Nothing could have been realistically gleamed through the aberrant's corpse. Rontress wasn't sure why she even bothered to carry it all the way here, she let out a disappointed sigh once Wardcruncha finished the st of his tests, she knew there's no point in hoping anymore, it's gonna end up in a negative anyway.

  "Did you expect any other result?"

  "At the start maybe." Rontress slumped, her body losing energy after it was confirmed that there is, in fact, no point in hoping that their enemy would be tracked. "It's fine, just help protect the towns for now, I'll leave with Ifira for the gathering in a little bit so you'll have to defend on your own for a while."

  "Do whatever you want, I'll keep this pce safe."

  Rontress made her way to the ptform, she stopped just before she stepped onto it, "thanks Bylor, for taking your time off your research and helping me out."

  "Even if I didn't care about you, I still would have helped the town. I need them to do all the worthless things I can't do after all, like collecting food and maintaining the swamp. That and I need ingredients."

  Rontress' lips curved into a small smile, "thank you anyway."

  With one st wave, she went onto the ptform and headed out of the tower. Once she's back in the swamp, Rontress looked at the sky and wondered what she should do now that she's being attacked on two sides at the same time. She could deal with the source of the aberrants all on her own but it would take weeks before she finishes.

  Who knows what will happen to Ifira then? She doesn't want to leave her friend in the midst of predatory nobles all on her own since there's a non-zero chance they might begin influencing Ifira with their words.

  She is aware that her current line of thought is pretty messed up, that she should want to be with Ifira because they're both friends, not because she doesn't want the viliness to fall back to her canonical path.

  And a part of her does want to do that, it's just most of her thoughts are centered around the possibility of Ifira becoming a viliness just like in the game.

  Which is completely fine right? Anyone can understand that she wants to prioritize saving the world more than keeping a friend, a lot of people in her position would do the same thing.

  Rontress hadn't encountered Ifira when she got back to their cabin, which can only mean that her friend got occupied by sending letters. What could possibly cause something like that? Rontress wasn't sure, maybe Ifira is trying to make it look as perfect as possible or something.

  Cooking food while waiting is practically a given by this point so Rontress made the two of them something to eat so that when Ifira does come back, all she needs to do is sit and eat.

  Minutes after finishing the table, the door opened and in walked a stressed out Ifira, she had slightly disheveled hair and a wrinkled dress.

  "Did you get into a fight or something?" Rontress asked as she straightened the table cloth. Ifira rarely looks like this, "you pulled your hair too much while writing maybe?" With the way Ifira flinched, she knew that she was spot on. "Ifira, you realize you don't have to think too much about what to say right? All you need to do is ask them to come and the rest of the conversation will happen after you meet up with them."

  "Have you ever written a letter to other nobles before?" Her friend's rebuttal was a question that caught Rontress off guard, Ifira took a seat. "There needs to be formality and a small paragraph about how your life is doing at the start, the more details about your current environment the better, and then the next part is where you gently ask them if they can come over, the implications of what happens if they don't come should only be the letter's undertone, as it is considered rude to force other nobles to come."

  "And that's what got you so stressed? You wracked your brain trying to figure out how to set the undertone and also write about how your life is currently?"

  "Yes, I even mentioned you in them, as well as what happened between us and the royal family. I also added the part where we made a deal with the crown, with the details of said deal having been left vague." Oh okay, so Ifira did put a lot of thought into this. Interesting. "You would have been convinced to come here if you read it."

  "Would I? The nuances of writing and reading letters are lost to me." Rontress took a seat and gave her friend an amused look. "I think I would have just glossed over the entire thing while ignoring the subtext."

  "Please, like you wouldn't over analyze it." Ifira wasn't interested in pying along. "Even if you don't know the subtext, you would have gone out of your way to study it and prove that your over analysis is correct anyway." Rontress put some thought into that particur guess and decided it was wrong. And so is the next one. "Or the parts that are actually true and you didn't make up in your attempt to get as much information from the letter as possible."

  "Well, you're wrong." Raising a fork and waving it back and forth in a motion of denial only got Rontress a dull stare from Ifira. "What will actually happen is that I'd follow the letter just because it tells me to, I wouldn't know about the subtext because I wouldn't bother trying to read it."

  "Let's just leave it as us having our own beliefs and that we are both correct, yes?" The concession Ifira offered was quickly accepted.

  "Very well, let's leave it at that." Rontress replied without hesitation.

  Does she actually know what she'll do if she ever receives a letter from Ifira who's basically a stranger to her? If she had to throw out a guess then she'd say that panic would be the first thing she does, Ifira is the game's viliness after all and even if she's a stranger Rontress would immediately recognize her.

  Worrying about doing something wrong would be the next thing she does, and after that, she would go to Ghorise just to see Ifira for herself. The two of them would start talking and she would have an ulterior motive of befriending Ifira in hopes that she joins Rontress' side.

  "You've thought about it, so did you over analyze the letter in your hypothetical scenario?"

  The question almost made Rontress do a spit take. She pulled herself back and inhaled, "that was out of the blue, I can't believe you'd just ask that so randomly."

  "Out of the blue? Rontress, that was the topic of our conversation before you decided to retreat into your head and start thinking about what would actually happen in reality." Okay, Ifira got her there. "Do you really think I wouldn't be familiar enough with the way you think that I can't guess what you're doing when you're silent?"

  "Fine, you win." Rontress hated the smug look Ifira wore after she admitted that the viliness was right. "So, how did it go? I'm sure you spent a lot of effort to make the letter but I still wanna know the details."

  "I made exactly three letters and sent them to the Ledesa, Sicrok, and Bante; there should be three nobles here before long."

  Three? Rontress paused to give the number some thought, three wasn't technically bad right? And it's not like it matters anyway, they have the support of the crown so three lesser noble families aren't that important in the overall pn.

  But having three friends at the party wouldn't make the two of them look so isoted, it also gives Rontress the ability to send false information towards the enemy faction by creating a fake pn and then feeding them to her new "friends" so that they have an answer when other nobles ask them after the gathering.

  The pn was pretty solid and the fws can be wrinkled out over time.

  "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, I wouldn't mind having three extra people come with us to the gathering, it makes us look like we actually have allies." Image is everything so if other nobles start to believe that the Haromago united the lesser nobles in their territory then it makes them less likely to attack them in the open.

  And if they want to fight in the shadows then Rontress will gdly meet them head on, she's more than happy to fight them politically even. Unlike them, Rontress has an ally in the crown, and there's two of them as well.

  The second prince should soon leave his faction behind, assuming that Rontress made a sting impression of course. But she's not willing to bet on Aegob's affection, which is why she'll choose princess Eonea over him.

  "Why does that matter?" Ifira asked, arrogance coloring her tone. "They can't fight us even if they tried, can't we just show off our strength and make them hesitate to attack us?"

  "Show off our strength? It's a gathering." Rontress shook her head only to then pause. "Unless..."

  No, would that be a good idea? To ask one of the nobles to fight her and then absolutely stomp them? What's more preferable, hiding her strength or showing it off?

  'I can just do it partially.' It's not like she actually has to go all out anyway. 'Toying with my opponent will definitely make them hate me though, but that's fine, they do that already. What will their emotions even be? Hate2? That sounds stupid.'

  "If you have a pn then can I go along with it?" Ifira put her fork down and stared Rontress in the eyes. "I wouldn't mind putting those nobles in their pce."

  "They already know you're strong though." Rontress pointed out, Ifira has been telling her stories of how she attacked other nobles ever since she was a child. "And attacking someone doesn't feel like something a higher noble would do, what if I do that instead?"

  "And what benefit would this pn have?" Ifira came forward. "I hold back, you attack people, what happens then?"

  "We show that our territory doesn't just have one powerful prodigy, but two." Rontress grinned, it's still unknown that she can actually fight Ifira on even if she uses magic. "And showing that you can actually control yourself emotionally now means that the other nobles will be scared to mess with us in the future, since you won't just go berserk."

  "Showing that you're as strong as me may cause the other higher nobles to approach you as well, as having you by their side could mean that I wouldn't be as oppressing as I would be normally during a fight."

  "Yep." Rontress agreed immediately. "I'll learn what they have against you, see who approaches me first, and then proceed to make pns on how to deal with them."

  "But don't we already know which families are attacking us and the crown?"

  "We have an estimate on who it could possibly be but we're still unsure if it's actually them, and even if we know which of the other higher nobles are hunting, what about the lesser nobles? They can keep hiding if we don't figure out who they are."

  "Fair point." Ifira conceded. "Okay, we'll go with your pn."

  "Can you tell me what you were originally pnning though? I wanna hear it."

  "Nothing. I just simply wanted to attack someone and show everyone that they can't do anything against us."

  "Really?" Rontress held back a sigh when Ifira nodded in response, of course that's how far her pn goes. Why did she expect Ifira to make an eborate ruse that lets her choose which direction the gathering goes?

  "Of course, what else would the pn be?"

  "You can't just rely on your strength forever, not unless you want to keep our peaceful life intact." Canon Ifira past the academy was basically on the run, she lived on her own and was miserable through it all. "Killing everyone in our way will just piss off the people of Oberlon and once that happens, they won't serve us the same way they do now."

  "Yes, Rontress, I hold back." Ifira sounded exhausted, like she's expined this several times already. "I haven't killed anyone in some time now! You can't keep reminding me that killing everyone is bad! I know already!"

  "Sorry, I was just thinking that your solution wasn't perfect, even if I agreed to it in the end." Rontress continued eating, the omelette in her pte actually tasted good so she was enjoying it. "So I thought that maybe reminding you that violence is unnecessary was a good thing."

  "... It was, you just do it too much sometimes." Ifira turned her head away. "You know? Sometimes I know what I am doing too."

  "And I agree with that." Rontress smiled. "So you said there are going to be three nobles? Can you tell me about them? When are they coming over?"

  "One is coming tomorrow, her name is Hyusi, she's the daughter of Voytia's head." Voytia... That name sounded familiar, they produce lumber and it should be where the Ledesa are right?

  "Ledesa? That's one of the nobles coming over? I'm feeling pretty curious about her."

  "Really?"

  "Yep!"

  Ifira suddenly turned silent and this sted through the entire dinner. 'It happened again.' Rontress thought in concern, why is she like this? 'Is she scared that I'll repce her with someone else? Does she think I'm that disloyal?'

  Dinner ended without a single word passing between them, Rontress retreated to her room and settled down for the night, she cleaned herself, picked a new dress and reformed it into a silken night gown, and then left to sit by the open window to look at the distant districts.

  Her orchard was grown on the higher parts of Misery Swamp and the part of it where they built the cottage is the tallest point, on top of that, her room is on the second floor of the cottage.

  The view from up here was beautiful, so much so that Rontress chose to build a veranda at this exact moment.

  Her will dug into the wooden walls and they answered her back, awaiting for her to command them. The window widened, forming an arching doorway that led into an open ptform covered by railings at its edges.

  Soft, thin pulps grew from the top of the door to create curtains, the paper-like sheets fpped inward as the wind rushed into Rontress' room. Leaves with almost no chlorophyll formed on the gaps of the wooden door, creating a gss-like structure.

  Rontress went out into the terrace, cold wind passed her by, she shudders.

  It was a nice night.