บท 87: THE LINE OF DEFENCE.

***On Planet Gieă, In the Outskirts of the Continent 'Eclipse of the Oceans', Chingford's Academy grounds..

It took Navi a couple of minutes to return his bag back into his room and to fetch his pendant but right now he finds himself walking across the very empty Academy's grounds. There's almost absolutely nobody on the campus but this is not surprising considering the current time.

The clouds were still mostly in a light shade of grey but now, there are peeks of orange sunlight coming from the seemingly endless carpet of green knownas the forbidden forest. The morning air is a bit chilly and the light winds carried a pleasant yet faint scent of morning dew.

Walking calmly in this current environment, Navi couldn't fight relaxing a bit as he makes his way to his planned destination in order to retrieve his first line of defence considering his current situation.

Walking calmly for about fifteen minutes, Navi is familiar enough with the Academy's map to quickly find the hall structure he is searching for. Standing lore than a couple feet away, Navi looks at the massive hall and then he looks at the banners hanging traditional by the sides of the opened main doors..

'Clingford's Martial Disciple's Storage hall..'.

Taking in a small breath, Navi lightly licks his lip end as he starts approaching the open but guarded entrance with a calm pace. As expected from such a highly valued hall, he is stopped from entry by a harsh glance from one of the unmoving knights. Looking a bit harshly at him, one of the knights crossed the blade of her spear in front of his chest.

Familiar with the process, Navi calmly pulls out his disciple slip and scans it by the side of the door. Only after showing his disciple slip is he allowed entry through the buildings doors as the armoured Knight goes back to her unmoving yet sharp posture.

The moment Navi walks in, he has to lightly squint his eyes in order to adapt to the sudden change on light intensity. His cold orange eyes stings lightly as they were forced to quickly adapt to the bright lights on the other side of the main doors even though they have already relaxed to the low light of the early morning.

Looking around, Navi finds the source of the intense light to be a setting of unartistic lanterns. Giving off pure white light they were pratucal arranged on the high parts of the walls in order to bring life to the cold wooden room.

The current reception space Navi finds himself in has three very noticable metal doors(One on each wall) with two guards flanking each door like statues. At the centre of the room sits a 'l__l' shaped reception stand with two receptionists sitting behind the table.

Having being through this process before, Navi walks up to the reception stand before placing forward his disciple slip.

"I'm here to retrieve some of my stored items.", Navi says to the officially robed elven receptionist who stands up to calmly receive his wooden disciple slip with a friendly purse of her lips. She seems a bit surprised by Navi's calm voice despite his obviously young age but she immediately plays off her surprise with professionalism.

Scanning his slip into the mouth of a small wooden sculpture, the receptionist asks Navi..

"Tier one or tier two?..", She questions.

"Tier two.". Navi calmly answers as the receptionist hits on a glowing rune-like button on the life-like sculpture.

With a small beep, the receptionist pulls out Navi's disciple slip as well as a slip of paper that has the numbers '36' recently written on it with still wet ink.

Giving Navi back his disciple slip, the receptionist gives a professional smile before stepping out from behind the stand as she says a small and polite.. "Follow me".

With only a dozen steps, the receptionist leads Navi to one of the doors on the eye-catching metal walls on the back wall of the space. Following behind her, Navi watches as the receptionist unlocks the door before leading him into a space he can still fondly recall in his memory; after all he has been here three times.

The first time he came here was at the beginning of the last martial term and his purpose was to store his pair of daggers in a Tier one locker. Even if he has a personal cabinet in his dorm, the cabinet cannot provide any sort of defence to a determined thief.

The second time he came here was to retrieve his daggers at the end of the last Martial term and as for the third time, he had come to this place to store back his daggers. Not know did he store back his daggers but he also stored a couple extra things that forced him to upgrade his locker's space from tier-1 to tier-2.

Walking through the just opened metal door, Navi sees rows and rows of locked wooden lockers of different sizes fixed into the walls. With a quick visual scan, Navi quickly pinpoints his own locker which had the numbers '36' written on top of it.

His locker comes in a rectangular shape with it's sixe being three feet tall(From top to bottom) and a single feet wide across. With a few steps, the receptionist leads him to his tier-2 rented storage locker and then, using a custom key she helps him unlock it.

Giving a quick glance into his locker space, Navi quickly confirms all his items intact and untouched. His Sheathed Claymore sword, his pair of twin daggers, the set of throwing kit he had gotten as loot from the dead intruders, a closed bag containing his folded white armour-suit and then finally, a small purse containing a bit of his wealth.

Everything in the locker were all in the same position he had left them though, Navi isn't surprised by this result. Considering the amount he forks out weekly to keep this locker as well as the reputations of these halls, anything less then air-proof security is a scam.

With a deep breath, Navi reaches into his locker then grabs only his sheathed pair of twin daggers before closing his lockers once more.

"Is that all?..", The receptionist asks Navi as she hears him shut his locker. She has been professionally looking away from the insides of the locker as soon as it was unlocked and so the sound of the door being closed once more alerts her that Navi's business here is most-likely done.

"Yes..", Navi replies with the receptionist turning around to face his closed locker. Putting the key into his door, she locks the locker once more before turning to face Navi.

She is a bit surprised as she sees absolutely nothing in his hands but it is not her place to ask as she leads Navi back out of the storage space.

Feeling the sheathed dagger against his chest and within the layers of his robes, Navi feels a little bit more confident in the case of a surprise attack.

He takes a deep breath to drain some of his tension and then he walks out if the hall with a straight back and his cold orange eyes cast forward.

...

Walking back out of the Academy's disciple storage halls, Navi doesn't have to squint his eyes much in order to adapt to change in light intensity. The morning sky has already gotten a bit brighter than before and he can even see the top of the orange sun coming off the top of the distant forest.

His next destination is the Cafeteria where he plans to get a quick meal before finding his way to meditation class. He hasn't abandoned his plans on making research on the dead intruders relatives but from now, those plans would have to wait.

Walking to the Cafeteria, the Academy's grounds comes off as mostly empty but Navi finds himself enjoying the general atmosphere of the cozy morning. Because of this, Navi intentionally eases up on his pace in order to enjoy a few more minutes of the journey.

After twenty minutes, Navi finally makes his way into the Academy's Cafeteria and moves up to grab a tray. The Cafeteria is mostly empty and quiet but a couple handful of student were already making their way through with breakfast.

Paying no attention to anyone in particular, Navi starts moving along as the servers filled up his plate though he had barely moved through half of the serving counter when his sixth-sense picks up a persistent gaze on him.

Navi doesn't know if the gaze belongs to someone spying on him or just a casual onlooker so he stops himself from suddenly looking back in that direction. With his gaze mostly to his tray, Navi soon moves through then to the end of the serving-counter and then, he calmly turns in the direction of the gaze as if to casually look for a table.

Much to his indifference, Navi finds himself locking eyes with a familiar face.

A quiet sigh escapes his nostrils as he sees Yuxi looking at him from a distant table with an expression he couldn't quite read into. Checking into his own mood, Navi is not surprised to find out that he would very much rather not have to deal with anyone this morning.

With his tray in his hand, Navi walks up to a table quite distant from that of Yuxi's but knowing a bit of her character, Navi can only be faintly racked as he sees her packing up her tray before making her way up to his table.

Pulling the chair right opposite to him and barely settling her tray on the table, Yuxi asks in a low and slightly distressed voice, "..Is it true?".

Navi calmly pauses his movements with his chopsticks and then he moves his cold orange eyes up to meet Yuxi's distressed blue doe eyes with various thoughts running through his mind.

He couldn't quite get this senior of his. He barely knows anything about her and she seems to know even less about him but still, she is always a bit more than casual whenever they meet.

Knowing a bit about her personality, Navi can probably guess she's acting this way because she considers herself a 'grown-up' and him a kid but still, he can't help but feel a bit rattled as he doesn't really know how to act around her.

It feels off to just ignore the bubbly senior.

A couple of seconds passes by with these two people locked in an awkward staring contest with different thoughts swirling through their minds. One of them looks distressed and the other looks completely calm. One of them is in a half-standing position and the other is fully and comfortable seated.

Tilting his head a bit, Navi finally breaks the stare and then casually replies Yuxi's question with one of his own.

"What is?..", Navi says while casually taking his gaze off a Yuxi. With relaxed motions, he starts stirring up his meaty pasta with his chopsticks laying in his left hand.