Affinity: Chaos

Chapter 269: Connor Aella

Grey finished with his experiment on the blue vest and noticed its defensive prowess was amazing, although, he couldn’t use his full strength since he didn’t supply the vest with enough energy. But it didn’t have any problems with defending an all-out attack from a Fourth stage Origin Plane Elementalist for a short time.

When he was done examining the blue vest, he started studying the books he got from the library, completely neglecting Void. The day ended without much happening.

On the morning of the next day, he went for his usual training, came back, and prepared to go for forging classes. The books he read increased his knowledge of forging overall, and he would like to implement some things when practicing.

Grey was currently stuck in a dilemma, given Void’s love for shiny things, he was scared to take him into the Academy, but he couldn’t always leave him with Alice, and he refused to stay at home, alone. Left with no other choice, he had to repeatedly warn Void not to take anything.

Void nodded grumpily, asking him if he looked like someone who would steal other people’s things.

Grey didn’t reply, but he knew the answer in his heart, as long as it’s shiny, Void would most likely forget it belongs to someone else. He dared to steal a treasure from a horde of Lightning Apes, and an Ice Dragon, there was nothing Grey didn’t think he wouldn’t dare to do for shiny treasures.

Taking Void with him, Grey headed for forging classes. This time, there were only three students in the class when he stepped in, the young lady from the previous day was amongst them, Aella.

She was a Fire Elementalist who was in the Third stage of the Arcane Plane, with a heart-shaped face, and waist-length black hair, she was the dreams of some of the boys here.

When she saw Grey step in with a strange, cute black cat, she was stunned, not expecting Grey would have such a pet. During the entire lesson the previous day, Grey was the one who spoke the least, he was always focused on what the Instructor was saying.

Being annoyed by the two boys who were bugging her, she decided to switch seats, taking the seat close to Grey, she turned to him after sitting, “Hello, I’m Connor Aella.”

Grey raised his head to look at the hand stretched towards him from the next seat, “Grey.”

He said before shaking her hand. Aella looked at him a little oddly, not expecting he would be this bland. Due to her looks, she always tends to attract attention from every single boy around her, there were even some who only came to forgery classes just because they wanted a chance to get close to her, like the duo who were bugging her a moment ago.

“That’s a strange cat, I haven’t seen anything like it before, can I touch it?” She asked still smiling.

She felt more free speaking with Grey when she noticed he didn’t really care about her looks. But thinking about it, she didn’t find it strange, given Grey’s facial appearance and calm demeanor, he must have gotten countless girls more beautiful than she was. And besides, she didn’t have any plans with being with him, she already had a partner.

“Sure, he’s a little grumpy at times. But, it should be fine.” Grey replied with a small smile.

He would do almost anything to get Void off his hands right now, since an opportunity had presented itself, then he didn’t mind the young lady looking after Void for him. He wanted to place his entire focus on the lesson, and with Void, he couldn’t.

He passed Void over to Aella, and he noticed Void gave him a knowing look.

‘Sorry bud, you’ll enjoy her company more. I really need to focus on this lesson.’ Grey apologized to Void.

‘Hmph! You’ll have to cook something… Oh…yes, that’s the spot.’ Void who was speaking to Grey stopped midway when his stomach was being scratched by Aella.

“His name’s Void…” Grey told Aella a little about Void before opening the book he brought with him to the class.

A few boys who recently entered the class were speechless when they saw Grey actually focused on reading a book when a nice-looking young lady was sitting close to him. Even Void didn’t think Grey was this addicted to learning, but when he thought about how he always looked serious whenever he was telling him about new things, he just shrugged it off and continued enjoying his time with Aella, she was a good belly scratcher, almost at Alice’s level.

After a few minutes, Grey closed the book and started speaking to Aella who placed her focus on the black cat on her lap. There wasn’t really anything to talk to Grey about in the first place, and the only reason she approached him was to ward off the boys disturbing her. Her friends hadn’t arrived yet, and they most likely won’t since they didn’t like the lessons the previous day.

“Oh that, you see, I come from a family of forgemasters, so I already have some experience.” She said.

“It doesn’t change the fact that you made such a huge improvement. If you were already good with it, you would’ve skipped that part, unless, you just want the attention, which I think you don’t.” Grey looked behind her while speaking of the part, only to see almost half of the boys staring at him evilly.

“Sorry, but compared to them, I’d rather talk to you. Although, I don’t think you have any interest in speaking to me.” Aella apologized.

“The truth is, I don’t like being disturbed when I’m learning. But these guys wouldn’t really be able to do anything to me.” Grey shrugged.

He wasn’t lying, being disturbed when training or learning was something he hated. Being a slow learner, every single second was precious to him. The reason he entertained Aella was because he wanted to learn some things from her, since she made good improvements the previous day, she must know some things about forging.

Grey spoke with Aella for about ten minutes, and just when he was about to complain of being too early, Instructor Dunstan finally arrived. When he saw how the number of students had decreased, he smiled softly but didn’t bother about it.

Most of the Fusion Plane students didn’t attend the class, it looked like they were waiting till they broke through to the Arcane Plane before continuing. He expected to see Grey, given how enthusiastic he was the previous day, the only thing he didn’t expect to see was Aella sitting close to him, but it was none of his concern.

Without further ado, he started the lesson for the day, speaking on the different materials as well as the temperatures needed to be maintained.

For the second day running, they would be focused on temperature once again, this time, he told them to keep the furnace within a particular range of temperature. They were going to use lead for the practicals today, and they needed to keep the temperature around three hundred to three hundred and fifty degrees Celsius.

Grey immediately started the training, due to the superiority of his flame, he had some problems with lowering it to such temperatures. But with the practice from yesterday, he managed to reduce it.

Keeping the furnace in the temperature though, was another story. He had to occasionally put coal in the furnace, while also occasionally sending flames inside.

After spending almost four hours practicing, Grey managed to stabilize the temperature of the furnace which cheered him up.

The practice ended one hour later, and just like the previous day, Aella was the one who had the best results of the students. Grey was below average in this practice, because of the natural high temperature of his flame.

Grey decided to check out the array class, he couldn’t say he was already the best when it came to arrays, and learning more about it wasn’t too bad.

Unfortunately, other than things he already knew too well, they didn’t speak about anything else in the array class. But getting to listen to the lesson gave him new conjectures about arrays, so he didn’t take it as a waste of time.

Void was with Aella all through the time they were in Forging class, to when they went for the array class, all in all, he had a pretty good day since Void didn’t get to disturb his learning.

“Thank you for your help today.” Aella said before returning Void to him.

“You were more helpful.” Grey smiled lightly while taking Void.

Void jumped out of his hand, landing on his shoulder like he usually does.

Turning around, Grey saw Klaus, with a smile plastered across his face. Knowing him, he knew he must be definitely thinking of something.

“Hey, bud.” Klaus called out to Grey before Aella could leave.

😉