Book 3. Chapter 17.
“Preparing for war.” Part 2
“Get out of my mind!” Kalysto shouted with all her strength.
“...No,” he whispered, increasing the pressure against her mind and forcing her to face him.
“GET OUT!” she insisted, focusing on expelling him, but she could feel him seeping in, touching, scanning and observing memories she didn’t want to share with anyone. The harder she tried to push him out, the more he seemed to resist. And she hated every second of it.
Suddenly, an image flashed in her mind.
A smiling girl with black hair and black eyes was already kneeling in the middle of a field of flowers.
But as quickly as the image came, it was gone. At the same time, Kalysto felt as if her skull was split in two and the pain spread strongly through her neck and shoulders. Breaking her concentration.
[The passive skill Pain Resistance has been activated.]
[The skill Pain Resistance has leveled up to 32!]
What the hell was that? She panicked for a moment, but quickly recovered. Never mind! I need to get him out of my mind first!... Focus! Come on, Kalysto! Focus! She scolded herself.
[The skill Mental Defense has been activated.]
“Come out, now!” She growled, straining to get him out. But he just smiled.
[The skill Mental Defense has leveled up to level 71!]
“Make me,” he whispered, his voice caressing the deepest corners of her mind, making her feel naked and vulnerable. Rage erupted like lava in an erupting volcano, flooding every part of her being, permeating everything. Giving her a momentum she might not otherwise have had and expelling him finally with brute force, at the same time as a faint white light surrounded her mental form and her physical body.
[The skill Mental Defense has leveled up to level 72!]
...
[The skill Mental Defense has leveled up to level 75!]
[The skill Pain Resistance has leveled up to level 33!]
Sweat was falling freely on Kalysto’s face, neck, and arms when she finally managed to expel him, her agitated breathing was a sign of the great effort she had made and although it looked as if she had just finished a marathon, her body hadn’t moved during the whole process. She felt exhausted, both physically and mentally, as she rested her hands on her knees and tried to normalize her breathing.
She could still feel an echo of pain, even though she had the pain resistance skill active.
Inventory! She thought, took out a revitalizing potion, and drank it immediately.
“Interesting,” Aegir murmured, pleased. “That seems to support my theory, but let’s do it once, just to check,” he commented. Seconds before invading her mind again, this time with much more force. Making the pressure on Kalysto’s head almost unbearable, she didn’t even have time to prepare for the new attack.
[The skill Pain resistance has leveled up to 34!]
[The skill Mental Defense has leveled up to level 81!]
About seventeen minutes later, Kalysto managed to expel him again. The soft white glow around her body was a little more visible this time, and the fatigue was much more evident.
[The skill Mental defense has leveled up to level 82!]
[The skill Mental defense has leveled up to level 83!]
[The skill Pain Resistance has leveled up to level 35!]
As soon as she expelled him again, Kalysto fell to the ground completely exhausted and gasping for breath. She immediately pulled out another vial of revitalizing potion from her inventory and gulped it down while glaring at him.
“Why the hell did you do that? Are you crazy?” she scolded him.
“Did you know that someone erased your memory?” He asked instead, taking her by surprise.
“What?” she questioned, not believing what she was hearing.
“I suspect it is the same entity that put the seal since there is a wall protecting your oldest memories. So it would be more accurate to say that the same entity that put the seal also sealed part of your memories, to force you to forget them.
“...” She opened her mouth and closed it again. “... I... I supposedly had an accident when I was little, at least that’s what my parents told me. That made me lose my memory... I don’t have any memories before I was eight years old.”
“...” Aegir observed her in silence for a few seconds, giving her time to assimilate the news. “Although I have managed to repair a part of the seal and you have managed to raise your mental defense a little, I suggest you rest a bit before we continue with a new session. I will be back in fifteen minutes.”
As soon as he left, Kalysto finished healing the wounded guard and gave him a small bottle of holy water as an apology, after making sure that Alice was completely unharmed and promising to explain what happened when they were alone.
Then Aegir took her to the beautiful room he had prepared for her on the other side of the castle.
But instead of sitting and admiring it, Kalysto sat in an armchair.
“Shall we begin?” she asked, placing her palms on her legs as she tried to hide how nervous she was about having to endure another mental invasion.
“I’ll order the food to be brought to us,” he said.
Unlike Alice’s room, hers was guarded by two female demons whose levels she couldn’t identify despite using ‘Inspect’ on both of them.
[Name: Lethear
Race: Demon
Level: ????
Class: ???
HP: ?????/????
MP: ????/????
DMP: ???/?????]
[Name: Zakyhar
Race: Demon
Level: ????
Class: ???
HP: ?????/????
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
PM: ????/????]
Damn! I’m going to have to level up Inspect! Another thing to add to my to-do list! She reproached herself when she remembered that she had it at level 10.
“If you need anything, you can ask Lethear and Zakyhar for anything. They can be trusted,” Aegir assured her.
It would be better to say that they are my jailers! she thought.
“I’m sorry you think that,” Aegir interrupted her, causing Kalysto to freeze as she sat on one of the living room couches in her room. “They are here both for your protection and that of my people, as well as to help you in any way you need. But I can’t deny that I am worried that on your first day here you have already lost control of what lives inside you.” Kalysto opened her mouth to say something, but he raised his hand, asking her for silence. “I plan to help you improve your defense enough so that we don’t have to worry about it for a while. So they will return to the function I assigned them in the beginning, to make sure that no one disturbs you during your stay in my lands,” he assured her. “Besides, helping you to repair the seal completely will take us more time than we have available and you still have to create at least two magic circles before the rest of the fairies arrive for their training, and I have to prepare everything for their visit.”
“...” Kalysto observed him in silence before speaking again, and although she could feel the sincerity in his words, she could not help but feel uncomfortable. “I appreciate you taking so much trouble after what happened. I assure you that I will do my best not to put your people at risk during my stay.”
“I know you will,” he reassured her. “Now I believe we have a pending contract to sign, although I have already fulfilled part of the deal.” Kalysto blushed and immediately drew up the contract they had talked about when he helped her absorb the dragons that had attacked Japan. It was after she gave him the agreed ten liters of holy water that she realized that those were the same dragons that Alice had told her had destroyed all of Asia and part of Russia in the previous timeline.
“I will add another ten liters of holy water if you agree to take me back for a day to the park where you found me and then bring me back after I check something and do some shopping,” she negotiated, wanting to check how things were on Earth and if Sakura was safe.
“Did you forget something?” Curiosity flooded Aegir’s voice.
“I need to check something, besides the food in this world is much simpler and very different from what I’m used to, so there are some things I want to buy.”
That and I’m sure Alice’s grandfather is dying to grow something. She thought. It must be hard for someone who has been farming all his life to stop suddenly, and have nothing to do.
“Alynn informed me about it. I assure you that all your food has been prepared with a bit of salt. You only have to tell him how much, and my cook will adapt to your taste.”
Why did Alynn inform him about it? She was curious. I would also like to cook something for Alice and make something for her as a thank you for her sacrifice.
“Cook for me too, and I’ll take you wherever you want.”
“Isn’t ten liters of holy water enough?”
“If it makes you feel better, you can cut it down to five.”
“... Can you stop reading my mind?” she questioned uncomfortably.
“As I said before, it’s not that easy. But if you like, you can use it as a stimulus to raise your mental defense faster,” Kalysto wanted to argue, but at that moment there was a knock at the door. “Come in!” A couple of maids served dinner on the tea table and they both started to eat while Aegir started to explain the magic theory behind the mana circles when they were alone again.
“Focusing on more serious matters, as I had explained to you before, a body can not withstand a large amount of mana if you don’t increase your stamina and intelligence stats so that your body can withstand the load,” he commented as he cut a piece of meat with the knife and used the fork to put the food in his mouth, showing off his table manners while Kalysto took the opportunity to drink a health potion every ten minutes as she ate and added a pinch of salt to the roast beef and salad that was brought to her. “I firmly believe that the best way to become stronger and faster is to have a good mana capacity. And for that, it is indispensable to have several circles of mana. Over the years, I have been perfecting a technique to create them so that each of them has at least four thousand MP instead of one thousand MP as usual. Right now I’m working on creating a five thousand MP circle, but I’m still perfecting that method, so I’ll show you the four thousand.”
After explaining a bit more about it, as soon as they finished eating Kalysto sat down on an unbacked stool while he pulled out several revitalizing, mana and health potions from his shadow for her to drink, along with several fifty centimeter high mana crystals and placed them on the tea table in front of her.
“How did you do that?” Kalysto was immediately interested as she saw how he pulled the objects out of his shadow instead of the system.
“I have my tricks,” he replied with a half-smile. “For now, we have to focus on the basics,” he excused himself, ”I will place my hands on your back and destroy the two magic circles you have created, then I will guide you through the process of weaving the mana and creating a new one.”
Pain erupted in Kalysto’s chest as he began to destroy the circles.
“...Cough!” Blood spurted from her lips as the agonizing pain spread throughout her thorax.
[The passive skill Pain Resistance has been activated.]
“Don’t resist,” he scolded her. ”I allowed them to be destroyed. The mana will remain active in your body until you learn to weave it together like a weave. Have you ever seen how to weave a scarf or a shirt or braid a braid?”
“...Yes,” she was barely able to answer due to the pain as her eyes filled with tears that she tried hard not to shed.
[The skill Pain Resistance has leveled up to level 36!]
“Good job,” he congratulated her. ”Now try to imitate weaving. Use your mana control skill to do it.”
It took Kalysto two weeks of working twenty-four hours a day and surviving on potions to get it right when she finally learned to level the skills Mana Sense, Mana Control, and Mana Manipulation. She had developed the last two around level 24, but the first one, she had it at level six, so it took her a long time to level it up to level it with the other two. But while she was doing it, the others were also leveling up, so getting them to be at par and in harmony was difficult and took much longer than she expected.
That and Aegir didn’t hesitate to undo on the spot the mana she had woven wrong every time she made a mistake, forcing her to reweave it from scratch to maintain harmony.
[The skill Mana Sense has leveled up to level 30!]
[The skill Mana Control has leveled up to level 30!]
[The skill Mana Manipulation has leveled up to level 30!]
Although she hadn’t slept for two weeks, she couldn’t help but smile as soon as she managed to get it. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and could feel the circle of mana surrounding her heart, much stronger and thicker than the thin line she had created earlier.
Aegir left the room as soon as they were done, needing to take care of the matters of state he had put aside during the time of her training when he could not leave her alone while she learned and put into practice what she had learned.
Kalysto, as excited as she was, barely registered his departure. Instead, she took Tsuki out of her inventory, drank a health potion, and asked the guards for fruits and food in abundance. After feasting with her pet and leaving some fruits for him to eat later, she tried to replicate the process, this time with Tsuki’s accompaniment. However, the creation of the Dark Mana circle was much easier for her, and she was able to create two in just eight days.
Excited by the progress, Kalysto again feasted together with Tsuki, which included the tray of food that Alynn had prepared for her last time while drinking several health potions to counteract the curse that was still active.
“I think we should return this,” she muttered, pointing to the tray with the fairies’ plates and flatware. “Inventory!” She said, and then took out the home stone that the queen had given her, the one she had linked before with the room she had been assigned in the kingdom of Balsahty and unconfigured it, and then assigned the room she was in as her point of arrival. After putting Tsuki back into her inventory and returning to the fairy kingdom to deposit the dirty tray and pick up the new one that Alynn did not forget to leave in her room under a conservation spell, she activated the one that would take her to Desmond’s kingdom. But to her surprise, she did not appear in her new room but in the same room, she had arrived in the first time when she used the scroll.
“What the hell?” she muttered when she saw that she was in the wrong place.
“This room deflects any attempt at teleportation in or around my palace, forcing travelers to appear here. And it sends a signal every time it is activated to the owner of this crown,” explained Aegir, pointing to his head where the black crown decorated with jewels began to become visible little by little as he spoke. “I didn’t think, of my current guests, that you would be the first to activate the defenses of my palace,” he reproached her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it was a problem. It has never been a problem in the kingdom of Bahram, so I didn’t think it would be a problem here,” she excused herself.
“Although my aunt’s territory is vast, the population is small, less than a tenth of mine,“ he instructed. “I hope you understand that our security is a little tighter,” Kalysto nodded. And Aegir looked at her chest before nodding, satisfied with the result of her training. “I see you’ve been doing a good job. Next time, please focus on creating your second circle of mana. You’re going to need it much faster than you think,” he added, approaching her, and immediately the surrounding scene suddenly changed.
The clear sky welcomed them. The sound of the waves crashing against the rocks reached Kalysto’s ears at the same time as the sea breeze and the smell of the beach reached her. Huge stones covered much of what she thought would be the beach, and as she approached the edge of the stone pathway, she encountered a huge cliff. Several feet below, waves crashed as the immense sea opened up before her.
As did the intrepid four-meter-tall octopus that was climbing the rocks, trying to get to where she was.
“A little one-hundred-and-ten level Kraken is trying to climb my cliff and invade my kingdom and you need to start leveling up quickly so you don’t fall behind the fairies coming to train in two weeks. Isn’t this what humans call a match made in heaven?”