Chapter 20: Normal Days
A few days passed.
Iris had a duel in the capital. Luna mentioned it once, on her way out of a different conversation.
"She’ll win," Luna said.
"You’re that confident?"
"No. I’m that familiar with the other idiot."
She left before I could ask who the other idiot was.
The days before I woke up were still missing. After the fourth time I asked, Luna started leaving before I finished the question. I stopped asking.
Training had settled. Magic in the mornings until the mana bottomed out. Sword forms until my arms stopped. Mana breathing on the walk back, which held through a full circuit now without dropping.
Wind Blade used to scatter before it reached the post. On the eighth morning it cut clean through without redirecting.
I stood there looking at the split wood for a second, then moved on. Progress never looked like anything. It just looked like the same thing done wrong until one morning it wasn’t wrong anymore.
The cave at dawn.
The floor was bare each time I checked. After the first week I stopped checking.
The estate was quieter without Sebastian.
Breakfast arrived five minutes late the morning after he left.
Different girl. She apologized three times before putting the tray down, adjusted it once after setting it, apologized again on her way out.
Sebastian had apparently trained everyone to a standard they were now terrified of failing without him there to confirm they’d met it.
He’d appeared at my door once before the carriage left. "I will take my leave, Young Master." The seal on the letter had been my father’s.
I stood at the window until the gate closed.
My father had pulled his eyes away from Thorne Hold. Either he’d stopped caring what I did, or he’d already decided he knew.
I went back to training.
"System. Open the shop."
The market came up. I scrolled past Cooking Skill, Healing Spell, Blink, and stopped on Inventory. 100 Ink. No hidden conditions. Twenty slots, pocket dimension. Basic combat magic ran into the hundreds and this was sitting at a hundred.
I bought it.
[Skill Acquired: Inventory. Available Slots: 20.]
I picked up the sword from the ground.
"Store."
It vanished.
I spent the next ten minutes storing rocks.
Then taking them back out. Then storing different rocks to see if the slots tracked by object or by volume.
They tracked by object. A pebble took one slot. So did the sword.
I stored a few more rocks anyway.
I checked my remaining balance and ran a premium spin.
Something tapped my shoulder.
Luna. Full maid outfit. Frills. Headpiece. She looked like she’d committed to it and wasn’t going to discuss why.
"Premium spin reward," she said, and started singing before I could respond. "Round and round the wheel goes~"
"Yeah, yeah."
"Congratulations~! You have won Pain Resistance!"
"That’s actually useful."
Luna’s eyes narrowed before I’d finished the thought.
"All acquired skills will be deactivated during penalty time," she said.
"That’s—"
"You’re enjoying this."
"Immensely."
"You’re smiling."
"You’re imagining things," she said, and left.
[The Lady is laughing.]
"Noted."
Seven days in, I stopped in front of the mirror on the way out.
My shirt fit differently across the shoulders. The jaw was cleaner. The face recognizable now, at least to me.
I kept moving.
On the way to the cave the next morning I heard crying.
I stopped.
It stopped too.
I kept walking.
It started again. Closer than before.
Deep in the forest, past where the undergrowth thinned for reasons nobody had explained to me.
I followed it until I found her.
Seventeen at most. Sitting on the ground, one leg at a wrong angle beneath her, hair matted with something dried on one side.
I stood there.
[WARNING.]
[Authority Detected.]
The forest went quiet. Every insect at once.
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