Yue felt a little excited as he walked through the halls in a pretty yellow dress. He was excited because he might get to see Viktor wearing yellow instead of his usual white or blue. He had started at him unhappily throughout the last auction they had where the theme said to wear white black and or red and Viktor just wore white so he hoped that Viktor changed his ways.

“You look beautiful as always,” Viktor said as he caught a glimpse of Yue. Yue blushed as he saw Viktor was actually wearing a mostly yellow suit and happily walked over to him.

“Finally,” Yue said with a little grin.

“People would spread rumors if you frowned all day again,” Viktor said and walked with Yue to the carriage. Yue blushed, he hadn’t really been thinking about how people viewed their relationship. For people who didn’t know the full narrative they probably seemed like a couple. The idea made him happy for reasons he didn’t quite understand. He just stayed quiet as they went on their way to the auction, silently imagining what over people thought of them. 

The auction was not as full as other auctions they had been to, even compared to the auctions for magic items this auction was particularly empty. It was the long-awaited Grimoire auction. It was empty because most mages didn’t know how to use Grimoires other than as a teaching tool.

Grimoires weren't just any old book with spells written inside. Grimoires were the easiest way to cast some of the strongest spells. Grimoires are infused with mana as they’re being written and they generally absorb mana as they exist in their completed form. Using a grimoire, a mage can cast even forbidden magic from the other side of the world without even saying the incantation. They can also serve as mana crystals and the mage that owns it can take mana from the grimoire even when they’re extremely far away from it.

Grimoires like the ones the Ivanov family makes for the members of their family are some of the strongest because their existence is bound to their creator because of their hair. They’re constantly overflowing with mana for the same reason. 

Yue had actually never used grimoire magic before but it was something he was incredibly curious about. Because of his status as a symbol he never really had to worry about mana although an extra source of mana makes it less likely that his eyes will become irritated after long periods of use. He was mostly curious about grimoires because they could cast spells in areas that were far away.

“You have multiple grimoires right?” Yue asked during one of the first bids. The area where they sat was a bit different this time. They were still on a balcony but it was much larger and was directly facing the auction stage. Yue was relieved that he could relax a bit since no one except the auctioneer could really see him.

“Just two. The one in Academy city and the new one. We’re generally supposed to make one every 10 years according to family tradition.” 

“How much would you say you know about grimoires?” Yue asked, making it a bit obvious that he was planning something just by his tone.

“Much more than the average casual grimoire user…” Viktor murmured, easing an eyebrow at Yue as he turned to him.

“Okay so I have a question,” Yue said and turned to stare at Viktor intently, “hypothetically if a mage with a conditional affinity that makes their mana stronger within certain locations, fills their grimoire with the mana from the place where it’s the strongest...Will the Grimoire retain that effect when used somewhere where the mana is weak?” 

“Yes, it will…” Viktor murmured, he was curious about Yue’s conditional affinity but he didn’t ask.

Yue's conditional affinity wasn't like most conditional affinities, most people with conditional affinities were strong in certain locations/situations and weak in other locations/situations. Yue was just stronger when he was in the east and during spring because of his status as the Azure Dragon.

“Okay, next question. I know that a grimoire can give the owner power from anywhere in the world but what about the opposite?” Yue asked, glancing at the maid who had put the bid paddle down after winning another item. He wondered if her arm ever got tired.

“I’m not sure about that…We can always test it though?” Viktor suggested and turned to the auction to listen to the next listing.

By the time the main listing came along, they had already bought 3 grimoires.

“This grimoire was taken from the treasure room of a Chinese dungeon, it is infused with mana and has spells written in an otherworldly language. Coming from one of the strongest dungeons found in recent times, I’m sure many mages would like to test out the spells in this grimoire. Its mana retention is expected to be nearly triple that of a typical grimoire!” The auctioneer said and showed the grimoire.

The grimoire had a pitch-black cover and a bright blue gem shaped like a star. Runes were etched into the cover and golden buckles sealed it shut. Yue and Viktor could clearly sense the mana coming from the grimoire.

“That’s such a weird energy…” Yue murmured and rubbed his arms a bit, he got chills just from the feeling. Viktor silently nodded and motioned for the maid to start bidding.

The price hiked up pretty quickly but a sudden burst of energy from the grimoire interrupted the auctioneer. Yue immediately reacted and created a barrier around himself and Viktor and the maid. Negative energy seemed to be filling the room.

Yue shut his eyes quickly. He was worried about what was going on but negative energy easily affected him through his eyes and he didn’t want to risk anything since it was an item from a dungeon. He felt fluctuations in the mana within his barrier and calmed down a bit so he could sense the movements more easily. 

Viktor had stood up and quickly cast barriers on the other guests of the auction house who hadn’t already done so. He was carefully inspecting the situation outside.

The auctioneer was in a barrier cast by one of the mages who was acting as a security guard and the grimoire was still emitting the energy. The energy started out as one pulse every few minutes but it rose up to pulses every few seconds like a heartbeat.

“How bad is it?” Yue asked, he couldn’t see past his barrier at the moment.

Viktor took off one of his earrings and tossed it onto the railing of the balcony. The earring turned black after a couple of minutes and Viktor hummed.

“Not too bad... I’ll go contain the grimoire.” Viktor said, not waiting for Yue’s input before leaving the barrier and jumping from the balcony to the stage.

“H-Huh?!” Yue exclaimed after processing what Viktor said.

“W-What is he doing?!” Yue said and turned to the maid. The maid was confused about why his eyes were closed and didn’t answer immediately.

Viktor had started his incantation in the barrier and was finishing it as he got close to the grimoire. The auctioneer would’ve said something about how he wasn’t supposed to interact with the item since he hadn’t won it yet but the situation was too grave to be thinking of that. 

The grimoire was encased in a white barrier by Viktor’s Spell and all the negative energy was sucked into the barrier. Viktor removed his other earring to once again test the mana quality of the room and signaled that everything was fine when the earring was unchanged.

“The young master contained the grimoire, you can release the barrier.” The maid explained.

Yue hesitates before opening his eyes and releasing the barrier. He didn’t actually sense anything anymore. Everyone was looking at Viktor with awe, he had used a high ranking seal spell to contain the negative energy.

“I-I recall my bid!” A chorus of people chimed, looking terrified. Even the strongest wizards didn’t want to deal with that kind of grimoire.

The Auctioneer looked devastated and turned to Viktor as he was the last resort. Viktor looked at Yue and had a feeling he’d say no if he asked if he should buy it. He looked down at the grimoire and strengthened the seal as he opened the grimoire with magic.

He looked through it silently and then turned to the Auctioneer.

“I’ll still buy it.”

The auctioneer was immediately relieved and quickly got everything done so they could end everything out without any more issues. Yue rushed over to Viktor after the auction officially ended and looked flustered.

“I don’t know about this Viktor… Dealing with dark magic and negative energy right before an expedition…” Yue murmured, looking at the grimoire worriedly. They were in their last few days of vacation before they had to go to their next expedition and messing with negative energy could have long-lasting effects.

“I’m not easily affected by magic from dungeons. And I’ll just be inspecting it tonight and leaving the rest for some other time anyway.” Viktor murmured and pointed at his hair. 

“Still…” Yue murmured, still very hesitant to agree with Viktor’s decision. 

“The young master’s earrings can sense mana purity, you needn’t worry Miss Xia.” The maid said as she purified the earring that Viktor had left in the balcony and passed it to him.

Yue looked at the earring and tilted his head, very confused. He’d never noticed that Viktor wore earrings. He didn’t recall ever seeing Viktor wearing earrings but those specific earrings seemed familiar. He stared at Viktor and watched him put the earrings on. Viktor decided not to question it and led Yue out to get the other grimoires before getting in the carriage.

After they picked up the grimoires, Yue’s gaze turned back to Viktor’s ears.

“Is something wrong?” Viktor asked, confused about how Yue was staring so intently.

“Did you get those earrings from an auction recently? They seem familiar…” Yue murmured and moved to look at Viktor’s earrings more closely.

“I’ve had these for years...You probably just saw them at some point.” Viktor murmured. The earrings he was wearing had been the same earrings he had been wearing when Yue kissed him. He doubted that Yue remembered what happened and it had been almost a week since then so he doubted Yue would remember anytime soon but he decided to hint at it just in case.

“You were very curious about them when you were drunk, you probably remembered them from back then,” Viktor said and smiled a bit. Yue seemed determined to remember after he heard that. He observed Viktor for the remainder of the ride back to the manor.

The head maid was waiting outside the door for them as usual but this time she was holding two envelopes. Yue and Viktor could see the seals on the envelopes and noted that they were from the Academy.

“I guess we’ll find out where we’re going for our expedition.” Viktor murmured and got out of the carriage. Yue knew he wouldn’t die before Mai’s wedding so he didn’t really mind even if they were sent to Scotland. 

Viktor reached out to help him off the carriage and Yue stared at him a bit. The latest prophecy he had of Viktor was the indecent one he had a while back. That was at least a year or two from now judging by Viktor’s hair length. 

He held Viktor’s hand as he got off the carriage, still looking at his face. He found himself looking at Viktor’s lips and froze, suddenly the memory of his drunken actions all flowed back to him then. His face turned bright red and he almost teared up.He couldn’t believe he did that and he couldn’t believe Viktor just let it happen and didn’t even say anything about it. 

Viktor was silently celebrating in his mind as Yue seemed to have finally remembered. Yue looked at him for a second so he pretended to be innocent and just tilted his head with a smile.

Yue let go of his hand and took his letter from the maid and rushed off to his room, too embarrassed to say anything.

The servants all looked confused and Viktor just smiled.

“Don’t worry, she just remembered something,” Viktor said and took the letter from the head maid and opened it. He didn’t seem surprised but he also didn’t seem pleased as he read the letter.

—

Yue laid on his bed with his face right into a pillow.

“I’m never drinking again...What the hell am I supposed to do now?!” Yue whined in Chinese and yelled into his pillow.

“Ugh, he’ll be so disgusted if he finds out I’m a boy… I wanna go back to last year. Everything was so much easier when I didn’t have feelings for anyone…” Yue murmured.

“Shixiong must’ve cursed me.” Yue murmured.

He remembered a time in china when Xia Guiren was courting his future wife. He was walking through the gardens of the main Xia house with her. Guiren was being flirty in a slightly awkward kind of way, using lines that only an old man would use to try and flirt.

Halfway through a cheesy line Yue burst out laughing and drew attention to himself. He had been sitting on the roof of the pavilion watching Guiren in secret but his laugh immediately made Guiren notice him.

“You’re so lame Shixiong,” Yue said through his laugh. Yue was only 14 at the time and had completely spooked Guiren’s lover who immediately worried that he would fall.

“Shut up and get down from there you brat!” Guiren had yelled with a bright red face.

“Miss Chen! My Shixiong isn’t worth it! He’s bad with kids, he'd definitely be a terrible lover!” Yue teased and giggled.

Yue groaned, this is what he gets for teasing Guiren.

“I was such a brat.” Yue murmured and sighed. He didn’t even bother to take off his dress and just hid his face in his pillow thinking about what to do.

—

Viktor sat down in his office and looked at the grimoire that he had sealed. He set down the grimoire on his desk and brought some chalk from a drawer and some gloves. He drew a magic circle on his table and set the grimoire on it before activating it and putting on the gloves.

He sat down and opened the grimoire. He had actually not been planning on buying the grimoire after the negative energy issue but when he looked through it he saw something he couldn’t ignore.

In the exact center page of the grimoire, there was a devil horn marking like the one in the marble they had found with the werewolves. Rather than being written in Chinese, the grimoire was written in French so Viktor could easily understand it. Looking through the grimoire he could tell that it was meant to essentially brainwash people into following whatever sort of cause they had with black magic.

The seal was starting to make some of the words erase so Viktor did his best to speed read through what it said.  The grimoire has written things about a meeting point in Spain and a few words underlined heavily.

The Undead Mage is in Northampton.

 

“Undead Mage..?” Viktor murmured, confused by what they meant by that. He flipped through the pages and found that only two pages including the one mentioning the Undead Mage were left. The rest had their information wiped out. The next page was clear as day, it had a drawing of a Chinese dragon on the side and a drawing of blue-green eyes with slitted pupils. Viktor recognized the eye. It looked like Yue’s eyes when he saw Huy.

“Should you see the azure dragon, flee. He sees all.”

Viktor sighed and flipped through the pages again. He noticed on the back of the page with the azure dragon information there was something written in Spanish.

“Your core will be Xia Meixiu’s Legendary Core.”

Viktor was puzzled, he’d never heard of anyone’s core being given to someone else or even just removed from one’s body.  A human couldn’t survive without a core.  He had wondered if Xia MeiXiu was a part of Yue’s family and remembered how Huy had given Yue his condolences when they met and suddenly he felt that he could understand Yue’s fear. For someone with Legendary core to be killed was crazy to even think about. 

He wondered if that was why Yue cried as he stood in the middle of those bodies in his memory and if that was why the people of this group feared him.

Soon afterward the words on the book completely disappeared and all that was left was the word ‘Hundun’ written in blood on the very last page of the grimoire. All the negative energy flowed out of it and subsequently, the grimoire became essentially a normal book. Viktor still sealed the book before putting it away.

Viktor was going to go to Yue’s room to talk to him about the expedition and just watch Yue be embarrassed about kissing him when there was a knock on his door.

“Young Master? May I come in?”

 Viktor cleaned up the chalk on his desk before telling the maid to enter. The head maid was holding a small box and looked calm and composed as always.

“The Mistress sent these. It seems Miss Natasha has informed her that Miss Xia is staying in the manor with you.” The head maid said and handed Viktor the small box.

Viktor opened the box and was shocked. He had a sheepish smile on his face as he stared at the contents of the box.

“What is it?” The head maid asked, a bit curious.

“No wonder my sister married so quickly, my Mom is way too quick on things like these…” Viktor murmured and chuckled a bit.

The box had a pair of sapphire earrings that anyone who knew the Ivanov family could recognize. They were a precious family heirloom passed down since his great-great-grandmother wore them.

“Are you gonna give them to Miss Xia?” The maid asked with a soft smile.

“...not yet…” Viktor murmured and put the box in his pocket. He didn’t plan on giving it to Yue yet but he didn’t know if things would change depending on their conversation.

The maid looked slightly depressed by this and Viktor just chuckled. A lot of people were apparently rooting for their relationship. It made him curious about how his dad would react to it and how he would react when he learned the whole truth about Yue.

He knocked on Yue’s door and the maid disappeared to go prepare dinner since it was still relatively early. 

“Come in…” Yue’s muffled voice said carelessly, he thought it was just the maid coming to call him to dinner or see if he needed help with his corset. He sat up on the bed looking at the door as he hugged his pillow to his chest with a tired and depressed look on his face. His face turned bright red when he saw it was Viktor.

Yue squeaked a bit and then covered his mouth in embarrassment and immediately looked away. Viktor just chuckled, staying by the door and observing for a little while.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” 

“Eh?”

Yue turned to Viktor and blinked a bit. He was actually too embarrassed and unsure of what to do to talk about their kiss but just outright saying that they didn’t have to talk about it in general kind of hurt his feelings. He figured that Viktor was saying that for his sake but it wasn’t like he wanted to pretend like it never happened now that he remembered.

“Some other time...let’s talk about it some other time.” Yue murmured and blushed.

“Alright,” Viktor said and smiled, he didn’t expect that sort of answer. He sat down in a chair that was near Yue’s bed and pulled the letter from the academy.

“Did you read it?” 

“N-Not yet…” Yue murmured, picking up his own letter.

“The expedition is in London...We’re being sent to try and fix the situation that the second tier group lost control of in Northampton.” Viktor said and showed Yue the letter that was sent to him, knowing that their letters would be the same.

‘Based on the first tier group’s performance in Wolfsstadt, you will be going to London to deal with the skeleton warriors coming from Northampton. You will be aided by Professor Aniston.’ 

Yue couldn’t help but wonder how Anika and her group would feel if they knew about this. The second tier class is generally forced to live in the shadow of the first tier class by nature but being told that the first tier class was “fixing their mistakes” would probably feel devastating.

“Why didn’t they send us there in the first place? I’m sure that the second tier group could’ve dealt with the werewolves so why did they send them to a ruined country instead of us?” Yue asked, his brows furrowed as he glared at the letter.

“Skeleton warriors are generally weaker than werewolves and back then England was salvaged up to Birmingham so it probably seemed safer than Wolfsstadt…”  Viktor murmured.

Yue sighed, he understood that but it still seemed irresponsible to send them to England while it was in such a situation. He read the expedition details completely and looked a bit confused.

“The uniforms are being altered?” 

“That’s probably because we’re going by airship instead of teleportation. They need to reinforce our boots so we can withstand a rough landing.” Viktor explained.

“Why are we going by airship? Are the London transportation pads broken?” Yue asked, opening his letter to see if there’s anything different.

“They’re not broken, they are being used to transport millions of people per day so there’s no time for us to use them,” Yue murmured, “it would be a catastrophe if they were broken.”

“Our vacation is practically over…” Yue murmured. He had gotten to rest and buy the items he wanted to buy but he felt like it was too short.

“Our next break after the next expedition break is from November to mid-January. So that’s pretty good...I’ll probably be in Russia most of that time though.” Viktor said and stood from his chair. Yue didn’t know what he would do since he would probably be alone during the next vacation since everyone was going back home for the holidays and just because it was a long break.

“Oh, also I have a question…” Viktor said and turned to Yue, bracing himself to see Yue’s reaction. He had been on his way out when he remembered.

“Yes?”

“Do you know what Hundun is?” Viktor asked, expecting Yue to look shocked since it was apparently the name of the organization he seemed to be on bad terms with. Yue didn’t really react, he just seemed confused.

“It’s one of the Four Fiends, the opposite of the four symbols, It’s a faceless creature that represents primordial chaos,” Yue explained, confused by the sudden question.

“I see…” Viktor murmured. Yue didn’t seem to know that the organization he’d been so scared of was called Hundun. 

Viktor left the room and returned to his office. He figured that it was meant to directly oppose Yue’s status as one of the four symbols and that it had only been changed recently since Yue didn’t know about it. He frowned a bit as he looked toward the dark grimoire. He could only assume that 'Hundun', the organization, found a magic book in a dungeon’s treasure room, filled it with dark magic, and rewrote it to seem like a grimoire with their instructions written on it. He worried about what would happen if they met the ‘undead mage’ in London. 

He sighed and opened his storage ring. He had been testing to see just how much the ring could store. He had been filling it with the items he planned to bring back to academy city and other miscellaneous goods. He wanted to test how perishables reacted in the storage ring so he had also left an apple there for a while. The ring would be very useful for their expedition since it would make it so no one had to actually carry their luggage around and would help with any sudden evacuations.

He looked through a chest that he had left in the storage ring and put the earrings down inside it before looking for something.

He pulled a white and gold box from the chest and opened it, double-checking that the item was still the same item he was looking for.  It was just a simple gold bracelet with 3 sapphires on it. It was a protection charm that he had worn as a child when he accompanied his mother to her home town in Norilsk. It protected him against the negative energy that flooded the city because of a large conflict that caused hundreds to die.

Viktor figured that it would fit Yue’s wrist and decided to give it to Yue after dinner.