New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Katherine ran to her daughter when she saw she was on the ground in Alex's arms.

Alex was not one to get in the way, so as soon as her mother grabbed her, he let her go.

"What happened? Why is she sprawled on the ground, Alexander?" Katherine growled.

Alex raised his hands, trying to pacify her.

"It's normal. I passed out too, when I formed mine. It's called mana exhaustion. Forming the mana lobe ate up all her mana, and she fainted. Much like if she had worked too hard. It's nothing dangerous. I was about to help her recover."

Katherine glared at him, hardly believing his words, but Violette nodded at her, confirming his words, and Katherine backed down.

"Then get to it. My daughter should never be on the ground like this."

Alex held back a chuckle as he understood the double meaning of her words.

"Alright. Violette. I'll be pushing mana into your body. I want you to focus on circulating it. Don't send it to your mana lobe just yet. Just circulate it for now. I'll tell you when to send it to your mana lobe, okay?"

Violette nodded, closing her eyes.

Alex took this as his go signal, and he started slowly trickling his mana into her, making sure he went slowly, so she could circulate every particle through her body. After a couple of rotations, he felt the sealed mana lobe quiver, and he knew he was on the right path.

He kept injecting mana into her, until her skin took on a more healthy hue, and her cheeks flushed red from the stimulation.

Once he was certain this was stimulating the mana lobe, he slowly undid the seal before pushing a larger chunk of his mana into her.

Kary could tell Alex had unsealed the mana lobe, because Violette instantly clenched her fists, her jaw tensing from pain.

"Alright, Violette. Push the mana into the lobe, but don't store it yet. Circulate some more, with the mana lobe as your point of start and finish. When the discomfort fades, then you can start storing the mana there."

Violette whimpered lightly, making Katherine glare at him again.

"Hey, don't blame me. She knew it was a painful process. Your daughter is strong, Mrs. Bellemare. Have some faith in her."

Katherine clicked her tongue in distaste, but kept her mouth otherwise shut.

After a few minutes of circulating the mana inside her body and through the freshly formed mana lobe, Violette's discomfort finally receded, and she breathed in relief.

Alex stopped injecting her with mana as her mana lobe kicked in and began producing its own.

The process was complete.

Violette opened her eyes, a new sheen shining in them, and she smiled.

"Finally. Much better. I almost feel normal, now that I have a mana lobe again," Violette commented, which elicited a grimace from her mother.

"You were normal before it, sweety… This is all but normal."

"Mrs. Bellemare… This will be the future normal. You have got to understand this, at this point. Especially if you've been tapping into our calls…" Kary said, her traits stretching.

Violette's eyes went wide, and her head snapped toward her mother with a look of disappointment.

"You spied on them? Mom! I told you to leave them alone!"

Violette was well aware of what her mother did for a living. After all, she had grown up with her mother often at home and her computer running all these lines of coding. She was bound to find out someday, and that day had come early.

Both she and her brother were extremely smart when Tommy was still alive, and they had searched the meaning of those codes on the internet, getting the likely answer from a forum about hackers.

Of course, this had caused issues for Katherine, who had to erase all traces of their questions over the net, so no one would trace her identity. But they had known from then on, and she had stopped hiding it from them, making them swear to keep it a secret.

"I never promised to leave them alone, sweety! Why would I? I barely knew them? It's a mother's right to worry about her daughter's friends, is it not?" Katherine defended herself.

Violette immediately started pouting, to which Alex chuckled.

"It's okay, Violette. I had expected as much when I found out what her work entails. I was just disappointed that she wasn't trusting me enough to say it to my face before yesterday. But it's irrelevant to the future. We can forget it happened. What do you say?"

Violette looked at him, still pouting, before sighing like a tired old man.

"Fine. So, are we going to get this test started? I'm tired," Violette said, pulling her face downward.

Alex, Kary, and Katherine laughed at her antics, and almost everyone else started filtering out of the sports center. The rest of the test didn't concern them, and they also weren't interested in seeing what the little girl could do.

Most of them had seen her fight in New Eden, and if she were half that strong outside of New Eden, witnessing it would bruise their egos. They could pass on that shame.

"I'm ready when you are," Katherine said, thinking the sooner they did this, the less time her daughter had to recover, and the less likely she was to be impressed.

But Violette already had something planned in her mind. She was ready to pull out the heavy guns. Novel Fire - novelfire.net

She got up, brushing the wrinkles from her short dress away with her hands, before taking in a big breath.

Stepping to the side of the pool, Violette's eyes focused.

When she lifted her foot over the pool, her mother almost jumped up to catch her, but Alex held her back.

"Have faith," he said.

Truth was, Alex had already activated his mana vision, and what he was seeing was reassuring him about this whole idea. Violette, with and without her mana lobe, were two different people.

The control she had was insane, and as Aberon had once told her, if she had been born to their world, the mage's guild would have torn her away from her parents, to make her a disciple. And she would have most likely ended up under a Progenitor.

This was what Alex was seeing right now. Absolute control over her mana. Not a single particle was going against her will, as they flowed by her side like the coming and going tides of the sea.

Her foot hit the water, and ice instantly formed under it, making a solid and stable footrest, before she stepped off the poolside. Violette walked her way toward the center of the Olympic pool, her eyes closed, feeling her way out in the dark from the ripples of water under her.

She knew exactly where she was.

When she reached the center, Violette stopped, as raised her arms parallel to the water. With every breath she took, Alex watched as her mana bade the water into her control.

Ripples formed over the pool, flowing in and out with the rhythm of her breathing.

Jonathan had stayed, curious to see what kind of difference a mana lobe would make, if he were to ask Alex to help him form one next, and his eyes were wide in shock.

He couldn't see mana, but he could feel it, like the air on his skin. And right now, he was feeling every breath she took like a light brush against his skin.

Yet, she was standing in the center of the water, almost thirty meters from him.

Once Violette felt that all the water under her would listen, she spun her left hand in a downward arc before raising it on her right.

The pool water practically cratered as the water under her mimicked the movement, emptying to her left and bursting up to her right.

With her right hand, Violette made a pulling motion, pulling a single column of water from the wall she'd just made, and extending it over her head, where it lay, suspended in midair.

She then made many other of these motions, her eyes still closed, forming something in the air that her mother instantly recognized. It was the logo of the Delphi Oracles.

A symbol Katherine's parents taught her to idolise. One she had taught Violette to always see as a symbol of hope; like a beacon for the future.

And as the symbol formed itself in water, Violette suddenly shot both her arms down, freezing the symbol in the air, before it dropped back into the pool. Violette was less proficient at controlling ice, and forming it was her limit on this side.

But she wasn't done.

Violette spread her arms out in a swift motion again, and the pool practically exploded outward, every drop of water inside it spreading to the limits of the room. The droplets stayed in suspended animation, Violette sweating, as Katherine was awestruck.

Violette pulled off one last power move, making the droplets form back together, making them into a spectacle of dolphins, which hoped around her mother, before heading back into the receptacle they came from.

And then she pushed herself to the ground before dropping to her knees, exhausted.

"So… *huff* Do I pass your test *huff* Mother?"

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