As the time slowly passed for Noah, he accompanied the rest of the blessed in eating and drinking the remainder of the treats. Their festive mood had been completely renewed by the passionate speech Michael had given them just a few minutes before, but Noah's mind kept running in circles around a particular thought that he had relived very much.

  'Maybe I should set aside some of the essences to join last time, just in case,' he thought for a split second, before thinking something completely opposite of what had just crossed the depths of his mind. 'No! Maggy will make a way better use of them. If I give her all 12 essence, the 5 I have and the other 7 we get from here, that's worth another fortress like today's. Then she can become much stronger even faster.' He nodded to himself as he agreed to himself this was definitely the best course of action. 'I'll just have to earn enough points and get another essence by the time we can join this again. Since it's two weeks because we can't join next week anyway after we win, it's a no brainer.' His mind quickly derailed again as he started thinking about how lucky it was that he could arrange more than one full point for his sister on the same day.

  Happy with the conclusion he had come to, Noah's attention went back to the blessed eating and chatting around him. Most were making some small talk about what kind of good impression they would give after the good results of today's Arena, but soon he felt a pair of eyes oggling him with curiosity.

  "What is it?" he asked the healer girl who seemed to be staring at him for some odd reason.

  Her reaction was quite different than what he had expected. While he had expected her to look at him weirdly, and say something about him that was related to what happened today, she suddenly acted all flushed and quickly averted her eyes, avoiding eye contact while responding to him very softly and awkward.

  "Not much really. I was just curious." she said, making him lightly furrow his brows, not really understanding her motives, which in turn made her face become colored in a little shade of pink, much like when she started talking passionately about cars when the two met outside the restaurant earlier. "I mean, you were all serious and your face looked like you were thinking about something very important, so I was curious what it could be about."

  Immediately as he heard her explanation, Noah's face relaxed into a small smile as he remembered who he was thinking about. "Yes, I was thinking about someone very important." To him, there was not too much said in that sentence, but the girl watching him felt like there was something very different to him.

  'Wow…… his eyes seem to glow. It must be very lucky for this person to have someone like him sherrishing them enough their eyes glow like this from someone just making him recall them.' Suddenly, her eyes widened a little and she blushed as she caught herself thinking such a thing out of the blue, averting her eyes again.

  Confused about why she was behaving like this, since she knew fairly well what her body language seemed to imply, Noah moved his head to look at her as he felt something strange happen, but shrugged as he understood it probably didn't have much to do with him anyways. Or so he thought. His attention shifting around, he struck a small conversation. More than anything, he wanted to understand why this group was this happy about making such a comeback, but it also served to let the girl go of that awkwardness that suddenly appeared as she avoided even looking at him while eating silently.

  "They sure seem very overjoyed at this arena thing today." he said, changing topics, and allowing her to recover, only raising her impression of him a little bit more.

  "Yeah, aren't you also? But for us, being able to go at it being sure we will win is an amazing thing, you know." she said, while at the same time thinking, 'He noticed it and shifted the topic away so I wouldn't be seen with weird eyes.'

  "I am, but for many other reasons……" he said, absentminded. While he was excited about winning all those extra essences, he was also looking forward to fight with those nosy people from earlier. Rather, he just wanted to test things out a little bit more, and they'd be great practice targets. Since he already knew their level and how difficult the fights would be to some extent, he really wanted to see hwo far he could go using the least possible. He was also curious as to what the Arena itself would look like, since it was something organized by such a fancy restaurant.

  While the two of them talked like so, both the leader of this group and the bearded warrior had seen her become embarassed, and thought of a way to bring the two into everyone's conversation while also breaking a bit more of the ice, as they quickly nodded at each other.

  "Hehey! It seems the two of you really do very well together, don't you?" the warrior said while lifting his glass, almost like in a cheer. "Ain't that great, Michael?" He laughed loudly as he called out to the leader.

  "Isn't that great though? She's our only healer and the cornerstone of out backline, and he's the one in change of protecting our ranged guys, if they do well together we can rest assured." The leader shurgged while smiling.

  As Noah was about to open his mouth, one of the mages spoke first, "He really did save our asses today. I hope we'll keep having someone this reliable with us in the future." Seing almost everyone else at the table look at him with serious eyes, the mage pretended he had choked while speaking, clearing his throat before finishing the sentence, "At least until that guys recovers."

  It really surprised Noah how the mage breathed a sigh of relief, as all remaints of tension vanished in a split second and most of the blessed burst into laughter, before he too began laughing at his own stupidity.

  "But it's really true that he made out lives a lot easier today," the scout that had interacted with him said while looking at Noah. "Every time you were with us I felt really safe, like I had another scout with me to cover my back."

  "Same here," a warrior began, "he dealt with so many of those strong monsters, and even his little Imp was useful."

  'Oooh……' Noah held himself from saying this out loud. He was familiar with how useful his imps were, but he didn't expect that single D blessed strong imp without useful skills he left behind to have actually been useful enough for anyone to comment on.

  "Really? I didn't expect him to be that useful to you guys on the front." he commented, shurgging. "I really only meant to leave him behind so I could get back to you guys, or so you knew in case I wasn't coming back not to wait for me."

  "No man, that little thing was very perceptive! Even when the fog was very thick, his behavior told us when something was approaching, so we could prepare." One of the riders said, making Noah proud of his small helper.

  "It was like we had an extra scout. Though he was weaker than ours." the bearded warrior butted in.

  "At least that much is good. If even the weakest of his monsters was stronger than me, I would lose face in front of you guys……" The scout said while scratching his head.

  "Oh, but he's not the weakest. I have a weaker monster with me, though he can fly." Noah's words made a smile light up on the scout's face as he took a large swig from his glass. Seing these guys talk about him like this, while not trying to suck up to him, but out of companionship was refreshing.

  "Erm…… Noah, are you going to keep coming with us in the future?" Noah was surprised as a shy and soft voice called out to him just loud enough everyone could hear. He hadn't expected her to ask this kind of thing.

  Putting his hand on his chin, Noah looked at the leader and waited for his answer. After all, this was not his group, it was not his call.

  "Why you looking at—Ohhh! Right!! I was so tired when we left I forgot to bring this up. I can't say it would really benefit you sticking around with us, since you're so strong on your own right, but having you around made us feel like we had multiple people at our disposal whenever needed. So…… do you mind sticking around with us, at least for a while?" The way Michael worded it made it sound entirely like it was his choince in the end, despite Noah himself feeling like he was really put against a wall in order to accept it, especially now that he had made them so excited for today's fight.

  Noah looked around the table, as all the people looked at him with anticipation, before staring back at the leader with all the seriousness he could muster and say a single word.

  "No."