It takes a while, but Sincir does manage to convince Ena to stay with Eleanor, while he goes meet the vampires…
“As I’ve said, I’ll be going there to talk. It shouldn’t come down to a fight.”
“Then, it shouldn’t be a problem if we come with, right?! What if they set up some sort of trap for you?! You’re always compining about your small mana pool, so if there are a lot of opponents…!”
…Did he say he managed to convince her? That might’ve been a slight exaggeration.
“Ena… Look, you’re not-”
“Stop being retarded,” Eleanor says, cutting him off, “Can’t you see he is trying to say we’re too weak to be of help? If he’s worried about us, then he won’t be able to fight properly, and he’ll probably spend even more mana saving our asses; If that bothers you, then become strong enough that he won’t be able to refuse to take you with, next time.”
“…What she said,” Sincir adds, with a sigh.
Ena clenches her teeth. “Fine, but you better not die… I don’t care about what you say, if you don’t come back, the only way I’m leaving is after I’ve uprooted every fucking st vampire in town.”
Eleanor sighs. “That’s obvious, you idiot, but you didn’t have to tell him. Now he’ll be even more worried.”
Throwing Eleanor a quick gnce, Ena blinks, then shakes her head. “Right, you’re the revenge girl… I should’ve known better when you agreed to leave, just leave like that.”
“Well, I was going to take you somewhere far away, and then come back… So, I wasn’t actually lying.”
Sincir grimaces. Father, why? Why did you have to die and leave these two in his care…? Although, he was already pnning to take Ena with him anyway, so he has no one else to bme, but his stupid soft heart.
Leading a kingdom of demons felt easier, most of the time.
“…You know what? If I die, do just what you want. You’re not exactly kids, anymore…” Sincir murmurs tiredly. Fuck it, the day has been long, and he is too tired for this shit.
Do they want to go and die for no reason? He washes his hands from the whole thing…
Eleanor and Ena exchange a gnce, grinning at each other as they do so.
Fucking brats…
“Fine, enough of this. Let’s get this over with, so we can all sleep. I know you’re both tired… Eleanor, you go first- No, wait, first, I have something to give you… I had nearly forgotten about it.”
Reaching into his pocket, Sincir grabs the small prayer book he received from Esme earlier, then casually throws it in her direction.
“I promised to teach you, but as we all know, Holy Magic isn’t exactly my strong suit… Or more precisely, I don’t know a single spell, and so we have worked on your mana movement and casting speed up to now with the spells you already knew, plus a couple of basic ones, but this should give you something exciting to practice… Just so we’re clear, I have no idea what’s in there, so be extra careful when you’re trying it out.”
Seeing Eleanor staring at the white prayer book in her hands with wide eyes, her expression frozen, Sincir clears his throat.
“Well, that’s a spell book for Holy Magic, in case that wasn’t clear enough already. I’m sure you must be excited to take a look, but put it away for now, okay? Also, don’t show it around… These are obviously valuable and tempting, and with your face, you’re doing more than enough tempting to have me worry, already.”
Ena snorts at that, and Eleanor blinks, seeming to have been snapped back from her trance as she finally stares up again, meeting his gaze exasperatedly.
“It’s not my fault-”
“Stop; I know that, it was just a joke. Now, show me what you got.”
Eleanor shakes her head, then takes a deep breath.
For buffs, there isn’t much of a visual cue one can pick up on, but there’s still mana movement to be noticed. In Eleanor’s case, she knows both a strength buffing spell (earth spell) and a speed one (wind spell), which were basically the only spells he taught her so far.
With her current skill level, at maximum output, she can pump one of them up to about C grade… Which isn’t bad at all, for a nineteen-year-old. Also, since she can’t hold them both at the same time yet, she has to switch mid-fight.
At maximum output, her mana will hold for about ten minutes (not taking into account other spells she might cast), which is twice more now than when they first began her mana training.
Considering ten minutes is enough to finish most fights, Sincir would say she is good enough to defend herself against most human opponents.
As a matter of fact, Holy Magic possesses both a strength and a speed buffing spell, which should’ve been much easier for her to cast and maintain, considering her heritage, but as already mentioned, he doesn’t know them, so Eleanor will have to do it the hard way, for now…
A minute or so after starting, Eleanor begins to furrow her brows as some of her hair begins to fly up, around her face.
This means a couple of things.
First, her control over the spell is slipping.
Second, she chose the wind, speed buffing spell as practice for today, as she usually does when they’re training inside… After all, an earth spell going out of control is not something to ugh at, but the yard is a lot easier to fix.
“Rex,” Sincir tells her, “Do it steadily, or it’ll just slip away from you.”
Eleanor takes another deep breath, and her hair, which was gradually being blown by the wind faster and faster, finally settles down somewhat.
“Good. Now just focus on keeping it up until the end…”
For the girls, this training has another purpose other than simply emptying their mana pools; To put it simply, Eleanor is doing her best to increase her mana control, speed, and output… Or, in other words, if her current best is a C-grade buff during a real fight, she’s trying to get that up to a B.
Though, obviously, if her basic mana control increases, it’ll also become easier for her to cast other spells as well, and this is a good opportunity to have her give it her all without worrying about her mana running out on her… Since that’s part of their objective, anyway.
After about five minutes, Eleanor is sweating profusely, and breathing heavily, her expression showcasing clear pain.
She is able to maintain a C-grade buff for about ten minutes, but trying to increase that to a B grade buff ate her mana twice as fast… However, considering she’s wasting a lot of mana with her poor control over the spell, if she were to master it, she should be able to fight for about six, or seven minutes with a B-grade buffing spell…
She’d have to get her body used to it first, but she’d be a force to be reckoned with, then. Add an offensive spell or two on top of that, good reflexes, instincts, and training, and you have on your hands a scary fighter, at least for human standards.
Sincir knows Eleanor has the determination and talent to get there, so the only question is how long it’ll take her.
At her current pace, he wagers it’d take another year or two to become a full-fledged B-grade fighter, and then another five or ten (depending on too many factors to count), for her to become a css A one.
As for if she’ll ever be able to rise above that… Impossible to tell. As far as humans are concerned, css A is the limit, but exceptions exist, and Eleanor isn’t fully human, herself...
A minute since Eleanor began to shake, and her spell finally fizzles out of existence; Not because she gave up, mind you, but rather because her mana has been utterly exhausted.
Right now, no matter how much she wants it to, no spell will obey her commands... Unless she is willing to trade her Life Force to cast them, as she was trying to do, when healing Ena at the chapel. Obviously, doing as much would kill her, and it is also not possible for almost anyone to do it willingly.
Seeing her gasping while literally dripping sweat over the ground, Sincir sighs and shakes his head.
“Sorry, but it has been three seconds… You fail.”
Having said as much, he steps forward and kicks her stomach, hard.
Ena flinches, but says nothing.
“Three,” Sincir counts, staring at Eleanor as she continues to attempt to move her body in spite of its obvious refusal to do so.
Limbs shaking and eyes wide, she manages to bring herself to a kneeling position at the count of two, and then to a crouched one once he reaches one.
“I-I’m up,” Eleanor murmurs, having raised both her knees from the ground right at the st second, which clears her from having to be kicked again.
In the case she wasn’t able to rise before the second kick, they’d have given the training for over, though she’d then have to face her punishment for having failed it… Ten minutes of tickling torture.
Don’t ugh; It is a lot worse than it sounds, especially in a state where one cannot defend themselves even slightly.
This is a secret both he and Eleanor were forced to take to their grave, under the threat of painful, slow deaths, but Ena pissed herself once.
Still, it is an important part of their training, and both the girls agreed to participate willingly… Once a mage’s mana is exhausted in battle, they’re good as dead; However, being able to move, even if a little, might save their life from a half-dead opponent, or give them the edge they need against a simirly exhausted mage.
Sincir also goes through the same training during his turn, of course, so the girls have no reason to compin… Well, he has yet to not rise at the first count of three, but that’s a testament to his determination, and experience.
He was kicked once, however; The day after she pissed her pants, Ena continued kicking him regardless of how fast or slow he tried to rise, and she didn’t stop at the second kick, either… She apologized ter though, and she seemed sorry, so Sincir let it go.
Still, her kicks are no joke, so he ended up going a bit easier on her tickling, from there on… Speaking of which, it has been a while since one of them had taken a kick. Eleanor must’ve truly gone beyond her limits, today.
“Are you sure you want to continue? I could help you up today, if you want,” Sincir offers as Eleanor begins to head toward the staircase that leads to their bedrooms, upstairs.
Rather than answering, however, Eleanor simply keeps going, one slow, unsteady step at a time, while Sincir stays near her in case she might fall.
This part of their training has no punishment, and it is more of an endurance test; Failing to climb the stairs means having to start from the bottom again, and if they give up, they can always sleep on the couch…
That so far nobody has ever done so speaks of the girls’ determination to grow stronger, both mentally and otherwise.
Sincir accompanies Eleanor all the way up the stairs, and then to her bedroom door, where she stops, leaning against the wall, and their eyes meet.
“Good job today. You did great… Don’t let the kick bother you; It happens to be best of us,” Sincir tells her, smiling encouragingly as he does.
“…You always rise at the count of one,” she murmurs back breathlessly.
Sincir rolls his eyes. “I’ve had a couple of thousand years of practice on you. Comparing the both of us is pointless.”
“…Your body is fully human, and underdeveloped,” Eleanor continues, in spite of her breathless condition, “When we were fighting earlier… Without magic, you should be much weaker, and slower, but I couldn’t touch you.”
Sincir sighs. “I’ve been through thousands of life-or-death fights, Eleanor, and many of them were against opponents stronger than myself… That’s what it takes to rise to the top as a demon. Of course you couldn’t touch me.”
“…Why? What keeps you going? And don’t give me that bullshit about a king’s responsibility… You weren’t always a Demon Lord, right?”
Sincir hesitates. Even now, he still hasn’t told them much about his time as a demon, mostly because there’s little of good to tell, other than sex, and even that was... He wasn’t a very nice guy, from human standards.
At this point, he’d normally cast a cleaning spell on her and then head back for Ena, but… he did promise he’d care for Eleanor better from now on, after seeing the state of her hands and feet earlier.
“…Let’s go inside, and I’ll tell you a bit about it,” Sincir says, nodding toward her bedroom as he does so, “I’ll help you get ready for bed.”
Eleanor blinks, but then shrugs, heading in first and leaving the door open for him to walk in as well.
Once Sincir does so, however, she is already in the middle of taking off her top, and he immediately curses out loud.
“…Training clothes under,” Eleanor murmurs tiredly, seemingly unable to complete a full sentence at this point.
Seeing she does indeed have her training clothes under the ones she wore for Victoria’s show, Sincir rexes slightly, clearing his throat as he closes the door at his back.
“You should’ve waited for the spell, you idiot. Now I’ll have to cast two of them,” he tells her.
“Just leave it… I’ll wash them myself, tomorrow…”
Having removed her pants with the practice of someone used to undressing themselves in less-than-ideal conditions, Eleanor pces her previous get-up on a pile which she kicks aside, then crawls on top of her bed, barely managing to reach her pillow before falling face first against it.
Having watched the whole thing, and now staring at her mostly naked back, well-shaped rear, uncovered legs, and exposed feet, Sincir feels his member slowly hardening against his pants…
…Damn it, he should’ve left her at the door.
“Sincir... What are you waiting for…?” Eleanor murmurs.
Realizing he has been staring at her for a while now, Sincir quickly shakes his head in a vain attempt at clearing his thoughts, before finally casting a cleaning spell over her lying form.
Eleanor shudders.
“Are you still awake?” he asks her.
“Yeah… Won’t be able to fall asleep until the headache is gone…”
Sincir snorts. She’s like him, then; On the other hand, Ena has no problem falling asleep immediately as her head hits the pillow, to his eternal annoyance.
“Want me to tell you about it tomorrow?”
“No, it’s fine… I’m listening.”
Eleanor slowly turns over to face him as he approaches her bed, then sits by her, trying not to stare at anything below her neck as he does so.
“It’s just… I’ve not said the story since becoming a human, so I’m not sure where to start.”
Meeting Eleanor’s gaze, he realizes her expression is strangely open, as though her exhaustion has lowered the defenses she usually keeps in pce.
Oh Lords, what has he gotten himself into…
As an excuse to avert his gaze, Sincir grabs a piece of cloth nearby and casts a water spell to make it wet, combining it with an ice spell to make it cold, just as he does when the girls stay on the ground for too long during their spars.
Then, he carefully pces the cloth against Eleanor’s forehead, causing her eyes to widen slightly.
“Better?”
“…Yeah,” she murmurs after a moment, before grimacing, “Wait, you’re telling me Ena gets a wet cloth, every time?”
Sincir snorts. “First off, I remember offering to take care of you several times before, and you never allowed me past the door. Second… She usually falls asleep before I can do much of anything for her.”
Eleanor grimaces further. “I’ll never feel bad for her again…”
Sincir chuckles. “C’mon, don’t be like that; You know she tries just as hard as you… Well, you’re her objective, after all.”
“A couple thousand years… Too early for that one…” Eleanor murmurs with a chuckle of her own.
As far as their spars against each other go, Eleanor usually wins handily, but she has lost on occasion, as well.
While Eleanor is stronger and has better technique, Ena is slightly faster, making for an interesting match… Now, if only things didn’t tend to grow out of hand whenever he allows them to spar, Sincir might have done so more often.
“…Weren’t you going to tell me about your life as a demon?” Eleanor asks, after he has stayed quiet for a while.
Sincir sighs. “Fine; I see you won’t just forget about it, if I pretend to… First, you need to understand demons don’t have families, or parents, for that matter. We are born from the Firepits of Hell, and more often than not, that means having to fight to survive from the moment of our birth.”
Seeing that Eleanor stares at him intently, Sincir continues, after a second sigh.
“But I was born weak. All incubi are… We are sex demons, specialists at giving pleasure, maniputing others, and then betraying them… As you might imagine, few find much use for us other than the obvious, and I soon found myself captured, then sold as a sex sve...”
Eleanor blinks.
“The demon who bought me… She was a true sadist. Humiliation and torture were parts of my daily routine, as well as that of her other sves, many of which were incubi or succubi as well… We were weak, and therefore helpless to fight against our captor... Simply, that’s the way of life in Hell. The weak won’t find any sympathy there, and midst my suffering and despair, I soon realized no help was coming… Or perhaps I had known so, from the beginning.”
“What… What happened then? How did you free yourself?” Eleanor murmurs.
“Some of us would be summoned to a mortal world, on occasion, but without the chance to spread our names around, it was the same as hoping for a lottery win… And I eventually won, about a hundred years or so into my ensvement.”
“I won’t tell you the things I did in order to maintain my contract with the humans who summoned me going, because I’m not proud of them, but suffice to say, I was able to learn magic during that period, and so I realized my species wasn’t completely hopeless, as we have greater magical potential than the average demon.”
“However, once a contract is finished, a demon returns to the pce where they were first summoned from, which means I was back to my cell before I even had a chance to put up a fight… Furthermore, with only a few years of magical training, and without a proper teacher to boot, I was still far too weak to challenge my owner by a long margin, and so from there, I trained in secret, keeping my rapidly increasing power from showing.”
“It was hard… I saw friends die, sometimes for the mere whims of our mistress. I was forced to torture others, and faced torture myself… But I endured. It was ironic… Our master’s greatest pleasure was to see us broken; Our hope extinguished, and our wills shattered. Once we were begging for death, only then would she be satisfied… And that, in and on itself, made so I never allowed myself to break.”
“Eventually… Eventually, I was strong. Little by little, one step at a time, I got there… And killing that bitch, staring into her eyes as the despair of death finally engulfed them… It felt great, but only for about a second or two.”
Sincir closes his eyes, the memory of it still engraved in his mind today, no less clear than if he had killed Ig'droren a week prior, rather than two thousand years ago... Even though many of his other memories seem lost to him now, this one appears to have been branded into his Soul.
“I wouldn’t go as far as to say I regretted it… But it felt so pointless, when I knew so many others exactly like her still walked around Hell, free to do as they pleased, and so many of my kind shared situations simir to mine, without the hope of ever being rescued.”
“From there… Revenge kept me going for a while. I killed, and killed, and killed, until I began to lose count of the number of enemies felled by my bdes, and my name echoed across Hell, accompanied by fear. By that point, without me realizing it, the number of followers I had gathered was enough to be called a Legion.”
“…A hundred thousand?” Eleanor murmurs, astonished sounding.
Sincir chuckles. “I see you’re familiar with the term. Yes, we were a force to be reckoned with… But small, in the grand scheme of things. It was then that a friend, he… He had the idea to build up a kingdom, or rather, to steal one. To create a pce where our people could be happy…”
“When that friend was finally the one to die, without having ever seen his dream realized, I decided it was past the time to change things... I had grown tired of revenge then. Not even once, had I found any meaning or happiness from it, no matter how many of my enemies I killed, raped, or tortured. It was a pointless fight, since for each of them I defeated, one of my people would pay be price. And while I continued to survive, often by luck, others did not, and I felt every life lost just the same… No amount of killing could make up for their deaths.”
“However, building a pce for ourselves was not easy… Our enemies, their friends, their lovers, wouldn’t simply forget about all the blood we had spilled, and yet more bodies piled up… And yet, I survived, when others did not...”
“It is hard to say what kept me going,” Sincir finally tells Eleanor, as he meets her gaze once more, “The memories of my time as a sve… The sense of duty I had gained toward my people… My unbroken pride… My rage towards an unjust universe… I walked, one step at a time, and never looked behind me, no matter how many bodies I left in my wake, friends and foes alike.”
As he finishes, Eleanor stares into his eyes unblinkingly, having listened to all he had to say attentively.
He smiles at her. “Well, I hope that answered your question. I know it was a gruesome story, but you should try to sleep now, and Ena has been waiting for a while.”
“…Okay,” she murmurs.
Sincir doesn’t know how what she heard will affect her opinion of him going forward, but he thought she deserved the truth, and was now old enough to bear it.
Sighing, he rises from her bed, heading toward the door… But then, remembering something, he stops and gnces over his shoulder, meeting her gaze one st time.
“Oh, just one more thing; I’ve always been a pervert, so you can add pretty girls to the list of things that keep me going,” he says, grinning devilishly as he does, “You’d make things much easier for the both of us if you kept this st one in mind, from now on.”
