.

When Evin entered the higher-class area, the stares he received changed dramatically. Instead of the naked curiosity of the common men and women in the other areas, these people looked at Evin with veiled fear and apprehension. They obviously recognized him. 

'Guess I'm kinda popular here, huh?' Evin lamented, but then realized that maybe others would be less likely to associate with Rhea if they knew that he was a frequent customer of Rhea's stall. Happily, he strode on.

A few minutes later, he saw the woman bending over to pick up a big bag of what seemed to be coffee beans from beside a small cart filled with merchandise and other stuff.

'I've heard that staring at boobs, or ass will help men live a bit longer, this act is very important for my immortality quest,' Evin thought gleefully, as he finally decided to help out a bit when he saw Rhea pick it up with some effort.

Rhea, who was struggling with the big bag of coffee, suddenly felt the thing becoming weightless. 

'Did it rip somewhere,' she thought confusedly, and wondered how she wasn't able to hear anything scattering on the pavement. But when she thought about it, the bag still seemed quite full, so Rhea was even more puzzled.

'What is happening?' she was thinking, before she heard a familiar childish voice call her name,

"Rhea, congrats on the promotion" 

"Oh, Evin! Sorry for not telling you anything, before moving," Rhea replied curtly, but her attention was on the bag of coffee in her hands, as she confusedly looked at it, seemingly looking for a tear somewhere. 

"I made it lighter, don't be so confused," Evin chuckled.

"Oh! I see, I see. No wonder. Thought I was going crazy. One moment I was struggling with this and before I knew it, the damn thing became weightless. Thought it spilled over the ground, or something," Rhea laughed and put her palm to her forehead. 

"Sorry for the startle, how'd you end up moving here?" Evin asked curiously.

"Oh, sorry again, for not telling you. My boss from Tower City actually decided to come and invest a bit into this branch. He was visiting the main branch in Koidot City, and then came here today and see how I was doing, while delivering the coffee beans for the winter," Rhea said, playing around with the weightless bag of beans with an amused face.

Evin was quite surprised when he heard that the boss-man had come personally for deliveries. 

'Wait, I own this place. I should be the boss-man. Though I am curious about the idea pitcher,' Evin thought and realized that aside from the man's name, he really didn't know much.