28 Spar and Invitation

(General POV)

But Luckily thanks to 'Thread', he'd dodged in time. Although he had to do the tiresome manoeuvre to back flip off the manor steps and onto the grass patch outside. He landed on his feet and looked up only to find Bara in his face again.

This time she went for an uppercut that was so fast and strong, Lyze could see the air pressure that her fist generated. He dodged to the side as he felt the blow whistle by him, the wind kicking up his hair a little. He turned around to face his back to her and grabbed her arm.

He flipped her over his shoulder with all the strength he could muster in time and expected her to body slam on the floor. But with an impressive display of flexibility and experience, she somehow twisted her arm in his grasp, allowing her to turn her body mid-air. So as he swung her down, she was facing him, kicking out with both feet at him.

Lifting his other arm, he absorbed the impact and was left stunned at how his arm instantly became numb, as he almost lost feeling in them due to the insane pain he was feeling now. The kick forced him to let go of her arm and he was sent sliding backwards, his boots digging up dirt as he refused to be taken off his feet.

He anticipated her as he came to a stop. This time she'd jumped in the air and was coming down upon him intending to smash him into the ground with both fists. Knowing that he may not survive blocking that with his arms, he dove to the side as she landed.

The impact of her attack tore up the grass and the dirt as well as sending out a small shockwave. Lyze landed on a hand and twirled around to deliver a kick of his own to her hip to imbalance her. Successfully doing that, he used his built up momentum to spin on the same hand again to axe kick her on the back of the head.

Her face collided with the ground as he somersaulted over her using his hands and landed safely on his feet with his body lowered and his hands clenched in a stance. The kick to her head didn't seem to do much to her and she jumped up again as if she'd never even been touched.

She charged straight at him again but this time at a much faster speed than before. She was upon him before he could get out of the way again, so he grit his teeth without showing it and lifted up his other forearm to block the punch. He'd jumped back onto the stone path, so as he absorbed the punch, his feet punched into the ground creating cracks in the stone bricks.

She relentlessly attacked him, not letting him get a breather and he slowly found himself being pushed backwards as he blocked blow after blow, each one creating very visible shockwaves in the air, accompanied by loud booming sounds as each fist hit their mark.

After figuring out her attack pattern, he deflected her left arm by pushing it to the side with his own left. Bringing his right arm inside of their left one, he jabbed at her face as she had to lean down to punch him, and connected right with her chin with all of his strength. This served to only lift her head up a little as she was slightly stunned.

He then leaned to the side and delivered a few sharp knuckle shots to her temple, before palming her fully in the face. But as he did so, he felt her hand close around his thigh and she lifted him up in the air with a little irritation. She swung him down with one hand, but he landed on his own two while hooking his legs on her neck. Pulling his legs forward, he pulled her body forwards and smashed her face on the ground as he jumped out of that situation.

Looking back, he found that she was buried in the dirt her head literally buried. She twitched for a moment before she kicked legs upwards, the force of it pulling her out of the ground and she landed expertly on her bare feet and cracked her neck. He glared at her as he held up his throbbing arms defensively, his palms caked with dirt.

"That was surprising." Bara said, not seemingly bothered. "You appear to be very good at hand-to-hand. You're also stronger than you look if you can tank that much force from me."

"That's high praise kid." Dain said as Noir shook his head exasperatedly. "Bara here is an expert at brawling."

'Yes, brawling.' Lyze thought grimly. 'Yet it would still seem that this world doesn't know the concept of sophisticated martial arts. Her punches were so telegraphed, I could have easily taken her down if she wasn't two levels above me.'

"It was uncalled for." Lyze complained. "You don't just try to hit somebody before you even try to introduce yourself. I very much would've liked to hear your name from yourself instead of hearing it from someone else."

"Well I had to do it." She responded. "We cannot have record breakers like you walking around and yet you can't fend for yourself properly. I have to say that you passed the test, since you've manged to evade me until this point, which is impressive."

Lyze grinned at her and the praise.

"Buuuuut, don't get too cocky just yet." She continued. "As strong as you are..." She suddenly appeared in front of him, too quick for him to react and she dug her fist deep in his stomach. He threw up a gob of saliva and a small amount of blood at this and sunk tot he ground clutching his gut. "...you still have much to learn."

She stood over him with a hand on her hip as she looked down at him, acting as if she were teaching in a classroom.

"I'm not sure that was a fair fight in itself Bara." Finn said as he walked towards them. "Lyze is still recovering from his fight with Goliath, so I very much doubt he was fighting at his best."

"Huh?" She said, a little shocked. She looked back down to the wheezing boy. "Is this true?" She got a cough in reply. "Well it looks like we'll have to do this again some other time if you still have more to offer."

"L-looking f-forward to it." Lyze choked out. This was nothing compared to Nekros's punches, so he'd live.

Finn sighed and helped him up. "Well, let's get you inside."

The other three kids made way for them as Finn helped Lyze walked through the doors. Ais gave Bara an angry pout before following after them. Bara widened her eyes at the girl's behaviour before looking at Noir and Dain. They shook their heads at her.

"Well at least it proves he's strong, if he wasn't knocked unconscious by that punch. So all's well."

Noir clasped the bridge of his nose in exasperation. But even he was impressed by the boy's quick reaction time. And according to Finn and Riveria, the boy was also a genius with the word, even more so than Ais. He wouldn't mind testing the boys skills himself a little bit either.

---

"Well your endurance went up a little bit, so I wouldn't say it was a complete waste of a fight." Loki said as she closed the Falna again.

"That's not the point here Loki." Lyze sad flatly.

"I know, I know. Just tried to make ya feel better Lyzie."

"I guess I appreciate that." He replied. "Any particular reason why you wanted to check my status? I haven't been in the dungeon you know."

"I just wanted to check that nothing was wrong."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"The Falna seems to react and work differently with you. Not to mention your absurd growths and weird skills. I just believed it was best to keep my eye on things ya know."

"Speaking of, don't level me up without consulting me again Loki."

"But there was no way you could have pushed your stats even further without endangering yourself again."

"That's up to me to decide Loki. I'm the one who's achieving them. I just want to max out my stats as much as possible before levelling up. That way I can remain stronger than other adventurers my level. Okay?"

"Fine. You're so pushy."

"I mean it Loki. I'm not happy with what you did last night. Already people are giving me trouble over this level up on top of the despair of knowing it was not to my liking."

"WHAT! Who hurt you?!" She said ash she pulled him close before he could put his shirt on again.

"Calm down. Nobody's hurt me, well apart from Bara that is. Just people spouting jealous nonsense at me, nothing more."

Loki stared at me closely before relenting and letting me go, supposedly finding no lie in my words.

"Okay, if you say so~ Jeez, now you've made me feel bad." She said as she folded her arms. "I know! Ganesha has invited me to a party tonight."

"That a regular thing with that guy or not?"

"Sometimes it comes out of the blue, and sometimes we expect it. But who can say no to a little bit of time to mess around huh?" She said brightly. "I was planning on taking Ais with me but she doesn't want to come. So how about I take you there, huh?"

Lyze looked at her questioningly.

"This party stuff sounds kind of regal. Wouldn't it be better if you took one of the executives with you?"

"Nah, they've been hundreds of times before. Probably about time the other gods saw a new face in the Loki Familia. So what do you say?"

Lyze deliberately pondered, putting his finger to his chin as if weighing his options.

"Pleeeeaaaaasssseee" Loki said as she clasped her hands. "I want to make it up to you. ~It'll be fun~"

Lyze took the act further by tapping his chin with his index finger. Loki frantically thought through anything she could say to make him come. He hadn't been in her Familia long, so she didn't know what would entice him. Then she suddenly remembered his first dinner with them in the manor. She noticed how ravenous he was when it came to meat.

"There'll be a whole lot of good food there Lyzie. Especially whole roasts and steaks. You like that?"

Lyze clasped his hands around hers with a resounding clap.

"Deal!" He half-shouted.

'Score!' Loki thought gleefully. 'And I get to show off my new child and possibly favourite one so far. Freya won't be able to charm him because he covers his eyes, so there!'

"Okay then. Go to Riveria and she'll fix up an outfit for you to wear. It's a 'regal' party after all."

"Sure." He said. Putting on his shirt, he picked up his fancy walking stick and left the room to find the elf princess.

'This is going to be fun.'

---

'Of all the anime tropes I've memorised, why didn't I see THIS coming.' Lyze thought dryly as Riveria fussed over him, straightening out creases and fumbling around with his cuffs. His hair was which was a little messy and unkempt had been washed, and brushed and then oiled a little bit to give his luscious black hair a shine.

Further to his irritation, Riveria had somehow brought back that stupid lock of hair, a cowlick it was called, that made him look like Arthur Pendragon. After all his effort of begging his master and humiliating himself so he could have the darn thing removed, this elf had only gone and pulled another one forth from his head and now it hung down his face as naturally as the other one.

But that was not the issue here. It was what he was WEARING that caused him insufferable amounts of cringe. She dressed him up in some super old middle ages style clothes that was worn by nobility with all the extra folds and even this stupid red necktie around his throat that was apparently customary for children.

'But I'm not a sodding noble now am I?' He though furiously. He'd worn suits before in his past life and he'd found them uncomfortable. THIS monstrosity made those others seem like they were made out of clouds because of how stiff and itchy it made him feel.

To make things worse, when he'd at least try to relieve himself of some annoyance and tried to push the lock of hair back, Riveria had slapped his hands away a little harshly and warned him not to touch it 'or else.'

For somebody who was insistent that nobody referred to her as 'mama', she sure as hell acted like one. She then explained to him how he was supposed to use Libur as a walking stick, in a dignified manner as opposed to how he just stabbed the ground with every time he walked.

"Aren't you taking things a little bit too seriously Riveria?"

"There are going to be people of high standing at that party, not to mention rival Familia. We can display our strength to them of not just our bodies but with our minds as well. We show our bodily strength with or accomplishments in the dungeon, and we show our strength of mind by acting dignified and proper at a party like this one."

"But it's so uncomfortable Riveria. I literally can't scratch my arse if I wanted to because of how stiff this is."

She curled up her nose and chopped his head.

"There will be no crude language there either Lyze. In fact, that is something I will have to fix of you regardless. And why would you do something like that anyway? It's gross."

"You try and do it while you're wearing pants like these. It's all good for you with your dresses that leave plenty of leg space."

"I just told you it's a gross thing to do! Why would I ever do that?"

"Look me in the eye and tell me you've never done it with a straight face."

"..."

"Point and case."

Riveria huffed and shoved him out the front door towards Loki who was waiting by a carriage dressed in a red dress. She waved both her arms at him to join her. The carriage was black in colour with some decorations and drawn by two white horses.

"Just go with her already, otherwise your fussing will make you both late. And behave yourself." She said with finality as she held the door to close.

"Alright mum." He muttered under his breath.

"I heard that!"

"Just...bye Riveria." He said and trotted down the steps carelessly while holding Libur over his shoulder. He could feel Riveria's eyes on him burning with anger but he just didn't care. Anything the elf could unleash on him was nothing compared to how uncomfortable he felt now.

"Remind me again why I agreed to this." Lyze said to Loki as he climbed in after her.

"Because I'm good at getting what I want." She said cheekily. "How do I look?" She opened her arms and displayed the length of her dress. Lyze deliberately stared at her flat chest.

"I think something is still missing."

"Hey!" She yelled as she jumped him, trying to reach for his face. He held her off by grabbing hers as her arms flailed around. After finally manging to throw her to the other side of the carriage, he climbed in fully and shut the door behind him.

Eyeing the interior, he felt very claustrophobic for some reason. It was like he was sitting in one of those train seats except it was tighter. And it certainly wouldn't help him evade Loki's antics.

'Here's to hoping the carriage ride is a comfortable one.'

---

'F*** that! Carriages suck!'

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