Making a sword appear out of nowhere, Matilda held it and wondered if it was ok to use when she really hadn’t done much sparing with a metal sword since before she had died!

  The sword was a bit heavy…

  “Let me know when you are ready, Mother!” Kin spoke loudly to her from where he was, a distance away.

  No time like the present to find out how weak I am…

  Matilda shrugged and nodded, “Alright, let’s start.”

  Not used to being in battle anymore, Matilda was a bit shocked to see Kin flying towards her straight away! It wasn’t a slow speed and so she only reacted through utter instinct, having no time to think at all!

  That damned golden sword had aimed at her!

  It looked so familiar!

  That’s right! I wanted that sword!

  It was finally time that Matilda could get serious though, so she stopped thinking about anything that didn’t matter at that current moment.

  Kin had mastered flying faster than Matthew, which had been a bit embarrassing on Matthew’s behalf, but because Kin was Matilda’s child and had a bit of her in him, he had thought of a way to understand it better.

  Flying, when you may have wind and gravity against you, wasn’t easy. Matthew had felt like strength had pyed a big part of it and so that was why he hadn’t been able to fly until just before Sahara had perished.

  What Kin had done though, was think of an entirely different way to learn about flying, which had gotten him through it a lot faster!

  Kin didn’t think about enduring the wind and gravity, but instead removed it from around him instead!

  When Matilda looks into it ter, she realizes that flying was a part of preforming, accepting and understanding wind cultivation…And so removing wind from being around you actually wasn’t that hard if you knew how to do it. What Kin accidentally achieved was that the gravity was automatically pulling, or pushing, at the wind and not him, almost like he had made an anti-gravity shield around himself. It was something that Matthew had not created, until Kin had learnt it, so…Matthew had flown for years by just using his strength and so only sted a few minutes before having to have to stop! Otherwise, Kin could st a much longer time in the air!

  Kin wasn’t just flying either. He obviously used his sword as well, which was slightly different to that of Matthew’s sword-shield type of defense. Instead, Kin seemed to have an offensive golden type of spell, where his golden weapon can change from a sword to a dagger, to even that of a two handed and a harder hitting weapon. As long as he knew what he wanted and how he wanted to use it, his ‘sword’ was changeable into another type of weapon!

  Matilda took it all in happily, finally satisfied with being able to fight!

  Her son had indeed grown strong!

  Yet, she was sure, he had much to learn!

  Matilda blocked his dagger, then used his strength against him to flip away from him. She had picked up some dirt in her hand and stared at him as she stayed closer to the ground.

  Kin smiled at her and flew straight towards her, only to get dirt towards his eyes when he got too close.

  Watching him with keen eyes, Matilda waited.

  She had yet to see what else he could do yet…What else had he cultivated? Surely, he had a bag of tricks…

  In no time Kin was ready once again, as the dirt was mostly pushed away from him by the wind. He too stared at his mother and even frowned a bit.

  He wasn’t sure on what to expect when fighting his mother…But this hadn’t been it! She was a bit of a dirty pyer!

  Kin had felt like this type of fighting could often become unfair!

  Having fought his grandfather before, Kin knew of this ‘dirty’ type of fight and had rarely ever fought his grandfather since!

  Matilda narrowed her eyes at her son, waiting…It seemed that the boy was perhaps losing his nerve?

  In a way, she was right. Kin was obviously having trouble accepting the fact that his own mother was fighting like this!

  Yet, he didn’t want to ‘teach her a lesson’ and go all out, as no part of him wanted to hurt her!

  That was the problem here! Matilda probably wouldn’t have pyed dirty if Kin had taken her seriously! Well…Maybe…

  The sword was a bit heavy, and she was running out of energy quite quickly…Already breathing faster than normal.

  The fight wasn’t over though!

  Matilda took the initiative and walked towards Kin, waiting to see his next move.

  Sometimes people had a routine, sometimes they were so keen on a way of fighting that it was obvious upon their weakness…Matilda was just trying to figure out her opponent…That was all. She had absolutely no idea that she had just been called a ‘dirty pyer’ by her own son!

  Kin, on the other hand, was not a person that had had a real-life battle before. He had only had spars within family and if he was lucky, some in an academy here or there too.

  Matilda had indeed got more experience, it wasn’t that her body was young that prevented her from being more aggressive and getting her opponent down as soon as possible. No, Matilda bides her time and tried to endure through the fight, even if her hand was getting sore.

  She needed that weakness, and she needed to keep up!

  This was her training for today!

  To a sad, certain degree, Kin had become somewhat of a stepping stone for Matilda!

  Walking to the side, Matilda eyed her opponent and again narrowed her eyes.

  Keeping an eye to her left and right and trying to remember to listen behind her as well, Matilda found nothing that might surprise her.

  There was nothing digging in the dirt, nothing that might distract her to turn right so that Kin could come from his position to attack…There was nothing except Kin…

  Even the environment was easy, as it was just a dirt area, with bits of grass here or there. There were no big rocks to hid into or anything like that. You could say that it was a typical type of one on one fighting arena …

  Kin took a deep breath in and showed a calming face as suddenly Matilda found herself floating.

  Completely losing her footing and her ‘center’ Matilda didn’t know what to do as she flipped and rolled in the air like some balloon getting hit from side to side!

  Feeling a fist connect with her arm, Matilda scooted as fast as she could to see what was going on and found Kin flying back at her!

  She knew he was taking it easy on her, as really, all he needed to do was strike her with a sword and she would have lost!

  Matilda just couldn’t get her bearings though! As much as she wanted to overcome the feeling of being weightless, she couldn’t stop tumbling in mid-air!

  Teleporting away, to try and nd on her feet, it didn’t work!

  The wind surrounded her…It felt so…Weightless…

  What a little shithead!

  Matilda smiled, wanting to have smiled at her son but couldn’t as she wasn’t looking at him at that moment!

  How was she going to get out of this!?

  What a great way to get your opponent into a predicament that they probably wouldn’t be able to control!

  Oh, I’m so proud!

  Matilda tried to pay attention, as she was once again hit in the other arm with another fist, but she couldn’t!

  The pain only made things more apparent to her that her son was better than she had thought!

  Was it really her fault to not really have much of an impression at first?

  She hadn’t really thought about it for a start, but she just didn’t know him!

  Plus, the feeling of being so proud and happy to how great he had become was a great feeling!

  Feeling herself be surrounded by arms and a chest, Matilda automatically put her hands around her man and smiled at him as he was scowling at their son.

  Giggling into his chest, Matilda could hardly contain her pride, “Did you teach him that?”

  There was a silent moment before Matthew said, “No…”

  “Oh?” Matilda looked up at him, finally seeing now that the gravity had turned back to normal and wondered what was going on.

  Oh right, I can just read his mind!

  How was it that she could turn it off and not remember to turn it back on again!?

  Weird…

  By the time that Matilda turned her ‘reading mind’ button to ‘on’, she had missed any thought that Matthew had been thinking of at the time.

  A little dismayed, she saw a sudden newcomer that she had rarely seen before.

  “Mother, I’m sorry!” Kin had rushed back to her, full of apologies!

  “It’s fine, we were fighting…What’s a fight without a couple of blows?” Matilda stated. If it weren’t for her happiness and pride over her son, she would have tried to find a way out of that predicament, but she just didn’t get that far!

  Again, though, she turned back to the newcomer.

  Austin was not someone she had seen very often. He had been the True Golden Heir that didn’t speak to his father and calmly thought about the letter. He was also someone that seemed to watch a lot…He didn’t seem like part of the in crowd…

  Matilda remembered seeing him briefly with a little boy and with Kin but really hadn’t seen him any other time.

  Unable to stop herself, as he stared at her and she stared at him, she found him to be quite intriguing.

  Having pced himself into her shoes, he wondered what he would have done in that fight.

  He wanted to be prepared…

  One of Matilda’s greatest motoes in life was ‘prevention is the best medicine’ and…This guy, this Austin, was wondering how he would prevent his own falling to the same type of attack.

  Seeing Austin’s cultivation, it being the same rank of eight as her son, his talent of being able to use the sun…Matilda was slightly overwhelmed to what he could do!

  He was a bit simir to Kin actually.

  Instead of being able to use wind to help himself fly, Austin used the sun’s heat and rays to shield himself and also to attack…

  Yet, his talent with the sun didn’t seem to help him overcome the problem of what had occurred, and Austin knew it!

  Seeing him go into deep thought, Matilda finally turned to Matthew, who had raised eyebrows at her, and smiled. “He’s trying to figure out how to win against Kin.” She stated.

  Matthew turned to Austin, his own younger brother, and frowned…

  Had they never fought with cultivation before?

  Didn’t his son love Austin? Why had they never had that friendly fight with one another like this before? Oh, wait, maybe that was Daxton…But then why had these two never fought?

  It was almost shocking that the two boys, who were close in age and were even friends, had never sparred together…Well, at least not recently with their wind and sun cultivation meditations…

  “Perhaps it’s time to put them against one another.” Matilda stated, looking back at Austin.

  Matthew sighed and looked at Matilda, “We weren’t always together but when we were they were mostly like mischievous boys that teased Madeline or pyed pranks, instead of wanting to be students and learn. Then again, that might have been with Daxton…I can’t recall Austin and Kin spending too much time together…”

  It didn’t help that Matthew couldn’t remember simply because he wasn’t paying attention…Actually, those years without Matilda were like a blur to him, almost like someone else had been living a lot of his life…

  …It sucked because Matilda wanted to see what they would be like! Both of them had something that was quite good! Well, actually, perhaps they had more, and she hadn’t even seen it!

  It wasn’t fair! She wanted to see more of what her little man can do! Why did Matthew have to take her away!

  …But that was what he was doing!

  If Matilda had puppy dog ears, they would be down…

  She looked up at Matthew and then hid her head into his neck…

  “Does your arms hurt?” He asked, not at all perplexed to her obvious want to have seen more…

  Matilda shook her head into his neck, and he smiled.

  I adore you, my dearest princess!

  And so, Matilda smiled too, except no one could see it as it was hidden into his neck…

  ***