Chapter 20: Spirit Forest 3

I didn’t decide anything.

I want that on the record. It wasn’t a heroic decision. There was no big declaration of love going through my head or anything. It just sort of... happened. One second, I was watching this cathedral with legs about to launch something at Lily, and the next I was soaring through the air, like a majestic eagle. And this eagle proceeded to hit her, move her out of the way, and promptly line itself up for the hit instead.

The thing it launched was the size of a rowboat, and it struck me, full-force.

So, here’s what happens when an F-rank body gets a rowboat slammed through it: it changes directions mid-flight, goes through a bush, then a log, and then it rolls to a stop, crumpled up and broken.

[Ow,] I moaned. [Ow. Yeah. I don’t think I qualify as human anymore... or foxgirl.]

Somewhere beyond the bells, muffled, someone was screaming my name. Two someones. Different octaves.

---

{Marisol POV}

From the ridge, I could see the whole clearing. I had my spyglass up and my notebook braced on my knee, ready to document the endgame of the operation.

Here is what I documented instead.

The fox threw her body between the monster and her own asset.

And she did it with an F-rank body. Sure, her intellect is clearly SSS-rank... But her body isn’t pretending. She’s weak. And she had no shield, no rank, and no chance, and she still took a strike meant for the commoner, went through a bush and a log, without a single second of hesitation.

For one heartbeat, I underestimated my new colleague. I... I thought she’d blundered.

Then I understood.

[Look at her. LOOK AT HER, MARISOL! One wound, taken publicly and willingly, and the commoner’s loyalty is hers for LIFE. It wasn’t bought or bargained for. It was earned in blood. No favor, no contract. No marriage ties a person to you the way watching someone bleed for you does. And she picked her audience, too. The Frostfall heiress is RIGHT THERE, watching every second of it. Two assets for one strike. The scale of this investment...]

I nearly shed a tear.

I have attended every salon, every court function, every whispered auction of favors this kingdom’s nobility has to offer, and I have never once seen anyone play a piece worth more than money. And here was a scholarship fox in a secondhand uniform betting the one asset she could never replace, herself, on a return that would keep paying out for decades.

It was the most magnificent play I had ever seen. I was actually shaking. And I knew, right then and there, that I needed to be part of this operation more than I had ever needed anything in my life.

[The outer ring isn’t enough. I need IN. Whatever she’s building, whatever it costs, I need—]

Then someone grabbed my collar.

It was a supervisor. He was grey-bearded, sweating, and probably the first adult who’d finished herding students to safety.

He hauled me back from the ridgeline while I protested. My arguments were not my best work.

"Unhand me, I am DOCUMENTING, you are interrupting the defining moment of my—"

Then he looked down at the clearing, and all the color left his face. He ripped a flare off his belt, fired it toward the gate, and dragged me off the ridge. I held onto my notebook the entire way.

---

{Kohaku}

The ringing in my ears faded eventually. I still tasted blood. When my vision came back, the whole clearing looked tilted.

The Warden had turned around, slowly. Satisfied with turning me into a crash dummy, it was reorienting on Lily, the one who’d called it out in the first place. She was back on her feet where I’d shoved her, her sword somehow still in her hand, her face white as paper. Serena stood between her and the monster with her blade up, but her head was turned the wrong way.

She was staring at me. The great villainess of my trash novel was standing in range of a monster with her guard half down, because she was too busy staring at the mutt crumpled at the foot of a stone. I had never seen that expression on her face before. She looked genuinely shaken.

[Get your guard up, you useless villainess!] I tried to say. What came out was a cough and some blood.

Lying there, bleeding, watching that thing turn toward the sweetest girl in the world and Serena, I tried to think. What did we need? What kind of ass-pull had I written into this arc that would save us here?

And somewhere under the pain, I remembered page four of my own notes, in Odette’s dry lecture voice: spirits bond to whichever intent is clearest.

[Uh... weasel thing?] I thought. [Are you still there?]

And out of the treeline, where it had apparently been following me this entire time, came the lamplight weasel.

It shot straight at me with its ears back, crossed the clearing in about a second, and dove into my chest like a dog greeting its owner after a long trip.

Warmth spread through my whole body, and a sudden fierce warmth settled in behind my sternum.

[SPIRIT CONTRACT FORMED]

[AFFINITY: LIGHT]

[... Well,] I thought, looking at my status. [I guess all it took was getting absolutely bodied. I’d celebrate, but even the thought of moving hurts.]

Up ahead, the Warden took another step toward Lily, and the ground shook. My new tenant went stiff inside my chest. I got an elbow under myself, tried to stand, and quickly found I couldn’t.

Fine. If I couldn’t stand, I could still scream. My body was spent, but the answer finally came to me. It was what I’d just done.

Spirits answer the clearest intent in range. And Lily’s intent was pouring off her so hard I could feel it from the ground, the same way it had the day of the armadillo. It was frantic, blinding, and aimed with total, undivided clarity at exactly one thing.

It wasn’t the monster, or the exam, or herself.

It was the bleeding idiot on the ground.

So, I carefully instructed:

"LILY! CALL! CALL A SPIRIT RIGHT NOW!"