Kallias kept blabbering nonsense, even after the crowd had fully subsided. "Dude, that was epic! What were those crimson bursts?!"
His eyes sparkled with intrigue, practically burning a hole through my skull. "What's your affinity?"
For a brief moment, I toyed with the idea of telling him the truth just to watch him writhe in disbelief. Maybe even in pain, if fate allowed. But I suppressed the urge. As tempting as it was, I had my own questions.
"Are you participating in this trial?" I asked, cutting through his ramble.
He blinked, then grinned like an idiot. "Nah. I already took part in last year's Sovereign Cup."
I narrowed my eyes. "What was your rank?"
Kallias made a show of thinking intensely, as if trying to recall something ancient. "Rank… one. I won the previous trial."
'So he's a bigshot,' I thought.
But the guy didn't act like one. If anything, he felt more like a comic relief side character than the former champion of a deadly competition.
