Caught in Time

Chapter VIII: The Determined Princess

The next dawn, Rosa found herself waking up on Irina's bed. The two of them had been practicing mana channeling the whole night. She then changed from her pajamas back to her maid outfit. She looked at Irina who was still sleeping and proceeded to shake her very gently, trying to wake her up.

"Lady Irina, wake up. Last night you said you wanted to continue your training, didn't you?", said Rosa.

"Huh? Y- Yeah. Ten more minutes, please", replied Irina who was still half asleep.

"Lady Irina, I can't give you ten more minutes, I have to do my maid chores", said Rosa.

Rosa can't help but smile and sighed. She decided to let Irina sleep for ten more minutes while she was tidying up her Princess' room. As she was cleaning Irina's desk, she saw a piece of paper slipped out of her diary and fell to the ground when she was lifting it up. Rosa immediately recognized that particular paper and picked it up.

She didn't even read it, because she already knew what was written on that paper. She just puts it back inside Irina's diary. When she had finished cleaning the room, she went back to wake Irina up.

"Lady Irina, ten minutes has passed. Wake up", said Rosa while shaking Irina slightly stronger than before.

Irina immediately jumped out of her bed and accidentally bump her head onto Rosa's. She instantly grimaces while holding her forehead in pain. Meanwhile Rosa didn't seem to be in pain at all.

"Lady Irina! I am deeply sorry!", said Rosa while bowing to her multiple times.

"Ouch... It's fine Rosa. I had quite the dream... That's why I jumped out like that, sorry...", responded Irina.

"Oh by the way, good morning Rosa. Isn't it still a bit too dark for breakfast?", said Irina.

"Good morning, Lady Irina. It's still dawn, but last night you told me to wake you up the first thing I did. And... so I did", replied Rosa.

"Oh right, training! Where's my crystal!?", she said while looking all around her bed.

"Shh... People are sleeping, Lady Irina. I put it on the nightstand", answered Rosa.

Irina looked towards her nightstand directly beside her bed and surely enough there was the mana crystal. She picked it up and quickly resumed her mana channeling training from last night, while Rosa excuses herself from the room.

As Rosa walked from Irina's room towards the cleaning tool storage, she saw Nicholas downstairs walking towards the main front door leading to the courtyard. Curious, she decided to follow him and peeked outside from the window of the main lobby. Nicholas was already practicing again so early in the morning, he seems excited. Rosa isn't sure why, maybe because of the upcoming duel?

As morning comes and everyone had finished their breakfast, Irina, Rosa and Kyleas head straight for the backyard with their equipment.

"Alright... Princess Irina and Rosa, for today's special training, I want you to spar against each other", said Kyleas.

"But before that though, I need to teach you something about mana energy", he added.

"Like I said before, everyone had their own natural mana pool. Which means every single person in this world had a set amount of mana that they can use, and once their mana runs out, they won't be able to cast any spell unless it is recharged", explained Kyleas.

"There's one thing you can do to combat that, and that is to use the mana energy that was emanated straight from the Core of the World", he further explained, as he created a mana bolt out of thin air.