“Are we actually doing this?” sounded the surly voice of a grumpy brown-haired man, who was currently frowning at the mask-wearing girl sitting on his bench.
Lucille cocked her head. “If you had a problem with it, then you should’ve brought it up with me before we signed the contract.”
Sedric stared. “I wasn’t about to start arguing with the new Faction Head of the Commission!”
“And yet you seem so happy to do it now,” she replied dryly. He looked away with his arms crossed and she rolled her eyes. “We’d both be breaking the contract if we didn’t do it. So, suffer. If you think I don’t know what I’m on about, then just calmly nod to what I’m saying and immediately forget about it once we’re done.”
He gazed at her dubiously, clearly not believing someone could actually teach if they had an attitude like that. Lucy didn’t care for the opinions of the less intelligent, and so ignored him. She pointed with a thumb towards a figure behind her. “And tell me honestly, it’s not the fact I’m teaching you that is the issue, is it?”
He switched his glare to the blonde-haired girl sitting on a stool at the bench, leaning her arms on the table. When Annaliese saw Sedric’s gaze, she smiled brightly and gave him a wave. His glare intensified.
“What is she doing here?” he grumbled.
“I’d like to say I want to ask the same question, but we all know it’s because she wants to annoy us and make our lives difficult,” she replied flatly, shooting a glance over her shoulder at the girl behind her.
Having become immune to Lucy’s comments in an inconceivably short time period, Annaliese smiled cheerfully and leaned her chin on her hands. “Don’t mind me, and go do your thing. I’m just curious about magic," she replied sweetly.
“This is supposed to be about crafting,” Sedric replied, irritated the girl had decided yet again to come to bother him.
“Magical item crafting is 70% magic, 20% designing, and 10% construction,” Lucille responded, getting out a fountain pen from her dimensional pouch and tossing it in the air. “The Coalition was a force under All-Aeon Athenaeum until they achieved independence, and became a lesser empire. She’s not wrong about the fact I’ll be talking about magic.”
She narrowed her eyes when she saw how Sedric looked grumpier, having had an idea. She gave a big shrug. “She’s only going to be here until Tuesday anyway, so no need to be so on edge. Even if she was smarter than you and could answer all my questions, she’d leave and never return again to make you feel inferior. There’s no need to care so much.”
Sedric’s eyebrow twitched and Lucy inwardly grinned, knowing he had latched onto the bait. She gestured to him. “Pull up a chair.”
He glared at her for a second, before sighing and sat with his arms crossed on one of the bench stools. With the ‘mysterious’ aspect of Lucy having worn off a bit over the past week, he seemed much more at ease voicing his complaints. Lucy stopped throwing the pen in the air and shifted a bit so she could see them both. She clapped her hands once.
“So then. What is magic?”
They stared, nonplussed. Annaliese looked perplexed. “Um… we’ve been asked those types of questions in school.”
Lucy’s face broke into a grin. “I know. I’m just messing with you.”
Sedric gave her an incredulous look, while Annaliese sighed in relief, glad she didn’t have to answer boring questions like that. Lucy pointed her pen at them both. “Then what’s the difference between a skill and a spell?”
“One is used by non-magic classes, and the other by magic classes,” Sedric said.
Lucille glanced at him for a moment and then shook her head. “Nope. That’s not it.”
The man scowled, while Annaliese looked thoughtful. “One is activated using the System, and one doesn’t need the System?”
Lucy pointed her pen at the girl. “How do they explore outer regions then, if all they have are spells? There are no Obelisks nearby to use the System’s aid.” Annaliese blinked in surprise, but Lucille shrugged. “You’re closer than him at least,” she said, directing her pen to point at the offended Sedric.
“Simply put, a skill is an energy pattern. I say energy pattern because depending on the skill, it could be mana, spiritual energy, or soul power. Sometimes all three. Spells are exclusively mana, but that’s not why they are divided. Because- a spell is still a skill,” she said to both of their confusion.
“Why would someone say ‘spell’ instead of skill though?” Annaliese asked.
“Just to be more specific. Spells are cast by mages and wizards. Not all magic classes. Magic swordsmen use lower-ranked spells, but sorcerers, shamans and summoners don’t use spells at all. If you see them doing it, then they’re a hybrid class. An elementalist is slightly different too, as they can only use spells of their element, and don’t necessarily need mana-circles. That’s because you need to be very proficient In elemental manipulation to cast spells without mana-circles,” she said.
She rapped on the bench with her knuckles. “Now, what’s the difference between a mana-circle and a magic arra-”
“Magic arrays are large-scale semi-permanent spells. Mana-circles are more temporary, have a shorter lifespan, and are less powerful,” Sedric replied, beginning to show competitiveness, as he said it quickly so Annaliese couldn’t respond.
“You’re not wrong, and that is what is commonly known about them. But I’m talking about the fundamental difference between them,” Lucy told him. “Why couldn’t you just make a really large mana-circle, or a really small magic array?”
Neither of them spoke up, so Lucille answered for them. “Again, there’s actually no difference between them. Large mana-circles are called magic arrays, and small magic arrays are called mana-circles. They both use the same runes and theory,” she said, receiving annoyed expressions in return. “But there is one special detail. Wizards can cast magic arrays. Mages cannot. That is all there is to it.”
“Why not?” Annaliese spoke up. “If they use the same runes…”
Instead of answering, Lucy asked another question. “Have either of you heard how mages and wizards can actually cast spells? Especially advanced level ones and higher.”
Sedric frowned. “I’ve heard there’s a difference between them, but I don’t know much besides that.”
“Well, the All-Aeon Athenaeum doesn’t want new magic Factions springing up everywhere, so they keep the details quiet. Neither does the Empire. That’s because you’d likely explode in a shower of blood if you tried to become either without instruction,” she said wryly.
Both of them looked horrified.
Lucy gestured to her abdomen. “Mages are simpler. They use runes to build a three-dimensional ‘runic model’ within their mana pool, which is just below the diaphragm. They typically use elemental runes, which is why in return for not being able to create magic arrays, they gain very high elemental manipulation, rivalling elementalists in control. They are easier to become, and that’s why there are more members of the Orders rather than the Wizard Towers. Different schools within the Orders have different methods of creating a runic model, so some mages have different strengths compared to other mages of the same element.”
Placing down the pen and removing a glove from her right hand, Lucille showed them her horizontal flat palm. They watched on curiously and then with shock as Lucy used her mana to create neon lines of light. She roughly sketched out a simplistic human heart in red and blue lines, which slowly rotated above the hand.
Sedric spoke up first, “Is that being cast with a mage class or a wizard class?”
Lucille glanced at him and then shook her head. “Neither. For me, I use my spiritual energy to manipulate the mana in my general vicinity. But unless you devote your stats to almost an exact split between INT and SPRT, you’d never have enough to do it this way. This is elemental manipulation because all I’m doing is causing illusion mana to show a certain image, the most basic ability of the illusion element. It hasn’t taken on any effects such as generating warmth.” Slowly, the heart moved off her palm to levitate over the middle of the table, letting them see it better.
[Available Secondary Skill: Greater Illusion Manipulation (Neutral)]
I’ll deal with that later.
“So, a wizard,” she began. “I’m sure both of you have heard of heart circles.” They nodded, so Lucy continued, “That’s not a figure of speech. They form mana-circles around their heart. It was a practice that started occurring when a dragon was first slayed, and the power of a dragon’s heart was revealed. It doesn’t increase a wizard’s mana to be like a dragon’s however, but functions as a runic machine for them to cast spells.” It was better described as a primitive calculator, but they would’ve had no clue what that meant.
Lucy pointed at the heart, and a holographic, white, flat disc formed around it, slowly rotating. The centre of the disc was empty, forming a ring that encircled the heart. “While a mage’s runic model can take on many forms, all wizards have the same structure around their heart. What varies is the type of runes they use. Now, what circle wizard has this kind of heart?”
“….shouldn’t it be a 1st circle wizard?” Sedric spoke up questioningly, an eyebrow raised with scepticism.
“Nope,” Lucy replied with a smirk that made him scowl. “In actual fact, no true wizard has a circle like this. That’s because the first heart circle is composed of three mana-circles.”
Without a gesture this time, two flat rings formed above and below the mana-circle around the heart, their diameter being the same size. A small gap was between each ring. She pointed at the illusion. “That’s a 1st circle wizard’s heart. They form all three circles at the same time, and they wouldn’t physically be capable of casting spells if they did not. Watch.”
They leaned in to look at the projection. The two upper and lower rings, which had been hovering slightly apart from each other while rotating, slowly pulled in closer to the central ring and then stopped moving. It then appeared like one ring, lighting up with an intense glow. Lucy gestured to it. “The runes need to align to cast a spell. If you know every rune off by heart and have the multitasking ability to use your mana to project each of the hundred runes required to cast just a low-ranked spell, then maybe you wouldn’t need this. But there’s a simple reason why wizards can cast magic arrays and mages can’t.”
They watched with surprise as three more mana-circles pulled together to appear like a single ring, and drew in closer to the 1st heart circle. Then the process repeated itself for a third time, then a fourth time, a fifth time, and then a sixth time. “Here is a 6th circle wizard’s heart," Lucy told them. “Wizards and mages can pretty much cast the exact same spells up until this point. As more circles appear, another layer of calculations and complexity can be added. But a 7th circle wizard is when magic arrays can be cast.”
The projection gained a new mana-circle, but this time it was perpendicular to the original ones, forming a ring that circled above and below the heart. Then it gained another 2 mana-circles, which pulled together, and then it occurred again and again to form a total of 6 wizard circles perpendicular to the original ones. “And here we have a 12th circle wizard’s heart. Because the mana-circles can resonate the runes not just vertically with each other, but horizontally too, a wizard can utilise far more runes and rune combinations in their spells than any mage possibly could. A 12th circle Archwizard has 36 mana-circles, and with each heart circle mana-circle having around 900 runes on average, that’s 32,400 runes to use.”
“But a wizard’s heart circles and a mage’s runic model are still internal, right? How do they cast spells externally then?” Annaliese said.
Lucille smiled. “And this is what’s truly important to be a genius mage. You need to resonate your mana outside your body so it will copy the runes you have either in your mana pool or around your heart. But to do this takes a lot of mental concentration and an understanding of the correct rune combinations, and then to create more complicated spells, you need multiple mana-circles, which requires multitasking ability. This needs the user to be smart, well-learned and have high mental power.”
And Lucy could just use her spiritual energy to directly form the runes she needed without requiring to form spells indirectly through heart circles or runic models. But normally a human soul didn’t have what it takes to compute complicated spells with just its own mind, and struggled to focus and ignore distractions. Lucy was a special case. Although, she hardly ever used normal magic, so it was wasted on her.
“So, how does this help me?” Sedric asked, frowning. “Seems kinda usele-”
Without warning, Lucy threw the fountain pen in her hands at the man, and it hit him on the forehead. He stared at her and rubbed the spot, incredulous, while she pointed to him. “What trigonometrical mana theory do you use when calculating the mana-retainment limit for metals engraved with intermediate-level spells designed to be cast by a 3rd circle wizard?”
He gazed blankly at her, so she turned her head to the projection and ignored him. She focused on the illusion and it disintegrated into a shower of white light. “When you can answer my questions without needing me to explain them, then you have the right to complain about what I’m teaching. I can tell that you never had formal magic education from your grandfather.” The pen on the ground was lifted up by her spiritual telekinesis, and she dropped it back into her hands.
Sedric had a troubled expression on his face, but Lucy didn’t care enough to ask about the reasons behind it. Instead, she asked her next question. “So, if spells are cast like that, then what are mana-arts?”
“Skills?” Sedric grumbled, still annoyed by her earlier question.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Lucille shot him a flat look but sighed. “This time you’re right, but they’re not just normal skills. A true mana-art is at least primary skill level. If it’s not, then it likely won’t be able to take you past Rank-3 with it. But that doesn’t explain what a mana-art is.”
Annaliese awkwardly raised a hand. “Um… why do people continue to use mana-arts if we have the System to grow stronger? Mana-arts were created before the assimilation of the realm…”
Lucy tilted her head back to look at the roof as she thought about how to answer. “Within the System, there is a passive feature that allows one to create a ‘path of progression’. This is a strict composition of skills that have all been specially altered to have high sync with each other and lead up to you getting a very specific class. Someone with a complete path of progression earns a class at least Ancient rarity or higher. All true mana-arts are complete paths of progression.” She turned to look at the Prophetess. “Mana-arts were the original method of using abilities to combat monsters. They were made to give humanoid races abilities similar to them.”
She got off the table and decided to sit on a stool. “Guild politics and nobility politics make it a habit to stay far, far away from each other most of the time. Do you know why that is?” Lucy asked them both.
Sedric frowned. “Is it because Guilds are usually commoner forces?”
Lucy shook her head. Annaliese piped up. “Because Guilds are untrustworthy?”
Lucy made a face. “I don’t know what books you’ve been reading, but that’s not it. It’s because the Guilds know, that without a doubt, almost any noble force can crush them. That is because they have mana-arts.”
Noticing their curious faces, Lucy explained it to them. “Guilds battle monsters and make a profit by selling their parts, often employing people to craft armour and weapons for them from the materials. They’ve embraced the aspect of the System that gives them strength through killing. Guilders and commoner warriors are almost always higher levelled and higher ranked than most nobility.”
Before they could ask questions she held up a finger. “But while nobility usually takes the time to level up slowly and don’t necessarily try to rank up quickly, they have more power. And that’s because of the traditional heritage of mana-arts, formed over millennia and passed down to their successors. They are powerful sets of skills that work in harmony to bring about effects such as multiplicative Aspects, high-rarity primary skills, and elemental manipulation,” she explained. “They take the time to learn every part of their skills, reading knowledge compiled over thousands of years, and have better combat abilities in general. A Rank-4 noble can typically defeat a Rank-5 guilder, sometimes even with the entire level gap of 100.”
She tapped on the bench. “The way they work is this. Using a mana-art that matches their strongest elemental affinity, they use a phenomenon called ‘elemental resonance’ to attract elemental mana to themselves. Many mana-arts start by generating a whirlpool-like motion within the mana pool. This draws in elemental mana, slowly increasing the size of their mana pool.”
“But that’s wasteful,” Sedric interjected. “Forcefully pulling in mana means it would be a temporary thing before the mana dissipates. You need to have the control of a mage to mentally dominate the mana around you, then draw it in to actually increase your mana pool permanently. Besides, they can increase their mana with stat points. Doing it this way would make it leak from the body.”
“But they aren’t doing it to expand their mana pool,” she said, pointing the pen at him. He flinched back, to her amusement. “If someone without a mana-art did it, then sure. It wouldn’t do anything. But for them, it’s different. They let the mana flow into their body, rather than keep it in the mana pool.”
He furrowed his brows. “But that would still be wasteful. Unless it matches their elemental affinity, it wouldn’t…. oh,” he finished quietly.
Lucille cocked an eyebrow at him, while Annaliese let out a slight giggle, making him glare at her. The Prophetess turned her head away to avoid eye contact with him. Lucy just sighed. “Yes. Elemental resonance means they attract elemental mana of their affinity. And slowly, they divert it to places in the body for it to settle, depending on the instructions of the mana-art.”
“It’s different for different mana-arts?” Annaliese asked curiously.
Lucy shrugged. “It really depends on what the mana-art is geared towards. A wind element mana-art is probably agility, and speed focused, so the spinal cord is targeted first. Earth is defence and endurance-focused, so the bones are targeted. Fire is strength and power focused, so the muscles, while water is based around sharpness and flexibility, so the ligaments and joints,” she explained. “The mid-level elements have different features. And when they reach a certain level of elemental saturation, they gain an Aspect and the primary skill of their mana-art. Because the System detects what they’re doing is the same as a past mana-art, it gives it to them. That’s a path of progression.”
“So… this can give them a Constitution?” Annaliese queried.
Lucy shook her hand to say, ‘Sort of’. “They’re not called Constitutions, but they fit what Scytale told you about people sometimes earning them in areas of high mana density. It’s an artificial process. Once they have the basic mana foundation laid, they can train their mana-art’s techniques, which are made exactly for that mana-type,” she told them.
“Certain moves combined with a certain mana flow ends up coating your limbs in flame, or other features. When they have reached the highest saturation of mana, they can manifest an ‘aura’, and use ‘aura blade’,” she continued. “This is because the mana has stayed in their body long enough that it’s been branded with their mana signature, like a mage, and can be controlled outside the body without losing their strength. I won’t explain the next stages of a mana-art.”
She turned to look at Sedric. “As for why all this matters for you… an item crafter implants these ‘energy patterns’ into an item by finding materials that would best hold the skill or spell they want. Then they enchant it with the spell by engraving or imbuing it. But to know how to make the best items, you need to know how to put spells and skill into your items in a way that makes them function properly, and knowing the fundamental differences between skills, spells, and mana-arts aids this.”
“Doesn’t my class help me with all this? Why do I need to be taught it?” Sedric responded, looking a bit nonplussed.
Lucille eyed them both for a moment. “Do you know how class rarities work?”
Sedric scoffed loudly. “If that was common knowledge, then anybody could go around with a high rarity class.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes and pretended to throw the pen at him again. He flinched and put his hands up to protect himself, and then blinked when it didn’t hit. “If you have an Epic class at level 234, what is your new level if it evolves to Legendary?” she asked him.
His face screwed up as he tried to work out what she meant, but Lucy rolled her eyes. “The answer is 187. The level penalty of a jump from Epic to Legendary, or Epic to Ancient and then Legendary is 20%. The user would lose the equivalent of 46.8 levels in Xp, so they would go down to 187 with 2% of level 188’s Xp. Again, you can complain about what I’m teaching if you answer my questions,” she said, frowning at him.
She sighed and rubbed her head. “I asked to gauge how much you know. Not to be condescending or imply you are ignorant,” she tried to explain. She continued talking about classes. “To evolve a class, you need to merge it with another main class. Doing so would give you a main class with two primary skills, one from each class that was merged. It doesn’t always increase its rarity, but you have some control over the result, so if there’s a rarer class option, you can choose it. This is how you evolve a class to a higher rarity. Some factors can influence this, such as a primary skill evolving to a high rarity beforehand, or bloodlines, but typically, this is how it works.”
She looked at them both. “But there’s a more important factor in this. Do you know what is actually the major difference between high rarity classes and lower rarity classes, besides the stat points?” she asked them.
Annaliese spoke up, making Sedric scowl. “I’ve heard someone describe them as ‘more’ in some way.”
Lucy raised an eyebrow. “More how?”
Annaliese shrugged sheepishly. “I… don’t really know.”
“I’m not picking on you,” Lucy said, smiling. “I suppose ‘more’ is a rather vague way of describing it. But rather, higher rarity classes are ‘comprehensive’.”
She turned to look at Sedric, making him raise an eyebrow. “I assume you had a crafting class before you inherited your grandfather’s?” she asked him. He nodded, so she continued. “What was the key difference between them?”
He rubbed his chin, thinking. “I just had a Rare enchanting class, so it wasn’t great. But I gained skills with greater effectiveness, such as the higher-rarity Steady Hands skill, I earned the second primary skill which enabled me to create the frame of the item itself, and I received new information from the skill.”
She pointed her pen at him. “The second primary skill is the most important part,” she said. “A class has a higher chance of evolving if it is combined with a class that adds something entirely new to its skillset. To get a new type of class,” she continued. “You need to earn skills that do not fit your first class and have little connection to it. And to gain those skills… you need information. This is how a class evolves, and how it becomes more ‘comprehensive’,” she finished. “I understand both of you don’t need to worry about class rarities.”
Annaliese’s Prophetess class was a Unique System-given class, so it couldn’t be changed, and Sedric’s class was almost as rare as it could be.
They nodded. But Lucy leaned forward and rested her elbows on the bench, looking at them both. “But that doesn’t stop knowledge from being useful. Earning secondary skills that fill the little gaps in your skillsets, finding new ways to apply your abilities, and even unlocking Titles, there are many ways that learning can help you. Especially if you need to do something so outside your class type, that you don’t have a single skill related to it. The System doesn’t block you from testing out the techniques of different classes. Maybe some could be useful to you.”
She leaned back and opened her dimensional pouch at her belt, withdrawing two new fountain pens and some paper, passing the paper and pens to Annaliese and Sedric. They took it with curiosity. “I think that’s enough explaining, so I’ll get you to do something now.”
She got out some paper for herself and after dipping her pen in an inkwell, drew a circle within a larger circle, and then drew some interesting geometric shapes and lines within it.
“I’ll go over what ‘nodes’, ‘frames’ and ‘runes’ are in relation to mana-circles.”
…
“Hmmm…”
“I assure you milady, that supporting my Lord is the better choice. You will not regret your decision if you choose to do so.”
A dark-haired girl was sitting at a lacquered wood desk, pondering over the sheet of paper in her hands with narrowed eyes, if one hadn’t been hidden behind a mask. She was expressionless as she read it, and didn’t seem to even glance at the figure standing before her. Lucille had a guest.
She had been working at the desk for most of the morning until one of the staff members had come in and told her there was someone who wanted to see the Faction Head. This was interesting, as so far, the County’s rumour control and propaganda had been successful, and most ambitious nobles at the Headquarters had come to Vincent to discuss things, believing he was the ‘secret Head’ of the Faction. But she thought she knew who it could be, and she was proven correct when a man wearing a dark blue outfit had confidently strolled into her study after she had allowed him entry.
The man hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, rather revealing that he was a supporter of Arwen Rostov Alichanteu, who happened to be the second heir of Alichanteu, Artair’s 19-year-old younger brother. The long-awaited noble politics has arrived at her doorstep. Long-awaited, because it was Monday, and had well and truly been more than a week since the meeting had occurred. Either this second faction of the Blue County was pretty lazy… or they didn’t manage to sneak in until that day due to the competence of the first faction.
She decided to test her theory. “So, Mr…?”
“Simard Reeves, Milady,” he said, bowing.
She tapped on her chin. “The Chairman of Crystal Swan’s son?”
He gave a wide smile. “I am honoured you have heard of me.”
Lucille flipped through the pages of the proposal he had given her. “Were you first in line for the gem company’s ownership?”
Reeves’ smile stiffened. “Second in line, milady. My elder brother is first for succession.” He clenched his hands at his side.
She didn’t care about his reaction and looked up, observing him with her violet eye. “So, if you wanted to propose this plan, why didn’t your faction try to contact me earlier?”
The man gave the teeniest of grimaces but hid it quickly. Unfortunately, Lucy was easily able to detect it with her perception field and narrowed her eyes. He answered her, “We decided to make our move once there was less scrutiny surrounding you, milady.”
She leaned back in her chair and gazed at him dubiously, although no sign of it was written on her face. So, he was making excuses. That meant something went wrong, and they either were blocked from contacting her or didn’t find out what occurred during the meeting until much later. She was expecting them to contact her at least five days before today.
She tilted her head a bit as she continued staring at the blonde man, long enough that he was beginning to get nervous. If they hadn’t managed to contact her until late, then it could possibly suggest, no matter how equal the two factions appeared to be, that Artair’s force had the upper hand, if only slightly. One of the proposal’s suggestions was for Alichanteu, or more accurately this ‘Arwen faction’ to give her a few subordinates. That was probably because Artair’s supporters had taken advantage of the fact he was the representative to pass responsibility for the preparations of some of her plans to his group’s members, leaving Arwen’s group to feel the need to get her to involve them more deeply in her plans so they wouldn’t be left out, even if not said directly.
That meant Arwen’s faction had to make a more drastic move to come to meet her, and probably lost a hidden piece through this meeting. The Crystal Swan was a large luxury business franchise in the Mystical Realm that sold exquisite gems mined from the company’s gem mines. Luxury goods were quite a valuable factor to be able to control when it came to a merchant Faction’s politics, so the fact this Arwen group has openly revealed that the second son of the Crystal Swan’s chairman was on their side meant Artair’s group was better off because of it just because they now knew that detail. They probably already knew he was on Arwen’s side, but the fact he publicly revealed it could give them some freedom to plot.
Before Reeves could say something to break the tense silence, Lucy closed her eyes and reshuffled the paper, placing them back in a neat pile on her desk. She crossed her arms, a bright smile on her face.
“So, in summary, this proposal of yours is to place your group’s people under my command to ‘balance’ out the responsibility Lord Artair’s group has taken most of the control of. The caveat is that it will be used as a channel to directly contact me, and I will have to indirectly support your faction until this Lord Arwen becomes the new Count. And you’ve come to me, and not my aide, because….?” she asked, an eyebrow raised.
He gave her a solemn nod like he was about to say something Lucy would be deeply interested in. She was not. “Once Lord Arwen becomes the new Count of Alichanteu, we will devote our efforts to helping you break out of the influence of Evisenhardt and the other Counties, becoming a true leader of the Faction,” he stated. “We will swear loyalty to you, as Alichanteu did to the Founder so many years ago. We will be your closest subordinates,” he finished, eagerly trying to gauge her reaction.
Lucy narrowed her eyes again, feeling a bit stunned at the man’s ability to be so thick-skinned. “We will swear loyalty’? Only the Counts ever swore loyalty to the Founder. Is Lord Arwen going to swear loyalty to me when he becomes the Count, or is he going to push this responsibility onto his subordinates?”
Reeves’ expression twitched even as he smiled widely. “Of course, he won’t. He will swear loyalty to the Faction Head himself.”
She cocked her head, incredulous at the shamelessness of this man. By blatantly lying to her, he had just unknowingly revealed that this Lord Arwen had plans to use her and then discard her once he became Count. Maybe it wasn’t the boy himself who had come up with the idea, but if he didn’t know about it, he was no better than a puppet ruler. Plus, the man had said ‘Faction Head’ and not you or Milady, so there might also be plans to institute a new Faction Head as well. She didn’t have any doubts that plenty of the County vassals without a clear understanding of the relationship between her and the Counts were becoming ambitious, but this was just ridiculous.
She abruptly stood up, startling the man, and picked up the proposal on her desk. She walked over to her study’s window, looking down at the gardens below. She didn’t turn around as she spoke. “Is this some ruse to test me, or are you really this ignorant?” she demanded.
Simard Reeves blinked, slightly flustered by the unexpected question. “Could you please clarify what you mean, milady?”
She turned around to gaze at him with a wide smile like her earlier sentence hadn’t existed. “Firstly, not once have you referred to me as the Faction Head this entire conversation. I will ignore it this instance, but know if your attitude is not rectified I will have to assume you are representing the stance of your young master,” she stated, not calling him a ‘Lord’ anymore.
The man gave an unsightly grimace and gave her a bow, this one lower and with more respect than the one before. “Yes, Faction Head.”
She flicked the proposal in her hand. “Secondly, I have no intentions of accepting this,” she told him. His eyes widened and he opened his mouth to persuade her again, but she firmly shook her head, holding out a hand to stop him. “Not just because of the fact you have heavily implied for this entire time that I am only to be used as a tool and then disposed of once my usefulness has faded.”
He paled, appearing panicked, but Lucille continued. “No, I have zero intentions of getting involved in the Alichanteu’s succession conflict. At all,” she stated with finality. “I believe you need to analyse your information again because the responsibility of choosing people for the positions of those plans lies with me," she said, her smile widening.
She pointed at the steadily growing more anxious man. “Thirdly,” she continued, looking at him oddly. “Becoming a puppet leader was my suggestion. Your information sources must be badly compromised if your master has come to such a ridiculous conclusion as to try to help me ‘escape’ what I decided on. Is this ‘Lord’ Arwen planning on going against the Faction Head’s decisions?” she asked him sweetly.
The man nervously shook his head, the realisation that things were going very, very wrong for him and his faction beginning to dawn. Lucille held out the proposal to him. “Take this back, and tell your faction to not ever try something like this again. It’s embarrassing for both of us.”
He hesitantly took back the papers, his expression looking complicated and a bit angry. She eyed him for a moment before letting out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Look,” she said, gesturing to him with a hand. “This isn’t me just insulting your lord.”
He gave her a dubious look. She put her hands behind her back as she gazed out the window. “I am doing your faction a favour,” she stated, ignoring the man’s sceptical expression behind her. “Do you think that if any other member of the Counties were in my position that they would’ve elected to just ignore the many insults sent my way?”
Reeves’ face paled again as he remembered what she had said earlier, but Lucille continued. “Instead of supporting your rival faction due to your attitude, I have shown you that you have been fed misinformation which caused your faction to have to reveal their association with the chairman of Crystal Swan’s second heir, told you about my stance on the Alichanteu succession struggle, and directly informed you of my fake status as a puppet leader of the Commission,” she said, turning around. She put a cheery smile on her face.
“If your faction had decided to come and directly express their misgivings about the assignment of responsibility with the plans, then I would’ve accepted having a proper discussion about this," she said, her smile very fake. “But you people did not. Instead, you tried to use a vulgar little ploy to play ‘subordinates’, scheming to obtain the Faction Head position.”
The man grimaced, giving her a nod in acknowledgement.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “I suggest you leave, but beforehand, listen to one last message from me to your faction. If the Alichanteu’s succession conflict escalates to the extent that the Commission’s neutrality stance is threatened…” she stated with a smirk. “Then I have no hesitations in taking away Alichanteu’s power until the situation has been resolved. Bring back my words, Simard Reeves. You may go.”
And with that, she returned to looking out the window.
The man hesitated, wondering what to do, before awkwardly bowing to Lucille’s back, and then turning around. He went to open the study’s door, before freezing when he saw Vincent standing in front of him. The silver-haired man tilted his head to see around the tall pile of paper he had in his arms, and smiled politely, giving Reeves a nod.
Reeves blanched and gave Vincent a polite nod in return, before hastily walking away from the study as much as the term ‘walking’ allowed without being an outright jog. Vincent cocked an eyebrow at the man’s reaction, but entered the study and placed the pile on a nearby table. Lucy looked over her shoulder at the noise.
“That was…?” Vincent asked.
Lucille gave him a dismissive wave, turning back to the window. “Who else? It was finally Arwen Alichanteu’s subordinate. He was the second son of the Crystal Swan’s chairman.”
“Ah.” He nodded. “So, what wonderful proposal did he suggest?”
Lucy turned around with a scowl on her face, walking over to one of the two armchairs in her study, and flopping down on it. “I found out some people are greater idiots than I believed possible,” she replied.
Vincent sat down in the opposite armchair as she told him what she had just experienced. He looked almost as incredulous as she had felt by the time she was finished.
“I fear for the future of Alichanteu if their second heir was so misinformed as to suggest that,” he said, shifting his half-moon glasses. “Although, that brings up another strange fact I have discovered about them,” he added, frowning slightly. “When I checked who the people on your list were, I discovered that more of Olden’s spies had connections to Alichanteu than they did to the other Counties.”
Lucille, who had been gazing at the ground in thought, looked up in surprise. “Has this been a known trend or a more recent thing?” she asked, feeling suspicious.
He shook his head. “Definitely a more recent trend. The employment of most of these spies dates back to just before the succession issues began before the Count retreated from the public eye. I don’t think many were employed past five years ago,” he said.
Lucy covered her mouth with a hand, thinking. “Is it a barely noticeable quantity compared to the other Counties?”
“No. At least two-thirds were related to Alichanteu and their vassals,” he responded.
She frowned and held her chin. “Some central Empire noble seems to be using Alichanteu as their playing field. I have to wonder what they are doing if they’re trying to get involved with the neutral Aurelian Commission, and just how far they intend to spread their influence.” She looked up. “Once we discuss this with Count Ravimoux, I think we need to ask the Counts to double-check just who they are employing. Especially who their heirs have been employing. They’re the best targets to infiltrate the centre of the Faction.”
He nodded along, mentally jotting it down so he wouldn’t forget. Then he realised he had heard something suspicious. “Once we discuss this with Count Ravimoux?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.