Chapter 158

Ripples (1)

The dwarf's voice rang out across the county square, so thunderously loud that it reached Seraphia's ears with perfect clarity even as she sat buried in paperwork in her office.

"Huh...?!"

Startled, Seraphia dropped her quill. She hurried to the window and looked outside. The square was already in an uproar, as though a festival had begun.

Dwarves roared, bumping shoulders with one another, while the county's residents rejoiced alongside them.

"Bwahahaha! We did it! We really did it!"

"Congratulations!"

"It's all thanks to our brothers and sisters! Wahahaha!"

Everyone was gathering in the square to share their joy.

"Me too...! I want to go too!"

Seraphia was so flushed with excitement that she couldn't sit still. Without a moment's hesitation, she ran toward the office door. Just then, the mountain of paperwork on her desk held her back—but...

"... Oh, to hell with it!"

She squeezed her eyes shut and dashed out of the office.

"Huh...? Count?"

"Where are you going, Count?"

She heard the maids' bewildered voices but paid them no heed. Flushed and excited, her thoughts were already in complete disarray.

* * *

Iliana was engrossed in a magic tome in Whitewolf Castle's library. Dozens of other tomes surrounded her, packed tightly together. She turned the pages with one hand and traced a magic circle in the air with the other.

FWOOSH!

Complex equations inscribed themselves in the air alongside a blue magic circle.

"Ah, the changes in electrical potential occurring within the neural network—"

"There you are!"

"Eep!?"

Iliana jumped at the sudden voice. The equations and magic circle in the air scattered into a jumble and vanished. Her blue eyes widened in surprise. When she raised her gaze from her book, she saw silver hair swaying, its mysterious glow seeming to hold the moonlight.

Skin as clear and pure as a dazzling snowfield. Ruby-red eyes and delicate shadows upon her face accentuated her beauty. Slightly lifted lashes. Lips as red as a pomegranate. This woman, whose delicate beauty resembled a thin flower petal, was—

"C-C-Count?!"

Count Seraphia Whitewolf. Adrian's younger sister.

"What were you doing here?"

"Ah, well... I..."

"Goodness, what are all these?"

Seraphia looked over the dozens of magic tomes surrounding Iliana.

[On the Activation Conditions and Structural Changes of Blood Factors], [Phase Transformations of Neural Networks and the Flow of Magical Power], [Cellular Fusion Mechanisms]...

The tomes bore all manner of complicated, abstruse titles.

"... They look super hard."

"B-But what brings you here...?"

"Oh, right. Where is my head?"

Seraphia blinked and continued.

"Brother is awake."

"R-Really?!"

"Yes. I just saw him training at the Frost Trial Grounds."

"That's such a relief..."

Iliana let out a deep sigh of relief.

And no wonder, considering how frightened she'd been. At some point during her explanation of Anti-Mana, Adrian had stopped moving altogether. On closer inspection, his face had been deathly pale, his heart had been beating faintly, and, worst of all, froth had been bubbling out of his mouth...

... No, wait a moment.

"Training?"

Hadn't he only just woken up?

"Brother is always like that. He never rests, not even for a moment."

"Ah..."

"That's what makes him so incredible!"

Seraphia exclaimed with sparkling eyes. But her expression soon grew downcast.

"... But it also worries me."

The sparkle in her eyes dimmed a little, and a faint shadow crossed her face.

"I wish Brother would think about himself a little more."

Seraphia's feelings came through clearly: heartfelt concern and profound love for Adrian. They were feelings Iliana had never once received—the unconditional love and trust bestowed in the name of family.

... Part of her felt envious, too. That was the sort of love and trust she would never receive or give in her entire life. She had no family who would offer her such affection and faith—

"By the way, are you really not Brother's girlfriend?"

"W-What?!"

Seraphia's question came out of nowhere. Iliana rapidly shook both her hands and her head.

"N-No!! He's just s-sponsoring me!!"

"That's what I heard, but..."

"Besides, it's unthinkable!! M-Me...! Someone like me, Lord Adrian's girlfriend...!"

"Why? You're so cute and pretty."

"P-P-Pretty...!"

Her face turned bright red despite herself.

"Y-You're much more b-beautiful, Count..."

"Hehe! Thank you."

Seraphia smiled sweetly. She truly was lovely—so very beautiful.

"You know, would you like to be friends?"

"W-What?! F-F-F-Friends?!"

... Just like that?

"Yes. From what Brother told me, I think we're about the same age."

"I'm sixteen this year..."

"I'm sixteen this year too!"

Seraphia exclaimed, eyes sparkling.

"Let's definitely be friends!"

"I-I can't...!"

"What? Why not?"

"I-I'm a mistress's daughter..."

A daughter born to a concubine. In other words, she was no different from someone of the lowest birth. Seraphia, on the other hand, was a count. A high-ranking noble and someone of the lowest birth. An insurmountable wall stood between them—

"And?"

"W-What...?"

"I'm an adopted daughter too."

"B-But...! You're a c-count..."

"Only a figurehead countess."

"W-What?"

"So let's be friends."

"B-But... how could someone like me...?"

"What do you mean, someone like you? You're the one who healed me, Iliana."

"Huh? Ah, that... that was..."

"Allow me to thank you again! Thank you for saving my life!"

Seraphia bowed deeply, bending a full ninety degrees.

But in truth, Iliana was the more grateful one. After all, that was what had allowed her to meet Adrian.

"So, in honor of that, let's be friends."

"... Huh? How did that suddenly lead to...?"

"Won't you be my friend? Please?"

'S-She's so close...!'

Seraphia's face was far too close. Iliana's mind went completely blank.

"Then we're friends, right?"

"..."

"Yes! Now I have a friend too!"

Somehow—

'I... have a friend.'

Iliana had ended up with a friend too. The first friend she had ever made.

"Then let's go!"

"Huh...?"

"The festival's starting now!"

"B-But—!"

Iliana's gaze lingered on her magic tomes.

"It's fine. You can do that tomorrow!"

Seraphia tugged her wrist. The pull wasn't particularly strong, yet Iliana was helplessly drawn along.

"W-Wait a moment...!"

"I've got loads of approvals piled up too. Brother will scold me, but... oh, to hell with it!"

Beaming, Seraphia led Iliana along.

"Let's have fun today!"

Then she clasped Iliana's hand tightly and began to run. Iliana didn't let go of her hand.

... A small but warm hand. It felt so very strange.

Iliana, the mistress's daughter of House Segretus. Within her family, she had always been alone. She never heard so much as a kind word. No one ever called her by her name.

["Vile bitch. Who do you think you are, showing your face here?"]

["I hear that lowborn mother of yours seduced the head of the house."]

["Well, you can't escape that filthy blood, can you?"]

["Get lost! Even breathing the same air as you disgusts me!"]

Her place in the household had always been some out-of-the-way corner, in the darkness beyond people's sight, where no one's attention reached. Her only happiness had been sitting alone in a secluded attic and reading. Whenever she lost herself in the knowledge within those books, she could forget all her worries.

And so she had grown accustomed to loneliness. And so she no longer expected warmth. Whenever someone offered a helping hand, suspicion came first.

... She couldn't trust them. What if it was another cruel prank?

Hands extended in the guise of comfort had always turned into mockery in the end. Words offered in the guise of sympathy had been nothing more than a means of using her as a tool. In the end, she couldn't trust anyone. No—she had forgotten how to trust.

And yet it was after she met Adrian...

"Come on, Iliana!"

"... Okay!"

...that the life she'd thought would always be unhappy had begun to fill with more happiness than she felt she deserved.

* * *

An excited mood spread throughout the county, as though a festival had broken out. But I didn't have the leisure to get swept up in it myself. I needed to inspect the runesteel vein now that mining had begun in earnest, and review my plan to reel in the empire accordingly.

I had no time to take it easy—but I sat upright in the middle of the deserted Frost Trial Grounds. Weakness Hunt[M]. I intended to meditate and train my mind for its use.

Weakness Hunt[M] perceived its target at the atomic level. It could instantly identify all an opponent's vulnerabilities and even "predict" their movements by detecting changes in electrical potential between cells. But the staggering volume of information and analysis exceeded my intelligence.

If Predator[M] caused "physical overload," then Weakness Hunt[M] caused "brain overload." That rendered even the body I'd evolved through Predation[S+] on the ogre useless.

"My body can take it, but my brain can't. What a pain."

Intelligence. I had no abilities related to the brain. As things stood... I couldn't use it. But that didn't mean I could give up.

Weakness Hunt[M] surpassed Ian's Lumen Pax. Both before entering the empire and in preparation for an eventual battle with a Sovereign, I absolutely had to master it. The question was how...

"Whew...!"

I exhaled deeply and organized my thoughts. Three methods came to mind right away. First: Iliana's Peak Human Intelligence[A+].

In other words, using Predation[S+] on her heart and taking her ability would solve the problem simply and cleanly... but was that remotely acceptable? It wasn't even worth considering.

"Rejected."

I immediately threw it into the trash can in my head.

Next, the second method. This was an alternative of sorts.

"I could use Predation to obtain an intelligence ability comparable to Iliana's."

Then, even if not completely, I could withstand brain overload to some extent—just as using Predation[S+] on the ogre had allowed me to withstand Predator[M]'s physical overload.

"On hold."

But that would have to wait. Intelligence was humanity's most prominent biological evolutionary ability. In other words, monsters specializing in intelligence didn't exist. That meant I needed to find a human...

"I can't think of anyone offhand."

Even searching my memories of my previous life, I couldn't find anyone likely to possess an intelligence-specialized ability. After all, simply being exceptionally intelligent wasn't enough. They needed to be capable of withstanding Weakness Hunt[M]'s brain overload—in short, comparable to Iliana's Peak Human Intelligence[A+]. In terms of rank, perhaps at least [A-]?

The problem was that abilities of [A-] rank and above approached those of dragons. It was safe to say dragons were practically my only option. That wasn't something I could do anything about now. So, on hold for the time being.

Which left the last, third method—the one I could act on immediately.

"Do I have no choice but to destroy the damaged brain tissue and restore it instantly?"

I would continually repair my damaged brain with Regeneration[B+]. The process would work like this.

1. Use Weakness Hunt[M].

2. The brain becomes overloaded.

3. Deliberately destroy part of the overloaded brain.

4. Immediately restore the destroyed brain tissue with Regeneration[B+].

5. The damage to the regenerated brain tissue resets.

6. Use Weakness Hunt[M] again.

I would repeat that sequence. Essentially, I'd be forcing my way through by trusting in Regeneration[B+]. But precisely because it was such a brute-force approach, it came with no shortage of problems.

For a start, the brain consumed more energy than any other organ in the body. Using it and then restoring it with Regeneration[B+] would consume an enormous number of calories. Adding the calories needed for combat would have made it unmanageable, but...

"Isolde really helped me out."

The Title <Saint of the Black Moon>. Simply owning it increased the efficiency of recovery-related skills by [+30%]. Of course, that didn't entirely solve the calorie consumption problem. But thanks to it, I could bring the impossible down into the realm of possibility.

Even so, the limits of my intelligence remained clear. Damage would also accumulate across my brain as a whole. And worst of all, what if I made one wrong move? If I failed to use Regeneration[B+] immediately or destroyed too much of my brain, I could end up in an irreversible state.

Thus, this wasn't a way to sustain Weakness Hunt[M]. But it was the only way I could make use of it right now.

"This is going to take a lot of practice."

... I had a long way to go. Still, I'd gained a foundation that could let me grow several times stronger than I was now.

"Shall we begin?"

I started my training by using Dragon Burst[E] to destroy part of my brain and restoring it with Regeneration[B+].

* * *

The festive mood in the county was gradually building. Watching the bustling square, Seraphia quietly caught her breath. Now all that remained was to set off the final burst of excitement. Her first-ever festival in the county. To make it happen, there was one enormous hurdle she had to overcome.

'I have to convince Brother.'

Adrian would surely disapprove, asking what the hell they needed a festival for. He would probably say, "We need to inspect the runesteel vein first." Or perhaps, "If you have time to spare, finish those overdue approvals." Then he would firmly shut her down with some incomprehensible phrase like, "I've got a Kraulgar of work to do."

How could she persuade him? Her own strength wouldn't be enough. She needed a solid strategy—in other words, help from others who could leave Adrian no room to refuse.

'I've won Iliana over.'

Adrian cared enough about Iliana to sponsor her unconditionally. With Iliana at her side lending support, he wouldn't reject the idea outright.

'Chief Brumbar...'

Unfortunately, Brumbar wasn't in the county at present, having left to resolve the problems in the dwarven kingdom of Feractrum. The chief was said to be on the way back now, but wouldn't arrive just yet.

'Then Sister Isolde and...'

Just then, she spotted a familiar face at the far end of the corridor. A handsome man with long, swaying blond hair.

"Sir Kai!"

Kai turned his head. Seraphia ran straight up to him and spoke with a flushed face.

"Have you heard? They say everything's been resolved in the dwarves' homeland!"

"I have. It's a great relief."

Kai smiled and gave a small nod. Seraphia immediately spoke again, her eyes sparkling.

"So there's a festival happening now! Come with us, Sir Kai!"

"I'm quite all right."

"Huh? Why?"

Seraphia blinked up at him.

"You've been doing nothing but training lately, without any rest either. So just this once, come—"

"I'm quite all right. As long as you enjoy yourself, Count, I'm content."

Then Kai walked past her. His long blond hair swayed and brushed her cheek.

"H-Huh? Sir Kai!"

She called after him, but his back only receded farther into the distance.

From behind, he looked as calm and composed as ever. ... And yet something was different. Somehow, he felt far away. Seraphia reached out to call him again, but in the end, she let her hand fall.

'Sir Kai...'

... Something was strange about Kai.