“Is this really all you’re doing today?” Damian’s familiar voice followed behind me.

  “We are doing nothing.” I groaned. “I am going to do something, and you are going to do whatever it is you do. I don’t care, as long as it does not involve following me around.”

  He’d been following me ever since I’d woken up. Not an hour went by without him popping in to ‘check on me’. I had thought that was just for the time I was bedridden. No. It was not.

  If this was done out of care I might have just ignored it, despite the fact that Damian was the entire reason I was recovering in the first pce. This was not done out of care.

  “You are wasting the day.” Damian said, not for the first nor the tenth time. “I don’t understand how you can even spend hours reading.”

  Yes. All Damian had wanted me to do since I’d woken up was to do something productive. In his mind, that meant training. Nothing else.

  “I normally find this quite enjoyable. When I’m not being hounded, that is.”

  Currently, I was walking towards the library. It had been a few days, and by now I was free to move around. My hand still ached every now and then, but that was a small pain compared to what I remembered.

  Damian let out a resigned sigh behind me.

  What exactly was I supposed to make of him? He’d just tched onto me, and everyone around me treated it like it was normal! When I’d compined to my father, he’d told me this was natural. Even Damian’s own father had apparently left him at our manor so we could ‘get to know each other better’. Did nobody in this world know what an introvert was?

  Most normal people would read the room and stop following me by now. Apparently, Damian wasn’t one of those normal people.

  I stopped in pce, turning. Damian almost ran right into me before coming to a stop himself.

  “Does your father not want you back? How can you afford to spend your time following me around.”

  “A retainer follows their Lord or Lady at our age. Everyone knows that.”

  It was a sad attempt to provoke him.

  Groaning, I rounded the corner, and was standing right in front of our library. It was the rgest room in the entire manor, filled with rows of books that reached all the way to the ceiling. A single crone of a woman maintained this pce. She sat behind a raised desk.

  Our eyes met. I nodded. She nodded. That was all the interaction we ever had. I had never heard her say a word.

  Now that’s how libraries should be.

  “This is so boring.”

  I ignored him.

  “Just do something already.”

  This time my eye twitched. I still ignored him.

  Another person might not have been able to focus with all the pestering. My hands flicked the pages of the book in front of me. It was a fantastical retelling of the st ten “Heroes” and “Gods” that had emerged in this continent’s history. In other words, it was a children’s novel. I vaguely remembered reading its like a hundred times before back on Earth.

  “I really thought you’d be more interesting than this.”

  “Meanwhile I couldn’t have imagined you’d be even more annoying.” My gaze flicked over to Damian sitting across the table. He had his head in his hands as if he was trying not to fall asleep. I did wish he would.

  “All you’ve done since you’ve woken up is do some exercises and read.”

  “Do tell me what else you expected given my reputation.” I said idly, flicking another page.

  Everything I read about this pce only intrigued me more. This was the Kingdom of Arian on the continent of Varus. Neither of those names meant anything to me, save that I had a pce in their hierarchy. That wasn’t what had me reading books like these.

  In this world, Gods and Heroes were real. They were both walking camities that invited either fear or worship wherever they went. The difference between them was unclear to me, not that it really mattered.

  “Please don’t tell me this is what my life is going to be like from now on….” Damian groaned, slowly banging his head against the table. It didn’t sound like that sentence was directed at me.

  “Perhaps you wouldn’t be so unpleasant if you read a book every now and then.” I commented dryly.

  “And perhaps you would have won our duel if you ever did something even somewhat resembling training!”

  That did sting, a little. I had pushed myself so far, and had ended up losing anyway. Still, I told myself it was understandable. My body could barely manage basic exercises, it had no business being in fights of any kind to begin with.

  However, mana really helped. It let me do ten times the number of pushups as I could have otherwise. The only problem was I was fairly certain relying on it for everything was stupid.

  “You’re really obsessed with swinging swords around, huh? Makes sense. Boys your age are always a little thickheaded and simple.”

  “We’re the same age! What, are you obsessed with tea parties and handkerchief knittings?”

  I sighed, pointedly closing the book and setting it back on the table. Damian looked up.

  “Please don’t tell me you’re going to your room to read some more.”

  “I am going to do some of this training you desperately want me to do.” His eyes widened. “And I think I do have a use for you.”

  “That’s…that’s all you want me to do?” Damian sounded the perfect mix of both horrified, eager and confused.

  “Yes.” I stepped back, crossed my arms, and waited.

  Mana coursed through me, making just the act of standing still difficult. How did people not constantly fidget?

  Rock coated Damian’s arms. He tentatively stepped forward, swinging at my side. I flinched, but didn’t move to block, just standing there as the blow knocked me right off my feet.

  Pain came almost immediately. I groaned. It hurt, though not quite as much as I’d expected it to.

  “You…you went easy on me.” I rasped.

  Damian stared down at me in horror. “I…I expected you to block! What if I hadn’t gone easy on you?!”

  I clicked my tongue. Held out a hand. “You agreed to help me. Don’t agree if you’re not going to listen.”

  “No but-”

  “You don’t need to hit me like you’re going to kill me. At least hit me like you mean it.”

  Damian stared at me, slowly nodded. Helped me up.

  “My Lady, I really don’t know if this is a good idea. The Duke will be-”

  “Busy today.” I didn’t look at Anias, who stood just outside of the small sparring ring. I had been trying to find a reasonably skilled healer to watch over me. It was truly bad luck that Anias was the one who’d found me instead.

  The air shifted, suddenly heavier.

  I tensed. “Maybe not quite s-”

  His blow physically lifted me right off my feet. I didn’t even know when I hit the ground. The pain was much sharper this time, radiating outwards from my chest. It didn’t feel like something was broken.

  Damian hunched over me. “You didn’t block this time either! Are you mad?”

  I ignored him even as a rger shadow settled over me. Anias inspected me, prodded me with a finger. The air grew heavier.

  “Don’t heal me.” I whispered. “Give me…a minute.”

  Now they were both looking at me as if I’d gone completely insane.

  “Trust me.”

  They reluctantly stepped back. I closed my eyes.

  Most Gifts were something people awakened to at the same time as they awakened to their mana. It was hard not to have one without the other.

  There was just one exception. Some Gifts came from a need. A desperate desire to have power in one’s darkest hour. It sounded like naive garbage, the kind you only saw in fairy tales. Yet, I’d read about it over and over again, to the point where I genuinely believed it.

  I had thought about my duel hundreds of times, and the more I did, the more it didn’t make any sense. My injuries had been so bad it had taken the best healers to patch me up, and I’d still needed bed rest. Given that, I shouldn’t have even been able to move at all. Not only had I moved, there had hardly been any pain at all near the end.

  My body might have given out at the end. That was something different.

  I had a Gift, I was sure of it. Finding out what it was…a different problem entirely.

  “Ugh….” I groaned. It had been a few minutes and nothing had changed.

  Anias looked concerned, as if it was taking an act of will for her not to come and heal me. Damian was looking at me as if I’d grow a second head any second now.

  “I think…I think you can heal me now.” I mumbled finally.

  Anias nodded, moved over to me. I felt the familiar cold brush of her mana.

  “My Lady…perhaps you hit your head in that duel?” Anias sounded like she was serious.

  “Yes, perhaps I did.”

  It wasn’t Pain Nullification.