BTCATL 21

Chapter 21

I blinked at the sudden wave of hostility.

The woman before me had fiery red hair and deep brown eyes. Her beauty was breathtaking.

But more than her appearance, it was the contempt, irritation, and disgust in her eyes as she looked at me that struck me first.

It was as if someone had poured cold water over my head, which had been soaking in the excitement of a new place and new surroundings.

My mood plummeted in an instant.

“I heard you’re the imperial princess? Shouldn’t you be enjoying yourself in the lavish palace instead of showing up in a place crawling with insignificant commoners?”

A blatant sneer shot out at me.

At the same time, I stiffened. She knew I was a princess.

I paused for a second, wondering if I recognized her, but no such woman existed in my memory.

Then how did she know?

[What the heck?!]

The butterflies behind me bristled at the woman’s words.

Though not as intense as their reaction to Calios, there was still clear aggression in their response.

The woman faltered for a brief moment when she saw them. But as if unwilling to back down, a small red eagle appeared beside her with a flicker of flame.

“Hm? Say something, Your Highness.”

She emphasized the words “Your Highness” with strange sarcasm.

I raised my hand to calm the butterflies that were now shedding increasingly radiant light.

After a few wingbeats that seemed to express reluctance, they vanished with a sharp flutter.

It hadn’t been a particularly threatening encounter, and unlike with Calios, there was no danger to the spirits themselves, so they likely withdrew because I willed it.

Rather than retorting to the woman’s aggressive tone, I recalled the name Ledin had mentioned and bowed politely.

“You must be Lucy Abella, right? I’m Asilla, and we’ll be sharing a room. I look forward to getting along.”

“…What?”

Lucy Abella stood speechless for a moment, and I turned my back to her, placing the book Ledin had given me on the desk.

Her sharp stare burned into my back, but I pretended not to notice, drew the curtain on my bed, and slipped under the blanket.

My body, which had frozen briefly in response to her venomous words, had already gone limp.

She probably wasn’t disgusted with me specifically. No, she couldn’t be.

How could someone who had never met me before show such hatred unless something was deeply wrong?

We had barely exchanged a few words, but I could already sense her sarcasm toward the privileged class.

She must have heard from someone that I was a princess, and that alone had provoked such a sharp reaction.

Simply because I was royalty—a member of the empire’s elite.

–I hate people like you the most!!

When I had just entered the Grand Duke’s estate—before I realized it was a never-ending swamp of horrors—I had met a child.

She had been wearing a maid’s uniform, so I naturally assumed she was a maid.

In truth, she was a child who had harbored resentment toward nobles and had infiltrated a noble household.

She tried to stab me in the chest with a small knife. Thanks to her clumsiness, she was quickly caught, and I only faced her for less than ten minutes.

But I never forgot her.

The hatred and loathing for nobles were etched deeply in her eyes.

Despite being so young, her gaze brimmed with pain and murderous intent well beyond her years.

–Go to hell! Nobles should just die! Die!!

Even as she was dragged away, she cursed nobles. I later heard she had lost her entire family to a cruel noble in a rural area.

Their house was burned down in the middle of the night, all because they hadn’t been able to pay taxes on time due to poverty.

That kind of rage and injustice would easily fuel a burning desire for vengeance.

Abella must have her own reasons as well.

I was used to malice. And now that I knew it wasn’t directed at me personally, her hostility no longer fazed me.

Compared to the socialites and noble ladies who subtly flayed others behind their backs, her open aggression was almost preferable.

I let out a dry chuckle.

In that sense, maybe we were the same—I, too, despised the nobility.

Though I was one of them, they had always treated me as nothing more than an enemy.

With that final thought, I surrendered to the heaviness in my eyelids and closed my eyes.

Even though it was broad daylight, I was exhausted.

My consciousness sank quickly.

✦✦✦

Time in the tower flew by.

Training with Calios and spirit theory lessons with Ledin filled my days.

My schedule was packed so tightly that I didn’t even have room for stray thoughts.

Sweat beaded on my forehead.

Malao swallowed dryly.

I closed my eyes, shutting off my vision, and clearly felt the mana streams flowing through my body.

At first, even with Calios’s help, it felt like I was wrapped in fog. But after days of repetition, the sensation began to sharpen.

That was as far as I got—controlling the mana in my body was still extremely difficult.

As the number of butterflies increased, I could feel the murderous energy radiating from Calios, standing before me, prickling against my skin.

For the first few days, he had tested my control with indiscriminate attacks. But realizing it wasn’t effective, he began simply radiating killing intent while sitting silently.

His aura summoned a black shadow that grew in size and twitched as if it might lunge at me at any moment.

That alone was enough to rile the butterflies.

It had been a month since I began sitting defenseless in front of him, attempting to sense and control my mana.

And a month of getting nowhere.

The mana surging from my heart throughout my body was like rough waves.

It felt like trying to stop a powerful current with my bare body as it flowed toward the spirits.

[You have to attack.]

The spirits’ voices sounded muffled, like hitting a wall.

Thankfully, not everything was stagnant. Some progress had been made.

The deafening, skull-splitting volume of their voices that plagued me at first had noticeably decreased.

–You’re better at maintaining your sense of self. You’re not swept up by their emotions like before, right?

Calios explained that I was learning to separate my emotions from the increasingly aggressive spirits under the influence of his killing intent.

If I didn’t stay focused, I could still get overwhelmed—but the difference between having a constant headache and not having one was massive.

A month was a long time.

Spending so much time with Calios naturally brought us closer.

The defensive wall I had put up after seeing him destroy the tower had long since crumbled.

If I had an older brother, maybe it would feel like this. That was the kind of closeness I felt from him.

Except for the occasional moments when he looked at me with a mysterious glint in his eye, his usual smirking red gaze was surprisingly comforting.

“Don’t get distracted.”

His voice snapped me back to the present.

Right. What I’d done until now didn’t matter—what mattered was now. I still couldn’t control my mana.

I traced the sensations, following the flow down the edge of my body.

The hazy energy, as if shrouded in fog, became clearer as I went deeper.

Usually, I’d get pushed back by this point, but today something was different.

It felt like I was slowly sinking into an endless pit.

I imagined bright light pouring down at a rapid pace—it felt almost real.

I held my breath.

It was the first time I had seen it so clearly.

That was the mana at the core of my body.

Just looking at it was overwhelming. The vast sea of light surged like waves.

It felt like I was floating alone in an infinite, dark space.

The massive flow of mana stretched far into the distance.

For a moment, I feared I might be swallowed up by it.

Though I couldn’t physically see it, I felt it.

A shiver ran down my spine.

If I could control that, I could control the spirits. They could move like extensions of myself.

Without realizing it, I reached out slowly toward the stream of flowing light—as if instinctively drawn in.

At that moment—

“Stop.”

A deep voice pierced my ears.

My mind, which had been sinking deeply, was pulled back like magic.

“Huff… huff…”

I gasped for breath the moment I opened my eyes.

Cold air filled my lungs, and the fog in my mind cleared in an instant.

Cold sweat trickled down my back.

“You saw it clearly?”

Calios, sitting across from me with his usual lazy posture, asked.

I nodded slowly.

There was no subject in his question, but I knew exactly what he meant.

The thing I had only vaguely sensed until now had been immense.

It was a world apart from when I had tried to block it by merely following the mana path Calios had shown me.

What he had shown me was only a small fraction.

I looked down at my trembling hands, chilled by the sensation of something crawling through my body.

I could feel every stream of energy within me.

Even without focusing, I could feel it all clearly.

It was as if a whole new sense had awakened.

Calios grinned, his red eyes curling.

“That’s your power.”

In the human world, spirits had to consume mana in order to manifest their power.

Spirits “choosing” and “loving” their contractors was ultimately about securing enough mana to feed on.

In other words, a spiritist’s power was directly proportional to their mana reserves.

“The foundation of control is being able to feel your power.”

It was the sign I had finally taken a step forward.