I quickly fixed my gaze downwards, hoping the angry man would just ignore me.

How the hell did he know I was watching him? Did he know I was looking into his mana core? But there weren't even any rings.

If only these eyes came with some sort of system that tells these things like in those few fictional stories I was able to read at home.

"...Then again you never checked...".

This is not the fucking time.

Come on, Damian, don't panic, but safe to say my crude acting didn't deter the scary man, "Kid".

I looked up at the tall man, trying my hardest to keep my composure."Yes, sir", I answered innocently.

He glared at me suspiciously before asking, "Do you have an affinity with fire magic?"

Eh? How did he know I had mana? "Uh...uhh".

"Just answer", he said sternly.

"No...I don't, sir".

"Hmm...a shame", he said before walking away.

My shoulders dropped as the tall man in a black suit left, and relief washed over me. Who the hell was that guy? He didn't even have a tag on him.

Guess I shouldn't be looking into people's cores so carelessly. It wouldn't be weird for there to be people who could look into cores, and therefore it would be weird if there weren't any people or magic items that could block it. 

However, I need to research this, even if it's slightly. I stretched out my gaze and simultaneously looked into the mana cores of several guests.

Five, two, twenty, empty, empty, fifty, eighty, empty.

Then I began to realize some inconsistencies: a young man with an empty core looked different from another person who had a core but with no rings.

That's when it dawned on me, an odd theory but the only theory that made sense.

Could some of these people be so powerful that my eyes couldn't view the number of rings they had? 

"You!" a voice called out.

I snapped my head to the right, half thinking someone caught me again, but all I saw was a girl.

She was around my age with an angry yet cute expression on her face; she had braided long black hair with clean darkskin and glimmering amber eyes. She was slightly taller than me, with puffy cheeks, her arms crossed together as she stood defiantly.

"Um...Me?" I asked while looking around.

"Yes, you! What did the dragon tell you?"

"What? What dragon?"

"The dragon that just spoke to you! Don't act dumb!"

We began stealing some glances, so I opted to try and diffuse any issues. I looked at her beautiful white dress and looked at her badge, "Evana Dean, second child of the Dean Empire".

"Look, E...Evana, I don't know any dr-".

She walked closer to me, glaring at me before saying, "So you don't know the thing you just saw was a dragon? A monster?"

"Sorry, but I don't know anything".

"Lowly brat, do you just speak to anyone?"

"Am I meant to ignore him?"

"Don't ac-".

"Evana, stop troubling the boy", a voice cut her off.

A slightly older boy walked over to us. "Let's go back to mom and dad".

"Julian, this boy talked to one of those bastards from the Dragon Empire; they were probably trying to recruit him".

"Recruit...me?"

The tall boy looked slightly down at me, looked just like what I believed to be his sister but had a few deeper features likely caused by the fruits of puberty.

"Damian...Simmons", he muttered.

"Try not to talk to random people. Let's go, Evana".

Evana huffed, then glared at me one more time before they walked off. 

"Don't you know who they are?"

I'm getting tired of all these new people talking to me, yet this voice sounded kind of familiar. Turning to my left, I saw the familiar girl I saved years ago.

It was Flower.

It had been about a year since I had last visited the Lion's Den, and I had barely managed to talk to her for long, so I was pleasantly surprised she came up to meet me.

"Oh, hello, Flower. How are you doing?"

"I am fine, I managed to use you as an excuse to free myself from walking around".

"Do you not know the Dean Empire?, she asked further.

"The name admittedly sounds familiar, but I don't keep track of empires anymore".

"Yeah, but they are the third highest-ranked empire in all of Giana".

“Ah, how did I forget that? What about the dragon she talked about?”

“You don’t know of the dragon empire?”

“Admittedly, I stopped keeping track of the recent rankings or powerful empires. I had other things to work on”.

She shifted her brown hair and smirked, “Oh, what could you be working on?”

“Why would you care?”, I said nervously.

“Well, it isn’t wrong to know more about the guy who saved me?”

I almost spat out my juice, then looked at her. “Who even told you?”

“Hugmoth, he’s spoken about you quite a few times. He likes you”.

I grinned a bit. “By the way, what’s wrong with the Dragon Empire?”

“Papa told me that they take kids to perform weird rituals on them for the sake of the dragons”.

“Dragons? There’s barely any information about dragons though; some books even state they’re extinct”.

“That only adds to the mystery, papa said it’s best to keep away”.

I scanned around the hall, hoping to catch the gaze of the tall man again but instead, I saw Patricia.

She was by the far corner, quite a ways away from me, but with my eyes I could clearly see her. There was someone beside her, a taller, oversized man with a sickening grin.

His hands were around her neck, dangling and intently brushing against her bosom. He held a glass of red wine, which was the cause of his deep red cheeks.

Patricia had a dark expression on her face; she had no choice but to tolerate the indecent behaviour. Making a scene here would only put her to shame, and with my parents and Lucia far away, no one could free her from this.

Except me, of course.

END OF CHAPTER 14.