Hours went by as Simon kept on learning and training with chaos runes.

After getting the hang of basic wind chaos runes and increasing his proficiency to the refined level, he decided to focus on the basic shadow runes once again.

He wanted to improve his proficiency in the basic wind chaos runes to the perfected grade, but it was not as easy as he expected even with his wind affinity.

Everything about the rune and his mind had to be perfect, and he believed that he needed to be... more in tune with the wind element.

This was strange to him since he believed that he was already in tune with the wind element.

And why wouldn’t he?

The wind whispered to him sometimes about incoming dangers.

However, when Simon thought about it deeply, he realized that he had actually never meditated and tried to form a connection with the wind.

He had never stayed in a single location without moving and just listened to the wind for an extended period of time.

Simon had several guesses as to what he needed to do to improve his proficiency to the perfected grade, but doing that would take time which was why he decided to do us on the basic shadow chaos runes.

Though he tried to improve his proficiency level as high as possible in the basic shadow chaos runes, he could not go past the standard proficiency level.

He needed to invest more time into his training, but he couldn’t do that this night.

He wanted to learn basic fire chaos runes because he also had an affinity for the fire element.

His fire affinity was from his one-horned demon bloodline, but it was a low grade affinity.

Because of how poor his fire affinity was, he spent the most amount of time on the basic fireball rune.

He spent nearly four hours to move from a flawed proficiency to a standard proficiency, and he had to stop because it was already nighttime.

He had something to do by this time, and he was very certain that it would take him a very long time to increase his proficiency from standard to refined.

That is if he could do it before his classes tomorrow.

As the fragments of the last fireball chaos rune fell to the floor and dissipated into nothingness, Simon released a deep sigh of exhaustion and satisfaction.

He stretched, causing his room to echo with soft cracking sounds.

He then looked around his room which was a mess.

There were cuts and burns all over the room, and his room was smelling like a place where burnt sacrifices took place.

At the opposite end of Simon, there was a thick boulder in his room, and this boulder had cuts of various sizes and depths on it.

They were from the wind blades he released.

It also had burn marks on it, and these burn marks were from the fireballs.

"I should definitely get more boulders. They can be useful for other things aside from killing and protecting myself." Simon said softly, then he stood and walked up to the boulder.

He traced his fingers on the cuts and burns on it, then he returned the boulder into his spatial ring.

He was shirtless, so he wore his robe and stepped out of the room.

His sky-blue feline eyes flashed with a calculating glint as he walked in the darkness.

(In another location)

A demon with a scorpion tail, and a white and black tail walked out of a shabby looking restaurant in the clan.

This demon was Brama, the slave of the clan and of Caesar’s factions.

As he walked out of the shabby looking restaurant, a flicker of exhaustion and sadness could be seen in his eyes.

He walked with a slightly absent-minded expression, and after walking for nearly forty minutes, he finally reached his room in the dormitory.

He opened his door, entered, then he placed his mask on the only table in the room, revealing his average looking face.

His gaze landed on the small window that was in front of him, and his gaze and expression became distant and unfocused.

A few seconds later, words began to leave his lips.

"Is this how I’m going to live the rest of my life? Living as a dog? Working harder than the rest only to be given bones and scraps? A life where I have to be grateful for the scraps I’m given?"

He looked down at his mask, then he looked to his right where his mirror was hung.

"Sometimes I don’t even recognize-"

He paused, then his gaze instantly sharpened and as he noticed another image in the mirror.

This image was familiar to him, but he couldn’t understand why he was seeing it in his room.

His head snapped to the back at a very fast speed, and just as he feared, he saw Simon sitting in a meditative pose on his bed.

"Broken Halo?" He said with a truly confused tone and expression.

He looked at his door, saw that it was locked, then he looked at his room and saw that there were no holes or opening in his room.

How did Simon enter his room?

"Am I dreaming? Seeing things? But I didn’t drink."

Simon shook his head softly, then he rested his head on his fist.

"Your words were quite... touching."

Brama’s eyes widened slightly in disbelief when Simon spoke.

So he was not dreaming or seeing things?

"How did you enter?" He asked with a deep frown.

Simon pointed at the door.

"I just walked inside. You let me in."

Brama became confused.

’I let him in? So did he enter when I entered my room?’

’But that should not be possible. I know that I was absent-minded, but I would have known if he was so close to me.’

Unfortunately for Brama, he had no knowledge of Hollow Sky Eye.

Brama’s gaze became sharp, then he sent his demonic energy into his spatial ring and a dagger appeared in his right hand.

Simon looked at it, then he chuckled amusingly.

Brama’s gaze became cold.

"I knew that you letting me to go scot-free back then was too good to be true, but just know that I won’t go down without a fight."