It could not be excused, and yet it had happened. It was important to find the Core of a Visitor, otherwise they couldn't be attacked with certain results.
A Visitor was, in a way, a wandering soul with some human Life Force. They accumulated energy and produced new energy, as far as humanity had understood.
Each individual Visitor had a spot on its body where it came together, like a seam. It was often found a bit off their center, in the chest, head, or lower abdomen, where they could protect it. Hitting that suture would cause the whole Visitor to fall apart.
But to feel that clot of energy from a distance, to pinpoint where it was coming from, was something a novice couldn't hope to do. She was preoccupied with her bow and the fact that she couldn't naturally draw it as she was now.
But no matter how much she told herself that it had been inevitable for her to miss the Phantom's existence, she came to the same conclusion: it was inexcusable.
In front of her, it slammed through the iron fence and waltzed over one of the individual walls. It simply tore it from the two posts it was attached to. The piece of metal was bent, but still flat enough for the Visitor to walk over, just the few inches it could lift itself above the ground to get around the flimsy blessing as it was.
The holy ground was spotty at best as it stepped over the metal and inched closer to the person it could reach, as opposed to the girl high up on the fence.
Time seemed to stand still as Rowena made her calculations, fumbling with another knife she had tied to her bloomers. She had thought she would be able to pick up a new branch after shooting the first one down, but now her advantageous position was all she had, and she was out of ammunition.
Lucan stood in front of it, a sword he had borrowed from a guard before returning strapped to his hip. He drew it on instinct, completely overwhelmed by the situation.
It looked like a person, but why did it keep disappearing? It was called a Phantom, but this was not why it was called that.
It must have started using its unique ability. Invisibility? At that moment, his sword sliced through the air, forming an arc with clean precision.
But instead of cutting flesh, it simply cut empty space. What was its ability?
He felt something out of place and swung around. With a clatter, his sword parried a claw that came at him. How did it get there so fast?
He leapt back about two feet, trying to increase his distance, but it was already in his face the moment his foot touched ground again.
It was as if it hadn't moved at all. That's when Rowena understood. It hadn't just become invisible.
Hopping down the fence, she grabbed a new branch by the wayside, hacked a nock into it, and secured the knife to the tip. She needed to make it as quick and stable as possible.
As he did his best to defend, unable to connect any of his blows unless they were meant to be defensive, Lucan's eyes wandered and made contact with Rowena's. The look in her eyes should have reassured him, but instead it made him feel uneasy. She wouldn't just rush into the fight, would she?
"His Core," was all she said.
Knowing already that he had to aim for the Core, he hastily pondered what she was trying to say when his head suddenly spun from a flurry of attacks. He had already found the Core at the beginning of their fight, but he hadn't been able to pierce it.
"The throat," he yelled between blows, "it's in the throat." He finally understood what she was trying to do.
He saw her drawing the heavy string of that very outlandish looking bow with an arrow that couldn't be more absurd. How would that even fly in a straight line?
But it did, at least for a short distance, when the initial force was enough to drive it through the air like a harpune through water. It went about three hundred and ninety feet per second, so it wasn't lacking in that respect.
She trusted her aim and her experience, even though she knew it would end badly if she was off by the slightest. As she steadied herself, she waited for the perfect opportunity.
The moment it jumped, it looked as if it vanished into a wormhole and showed up a few feet away just a beat later.
But as it was, it was still a Phantom, with little to no experience with these abilities. So they had that one thing working for them when Lucan blocked again, this time with the Visitor in Rowena's line of sight, its back to her, neck wide open. She let her Mana flow into the silverware as she felt the strain on her.
This body was in no way, shape or form ready for that kind of workout. It was different when a Numbered attached itself to a person and expanded their physical horizons, but she couldn't do much beyond what she had already done. If this attempt failed, she would be done for.
One step closer. She let go of the string, her heart stopping for a solid second as she held her breath and yelled before shooting: "Duck!"
He had seen it coming, of course, but he felt frozen as the tinkered arrow flew at him with unprecedented speed. Her scream had jolted him awake, and he threw himself to the ground, somehow scraping his shoulder on the claw he had been fending off before.
The moment he lowered his head, a reinforced butter knife pierced his enemy's neck and inched into his space. His heart raced, pounding on his ribcage like a jackhammer as he rolled on the floor to avoid the falling Phantom.
'Well, that was… uncoordinated much?' How did they survive at all? She couldn't say.
But as her breathing returned to normal, so did her tunnelling vision. She hadn't even noticed how narrow her field of view had been, focusing on this one adversary.
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That was something she just realized was a mistake, as Lucan, still watching the Grade 3 turn to ash, looked up at her and turned even paler than he already was.
"Run!" he shouted at her, but it was too late.
As she turned, something was aimed at her skull. A step back, she stumbled, fell flat on her backside, and froze as she felt something had lightly scrape the bridge of her nose.
'Oh fuck, I'm done.' That was her last thought as she looked at a Grade 2, no less. This was it for her.
With an ugly sound, accompanied by a scream that made her squeeze her lids shut for a second, a blade was driven through the Grade 2's head. Its needle-like teeth stood freely, its mouth agape as if it couldn't understand what had happened, as the tip of a sword grew out of the back of its throat. Rowena, who had looked back up again, watched this with wide eyes.
It fell at her feet, and her eyes followed the movement. "What do you think you are doing?"
She knew the voice definitely, but it sounded too dark; so eerie, so absolutely unwelcoming to any kind of life, that her instincts told her it was the devil speaking. Nevertheless, when she looked up, in spite of herself, it was merely her brother after all.
He looked down at her, his cold gaze could have had the power to cause frostbite on her soul at that moment, so she simply countered with a smile. "First brother, there you are."
For a moment, he kept staring down. "Yes," he finally replied, "there I am."
'Yeah, I'm definitely fucked now. I should've let the Visitor have me.'
As she was pulled up by her brother, who began to brush dirt and dust off her dress, then grabbed her chin to look at the small scratch on her nose, one might have thought he was doing all this rather roughly.
To her surprise, however, as firm as he was, he was also gentle, and she didn't feel an ounce of pain or discomfort.
While he started yapping at her, something about how stupid she must be and why she hadn't run away already, she faintly noticed the guards rushing over to Lucan on the ground. His scratch was a touch deeper than hers, and certainly more worthy of attention.
"Your Highness," one of the knights in armor had called out, then ran past Rowena to get to "Mr. Noble," who was still fraternizing with the dirt.
Alan didn't seem to mind any of this, though, as he was still focused on Rowena, holding her by both of her small shoulders, keeping her close to him to make her listen. Which didn't end in success, because being yelled at was something she had gotten far too used to while working for VAULT.
"I wasn't even inside, young lord. It's okay for you to go in, but I can't even be outside waiting?"
"Yes, you are half a meter shorter than me and not even heavy enough to block a door in a storm."
'Well, I'm not a sandbag, after all?' she thought, wondering what had just happened, 'Am I really getting chewed out right now? We haven't even left the entrance of the mine yet.'
For the first time in the last few minutes, she actually looked up and met his gaze. She was taken aback, not by the cold veneer still on them, but by the reality of what lay beneath that coldness. She recognized the emotion, for it made up a large part of her life: Fear.
She had seen fear in the Grand Duke's eyes before, but this was different. There was fear, but there was also concern. He was stressed, as far as she could tell, though her readings of people's emotions always had to be taken with a grain of salt.
"I'm sorry, I won't do it again, First Brother."
He opened his mouth a few times after that, but never said anything else, instead he yelled at everyone and their grandmothers that they should get a priest with some skill or he would go and destroy a church over it.
Of course, he only said that. At least that was what everyone from the Arlen envoy chose to believe.
"So, you are of the opinion that the salt had that effect on them?" This time, it was the Emperor himself who spoke. It was that big a deal.
Everyone listened intently, as the same people had gathered again, only Lucan van Belheim was missing. 'No, that's probably not even his name, right?'
"Yes," the knight who had been questioned replied with fervor.
He stood at attention next to the table instead of sitting down, for he was only there to testify to what he had seen, just like the others at the scene. And all of them had claimed the same thing: The Visitor's dreaded salt.
"Thank you. You are excused." He'd said that a few times now, looking utterly exhausted, but it wasn't because of the repetitive task.
His life had been a lie. It was visible on his face, the stress he had been under when he first heard the news from the mine when they had returned the night before, having returned the same day it had happened.
It was a beautiful Friday morning, the next day they would be hosting a banquet that the entire palace had been busy preparing for most of the week, but now that was of no consequence to the most important person in the room.
What he had expected when he had invited the delegation from Arlen was a costly treaty between two Empires, secured by a political marriage to silence voices of so-called concern from outside forces.
What he had now was something else entirely. Knowledge - knowledge that would turn not only this Empire, but the entire world upside down. But that wasn't why he was so frustrated.
'They have truly deceived us.'
As someone who had a certain affinity to Mana, he at least knew that one could sense if there was a high chance of Visitors in an area or not. They would have known best that no Visitor had tried to enter through the mines in the salty regions.
And he had always thought that was the only place they protected well, since two of the mines up there were claimed to be the ones that paid the churches in the Empire. But now he had to wonder if they had chosen those mines by chance or not. Did the Church of Aurora know about this and still kept quiet?
And it was such a simple thing. How could no one have thought of this yet? It just escaped his understanding.
Although the reality was that people were rarely attacked in their own homes, and if they were, they usually tried to fend off the Visitors with furniture or large household appliances of some sort. They tried to keep them at a distance by pushing them with chairs or brooms.
Even in Celia's world, this reality had been revealed by accident when a housewife had thrown salt she was holding at a Visitor. She got jumpscared by it, because she was deaf and didn't respond to the alarm outside her house or the noises of it coming in. This was in the eleventh century and the story was so odd, they kept on telling it.
It was such a mundane thing, yet it didn't necessarily come in contact with a Visitor, and if it had before, no one lived to tell the tale.
Scratching the itchy spot on her nose, which was covered by a gauze patch after a priest had done his best, Rowena sighed. "May I say something?"
Pulling Emperor Alejandro Diaz de Lodden out of his deep thoughts was something his vassals flinched at, but he didn't seem to be angry with the girl. "Of course, you are our benefactor."
He believed it must have been something the Grand Duke discovered on the battlefield, but no matter how, it had ended up there and blessed his lands. He couldn't be more grateful for a small slip of the tongue.
"Now that the fact that salt repels Visitors has been confirmed, you will understand how fortunate the landscape of your Empire truly is." She took a sip from her teacup, which contained tea that wasn't as good as the one Norina made, though she enjoyed the unfamiliar blend. "You won't need that old piece of parchment anymore."
She glanced at a contract that still lay on the table as part of their discussions. One-third of Lodden was covered in salty water, one-third in salty mountains, leaving them only one-third to cover with blessings. Fringe areas could also be neglected and fenced off, taking away another third of that third.
If they didn't trust the High Priests of the Aurora Empire, they could hire them from Arlen for a reasonable commission. A High Priest from Arlen wouldn't want to disgrace his homeland by messing up the job his Emperor had personally assigned to him, no matter how loyal they were to the Church.
Suddenly, Alan lifted himself from the chair he was sitting on and organized a stack of papers. "I guess that means my sister won't be needed to legitimize this deal, am I wrong?"
There was a surprised silence, as even the Emperor was speechless. Finally, he chuckled and rested his chin on his folded hands, his elbows on the table. "I will ask the Crown Prince tomorrow at the banquet, but if it is as you said and they both wish for this topic to be buried, it shall be their decision, young Grand Duke."