Book 3. Chapter 17. “Preparing for war.” Part 1
[The passive skill Pain Resistance has been activated.]
[The skill Pain Resistance has leveled up to level 34!]
[The passive skill Regeneration has leveled up to level 7!]
[The skill Pain Resistance has leveled up to level 35!]
[The skill Regeneration has leveled up to level 6!]
Finally, Kalysto felt that she could breathe. The piercing pain that had been shooting through her entire body as soon as she regained control of it and hindered her ability to reason finally began to subside until it finally faded away.
Regeneration! Regeneration! she conjured in her mind as she concentrated her mana on healing the stomach wound, which was the largest of all the wounds he had inflicted on her.
“I’m sorry for hurting you that way. It was the quickest way to weaken her and help you regain control,” apologized Aegir as he took a vial of holy water from his inventory and offered it to her. A potion that Kalysto recognized immediately as she had given it to Hanna as part of a contract. “And it will be necessary to touch you during training, especially when it comes to mind magic to help establish a connection,” he apologized. “Now drink this.”
“I appreciate you helping me regain control of my body,” ‘but I don’t want you to touch me again’ she wanted to add, although he seemed to understand what she wasn’t telling him. “Explain to me what you said before,” she alleged with a frown, instead of accepting the offer.
Regeneration! Regeneration! She continued to conjure mentally, even though she knew that not doing so verbally increased her mana expenditure, but she didn’t want him to guess what she was doing.
“Drink the potion, Kalysto.” He insisted, but when he saw that she didn’t give in, he let out a sigh. “If you’re not emanating any golden light right now, it means you can’t use your saintess skills to heal yourself, though I suppose your hand being near your stomach wound means there’s some other kind of healing spell you can cast, though I doubt it’s as efficient as Jhil’s,” he explained and despite the calmness in his tone of voice, it was obvious he wasn’t willing to give in either. “Drink.”
[Regeneration skill has leveled up to level 7!]
“...” Kalysto pursed her lips, anger shining in her green eyes as she realized how easy it had been for him to discover the weak point in her contract. Something she didn’t want others to know since they could use it against her. “Explain,” she insisted stubbornly, needing any information that would give her an advantage so as not to lose control over Persephone.
Several seconds passed without either of them giving in. Still, he spoke again.
“You shouldn’t waste so much time. ‘It’ almost killed two of my guards along with your friend. Do you plan to put her at risk instead of starting training with me at once?” Kalysto sighed, it wasn’t just the fact that she was annoyed with him that was the reason she didn’t want to receive his help, but because she had to take the health potion and didn’t want to be indebted to him, plus she knew she wouldn’t die from the wounds. Not only would the holy water take care of it, but also because this was a good opportunity for her regeneration skills to level up, something she knew would be necessary in the future. She had gotten so used to rushing to drink holy water every time she was injured that both skills had gone up very little in level since she got them despite how important they were to her survival.
In addition, Alice had Jhil’s skill, which ensured that she could heal herself and the two wounded soldiers. So she could regenerate while trying to get information out of him without any pressure.
[The passive skill Regeneration has leveled up to level 8!]
“I thank the offer, but you can keep it. I have more than enough holy water,” she said as she pulled out a liter bottle and took three long gulps.
Aegir smiled to see her boasting in front of him with a simple gesture. And he put his small vial back in his inventory.
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“Since you seem to be Hanna’s supplier, I would like you to extend that kindness to me as well. If there is anything you need from me or anything I can help you with, please don’t hesitate to ask me.” Despite his apparent kindness, Kalysto looked at him suspiciously.
“Why the sudden kindness?”
“You hurt me. I have always been kind to you, Kalysto,” he said, approaching her with a soft smile on his lips that she felt more and more tempted to erase by force. “And he seemed to be amused, knowing it. “Besides, you have...” he murmured, looking her up and down and then at the almost full bottle of holy water... ”something I want.”
“... I see,” she murmured, feeling uncomfortable and uneasy at his nearness.
“Now I’ll touch your forehead... we need to check that seal right now,” Kalysto nodded and her body tensed like a bowstring just before shooting an arrow as soon as he placed his fingertip on her forehead. The displeasure at the slight contact was not long in coming, but less than a second later, she was alone and surrounded by infinite darkness.
“...Interesting.” Aegir’s deep voice sounded to her right, making her jump as he appeared out of nowhere near her. “Mine is much more colorful,” he murmured, surprised by the vast emptiness.
Kalysto instead frowned, feeling a little offended by the criticism of her mental world and the lack of things in it as she began to walk.
“We’ll have to walk a bit to find the seal,” she commented, remembering all the walking she had to do last time. “Since when did you get good at this mind magic stuff?” She asked, trying to fill the awkward silence that arose as they moved forward and forced herself to stop comparing herself to him as her curiosity about what his mental world would be like began to grow. That, and she needed to know if he was really as good as the queen had implied.
“Practically since I was born,” he answered as he continued to stare in surprise at the deep darkness that surrounded them. “It was always natural for me to enter the minds of others. It was understanding that their minds were not my own that took me some time to learn as a child.”
Although she was surprised to hear that, she couldn’t help but think he seemed to gloat.
“You were able to read my mind yesterday when we were in the park. And you didn’t need to touch me to do it,” she accused him.
“I know, but it’s easier for me to respect your boundaries if I’m touching you,” he replied, smiling at her, causing her to let out a snort. “You’d better close your eyes, take several deep breaths, and concentrate on finding the seal, or we’ll be stuck in here for hours.”
Kalysto reluctantly stopped and closed her eyes.
Come on, Kalysto! Focus!
[The skill ‘Mental Defense’ has been activated.]
After doing as he had asked, she could feel the seal as a gentle pull to the left and walked in that direction, less than five minutes later they were in front of the giant cracked rock where small tendrils of darkness escaped from the cracks along with thin tentacles of black mana.
Kalysto annoyed that Persephone had dared to attack Alice, approached one of them, grabbed it tightly, and muttered.
“Absorb!”
[Does the user wish to absorb this target?]
[YES/NO]
Yes! she thought at the same time that Aegir’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he advised her, ”Although you have a pretty high resistance for someone with such a low level, it is necessary to create mana circles for a physical body to resist such an amount of mana, even when it comes to dark mana, whose characteristics differ from traditional mana.”
A sharp pain in her chest indicated to Kalysto that he was right.
[Congratulations, the user has acquired 2000 DMP!]
[The passive skill Pain Resistance has been activated.]
“How do you know my stats? Can you even see my system?”
“No, but I can feel it. Which gives me a rough idea of it,” he commented as he caressed the cracks in the big rock. “Are you ready?” Kalysto nodded her head in approval, though she wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing. “There are two moments marked in these cracks, one recent and one not. In both, it was your lack of control over your emotions that allowed the cracks in the seal to grow larger. You had so much rage at being betrayed, so much fear of dying... so many emotions, so strong that it has been weakening the seal,” he murmured with his eyes closed, concentrating.
“What are you talking about?” she asked quietly, moving closer to him.
“Let me show you,” he whispered and immediately, the rage after the betrayal of the elves, whom she had willingly helped but who had nevertheless ended up selling her to a merchant, flooded her. The image of the blond elven merchant giving the order to cut off her legs flashed into her mind. Rage, fear, and a strong desire to survive, no matter what the situation, completely overwhelmed her.
Gradually she could feel those emotions begin to subside, as if a filter was applied between her and the emotions. And the filter became stronger and stronger, until she slowly began to feel some peace and lightness, until the scene changed completely and she found herself once again under the doorframe of the kitchen of the house she grew up in. Her mother’s body lying on the floor, covered in blood, her disgusting and violent drunk stepfather sadistically beating her mother’s lifeless body.
She felt naked and completely unprotected, knowing that Aegir was also witnessing everything she was seeing.
“Get out of my mind!”