Chapter 211

The silence stretched once more after my answer.

I let it linger, giving her the time to process that there was more than one mysterious organization that was interfering with the workings of her little Empire without showing the slightest respect to its supposedly-exalted nature.

“So, which organization do you belong to if not with them,” the princess said, doing her best not to give any information, but the great difference in our current skill configuration working against her.

The brute force approach was not just useful for combat but also for more political activities. My overwhelming speech and subterfuge allowed me to detect the undercurrents of the word ‘them’, loaded with hatred and fear, but no mystery.

It was clear that she was aware of the identity of the Eternals and their position in the world, at least to a certain degree in terms of their domination of the Material Plane. Whether her information included their dubious struggle against the gods was a mystery.

Yet, she avoided mentioning their name, clearly not intending to volunteer any information, no matter how small.

Interesting strategy.

Unfortunately for her, she was not the only one that could play that game. Rather than answering her question, I let out a soft, dismissive snort, which was all I needed to inform her that she was not worthy of questioning my origins.

I was happy to see that the first thing my reaction brought out of her was angry, even though she had managed to hide it behind the calm geniality that was cultivated by a lifetime of training. It meant that there was a fire to support her ambitions, the ambitions that forced her to fight against difficult odds rather than using her abilities to disappear.

A view that was enhanced by her improperly loose corset as she took a deep breath, enhancing her cleavage even further.

Yet, I felt a flicker of mana from her, one that was only possible as I was continuously observing her Soul Space. She pulled her mana to her Soul Space, letting it dance in her core before pushing outward, and started building her fake soul space once more.

I was impressed, both by her daring to create such an attempt against me, and by the subtlety of such an attempt. I might have missed it if it wasn’t for my mana already lodged deep into her Soul Space, giving me real-time observation of what she was doing.

As the mana danced in her core, I watched as it transform. Mana was normally bright and filled with energy, but as it dragged in her Soul Space, it slowly lost its more noticeable qualities, turning almost invisible.

Between a shadow and a whisper.

It was a simple nature transformation, but watching it happen slowly rather than through a skill shortcut was interesting. Well, more accurately, it was through a different shortcut, as it was still much simpler than actually forcing such a transformation with the skill blocked.

The purity of it, however, looked even better than what could be achieved through the skills. Though I had no idea whether it was about her application method, or an illusion that was about the nature of the darkness mana.

Unfortunately, I lacked the ability to compare.

Yet, while both the process and the results were interesting, I couldn’t say the same for the flexibility of her application. Despite the impressiveness of the result as she slowly built up her fake soul space, her ability could best be defined as fumbling in the dark — I thought as I forced myself to hold my chuckle back at the unintended pun.

She wasn’t incompetent, of course. But her actions showed she lacked my ability to look inward and analyze her own soul space at the same time, yet she was familiar enough to be clearly checked it before.

My best guess was that she had used her fake skills to maximize her detection capabilities to examine it, until she developed a method to fumble in the dark.

“How can I help you, then,” she asked after half a minute of silence, trying to reframe the situation once again. Extending unrestricted favors to strange men was hardly the smartest strategy, but still, it was a reasonable attempt for her to understand my objectives.

Especially since my barging implied that she couldn’t exactly reject me if I pushed.

“Ah, the arrogance of the nobles. Do you think there’s anything you can do that I would actually care about?” I said, followed by an extended sigh that made her tense, which made her focus on the construction of her soul space even faster. Which was exactly what I wanted, as her speedy construction made the process even easier to decipher for me.

Just to extend the pressure a bit more, I removed my hood, though not before casting a spell to change my face, turning it into a generic man in his early fifties.

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 7334 / 7334 Mana: 9000 / 9000 ]

SKILLS

Grandmaster Tantric [114/140]

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Master Craft [85/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (0/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Titania - Level 35/38]

[Cornelia - Level 22/26]

[Helga - Level 22/26]

[Marianne - Level 21/29]