Chapter 14: Unparallelled.

Chapter 14: Unparallelled.

"Finished?"

Gabriel looked at Alice, whose tears were finally starting to dry up. She’d stuffed the entire pan of food into her mouth, forcing it down even after she looked ready to burst. As a result, her cheeks were bulging slightly and she had made a mess of both her face and the table.

"It’s fine to cry when you’re happy, but if you cry too often then people will think that they can just take advantage of you so I recommend doing it in moderation in the future."

He picked up a rag from the side as he spoke, wiping the sticky crumbs that clung to her cheeks. The soft touch made Alice’s eyes well with tears again, but she swallowed heavily so that they didn’t pour out this time, her lips pursing as she put on a strong front.

"That’s good. I can understand your desire to cry, but you’ll have to get used to the feeling, living a good life means experiencing a lot more happiness so you can’t well go crying every time."

He lowered the rag after he finished with her face, starting on her hands, which were somehow even dirtier than her face. She was starting to calm down now, the reddish tint in her eyes receding as she pulled back her tears.

"Tell me, Alice, what is it that you want? Beyond the cake for your birthday, beyond a friend who’ll stay with you, what is it that you want?"

He asked the important question. People... They needed desires, ambition, things they wanted. They’d end up hollow without them. He had been one such person, and thus he took the plunge in his past life. And thus he latched onto this pitiful villainess when he saw her and how she was treated. He didn’t want her to end up hollow, nor did he want to become hollow again.

"What I... Want? Can there even be more?"

Alice was, to say it simply, stumped by the question. Just earlier this day she thought of a birthday cake as an extravagant wish that she would likely never see fulfilled. But in just one day, she got both a friend and a birthday cake, how could there possibly be anything more she could want?

"Of course, as long as people live there can and will always be more. If you’re not sure, then just think about the future. Not tomorrow, not next week, but years ahead. Think about the possible futures. What if your Elder Brother takes over the household? What if your Eldest Brother takes over as the duke? Think about the futures that are likely to come to pass and then search your own feelings. How would you feel? What would you think? What would you do?"

To Gabriel, in one way, desires were an easy thing to dig out. Think about the future, think about what is likely to happen, and then think about how you’ll feel. Will you be happy with it? No? Then your desire would be to become someone who could change that future. It was easy, which made it all the sadder when someone ended up hollow.

Naturally, the reason Gabriel mentioned her two brothers in the possible futures was to see how she would react. And luckily, if he could even be despicable enough to think that word in this situation, the response was favourable.

"Elder and Eldest Brother..."

Alice winced slightly, a bit of colour slowly fading from her face. She’d shown signs of it at the orphanage, but it seemed as if she was in fact at least a bit afraid of her brothers. She was just a child, but she knew that her brothers had been the ones to snatch away her new maids, and she probably knew that they were the reason she was being treated like this.

As for why she hadn’t said or done anything, it had probably gone on for so long that she now considered it natural. Her mother had cheated so it was only fair that she was hated. She carried filthy blood so of course she should be hated. She didn’t look like the rest of the family so she shouldn’t expect to be loved. That was how she had been raised so of course she would think like that, of course she would accept it as natural.

"I... I..."

She struggled with the words, uneasily looking around the empty kitchen, her eyes eventually settling on Gabriel. He simply smiled gently, not urging her towards any one answer and simply waiting for her to decide.

"I... Don’t think I want my brothers to take over the duchy... If they become the duke then I can’t stop them from taking you away, and then I’ll be all alone again..."

Right now it was somewhat okay. The brothers had more authority than her, but they couldn’t just outright order her servants to leave her. They could offer better positions or deal with them in underhanded ways, but that was it. But if one of them became the duke? A word would be all it took for them to separate her from her new friend, she’d be powerless to stop them.

"So what do you want to do with it then?"

She’d found something she didn’t like, a future she didn’t want to come to pass. That was step one, now she just had to figure out how she would stop it from happening. Once she did that, then she would have her desire. And how did you stop someone else from becoming the duke? The answer was perfectly plain and simple.

Alice looked a bit shocked that Gabriel had been able to point it out that accurately. She had indeed come up as oily black in the end, her family making her test every single one of the 11 types of magic. But as he said, none of them worked, not even the lowest ranked spell would come out. She was a defect. Gabriel simply kept smiling.

"I’m right, aren’t I? What if I told you that its simply because they used the wrong words? Eras, Arais, Waraya, Tarak, Azui, Katush, Uvaish. Even Karas, Gula, Diverta, and Akasha, you tried them all, didn’t you? But they’re still wrong, they’re not for you. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you that, right? So let’s try it."

He hopped down from his seat after reciting the 11 magic types. They had been around since before the founding of this empire even, they had been in use for thousands of years. But there was something he knew that no one else knew yet, there were more of them. Other than the last four types, which were solitary and didn’t interact with any other types, the first 7 were reactive. Several of them could merge.

He picked up some paper and a bit of coal, bringing it over to the table as he sat down again. Using the coal, he started to scribble on the first sheet of paper, drawing a formation on one side and words beneath.

"Let’s start with an easy one, Eras and Arais. Together they become Iras. And if you combine Iras with Karc then you have the lowest level spell. This is the formation, try it for yourself."

Alice looked at the paper with some scepticism, she had never seen a formation like this, nor had she ever heard about mixing elements. But there was something about the way Gabriel spoke, the unbound confidence, she just couldn’t treat it as a joke. She studied the formation he drew up and memorised it, linking it with the words.

"Iras Karc."

The second the words left her mouth, she felt a bit of energy within her body move. The mana she could sense but never had a use for, it was moving within her. It seeped out of her body and entered the air, a dark blue crackle of lightning sparking in the air in front of her. It crackled for a few seconds before vanishing, leaving a dumbfounded Alice.

"Iras is lightning, and Karc is crackle, together they form a bit of crackling lightning. Not too useful, but pretty to look at."

"Iras Karc."

Alice muttered the words again as Gabriel spoke, a crackle of lightning lighting up her face. She looked dumbfounded.

"Iras Karc."

Again, a flash of light.

"Iras Karc."

Violet hair, like strands of wolfsbane woven together.

"Iras Karc."

Crimson eyes that seemed like a mixture between blood and roses, in the light of the lightning they seemed like a pair of blood moons that hung in the night sky.

"Iras Karc."

She kept going, even when she started to feel tired from using too much mana. This was a very small spell, but she was just a child, and she had never put too much focus on increasing her mana because she had no use for it so it was inevitable that she would get tired. But right now, those waves of weariness made her ecstatic.

"You’re crying again. But this is just the start, Alice. Arais and Tarak for Duvak, Eras and Tarak for Makar, Azui and Katush for Natar. There’s even more than just those, and you can use all of them. I told you, you are unparallelled."

His hand moved as he spoke, as he reassured her. He drew a diagram on the other side of the paper, writing down the elements and fusions that he knew, leaving out only the four non-reactive magic types of Darkness, Light, Divine, and Demonic.