Chapter 17
[…Asila.]
[Asila!]
A voice echoed through the darkness, pulling her mind up from the deep mire it had been wandering in. Her eyelids lifted.
An unfamiliar ceiling filled her vision. She slowly sat up.
[You’re awake?]
The butterflies that had been fluttering quietly by her side settled softly atop her and whispered.
Their tone was cautious, something she had never sensed from them before. It was the first time they had acted like this since they formed their contract.
She nodded and looked around the unfamiliar room.
Sunlight poured through a wide-open window. It was a spacious room.
It appeared to be meant for two people. Besides the bed she lay in, another stood at the far end.
Everything in the room was organized for dual use.
Her side of the room was completely empty. In contrast, the other side was messy, cluttered with belongings, as if someone had been living there for a long time.
“…Where am I?”
“Inside the Tower.”
The answer came from a voice that wasn’t hers. She had thought she was alone. Slowly, she turned her head.
“Hello?”
A man stood where the voice had come from, greeting her with bright eyes and a wide grin, his red pupils gleaming.
Bang! Bang, bang!
While staring at him blankly, a flash of memory from right before she collapsed sent a shiver down her spine.
Her body tensed instinctively. She felt her muscles stiffen.
The man who leaned lazily against the wall, blinking like a relaxed cat, was the same one who had half-destroyed the Spirit Tower’s surrounding buildings, and had stopped the Nyx spirits’ attacks.
As if to confirm this, shadows writhed at the man’s side, subtly taking shape.
Grip.
She blinked.
“There’s really no need to be so tense…”
The shadow squirmed weakly in his grasp as if resisting, but he quickly made it vanish.
“…See?”
He gave a mock-disappointed look and erased the shadow, then approached her.
[He’s bad!]
[Don’t come near Asila!]
[Ominous.]
[He’s dangerous, dangerous!]
As if trying to protect her, the butterflies flew toward him. He casually caught one by the wing and smirked.
“And when you acted on your own like that before, what exactly happened to your precious contractor?”
[Shut up, you ominous human!]
The spirits, unusually agitated, wavered.
“What’s it like, knocking your contractor unconscious for a week by forcing her to use command speech?”
[We said shut up!]
Their wings flushed red, and one of them released a sharp beam of light.
“A spirit that doesn’t learn from its mistakes.”
Just as he finished speaking, shadows burst from his body and blocked the attack. The Nyx spirits vanished, as if in frustration.
Asila didn’t try to stop them. She just watched.
No, it would be more accurate to say the thought of stopping them never even occurred to her.
Her mind had gone blank at the words he said.
She ignored the part about command speech, but…
A week?
‘Had she really been unconscious for an entire week?’
She looked down at herself.
Her body, dressed in soft sleeping clothes as if someone had changed her, felt refreshed, as though she had just woken from a nap.
But a whole week? It didn’t feel real.
She raised her head again and looked at the man.
He was smiling brightly, as if that mock-sullen look earlier had never existed.
She still didn’t know who he was.
This lunatic…
All she knew was that he seemed to be acquainted with Ledin.
Speaking of which… where was Ledin?
She recalled the silver-haired man running to her side just before she collapsed.
That desperate expression was still vivid in her mind.
“…Asila!”
Right then, a familiar voice rang out. She turned toward it.
“Ledin.”
He entered the room carrying a glass of water. When he saw her sitting up against the bed, he quickly rushed over.
“You’re awake. How do you feel? Are you alright?”
His deep blue eyes brimmed with concern. She gave a faint smile.
“Of course I’m fine. After all, I pumped her full of mana.”
The atmosphere had turned gentle, but the voice of the man beside her shattered it completely.
“Shut up…”
“…Mana?”
Before Ledin could say anything with a grim expression, Asila spoke first.
The man shrugged.
“You used command speech. Even if you didn’t do it on purpose, using it right after forming a contract is a big deal. But your body wasn’t ready to handle the feedback, so you passed out.”
That alone seemed amusing to him, despite the seriousness of his words. He let out a deep sigh as though truly disappointed.
When Asila frowned, the man raised both hands briefly in mock surrender, then pointed toward Ledin.
“But that guy kept making such a fuss when she’d have recovered just fine on her own. So, as a temporary measure, I gave her a bit of my mana.”
Under Ledin’s sharp glare, the man coughed awkwardly and finished his sentence.
She couldn’t understand a word of it.
It must have shown on her face, because the man’s brow arched.
“What, you don’t get any of this?”
As she blinked blankly, disbelief slowly dawned across his face. Finally, Ledin stepped between them.
“Asila only recently learned she was a spirit contractor. Let’s stop there.”
“…Seriously?”
Wow. Really? Truly? The man muttered to himself in awe, then burst out laughing.
Both Asila and Ledin grimaced at the inexplicable laughter.
“Ah, ha ha ha. This is insane.”
After laughing for a while, even wiping away tears, the man pointed to his chest.
“Alright, listen up.”
“We can do this later…”
“I’ll just explain the basics. Shut up for a second, Ledin. You can go into the details later. She should at least know the fundamentals.”
Ledin looked dissatisfied, but said nothing further.
He too seemed to recognize that Asila was sorely lacking the most basic understanding of spirit contracting.
“When you used command speech, or when the Nyx spirits multiplied and attacked me, you felt like your body was being drained, didn’t you? Like something was being pulled from your heart and spreading through your whole body.”
He described exactly what she had experienced before she collapsed. She nodded slowly, almost hypnotically.
She still didn’t fully understand what “command speech” meant, but she had felt it clearly. As the butterflies multiplied and swarmed, the sensation had steadily intensified.
When they unleashed a direct attack on the man, the feeling had been especially strong.
It was like every ounce of energy in her body was being sucked into some invisible void.
The man tapped his left chest lightly, where his heart would be.
“That energy, that force, call it what you want. It’s mana. Spirits draw power from the mana flowing from your heart through your body. And you used that to command them. Even if unintentionally.”
“…What exactly is command speech?”
When she finally asked, the man paused briefly before laughing again.
“Why do you think your spirits stopped attacking me in the end?”
She blinked.
Yes, before she lost consciousness, the butterflies had stopped.
But why?
They had ignored her pleas no matter how many times she begged them to stop.
“…Ah.”
As she retraced her memories, a moment surfaced clearly in her mind.
Stop.
A voice not her own. It hadn’t come from her mouth, it had resonated through her whole body, as if rising directly from her heart.
That… was command speech?
The man grinned as if he knew she had figured it out. His red eyes gleamed with a dangerous light.
“Got it now?”
He continued.
“Among the powers a spirit contractor can wield, command speech is considered the highest tier. And you used it. That’s why the old fogeys in the North practically fainted. Contracting with Nyx as an adult was already a shock, but then you go and use command speech. That was one hell of a show.”
He grinned slyly. Something in his demeanor made her instinctively tense.
“But.”
He changed tone like an actor mid-performance. The smile vanished. His voice turned serious.
“You’ve probably sensed it yourself. Your biggest problem is your lack of self-control.”
More precisely, the fact that a contractor of darkness spirits appeared now, of all times, was the real problem.
Lack of control meant lack of restraint.
Before she could say anything, Ledin let out a sigh beside her.
“Do you remember what I said before, Asila? About how Nyx and its spirits are different from other elemental spirits?”
Those who contract with Nyx are a little different from other elemental contractors… I’ll explain in detail once we land.
She nodded.
He had said that to her right before they arrived at the Tower. But neither of them had the presence of mind to continue the conversation then.
So… is lack of control a trait of Nyx contractors?
As if reading her thoughts, Ledin explained.
“It’s not exactly lack of control. It’s more that Nyx’s power is too strong.”
He gently brushed a butterfly perched on her shoulder.
[Hmph.]
The spirit still sounded sullen.
“Spirits of darkness are powerful. Look at these ones, they didn’t appear because you summoned them, did they?”
He was right. She turned to look at the butterflies fluttering behind her.
Ledin took her silence as agreement and continued.
“Other spirits don’t consume mana or manifest unless the contractor wills it. Only darkness spirits can come and go as they please.”
Even the man leaning against the wall nodded in agreement.
“That’s why contractors of darkness spirits train in self-restraint from childhood. I’ve never actually seen one myself, though.”
“…You’ve never seen one?”
She couldn’t help asking.
Were they really that rare?
“There you go.”
With a short chuckle, the man laughed again.
Ledin, who had been glaring at him moments ago, turned back to her with a softer gaze.
“Asila, you are the third darkness spirit contractor on the continent.”
