Chapter 78 - The Contract (2)

The quiet, ordinary park and forest turned against me. Stone walls rose to enclose the area, and the ground heaved beneath my feet, throwing me off balance.

SWISH!

Branches lashed at me like whips.

CRACK!

Roots tore through the earth and tried to coil around me. Pollen carried on the wind became tiny blades that cut my skin, while the moonlight that had illuminated the night warped until I could barely make out what I was looking at.

Valea had vanished. She had moved objects within her domain to hide herself. This felt nothing like fighting her indoors before. Then again, there was no reason it would be the same.

My feet scarcely touched the ground. I kicked off a rising wall, pushed away a root stabbing toward me, and shot upward. I bounded around wildly, like I was on a trampoline in my previous life—a thoroughly unknightly sight.

"Running and dodging like that won't do you any good. Even if you're a far better knight than I expected, young master, you can't keep it up until someone comes."

Valea's voice reached me, but it gave me no clue where she was. Unless she was bluffing, she either had more mana than I'd expected or creating her domain consumed less mana than I'd thought. An elemental or telekinetic inherited ability would burn through mana much faster than I would by merely dodging, but her domain seemed different.

I had no intention of assuming she was bluffing and simply holding out. I was only dodging so I could check one more time: how was this different from what I'd seen indoors, and where were the limits of her domain? Now I had my answer.

WHOOSH!

Still dodging the objects attacking me, I planted a foot on a rising stone pillar and launched myself high into the sky. As expected, shards of stone and broken branches shot toward me while I hung in the air. I knocked them aside and looked down. Just as I'd thought.

Her domain covered a much wider area than it had at the Baron's mansion, but it didn't extend nearly as far upward. Inside it, objects could change shape at her will. Once they left it, all she could do was fire them at me. I could have simply escaped beyond its boundaries, but she had apparently anticipated that and surrounded it with a high stone wall. She had left the way into the forest open, too, as if luring me there.

At the top of my leap, I began to fall. I could clearly sense the branches, roots, stones, and even the soil preparing to attack me. Valea's inherited ability really was remarkable. Everything in her domain could become a weapon. In an enclosed room, or somewhere full of weapons like a battlefield, she might be nearly invincible.

Here, though, her weapons weren't particularly strong. Rocks and trees. Her ability seemed to reinforce them—they didn't feel quite like ordinary stone or wood—but it didn't fundamentally change what they were. Then again, there was nowhere else at the academy where she could fight me out of sight. She had little choice. And with nothing overhead, even a leap like this bought me plenty of time. Of course, with attacks coming from every direction, only an ability user or knight whose other senses were exceptionally keen could just barely dodge them.

After experiencing her domain twice, though, I thought I understood how it worked. Her mana filled the entire space. It reshaped and moved the objects inside. When that mana shifted, gathered, and surged upward, a root moved to stab at me. I saw the mana before the root struck, shifted slightly, and rode the rising root down.

"You're incredible. How are you dodging all of that? Is it enough to have a good mana Heart Method? Could a skilled knight do it too?" Valea spoke up after watching me evade attack after attack.

How should I know? I'd heard that royals all had Mana Sensitivity, though. Maybe they could do it. Valea seemed confident I wouldn't discover her position. And even if I did, she apparently thought she could stop me: anything I destroyed within her domain could be restored.

But I could find her. Strangely, even my ability to sense mana had trouble locating her inside the domain. By following the movement of the mana that filled it, though, I could track her down.

Valea had called her domain a kingdom. To me, it was more like a body. The moving objects were her flesh; the mana filling the space was her nerves and muscles. And she had to be where that movement began, at the center of it all. I launched myself toward that point.

I dodged a branch shooting at me and knocked away the flying stones. Just as I closed in, trees rose to block my path. Not just branches or roots this time: whole uprooted trees were moving. So that was why she'd kept pulling them out of the ground. I sent sword aura streaming from my dagger and cut through the tree in front of me.

SLICE!

"It's no use. Everything in here can be restored endlessly." As she said, I'd cut through the tree with my sword aura, but its severed pieces still swung their branches at me.

SLICE! SLICE!

I kept cutting. "I told you it's no use. If you keep... No, why..." Her voice filled with surprise.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The trees fell. Even if a body could restore itself endlessly, it couldn't move while all its nerves and muscles were severed. Mana was what kept the cut trees standing. Once I severed every flow of mana, they couldn't move until those flows reconnected.

The trees blocking me toppled. I sprang past them in a single bound and swung my blade at another tree. It looked no different from the others, but before my blade touched it, it turned into a person. "I surrender." Valea stood there with both hands raised.

I stopped short. My dagger halted inches from her neck. Blood ran down one of her raised wrists. My sword aura had cut it.

FWOOSH!

The moment she surrendered, our surroundings changed. The writhing trees returned to normal, and the raised stone walls sank into the ground. The ruined stone path took its old shape, and the moonlight regained its natural glow. The domain was gone. The park and forest were ordinary again, though traces of the fight remained. The academy staff would have quite a headache if they saw them.

"You said I was your father's killer, didn't you?" I asked, keeping my blade trained on her. Would she say she'd been mistaken, then come after me again later?

"You are his killer." So that wasn't it. "But I don't think I can beat you. I'm going to give up." Ugh. I really couldn't understand what went on in this woman's head.

"I've done enough as his daughter. Honestly, if I weren't his daughter, I wouldn't have fought you at all. I'd have been glad you killed him. You know how happy I was when he died." Valea went on speaking with blood streaming down her raised arm. "I don't intend to give my life for someone I don't even like."

"But you tried to kill me." "Yes. I did." "And now that you failed, you think you can just surrender?" Somewhere along the way, I'd stopped saying she'd attacked me over a misunderstanding. She wouldn't listen, whatever I said. No, more than that, killing her was somehow becoming difficult. Maybe I shouldn't have stopped my blade.

"I couldn't help it. You could say I was torn between my duty as a daughter and my desire to live." She was shameless. Until we came here, she'd put on every sweet and innocent act imaginable. Now that I'd seen what she was really like, I almost wished she'd go back to pretending.

"You tried to kill me. Why should I spare you just because you surrendered?" I could report her to the academy instead of killing her, but what she knew made that impossible. I'd done far too much already. I couldn't let word spread now that I'd killed the Baron. That seemed to leave killing her. Just as the scales began tipping that way again, she spoke.

"I'll become your ally. I'll save your life, too. As you know, I'm not exactly weak. Being a duke's illegitimate son must make certain things difficult for you. I'll take care of anything you can't do openly." Her eyes sparkled. Hmm. Some of that sounded appealing. But trusting her was another matter.

"Let's go to a temple and make a contract. If you like, I'll even call you my... mas... ter." Her voice turned sweet, but that did little for me. The word "contract," on the other hand, caught my attention. "Really?"

"Of course. I knew what I was risking when I did this. Besides, I don't think my master would make me suffer the way my father did." "You don't need to call me master." I lowered my blade. "Let's make the contract tomorrow." "Yes!" She lowered her arms too.

In the end, I'd decided not to kill her. I still didn't entirely trust her, and I had no idea what would happen from here. Unlike other people, though, I could undo this decision. With some of the tension gone, I asked her something I'd been wondering.

"What were you going to do if you killed me? You would have been caught." That was one reason I'd found it hard to kill Valea myself. "I was going to run away immediately. I know a mercenary who's acquainted with my father. I planned to find him and flee to the empire or some other country."

There seemed to be little thought or planning behind it. She didn't appear to place much value on being an academy student or a baron's daughter. Was she a free spirit? But her offer to make a contract suggested otherwise. The more I thought about her, the less I understood.

While I was lost in thought, she tentatively raised a hand. "Um, more importantly, I'm really dizzy. May I pass out for a moment?" With that, Valea collapsed backward. Her sleeve was soaked with blood, and a pool of it had formed on the ground. I looked down at her and sighed. Taking out a handkerchief, I tied it around her wrist, picked her up, and headed for the infirmary.

The next day was a holiday. Valea and I left the academy to find a temple. There was a priest in the academy infirmary, but they didn't specialize in contracts, and it would be difficult to keep the contract secret if we made it on academy grounds. After a long carriage ride, we found a priest and drew up the contract before them.

Its terms favored me as much as possible. Valea would keep my secrets and could not harm me. Promises to protect my life or become my ally were difficult to put into a contract, but those terms alone made it unfair enough. The mana in the contract had its limits, so it wouldn't last a lifetime, but she would have to abide by it for a long time.

The priest was startled when they read it and questioned Valea several times, but she smiled and signed. She wasn't my ally yet, and I couldn't trust her. Still, it felt as though there was now someone who shared one of my secrets.