Chapter 342 - Debts and Dues VI

Virillius pressed a hand to his brow and lightly massaged his temples as he shifted a report from one pile to another. He was so tired that he fantasized about abandoning his post and feigning illness in bed, but he knew that such tactics would bring no long-term relief. The fault lay with their system of government. While other countries allowed officials to finalize policies relevant to their areas of expertise, Cadria placed its trust in the crown alone. Virillius was the only person authorized to make decisions whose influence directly crossed provincial lines.

He had assumed that learning more about the various topics would bolster his ability to understand them, only to discover, upon scrutinizing the associated material, that he had wandered down a rabbit hole and a half. Understanding his people’s arguments only made it more difficult to decipher the bills and their intentions. The nobility was a mess of landmines that even the lightest step could trigger; he pined for the time when he was just a simple duke. Alas, said time had passed. He had no choice but to begrudgingly return to his work.

The king read through a report concerning the overuse of the Aniere River, a bill arguing for increased taxes on weaponry, and a proposal for a law that expanded protections for patents and trademarks before dropping his stamp and pressing his hands against his temples. The next document in the pile was one of Ephesus’ updates. That, in and of itself, was no source of trouble, but the contents filled the cervitaur’s mind with pain. The mad goat was entirely convinced that the nameless, horned knight (read: his daughter) was in fact his brother. His report was ten pages long and was mainly comprised of further analysis that detailed the similarities between her mana and his own.

His team was clearly putting in a lot of work, but their conclusion was wrong and their efforts were wasted. He would have liked Ephesus to direct his labour elsewhere, but he was unable to come up with a suitable excuse. He surely would have asked for the analysis had he suspected his brother’s intervention.

He was not explicitly covering Claire’s tracks. Benefiting his daughter was simply a side effect that came with his perfect facade; he needed the fake—Rubia, as they called her—to play her part for as long as she could.

Though he wanted to leave the scheming goat to his misguided machinations, Ephesus’ fervour was starting to get out of hand. He was piling resource after resource into “Constantius’” elimination, and he was sure to complain upon discovering that the king had the truth all along. Of course, Virillius could have simply played dumb, but he did not believe Ephesus enough of a fool to fall for the act; his only choice was to prepare adequate compensation and pray that it tempered the marquis’ anger. Fortunately, it seemed that Ephesus was not bearing the burden by himself, given that he had managed to sic Pollux’s army upon his foe.

It was a mystery as to how the goat had even convinced the dead centaur’s men to sortie. Virillius had gone out of his way to instate one of Pollux’s less respected and loyal retainers as the new marquis, and yet, the territory had moved its forces in a bid for revenge regardless. It simply didn’t make sense.

Just like the enigma that had silently entered his office.

He had known that she was coming. He had detected her as she had possessed the doll and followed her through the castle as she made her way towards him. Her ability to possess the fake’s body was one that had always thoroughly confused him. He suspected it had something to do with the strange magic that she so often employed, but it was difficult to say for certain.

She was unwilling to make use of its features, but having forced it out of her often enough, he had arrived at the conclusion that it was gravity-adjacent. Gravity magic was already considered an impossibly rare advancement. It was a branch of earth magic that had an abysmally small chance of appearing in place of a traditional evolution. Because it was so powerful, the unique school was highly coveted; scholars throughout history had invested an inordinate amount of time into identifying its method of acquisition, and they had eventually narrowed it down to an unfortunate truth.

Like coloured magic, necromancy, and many other elusive abilities, it was reserved for the innately compatible.

“Good evening, Claire.”

“Good evening, Father.”

“What is it this time?”

He wouldn’t have been all that surprised if she had an even more advanced version of the class that required a specific attunement. Everyone had some potential or other, hidden deep inside. Finding that something simply came down to the luck of the draw.

“I don’t mind leaving, if you think I’m a nuisance.”

“You know that isn’t what I meant,” he said. “You’d never come to me without reason.”

“Because I hate you.”

“I’m well aware.” Not even the slightest bit fazed, he answered with his usual icy look.

There was a brief pause, but Claire soon broke the silence. “When can you step away? For training.”

Virillius briefly glanced at the report on his desk. The request almost seemed too perfectly timed for it to be anything but planned, but he dismissed the absurd conjecture as soon as it came to mind. She couldn’t have possibly known. The paper had just been placed on his desk that morning, and the scenario was too outlandish to have been predicted. He almost wanted to laugh at himself for even considering it.

Evidently, he was in need of a break.

“Now is fine.”

“Okay.”

She vacated the fake’s body and returned in her own after a brief delay. She was accompanied by her usual escort, as well as one of Vella’s spawn. While the spider walked on its own legs, the demon was sitting on her head as always, its eyes more curious than guarded.

Her advent, of course, was followed by the usual ceremony. Rubia exchanged hugs with Claire and the demon before vanishing alongside the latter. The trick had worked wonders on the western marquis’ men, but in the royal house, it was a petty disguise. Virillius knew that his agents could see through it, and the demon seemed to be aware as well. The only reason no one said anything was because the king’s guards believed that he was effectively invulnerable.

Having visited nearly two dozen times already, Claire already knew exactly where to go. Dressed in a fresh suit of armour—a dark red suit that featured a lizard-like motif—she led them to one of the private courtyards where they could conduct their business.

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She grabbed one of the glaives from the nearby rack, took up the usual pose, and prepared to go through her forms, but Virillius stopped her before she could.

“Do the forms in your own time. You’ve learned them well enough,” he said. There wasn’t any time for them to waste on rudimentary refinement, not with Ephesus’ schemes as they were. “Today’s lesson will differ from the usual fare.” Rather than grabbing a copy of her weapon, he reached for an extra large shieldlance, tailor-made for a moose of his size. “Your goal is simple. Survive.”

He flew through the courtyard as the words left his mouth. Propelled by wings of blood, he closed the distance so quickly that she was unable to react. Though his weapon was made of wood, he would have lopped her head clean off if he hadn’t slowed the blade the moment it touched her. The violent strike became a light tap with just enough force to break through her armour and damage the tissue within.

“One,” he said.

Shooting him a look of irritation, she immediately righted her crumpled posture and thrust her weapon toward his midsection, but he repelled it with a flick of his own and tapped her over the head again.

“Two.”

She, of course, jumped into another assault. It was almost endearing, how she struggled. Staring at his eyes, she predicted his third attack. But while her weapon certainly moved to guard her flank, it was too slow to close the distance. There was another light hit, followed by another failed attack, and yet another slow guard.

“Three.”

Of course, it was all by design. Having already determined her maximum speed, Virillius operated just a little bit beyond it. Over and over he struck, shaving off just enough of her health that she would feel like she was in danger. He could see it through her eyes.

Her mind was being put to work.

She was trying to learn, trying to adapt. She really was just like him. Her abilities, her classes, and even her uninstructed approach. It felt like he was looking into a mirror that reflected the distant past.

The feeling only grew stronger when the shape of her body changed. Perhaps having realized that she was too slow to use her stature, she sprouted a centaurian lower body and another pair of legs to match. Her particulars were somewhat abnormal. Like her hands, her front legs were more bird-like than centaurian, featuring sharp claws ready to gouge at his flesh.

Her speed itself was unaffected, but the added weight of her body allowed her to take his attacks without being knocked off balance. That in turn led to quicker reactions. She nearly parried his thirtieth strike. It would have been a perfect block had he not further bolstered his speed.

It didn’t show on her face, but he could tell that her frustration was building. Each subsequent parry was even faster and more careless than the last. One was so far off angle that it was unable to catch the attack. Or at least that was what he thought until he suddenly felt his arm pushed up by a mysterious force. He could have easily suppressed it, but curious, he allowed the ability to raise his lance and perfectly line it up with her blade.

Virillius had to fight back the urge to chuckle. It was the most amusing thing. She was so caught up in meeting his weapon that she had ignored the opportunity to counter; she could have displaced his hand in another direction whilst retaliating with a strike of her own. But she was too smug to care. He could see it through the rebellious look that radiated through her eyes.

Of course, he was not so foolish as to allow her celebration. Moving just one front leg, he kicked her in the chest. His jagged hoof cleaved right through her armour and dug into her solar plexus. But interestingly enough, she was not the only one to bleed.

A strange, freezing blade dug into his fur and tore at his flesh. When he pulled his foot away, he found his wound half-frozen. There were bits of ice lodged between his toes, tiny shards that only gouged his feet when he tried to crush them.

True ice.

A chuckle escaped his lips. He couldn’t stop it from inching its way up his throat. A deep, disquieting laugh.

He had known that she could use it. Her access to divinity made that immediately clear. But he hadn’t thought that she had an elemental power source buried right into her body. And the lack of side effects meant she had clearly acclimated to it already.

Deciding to test the extent of its assimilation, he knocked away the blade that was aimed at his throat and drew a string of blood from his open wound. By tracing his fingers through the air, he ordered the crimson fluid to move like a whip, to race towards her flank at a speed that made it impossible to evade. He was confident that he had given her enough time to react. But perhaps because she was so thick-headed, or perhaps because her ice magic was slower to cast, she pressed on with the intent of giving up a limb.

By all means, that should have been the end result. His whip was driven straight through her upper arm. But upon making contact, he found that it stuck on something that couldn’t be cut. He would have accepted it if it was her armour. The outfit’s physical defence was minimal at best, and he wouldn’t have been too surprised if it was more magically inclined. But it was not her armour. His whip ate right through the metal and dug through her flesh. So what then was the thing that stopped him? The answer was clear, even though he had only time for the briefest of glances.

It was a bone. A blue bone that shared the same translucent nature as the blade in her chest.

Again, the cervitaur laughed. He almost couldn’t believe it, so he attacked again just to be sure. Faster. Faster than she could see. Faster than she could take a step. In that tiny fraction of a second, he struck a dozen times and confirmed everything he saw. Her hips were the same. Her legs were the same. Her ribs were the same. Her skull was the same. Every bone in his daughter’s body had been replaced with an identical structure made out of true ice. The only way to remove her limbs was to saw perfectly between her joints before she could react and redirect the action off course.

She must have had the ability to manipulate it as well.

He was convinced. There was no doubt in his mind. So drawing even more blood from his wound, he crafted a crimson torrent—a tidal wave that could not be dodged—and crashed it down upon her.

She barely reacted in time. Stopping her charge, she threw up a spherical shield and endured the bloody downpour. It continued to hold as he swirled the blood around and transformed it into a vortex of tiny cutting blades. Unsurprisingly, the shield even continued to endure when he mingled his divinity into the whirlpool’s composition.

He stopped his attack and cocked a brow when it suddenly shattered nearly a dozen seconds earlier than his calculations foretold. But a look at his daughter revealed the reason. There was something terribly wrong with her magical circuitry. The supposed pathways were glowing under her skin, visible in a way that they should have never been, lest they were subject to extreme duress. And that wasn’t all. They weren’t just visible. They were visibly damaged.

There were hundreds of tiny breakages scattered all over her body, and the seemingly unbroken pieces suffered from a variety of different maladies. Some had issues with energy transportation and leaked mana into the surrounding flesh. Some had clogs and unwanted dilations, leading to an uneven flow. And others yet were simply distorted, twisted completely out of shape and haphazardly rearranged.

It came as no surprise that she nearly collapsed from the magical exertion. Her legs shook, even as she stabbed her sword into the ground and heaped most of her weight on top of it. Her mana was leaking into her muscles and disrupting their function, perhaps even ripping them apart whilst engraving their fibres with formulae. It was a nasty condition. He had no clue when exactly she had gotten it, but he doubted that it would be going away for the foreseeable future.

Shaking his head, he lowered his weapon and retrieved his blood. As it couldn’t quite go back into his veins, given that it was already contaminated and replaced, he compressed it into a tiny orb and captured it in one of the capsules that always hung from his waist.

“I would have arrived at a different solution if you informed me of your condition,” he said. “Go rest. Come back once your body has recovered.”

Claire narrowed her eyes. “You have a solution? To this?”

“No.” He paused briefly before speaking a line that, for some inexplicable reason, visibly got under his daughter’s skin. “But I do have a plan.”