Chương 34: "Impawsible Odds (3)"

Crack!

"Eek!" A porcelain cup shattered on the ground, its pieces scattering across the tiled floor.

"S-sorry!" Paimon blurted, her hands still frozen in midair where the cup had been a second ago. She had knocked it off the edge of the table while wiping. One of the maids, Harper, was beside her almost immediately.

"It's alright, it's alright," she said, already crouching to pick up the larger pieces.

"These things happen. Just let the lead maid know so we can get a replacement from the storeroom." Another maid, Rochelle, leaned over to check Paimon's hands.

"Did you cut yourself? Let me see." Paimon shook her head quickly, pulling her hands back.

"N-no, I'm fine. I just... it slipped."

"Good." Rochelle gave her a pat on the head.

"Go on, then. I'll finish this table." A third maid was already sweeping the smaller shards into a dustpan. They were extremely friendly here. Paimon, who had only known this kind of warmth from her childhood, felt comfortable in the office. When Martha first told her she'd be apprenticing under her, Paimon had braced herself. She had assumed the other maids would resent her, or at the very least, keep their distance. A girl with no background and no skills, suddenly placed among trained house staff?

She had expected cold shoulders, bullying, and maybe worse. Instead, they doted on her. Harper saved extra pastries from the kitchen for her. Rochelle showed her the proper way to fold bedding. Even the lead maid, Martha, had adjusted Paimon's schedule so she wouldn't be assigned any strenouous work outside of her lessons and training. It was as if they'd collectively decided she was a little sister who needed looking after. Paimon set the cleaning cloth down on the table and stared at her hands.

Her life in that cage felt far away now. Just a week had passed since Martha first washed the grime from her hair and dressed her in soft, fluffy clothes. She was taught plenty of things Martha was responsible for in the office. Most important of all, she had proper food and a bed. And yet. She still had suspicions. The panic attack from when she first arrived still lingered in the back of her mind. Lady Celestia had said her name. Her real name. Nobody should have known about it after both her parents had died.

Martha had told her later that the auction house had known more about her than they let on, and it was a reasonable explanation. Paimon wanted to believe it, and most days, she just let it be. But it always lingered in the back of her mind.

'How did she know?' That was why she kept thinking about the options Celestia had given her the previous day when she was asked to remain in the office. Lady Celestia sat behind her desk, documents spread in front of her. After Martha left, Paimon stood in front of the desk with her hands clasped, waiting. After what felt like a long time, Celestia looked at her.

"How old are you?" Paimon blinked.

"E-excuse me...?"

"Your age." Celestia's crimson eyes looked scary.

"I'm well aware that the underground auction doesn't know your actual age." Paimon swallowed. The auction had listed her as somewhere between ten and thirteen.

"I-I'm... 15." Surprise took hold of Celestia's face for a moment. Her eyebrows rose, and she leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples. Paimon watched the woman process this. She couldn't tell what was going through Lady Celestia's mind, but whatever it was, it seemed to bother her. After a few seconds, Celestia continued.

"For the next three months, you will undergo education and manners classes, while being apprenticed under Martha. After which, you can decide between these options." Paimon straightened her back.

"Work as a Reingarde maid at the main house." Celestia held up one finger.

"Or you can continue working around the office until you're of age." A second finger. Paimon opened her mouth, then closed it. Both options were generous. More than generous. A permanent position in the Reingarde household or a steady job in the office? Either one was a life she couldn't have imagined a week ago. Then Celestia added a third.

"Or you can work as my personal maid within the Tower." The words hung in the air between them. The Tower… Paimon's hands tightened at her sides. The Tower, where her father had gone when she was eleven. The Tower, which had taken him and never given him back. She didn't know how he'd died. She only knew that one day he had entered, and that was the last she ever heard of him. Paimon opened and closed her mouth, unsure what to say. The first two options were safe. The third was anything but.

"W-why me?" she finally asked. Celestia's expression changed into something closer to annoyance, as if Paimon had asked the wrong question.

"You'll get your answer in the future," Celestia said flatly. She picked up her pen and waved Paimon off with her other hand.

"Now leave. I have work to do." Paimon dipped into a bow and left the office, closing the door softly behind her. Back in the present, Paimon picked up the rag again and moved to the next table. Harper had already disposed of the broken cup, and the other maids had resumed their work as if nothing had happened. Paimon wiped the surface in slow, even strokes, still contemplating on the choices. As the afternoon went on, the maids gathered in the staff pantry for a short break.

Harper poured tea while Rochelle sliced a small cake that another maid had brought from the kitchens. Paimon sat on a stool near the corner, holding her cup with both hands and listening as the older maids talked.

"You know," Harper said between sips, "we really are lucky. I was telling my sister the other day, she works for House Valmont, and she couldn't believe it when I said we hadn't had a single incident in months." Rochelle nodded.

"Lady Celestia's been strict, sure, but that's different from before."

"Completely different."

"How so?" Paimon asked quietly. The two maids exchanged a glance. Harper set her cup down.

"I don't want to frighten you, but... had this been the old Lady Celestia, that cup you broke this morning would've earned you far worse than a replacement from the storeroom."

"A flogging at the bare minimum," Rochelle said plainly. Paimon's hands tightened around her cup.

"I saw it happen once," Harper continued, "a maid spilled wine on the carpet in the main estate. Lady Celestia had her dragged out of the room by her hair and whipped in the servants' corridor. The girl couldn't sit for a week." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Catching the look of fear on Paimon's face, Rochelled quickly added, "You don't have to worry about that anymore." Harper waved her hand too.

"Don't scare the poor girl. That was ages ago." She leaned back in her chair.

"About two months back, Mistress Celestia changed after her illness. Her tongue is as sharp as ever, mind you."

"Exactly! She actually cares about us now," Rochelle said.

"Remember when Claris hurt her ankle on the stairs? The old Celestia would've told her to keep working. It was a surprise when a doctor was actually sent over to check her injury." Harper nodded.

"And therere the charity programs in the duchy. Can you believe it? Feeding programs for the poor and shelters near the market district.. The staff at the main estate still can't believe it."

"The illness must've knocked something loose and fixed her attitude," another maid, who had been quietly eating her cake, offered with a shrug. A few of the maids laughed at that.

"Whatever it was," Harper said, "I'll take it. Lady Celestia's still terrifying but she's fair now." Rochelle turned to Paimon.

"That's also why none of us were worried when she started hiring the... well, you know…" The slaves. Paimon knew she was technically one of them, even if no one in the office used that word around her out of consideration. Celestia had purchased quite a few people from the public markets, and rather than putting them to work in chains, she had them study and receive training under Jade.

"If it were any other noble," Harper said, lowering her voice, "we'd be terrified for them. It makes me scared to think about the stories about what happens to purchased slaves in other houses." Paimon sipped her tea. It had gone lukewarm. The break ended shortly after. The maids returned to their duties, and Paimon cleared the cups and plates before heading out. Her late afternoon was divided into two parts: education, then training.

The education sessions took place in a small room on the second floor of the office building. A private tutor Martha had arranged; a retired schoolteacher from the Reingarde duchy capital who walked her through arithmetic, reading comprehension, and etiquette. After the lesson, she changed into training clothes and made her way to the grounds behind the building, where Jade was already training the other slaves.

There were a few dozen of them, and they've all shared with each other the contracts they've received from Martha: learn, train, and eventually choose their own path. Paimon picked up a wooden practice sword from the rack and walked into line. As she ran through the training, her mind returned to the conversation from earlier.

'Why me?' Celestia had said she'd get her answer in the future. That could mean anything. But Paimon had already made a decision. Until she knew the truth of why Celestia knew her name, she would stay beside her. * The wolf split in half before it hit the ground. Arthur pulled his sword free from the follow-through and shook the blood off the blade. Around him, the floor was littered with the corpses of the pack, their grey fur matted with dirt and red.

This last one had tried to flank him from behind, but his amazing reflexes allowed him to counter it. He exhaled and rolled his shoulders. A slight ache in his right arm where one of the wolves had managed to graze him. [Floor 4 - Cleared] The notification appeared in his vision, and with it, the familiar instinctual feel of where the checkpoint is. Arthur sheathed his sword and walked toward the direction. Upon reaching the black door, he stepped through and into whiteness.

The waiting room was the same as the previous three. A featureless white space; but placed in the center, as always, was a chair and a table filled with food. Roasted meats, still steaming. A rack of seasoned ribs glazed in sauce. Thick slices of bread with butter. A pitcher of cold water with ice cubes floating in it, and another of what looked like cider. And a bowl of roasted vegetables glistening with oil. Just like the previous floors, the food the Tower prepared for him was lavish.

As Arthur sat down and ate, he reviewed his progress. None of the trials had been particularly hard. There were close calls on the second floor when a goblin ambush caught him off-guard, but his instincts had kicked in and he'd cut through them before any real damage was done. In fact, there had been barely any challenge at all. He finished a rib and wiped his hands on a cloth napkin the Tower had provided. Then he opened his System.

---Stats: Strength: H | Dexterity: F | Speed: H | Wisdom: H | Aura: F ---Special Stats: 2 ---Active Skills: 2 ---Passive Skills: 1 Two stats at F-rank already. Dexterity and Aura had been G when he first entered, both had broken through that ceiling during his climb. The active skills were useful. One was a short-range dash that let him close distance in a blink, and the other was a sword slash filled with aura using his elemental attribute, Holy.

He stood up from the chair and moved to the open space of the waiting room. He drew his sword and began training. warming his muscles back up after the meal. With time to train in this space, he took every opportunity he could. Instinctively, he could tell that he could also leave the tower right now. However… he wanted to continue. Floor 5, the next floor, was the tutorial boss. Professor Griffin had told them about it during class. It varied by person, but it was always the first real test.

He was eager to see what came next. * The moment Celestia fell through the black door and into the white space, she grabbed her spear and slashed the blade across her right leg. She'd felt them burrowing during Floor 4, when the living vines had seized her ankle and tried to drag her away from the black door. Small, hard shapes pushing deeper into the muscle of her calf, climbing toward her knee. The spear's blade bit into the muscle just above where she could feel the movement.

Blood welled up immediately, pooling on the white floor beneath her. She ripped a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress-armor and tied a makeshift tourniquet above the wound, pulling it tight with her teeth and her one functional hand. The seeds, denied their upward path, began to push out through the open wound instead. Each one was still squirming as it emerged from the torn flesh and dropped onto the white floor. She crushed them under the butt of her spear.

When she no longer felt any movement beneath her skin, she loosened the tourniquet slightly to let blood flow return.

'That's handled.' She exhaled and leaned back against the floor, staring up at the featureless white ceiling. Her body was a wreck of everything the Tower had done to her since the first floor. Her right hand was a mangled wreck, the flesh barely held together by crude bandaging. Her right knee, where an arrow had pierced clean through, had never fully healed. Two ribs on her left side, cracked from a fall on Floor 3, still ached when she breathed too deeply.

And now her boots were ruined, Floor 4's acid-spewing plants had eaten through the leather soles until they were pitted and paper-thin. She pulled herself into a sitting position, took off the boots, and threw them aside. By all rights, she should have been dead several times over. She'd learned that much after Floor 2, when she'd collapsed through the black door looking like a porcupine—arrows embedded across her body, her right hand mutilated, and poison still circulating through her blood.

In fact, the blood loss alone should have killed her. But somehow, her body had stabilized slowly over hours; eventually, it became clear to her that the waiting room didn't allow climbers to die. Though, she wasn't willing to test the limits of that, but it was the only explanation for why she was still breathing. The trade-off was pain. When the Floor 2 poison had cleared and sensation returned, the full pain of every wound hit her at once.

She'd lain on the floor unable to move for what felt like an eternity, until the pain dulled on its own. She'd opened her System afterward and found a new passive skill: Pain Resistance. That discovery had implications. If passive skills could be gained in the waiting room, the entire approach to the early floors could change. Why this information was never disseminated was something she still didn't understand yet. Now, on the waiting room before Floor 5, her list reflected her torturous struggle to reach here.

Passive Skills: Faint Resistance (G) Concentration (G) Pain Resistance (G) Poison Resistance (G) Physical Recovery (G) Fatigue Recovery (H) Mental Recovery (H) Seven passive skills. And only one aided direct combat. It was the skillset of someone who was very good at not dying.

'How inspiring,' she thought sarcastically. She ate a piece of stale bread from the meager provisions the waiting room provided. That hadn't changed either, the same few pieces of bread and a jug of water, floor after floor. Thankfully, Physical Recovery handled the smaller injuries well enough, since bruises faded faster and shallow cuts closed after a few minutes. But her right hand and knee were beyond what it could fix. She still couldn't walk properly, and her hand was dead weight.

'The next floor is the Tutorial Boss.' If she recalled correctly from the original novel and Professor Griffin's lecture, this waiting room was where climbers were given the option to leave the Tower. She could exit, recover properly, and return when she was ready. Not wanting to fight the boss in this state, she focused her intent to leave. However… nothing happened. She tried again, verbally this time.

"I want to leave the Tower." Still, nothing happened.

"Hah..." She picked up another piece of bread and ate it.