Elizabeth now had a choice, one she did not believe she should have had.

"Do I not need to participate in the tournament?"

Samuel had stated as such once before, but that was before she was told she was more to him than a master disciple. She always believed that their relationship was more. But it was one thing to believe and another to be told as such with such conviction that it made you teary.

So instead of dismissing the possibility outright, as she had once thought she needed to prove her worth to him. She asked the question outright.

"Where did this come from?" Samuel's gaze shifted from Eishath who had her nose almost inside his pelvis, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and yet still latched on to his crotch to her, his demeanor shifting from amused to serious.

"I remember you telling me... that I did not need to even participate in the tournament..."

She said more and more unsure of herself as the words spouted from her mouth. Another thing she realized is that she had never asked for anything from her master. She was given everything completely unprompted. This somehow made asking something from him even more difficult, especially since she knew it would be of no benefit to her master.

"Yes. And I stand by that statement. But you seemed to be heavily against it." He said.

"I know... But I felt like it was a slap to your kindness if I said I was having a rough time and did not want to do it anymore." She replied.

"So do you not want to do it anymore?" He asked.

"No. I still want to try." She answered.

The elation she had felt upon her first victory and subsequently first event was something she wanted to continue to experience. For most of her life she felt very powerless. The first time she had felt like she had any sort of power was when she defied her family and entered the sect, but then her hopes were quickly dashed when the sect acted more or less as her family did. The second time she had felt power was when she dragged her master to make her a cauldron, that one was very intoxicating and now that she understood she could get away with more she was going to add the joining of their nethers as a more regular thing. Finally, the last and the most prominent time she felt power was when she beat the cultivator that was so clearly above her. It made her urge for more. So even if the reception nearly broke her she wanted no she needed to push further.

"Then why the question?"

"Because I don't want to feel like I should hide things from you. And I almost felt like quitting a couple of times yesterday." She said a bit more confidence in her voice.

"Oh! Please, if you feel like you cannot partake do not feel obligated to do so. If you can't it just means we are still a bit behind on training your confidence, and you have to remember, you stepped on the path of cultivator for less than a year." Samuel said to Elizabeth.

It was a shame that Eishath was currently in a world of her own, for she would have realized that Samuel was unwittingly coddling her and just then had given her even more power to push all responsibility onto the master. While currently, it was working, the shrewd disciple knew that it would not do so, forever.

The only reason it was working was that Samuel was currently hitting lower than his station, when he would go to his own league he either had to make Elizabeth a passive homemaker or allow her to emotionally mature. If he did neither he was handicapping himself without even realizing he was cutting off his own foot.

Elizabeth was not a bad investment per se, but she had a sheltered if cruel upbringing, and despite her above-average intelligence, she like Samuel was oblivious to a lot of the world. The events that may have hardened her soul, namely nearly dying after two years of abuse at the sect wiped clean when she had her 'fairy tale' ending with her master, only strengthened her childish beliefs.

But the gagging semi-conscious disciple was not going anywhere and she had plans for Samuel, ones that either needed Elizabeth out of the way or strong enough not to be dead weight. And she was very very good at what she did. After all, she had spent a very very long time doing them.

Right now, however, she was close to being full, a statement very very few of her kind had the privilege of even uttering. And she was not stopping she was stuffed till bursting. She was going to quench her near-bottomless hunger and everything else could wait a minute.