CHAPTER 100
A MINIATURE SANCTUARY
Delimira came knocking on Hans’s doors and he was forced to close his barely opened Limitless, with a deep breath he put a smile on his face and opened the doors. He maintained a forced smile as she asked,
"What will you be doing, today?"
Hans quickly replied with a friendly tone,
"I will sleep through the day, Winters."
Delimira could see that he wanted her out of his hair but she insisted,
"Oh, don’t be a buzzkill, I thought we became friends, you even asked me to stay here, squeaky."
"You wanna be a bitch that badly?" Hans attacked her with her own words that she spoke when they left Frozen Tooth
She came back to her usual tone and retorted,
"You were the one who called me Winters first"
"Fine Deli, what do you want?"
"I just wanna look around your home but walking alone without the host is awkward."
"I will ask Hodges-" He stopped in the middle, realising that Hodges would probably force him to show her around so if he was going to do this eventually, he decided to do it before he was asked to, "Fine, wait a minute," he said and closed the door. He hid his book in his vast collection and change his attire and look to accompany her. Hans did not see himself as having an inferior face, after all, Samson had the same features but Delimira could make even the most handsome man next to her look like a dried squid so he thought he should at least put some effort to not lack behind her.
He thought, there was no point in exaggerating this further and focused on showing her around so he could get out of her hair quickly. Although it was still winter, the climate was milder compared to the bitterly cold weather of Frozen Tooth. Nevertheless, Hans continued to use the pilfered artefact in his room to keep himself warm. After dressing appropriately, he picked up the artefact and opened his door.
His changed attire sure surprised her but she did not comment, since his mood could turn back as quickly as waves on the beach, However, she could not help but ask,
"Are You still using that stolen thing?"
"I did not steal it," Hans refuted instantly while activating the artefact, "this belongs to my… family. I am just… borrowing it." he hesitatingly added while leading her to the kitchen first since it was his favourite place and then the small library of the mansion. The servants were dusting off the almost closed places like the library and archives. It was rarely used since their lord and lady were never in the mansion and were not on the scholarly side as their Young Lord.
On their way servants greeted them and Hans politely returned the greeting. This was another change Dellimira had noticed, the Edenbergs treated the servants with respect, it was so much that Hodges could interrupt the speaking Lord if he deemed fit or chide Hans if he felt like it. She observed the same in Parvians when she saw the escort butting in Arat's conversation. it was quite a contrast to Elves since In Clandor servants were not allowed to speak before they were asked to.
Lost in her thoughts, Delimira had walked out of the mansion and was now following Hans to the training field. She had wanted to step out of the confines of the mansion, which was the reason she had insisted on exploring the place with Hans. As they walked, Delimira caught sight of the knights who were in the midst of their afternoon training, under the leadership of Aldrich. And upon seeing their young lord approach, they stopped their training, but Hans motioned for them to continue as he said to her company,
"Now the tour is finished Winters, can I go now?"
She did not respond but kept staring at him like he missed something. Hans corrected,
"Can I go now, Deli?"
She showed a satisfactory smile and ask him for one last thing, at least for today,
"Where is Lady Sierra?"
Hans looked at the sun and replied,
"She soon will come back from the temple, why don’t you hang around with sis Vanessa till then?"
She made an uncomfortable face and replied,
"I don’t think she likes me much."
"What? Sis Vanessa likes everyone."
Hans dragged her to the study, where Sierra mostly spend her noon time and since she was not there, her aide, Vanessa was sorting things up. He confidently left both girls together and escaped before any could say something After his departure an awkward silence followed but Hans was not the one to waste a single moment in this charade. He had only three months to learn new things without hiding like in Concordia. He was going to his room but met his verbal adversary.
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They both stared at each other and nodded in a truce for a moment. Rudolf was the one to break the silence first,
"What are you doing here?"
"Babysitting, and you, gramps?"
Rudolf couldn’t hold to the truce. He looked at him with a smirk and said,
"Me too, Babysitting"
Hans did not wanna start anything new so he just let his comment go. He was gonna make his exit but he was reminded of something so he asked his old man,
"How much should I trust Arat?"
"Oh, that's complicated, did he say anything else to you?"
"Yes, something that shook me to the core."
"What?"
"Gramps, you all say I am not human, so how I came into this world?"
"That's a mystery, squeaky because we did not witness - "
"Arat said I had a mother."
Rudolf just kept staring at him for a while so Hans interrupted,
"Genas to Grandpa, you still present?"
"Yes yes, maybe Arat said it so you would want to go with him."
That was a valid inference that Hans did not expect from Rudolf but it fit perfectly. If his mother existed then Rudolf and Sierra would have at least known about her a bit. He left Rudolf distressed and shut himself in his room. After he left everyone and ran towards his room, there were two places in the mansion that was filled with awkward silence, first was Sierra’s study where Deimira and Vanessa were bearing uncomfortable silence and the second one was Rudolf who was contemplating Arat’s words. But away from them, Hans had opened his book.
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> Page13
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> SILVA ORTUS
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> This will be your fourth genuine spell from the book, I hope you have created the many of your own. The special thing about this spell will be its similarity to the Sanctuary of Wolrd mages(eight circles). This will be tiring to learn so prepare yourself ahead.
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> You have mastered the sprout, conjuring the seed, transfer the mana in it to grow it rapidly, that’s the base of your every spell. Now I want you to raise a forest.
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> Yes, you read right, with this spell you can modify any terrain you want with seeds of VeganBind already present in many places. This will reduce the time for VeganBind exponentially, the forest created by you will be your territory, hence I called this miniature sanctuary.
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> Then how to master it? First, start with a ten-metre box and gradually start to increase the area as your mastery increases. SilvaOrtus is also a base for you to master my most known domain ability VOID ZONE. You will learn that after finishing the SilvaOrtus. The combination of SilvaOrtus and VoidZone would be enough to put most of the enemies at rest.
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> Remember this spell is just an accumulation of various sprouts and a forest must have different type of trees like your spells. This will teach you how parrallelism in mana theory worls and I must warn you ahead, this will be time-consuming but you need to reduce it by presetting the different terrain you wanna create, like the different maps in your mind with the features like how big it will be, which trees it will have, where will be the VeganBind seed, and everything.
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> I trust you can achieve it.
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> PAGE 13 ENDED
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The feeling that he had not felt for a long time came back to him. Whenever he read Samson’s words it felt like he was under his tutelage but his words which earlier sounded like a well-thought procedure started turning into a father’s guidance. He knew that he should not believe Arat’s words but he wanted them to turn true. The idea of having a mother was giving him butterflies and the power of INHERITANCE passing down to him, as a pure-blooded Parvian supported Arat’s words to some degree.
Hans was entering a rabbit hole of daydreaming, he struggled with many what-ifs questions but it did not took him long to come back to his senses. It was all because he remembered his sister’s words when he asked about her past. He mumbled her exact words,
“We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; a person of discernment always deals only with the present moment”
Vanessa always had a huge influence in Hans’s life and this time too, her sway and words helped him to make up his mind. He looked at the book in front of him and buckled it in the waist. It was time to master this SilvaOrtus.
ALLIANCE HEADQUARTERS, UTAR
"What is it?" Asked Norwin
His trusted Aide responded,
"Rudolf Edenberg wiped out an assassins guild"
"I don't even have to ask why, just tell me if our people are involved or not."
The Aide became silent but seeing Norwin frowning at her sudden state, she replied,
"Its complicated, sir -"
Abruptly she had to stop as another scout came running frantically and reported,
"Concordia was robbed of Sunstones by Eclipse."
"How much?"
"Enough to fund a small war?"
"Who they are attacking?" asked Nowrin, expecting an answer.
"We do not have the information yet, sir, Alliance head."
Grunted, he ordered,
"Investigate so I can finally kill those sour bastards," and the room became chilly as Norwin's excitement rose.
***