Chapter 64
Chapter 64: Bite Down Hard and Hold On (3)
Once again, mana was sucked in with a whoosh as the magic circle was completed.
Since Vanessa had mastered up to the 5th Circle, it must be a 5th Circle spell.
Moreover, since it had devoured Ghislaine’s mana, its destructive power would be considerable.
If all of this was activated, the training ground would be destroyed, and the people outside would be severely injured.
Guuuuuuung!
Ghislaine quickly began to cut off the swirling streams of mana within Vanessa’s body one by one.
As the flow of mana decreased, the magic circles flickered and distorted.
‘This is dangerous.’
He couldn’t keep holding on like this forever.
But if Ghislaine let go, Vanessa’s life energy would be completely drained.
The magic would keep activating unless she stopped it herself.
Despite the danger, he had to forcibly awaken her consciousness.
“Hmph!”
Ghislaine expelled mana, instantly blocking all the mana rods in her body.
At the same time, with all paths blocked, the chaotic mana swirling inside Vanessa stopped flowing for a moment.
Seizing that moment, Ghislaine shouted loudly.
“Open your eyes!”
Zjeoong!
The tremendous shout vibrated the training ground and finally brought Vanessa back to her senses.
Pasush…
The countless magic circles floating in the air lost their light and vanished.
Ghislaine confirmed that the turbulent mana had settled and slowly removed his hands from Vanessa.
“Cough!”
Vanessa bent over and vomited blood.
Despite writhing in agony, she felt a sense of ecstasy.
Finally, she had a clear understanding of what mana felt like.
The minute amount of mana settled in her body gave her more assurance.
“Ueek!”
Despite continuing to cough up blood, she smiled. It felt like the blockage inside her was cleared.
Even in her foggy consciousness, she looked at Ghislaine.
The person who made her feel mana. At that moment, she was profoundly grateful.
Ghislaine also smiled at her with satisfaction.
‘It worked as I thought. But this could have gone very wrong.’
To feel mana and immediately perform a multi-casting spell was beyond his expectations.
Seeing Ghislaine in such high spirits, Vanessa cautiously asked.
“Why… did you go this far for someone you just met?”
“Well, I need your power. You will help me, right?”
“Could I… really be of help to you, Grand Duke?”
Ghislaine chuckled as if he had heard something amusing.
“Of course, you’ll be a huge help. Now that you can feel mana, I’ll properly teach you the Mana Circulation Method. There’s one that fits you perfectly.”
Seeing Ghislaine’s playful expression, Vanessa couldn’t help but shed tears.
She had been fortunate to find a good mentor and entered the Mage Tower, the best in the North, but the reality was harsh.
Low talent, scorn from those around her, and a reality that didn’t change no matter how hard she tried.
This got worse after her master died.
Having fallen to the level of a maid and suffering all sorts of troubles, no one acknowledged her.
On the contrary, even the other maids bullied and ostracized her just because she was a mage’s disciple.
In the Mage Tower, she was nothing but an outsider, neither a mage nor a maid.
Now, a miraculous event that she couldn’t believe was happening to her.
Vanessa quietly opened her mouth.
“I want to be… someone.”
“Hmm? What was that?”
She genuinely wanted to be of help to him.
“I….”
The Grand Duke in front of her broke all the chains that had bound her with an unknown power.
She wanted to repay him for sure.
Vanessa gathered more courage and said.
“I want to be of help to you, Grand Duke.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’m good at handling people. You should be prepared.”
Ghislaine laughed cheerfully. Vanessa smiled too.
Ghislaine crouched down and looked into her eyes.
“Welcome to the Ghislaine Mercenary Group, Vanessa.”
*
Vanessa began to train in the Mana Circulation Method under Ghislaine’s guidance.
He reconstructed Perdium’s Mana Circulation Method to a safer way to gather mana.
If Count Perdium and the retainers found out, they would surely faint.
Changing the family’s vision recklessly and teaching someone unrelated to the family were taboo among nobles.
But Ghislaine didn’t care one bit.
“If I could use the mana circulation method I’m practicing, it would go faster.”
The Mana Circulation Method Ghislaine used was tailored to his body, so it couldn’t be passed on to anyone else.
Even for him, it was difficult to control the unstable flow, and if someone else learned it, their body would burst.
“A war is going to happen soon. Your magic will be really important then.”
Ghislaine explained the upcoming events to Vanessa.
When things happen suddenly, one can become flustered and miss the timing.
Preparing in advance was essential to handle things properly when the time comes.
“I… I still can’t use magic properly.”
“It’s fine. You’ve mastered the spell up to the 5th Circle, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but I lack the mana…”
Vanessa had yet to gather a sufficient amount of mana.
No matter how talented she was, time was the only limitation.
With the amount of mana she had gathered, she could only cast very simple spells.
Understanding.
A fist-sized light floated above Vanessa’s palm.
1st Circle spell ‘Light’. Currently, this was her limit.
She looked at Ghislaine with a pained expression.
How could this little help in a war?
“What should I do? This won’t be much help…”
“It’s unavoidable if you lack mana. I’ll figure that out; you just focus on your training.”
Despite her anxiety, Vanessa nodded.
“When will the war start?”
“Probably in a month at the earliest? At the latest, within two months.”
It had already been over a month and a half since they came out of the Forest of Monsters.
The enemies must have heard the news and begun preparing for war.
Ghislaine, too, had not been idle during this time.
He summoned mercenaries with the money he earned selling runestones for a month.
Then he spent the following two weeks teaching Vanessa the Mana Circulation Method.
Although it took a while, it was a necessary preparation process to win the war.
*
Once Vanessa reached the stage of gathering mana on her own, Ghislaine began to reduce his time spent with her and started handling other overdue matters.
“Gillian, how’s the training for the mercenaries going?”
“No problems at all. They’re already better than the soldiers of most territories.”
Gillian replied with a satisfied expression.
The mercenaries had focused their training on moving organically rather than increasing individual strength.
They had gathered people with a baseline level of skill, so results became evident quickly.
Ghislaine pondered for a moment before commanding Gillian.
“Then let’s start taking them to the Forest of Monsters.”
Leading around three hundred mercenaries, Ghislaine entered the Forest of Monsters again.
Although they had destroyed all the monster habitats when first pioneering the route, new monsters inevitably filled the vacant spots.
Periodically, the area had to be cleared so that monsters couldn’t settle.
“This time it’ll be easier than before, so don’t worry.”
The mercenaries who had been to the forest before chuckled comfortably.
The newly recruited mercenaries followed them with tense expressions.
Having already cleared a path and properly secured the flesh and blood of the Blood Python, it should be safer as long as they didn’t stray from the path.
Thanks to the increase in numbers, Ghislaine and the mercenaries easily eliminated the surrounding stray monsters and brought back plenty of runestones.
As Ghislaine counted the remaining amount of runestones, he let out a deep sigh.
“I need to conserve these moving forward.”
Runestones weren’t resources that were limitless. Although plenty remained, they had noticeably decreased after being mined in bulk twice.
Ghislaine entrusted the management of the mercenaries to Gillian and Kaor and returned to the castle.
“Alright, now it’s time for me to train a bit.”
He needed to become stronger so he could save at least one more person.
As he headed towards the training ground, his retainers rushed in.
They had come running, eagerly anticipating news about the runestones.
“Grand Duke! Please give us some runestones!”
“We have uses for them!”
“Just a bit! Please!”
The retainers persistently protested. Ghislaine reluctantly relinquished a tiny amount of runestones.
He had plans for them too, so he couldn’t just hand them out recklessly.
This wasn’t a situation where he could just fight monsters daily and continuously gather resources.
The retainers raged that it wasn’t enough, but Ghislaine disregarded them with a scoff.
After that, he focused solely on his training for a while.
Physical training, weapon training including swordsmanship, and finishing his mana circulation all took up his day.
“It’s a pity that I only have one body.”
Once training ended, he reviewed how much work had been done on the roads and palisades in the Forest of Monsters.
Moreover, he had to keep an eye on Vanessa’s training, leaving no time to waste.
There was an annoying problem, but with so much to do, he couldn’t even find the time to look into it properly.
“I really don’t understand. Why has it turned out this way?”
Since the battle with the Blood Python, his recovery rate had slightly improved.
With a better recovery rate, his rest time decreased, allowing him more time to do other things.
In such a critical situation, it was a positive change, but not knowing the reason behind the change in his condition was unsettling.
A force that he neither understood nor could control isn’t true power.
“Could it be related to that?”
There was only one reason for the change in his body.
Ghislaine sighed and shook his head.
There was one way to verify his suspicion, but doing so would require risking his life.
He couldn’t take that risk not knowing when the war might break out.
“I’ll have to check after the war ends.”
For the time being, he could only concentrate on his basic training.
While Ghislaine focused on his personal training, the mercenaries continued their consistent joint training.
Whenever he had a moment, Ghislaine checked in on Gillian to assess their training status.
The newly recruited mercenaries were quite pleased with the current situation.
In reality, what they were doing was receiving training, occasionally fighting monsters in the forest, and protecting the laborers who were clearing the path.
Laborers were the ones maintaining the roads for wagons and building palisades on either side.
Since they had strewn the Blood Python’s blood around and Ghislaine had cleared out the monsters once more, there wasn’t much work for the mercenaries.
“Wow, this is much easier than I worried it would be. All we have to do is train and occasionally deal with some monsters.”
“The Forest of Monsters isn’t as dangerous as the rumors say, is it? Sure, it was tough at first, but… who knows if that’s really true.”
“And we’re getting paid with the war hiring fees. Hahaha.”
With high hiring fees and expensive gear provided to them, the mercenaries were in high spirits.
However, not all the mercenaries genuinely followed Ghislaine.
He hadn’t particularly excelled in any noteworthy exploits to capture their hearts, and the time spent building camaraderie had been short.
Yet, they also couldn’t openly disregard Ghislaine.
This was because the loyal existing mercenaries kept them in line with their strength.
From the moment Ghislaine increased the number of mercenaries, he planned to control and manage them through the existing members.
With both money and force satisfying the criteria, he managed even the rough mercenaries without any problems.
“Yet, they train really hard. Did something happen that we don’t know about?”
“Please, wars aren’t that easy. Just preparing for a territorial war takes at least a year.”
“Our young commander doesn’t have war experience, so that’s why. He probably thinks they can just invade if they don’t like it.”
“If word gets out that we have runestones, there will be lots of lords drooling over them, so it’s not surprising to be worried.”
“But if they do invade, will we be able to stop them? This isn’t such a strong territory, is it?”
“Right now, it’s fine. By the time all the rumors spread and the lords start eyeing us, we’ll likely sense it coming and take action.”
Before signing contracts with Ghislaine, the mercenaries had calculated the time it would take for news to spread and for other lords to prepare for war.
They didn’t expect an immediate invasion.
While they couldn’t completely let their guard down, this level of risk was something they had to accept to work as mercenaries.
Aside from the slight unease, they were quite satisfied with their rural life.
“Ah, it’s really comfortable. I wish it would always be like this.”
“Everything is great, but there’s nowhere fun in this territory.”
“Being in the countryside is a bit dull. Let’s play a game.”
One day, as the mercenaries relaxed as usual, one ran over in a panic and shouted.
“B-big trouble! Something big has happened!”
The mercenaries preparing to gamble looked at the one running with disinterest.
In this territory, something “big” usually wasn’t anything serious.
It might be a laborer getting hurt during construction, someone messing with Kaor and getting punched, or getting scolded by Gillian for slacking in training.
“What is it? Did someone get hurt?”
“Did someone mess with the rabid dogs and got hit by them again?”
“Or is it that training old-timer calling everyone again?”
The mercenaries chuckled and laughed.
But upon hearing the words of the rushing mercenary, they could no longer laugh.
“It’s war! A real war has begun!”
