Chapter 64: A new developing friendship

Abby stood in the middle of the courtyard path, her hands clasped tightly in front of her gray coat. Students brushed past them on either side, their chatter fading into a background hum as Rain looked at her face. The sharp, controlled posture she usually carried in the dueling ring was completely gone, replaced by a rigid tension in her jaw.

"Rain," she repeated, her grey eyes searching his. "We need to talk. Right now."

Rain held her gaze for a second, picking up on the sudden, strained edge in her voice. He glanced around at the open courtyard, where three different groups of upperclassmen were idling near the stone benches.

"Okay," Rain said, keeping his tone quiet and steady. "You look like you’re about to jump out of your skin. What’s going on?"

Abby bit her lip, looking away toward the tree line for a brief moment before snapping her attention back to him. "I can’t do Thursday. The training session. I have to cancel it."

Rain didn’t answer immediately. He looked at the slight tremor in her hands, the way her fingers were locked together so tightly her knuckles were white. A normal cancellation would have been a quick text or a brief word between classes. She had been waiting behind a pillar for an hour just to tell him this in person.

"All right," Rain said gently, shifting his weight. "It’s fine. We can reschedule."

"No, you don’t understand," she said quickly, her voice dropping lower as two second-years walked past them. "It’s not just a schedule conflict. I might not be able to do next week either. I might not..." She stopped, cutting herself off with a sharp breath, her eyes flashing with a mix of frustration and genuine distress.

Rain looked at her for another second, then gestured toward the paved walkway leading away from the East Annex toward the student dining hall.

"You’re telling me over lunch," Rain said, turning his head to look at her. "Come on."

Abby blinked, caught off guard. "Rain, I don’t really have time to—"

"I’m buying," Rain interrupted, a faint, easy grin breaking across his face despite the ache in his ribs. "Which means you literally can’t say no. I’ve got a whole ninety credits to my name, Abby. Let me flex a little."

A short, sudden laugh escaped her throat before she could stop it. The tight line of her shoulders relaxed just a fraction, the sharp tension around her eyes softening as she looked at him.

"Ninety credits?" she echoed, shaking her head. "You’re absurd. Fine. But only because I want to see you try to pay for a dining hall meal with loose change."

"Hey, it’s legitimate currency," Rain said, turning to walk beside her down the tree-lined path. "The vendor at the west gate didn’t complain."

They walked in silence for a minute, the cool afternoon air blowing through the pines overhead. They reached the smaller, secondary dining hall near the athletic fields, a brick building with quiet wooden booths and large glass windows overlooking the practice track. Rain bought two basic soup bowls and two teas at the counter, counting out the credits onto the tray while Abby watched with a quiet, lingering smile.

They carried the tray to a corner booth near the back, away from the noise of the main counter. Rain sat down, leaning back against the wooden booth, while Abby unwrapped her tea cup, staring down at the amber liquid as steam rose into the air.

"All right," Rain said, holding his tea cup in both hands to warm his fingers. "No crowd around. Why are you cancelling Thursday?"

Abby took a slow breath, her fingers tracing the edge of the ceramic mug. The humor from a moment ago vanished, replaced by a heavy, quiet weight that seemed to settle over the entire table.

"My mother summoned me," Abby said softly. "This morning. Official notice came through the guild portal office while I was in my morning combat seminar."

Rain frowned slightly. "Your mother. She’s senior leadership in Red Dragon, right?"

"Senior Vice-Director of Human Resources and Field Ops," Abby corrected, her voice flat, devoid of any pride. "Which means she controls contract allocations, party assignments, and guild sponsorship grants for every non-lineage cadet coming out of the academy."

She paused, taking a small sip of her tea before setting the cup back down on the wooden saucer with a soft click.

"It’s not a family visit," Abby continued, looking directly into Rain’s blue eyes. "She’s calling a formal review session for Thursday night at the Red Dragon regional headquarters in the central district. A full panel evaluation."

Rain leaned forward slightly, resting his elbows on the table. "An evaluation for what?"

"For me," Abby said, a sharp, bitter edge creeping into her words. "For the last four years of my life. My mother brought three senior division officers onto the panel. People who report directly to the Guild Master. They’re reviewing my performance metrics, my spar records, my physical aptitude scores, and my mana density growth curves."

"To see if you qualify for a guild contract?" Rain asked.

"To see if the investment was worth it," Abby said, her voice dropping into a razor-thin whisper. "That’s the phrase she used in the official summons notice. ’To assess whether the resource allocation provided to Cadet Abigail Ratchford over the preceding forty-eight months justifies direct contract integration upon graduation, or if primary assignment should be redirected to administrative staff.’"

Rain stared at her, feeling a cold knot form in his chest. "Administrative staff? They’d bench you?"

"If I fail the panel, yes," Abby said, her fingers tightening around her tea cup until her knuckles turned white again. "They’ll strip my field priority status. I won’t get a guild rift permit, I won’t get access to high-tier refining drops, and I’ll spend the next ten years sitting behind a desk in the logistics department in Sector Four, processing inventory sheets for frontline strike teams."

She looked out the window, staring at the empty practice track outside.

"My mother built her entire career on cold, flawless efficiency," Abby murmured. "She doesn’t care that I’m her daughter. To her, I’m a line item on the Red Dragon ledger. If I don’t produce an A-tier combat rating in front of those three officers on Thursday, she will personally sign the transfer order to administrative desk duty just to prove to the board that she doesn’t show favoritism."

Rain watched her face. He saw the quiet, suffocating fear underneath her composure, the weight of four years of relentless pressure crushing down on her shoulders. She wasn’t just facing a hard test; she was walking into a firing squad disguised as a performance review.

"How many people get audited like this?" Rain asked quietly.

"In my class? Just me," Abby said, letting out a short, dry breath. "Other cadets get standard evaluations at the end of their senior year. My mother pushed mine up by six months because she wants to decide my track before the spring guild auctions start."

"Can you refuse?" Rain asked.

"Not without walking away from everything I’ve built toward since I was a kid," Abby said simply. "No contract, no sponsorship, no path back into Red Dragon later even if I changed my mind. I’d be starting over from nothing, and there isn’t exactly a line of guilds waiting to pick up a cadet whose own mother benched her."

The silence hung heavy over the table. Rain took a slow breath.He thought about the cold, calculated way the big guilds operated, the exact same cold, calculated structure Miss Ebony had laid bare on the slate board an hour ago. To Red Dragon, Abby wasn’t a person with potential; she was an asset whose yield return was being measured on a graph.

"Where is the review happening?" Rain asked.

"The Red Dragon administrative tower" Abby replied, looking back at him with a tired expression. "Why?"

Rain set his cup down. "I’m coming with you."

Abby froze, her grey eyes widening slightly as she stared at him across the table. "What?"

"I’m coming with you," Rain repeated, his voice quiet, steady, and completely devoid of hesitation. "To Sector Two. On Thursday."

Abby blinked, a sudden, flustered confusion breaking through her heavy mood. "Rain, you can’t just... you aren’t even a Red Dragon cadet. You’re an unattached F-rank independent. They won’t even let you past the security gate in the lobby."

"I’ll wait in the lobby then," Rain said flatly. "Or on the sidewalk outside the front doors. I don’t care."

"Why would you do that?" Abby asked, her voice cracking slightly with genuine bewilderment. "It’s going to be four hours of cold, miserable corporate interrogation. It has nothing to do with you."

"Because you shouldn’t have to walk into that building alone," Rain said, his blue eyes locking onto hers with unwavering directness. "I’m not coming to fight your mother or argue with three guild officers. You have to handle the panel yourself. But when you step out of that room, whether it goes great or whether it turns into a complete mess, you shouldn’t be standing in an empty marble lobby with nobody there who gives a damn about you as a person."

Abby sat completely frozen, her lips slightly parted as she stared at him. The sharp, defensive wall she kept built up around herself seemed to crack, a flush of color rising up her neck into her cheeks. She looked down at her hands, then back up at him, her grey eyes shining with a sudden, intense emotion she quickly tried to blink away.

"You’re an idiot," she whispered, though her voice lacked any real bite. "A total idiot."

"Probably," Rain agreed smoothly, picking up his spoon. "But the offer stands. Thursday night. I’m riding the transit train to Sector Two with you."

Abby looked at him for a long, quiet moment, her chest rising and falling with a slow, shaky breath. A genuine, breathless smile broke across her face, small and real, lighting up her grey eyes in a way Rain hadn’t seen all day.

"Okay," she said softly, her fingers relaxing against the table. "Okay. Thank you, Rain."

"Eat your soup," Rain said, gesturing at her bowl. "I paid good money for those sixty credits."

Abby laughed, picking up her spoon. "Right. The ninety-credit fortune."

They finished lunch twenty minutes later, the heavy atmosphere between them lifting into a comfortable, easy conversation about basic movement drills and spatial footwork. They stepped out of the dining hall doors back into the crisp afternoon sunlight, walking slowly down the paved slope toward the central plaza where the dorm pathways diverged.

"I have a mana theory lecture in ten minutes," Abby said, tucking her blonde hair behind her ear as they reached the stone fountain at the center of the crossroad. "I should head toward the North Hall."

"Yeah," Rain said, stopping near the fountain edge. "I’m heading back to C-building to clear out some—"

He stopped mid-sentence.

Three figures were stepping out from the shadow of the covered walkway connecting the library to the main hall, cutting straight across the manicured lawn toward the fountain.

Corwin walked in the center. He wore his heavy, fur-collared leather jacket open over a grey tunic, his dark, greasy hair pulled back into a messy stub of a ponytail, his sneering face marked by a fresh scab across his jaw from two nights ago. To his left was Petrov, tall, broad-shouldered, and thick-necked, his heavy hands resting casually in his coat pockets. To his right was Dax, lean, sharp-faced, and twitchy, his dark eyes locked onto Rain with a cold, hungry intensity.

Rain felt his body go on instant alert, his muscles tightening, his heart giving a sharp, hard thump against his ribs.

[Status: HP 95/160 | Mana 20/20]

He was nearly at full Mana, but his physical health was still recovering. More importantly, he was standing right next to Abby in the middle of a wide-open campus plaza with thirty witnesses walking around.

Corwin slowed his stride as he approached, a slick, mean grin spreading across his face as his eyes swept over Rain, then shifted instantly to Abby standing at his side.

Rain didn’t wait for them to speak. He immediately stepped half a pace forward, putting his shoulder subtly between Abby and the three approaching guys, his voice flat and perfectly controlled.

"Abby," Rain said, not taking his eyes off Corwin. "Go to your lecture."

Abby stopped, her eyes darting from Rain to the three guys closing in. She recognized the look on Corwin’s face instantly, the posture of a predator looking for an easy target. ℯℯ𝘭.

"Rain?" Abby said, her tone dropping into a sharp, protective register. "Who are these people?"

"Nobody," Rain said, his voice hard, leaving no room for argument. "Just some guys from the lower ward I know. I have some business to clear up with them. Go ahead to North Hall. I’ll see you tomorrow."

Corwin stopped five feet away, letting out a wet, rattling laugh as he ran a hand through his hair. "Nobody? Ouch. That hurts my feelings, Rain. Is this how you introduce your old friends to a high-class Red Dragon girl?"

Petrov chuckled, a low, rumbling sound, while Dax leaned to the side, his sharp eyes trailing up and down Abby’s gray coat.

"She’s a pretty one," Dax muttered, a greasy smirk on his face. "Didn’t know you had friends in the upper tiers, kid. What, she paying for your lunch now?"

Abby’s grey eyes turned to ice. Her hand moved instinctively toward her belt, where her dueling focus usually rested, her posture straightening into a dangerous, lethal stance.

"Abby. Stop," Rain said, reaching out with his left hand to gently but firmly intercept her arm, keeping his blue eyes locked onto Corwin. "Don’t engage. Leave. Right now."

Abby looked at Rain’s face. She saw the absolute, uncompromising seriousness in his blue eyes, the silent plea for her to step out of the crossfire before things spiraled out of control. She hesitated for two long seconds, her jaw tight, before giving a single, reluctant nod.

"I’ll be at the North Hall," she said loudly, her grey eyes flashing a dangerous warning at Corwin. "If you aren’t back in twenty minutes, Rain, I’m bringing campus security down here."

She turned on her heel and walked away, her boots clicking sharply against the stone tiles as she cut across the lawn toward the lecture buildings.

Corwin watched her go, whistling low through his teeth before spitting into the grass at his feet.

"Nice piece of work," Corwin said, turning his full attention back to Rain, his eyes narrowing into two sharp, cruel slits. "Too bad she’s out of your league, trash."

"What do you want, Corwin?" Rain asked, his voice dropping into a flat, dangerous calm as he folded his arms over his chest.

Petrov took a heavy step forward, closing the distance until he was standing barely three feet away, his broad frame blocking the view of the main hall behind them.

"You know what we want, you little shit," Petrov growled, his deep voice carrying a sharp edge of malice. "It’s three in the afternoon. Reeve’s been sitting in the back room at the Iron Anvil since midnight waiting for the drop. Where’s the crate?"

Rain didn’t flinch. He looked Petrov right in the eyes, his face completely expressionless.

"There is no crate," Rain said plainly.

Dax took a quick step to the right, his hand twitching toward his pocket. "What did you say?"

"I said there is no crate," Rain repeated, turning his head to lock eyes with Corwin. "Your intel was completely wrong."

Corwin’s grin vanished instantly, his face hardening into a dark, ugly scowl. "Don’t play games with me, Rain. You and Peter were put on that secondary drainage run specifically to execute the swap during the core extraction. Peter had the mark. You had the distraction. Where are the cores?"

"Your scout told you it was a standard D-rank clearing run with a stable perimeter," Rain said, leaning into the lie with absolute, stone-cold confidence, his blue eyes unblinking. "It wasn’t a standard run. The rift had an uncatalogued ambient anomaly. The party we were attached to didn’t even make it past the second chamber before an elite C-tier entity breached the inner wall."

Corwin frowned, his brows drawing together. "A C-tier?"

"A C-rank Boss," Rain said, his voice cold and precise. "The party leader panicked. The entire squad broke formation within ten minutes. Two of the hired-raiders got pinned under a cave-in, and the whole perimeter went up in flames. It was a complete disaster."

Dax took a step closer, his eyes narrowed with intense suspicion. "You’re lying. You took the crate yourself and tried to fence it through an independent broker."

Rain let out a short, contemptuous snort, looking directly at Dax. "Use your brain, Dax. If I had a crate of high-tier cores, do you think I’d be walking around campus in a torn jacket with ninety credits in my pocket, eating sixty-credit soup? Look at me. Look at my chest."

Rain pulled back his jacket sleeve slightly, showing the dark, yellowing bruises along his ribs and arms.

"I barely got out of that pipe alive," Rain said, his voice hard as iron. "The roof caved in, the rift collapsed, and the municipal portal authority locked down the entire Sector Seven drainage grid fifty minutes after we dragged ourselves out. There was no window to execute a swap. There was no time to grab a crate. If I had stayed in that chamber for another thirty seconds to touch a cargo box, I’d be buried under six feet of wet rock right now."

Petrov looked at Corwin, hesitation flickering in his small eyes. "A rift collapse? I heard something on the police band about Sector Seven getting closed off early this morning."

"Shut up, Petrov," Corwin snapped, his eyes never leaving Rain’s face. He stepped up until he was standing nose-to-nose with Rain, the smell of cheap tobacco and stale sweat coming off his breath. "You think you can just walk up to us, say ’whoops, the rift collapsed,’ and clear a fifty-thousand-credit debt?"

"I’m telling you what happened," Rain said, not backing down an inch, his blue eyes burning with a cold, steady flame. "You don’t have to take my word for it. Go ask Peter."

Corwin squinted at him. "Peter?"

"Peter was standing right next to me when the wall gave way," Rain said, his tone perfectly measured. "He saw the same thing I saw. He saw the raid squad collapse, he saw the rift seal break, and he ran for his life just like I did. Go find him in his dorms. Ask him if there was a single second where anyone could have pulled off a crate swap without getting crushed by falling stone."

Corwin stayed completely still for five long, suffocating seconds, his chest rising and falling heavily as he stared into Rain’s eyes, trying to find a crack, a stutter, or a single flicker of hesitation in his story.

Rain gave him nothing. He stood his ground, his expression as unreadable as polished granite, his mind resting quietly on the twenty points of Mana humming in his veins, ready to trigger a twenty-eight-foot spatial step the instant a blade cleared a sheath.

Finally, Corwin backed up half a step, spitting into the dirt again.

"Oh, we’re going to check with Peter," Corwin said, his voice dropping into a quiet, vicious threat that made Dax smirk. "We’re going to track Peter down right now. And we’re going to ask him every single detail about what happened in that drainage pipe."

Corwin raised a long, calloused finger, pointing it straight at Rain’s chest, stopping an inch from his jacket.

"If Peter’s story matches yours down to the exact second," Corwin whispered, his dark eyes gleaming with malice, "then maybe, maybe, we chalk this run up to bad luck, and we figure out how you’re going to pay back Reeve’s operational expenses another way."

He leaned in closer, his voice dropping even lower.

"But if Peter tells us a different story, if Peter tells us you double-crossed us, or if his timeline doesn’t line up with yours by even two minutes."

Corwin leaned back, a dark, ugly smile stretching across his face.

"Then you won’t have to worry about paying back fifty thousand credits, Rain. Because Petrov is going to break both of your legs, and we’re going to drag you down to Reeve’s basement to settle the debt in blood."

Corwin turned on his heel, gesturing with his hand. "Let’s go find Peter."

Petrov and Dax followed him, cutting across the lawn toward the D-building quad, their heavy footsteps echoing off the stone paths before disappearing around the corner of the library.

Rain stood alone near the fountain, the cold wind blowing through his dark hair. He took a long, slow breath, letting his posture relax as he watched the empty corner where they had vanished.

His story was airtight on his end. But Peter was terrified, weak-willed, and cornered. If Corwin’s crew caught Peter alone in his room, pressed him against a wall, and started throwing fists...

Rain looked down at his right hand, his blue eyes narrowing with frustration.

’I hope you remember the story, Peter,’ Rain thought quietly, turning toward the dorms. ’Because if you break, things are going to get very loud.’