Chapter 78

Chapter 78. Contract (2)

The quiet, ordinary park and forest turned hostile toward me.

Stone walls rose up and surrounded the area, while the ground undulated beneath me, making it impossible to keep my balance.

SWISH!

Tree branches bent inward like whips.

CRACK.

Roots tore through the ground and tried to wrap around me.

The pollen carried by the wind became tiny blades that cut my skin.

The moonlight that had illuminated the night distorted, making it difficult to grasp objects properly.

Before I knew it, Valea was nowhere to be seen.

She had hidden herself by moving the objects inside her domain.

It felt entirely different from when I had fought her indoors before.

Well, of course it could not be the same as fighting inside a building.

My feet barely touched the ground.

I kicked off the rising walls and pushed away the roots stabbing toward me as I soared upward.

Like jumping on a trampoline in my previous life, I bounced around wildly in a manner completely unbecoming of a knight.

“Running around and dodging like that will not help you at all. Even if you are a far better knight than I expected, you cannot hold out like that until someone comes, can you?”

Valea’s voice rang out. I could not determine her location from her voice either.

If she was not bluffing, then she had more mana than I had expected, or creating her domain consumed far less mana than I had thought.

If this had been an elemental-type or telekinesis-type inherited ability, her mana would have run out much faster than mine, since I was only dodging. However, her domain seemed different.

I had no intention of trusting that it was a bluff and merely holding out.

In any case, I was only dodging like this to confirm it once more.

How was it different from what I had seen indoors? Where were the limits of this domain?

And now, I had finished confirming it.

PAK!

While dodging the attacking objects, I stepped on a stone pillar that surged upward and leaped high into the sky.

Naturally, fragments of stone and broken branches shot toward me while I was suspended in midair.

I struck away the incoming objects and looked down.

It was as expected.

The range of her domain had become far wider than it had been at the baron’s mansion, but it was not the same upward.

Inside her domain, objects could change shape according to her will, but once I left the domain like this, the only thing she could do was shoot objects at me.

In this case, I could simply escape beyond the expanded domain. However, perhaps because she had expected that as well, she had surrounded the domain with a high stone wall.

On top of that, she had not created a stone wall on the forest side, trying to lure me there.

After soaring to my maximum height, I began falling downward.

I could clearly feel branches, roots, stones, and even soil preparing to attack me.

Indeed, Valea’s inherited ability was truly impressive.

Every object inside the domain became a weapon.

If she were indoors with every side sealed, or in a battlefield full of weapons, she might be nearly invincible.

However, in a place like this, her weapons were not very powerful.

They were piles of stones and trees. Perhaps because her ability also strengthened the material, they felt different from ordinary stones and wood, but the originals had not changed greatly.

That said, there was no other place in the academy where she could fight me away from other people’s eyes.

For her, it could not be helped.

On top of that, since the sky was not blocked, I could buy enough time just by leaping like this.

Of course, since attacks were coming from every direction, only an ability user or knight with senses far superior to sight could barely dodge them.

However, after experiencing her domain twice, I felt like I understood how it moved.

Inside this domain, her mana filled everything.

The objects inside the domain were transformed and moved by her mana, which filled the domain.

When mana moved, gathered, and surged into the sky, roots moved and stabbed toward me.

Before the roots arrived, I saw the mana and subtly shifted my body, riding the rising roots as I dropped downward.

“You really are amazing. How are you dodging all of that? Is it because your mana circulation art is good? Can a highly skilled knight do that?”

Because I dodged so well, Valea opened her mouth.

How would I know that? They said royals basically possessed [Mana Sensitivity], so perhaps royals could do it.

Valea seemed confident that her location would not be exposed.

On top of that, even if she were discovered, she seemed to think that inside her domain, she could block me sufficiently because no matter how much I destroyed objects, they would be restored.

However, I was able to locate her.

Strangely, even with my sense for finding mana, it was difficult to find her location inside this domain.

But by following the movement of the mana filling the domain, I was able to find her.

Valea called her domain a kingdom. However, to me, it was closer to a body than a kingdom.

The moving objects were her flesh, and the mana filling everything was her nerves and muscles.

And at the place where the movement of mana began, at the center of all that mana, she had to be there.

I launched myself toward that place.

I dodged the branches shooting toward me and deflected the flying stones, drawing right up in front of her. Then trees blocked my path.

Now it was not branches or roots, but uprooted trees themselves that moved.

It seemed the reason she had kept uprooting the roots was to move the trees themselves.

I emitted sword aura from my dagger and cut down the tree blocking me.

SLICE.

“It is no use. Inside this place, they are restored infinitely.”

As she said, although I cut down the tree with sword aura, the trees swung their branches at me while remaining in their severed state.

SLICE, SLICE.

However, I kept cutting.

“I told you it is no use. Like that……. No, why…….”

Along with her startled voice—

THUD. THUD. THUD.

The trees fell.

Even if the flesh was restored infinitely, if all the nerves and muscles were severed, the body could not move until they were connected again.

The reason the severed trees endured was because of mana. If I severed all the flows of mana, the trees could not move until the mana connected again.

The trees that had blocked me fell, and I leaped out in one step, swinging my sword at one of the trees.

It was an ordinary tree, just like the others, but before my sword touched it, it turned into a person.

“I surrender.”

Valea stood there with both hands raised.

Stop.

The dagger stopped not far from her neck.

Blood flowed from her raised wrist. It had been cut by the sword aura.

SHHHHHH.

And the moment she said she surrendered, the surrounding environment changed.

The limp trees returned to their original state, and the stone wall that had surged upward sank down.

The ruined stone path returned to its original form, and the moonlight regained its proper color.

The domain had vanished.

It was once again an ordinary park and forest. However, the traces of the fight had not disappeared entirely, so if an academy official saw this, it seemed it would become quite troublesome.

“You said I was your father’s enemy.”

I asked her while holding the sword toward her.

Would she say she had seen wrong? And that she would attack me again later?

“You are my enemy.”

So that was not it.

“But I do not think I can win. So I am going to give up.”

Ugh, as expected, it was difficult to understand what went on inside this woman’s head.

“As a daughter, I did enough. Honestly, if I had not been his daughter, I would have been happy that you killed him. You know that, do you not? How happy I was that Father died.”

Valea continued speaking with her bleeding arm still raised.

“I have no intention of sacrificing my life for someone I did not even like.”

“But you tried to kill me.”

“Yes. I intended to.”

“And if you fail to kill me, it ends just because you surrender?”

As I spoke, I found that I had stopped saying I had been attacked over a misunderstanding. No matter what I said, she would not listen.

No, more importantly, she was becoming difficult to kill. Perhaps I should not have stopped my sword.

“It could not be helped. I suppose you could call it a conflict between my sense of duty as a daughter and my desire to live.”

She was truly shameless.

Until just before coming here, she had put on every kind of pretense, acting pretty and kind. Now that I saw her true self, I almost wished she would go back to pretending like before.

“You tried to kill me. Do I have to spare you just because you surrendered?”

There was also the option of reporting her to the academy instead of killing her, but because of what she knew, I could not do that.

I had done more than one thing in reality, and at a time like this, I could not allow rumors to spread that I had killed the baron.

In that case, it seemed I had to kill her.

Just as the scales were once again beginning to tilt toward killing her, she opened her mouth.

“I will become your ally. I will save your life too. As you know, I am not exactly weak. It must have been difficult for you to handle matters because of your position as an illegitimate son of a ducal house, so I will handle all the matters you cannot bring into the open.”

Her eyes sparkled as she spoke.

Mm. It sounded like I had heard something rather useful. However, it was difficult to trust her.

“Let us go to a temple and make a contract. If you want, I can call you Ma. Ster.”

Her voice turned sweet. However, the sweet voice did not particularly move me.

Instead, the word contract entered my ears clearly.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course. I did this while being prepared for at least that much. On top of that, I do not think Master will make me suffer like Father did.”

I no longer felt any killing intent. I also felt certain that she would no longer try to kill me.

“I do not need you to call me Master.”

After worrying for quite some time while holding my sword, I finally withdrew it.

“Let us make the contract tomorrow immediately.”

“Yes!”

She also lowered her arm.

In the end, I had concluded that I would not kill her.

I did not fully trust her yet, and I did not know what would happen from now on.

However, unlike other people, I could reverse this decision.

After some of the tension eased, I asked her something I had been curious about.

“What were you planning to do if you killed me? You would definitely have been discovered.”

I, too, found it difficult to kill Valea for that reason.

“I intended to run away immediately. There is a mercenary who knows my father. I planned to find that mercenary and flee to the Empire or another country.”

There was no hesitation and no sense of before or after in her words.

It did not seem as though she placed much meaning in her position as an academy student or her status as the baron’s daughter.

Should I call her free?

However, judging from her offer to make a contract, that did not seem to be entirely true either.

Even after thinking about it again, she was truly a person I could not understand at all.

While I was lost in those thoughts, she quietly raised her hand.

“Um, more importantly, I feel very dizzy. May I faint for a moment?”

With those words, Valea collapsed backward.

Her sleeve was soaked with blood, and blood had pooled on the ground.

I looked at the collapsed Valea and let out a sigh.

After taking out a handkerchief and tying Valea’s wrist, I carried her and walked toward the infirmary.

The next day was a holiday.

She and I left the academy and visited a temple.

There was a priest in the infirmary inside the academy as well, but he was not a contract-specialist priest, and making a contract inside the academy would make it difficult to maintain confidentiality.

After riding in a carriage for quite some time and finding a priest, Valea and I prepared a contract with the priest before us.

It was a contract as favorable to me as possible.

It was a contract that made her keep my secrets and prevented her from harming me.

It was difficult to make a contract that would protect my life or make her my ally, but even the above contract was sufficiently unfair.

Because the contract’s mana had limits, it was not a lifelong contract, but it was still a contract that had to be kept for a sufficiently long time.

When the priest saw the contract, he was startled and asked Valea several times, but Valea smiled and signed it.

She was not my comrade, and she was difficult to trust, but in any case, it seemed I had gained someone who shared one of my secrets.