On the other side of this portal was a room that was simultaneously very similar, and very different to the one we had just left. Like the duke’s office, there was a low table surrounded by couches, and the walls were lined with bookshelves, but this room felt much cozier. The couches were larger, and looked much softer, and the decorations, at least to me, looked much more inviting.
Everything in the duke’s office had screamed “royalty.” All the furniture was in a style similar to Louis XIV, but even more so, with so many extravagant carvings and gildings that it was hard to focus on any of them, and the whole piece looked cluttered and overdone. In contrast, the furniture in the new room was very simple. The couches were plain leather, and the table was just dark wood, with a slightly glossy finish.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“I believe we are in my daughter’s house,” said Anatoly.
“Well, she’s got a better sense of style than that asshole,” I said, nodding back at the portal.
“I agree,” said Anatoly, smiling. Sylvia didn’t react, and stared blankly down at her feet.
We stood in front of the entrance to the portal in silence for another minute before Natalya finally emerged and the portal closed behind her.
“Ah, that was fun,” she said, grinning widely.
“What were you doing there?” I asked.
“Oh, I was just giving little Lou-Lou a warning. You don’t have to worry about him coming after you now. Not publicly anyway. He might still try sending assassins though. I recommend you cancel your plans to run away and stay near me for a while, or else you might die.” She smiled at me and winked.
“How did you manage to do that?” I asked, ignoring her provocation.
“Oh, I just gave him a little reminder of who I am. He may be a duke, but I’m an immortal archmage who also recently defeated a Demon King, and currently has the Church of Order on my side. If he tried to have you arrested, or made any public claims about you assaulting him, and I said otherwise, the people would believe me, not him.”
“I see…” I said.
There was a moment of awkward silence until Sylvia, who was still staring blankly at the ground, spoke.
“Why…” she muttered.
“Why what?” I asked.
“Why…” She suddenly looked up at me and I was surprised to see an expression of anger on her face. “Why did you do that?!” she shouted.
“What?” I said, bewildered.
“You- why did you do that to my father?!”
“Because he was being a dick,” I said. “Why are you mad about it? He was insulting you too.”
“You ruined everything!” she shouted with angry tears running down her cheek.
“I didn’t ruin anything. That was your idiot dad, not me.” I was confused. Why would she be angry about what I had done? Shouldn’t she be angry at her father.
“Why couldn’t you have just taken the deal?! You would have been a Lion in no time! You would have had everything I promised and then some. But now everything’s ruined! It’s all your fault!”
“What?” I said, my own anger rising. “How the hell is any of that my fault? The duke is the one that was being an asshole. And you’re not innocent either. You way over-promised! You should have told me what the actual conditions were, instead of promising me everything right from the start!”
“I would have, but you never gave me time to talk! You just kept rejecting me, over and over again before I even had time to give you any of the details!”
“Then why didn’t you talk to me about them before we left? It’s not like there was a time limit! We could have taken an extra day to talk everything over!”
“Well, I’m sorry!” said Sylvia, sarcastically. “I thought you were reasonable, and would be able to work out the details with my father. But noooo, you just had to jump straight to arguing for the most benefits possible and force the deal to fall through! If you were more polite, and used the elves properly, you could have negotiated for more, but you didn’t! You were rude, and now-”
“Excuse me, I was the rude one?” I said incredulously. “He couldn’t even remember his own daughter’s name!”
“But he would have!” A teardrop fell from her chin onto the hardwood floor. “He would have, if you didn’t mess it all up! I’m the 40th of his 43 children! 43! Do you know how hard it is to stand out? I don’t have any talent in mana like Avril, I can’t use aura like Remi, I’m not beautiful like Ophelia, I can’t sing, I can’t play any instruments, my writing is mediocre, my art is terrible, I’m no good at socializing, I don’t understand politics, I’m not smart enough to be a scholar! This was my only chance to do something to earn his recognition, and you ruined it!”
The room was silent, aside from the sound of her heavy breathing. Natalya’s smile had vanished, and Anatoly was looking at Sylvia with a frown and a deep sadness in his eyes.
“Well then, why are you trying to impress him at all,” I said, breaking the silence.
“Lucy!” said Anatoly sharply, as Natalya gasped. Sylvia stared at me with an expression that I could not fully describe
“Why do you care so much about impressing a guy like that?” I continued, ignoring the elves. “Even if the deal did go through, what then? He’s not going to magically start caring about you. He might congratulate you for recruiting a future archmage, and for convincing Anatoly to do whatever you needed him to do. He might even remember your name for a little while, but then what? He’s not going to just magically start loving you because you did this one thing.”
“That’s enough, Lucy,” said Anatoly as Sylvia collapsed to the ground and began sobbing.
I felt a firm hand on my shoulder start to pull me backwards, and turned to see Natalya looking at me with an uncharacteristically serious expression.
“Come with me,” she said, and started steering me towards the door behind me.
I resisted at first, but seeing Sylvia crying and Anatoly crouched down trying to comfort her, I realized I didn’t really have any reason to stay. I let Natalya lead me out of the room, and then down a hallway to another room that looked like a kitchen. Once there, she stopped and turned around and started staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
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She sighed. “You don’t feel bad about that at all, do you,” she said.
“Of course not. Why? Should I?” I said.
“Yes. You should.”
“Why? She’s the one that started yelling at me. Should I have just let her?””
“That probably would have been better. She’s just gone through a terrible experience. She’s feeling like it’s the end of the world. And what you did was essentially kicking her while she was down.”
“I just told her the truth,” I said defiantly. “She needed to realize that her father wasn’t someone worth investing so much time and effort into impressing.”
“That may be true, but you should not have done it the way you did. Not when she was in that state of mind.”
I didn’t respond, and just glared at her. I don’t know what she expected me to have done in that situation. It’s not like I could just ignore someone yelling at my face. And it shouldn’t really matter when I said what I said to her. If she couldn’t understand good advice just because she was angry, then that was her loss.
“You should apologize to her once she’s calmed down a bit,” said Natalya.
“For what?” I asked. “Telling the truth? Giving her some good advice? Not letting her shout at me?”
“You let your emotions get the best of you. Even if you don’t think you did anything wrong-”
“I didn’t.”
“-you should still apologize. It would make her feel better.”
“No.” I said. “Why should I apologize when I haven’t done anything wrong?”
Natalya stared at me for a few seconds, then sighed again. “Nevermind. If you can’t understand the situation, then there’s no point in trying to convince you. Let’s move on from this topic.”
“I understand the situation perfectly fine,” I protested. “What I don’t understand is why you seem to think I was in the wrong here.”
“I never said you were,” she said. “I was just trying to say that it would make her feel better if you apologized.”
“I’m not apologizing.”
“I know. So it doesn’t matter anymore. Let’s discuss your training instead.”
“Fine.”
“My dad probably already told you, but this is my house. I have my own private training grounds here, and while they’re not quite as impressive as the duke’s, they’ll suit your needs just fine. We won’t do any serious training tonight, because unlike you, I need to eat and sleep, but tomorrow, I’m going to start you on a full-time training course that I prepared just for you.”
“What kind of training course is it?”
At that, Natalya finally started smiling again. “Oh, it’s a fun one. I’m going to make full use of the fact that you don’t sleep to maximize the efficiency of your leveling. You’ll be an archmage in no time. 5 years or less, depending on how talented you actually are.”
“Less,” I said.
“I like your confidence,” she said grinning. “I was there when you showed Yona your abilities, and though you obviously didn’t show her everything, I still got a pretty good idea of your current level. I’ll start by shoring up some of your weaknesses, and getting all your elements up to a similar level, and then we’ll start power-leveling. The duke will make it difficult, but I’ll get you into some Dungeons periodically so that you can earn some experience and practice your skills in actual combat scenarios.
“I’ll also take you along when I attend to my regular duties, so you can see how an archmage handles non-combat situations. I might even bring you on some of my combat missions, if you’re strong enough, and I can trust you not to do anything dumb.”
“What exactly is an archmage, anyways?” I asked. “Is it just any mage who can use all 6 elements well?”
“Pretty much,” she said. “For that reason, most elves are archmages, though few of them are true archmages. Anyone can technically become an archmage if they have enough time and they get all their elemental skill levels up high enough. Only true archmages like me, and in a few years you, actually have affinities for all 6 elements though.”
“I see,” I said. “What should I do tonight before we start training, then?”
“You can train in the training grounds if you’d like. I’ll show you where they are in a minute. Or, you can go explore the city. I’d recommend doing that, since you won’t have much time to do that once the training starts.”
“Ok… And what if I run away while you’re asleep.”
“Ah, I’m glad you asked.”
She suddenly became a blur, and before I had time to react, she was directly in front of me, pressing her palm on my stomach. I felt mana enter my body through her hand, and leapt backwards. I tried to feel what she had done, but the mana signature had already disappeared.
“Was that a tracking skill?” I asked.
“Yup!” she said happily as she backed up and started leaning on the kitchen counter.
I continued searching for it using [Mana Sense], but was unable to find it.
“You won’t be able to find it. Not at your level. And if you do, you won’t be able to remove it.”
“What the hell?” I said indignantly.
“Hey, it’s better than being arrested, right? Don’t forget that I still haven’t cleared you of my suspicion of you being a Demon King.” I glared at her, but she waved it off. “Hey, don’t be too mad. By the time you’re done with my training program, you’ll be able to get rid of that no problem. And if you make it that far, then that means that I didn’t kill you, which means that I probably don’t think you’re a Demon King anymore. It’s not gonna hurt you or anything.”
“Whatever,” I said.
I didn’t like it, but I would have to accept it. Despite the care I thought I took not to stand out too much while I was still weak, I had been careless, and caught the attention of one of the most dangerous people in the world to me. This was by far the best outcome that could have resulted from that mistake.
“Well, I’m gonna grab some food,” said Natalya, turning around and walking towards one of the cabinets. “I’d offer you some, but you don’t eat. Feel free to explore the house. Anything off limits is already locked, except the library, which is where Dad and Sylvia are, but you probably already know not to go in there. You can get to the training grounds by going down that hallway and taking the last left.” She pointed to a hallway to my left while grabbing a loaf of bread from a cabinet. “Or you can get outside to explore the city by going that way.” She pointed to a set of doors on the opposite wall from the hallway leading back to the library.
“...thanks,” I said as she started digging around in another cabinet.
I spent a few minutes exploring the house, but didn’t find anything interesting. I would have liked to check out the books in the library, but Sylvia and Anatoly still had not emerged, so I couldn’t really do that.
I took Natalya’s advice and decided to explore the city with my remaining time that night. Aside from its size, Claude was not too different from Bizet. The streets were the same cobbled stone, the houses were all the same, boring wooden style, and since it was nighttime in the middle of winter, there was no one on the streets to make things interesting.
I did notice a few impressive buildings though, and decided to make finding more of them the objective in my exploration. I saw the Lyon castle again, but from a much greater distance, as well as an even larger castle that I assumed must have belonged to the king. I also saw an enormous cathedral that belonged to the Church of Order. I didn’t get too close to this one, but using [Enhanced Senses], I was able to get a good look at the intricacies of the structure. It reminded me a little bit of La Sagrada Familia cathedral back on Earth, with its huge towers and satisfying geometric patterns.
I spent the entire night walking around Claude, only heading back when the sky started to turn gray, indicating the imminent sunrise. I got back to Natalya’s mansion just as the sun crested the horizon. Natalya seemed to have already keyed her house’s security system into my identity, because the doors opened automatically before I even had time to realize I had forgotten to ask for a house key.
No one else seemed to be awake yet, so I decided that this would probably be the best time to go explore Natalya’s library, since Anatoly and Sylvia would be gone by then. Unfortunately, that assumption was incorrect. When I opened the door, I saw Sylvia sleeping on the couch, still in the dress she had been wearing the previous night, though her fur coat was now spread over her like a blanket. Anatoly was sleeping in an armchair nearby. Neither noticed my arrival, so I closed the door as quietly as I could, and snuck back down the hall.
With the library still off limits, I decided that I should instead check out the training grounds. Although Natalya had said that they would suit my needs, and also explained that she was training me to be an archmage, I still did not fully understand how large the training grounds would be, and I was momentarily awestruck when I went outside. Most of the area was open space, so wide that I could barely see the fence on the other side, but on the side closest to the house, there was a large shed full of every weapon imaginable, both in steel and wood, as well as a large assortment of training dummies with monster cores larger than any I had ever seen in their centers to serve as power sources.
After a couple hours of messing around with the different weapons and dummies, I suddenly dropped the sword I was playing with as I felt a small amount of mana began to well up in my abdomen. I panicked for a second until I remembered the tracking spell that Natalya had planted in me. I steeled myself for what was coming, and looked towards the mansion patiently until I finally heard my new master’s voice.
“Gooood moorniiiing, Lucy!” she shouted as she floated out a window on the second floor of her house and down towards me. When she reached the ground in front of me, she put her hands on her hips and looked down at me, smiling. “So, are you ready to start?”