Chapter 60 - Lady Calina Serle (2)

After escorting Lady Calina back to the Fifth Manor House, I bid her a farewell.

“Slave, do not forget to meet me here the day after tomorrow in the early morning. Prior to meeting Zor Alzeroth, I have already obtained father's permission on letting you accompany me to the Mage Academy, so there shall be no excuses if you do not show your face on that day.”

“I shall be there, Lady Calina.”

“...”

Noticing that she remained silent, I turned around to leave after saying that.

From behind me, I heard Calina's soft whispered voice, which broke the small, silent pause.

“Call me mistress...slave...call me mistress.”

I pretended not to hear that soft mutter of hers, which, if I could be trusted, contained a hint of sadness.

To be honest, I had no clue why Lady Calina Serle had requested me to be with her today, when I barely knew her. It was a puzzling matter, especially since she was asking me all those awkward questions.

She had certainly chosen the wrong person to discuss her thoughts with. A family member, such as one of her older sisters, would have been a much better candidate, for I could never truly feel such emotions—only imagine and observe them.

But I decided to humor the fifteen year old girl. Words, after all, could not harm me. And neither would calling her mistress harm me. Still, I was a little curious as to why she had chosen me to accompany her to the Mage Academy as there were much better choices.

Oh well, I thought.

Perhaps Lady Luck was finally looking my way.

Just like what the Third Minister had said the previous afternoon; “I would roll the dice of fate.”

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[278 Days Remaining]

It was early morning and I was currently outside the city. It was at a desolate place inside the clearing of a forest far away from the city that I was practicing my magic.

There were no pressing matters for me at the moment. The Third Minister of War had given me no messages, so I suppose that the news of my role as a bodyguard to accompany Lady Calina Serle had been spread among the baron's households.

Prior to coming here, I had obtained a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, and bread from Alice Silver, the daughter of the inn-keeper at the inn I was staying.

I deeply breathed in the fresh forest air, which was reminiscent of the verdant greens and flowers. I felt the undercurrent of magic inside me, so close at hand that with just the slightest will to summon it, my metaphorical gated pool of magic would open.

I knew that the distance I could spread my magic was well over a hundred feet, perhaps somewhere around a hundred and thirty feet. Now that I had some free time, I would test out the area my magic could cover.

With just the slightest thought and willpower, I summoned my magic and from the soles of my booted feet, black-colored magic started spreading out. The blackness of my magic against the green forest floor made it look as if the ground was getting swallowed. A short moment later, I discovered the limit I could cover an area with my magic.

On the ground around me, there was a covering of black magic. It formed a circle of perhaps around forty feet in diameter with me as the center.

Then I released my hold over my magic, willing it to become fire magic. There wasn't really a need to imagine this happening or even think about it—you just needed to will it and the magic becomes fire. Imaging your magic also sort of help you focus, but it wasn't really needed.

This was the process of how my magic transformed into the earth and fire based magic, and how I transformed, but that was just me; I was not sure about how the others did it. The eldest, it seems to me, also follows this process.

The twenty feet radius circle of black-colored magic around me changed before my very eyes, becoming pillars of fire. These pillar of fires were more than ten feet tall and blazed a fiery, orange red.

I was surrounded in a sea of fire, but I was not harmed by it. The reasons were because I was particularly resistant to fire and the magic was my own, so there was natural aversion in the magic to harm me.

This was a facet of magic I had discovered and found particularly interesting; it somehow made magic seem alive.

By the way, my clothes were also not burnt.

Why, you ask?

That was because I was practicing my magic entirely naked; I had removed every article of clothing I had worn on the way here and had thoughtfully laid it out in a clean place far away from the area where I was practicing.

I did not mind my nakedness, for there wasn't anyone around to watch. And to be frank, I would not have cared even if there were spectators. Lots of humans, after all, had seen me naked, though I must admit most of them are dead.

The morning eventually turned into afternoon as I continued practicing magic.

One of the results I obtained from my practice was that there was a difference between the size of area I could affect based on my fire and earth affinity.

For fire-based magic, I could affect about a twenty feet distance in all directions, whereas for earth-based magic, I could only affect about a fifteen feet distance. The disparity between the two magics was interesting.

For the rest of the afternoon, I practiced the sword forms I had learned from the short grandmaster whom I had met during the Tournament of the Wolf. He had sought me out afterward and had made me—forced me, to be exact—to learn a sword style.

The forms he had taught me in the time I had been here were River Crushes Boulder, Leaf Twirling in Wind, and Walking Mountain, to name just a few of them. These forms are part of the sword style the grandmaster had decided on teaching me.

It is called the Wandering Flame, a sword style known for its aggressiveness. There are only a few defensive forms in that style, or so the grandmaster had told me.

During my time with the short grandmaster whose name is Kizan Vulcram, a renowned grandmaster swordsman from another kingdom, I had been informed that the Shail Kingdom soldiers use two sword styles: Flowing Water and Moon and Void.

I knew of these two sword styles only by name in my previous life, as I was not particularly interested in military things. I had been a merchant in my past human life, after all. In addition, I had also been busy with learning and observing many aspects of life.

Thus, I grabbed the longsword I had placed nearby and started practicing the Wandering Flame sword style.

It was until night that I finally stopped my practice. My lunch and dinner had been the raw meat of wild animals—a rabbit, a deer, and a bird.

If you want the specifics, the rabbit was female, the deer was male, and the bird was male (I think).

Also, I cleaned myself inside the river, meticulously washing the taste of blood from my mouth and my body, which had sweated a little.

Now, I would head back to Asolance and spend the night drinking with my subjugation squadron at a tavern. The soldiers in the squadron would be temporarily assigned elsewhere, since I would be busy with Lady Calina Serle for a while.

So until my return, the soldiers would be working elsewhere in other divisions.

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It was probably well past midnight by the time I returned to the Silver Beauty inn. There had been some lively outbursts during my time drinking with my squadron in the tavern, especially when most of the females were trying to get me drunk.

Sad to say (for them, not me), it did not went as planned. My alcohol tolerance was surprisingly high. It was most likely due to my dragon constitution, and not to mention the fact that I had also been more tolerant than the average person in my past human life. All of this combined allowed me to win the drinking contest by a far shot.

I also paid for the majority of the bill after they had looked at me with pitiable and begging dog-like eyes. I gave in, since I had no particular attachment to money, and the total cost of the drinks would not amount to much anyway.

It was, to amusingly put it, “no scales off my back.”

The female scout soldier, Leana, had also followed me to the inn where I was staying. She had been, by far, the most enthusiastic of the lot of soldiers.

You can infer from this that Leana was also the most drunk, since she had many glasses of alcohol which almost rivaled the amount I had ingested.

By the way, Leana was also a violent drunk. During our party, she smashed a few of the tavern chairs into pieces, causing me to pay for the costs of it all to the owner.

Thankfully, however, she did not get into any brawls, as doing so would have gotten all of us kicked out of the tavern—the tall, muscular, bald owner had been starting to become annoyed with our antics.

Inside my room, Leana undressed atop the bed and revealed a thin, see-through, light-blue gown underneath.

“Mhm...Verryth. Fuck me,” she said in a drunken slur, her hands lightly caressing her small, shapely breasts.

“Sure. But before that, why don't you just lie down on the bed for a bit.”

I patiently waited for a moment as Leana laid down on the bed. It took only a short while before she fell asleep and I heard her lightly breathing.

Then I pulled a chair to the window of the inn and gazed upon the twin moons, reflecting upon the things I had learned today. The only sounds that accompanied my thinking were the light breathing from Leana and her soft mutterings.

Early morning tomorrow, I would accompany Lady Calina Serle to the Mage Academy, which was located at the central region of Shail Kingdom.The academy was also close to where Merchant Kafer and the Guardian of the East lived.

One of these two suspects would have deep ties to Malice, the Dark Brotherhood, the assassin organization that had killed Rhea of the Wanderers at the behest of one of my father's enemies, rivals, or perhaps even friends.

It was time to finish what I had barely started—I had, after all, only eliminated a branch of the Dark Brotherhood who had killed Rhea, before I had died in my human life.

The dice of fate had been rolled and I would see through the events that would play out.

In the end, though, I would be the victor...regardless of the costs. There was nothing and no one that would get in the way of my vengeance.

The cold, indifferent anger burned inside me as I gazed upon the twin moons.