My entrance to the headmistress’ office was less spectacular than the previous time. One difference was I wasn’t sneaking in but asked to be there, but also I didn’t come face to face with a thief in the midst of burglarizing some of her most precious documents.
Pity, as unlike the last time, I would have been free to react. And I would have loved the excuse to capture one of the princess’ secret agents for some pointed interrogation.
Instead, I sat down on the nearest chair, letting my gaze dance over the documents sprawled on the table, but otherwise not doing anything dubious. The headmistress could arrive any second, and I had no intention of ruining the trust I had earned through my spectacular victory — even said the victory was less impressive than the headmistress might think.
I didn’t explain Zokras’ latest trick to her, nor did I plan to do so in the future, because it would raise a lot of questions about the limits of my true ability. According to everything I had revealed to her about my abilities, it wasn’t something I could achieve.
Zokras’ continued survival had no immediate implication worthy of for me to abandon my convenient fake identity.
I turned my gaze on the documents that were sprawled on her desk. None of those had any huge secret. If they had, she wouldn’t have left them on her desk carelessly while allowing me to enter without supervision. It was different for the books on the shelves, protected by layers of wards. Nothing I couldn’t break, but she might arrive any moment.
More importantly, sometimes, unimportant details told a better story.
Naturally, every single report on her desk was about the recent battle. One of the advantages of high intelligence was to process information faster, so much that processing every single detail represented in the visible pages of the reports took me only a few seconds.
And the results were hardly amazing. Every single report on her desk was misleading.
Dangerously misleading.
Nothing inaccurate at the highest level, of course. It would be easy enough to detect. Anything too high-profile, meaning anything that might be double-checked by the headmistress directly, or might be followed up by a discussion with Titania, was flawless.
Well, mostly flawless. The way the conclusions were written included some interesting word choices, subtly undercutting the importance of the events that happened in the surrounding towns, and overstating the importance of the crisis at the school.
The details were even more inaccurate. I didn’t have a full picture of the view, of course, but just comparing the numbers against the actual details I had observed directly while waiting for Titania, the disparity was clear.
The situation was even worse than I was expecting. The spies were not only adjusting the headmistress’ orders or interfering indirectly, but actually feeding her garbage information.
And neither Titania, nor the headmistress had the personality to dig through that numbers to discover the subterfuge.
Turning those reports into another subtle, yet deadly wound on Silver Spires.
However, before I could delve deeper into the implications, the door opened, and the cloaked figure entered, though, unlike other times, she didn’t bother pulling her hood, her beautiful face out in the open to contrast her black robe.
I recalled with some amusement how intimidated I had been of her when we had first come face to face. A mysterious hideous ghost that managed to control one of the most premier organizations of the world despite all the opposition.
The deeper I saw the supposed premier organization, the faster that fear and reverence dispelled — not helped by knowing the innocent beauty that lied under her scary robe. As I understood the power of the enemy, the veneer of strength Silver Spires was reduced into smokes and mirrors.
And not the kind that could actually trick the enemy, not if their latest moves were any indicator.
The headmistress walked forward with grace, her wings gathered under her robe, looking like a hunch. She didn’t give any sign of greeting or other social niceties, just sat on her chair.
However, her robe was unable to hide her exhaustion. Her tense shoulders and trembling arms were evidence enough. She had been affected by the transfer process significantly, and the fact that she wanted to have a meeting despite that was another evidence of the seriousness of the situation.
I waited silently, doing my best to look even more exhausted than her.
Her gaze danced over the room before focusing on me. “Good work against Zokras,” she finally said. “He’s not someone that will be missed.” Her voice was slow, stuttering. Like she was not used to paying compliments, though her lowered hood hardly helped. Without its intimidating shadow, her aura was lacking.
“It was nothing,” I said. “I was just lucky.”
“It was more than luck. You adapted to your power faster than I imagined,” she asked, trying to sound casual, but against me, her interrogation attempt, which was clearly supposed to be subtle, was laughable. It didn’t alarm me, because if she was serious in her fears, she would have asked the questions before going all the effort to transfer a chunk of Divine Spark.
Or maybe not, I realized a second later. Maybe she was actually trying to use the effects of the Light Node to make the interrogation easier.
“Is it faster than normal?” I questioned, trying to sound neutral. After all, I wasn’t supposed to have any kind of baseline.
“A bit,” she answered.
“Is this about the spells I used against Zokras?” I asked. “Because it was mostly about the wards I set up. I only managed that effect after hours of preparation.” It wasn’t true, of course, but she definitely lacked the sources to validate it. Even Titania couldn’t really dig down to my magical tricks.
“Show me,” she ordered as she leaned forward, anticipation showing despite her exhaustion.
I raised my hand and started to draw several runes rapidly, creating a small ward that could use light magic in combination with life energy, for great explosive effect. I didn’t use it against Zokras, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t actually usable. I just didn’t have the time to do so. “It took hours to set the ward up, but the results were spectacular,” I answered.
She nodded after examining the ward for a long while, and from her expression, I could see that she was already convinced by my answer.
“Good work,” she said, suddenly falling silent, like she had something else to say, but failing to come up with a way to do so. The fact that she didn’t give a direct order was telling.
“What’s the problem?” I asked, giving her a chance to open up.
“There’s no problem,” she said, but that the answer came too quickly, and her eyes evaded mine. The exact reaction of a bad liar, trying to deflect. Her reliance on her magical aura and mysterious hood made it difficult for her to face someone near her power, yet not fully loyal to her.
“Sorry if I misspoke,” I said with a regretful expression. “With the undead threat gone, I’m sure there’s no emergency left.”
Her silence was beautiful. I could see her trying to find a preamble after my statement, without swallowing her words. Which was inconvenient when she was facing a threat important enough to hasten the transfer process significantly.
“I should leave you to your tasks, I’m sure you’re busy with a lot of things after a crisis,” I said, standing up like our meeting was already concluded.
“Not yet,” she said as she shook her head, but that didn’t prevent panic from infecting her tone.
She was completely unfit to lead with anyone that was not showing her extreme loyalty or she couldn’t fully dominate with a flex of her magic.
“As you wish, headmistress,” I said as I took my seat once more, not being difficult, at least, not directly.
“There are some mysterious sightings around Mount Dread,” she finally decided to say/
“Oh, that’s quite far away,” I said. “What exactly are we talking about?”
“A dragon,” she said.
I was glad of my acting abilities because inside, I was quite surprised. Not just because I was almost sure about where that dragon came from, but also the headmistress actually asked about her.
It wasn’t too shocking, because as I learned more about the System and its roots, it wasn’t hard to connect dragons weren’t just another group of monsters, their special trait of not giving experience made a lot of sense in the process.
I was interested in the headmistress’ priorities, however, because while the dragon was an interesting target, the fact that she was focusing on that in the middle of a crisis was quite telling.
It should be too unimportant to the considerations of the headmistress. Unless there was another mystery around it.
“Is it too strong?” I asked, carefully asking a leading question.
“Maybe,” the headmistress answered, and she didn’t seem to be lying. It revealed one important piece of information. She didn’t have a connection with the dragon, at least not enough to know her strength.
Not that I had a true perception about her power level as well. I hadn’t been extremely impressed by her display of power as we escaped the undead base, but might be about the damages she had received in the hands of the necromancers conducting a ritual on her.
“Anything else I should know?” I asked.
“You need to capture the dragon alive, and if possible, without hurting it too much,” she answered.
“It should be done unless it’s too strong,” I said, which earned a soft smile from her, that made her even cuter than her beautiful features already did. “And it’s a priority mission, why?” I countered, choosing to dig into her explanation. It was clear that there was more to it than just capturing a dragon, or she would have just given an order.
Her delay was pointed. I waited for her to answer patiently. “There might be some …” she murmured before fading.
“Let me take a guess,” I said, reading her hesitation. “There’s some members of our mysterious walking around.”
“Maybe,” she answered, which didn’t surprise me even the slightest.
“And I’m guessing that it’s very important, but for a reason you can’t tell me,” I said, stealing her initiative even further. She nodded. “And you don’t have any reliable information about the number of enemies or their powers,” I followed up, stealing the initiative even further.
“I know it’s a bit difficult,” she said before taking a deep breath.
“Don’t worry, I’ll do it,” I said with a smile even as I stood up. “Do you think they’ll be more interested in killing it, or capturing it?” I asked.
“Killing,” she answered with a nod, which unlocked another interesting set of questions for me, particularly why it was important to capture a dragon alive for the headmistress, but the organization preferred to kill it. Yet undead forces wanted to use her for a mysterious ritual.
But I kept my mouth shut. Playing the role of the obedient subordinate was much more important at the moment.
Especially with her change of attitude.
After confirming that my display of power was not suspicious, her orders were replaced by hesitant requests. I was willing to believe it was about my spectacular performance against Zokras, not only dispelling the threat but also saving her only subordinate — or at least, only one strong enough to matter.
But maybe, it had a different reason.
However, that was a problem for a different time. For now, I needed to find an old acquaintance.
[Level: 31 Experience: 493210 / 496000
Strength: 46 Charisma: 63
Precision: 40 Perception: 42
Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49
Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51
HP: 6324 / 6324 Mana: 7750 / 7750 ]
SKILLS
Master Melee [100/100]
Master Tantric [100/100]
Master Biomancy [100/100]
Master Elemental [100/100]
Master Arcana [100/100]
Master Subterfuge [100/100]
Expert Speech [75/75]
Expert Craft [75/75]
PERKS
Mana Regeneration
Skill Share
Empowerment (1/1)
Teleportation
COMPANIONS
[Cornelia - Level 22/26]
[Helga - Level 22/26]