"Damn, Sha's healing is op!" Khish exclaimed, as they watched the fights unfold. At firt, all were focused on Noah's performance, but since the cameras were always late to pick up with his teleport-like hability, they enjoyed the vriw of everyone else too.

"Not! It's just that my group almost never gets heavily injured," she protested, shyly, before muttering, "But I do try my best."

"Noah's moves are still too unpolished... He could've finished this fight a lot earlier," Lilith said, staring at the screen, where Noah slayed a woman 1v1.

"But Lilith, he was trying not too kill too many people, remeber?" Maggie said, turning around. "Also, he had people fighting with him and a lot of people watching, so he couldn't use his full power," she nailed the idea in, making the three other girls turn their heads covetly, trying to listen in to their conversation.

"I know that, but still! Even if he didn't want to kill them, he has too little creativity. All he does is spikes and bombs and flamethrowers," Lilith said, squinting, as she saw Maggie roll her eyes.

"Well, yeah, but still... How could he know if something he never tried would only do as much damage as he wanted, while not making a blunder that could make him lose?" Maggie countered, diving deeper into the discussion of how to control damage.

"He could just lower the strength to the individuals he knows are weaker."

"But what if they are hiding their strenght?"

"Then he ups the strength in real time, it's not like his mana is runnig short, like, ever. I've only seen him almost run out of it once, today!"

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"But that doesn't count because he need to burn his prey to regenerate his mana."

"Then just choose a motherfucker to kill and burn and spare the rest!"

"You can't just kill one person every fight every time without expecting backlash!"

While Maggie and Lilith continued their endless discussion, Sha and Khish looked at each other, both awed at how the two talked about taking people's lives as if it were nothing, and how knwledgeable they seemed to be of Noah's power and Blessing.

'Could it be, Noah was hiding his full power all long?' Sha thought, putting her hands over her chest, as she felt her heartbeat increase. It was not a negative feeling, though her heart was troubled by him hiding his power from her, despite her considering them good friends... sorta. Instead, a feeling of exhilaration started bubbling inside her. That the person he had entrusted her life to was actually even stronger than she'd imagined. And from that point on, she could only imagine how powerful he actually was, and how much he was still keeping veiled from everyone else. 'Was this why he kept trying to explore alone in the Fortresses? So we would not hold him back?' the question pounded into her heart and chest, and, watching him fight from another angle, since she couldn't pay attention during the fight itself, she realized how much of a powerhouse he was, and how much he had contributed for the arena results.

Everything. That was the conclusion he came up to. He was paramount to the result, to the point one could remove even half, heck, almost everyone from their side, and the results would've been the same. Because Noah was there. Because he was the spearhead, the backline, the shield and the body of their formation, all at once.

"Sha?" Khish poked her arm, as she noticed she was in a daze. "Sha, you even there?" she asked, making the girl snap out of her thoughts, disoriented. "You've lost the best of the fight."

"Eh?" Sha turned, seeing the image of the injured being taken from the arena, and the image cut to the beginning of the next fight. "Too bad," she said, realizing the fight that was starting was the one against the Hyu Family. "Excuse me," she stood up, walking towards the table, not wanting to watch this fight that much.

"Come back quick, this fight is fire!" Maggie said, eating the chips from the platter, together with Khish who was now sitting by her side.

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"Sure, I'll be," Sha said halfheartedly, and walked away.

"Maggie, don't you think she's avoiding watching?" Khish asked, turning her eyes back to the screen.

"I think so too, but again, she was in the fight, maybe she doesn't like the bloodshed," Maggie responded, looking back over her shoulder to the pink-haired healer stalling for time, while trying various different foods and drinks.

"... Now that you say it, she probably hates fighting other people," Khish said, also turning around to watch her little sister. "On this, you and her are extreme opposites, aren't you?" she asked, making Lilith, who overheard it, cackle.

"Damn right you are!" the snake exclaimed, butting into their conversation. "If you let this one loose, without any repercussions, I bet she'd commit a mass genocide," she said while laughing.

"Hey I...Guess you're right," Maggie started refuting, but interrupted herself while blushing, agreeing with the cunning snake.

'With what kind of people did I get involved with...' Khish had a dangerous thought, as she imagined the possibiblity of going back. But gulped upon considering her options. She was literally and proverbialy between a rock and a hard place. She had a contract with Noah she had absolutely no idea of the consequences of breaking, and she had a family that wanted her dead, and that had used her for underworld tasks and crimes over the last few years. If she returned, if not dead, she'd very possibly end up in jail, or worse. Her entire body shivered.

"What! Where's everyone? Why is there a dome?!" Al exclaimed, as a fiery dome enclosed Noah and whoever he was fighting with.

"Dome?" Khish repeated, looking back towards the screen, finishing her conversation with Maggie and the snake. On the projection, the care only picked up a dome of fire, nothing else, as if that was the keypoint of the fight taking place, and leaving them no room to interpret. That is, because there was no narration going on. Maggie had not recorded the audio from the battles, since that would take away from her and Bel's attention while analysing the fights.

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They had learned this from the countless hours spent watching Noah's fights as Lucifer in Valorwatch.

"Yeah. That's one of my brother's uses of his Blessing. He makes a dome of fire to win the battle slowly over time, as the temperature inside increases more and more."

"That sounds like a fiendish way to fight," Al said, staring at the flames.

"It surely is. But when your life is on the line, every way to defeat your enemy counts," Maggie told her, making her bite her lip. "I'm not saying this for you to feel bad, but now you know you are a Blessed, if you want to ever get a Blessed credential, you will have to enter at least a few Fortresses. And against monsters, you need to fight like your life depends on it, because nobody knows what can happen."

As she listened to Maggie, Allie's eyes, widened and her mouth gaped. The way she described this was so vivid that it was hard to imagine she was not yet at the age one would awaken a blessing. "Have you..." she almost asked the unthinkable, but Maggie quickly stepped up.

"Me, no, no. I'm just telling you what I heard from Noah and Carlos and a few other Blessed. I've never entered a fortress or fought monsters, aside from today..." Maggie stumbled on the words trying to justify and finish her sentence, but despite her clumsy wording, she still managed to get her pint across.

"I see, it's okay. It's hard for me to imagine you, despite being so young, having already suck a good grasp on your blessing... Why I am just leasrning I even have one to begin with," Al said, turning back towards the screen, the fire dissipating to show Noah standing in front of a carbonized body still in flames.

"Oh, there was a fight happening inside!" Khish said with enthusiasm as she saw Noah quickly flick into another position, the body he left behind crumbling into ashes as the fire consumed the remainder of it.

"I remember that fight... I wish that woman could have been spared," Lilith said, watching the screen for the first time after spending most of the time eating.

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As she said so, Sha turned towards her, out of her sight, and started to pay attention to the snake's words.

"That girl was being forced to fight for the Hyu and do all kinds of underworld jobs... Just like you, Khish." The snake turned to the stupified girl, not waiting for her to say a word, her lips shut from surprise. "They had a bit of a conversation, which is why the whole dome thing lasted so long, but, in the end, there was no way for Noah to save her then, so she asked him to finish her off..."

As she said so, everyone turned towards the snake, without exception. Her words were simply unbelievable, but she further proved her point across, by mentioning something they didn't kow. "That girl had two Blessings. One was to create footholds on air and jump around using them. That one was fine, but the other was... She could coat her blades with any poison he had experienced and survived without dying." As she finished the sentence, everyone's face grew pale, except for Sha, who did not have the imagination and perception of how wicked people were to understand how dark her life must have been.