Chapter 424 Interlude 6-1 – Lightning And Water



Unnamed Hilltop

Cheverton Capital City Outskirts

Cheverton Duchy

May ?

Year 1052

Made up of four stars, the constellation called Canis roughly resembled the shape of a compass. It could be seen most prominently high in the Northeastern sky towards the end of the spring and just before the summer solstice.

In one of Aidos' ancient societies, this constellation was seen as the representation of the god of war, which is how it received the name still used in current-day Aidos.

Staring at this constellation atop a random hill, was a young pre-teen-looking black-haired girl, with eyes that shone noble gold and beautiful snow-white skin.

She wore a slightly loose long-sleeved shirt and black shorts, with similarly coloured leather gloves that matched the boots she had on.

The girl sat on a rock in front of a small water pond as she stared at the constellation in the night sky, petting the black van cat that rested in her lap while wiggling his tail about.

This cat was relatively large, being a bit over a metre long from nose to tail tip, and weighing a bit over 20 pounds.

While still petting the cat, her gaze turned downwards, with her superior eyesight not even needed for her to see the large city in the distance, about half a dozen kilometres away from the hill she sat atop.

As the capital city of one of the Great Western Empire's largest Duchies, its size was incomparable to that of the average city, spanning an area of more than five thousand kilometre squares and with a population that made it seem like there was not enough space for all its inhabitants.

Random fact but a census conducted five years prior showed the population of the city was on the brink of going over the 25 million mark.

Now then, as for why this girl was currently seated atop a hill, kilometres away from civilisation, there were two reasons.

One, was the golden plants that could be seen amidst the numerous greeneries on this hill. They had tiny, trifoliate leaves, and also grew decent-sized flowers, which could be black, dark blue, gold and silver depending on their element.

However, the strange thing about these plants was the fact that their leaves were filled with huge amounts of pure elemental energy.

Its leaves and flowers could be used in making pills and potions that helped beings with lightning attribute affinity, increasing their control over the element, their elemental damage, helping with energy recovery and many more.

Plants like this were quite actually quite common in Aidos, with there being other elemental variants.

And wherever these plants grew, the ambient energy concentrations in the area were usually off the charts, proving too dangerous for lower levelled beings, with some of them being powerful enough to bring grandmaster-level beings to their knees with just the pressure from the energies.

Of course, this particular one was not anything as dangerous as that, but it was still not recommended for normal people to be anywhere near it.

Info dumping aside, the girl was currently absorbing the elemental energy being emitted by these plants, refining it and using it to increase her own energy reserves.

This was something that could be done by almost anyone who possessed lightning affinity and was above the gold level, to permanently increase their energy reserves, quality of their lightning energy, control, elemental purity and so on.

Basically, they would gain the effects of the pills and potions created with these plants' materials and even more, without having to spend the money, and these effects would be permanent.

In her case, she was simply doing so to increase her energy reserves, after all, her control and energy quality were the highest any being on her level could ever hope to achieve.

This was natural, after all, she was none other than Kayla, the current 'Great Lightning Spirit', and for the spirit race which was close to nature and the elements, it was nigh impossible to have higher elemental purity and control than her.

As for the cat on the lap of said Great spirit, it was naturally the shadow spirit who had the role of acting as her 'Guardian', Kuro.

They sat there, basking in the silence, until the second reason the girl sat there finally arrived.

Suddenly, the water in the pond behind her surged upward, condensing and forming a small oval cocoon about a metre in diameter and two metres in height.

The next moment, the cocoon burst open and a being emerged from within.

It was a beautiful woman whose long hair and gown were made of water, fish-like fins in place of ears, blue eyes and pale skin that almost looks blue.

Standing atop the pond water like it was the most normal thing in the world, her mouth opened and she spoke.

"I finally found you."

Her words were directed towards the black-haired girl who only sighed in exasperation, shaking her head a bit before replying.

"Should the fact that I purposely left the country after discovering you were after me not tell you I did not want to be 'found'?"

The blue-eyed woman was stunned for a moment, not expecting such a question from the being she had been after for months now.

Even so, she quickly recomposed herself and delivered a reply that the black-haired girl had already predicted.

"Why would you not want to be found? Do you perhaps wish to stay in the land of humans? This is the worst possible place for a great spirit like yourself.

You do not seem to be aware of how much danger you would be in if it was discovered that you are a great spirit. Those greedy humans would want to capture you for your power, I cannot have that happening.

Al-!"

Her words stopped as she suddenly noticed something about the girl whose back was facing her, an expression of annoyance appearing on her face as she spoke.

"You really did enter a contract with a human…this cannot be tolerated.

I would not allow a great spirit to be tainted by a mere human."

She turned her gaze to the black cat who jumped off the girl's lap and pulled out a jar of milk from his shadow and continued.

"And you…are you not her guardian? How could you allow her t-"

[Undine.]

Kayla's voice turned cold as she cut Undine off, with Kuro who was on the floor heaving a small sigh before turning to the blue-eyed Great Water Spirit and speaking.

[Hold your tongue Undine, your words are crossing the line.]

Guardian spirit or not, Kuro was currently a mid-rank spirit, and there was no way that a Great Spirit like Undine would tolerate being spoken to like that by him.

However, she did not even have the time to get angry as a small wave of energy suddenly spread out from Kayla's body, followed by the activation of one of the girl's unique skills as her body grew in size and a fragmented crown materialized above her head.

The moment she turned her gaze towards Undine, the Great Water Spirit received the greatest shock of her life, so much that she even fell backwards and into the pond of water she was previously standing on.

"h-hoow?!"