Chapter 36: Dark Mage?

’Dark magic isn’t evil here? Is it not the villain’s power? It’s actually the incredibly rare, highly sought-after, VIP-status environmental balancing power?!’

Suddenly, the pieces of the puzzle began to slam together in her mind with terrifying clarity.

She could see ghosts.

She could see the spiritual residue of death.

The ghosts in the Count’s estate hadn’t attacked her; they had surrounded her, drawn to her.

And the Duke’s horrifying, death-soaked aura... she wasn’t scared of it.

She found it comforting and soothing.

Why would a normal person with an upper-middle-tier water or wind affinity find the killing intent of a warlord soothing?

They wouldn’t.

Unless their core wasn’t attuned to water or wind at all.

Seraphina looked at the Void-pearl.

It sat there, a smooth sphere of absolute darkness, seeming to absorb the ambient light in the carriage.

It called to her.

It didn’t feel cold or scary; it felt like a heavy, warm blanket.

It felt like the silence she craved.

"I want to touch it," Seraphina whispered.

"My Lady, it’s just a formality," Lucas chuckled softly, reaching out to close the mahogany box. "There’s no need to—"

"I want to touch it," she repeated, her voice firmer this time.

Before Lucas could snap the lid shut, Seraphina lunged forward.

She bypassed his armored hand and slapped her small, sticky, apple-juice-covered palm directly onto the center of the pitch-black Void-pearl.

For exactly one second, the universe seemed to hold its breath.

The carriage was dead silent.

Then, the world inverted.

It did not glow. It did not shine. What happened was a catastrophic absence of light.

A shockwave of pure, unadulterated, concentrated dark mana exploded from the small pearl.

It didn’t blast outward with concussive force; instead, it rushed out like a tidal wave of heavy, liquid shadow.

The magical lamp in the ceiling of the carriage instantly flickered and died, snuffed out by the sheer density of the darkness.

The blue glow of the Star-glass in the box shattered into dust, completely overwhelmed by the opposing force.

The shadows in the corners of the carriage physically peeled themselves off the wood, swirling through the air like living ribbons of velvet.

The temperature in the cabin plummeted, not with the biting cold of winter, but with the deep, profound chill of a subterranean vault.

"By the Gods!" Sir Gallahan screamed, falling backward out of the carriage door and landing flat on his back in the grass.

Sir Boris grabbed the doorframe, his massive eyes bulging out of his head. "T-The pearl! Look at the pearl!"

Sir Lucas, who was still kneeling right in front of the box, was absolutely paralyzed.

Beneath Seraphina’s small hand, the Void-pearl was no longer a solid stone.

It had liquefied into a miniature, swirling vortex of absolute darkness.

It was a black hole of mana, overflowing from the velvet confines of the mahogany box and dripping onto the floorboards like thick, heavy ink.

The dark mana was so dense, so incredibly pure, that it began to manifest physically.

Tiny, delicate black lotuses bloomed from the wooden floorboards, their petals made of swirling shadow, before dissolving back into the air.

Outside the carriage, the effect was even more terrifying.

The horses whinnied in sudden panic.

The entire vanguard drew their swords, sensing the massive spike in mana, only to freeze in utter bewilderment as the sunlight in the clearing seemed to dim, drawn toward the carriage like water down a drain.

In the woods, the spirits of the dead, the hanging bandits, and the lost souls suddenly materialized into the visible spectrum for everyone to see.

But they weren’t screaming.

In the center of this cataclysmic magical event sat Seraphina.

She didn’t look scared.

She looked like she had just slipped into a hot bath after a freezing day in the snow.

Her eyes, usually dark brown, were currently glowing with a faint, ethereal violet ring around the iris.

The heavy, dark mana swirled around her like a protective cocoon, caressing her cheeks, braiding itself through her messy hair.

"It’s soft," Seraphina murmured, her voice echoing with a strange, overlapping resonance. "Like Papa Duke’s cape."

Slowly, the overflowing darkness began to retract, pulling back into the sphere as Seraphina lifted her hand.

The black lotuses vanished.

The shadows snapped back to the corners.

The magical lamp in the ceiling sputtered and reignited.

The Void-pearl sat in the box.

It was no longer a dull black stone.

It was practically humming, a brilliant, terrifyingly beautiful orb of shifting obsidian light.

The silence that followed was so profound it was deafening.

Sir Lucas was on his knees, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish.

Sir Boris was gripping the doorframe so hard the mythril was groaning.

Outside, Gallahan was lying in the dirt, staring at the sky, rapidly muttering prayers to gods he hadn’t spoken to in years.

Duke Kaelus von Nacht had not moved.

He was still sitting in his chair.

His quill had snapped perfectly in half in his hand, ink dripping down his leather glove.

His mind, the greatest tactical engine in the North, was currently processing the magnitude of what had just occurred.

Upper-middle tier arcane core?

What a joke.

A practical affinity?

An understatement of historical proportions.

The child sitting in front of him, the six-year-old who demanded strawberries and made paper ducks, had just registered a Dark affinity so pure, so overwhelmingly massive, that it had caused a reality distortion.

She wasn’t just a Dark Mage.

She was an apex existence.

She was the walking, talking cure to the Empire’s magical sickness.

If the Emperor knew about this, he would mobilize the entire Imperial Army to seize her immediately.

The Church would offer him half its treasury for her.

The Magic Tower would declare a holy war to claim her as their new grandmaster.

She was right now, without a shadow of a doubt, the most valuable, precious, and politically dangerous individual on the entire continent in the century.