Diela (3)
"Orabeoni."
The small, secluded room in the main house that young lady Diela used.
Now, although no one had come there for a long time, the maids still cleaned it regularly, and in that small space Valerian sat alone, lost in thought.
Even after Derrick left, he had remained sitting there for quite a while, organizing his thoughts.
While that was happening, Aiselin, who had been walking along the main house corridor, entered while leading the maids.
"The head butler made a report, and they said Mr. Derrick took Diela out from the annex ... "
" ... At this hour?"
– 'Yes. Let's try it once.'
The image of Derrick leaving the room with a resolute expression. He looked as if he had found something.
It was a deep night when even most of the servants had fallen asleep.
Valerian felt a strangely uneasy feeling.
"I should give instructions to the head butler and have him check once."
"T, that is ... Mr. Derrick strictly warned that no one should follow him, so ... the report even came up to me."
" ... What in the world is he planning to do?"
"T, that is ... "
Young lady Aiselin also wore an uneasy expression.
Derrick was someone she herself had found and brought.
Because Duke Duplein had granted him full authority, no one argued against his policies, but still, it was unavoidable to feel uneasy.
However, if, as the Duke said, an extreme measure was necessary ... from Aiselin's standpoint, there was nothing more she could say.
"What were you doing in Diela's room?"
"I was just organizing my thoughts a bit. And I looked at Diela's paintings for the first time in a while."
Canvases filled the room. The very last painting Diela had drawn.
Although it was still an unfinished painting with plenty of blank space around the edges of the canvas, just looking at the drawn parts showed how outstanding her skill was.
Aiselin looked at the painting, gently closed her eyes, and said,
"I hope that someday Diela will finish the painting. We'll put it in a frame and hang it beautifully in the hall ... "
"Yeah."
The two of them looked at the painting with regretful voices, and in the deepening late night, they could only lament.
*
–Kwaang!
Even the darkness of the night left Diela's side.
Derrick's Mana Arrow, having completely locked onto the enemy's position, smashed through branches as it chased after Diela.
– Pababak! Pabak!
The flow of magic bending and twisting as it came in looked as if it would crush Diela's bones at any moment.
If even a single hit landed, it would be fatal to Diela's fragile body. Knowing that well, Diela clutched her head and ran along the rugged forest path.
"Kyaaah!"
– Hwiik! Kwaang!
When Derrick strode forward, Diela ran in the opposite direction.
She vaulted over thick tree trunks, slid across the dirt ground, and climbed up slopes.
She crossed between the trees, lowered her head and passed by the overhanging zelkova tree, and jumped over a ditch.
Even though it was midnight, she ran through the forest path without hesitation. Diela already knew all the terrain here.
The location of this forest, the positions of the vines that hinder pursuit, even the positions of the large fallen tree trunks and the unevenly protruding rocks on the ground, she had more or less memorized them all.
Derrick was not flustered. He already knew that she would be thoroughly familiar with this forest's geography.
All the landscapes filling her room were paintings of the area around this estate.
It was not hard to infer that Diela, in her childhood, had been a girl who ran around inside and outside the estate and played in nature.
The paintings Diela drew as a child were, to anyone's eyes, beyond the level of a mere child.
She captured the world she saw with her own eyes without embellishment.
Moreover, even the many bluish lines that were drawn in the landscapes were not ordinary.
Those lines that appeared in the forests, trees, sunsets, and streams she drew as a young girl. Those bluish lines that seemed to express shading or texture might have looked like her own unique painting style to those who did not know.
However, those were the flows of mana that the young girl had seen in the great nature.
They were the massive currents of mana within nature itself that a Wild School mage would experience at least once.
The fact that she could visualize and express them meant that she had been unconsciously sensing that energy.
–Diela's aptitude is closer to the Wild School than the Discipline School.
The moment he saw those paintings, Derrick had already intuitively felt it to some extent.
A School of Magic that does not manifest mana through rituals within rules and regulations, but instead senses the mana dwelling in all things and uses it in a free form.
That was called the Wild School, and while it shared many aspects with the Discipline School, it also differed in many ways.
This girl had been gifted the noblest Bloodline in the world, but unfortunately, she had been born with the talent of a back-alley mage.
The ability to handle mana is greatly influenced by Bloodline.
However, ultimately, the School-based knowledge used to manifest magic often follows an individual's disposition.
Of course, most children of noble families follow the noble Discipline School, but the girl named Diela was different.
The girl simply liked the world.
She liked to roam around inside and outside the estate, look at the world, draw pictures, and run around.
Even if she got scolded by the servants, she would jump over the estate wall and explore the forest, and she would draw passing rodents in her small sketchbook.
She would lift her skirt and cross the stream barefoot, and lie down in the grassy plains and look up at the blue sky.
And she left all of those behind in pictures and remembered them. It was clear that she simply liked doing that.
In that gap, everything begins.
Unfortunately, in a world where the noble Discipline School had become the mainstream, she was nothing more than a dropout.
– Kwaang! Kwaang! Kwaang!
As Derrick pressured her by firing Mana Arrows at appropriate positions, Diela once again vaulted between the trees and somehow managed to escape.
Even in the terror pushing her to the limit, she racked her brain on how to survive.
Her blood flow accelerated. Her breathing grew rough. Her heart pounded.
The well-known fact that running away like this would accomplish nothing tormented her mind.
If she wanted to live, she had to resist.
Even if she had to mobilize everything she had, and if she had nothing, even if she had to swing her bare hands until they were torn apart, she had to resist.
"Haa .. haa ... "
Gasping for breath that was reaching its limit, she almost rolled through the bushes.
The speed at which Derrick pursued her with steady steps and the speed at which Diela fled while her body lost strength were not much different.
Derrick was originally from a wandering mercenary background.
He was someone who was always forced to fight in unfamiliar environments.
Just because she knew the forest's geography completely, there was no way she could shake off Derrick.
– Kwaang!
"Kyaaah!"
Another Mana Arrow grazed past Diela's back and exploded nearby.
From the shock, Diela rolled down along a gentle grassy slope.
Her blonde hair, already tangled with dirt and grass, became even more disheveled.
– Pasak!
The girl somehow got her body up.
Her once neatly arranged hair, now rough, flowed down over her shoulders.
Her lace pajamas had turned into rags, and her once fair skin was full of scratches.
Even so, she clenched her teeth and got up.
If she fell down along the long hill, she would go deeper into the forest.
In the middle of the forest was a wide clearing like a giant meadow, and a single zelkova tree stood there conspicuously.
Diela grabbed the trunk of the zelkova tree and barely managed to get herself up.
While panting heavily, she tried to somehow take one more step.
However, because her stamina was completely exhausted, her body would not move forward anymore.
Her breath, risen up to her chin, was making even breathing difficult.
"Do you not even have the strength left to run anymore?"
"......!"
A sound of a blade being shaken off once was heard.
At a time in the dead of night when the moonlight shone intensely, the boy strode toward the girl who had her back to the zelkova tree.
Derrick, wearing a satisfied smile, closed the distance, but Diela, who had no strength left, slowly lost strength in her legs and collapsed to the ground.
Thus, Derrick came right up to her and looked down at Diela.
"Huff ... huff ... "
"Do you have anything else you wish to say?"
"Huff ... why are you asking that ...? haa ... haa ... "
The collapsed Diela raised her head and stared straight at Derrick.
There was still life in her eyes.
Her small body had no strength left to run, but her resolute will was still alive.
"Why? You think I'll apologize? Beg you to forgive me? Say I'm sorry, say I won't do it again ... and beg while rubbing my hands together, saying I'll be a good child?"
"........"
"Then just kill me. I will never do something as cowardly as that which doesn't suit my Bloodline."
Even though she knew that she was nothing more than prey right now, Diela held her head high and looked at Derrick.
Derrick just quietly looked at Diela like that.
"Why are you so obsessed with Bloodline and authority?"
" ... Then what else do I have?"
Clenching the grass with her trembling fingertips, Diela gritted her teeth and said.
What was in her voice was closer to sorrow than anger.
"Magic, studies, painting ... everything falls behind ... and after being left behind like that ... what do I have left besides the authority that comes from this Bloodline? If I can't even protect this ... then I ... then what am I ...? "
"......"
Diela said that while tears fell drop by drop.
Derrick quietly looked at her, and then spoke softly.
"I saw the sunset painting."
"...."
"You finished it well."
"...."
That watercolor painting depicting the sunset he saw in Diela's room.
The work where the girl, carried on a maid's back, looked up at the reddened sky was the last thing Diela had drawn.
It was a delicately and beautifully depicted painting, but the outer parts were almost entirely filled with blank space.
Most of Diela's paintings were like that.
The brushwork was clean and the colors were soft, so they were beautiful in themselves, but a part or most of the canvas was left empty.
Valerian had evaluated them all as unfinished paintings.
If even Valerian, who loved Diela dearly, had said that, then probably the other family members thought the same.
However, to Derrick's eyes, who had the perspective of a modern person, it looked different.
Even though some brushstrokes invaded the blank space, the sense of space felt aesthetically intentional.
In short, it was the so-called "beauty of empty space."
It was a technique that often appeared in Eastern painting rather than Western painting, where the traces of the brush flowed gently into the blank space and brought out the sense of space.
It was a method that almost never appeared in Western painting techniques that relied on rules and forms.
Rather, filling the canvas to the brim and layering flashy colors was the most common painting method in this noble era.
Diela had built her own painting style in such an era.
No one had recognized it, but she was a girl born with an aesthetic sense.
In other words, she was not a girl who had nothing but Bloodline.
"What meaning does that have now ... "
Diela tried to say something, then stopped.
In the world reflected in her wide-open eyes, she saw the flow of mana that filled the world as if it were about to burst.
Within the survival instinct that had been constantly provoked, she felt as if the scenery of this forest, where she had played countless times since childhood, was blending with her vision.
Only when she was pushed to her limit did the girl's magical instincts finally stir.
Within senses sharpened to the extreme, the countless flows of mana permeating the world came into view all at once.
That was the moment when Diela could not close her mouth.
– Sreung!
"Kyaaht!"
Without giving her even a moment, Derrick's blade flew in.
Diela was startled and fell backward, raising both arms to take a defensive stance.
It was just a movement that came out by reflex.
Of course, there was no way those slender arms could block Derrick's well-honed sword.
However, Derrick's blade never reached Diela.
– Jjeojeojeok!
– Kaang!
Moisture in the air froze around the girl's body and blocked Derrick's sword.
The girl, who had fallen backward, widened her eyes in shock.
An ice pillar emitting cold air had formed around her as if guarding her.
She had done it.
It was still too raw to reach the level of a 1-Star magic, but it was at least the level of basic elemental magic.
– Sreuk, tak!
Derrick calmly sheathed his sword again.
And he said in a quiet whisper,
"Well done."
In Derrick's face as he looked down at her, the madness from just before was long gone.
As always, he looked like the indifferent yet kind mage she had seen at the estate.
Seeing that change in Derrick, Diela swallowed her breath.
What had driven Diela into a corner until now was to push her senses to the limit in an extreme survival situation.
Something Diela, who had always lived like a hothouse flower and learned mana at a desk, could never experience.
That feeling of her whole body's senses surging for the single goal of survival.
Diela, with trembling pupils, looked around herself.
The ice pillars frozen by mana energy gradually exhausted their power, then turned back into moisture and seeped into the surrounding ground.
She spread her trembling arms and looked at them.
What filled them was nothing other than undeniable mana energy.
The mana that Diela had finally manifested was specialized in cold.
The sight of bluish mana wrapped in cold and floating in a circle above her hands was like an ideal she could never reach no matter how hard she tried in her childhood.
Something that did not work no matter how much she stayed up all night reading books, no matter how many times she repeated it, no matter how she worked herself to the bone.
Even after countless challenges, only failure repeated, and she had to receive pitiful looks and subtle contempt.
Thus, only memories of frustration and disappointment accumulated, eroded the girl, and when she came to her senses, she had locked herself in the annex surrounded by rose vines.
Buried only in authority and Bloodline, her soul had been gradually worn away.
Yet compared to the years of such repetition, this mana was so beautiful and brilliant that it made those years seem meaningless.
Sometimes flowing like water, sometimes surging like the earth ... a source of power that moved according to Diela's senses.
That 모습 was engraved in Diela's blue retinas.
"......"
When she was still pure, Diela used to imagine every night before falling asleep.
If she studied magic hard and became able to use magic, she would be so happy she could jump.
She would run to her family with a face full of smiles, jump around, and boast.
So she had to learn magic diligently.
Compared to those expectations back then, Diela did not even twitch when she saw the manifested mana.
For a long time, she just looked at it, and looked again, and then her body began to tremble little by little.
"Uuk, hic ... uk ... uuk ... "
It seemed that the emotion that had welled up was closer to sorrow than joy.
While quietly watching Diela hug her own arms and sob for a long time, Derrick blankly looked up at the starry sky.
The starlight of the moonlit night was still bright.
*
"Did you really have to do it in a way that makes a person's heart drop like that?"
"As I said, an extreme measure was necessary."
"Don't treat people like patients."
"......"
Both Diela and Derrick were a little tired after firing magic several times.
Under the large zelkova tree, keeping a moderate distance from each other, they were each leaning and resting.
Diela hugged her knees and looked at her palms.
She gently closed her eyes while looking at the shimmering mana inside them.
"You should be thankful."
"I'm not thankful."
"I know you're thankful."
"If you know, then why are you asking?"
Although her tone was still curt, Diela's attitude had softened quite a bit.
However, she was still not very honest.
"You still haven't reached the realm of 1-Star magic, so you need to train more. You've wasted a lot of time, so there's a long way to go."
"......"
"Your mana will be unstable for now. Starting tomorrow, you need to learn how to properly manifest mana first. That will become the foundation of all Star-ranked magic."
"How do you do that?"
"I'll tell you tomorrow."
Diela lowered her gaze.
Her state was a mess.
Her thick blonde hair was full of leaves and dust, and her whole body was covered in mud, making her look like a beggar.
Even so, mana was flowing through her body.
That one fact overflowed heavily in her chest.
It felt as if hot lava were flowing down her esophagus.
"Derrick."
The girl called Derrick's name.
When Derrick answered lightly, the girl blankly looked at the forest at night, then said casually.
Only the back of her head was visible, but that calm one word was clearly heard.
"Thank you."
"......"
Derrick leaned his head against the tree trunk, quietly looked at the starry sky, and thought.
Was he really worthy of being thanked?
In truth, Diela had almost learned the basic magical aptitude on her own.
Derrick had merely created the trigger for its manifestation.
From a young age, roaming the forest, drawing landscapes, and observing the world, she had been raising her Wild School-like instinctive senses by herself.
If she drew pictures, they were treated as unfinished works.
If she learned magic, she couldn't even do the basics.
And she had no other outstanding talent.
If life were a painting, that childhood in which she had accomplished nothing would have felt like meaningless blank space.
However, Derrick, who came from the streets, knew.
Not every moment of life can be filled to the brim.
Whether he was sitting blankly in the slums starving, or sitting alone in a room all day reading only Magic Books, that empty space of life was always with Derrick.
It's only a matter of whether it comes sooner or later, but in a long life, blank spaces in life always come.
Whether you lose your goal, lose your dream, lose your family, or lose your comrades.
A period of blank space filled with long emptiness and frustration always comes.
As experience accumulates and one becomes mature, one gains the skill to endure those blank spaces.
Even within that emptiness, one becomes able to find meaning or purpose.
And one comes to accept that this, too, is a part of life.
However, blank spaces that come too early, before such maturity accumulates, sometimes break a person's heart.
Because it makes them think that it is everything in life.
For a young girl like Diela, there was no need to even say it.
Still, when she held a brush in front of the canvas and played around, hadn't she already known?
Only when those blank spaces are also included does it finally become a complete painting.
"About that sunset painting."
That is why Derrick casually asked,
"Was it your own work?"
" ..... Why are you asking something like that? I put down the brush a long time ago."
"I just wanted to ask."
Diela snorted as if asking what kind of question that was.
It was that painting which the whole family had looked at with warm eyes, telling her to finish it quickly, saying they wanted to see Diela's fully completed painting.
Regrettably, it was already a finished painting.
After maintaining silence for a while, Diela then rested her head on her knees and answered in a muttering voice.
"It was my masterpiece."
Life was always like that.
Next to Diela, Derrick just looked up at the moon together with her.
*
The next morning, the first thing Diela did when she opened her eyes in bed was to spread her palm and let mana flow.
The clearly visible flow of mana was finally telling her that the girl had entered the very beginning as a mage.
However, it still felt a bit difficult to fully manifest it.
She wanted to use magic properly as soon as possible, but the girl's level was still weak.
– 'Starting tomorrow, you need to learn how to properly manifest mana first. That will become the foundation of all Star-ranked magic.'
– 'How do you do that?'
– 'I'll tell you tomorrow.'
"......."
Diela rested her chin on her hand and sank deeply into thought.
Her messy hair fell down and blocked her view, so she blew it away and made a sulky, cat-like expression.
Last night, when Diela returned to the annex looking like a beggar, the servants were startled.
After receiving the maids' help, washing her body, and falling asleep, not even five hours had passed.
Outside the window, the sun that had just barely risen was driving away the darkness.
That man named Derrick was probably sleeping soundly in the guest room of the main house.
Then what was she supposed to do?
He was the one who said he would tell her tomorrow.
From Diela's perspective, when you sleep and wake up, it is tomorrow.
If he was going to be like that, he should have set an exact time.
She was starting to feel restless because she wanted to learn how to use mana quickly.
Diela got down from the bed wearing her pajamas.
It was the moment she opened the door to go out into the corridor.
– Thud.
"Kyaaah!"
A maid who was bringing back cooking water from the well, refilling the water Derrick had emptied last night, fell.
She must not have expected Diela's door to open suddenly, and she ended up dropping the bucket.
– Kwa-dangtang!
– Chwaak!
The bucket rolled once, and Diela's slippers and the hem of her pajamas got wet.
"...."
"Young Lady Diela! H, hiek!"
Diela's cold gaze turned toward the fallen maid.
Delron, the head butler, who had been giving instructions to the butlers in the corridor, ran over in surprise.
"Young lady Diela. Are you alright?"
"Y, young lady! I, I'm sorry! I'm really sorry! Please forgive me just once! Please, just once ...! "
The fallen maid sprang up her upper body and begged for forgiveness.
The head butler Delron also swallowed his dry saliva nervously.
It was obvious at a glance that the maid would get beaten, so his head was already getting complicated thinking about how to stop it.
If the number of servants in the annex decreased any further, it would become truly difficult to handle the workload.
However, Diela simply looked down at the maid with cold eyes and said,
"Be more careful."
After saying that rather coldly, Diela quickly walked down the corridor.
She was going to call the head maid, change her clothes, and go to the main house.
The way she walked somehow looked a bit cheerful, and for a moment, she even looked like a girl her age about to go on an outing.
"......"
" ... Huh ...? "
The head butler Delron and the maid looked at each other and widened their eyes.
It was none other than that Diela.
Even if she had trampled and beaten the maid to death, it would not have been strange in that situation, but she had just left after saying one short sentence.
People seeing it for the first time might say that she was just as rude as ever, but for the servants who had worked beside Diela for half their lives, it was a situation they could not believe even with their own eyes.
Not knowing what in the world had happened, the two could only stare blankly at the corridor where Diela had left.
It had been just one full day since Derrick had taken her by the hand and gone outside the estate.
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