The Maid’s Breathing Method
Where Kalik’s neck had been severed, blood geysered upward in a hot rush before quickly ebbing away.
The elite scout unit, five in all, including the Sword Expert, had been wiped out.
I didn’t have the luxury of lingering over the afterglow of victory.
Nen’s breathing on my back was painfully thin and ragged.
“Hans... I can walk...”
“Stay still. I’ve only given you emergency treatment. You can’t move around yet.”
I quickly gathered the scattered fragments of the magic armor cannon and the reinforced mana threads into my subspace.
These can all be repaired. I’m not about to throw away something I worked so hard to make.
That would also erase any trace that I’d used magic.
Then they’d have no way of figuring out what kind of trick had killed them.
If these were Kran scouts, another surveillance team would be passing through this area before long.
I don’t have time to waste.
Nen’s condition was worsening by the second, and any unnecessary movement would only make it worse.
If I use Space Stitching, I can minimize the shock.
A spell that could carry Nen even while I was carrying her on my back.
It was a formula I’d modified myself, because I hated wasting mana with a vengeance.
Thanks to that, it consumed far less mana than classic spatial movement magic like Blink.
Space Stitching.Space Stitching.
With every step I took, I severed the afterimage of mana behind me as cleanly as if I were slicing it away with a blade.
It was a pain, but I had to erase every trace if I didn’t want to be tracked.
After a short while, I reached a secluded cleft in a lonely mountainside.
The entrance was so narrow I had to squeeze my body through it.
Fortunately, once I got inside, a small natural cave opened up, big enough for two people to lie side by side.
It was a perfect hiding place, completely hidden by brush and rock from anyone searching outside, no matter how hard they stared.
This should do.
I carefully laid Nen down on the cave floor, then quickly drew a concealment magic circle at the entrance.
Let’s make sure this place can’t be seen from outside.
I was worried not only about Kran scouts, but also about the magical beasts that had supposedly been appearing frequently lately.
If I’m going to treat Nen, I can’t have anyone interfering.
Sealed Concealment.
A formula that went beyond visual closure and even let detection magic slip through—magic designed to sense mana flow or presence itself.
Backflow Mire.
And if an intruder still managed to get in, it would force mana into reverse flow, making it impossible for them to exert power properly.
Chiiit! Chiiit!
I pulled a few low-grade Magic Stones from my subspace and used them to activate the circle’s core.
That should do for now. Time to treat Nen.
That was when something unusual caught my eye.
It was inside my subspace.
The strange gray bead I’d tucked away earlier, the one I’d noticed while taking out the Magic Stones.
Huh?
It had been the unknown gray orb I’d recovered from the hidden chamber beneath the collapsed rock in the count’s family cave.
It had been all but scrap metal, completely dried up with not a single thread of mana left in it.
But now something had changed.
Like water returning to a parched spring, a faint but unmistakable current of mana had begun to fill it.
What the hell? Why did mana suddenly appear in it?
And not just a little, either.
It was really bizarre.
Don’t tell me it refills on its own over time?
I couldn’t be sure yet.
Still, if that mysterious orb kept accumulating mana again, I couldn’t ask for anything better.
I’ll look at it again later.
For now, saving Nen came first.
In the meantime, Nen had already lost consciousness.
I gently pulled back the torn top of her maid uniform.
The wound on her side where Kalik’s razor-sharp aura had sliced straight through her.
Thanks to my earlier treatment, it had improved dramatically.
Good. It didn’t get any worse.
I’d stopped the bleeding and kept her from dying, but the important part started now.
3rd Tier Orthodoxy Magic: Light of Healing
Whoosh—!
A healing formula forged by ancient mages through countless trials and errors.
A proven spell that rapidly restored even depleted life force.
I didn’t like it much, since the casting time was extremely long and the mana cost was heavy.
Still, the effect is undeniable.
I didn’t have time to come up with a more efficient formula on the spot, so I had no choice.
Light of HealingLight of Healing
Only after casting it three times in succession did Nen’s condition visibly improve.
I’ve used a spell this taxing three times in a row, and I still have plenty of mana left.
Roughly half.
Even after flinging magic around nonstop on the way here, that much remained.
It was thanks to the vast mana core that had grown along with my mastery of 3rd Tier spells.
Mana that was spent would recover naturally with rest.
If I wanted to recover it quickly, I could always draw a circulation magic circle.
Should I rest a little?
If I left Nen alone now, she’d recover fully.
But something felt off.
Wait. The wound’s healed, but...
The mana flow was unstable.
Mana keeps scattering. Don’t tell me the core was injured?
Physical injuries could be healed relatively easily with orthodox spells like Light of Healing.
But wounds to the core were almost impossible to treat that way.
If the core’s broken, she may never be able to use mana again...
Unlike me, whose mana core was in my heart, Nen’s mana core was located just below her navel.
I carefully placed my hand there and examined the mana fluctuations.
Good. The core itself is fine.
But something was strange about it.
The mana pulse keeps dispersing and re-forming.
The source of mana, which should have been fixed in one place and steadily accumulating, wasn’t holding its shape properly.
At one moment the core would open completely, forming a fine, precise texture of mana.
Then, all at once, it would blur like smoke, the very presence of the core fading away.
It was a grotesque form, repeatedly appearing like mist and then scattering without a trace.
...Good heavens. Don’t tell me this is a mutant core?
An unusual constitution said to occur in one person out of several million.
A cursed circuit in which the mana core didn’t remain fixed, but floated, opening and closing again and again.
For a body like that, a normal mana breathing method would actually do harm...
That was when Nen opened her eyes and came to.
Her expression was one of utter disbelief.
“What happened? I was in so much pain I thought I was going to die, but now it doesn’t hurt at all.”
Nen looked up at me with eyes full of awe and confusion.
“What matters right now isn’t that the wound’s healed. Does your mana usually scatter like that? Like it can’t settle in one place and keeps dispersing on its own?”
“H-How did you know?”
Nen’s eyes went round.
“And whenever you generate aura, it probably always felt like being stabbed through the bones, didn’t it?”
“How do you know that? Yes, Hans. The stranger I trained, the worse it got. I only thought my talent was just worse than everyone else’s.”
“Not at all. Your mana core is unusual, not inferior. If anything, it’s the opposite.”
I cut her off firmly.
“When someone with a mana structure like yours tries to build mana through ordinary breathing methods, those symptoms appear exactly as I described. In the end, the more you train, the more painful it becomes, and once you hit a clear limit, the entire circuit starts to break down.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
Nen looked completely lost.
“Who taught you your breathing?”
“By the count’s and Lady Ellen’s consideration, I was assigned one of the family knights as a mentor and taught his breathing method. The young lady wants to make me a knight someday.”
I nodded.
So that explained why Nen’s fighting ability had seemed so far beyond the ordinary. She’d been training as a knight.
“For an ordinary person, that knight’s breathing method would have helped plenty. But for you, Nen, that formula was poison.”
“Then... does that mean I can’t hold a sword anymore?”
She asked the question with a face darkening in despair.
I let the corner of my mouth lift slightly.
“No. If the formula’s wrong, you just rewrite it. From now on, I’ll make a custom breathing method that fits your body perfectly.”
“Huh? You can make a breathing method?”
Anyone else would have thought that was madness, but to me it wasn’t such a tremendous feat.
Of course, it wasn’t something you could finish in one neat pass.
I had to grasp and memorize every variable—the floating irregular motion of Nen’s core, the mana pulse that changed from moment to moment.
Without an absolute memory, the job would be impossible from the start.
“But before that, you have to trust me, Nen. If you don’t want this, I won’t do it.”
Honestly, it would be hard to believe.
I decided to leave it to her choice.
“If it weren’t for you, I’d already be dead today. I’ll trust you.”
Nen nodded with a solemn look in her eyes.
“Good. Then forget the breathing method you learned before. From now on, breathe exactly as I tell you.”
“Yes.”
Nen closed her eyes.
At that instant, blue mana burst from my fingertips.
It shifted into threads and wrapped around Nen’s entire body like a cocoon.
Chiiit! Chiiit!
If her core floated like mist and changed cycles?
Then all I have to do is identify the warped gaps and stitch in a new formula that fits them exactly.
I carved away every inefficient lump of computation and rebuilt it in my own way.
The process itself was so exhilarating, so satisfying, that I couldn’t help enjoying it.
That said, I couldn’t lose myself in it completely.
This was Nen’s fate I was handling.
I had to be careful, and I had to give it everything I had.
Using all my strength, I stitched together the circuit inside Nen’s body thread by thread.
How long had passed like that?
At last, a unique breathing formula—one and only one in the world, made solely for Nen—was complete.
“Hoo... Done. All the work’s finished, so go ahead and try breathing.”
“Yes.”
At once, Nen inhaled and exhaled slowly, following the grain of the formula I’d woven into her.
Mana that had been floating and scattering.
The new breathing formula gently caught that current and settled it precisely into the core.
“...Ah!”
Nen’s eyes flew open.
“I can’t believe it. It doesn’t hurt at all. The mana isn’t scattering either, and I can control it perfectly, like it’s a part of my own body. No... my body feels so light I could suddenly fly away.”
Nen trembled with emotion.
It was the shiver of someone who had just experienced a miracle.
Of course.
I smiled with a sense of pride.
It ended up becoming a top-class breathing method while I was making it.
And it was one only Nen could use.
For her, an incredible stroke of luck had arrived.
A breathing method tailored to Nen’s unusual core... It’ll bring out terrifying power.
Just changing her breathing method alone made Nen’s presence feel at least twice as strong.
There was no telling how much stronger she’d become from here.
“Hans......!”
Nen’s eyes welled up with tears, and then she dropped flat on the ground before me.
“The kindness you’ve shown me today runs deeper than that of the master who taught me. You saved my life when it was falling apart, so now my life belongs to you.”
“Get up. Don’t suddenly start bowing like that. We’re both commoners, so let’s not make a fuss over it.”
Flustered, I hurriedly grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back up.
But Nen’s eyes remained utterly steady, without the slightest wavering.
“I have no choice but to go to the imperial capital now, since I’m under the count’s orders and serving Lady Ellen. But I promise you this: if Hans-sama calls for me one day, I’ll come running to you no matter where it is, no matter what the situation.”
“It’s not that big a deal.”
I scratched my head, trying to hide my embarrassment.
It was just a small favor for someone who had genuinely helped me when I was staying at the count’s house.
And, frankly, it had also satisfied my intellectual curiosity.
There’s a certain thrill to seeing a formula improved properly.
Anyway, once I confirmed that Nen’s condition had stabilized completely, a new question finally surfaced.
“But how did this happen? Weren’t you supposed to have left for the imperial capital with Lady Ellen? Why were you being attacked by those bastards?”
Nen hesitated for a moment before answering.
“...Actually, the young lady left me behind in Rowen. On the surface, it was to have me handle the family’s remaining errands.”
She looked up at me quietly.
“But secretly, she ordered me to find you.”
“Me?”
“Even after she learned that you had safely escaped the underground prison, the young lady still couldn’t put her mind at ease. She told me to watch over you quietly if you were somewhere in Rowen. And if you allowed it, she wanted me to come to the imperial capital with you.”
Lady Ellen must have been far more worried than I’d realized.
“But I searched and searched and never found you.”
That made sense.
I’d been back in the cave training.
And when I did go outside, I was wearing Jeren’s face.
“I was just about ready to head to the imperial capital on my own, but the war atmosphere spread too quickly. I was helping with the family’s work because we were short-handed, and yesterday the count summoned me. He said this place was dangerous, so I should go to the imperial capital and protect the young lady.”
Nen’s eyes turned cold.
“On the way there, I ran into a Kran patrol. I saw with my own eyes those bastards cutting down my master.”
“Your master... you mean that knight?”
“Yes. He’s the one who taught me swordsmanship and mana breathing. I couldn’t just walk away. But he was too strong...”
“Wait.”
I cut her off with a gesture.
Inside the cave.
Killing intent.
Nen sensed it too.
Her expression hardened at once as she turned her gaze inward.
A hole swallowed in darkness.
Something was stealthily coming out from inside it.
Was there something like that in here?
I’d been so focused on blocking the entrance that I’d never properly checked the inside.
Sssss—
A body as thick as an adult man’s thigh.
Gray, scaly hide.
Where its eyes should have been, there was only a dim membrane.
A split tongue licked the darkness.
A magical beast...!
The bestiary in my head supplied the answer immediately.
Pogna.
It wasn’t particularly strong.
In the hierarchy of magical beasts, it stood at the very bottom—a low-grade beast.
But there was one thing to watch out for.
Poison.
That thing breathed out mana-forged poison mist.
This cramped cave was the perfect hunting ground for it.
Chiiii—
Just as expected, a pale poisonous fog began seeping from Pogna’s maw.
“I’ll handle it, Hans.”
Nen rose to her feet, drawing a dagger.
She took a stance as if to shield me with her back, eager to repay the favor.
“Relax. I already took care of it.”
I spread the magic armor cannon’s field and drove back the poison mist.
Swish.
A single thread, finer than a hair, cut across the darkness.
Pogna’s head fell away, scales and all, without a sound.
Nen’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“Amazing.”
“It’s not much of a beast, but it uses poison, so don’t let it get close.”
I erased the poison clinging to the magic armor cannon with mana, then collected it along with the reinforced mana threads back into my subspace.
Huh?
Then I glanced into my subspace again.
The gray bead.
Its mana had increased slightly since before.
And it had happened just now.
Again?
Something was strange.
...Don’t tell me.
Just as something in my head began to click into place.
Ssssss—
Deep in the cave’s darkness.
Another murderous presence began to stir.
Nen raised her dagger, tense.
“There seems to be another magical beast inside.”
“Perfect timing.”
“For what?”
“There’s something I need to confirm.”
Whether my suspicion was right.