[Saintess for You - 11]
[Saintess for You - 11]
"Are you sure it was okay to send just the two of them?"
Lucian sighed worriedly while organizing documents, but Aria didn't stop her hands from organizing the papers.
It wasn't that she was so oblivious that she didn't know what Lucian was worried about, but Aria wasn't nice enough to go out of her way to be considerate and comfort him for every little thing.
"Who else would we send? Our guards? They'd just be dead weight and complicate things for no reason. Ed goes without saying, he's the man called a hero in that Monster War, and the Saintess-nim isn't someone who'd get taken down by your average enemy."
"But my stomach hurts so much just thinking about what if an incident breaks out."
"That's why it took so long for you to get marriage permission from my husband. It's not that you're a commoner, it's that your disposition is just too weak."
"I have nothing to say."
He said that, but aside from his disposition, his eye for people was quite good.
He was awkward at dealing with people, felt uncomfortable talking to them, and disliked the gaze of others.
That was why he put effort into dealing with people, focused all his attention on conversing with them, and was more sensitive to others' gazes than anyone else.
In a sense, he was a typical example of someone whose talent and disposition didn't match; his personality and disposition weren't suited for working with people, but his talent actually was.
If he hadn't even had that talent, it would have been impossible for Lucian to enter this Valtus Family in the first place.
If that had happened, marrying Noel might have been impossible, but he wouldn't have ended up sitting in the family head's seat, becoming the master of a crumbling family with nothing but a bad reputation.
'In a sense, it was luck if you could call it luck.'
Anyone else would have tried to cancel the marriage, run away, or avoid responsibility somehow once the family collapsed, but Lucian never refused the position of family head that he was forced to take, and he even begged Aria.
Whether it was because he could act lightly since he wasn't a noble, prioritizing the will to survive over pride or dignity, or because he had been prepared from the start, unfortunately, even Aria couldn't tell.
"Still, I'm proud that both my sons grew up well. How do you evaluate them, Mother?"
"The eldest grandson is obsessed with clowning around. If he inherits the family head position, he should act a bit more seriously, but since he's been clowning around his whole life, it might be quite difficult."
If the atmosphere is bad, someone does something stupid to break the tension.
Since that foolish behavior had become a habit, even if Julian became the family head, that goofy, playful personality had already become his face and wouldn't fall off, so it wouldn't be easy.
He wasn't originally like that, but it seemed he had lived that way for so long that he had become that kind of person.
However, aside from that attitude, the tendency to be good at reading people was definitely something he inherited from Lucian.
"The younger grandson is cautious and smart. He has strength, too, so he truly has nothing to fear in this world."
"Is that so?"
"But sometimes he thinks too much."
That was likely a habit bordering on trauma from the battlefield.
A single choice changes the number of lives lost, and changes the blood that flows.
He had no choice but to think of all kinds of possibilities, and fighting on the battlefield wasn't always about engaging in fierce combat; there were quite a lot of cases where everyone put their heads together inside a tent.
Ed must have had a headache every time that happened, and since he had to think about every possibility, that habit must have definitely formed during those times.
He seemed to be worrying about various things regarding the Saintess.
But for the Saintess, for whom everything had already been decided, worrying was useless.
For Ed, the choices now were to choose 'trust' and try forever so she wouldn't get bored, or choose 'don't trust' and leave her alone.
There was no middle ground.
The first existence reflected in Anastasia Lacroix was Adrian Valtus, and from that moment on, everything else became irrelevant.
Strength.
Intelligence.
Knowledge.
Honor.
Pride.
Appearance.
Everything else became meaningless to Anastasia.
"He's looking for trouble, really."
"That's a trait of our family. You're the same, aren't you, Mother?"
Aria frowned at those words and said.
"Shut your mouth and process the documents."
"Yes......."
"Claw marks. I don't think I've ever seen claw marks this big. Are all monsters big?"
"There are small monsters, too. In my experience, monsters that are too big are annoying, but small monsters are often more troublesome."
"Why?"
"Because if they're small, they often have special abilities."
For example, there were many monsters that freely used all kinds of abilities that would literally make you lose your mind, such as poison, curses, or even hallucinations and mental manipulation.
In my experience, the most annoying one was mental manipulation.
Because it manipulates allies, it's hard to attack, and since there's a clear 'singularity' for mental manipulation, you can't easily kill your comrades because you can reverse it if you can just destroy that.
If there were undead in front of me where holding back was meaningless, only anger toward the monsters would build up.
But if it was mental manipulation, there was a higher possibility of saving them, so I couldn't fight with full force.
"Hmm, can't I handle all those special abilities somehow?"
"If it's poison, curses, or hallucinations, it's possible somehow. It wouldn't be a problem even if the Saintess-nim were alone. But in the case of mental manipulation, you must be careful."
"Why?"
"In the case of mental manipulation, it's often used with a medium that becomes a single singularity. In other words, no matter how much you dispel it from the person whose mind is being manipulated, they'll just get hit again. To dispel it, you have to destroy what became the medium."
"I see, that's annoying. Then if you're alone, it's just over? You could just give an order like, 'Commit suicide as soon as you get hit,' right?"
There are many people who misunderstand that.
Since it's named mental manipulation, many people think they can manipulate the mind at will.
"Because it can be easily dispelled if a gap in the mind appears, suicide isn't very easy. For example, even if you try to cut your own throat with a sword, you can usually dispel it because of the intense pain that comes in that moment."
Naturally, a scar would remain on the neck, but you could stop before the wound became serious.
As long as there was pain from the wound, it could be easily dispelled.
In other words, suicide wasn't very easy.
"Ho, then the best way to dispel mental manipulation is......."
"Yes, it's to knock them out. But this is only a temporary method at best. Once you're hit, traces of the mental manipulation magic remain inside for several hours, so you never know when they'll try to manipulate you again. Therefore, destroying the medium is the most certain way."
If you were quick-witted, you could even block it in advance by self-harming the moment you judged that mental manipulation was coming.
Actually, I had self-harmed a few times in that way.
The moment you hesitate, the mental manipulation will enter, and in that case, the damage is often immense.
Especially since my ability had characteristics that suited 'surprise attacks' in many ways.
"That's a shame."
"What is?"
"If one of us, you or me, gets hit with mental manipulation, wouldn't that be a true narrative? A narrative achieved by overcoming it."
"Please distinguish between novels and reality. Above all, if one of us gets hit, that in itself is a major accident. The surroundings are dangerous......."
I drew my sword and stabbed it into the ground.
"Ed?"
"......."
"A rat?"
What I stabbed was a rat.
"Blood-red Rat, a rat characterized by blood-sucking, and they often act in groups."
"But it's alone? To begin with, then what are these claw marks?"
"......."
A sense of incongruity.
Something is strange.
It's strange to just call it a monster.
Monsters basically have a hierarchy formed by strength if there's no leader of the pack, and naturally, there's a food chain that fits that.
In other words, it's rare to find cases where giant monsters and small monsters act together.
If this were a battlefield.
Or if this were a monster's territory, it would be their domain, so there would be parts that could be understood.
But to be precise, this was human territory, and if there were monsters hiding here or born by chance, it should be 'one type of monster.'
Giant claw marks.
The Blood-red Rat I just saw.
Even though Blood-red Rats move in groups, there's only one?
If there were several Blood-red Rats, one could say they were cooperating because a powerful and intelligent monster had established a clear hierarchy, but this situation where the characteristics of the Blood-red Rat seemed to have died forcibly didn't fit that situation.
"Two types of monsters were born? Something is strange, and above all, the characteristics of the Blood-red Rat don't match. In other words, this is......."
It's not a natural occurrence.
It wasn't a natural occurrence of monsters, that is, a 'phenomenon,' but an 'accident' into which someone's will had entered.
And this feeling of manipulating monsters.
"Saintess-nim, the situation has changed. Let's retreat."
"Huh? Why?"
"There's a possibility that there's a monster tamer......."
Saaaaak, something approached.
Large, pure-white snakes began to surround us.
The Saintess-nim and I naturally leaned our backs against each other and said.
"Monster tamer....... That's a crime, right?"
"Yes."
I sighed softly.
"It's a top-tier crime. It's a technique where you'd have nothing to say even if you were executed the moment you learned it."
Except for the very few authorized by the state to do so in designated locations, it was a 'technique that should not be learned.'
And in this forest right now, there was a madman who had learned that technique which should not be learned.