Chapter 96: Little Joys

She didn’t unleash a visible wave of shadows as she had with the Void-pearl.

Instead, she channeled a thread of dense dark mana directly through her fingertips, up the gold chain, and straight into the brocade fabric of Drusilla’s dress.

The dark mana had acted like a metaphysical vacuum cleaner.

The three parasitic gremlins hadn’t even had time to squeak.

The overwhelming power of Seraphina’s core had instantly absorbed them, crushing their negative energy into nothingness, purifying the heiress’s spiritual aura in a fraction of a second.

The snapping of the gold chain and the crushing of the ruby had just been the physical cover story.

A spectacular, dramatic distraction to hide an exorcism.

’I crushed a rock, saved a life, and got praised by a warlord for being a brat,’ Seraphina mentally checked off her accomplishments, feeling profoundly satisfied with her own multitasking abilities. ’I am basically a tactical genius. Sir Lucas would be so proud.’

She looked up at Kaelus.

He was currently unrolling a massive, thick scroll of bureaucratic parchment confiscated from Duke Voran’s personal vault.

"Papa Duke," Seraphina chirped. "Are we going to the plant place now?"

Kaelus sighed, his violet eyes already scanning the dense, tiny script of the ledgers. "The Verdant Reach, yes. The journey will take slightly less time than the mountain pass, but it is a vast distance. We must cross the central plains before we reach the jungle canopy. It will require patience."

"Okay," Seraphina nodded agreeably.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.

Thus began the long, sprawling, and domestic transit to the territory of House Sylvane.

***

As the days blended into a continuous ribbon of paved roads, rolling green hills, and passing merchant caravans, the reality of the Archduke’s responsibilities came crashing down with a vengeance.

Duke Voran’s ledgers were a complete disaster.

The man had kept two, sometimes three different sets of books, hiding embezzled funds behind complex metallurgical jargon and fake supply lines.

Kaelus, operating as the Emperor’s designated auditor, had to manually trace every single misplaced ounce of mythril.

The terrifying Reaper of the North was effectively bogged down in a swamp of accounting.

He sat at his desk from dawn until dusk, surrounded by towering stacks of parchment, his inkwell constantly running dry, a look of murderous irritation etched permanently into his flawless features.

"If this man claims one more ’accidental smelting loss’ on his quarterly reports," Kaelus growled to himself on the fourth day, rubbing his temples as a headache threatened to split his skull, "I am going to ride back to Ironforge and smelt him."

Because Kaelus was trapped in a prison of paperwork, Seraphina was left to her own devices inside the carriage.

For a normal six-year-old, being confined to a moving box while their guardian ignored them would result in boredom, whining, and inevitable tantrums.

But Seraphina was not a normal six-year-old.

Her brain remembered the days of being a latchkey kid, left alone in an apartment while her parents worked double shifts.

She knew how to entertain herself.

She embraced the independence with absolute, chaotic joy.

Her first grand project was the construction of ’Fortress Mushroom’!

Using the plush velvet cushions from the benches, Seraphina began to disassemble the interior decor of the mythril carriage.

She dragged the heavy cushions onto the floorboards, arranging them into a square perimeter.

"What are you doing?" Kaelus asked, glancing over the top of a particularly infuriating tax document, raising an eyebrow at the sudden interior renovation.

"I am fortifying my position," Seraphina replied seriously, dragging a smaller pillow to act as a gatehouse. "Sir Lucas said a good commander always establishes a secure perimeter before nightfall."

Kaelus stared at her for a second, sighed, and went back to reading. "Ensure your perimeter does not encroach upon my footspace."

The cushions were not enough.

A fortress needed a roof.

Seraphina looked around.

Her eyes landed on the heavy, midnight-blue, fur-lined mantle that Kaelus had draped over the back of his chair.

It was massive, warm, and perfect!

She sneaked over, grabbed the hem of the heavy wool, and yanked.

The cape slid off the chair, burying her entirely beneath its weight.

She wrestled her way out, dragging the massive garment across the floor.

She draped the cape over the top of the cushions, creating a perfectly dark, enclosed, incredibly cozy tent that smelled of pine, cold iron, and Kaelus’s comforting mana.

She crawled inside, dragging her favorite stuffed bear, which was a terrifyingly realistic, massive dire-bear plushie Sir Boris had bought her as a gift, a plate of crackers, and a small, glowing magical reading orb.

From Kaelus’s perspective, his daughter had vanished into a pile of his own clothing, occasionally emitting soft crunching noises and the muffled sounds of a very intense, one-sided conversation with a stuffed bear.

It was bizarre, but it was quiet, and it allowed him to focus on the numbers.

As the days wore on, her activities expanded.

When she grew tired of the tent, she would emerge, stretch, and decide that the floor was no longer acceptable.

On the seventh day, Kaelus was deep into deciphering a fake trade route when he felt a sudden weight against his right thigh.

He looked down.

Seraphina had crawled under his desk.

She was lying flat on her back on the floorboards, but she had hauled her upper body up, using Kaelus’s knee as a makeshift pillow.

Her dark hair splayed across his greave.

She had a piece of charcoal in one hand and was currently using the underside of the mahogany desk as a canvas to draw what looked like a cross-eyed dragon.

"Seraphina," Kaelus said, his voice dropping into a low, warning register. "Are you vandalizing Imperial property?"

"No," she mumbled, not breaking her focus, coloring in the dragon’s snout. "I am leaving a historical record of my conquest. If the next person who sits here is boring, they will look up and see Fluffy, and they will know fear."