Chương 64: Chapter 63: An Appeal

++Forging alliances is a good habit to have. In any interaction there is some opportunity for advantage, and numbers can go a long way. It is numbers, in the end, that the Gods feared. Not me, Lord Dread, but the idea of a thousand of me, of a million. And if a thousand Lord Dreads could threaten them, why not a billion ordinary people? ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. The new equilibrium I attained with my father lasted for a long time.

Long enough that I did more growing up with it, and saw my younger siblings do the same. Long enough that war with Irruchi was soon becoming a greater concern than ever before. Two years had passed before the next major incident, and I used them well. In my free time at the Winzorth Institute, I continued my experimentation on the captive warrior with the hopes of one day cultivating similar abilities as him in my own body without jeopardizing my magic.

I branched out into basic biological tests, taking tissue samples and attempting to have them grow under the power of my mana, among other things. None of these were successes, but all were educational failures, and I did not lose hope. Science and magic were both long and plodding processes, how many millennia had it taken me to learn what I knew in my first life? Far more than I had spent so far. Knowledge came so quickly and easily in this era, with access to the right sources.

This did not mean that I was without problems, however. My body had just about finished developing by this point, and more people considered me a woman than a child. On the one hand, this did give me that little bit more influence within most social circles, and permitted me access to places children would not have been allowed. On the other hand, it led to far more unwanted attention too.

Many penny novels depict a certain phenomenon that I shall refer to as the 'beautiful outcast', a woman scorned by her peers, ignored and overlooked, while boasting extraordinary beauty. I could now confidently say that the beautiful outcast does not, in most cases, exist. I knew this, because I was very deeply inconvenienced by my own beauty, and spent no small amount of time wishing to be an outcast.

Almost overnight, it seemed, as I came back to the Winzorth Institute following a single growth spurt, I was the centre of a grotesque amount of attention. It was like I had suddenly been sent to a school filled with Gyrats. Hundreds of leering, grunting baboons chasing me around like dogs in heat, practically humping my legs.

Some were subtle—"would you like to accompany me back to my room and study"— while others were less subtle—"I want to come inside you until my cock shrivels up like a raisin"— and all of them were utterly repulsive. But I am forced to look on the bright side in cases like these, because at the very least I found a certain level of power with these newfound attentions.

Lord Dread, the king of liches, inventor of necromancy, challenger of the Gods and Arch Evil of the universe, had probably done less dignified things than fluttering her eyelashes at a pack of drooling teenaged boys, but for the life of me, even my superhuman memory could not quite recall one then. It was a small price to pay however. Age meant experience, and it meant, more importantly, being acknowledged to have experience.

I was not the first among my class in the Winzorth Institute to reach the rank of novice, that distinction had gone to Agrian a few years ago, followed by several idiots with a tenth of my talent, but when it finally happened I was perfectly happy about it. The ceremony itself was a chore however. I was called to the great hall and paraded up on stage before a thousand sets of eyes as some ritualised speech was given beside me.

It took half an hour before I was finally presented with the rosette signifying my advanced status in the Institute. And it was all worth it, because that rosette opened doors and brought some measure of authority. For years I had been pushed around and belittled by the Institute's novices, able to fend off their malfeasance only with my reputation for taking swift and brutal revenge. Even that had only been partially successful. Now I had their status, it was finally my turn to push around and belittle others.

It was shortly after the ceremony that I received my first big surprise, though it would shortly be followed by many more. I answered a knocking on my door to find Paula standing on the other side, looking at me eye-to-eye now with a face that seemed caught between angry stillness and nervous twitching.

"Congratulations," she said immediately.

"May I come in?"

"Are you here to seduce me?" I asked her. Paula could not have looked more pale if she had suddenly had her throat cut.

"W—what?!" she spluttered. I did not repeat my question, just stared at her.

"No!?" she managed at last, "I—that, we're both women!?"

"Okay, then come in," I stepped aside, and she actually hesitated before entering the room. She looked around. You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Bigger than the last one, of course," Paula sighed. I had already been given new quarters, befitting my status as a novice. Indeed, they were better than those of an ordinary novice too. The Institute was funny about that, with certain elders among its governing board being rather offended by the concept of female advancement, thus leading to my delay, but all agreeing that talent demanded luxury.

The result was that now I had finally attained my rank, I was kept in conditions as fine as a princess might have been. Paula did a semi-decent job of hiding her jealousy.

"You will become a novice one day, too," I informed her. She sighed at that, taking a seat on one pristine couch without asking as I closed the door.

"You don't know that."

"I do know that," I countered.

"I intend to, if nothing else, make you one personally once I have taken over this Institute." She blinked at that, as though something had just hit her unexpectedly in the nose. Then smiled. The smile turned into a giggle.

"I forgot you were like that," she grinned.

"Like what?" I did not smile back, never one to tolerate mockery.

"I don't know, all…I don't know," Paula shrugged.

"Acting like everything in the future is all according to some grand plan of yours. Like the Gods were on your side." That almost drew a smile from me. The Gods were not on my side at all of course, they were just hapless morons who posed a trivial threat to my rise.

"Did you come here just to tell me that?" I asked. Paula got serious fast, leaning forwards and tightening her fingers around themselves.

"No, I didn't. I wanted to congratulate you, and…I wanted to ask for your…help." She was almost twice my age, old enough that I had already started hearing whispers about how there was something wrong with her to not be having children of her own yet. Even still, she flushed and looked down at her feet with utter humiliation, utter helplessness.

"What is wrong?" I asked. I had moved forward somehow, not quite meaning to and not knowing when it happened. Another quirk of this hormonal body perhaps. Paula remained silent.

"What is wrong?" I repeated.

"I cannot help you if you do not tell me."

"You can't help me at all," she said with a start and leapt to her feet.

"I…this was a mistake, I'm sorry. Congratulations again, I need to go." I could have stopped her, but I did not actually care what was wrong and had better things to do. Then again, I considered, where there was a problem for another, there was an opportunity for myself. I had already learned that loyalty was a stronger chain than fear in many cases. There was nothing to lose from acquiring a debt of gratitude.

"Wait," I called, then threw up a wall of aether to stop Paula from taking her leave. She bounced off it, rounding on me with some whisper of her usual irritation.

"Let me go," she snapped.

"I will, but I want you to tell me what your problem is first." Her face creased over with rage.

"Why, I thought we couldn't rely on anyone but ourselves." What? Oh, she was referencing the advice I had given her all those years ago. Sometimes it was annoying, being me. Dispensing wisdom to all these lesser beings only for them to turn around and get angry at how little they liked it. It was almost as bad as dealing with those other lesser beings who called themselves the Gods.

"You came here for help from me, I want to know what help you require. I may be able to provide it." Her face kept folding up and quivering.

"You pushed me away," Paulla spat.

"I wanted to help you, and you…You were so desperate not to know me. Have you just changed your mind about that, is that what's going on here?" I did not answer, which apparently was answer enough. Paulla scoffed.

"So you still believe everything you said. Meaning that this offer here, this is you asking me to, in your mind, debase myself. To prove that I'm beneath you." She was entirely correct, and quite astute to have pointed it out.

"You can complain about your circumstances, or you can do something about them," I told her flatly.

"I am offering you assistance."

"To own me and get some favour owed," she accused. How much of this was good instinct, and how much was random anger just coincidentally stumbling onto the right answer?

"Does it matter? You still need help." She stood there, glaring, and I stood there too, waiting. Eventually she caved.

"It's my family," she said after a moment.

"I…told you about them, remember? Or do you remember?" there was an accusatory note in her voice again.

"I remember," I assured her. Which was true. I remembered everything.

"Right," Paula nodded, started pacing. She had a restlessness I had not seen in her before, like her whole body was animated by something external to her.

"Well, you know they're not really rich. Not even wealthy. My dad…he's a jeweller. I'm not complaining about that, he kept us fed and kept us happy, but…times have been tough." It was not hard for me to imagine how.

"The brewing tensions with Iruchi," I guessed.

"Access to diamonds and other precious stones have become scarcer in the Empire."

"Right. Except the nobility are fine, the old merchant families—the fucking magician families—are all fine. My family's jewelry business and businesses like it are the ones going under." Her anger was mounting now, fuelling her, giving momentum to launch through the rest of the explanation.

"And so my father…took out a loan, just to keep the shop running for another few months. Now it's time to pay it back and he can't, because the interest is ridiculous and by the time he's made one installment there's already half again the fees added onto the next." Ah, loansharking. A business as old as coinage.

"And you need my help with what exactly? Paying off the debt?"

"No!" Paulla said hastily.

"No, not that I…just…I need you to help me make my way back home physically."

"You cannot do that yourself?" I asked. Her jaw clenched, a muscle jumping right over the bone.

"Not all of us can afford transport across-country every few months. I'm home every few years if I'm lucky, and I can't wait a few years…can't be sure I'll even have a home I can head to, actually, with how things are going." I understood then, save for one thing.

"You have some way of fixing this yourself?" She flushed like something was manually squeezing all the veins in her body until the blood rushed upwards.

"... Yes." Paula's voice came out as a mumble, suddenly weak and wavering in a way that was not like her at all. It bothered me to hear.

"I will help you," I said after a moment.

"Just give me a few days to pull some strings." She was fortunate to be asking now. My string-pulling ability had advanced a great deal over the last two years.