129 New Companion

Selma Payne’s POV:

We were also investigating the Eye of Insight. My father sent an advanced team to explore the ruins of the witch clan in the Rocky Mountains. We couldn’t underestimate places where demons are sealed. We needed to get enough information before we could set off.

During the summer break, I trained while accompanying Dorothy.

What pained me the most was that my social class had been put on the agenda.

Anyone could see how ill at ease I was on the day of the farewell luncheon. My father didn’t even have to say anything. My mother alone couldn’t stand how I was at a loss in front of my peers.

“This isn’t like a princess. Perhaps you need the servant in the tea room to give you some extra lessons?”

My mother rarely criticized me like this, which made me realize how careless I had been in this aspect in the past. Therefore, even if I was impatient with the elaborate formalities in social class, I forced myself to remember them.

At the same time, my mother also found me two ‘social companions. I suspected this was the civilized name for ‘female attendants’. They were responsible for attending classes with me and testing the results of my studies in daily life.

Being scrutinized all the time made me miserable.

However, I didn’t hate them. These two girls were also of noble birth and weren’t as rigid as Carolyn. In private, they were very open, no different from Mara and Avril.

“I’m so sick of these stupid rules.” Emma took advantage of the absence of the etiquette teacher and took a big bite of the chocolate with a ferocious expression that ladies were not allowed to show. “Who was the first person in the world to invent social etiquette? We should give him the ‘most torturous person’ award.”

Emma was the granddaughter of an Earl. As the youngest child in the family, she was naturally not well-behaved. Her mother sent her to the palace against all objections, hoping to ‘wash away the ruffian aura on her’.

Jordin agreed, pretending to be serious.

She was the same age as me, but her parents, who had already taken on the noble title, made outstanding contributions to the Wolf-Witch War. A few years after the war, they passed away one after another due to old injuries, leaving Jordin, still in her infancy, to inherit the title of the ‘Countess of Mirror Lake.’

Without her parents’ upbringing and her relatives’ neglect, Jordin was even wilder than Emma.

I introduced Dorothy to my female companions, and they got along well. Emma and Jordin were obviously confused about Dorothy’s eyes, but they didn’t say anything out of courtesy.

The three girls were a little too close. Sometimes, I was a little jealous. Every time I was forced to be silent because of a philosophical term that I’d never heard of, and I was watching other people’s heated discussions, I always wondered, ‘why am I here?’

In short, life passed by peacefully for a while.

At the end of July, my father called Dorothy and me to the study room to tell us some good news.

“The advance party has found the ruins of the witch clan. The werewolf grandmaster who accompanied them has already investigated it, and there is no danger. The witches who lived here then evacuated quickly and didn’t even have time to arrange some defensive sorcery for the clan.”

This was in line with the legend that the sorcerers had retreated in an emergency after sealing the demon and the boy and had not been able to take anything with them.

“What about the devil’s seal?” Dorothy and I were most concerned about this. “Have the werewolf grandmasters found the seal? Has it loosened? Was there a pine forest hiding it? Has the devil’s power seeped into the pine forest?”

The devil’s seal was more important than the witch clan’s ruins. Its safety directly determines whether we can proceed to the next step of the exploration.

If the werewolf grandmaster concluded that the seal was dangerous, all the plans that followed would be ruined.

My father said, “It’s a pity that the werewolf grandmasters didn’t find any traces of the seal. Although they can indeed feel the evil power intertwined with magic power, certain factors interfere with their judgment, making them unable to find the specific location.”

“Do the werewolf grandmasters have any suggestions?”

“Of course there is, but I don’t agree with it.”

“What is it?”

Under my questioning, my father passed the advance party’s report to Dorothy and me.

We found Master Mary’s report. At the end of it, she believed that no werewolf grandmaster, witch or wizard, would be able to find the actual location of the seal because the witch responsible for sealing the devil was the daughter of Mullwica. This meant that she might have used the power of prophecy or even the Eye of Insight.

Only someone with the same power could break through the layers of the fog she had set up, and that person was Dorothy.

But Dorothy didn’t have the strong body of a warrior or the rich experience of a werewolf grandmaster. We couldn’t just send her to the Rocky Mountains.

It was apparent from Adele that the power of prophecy was bewitching and could directly affect people’s minds. Dorothy’s mental barrier was not as strong as Adele’s. Although a large part of the latter’s madness was caused by herself, it could not be used as an excuse for safety.

Obviously, my father had considered this and disagreed with Master Mary’s suggestion.