"I think it is somewhere around here..." Lux muttered as he walked down the hallways, heading towards Cai's room in the academy.
He had been talking to Keane for half an hour, but the Boar still hadn't returned, prompting the Half-Elf to look for it.
Keane had told him which area its room was, as well as Cai's room number, so Lux decided to go and find the Boar himself to ask for it to show him the gift it had been talking about earlier.
"Ah, this must be it," Lux glanced at the room with the number sixty-nine on it and opened the door without even bothering to knock.
Since the Boar was an annoying character, he planned to annoy it as well.
The moment the Half-Elf entered the room, he came face to face with a naked, beautiful young lady, with long brown hair who was brushing her hair at the moment.
She had sun-kissed skin that was radiating youth and life, and Lux's gaze landed on her well-shaped breasts for a brief moment before forcefully shifting his gaze back to the beautiful young lady's face, which wouldn't lose to his step-sister, who was now his fiance, Iris.
"S-Sorry! Wrong room!" Lux hastily closed the door and backed down the hallway.
A few seconds later, he looked at the room number again to make sure that he hadn't made a mistake. After seeing that the number of the room was indeed sixty-nine, the Half-Elf took a deep breath before knocking on the door to make sure that he wasn't just hallucinating on things.
"Cai? Are you there?" Lux asked.
"Um, just a minute." Cai's irritating voice replied from the other side of the door, making Lux breathe a sigh of relief.
Half a minute later, the door opened revealing the chatty Boar with brown fur, and hazel colored eyes.
"Cai, are you living with a young lady in this room?" Lux asked as the Boar welcomed him inside its room without any fuss.
"Young lady? There's not one," Cai answered. "I'm the only one staying in this room. Ah, but let's not talk about that for now."
Cai then summoned an ornate box out of thin air and presented it to Lux.
"If you join my faction for the upcoming dungeon expedition, I'll give you this as an added bonus to my Grandpa's favor," Cai said with a smug look on its face.
Lux took the ornate box from its hands and opened it.
Inside the box, golden rings with runes written on their surface appeared. Their craftsmanship was amazing, and even if Lux was training to become a Blacksmith and not a Jewelsmith, he could clearly tell that a master had made this set of rings with utmost care and devotion.
"Beautiful..." Lux muttered as he stared at the rings before shifting his attention to the smug-looking pig, who acted as if he was the one that made the rings itself.
"But of course!" Cai replied. "I begged my grandfather to have these rings crafted for me so that when I married Iris, I could present these to her as my wedding gift. Amazing, right?"
"Yeah. Your grandfather is amazing." Lux nodded his head in agreement. "So you made these rings because you thought that you were going to win the tournament from the very beginning. What a cheeky and chunky pig you are."
"Pig? Excuse me! I'm a Boar," Cai snorted. "You uncultured swine. Also, I was confident that I would win the tournament, so I had these wedding rings prepared in advance. So, what do you think? Will you join our faction when we do our dungeon expedition?"
Lux didn't answer right away. He then picked up one of the rings and took a closer look at it. Although he didn't know what language had been used to transcribe the runes, inside his head, several words appeared as if automatically deciphering the meaning of the runic texts.
"Forever by your side."
The words were cheesy, but for some reason, Lux didn't dislike them. In fact, it even held some kind of binding power that made the Half-Elf feel that these rings weren't that simple.
"Do these rings have any special properties?" Lux asked. He had tried to use his appraisal skill, but the only information he saw on the ring was a bunch of question marks.
Lux wasn't unfamiliar with this experience. There had been several times when he was unable to appraise the stats of strong monsters who were more formidable than he was.
"Of course, they have," Cai replied "My grandpa does jewelsmithing as a hobby, and he is very proficient with it. Listen here, okay? Those rings have three special attributes.
"The two people that wear those two rings are able to talk with each other as long as they are in the same plane of existence. Meaning, if you and Iris were both on the same continent, you can talk whenever you like. The same can be said with Elysium. As long as both of you are on the same continent, talking to each other is not a problem.
"The second ability of the rings is to know exactly where the other person is. Regardless of where they are in the world, you will be able to find them with the help of this ring.
"The last ability of the rings is quite unique. They prevent any kind of mind-affecting spells--Charm, Fear, Confusion, or other effects that could affect the state of mind--to take hold of them. It also gives a small resistance against the power of Abyssal Corruption, and slows its effects from spreading inside the body.
"Just so you know, very few items are able to effectively mitigate the effect of Abyssal Corruption. This ring is one of them. Ah, my grandfather said in passing that as long as you wear this ring, you can also enter places with dense miasma without worrying about getting harmed by it. Quite amazing, right?"
Lux nodded his head in agreement. This item was like the cellphone from Earth that allowed people to talk over long distances, as well as find their location through GPS tracking.
The immunity against mind-affecting spells, slow down Abyssal Corruption, as well as complete resistance to Miasma, were simply too good to be true.
'As expected of a Saint,' Lux thought as he returned the ring inside the ornate box. 'Whatever they make is truly formidable.'
Cai, who could tell that Lux was quite satisfied with the gift it had prepared for Iris, felt happy inside its heart. In truth, the reason why it was able to give Lux the ornate box without a second thought was due to the fact that it knew how Iris felt about the red-headed teenager in front of it.
To a certain extent, Cai was Iris' best friend. Perhaps, it was the only real friend the latter had aside from the Beast Companions that protected her at all times.
This was also why, when Cai learned about Alexander's decree to marry off Iris to whoever became the Champion of the Tournament, the Boar made a declaration in front of its Grandpa in the Rowan Tribe.
"I won't let Iris marry someone she doesn't love!" Cai had shouted back then. "If it comes to this, I'd rather marry her myself than let another person make her life miserable!"
Cai's grandfather repeatedly told the Boar that it would be dangerous for it to enter the tournament, but the Boar was dead-set on leaving, with or without its Grandpa's permission.
Because of this, the Saint of the Rowan Tribe had no choice but to help the Boar assimilate the power of strong Monsters to add to her "Gear Art".
Cai's Grandpa scoured the regions of the Six Kingdoms to find a suitable upgrade to Cai's Beast Form, and happened to meet two powerful creatures by chance.
One of them is the Mutated Field Monster, Hildivisni, and the other was an Initiate Ranked World Boss, which proved how much the Saint doted on the cheeky Boar, who wouldn't take no for an answer.
After gaining these two powerful forms, Cai's confidence soared to the heavens, making it ask its Grandpa to forge wedding rings for it and Iris after it became the Champion of the Tournament.
"Okay, I will join your faction for the dungeon expedition," Lux said after closing the ornate box in his hand. "When do we leave?"
"Um, I just contacted Grandpa a little earlier, and he said that due to some kind of phenomenon, the opening of the Domain has been delayed to two weeks from now. However, the Guilds chosen to be the representatives of the Six Kingdoms are already making their way to the Hidden Domain's location.
"I think it will be best if we leave four days from now and head to my tribe, so you can talk to my Grandfather about the favor you want from him after we clear the Hell-Mode."
Lux smiled because the Boar was talking as if they already had the Dungeon in the bag. If the other guilds of the Six Kingdoms, as well as the guild that represented Barbatos Academy, couldn't clear it, then it meant that its difficulty rating was quite high.
Even so, Lux had to admit that the prospect of challenging such a Dungeon was quite tempting for him.
After talking with Cai for a bit more about their journey to the Rowan Tribe, Lux left the room to prepare for the evening celebration party that would be held in the Event Hall of Barbatos Academy.
