“Lady Veronique what are you saying!?” Miss Hawkings exclaimed aghast, then sharply turned towards Madame Luise “please forgive her, she has a tendency of saying what’s on her mind without thinking about it”

  The glare from Madame Luise was so intense it could have killed Veronique on the spot

  “What utter no sense, an healthy body with a rotten head is useless” the Madame didn’t want to listen to excuses “Nobles are needed to keep order, without them we might as well let the kingdom decay from the inside out”

  “How are you sure we aren’t already rotting?” Veronique challenged her much to the displeasure of Miss Hawkings who seemed utterly scandalized ‘the old hag is no doubt going to yap at me for this later’ she thought but despite knowing such thing, it was as if she simply couldn’t stop

  “As long as honorable men like Duke Alfred of Aurelia are in power we have nothing to worry about” Madame Luise kept up with gospel “alright Lady Veronique step forward” the woman seemed about to say something else but a single glance towards Rhea had made her change her mind, Veronique had no doubt that if the child wasn’t present then Madame Luise wouldn’t have been so cordial

  Veronique walked over fluming and impatiently waited for the Madame to do her thing, soon she was looking at her own status window projected on the ceiling

  ‘Err I got a lot of attack’ she thought then observed ‘my weird text is longer then Rhea’s’

  “Interesting result, you have an high affinity for fire, along of what appears to be passive” Madame Luise commented after a long pause then turned towards Miss Hawkings “are you sure Lady Veronique has never studied or practiced skills before?”

  “Of course not, is something wrong?” the woman responded and asked out of concern, probably towards the good name of the Aurelia and not towards Veronique herself or so Veronique herself thought.

  The mere notion of the old hag being worried about her was laughable

  “Not at all, you mentioned Lady Veronique is impulsive?” Madame Luise had said, but something told Veronique she was lying, why else would she be asking those questions? Rhea’s status window didn’t get this added scrutiny

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Yes and quite prone to rage, but she has been getting better lately” Miss Hawkings answered the question

  “Her passive is giving her an abnormal amount of mana, which doesn’t bond well with her high affinity for fire” Madame Luise gave an explanation about her inquiry

  “Why is the number changing?” Rhea suddenly pointed out, she still looking up at Veronique’s status window

  “Eh? What number?” Veronique asked as she had been squirting so much at the unknown text that she didn’t even notice

  “That one” the child merely pointed at it

  “see it’s going up again” and added as it did indeed go up before their very eyes

  “This shouldn’t happen” Miss Hawkings was baffled, her mouth slightly agape out of surprise

  “It’s her passive, Siphon, it adsorbs lose mana in the air” Madame Luise explained “quite an unique ability I will have to write a report about it” was there some fascination in her tone? Veronique couldn’t tell since she didn’t know this woman.

  “Yea and what else? The bold looking symbols are the names of the skills right? Then what’s the other one?” the formatting of the text also agreed with her, the symbols were are in a paragraph after the bold one.

  ‘It must be the name of the skill and the description of it so I am sure there is another one’ Veronique reasoned in her head, if those skills were so important she wanted to know all about it and she didn’t want to be fed incomplete information

  “I don’t know what you are talking about, must be the mana going up Lady Veronique’s head” Madame Luise denied everything, but the slight upward curve of her lip together with the condescending tone told the redhead she was being made fun off “I will go to advise the Duke on ways to relieve such pressure”

  ‘Yea she’s totally going to report directly to the Duke and not tell me shit’ Veronique wasn’t going to let herself be gaslighted so easily

  “Lady Veronique it’s time to go, we can’t stay there the whole day” Miss Hawkings had declared with an air of authority that didn’t take no for an answer, reminding the redhead that she had no agency even if she knew Madame Luise was lying she had no way of doing anything about it.

  She had let go of this bone.

  Letting out a huff she trailed after Miss Hawkings, apparently Rhea had ran ahead after hearing about pastries waiting for them in the music room.

  Unknown Location

  It was a completely dark place, barely anything could be seen

  “Uh oh this is bad, it’s getting restless again” a female voice with a lisp had said, her silhouette was barely visible in the dark

  “think you can keep it under control for a while longer?” she asked, a fluttering of wings could be heard

  “I am not sure about that, the girl is not like our little cat and she isn’t even a fighter” she seemed a bit disappointed but not really, a bit of light reflected from something on her face, probably a pair of glasses

  “oh you think we can count on it to calm it down? Even as unpredictable as it is?” there was some laugher in the voice

  “You want me to go out there to observe? Did you forget what happened last time?!” now there seemed to be some legit upset in the tone, deep anger peaking at the end of the sentence, two green orbs illuminated the scene for a mere moment a clawed hand defaced a wall then the voice turned serious “a contingency? What kind of?”

  Barking could be heard, little paws running through the tiled floor towards the figure’s direction

  “How is that going to help?” she wondered out aloud but wings fluttered far away from her location “fine don’t answer me, I will figure it out”