Chapter 10 Translator: XZY Chapter 10: Diella (3) ***
"Orabeoni."
The secluded room in the main building that Diella used to use.
It was a place no one had come to for a long time, but Valerian was sitting alone in that small space, which was still consistently cleaned by the maids, lost in thought.
Even after Derek had left, he had been sitting there for a long time, organizing his thoughts.
As he was doing so, Aiseline, who had been crossing the hallway of the main building, led her ladies-in-waiting and came in.
"The head butler reported that Derek-ssi took Diella out of the annex..."
"...At this hour?"
'Alright. Let's give it a try.'
The image of Derek leaving the room with a determined expression. He had an expression as if he had surely figured something out.
It was the dead of night, when most of the servants were asleep.
Valerian felt a strange sense of anxiety.
"I should give instructions to the head butler and have him look into it."
"Th, that's... Derek-ssi apparently threatened them never to follow... so the report came up to me."
"...What on earth is he planning to do?"
"I, I know..."
Lady Aiseline also wore an anxious expression.
Derek was a person she had found and brought herself.
Because the Duke of Duplein had given him full authority, no one had questioned his methods, but it couldn't be helped that there were some anxious parts.
However, if a drastic remedy was necessary as the Duke had said... from Aiseline's position, there was nothing more she could say.
"What were you doing in Diella's room?"
"I was just organizing my thoughts. And looking at Diella's paintings for the first time in a while."
The canvases that filled the room. The last painting that Diella had drawn.
It was still an unfinished painting with a lot of blank space around the edges of the canvas, but looking only at the painted parts, one could see that her skill was outstanding.
Aiseline looked at the painting, gently closed her eyes, and spoke.
"I hope Diella will finish the painting someday. I would frame it and hang it beautifully in the hall..."
"I agree."
The two people who were looking at the painting with regretful voices could only sigh in the deepening late night.
<><><>
CRASH!
Even the darkness of the night left Diella's side.
Derek's Mana Arrow, having completely pinpointed the enemy's location, chased after Diella, breaking tree branches wantonly.
Pababak! Pabak!
The flow of magic, bending and turning as it came in, was on the verge of crushing Diella's bones at any moment.
If even a single one hit, it would be a fatal blow to Diella's frail body. Knowing that fact well, Diella clutched her head and ran along the rugged forest path.
"Kyaaaaaak!"
Whoosh! CRASH!
As Derek approached with long strides, Diella ran in the opposite direction.
She climbed over a large tree trunk, slid down an earthen slope, and climbed up an incline.
She crossed through the forest, ducked her head, and passed by a drooping zelkova tree to jump over a ditch.
Despite it being the middle of the night, she ran through the forest path without hesitation. Diella already knew the entire topography of this place.
She had memorized to some extent the location of this forest, the location of the vines that would obstruct a chase, the location of large tree trunks lying on the ground, or the location of rocks that rose up unevenly.
Derek was not flustered. He had already known that she would be well-versed in the geography of this forest.
The landscapes that filled her room were all painted of the area around this mansion.
It was not difficult to deduce that the Diella of her childhood was a girl who ran around inside and outside the mansion, playing with nature.
The paintings drawn by the young Diella were beyond the level of a child, no matter who looked at them.
She was capturing the world she saw with her own eyes without addition or subtraction.
Not only that, but the numerous bluish coloring lines drawn in the landscapes were also unusual.
The lines that were seen in all the forests, trees, sunsets, and streams drawn by the young girl. Those bluish lines, which seemed to express shadows or represent texture, might have looked like her own unique painting style to those who did not know.
However, that was the flow of mana that the young girl had seen in the great nature.
They were the energies of mana in the great nature that a Wild school mage would surely experience at least once. The fact that she could visualize and express it meant that she was unconsciously feeling that energy.
──Diella's aptitude was closer to the Wild school than the Scholastic school.
The moment he saw that painting, Derek had already had an intuition to some extent.
A school of magic that, rather than manifesting mana through rituals within rules and regulations, felt the mana dwelling in all things and utilized it in a free form. That was called the Wild school, and while it shared many parts with the Scholastic school, it was also a school that was different in many parts.
This girl was gifted with the noblest bloodline in the world, but unfortunately, she was born with the qualities of a street mage.
The ability to handle mana was greatly influenced by bloodline. However, in ultimately manifesting magic, the school-based knowledge, which was the theory used, often followed an individual's disposition. Of course, most children of noble families followed the noble class's Scholastic school, but the girl named Diella was different.
The girl just liked the world. She liked to play inside and outside the mansion, see the world, and run around painting pictures.
Even if she was scolded by the servants, she would jump over the mansion wall and explore the forest, and draw the rodents that passed by in a small sketchbook.
She would lift her skirt and cross the stream barefoot, and lie down in the grassy meadow and look up at the blue sky.
And she remembered all of them by leaving them as pictures. It was clear that she just liked that.
Everything began from that gap.
Unfortunately, in a world where the noble class's Scholastic school had become the mainstream, she was nothing more than a straggler.
CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!
As he pressured Diella by firing Mana Arrows at appropriate locations, Diella once again climbed between the trees and somehow escaped.
In the midst of the fear that was welling up to the extreme, she racked her brain on how to survive.
Her blood flow accelerated. Her breathing became ragged. Her heart pounded.
The well-known fact that nothing would come of just running away like this tormented her mind.
If she wanted to live, she had to resist.
Even if she had to mobilize everything she had, if she had nothing, she had to resist even if it meant swinging her bare hands until they were raw.
"Haa... haa..."
She exhaled a breath that was becoming ragged to the limit and tumbled through the bushes. There was not much difference between the speed at which Derek was pursuing with heavy steps and the speed at which Diella was fleeing with all her strength gone.
Derek was a wandering mercenary from the beginning. He was a person who was always forced to fight in unfamiliar environments.
There was no way she could shake off Derek just because she had completely memorized the geography of the forest.
CRASH!
"Kyaak!"
Another Mana Arrow grazed past Diella's back and exploded nearby.
Due to the impact, Diella rolled down a gentle grassy slope. Her golden hair, which was already tangled with all sorts of dirt clumps and leaves, became even more disheveled.
Rustle!
The girl somehow managed to get to her feet.
Her hair, which had been neatly arranged, was now dry and brittle, flowing down her shoulders. Her lace pajamas had turned into rags, and scratches were evident on her fair skin.
Nevertheless, she gritted her teeth and got to her feet.
After falling down the long hill, one would proceed deeper into the forest.
In the middle of the forest, in a large, open, grassy area, a zelkova tree stood as if to show off.
Just like that, Diella grabbed the trunk of the zelkova tree and managed to pull herself up. Gasping for breath, she somehow tried to take one more step.
However, due to her completely depleted stamina, her body would not move any further. The breath that had risen to the tip of her chin was making it difficult even to breathe.
"You don't even have the strength to run anymore?"
"...!"
The sound of a sword being flicked clean was heard.
In the dead of night, when the moonlight shone intensely. The boy approached the girl who had her back to the zelkova tree with long strides.
Derek, with a satisfied smile, closed the distance, but Diella, with no strength left, slowly lost strength in her legs and sank to the ground.
And so, Derek came right up to her and looked down at Diella.
"Heok... heok..."
"Do you have anything more to say?"
"Heok... why do you ask something like that...? Haa... haa..."
Diella, sitting on the ground, raised her head and glared straight at Derek.
Her eyes were still full of life. Her petite frame no longer had the strength to run, but her resolute spirit was still alive.
"Why? Did you think I would apologize? Did you think I would beg for forgiveness? Did you think I would rub my hands together and beg, saying I was sorry, that I wouldn't do it again... that I would be a good girl?"
"..."
"Just kill me. I will never do anything cowardly that doesn't fit my bloodline."
Even though she knew she was nothing more than prey right now, Diella held her head high and looked at Derek.
Derek was just quietly looking at Diella.
"Why are you so obsessed with bloodline and authority?"
"...Then what else do I have?"
Diella gripped the grassy ground tightly with her trembling fingertips and spoke, gritting her teeth. What was present in her voice was closer to sorrow than anger.
"Magic, studies, painting... I've fallen behind in everything... and after being left behind like that... what is left for me besides the authority that comes from this bloodline? If I can't even protect this... then... then what am I...?"
"..."
And so, Diella spoke, shedding tears.
Derek looked at Diella quietly, and then eventually spoke quietly.
"I saw the sunset painting."
"..."
"You finished it well."
"..."
The watercolor painting depicting the sunset that he had seen in Diella's room. That work, in which a girl on a lady-in-waiting's back looked up at the red-stained sky, was the last one Diella had painted.
It was a delicately and beautifully depicted painting, but the outer part was almost entirely filled with blank space.
Most of Diella's paintings were like that. The brushstrokes were neat and the colors were soft, so they were beautiful in themselves, but a part or most of the canvas was empty.
Valerian had described them all as unfinished paintings. If even Valerian, who loved Diella dearly, had described them that way, then the other family members probably did too.
However, in the eyes of Derek, who had the perspective of a modern person, it was different. He felt that the feeling of utilizing the sense of space, even as some brushstrokes encroached on the blank space, seemed to be aesthetically intended.
In short, it was the 'beauty of empty space'. It was a technique that appeared frequently in Eastern painting rather than Western painting, where the trace of the brush flowing out would faintly continue into the blank space, thereby bringing the sense of space to life.
It was a method that almost never appeared in Western painting, which relied on rules and form. Rather, the most common painting method of this noble era was to fill the canvas to the brim and add splendid colors.
Diella had built her own painting style in such an era. Although no one had recognized it, she was a girl born with an aesthetic sense. In short, she was not a girl who had nothing but her bloodline.
"What meaning does something like that have now..."
Diella was about to say something, but stopped.
In the landscape captured by her wide-open eyes, she saw the flow of mana that filled the world as if it would burst.
In the midst of the constantly instigated survival instinct, she felt as if the scenery of this forest, where she had run and played countless times since she was a child, was becoming one with her vision.
Only in such a state, pushed to the limit, did the girl's magical instinct finally stir. In her senses, sharpened to the limit, the flow of all the mana that had permeated the world came into view at a glance.
And so, it was the moment Diella could not close her mouth.
Shing!
"Kyaat!"
Derek's sword flew in without even giving her a moment's pause.
Diella was startled and fell backward, taking a defensive posture with both arms. It was a movement that came out of mere reflex. Of course, there was no way she could block Derek's well-honed sword with her slender arms.
However, Derek's sword never reached Diella.
C-c-crack!
CLANG!
The moisture in the atmosphere around the girl's body froze and blocked Derek's sword.
The girl, who had fallen backward, was surprised with wide-open eyes. A pillar of ice, emitting a cold chill, had been constructed around her as if to guard her. She had done it.
Although it was still too raw to have reached the level of a star-rank magic, it was at the level of a basic elemental magic.
Shing, thud!
Derek sheathed his sword again as if nothing had happened.
And then, he spoke quietly, as if whispering.
"Well done."
In the expression of Derek, whom she looked up at from her fallen position, the madness that had been there just a moment ago was long gone.
As always, it was the appearance of that mage he had seen in the mansion, who looked indifferent yet good-natured.
Diella saw the change in Derek and swallowed her breath. What had driven Diella into a corner until now was for the purpose of pushing Diella's senses to their limit in a situation of extreme survival.
Something that Diella, who had always lived as a hothouse flower and learned mana from a desk, could not have experienced.
It was the feeling of all the senses in her body stirring for the single goal of survival.
Diella looked around her with trembling pupils. The pillar of ice that had frozen with the energy of mana gradually lost its strength and disappeared, turning back into moisture and seeping into the surrounding ground.
And so, she spread her trembling arms and looked at them.
What was fully present there was, in name and reality, the energy of mana. Diella's finally manifested mana was specialized in cold energy.
That sight, of the bluish mana, engulfed in cold energy, floating in a circle above her hand, was like an ideal that she could not reach no matter how hard she tried in her childhood.
Something that she could not do even if she stayed up all night poring over books, repeated it countless times, and worked her fingers to the bone. At the end of numerous challenges, only failure had repeated, and she had to receive pitying gazes, and she had to receive subtle humiliation.
And so, only memories of frustration and disappointment had accumulated, and had worn the girl down, and when she came to her senses, she had become cooped up in an annex surrounded by rose vines. Buried only in authority and bloodline, her soul had gradually worn away.
It was a beautiful and brilliant mana, to the extent that the years that had repeated and repeated felt meaningless.
Sometimes flowing like water, sometimes stirring like the earth... the source of power that moved according to Diella's senses. That sight was engraved on Diella's blue retinas.
"..."
Diella, in the days when she was still pure, would imagine every night when she fell asleep. She would be overjoyed if she could use magic after studying it hard. She would run to her family with a wide smile and jump up and down, boasting. So she had to study magic hard.
As if to make that expectation of that time meaningless, Diella, who saw the manifested mana, did not even stir.
She just looked at it for a long time, and looked again, and then eventually, her body began to tremble little by little.
"Uuk, heuk... uk... uuk..."
It seemed that the emotion that had welled up was closer to sorrow than to joy.
And so, while quietly watching Diella who was sobbing for a long time, hugging her own arms, Derek stared blankly at the starry sky.
The starlight of the moonlit night was still bright.
<><><>
"Did you really have to do it in a way that would make a person's heart drop?"
"As I said, a drastic remedy was necessary."
"Don't treat me like a patient."
"..."
Not only Diella, but Derek too was a little tired from firing magic several times.
Under that large zelkova tree, they were each leaning and resting, keeping a moderate distance.
Diella was hugging her own knees and looking at her palm. She gently closed her eyes while looking at the shimmering mana within it.
"You can thank me."
"I'm not thankful."
"I know you're thankful."
"Then why do you ask if you know?"
Although her tone was still blunt, Diella's attitude had softened considerably. However, her inability to be honest remained the same.
"You haven't reached the realm of 1-Star magic yet, so you need to train more. You've wasted a lot of time, so there's a lot of progress to be made."
"..."
"Your mana is probably a bit unstable right now. Starting tomorrow, you need to learn how to manifest mana properly. That will be the basis of all star-rank magic."
"How do you do that?"
"I'll tell you tomorrow."
Diella lowered her gaze.
She was a mess. Her abundantly spread golden hair was full of things like leaves and dust, and her whole body was covered in clumps of mud, making her look like a beggar.
Nevertheless, mana was flowing through her body.
That one fact overflowed warmly in her heart. It felt as if hot lava was flowing up her esophagus.
"Derek."
The girl called Derek's name. As Derek answered lightly, the girl stared blankly at the forest in the dead of night and then eventually spoke suggestively. Although only the back of her head was visible, that calm word was clearly heard.
"Thank you."
"..."
Derek leaned his head against the tree trunk and thought, quietly looking at the starry sky.
It was a bit ambiguous whether it was something to receive thanks for. In fact, the basic magical qualities were closer to what Diella had learned on her own. Derek had only provided the trigger for its manifestation.
At a young age, she had roamed the forest, painting landscapes, and had been raising her own instinctive senses, unique to the Wild school, by observing the world.
Even if she painted a picture, it would only be treated as an unfinished work, and even if she learned magic, she couldn't even do the basics, and she had no other outstanding talents.
If life were a single painting, then that childhood, in which she had achieved nothing, must have felt like a meaningless blank space.
However, Derek, who was from the streets, knew. Not every single moment of life could be full.
Even when he was sitting blankly in the slums, starving, and when he was sitting alone in his room, poring over a grimoire all day. That empty blank space in life was always with Derek.
It was only a matter of whether it came sooner or later, but in a long life, a blank space in life would surely come.
Whether one lost one's goal, lost one's dream, lost one's family, or lost one's comrades. A period of blank space, filled with long emptiness and frustration, would surely come.
As one gained experience and matured, one developed a skill to overcome such blank spaces. One would be able to find meaning or purpose even in that blank space. One would also come to accept that this, too, was a part of life.
However, a blank space that came too early, before such maturity had been built up, would sometimes break a person's heart. It was because it felt as if that was all there was to life. Not to mention a young girl like Diella.
Still, hadn't she already known in the days when she held a brush in front of a canvas?
Only when all those blank spaces were combined did it finally become a single painting.
"That sunset painting."
Therefore, Derek asked suggestively.
"Was it your masterpiece?"
"...Why on earth do you ask something like that? It's been a long time since I put down the brush."
"I just wanted to ask."
Diella snorted as if to say, what kind of question is that?
It was the painting that her whole family had looked at with the warmest eyes in the world, asking her to finish it quickly, saying they wanted to see Diella's fully completed painting. Unfortunately, it was already a completed painting.
After maintaining a quiet silence like that, Diella eventually rests her head on her knees and answers as if mumbling.
"It was my magnum opus."
Life was originally like that.
Next to Diella, Derek just looked up at the moon with her.
<><><>
The next morning, the first thing Diella did when she woke up in bed was to spread her palm and let the mana flow.
The clearly visible flow of mana finally informed the girl that she had entered the threshold as a mage.
However, it seemed that completely manifesting it was still a bit difficult.
She wanted to use magic properly soon, but the girl's level was still weak.
'Starting tomorrow, you need to learn how to manifest mana properly. That will be the basis of all star-rank magic.'
'How do you do that?'
'I'll tell you tomorrow.'
"..."
Diella rested her chin on her hand and was lost in deep thought. Her disheveled hair flowed down and covered her vision, so she blew it away and made a face like a sulky cat.
Last night, Diella had returned to the annex looking like a complete beggar, and the servants were startled. Not even five hours had passed since she had been attended to by the maids, washed up, and gone to sleep.
By the window, the sun that had just risen was driving away the darkness. The probability was high that the man named Derek was also sleeping soundly in the guest room of the main building.
Then what was she supposed to do? It was he himself who had said he would tell her tomorrow.
From Diella's perspective, when she woke up, it was tomorrow. If he had a problem, he should have set a precise time. She was starting to get antsy because she wanted to learn this thing called mana utilization quickly.
Diella got down from the bed in her pajamas.
It was the moment she opened the door to go out into the hallway.
Thud
"Kyaak!"
A maid who was drawing fresh cold water from the well for cooking, which Derek had emptied last night, fell over.
Perhaps because she had not thought that Diella's door would suddenly open, she had dropped the water bucket.
CRASH!
SPLASH!
The water bucket rolled once, and Diella's slippers and the very hem of her pajamas got wet.
"...."
"L, L, Lady Diella! H, heek!"
Diella's cold gaze turned towards the fallen maid.
The head butler Delon, who was giving instructions to the butlers in the hallway, was startled and ran over.
"L, Lady Diella. Are you alright?"
"Y, Young Lady! I'm, I'm sorry! I'm really sorry! Forgive me just this once! Please, just this once...!"
The fallen maid shot her upper body up and begged for forgiveness. The head butler Delon also became tense and swallowed a dry gulp of saliva.
It was obvious that she would beat the maid, so his head was already getting complicated thinking about how to stop her. If the number of servants in the annex decreased further, it would become really difficult to handle the workload.
However, Diella just looked down at the maid with cold eyes and said.
"Be more careful."
After speaking so intimidatingly, Diella quickly walked down the hallway with light steps. It was to call the head of the maids, change her clothes, and go to the main building.
Her gait seemed somewhat excited, and for a moment, she looked like a girl of her age before an outing.
"..."
"...Huh...?"
The head butler Delon and the maid looked at each other and their eyes went wide.
It was none other than that Diella. It was a situation where it would not have been strange for her to be trampled and beaten to death, but she had just left a single word and left.
Those who saw it for the first time might say, aren't they both equally rude, but to the servants who had worked by Diella's side for half their lives, it was a situation they couldn't believe even seeing it with their own eyes.
Not knowing what on earth had happened, the two people could only stare at the hallway where Diella had left.
It had been a full day since Derek had grabbed her hand and taken her outside the mansion.
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