The next day, just as the sky began to lighten, Adam went to the stables to work as usual—feeding, brushing, cleaning, every step the same as before. But once the work was done he did not leave straight away as he always had. Instead he opened the door that he would normally have pulled shut, and stood quietly to one side.
Ever since he had gained a basic grip on his power, he had discovered another use for spiritual power: this special energy carried a powerful perceptive faculty, far keener than the naked eye, with no blind corners and no dead spots inside its range. Just now, for instance, he had sensed someone's approach without so much as turning his head.
Ophelia was as radiant as ever. She passed by Adam with nothing out of the ordinary in her manner, as though he were just another common servant of the manor.
She had come to collect her mount—the warhorse she had named Dark Cloud, a beast with unicorn blood in its veins.
For Ophelia, who stood at Grand Knight rank, a mixed-blood warhorse like this could no longer add anything to her fighting strength; with a Grand Knight's blood and qi erupting at full force, the horse would simply collapse beneath her. And a pure-blooded magical beast mount was not something a knight's power could tame. So in a Grand Knight's hands a warhorse returned to its original function: a means of travel, nothing more.
Ophelia did not say a word. As Dark Cloud left the stable it flicked Adam lightly with its tail. Adam likewise said nothing; he shut the stable and walked off toward the mess hall.
Ophelia rode Dark Cloud out of the manor and galloped toward Cold Maple City in the Northland. She was going to keep her promise.
She knew her father, Count Johnson, had never been a kind man. He kept to the bottom line that a noble and a knight ought to keep to, but he was not so hidebound as to do everything strictly by the code of chivalry. If Ophelia did not go and ask, Count Johnson might force Adam to sign a contract, ordering him to renounce his freeman status and become one of his retainers. And if that cost Adam his chance to become a Mage, her promise would be broken—a spiritual impurity, to a knight.
As for whether Adam could handle Marshall's and Dennis's coercion and bribery, Ophelia did not care. In her mind Count Johnson was an unstoppable force; a man that fierce, like a magical beast, was beyond even her present strength. Her two elder brothers were, at best, ordinary wild animals. If Adam could not even cope with a threat of that level, then honestly staying a knight was the best choice for him—no matter whom he served.
Cold Maple City was the heart of the Northland, a very large city, and the city lord's mansion where the Count resided stood at its very center. Ophelia and Dark Cloud rode straight in; no one along the way made the slightest attempt to stop them.
"Ophelia, is something the matter?" Count Johnson sat in a huge chair at the head of the hall. He was a majestic man, still wearing steel armor even now, his greatsword and knight's lance within easy reach, as though nothing in the world could threaten him.
Ophelia smiled bitterly to herself. This was her father—speaking to her as though to a stranger.
"It's about Adam, my groom. I want to take him with me to meet the Mage from Mordo Mage Academy." Ophelia put the request bluntly.
Count Johnson's face showed nothing. Yesterday, when he learned that Adam had supposedly caused an energy rampage on his very first attempt at cultivation, he had been greatly surprised—but only surprised, with no joy in it.
True, Adam worked on his estate, but he was a freeman. Family guardian knights could not be trusted at all unless their loyalty had been cultivated from childhood, and wandering knights could only be used as mercenaries. But plainly it was too late now to go about brainwashing Adam.
As for forcing a freeman to sign a master-servant contract and become a slave or a household retainer—that would without question provoke a fierce backlash among the people of the domain. The loss would outweigh the gain.
But if Adam were to be kept here by some other means...
"Ophelia, you know that if you leave after passing the aptitude assessment, the family will suffer a loss," Count Johnson said slowly.
Ophelia sneered inwardly. She had already guessed what her father was going to say. Sure enough. I'm just a valuable piece of merchandise.
Count Johnson went on: "Losing a Grand Knight has already cost this family dearly, and now you want to carry off another genius who is certain to become one. I cannot accept that. I think you should consider the family's interests. I hear that boy named Adam was your playmate in childhood—you should have some way to persuade him to serve the family, shouldn't you?"
Ophelia said coldly, "No, Count, sir. Adam is a freeman, not your slave. He has the right to choose. I have neither the means nor the right to influence him. As for me, sir, my name is Ophelia Johnson, and my surname will not change depending on whether or not I become a Mage."
Then she gave a laugh of undisguised contempt and said, "Sir, you should be quite clear about the talents of your two sons. So it is Mage Ophelia Johnson who is the Johnson family's true shield."
After you're dead. Ophelia did not say that last sentence aloud; she only said it to herself.
Count Johnson's head snapped up, his eyes fixed on his youngest daughter. His muscles bulged with fury and the steel armor creaked. Ophelia met his gaze without flinching for an instant. This father had disappointed her utterly.
After they had stared at each other for a good while, Count Johnson said nothing more and waved Ophelia away. He knew his daughter's words were true. He also knew that once he was dead, a family without a Grand Knight would be nothing but a piece of fat meat, and that neither of his sons had the talent to keep the family ruling the Northland. That was also why he had tacitly allowed Ophelia to chase the path of the Mage—the family needed deterrence.
"Daughter... why are you a daughter." Count Johnson sat alone in the vast hall and heaved a long sigh.
Ophelia walked calmly out of the city lord's mansion. Her warhorse Dark Cloud stood proudly outside; with keen sensitivity it caught its master's low mood, nickered softly, and rubbed its big head against her face.
Ophelia patted it and swung up into the saddle. "Let's go."
The atmosphere in the manor's mess hall was strange.
Adam still sat alone, a mountain of food piled up in front of him, eating it one deliberate mouthful at a time, not wasting a scrap of the energy in any morsel. Under Adam's complete control of his body it was absorbed perfectly, strengthening his constitution.
Around Adam, servants lay scattered across the floor, every one of them battered black and blue, hissing through their teeth; the fierce pain kept them from even getting up to leave. Bearded Joe sat slumped by the door with his head hanging, blood covering his face—if not for the rise and fall of his chest proving he was alive, he would have looked like a dead man.
The ointment had helped Adam enormously, lifting his constitution to the level of a normal person overnight. But Adam knew there would be no second jar of it for him anytime soon, so this ordinary food was now an important source of energy.
And so the exact reverse of the old state of things came about. Adam, who had so often had his food snatched away, struck first this time; after cleanly and efficiently knocking down every servant, he enjoyed their food with an easy conscience. These servants were not worth a single blow, with no power to resist at all.
Every muscle in Adam's body was trembling at a minute frequency, training itself that way—but, Not enough. The energy I get from low-grade food can't sustain the breathing method.
When Adam had finished the last chunk of black bread he sat in his chair and began to train the breathing method. The spectacle was still tremendous: No. 3 energy poured into his body, each particle shoving to get in ahead of the rest, and a faint red glow rose around him.
The onlookers were terrified. Never, when any knight in the manor cultivated, had they seen an energy reaction of this magnitude. At last they knew the gulf between themselves and Adam.
After barely a full five minutes of breathing at full force, overload reactions had already set in and the energy gained from the food was spent. Adam rose in silence and swept the crowd on the floor with a cold, emotionless gaze. The servants, enduring their pain, kept scrambling backward—they even thought Adam might choose to eat them—and only after Adam had left the mess hall did they breathe easy and curse under their breath: "Damn it. That mongrel. That monster."
In truth, Adam had not been without the idea of eating them. In Adam's mind, he and they were simply not the same species, and he had no "humans must not be eaten" inhibition; the only reason he had held back was that he did not yet have the power to challenge universal values and bear the consequences.
Adam picked up his basket and sickle and headed out of the manor. Today he had brought along an extra fire-striker.
In this rather closed-off place, news traveled fast. By now everyone knew that the Idiot, who had once counted for so little that he was at best a joke, had turned into a genius overnight. Even those who refused to believe it had come around to half-belief after the knight-squires' categorical confirmation at the training ground yesterday.
Adam was watched the whole way. Word had it that after Miss Ophelia shielded him from the two Young Masters, the people who had so often made things hard for him had pulled in their claws; the soldier at the gate came thumping over from the fire to open the side door for him without so much as a word of nonsense.
It happened that he met Ophelia on her way back. Seeing Adam's getup, she understood the lower servants' crude amusement at once, and she knew what he was going out to do. After a moment's hesitation she offered no explanation, only said coldly, "Starting today, you don't need to feed my horse anymore."
Adam looked up at Ophelia and said nothing; in silence he walked off toward the wilds. Ophelia did not wait for an answer either, and the two passed each other by.
The manor shrank smaller and smaller behind Adam. He did not take the paths he knew, but walked deeper into the wilderness. The snowflakes drifting down from the sky announced that the Northland's late autumn was coming to an end, and that the long, bitter winter would follow.
And Adam needed to hunt and kill as many wild beasts as he could before the heavy snow covered the land completely.