A year and a half had passed since I first met Viscount Nightshade. Of course, she tried to pull me out of the war, but I simply wouldn’t budge.

I anticipated that she’d use her position as a Viscount to kick me out, so I contacted Evanos beforehand. That turned out to be a smart move since she literally barged into Administrative office the next day and demanded that I be kicked out.

Anyways, the last words she said to me were,

“Astrape, your mother wouldn’t want you to do this. Please, if you ever change your mind, come to my estate. I’ll welcome you with open arms.”

Yeah, no. My vow to never get involved with nobility still stood strong.

Oh, and also, the war had just ended.

Yes, it was as anticlimatic as that. Not just that, it ended in a truce. A FUCKING TRUCE! Okay, I shouldn’t have been that surprised since this was also mentioned in the novel.

But still, I could already imagine the Empress and the King begrudgingly shaking hands while hiding knives behind their backs. This peace wasn’t going to last long, was it?

And it wasn’t speculation either, as in the novel, war would resume in a few years.

Anyways, the war was over right when I conquered the piece of land that held the Martial manual, so one could call this good timing.

What wasn’t good, however, was the terms of the truce between the Kingdom and the Empire. To put it simply, this piece of very strategically important land would be cut in half soon, and the half that contained the Martial manual would belong to the Kingdom after this.

So, I hurried to the Martial manual. Petra, Scott, and Rin were following me for some reason.

“You guys really don’t need to go…”

Petra simply answered by patting my head. “I promised to protect you, so of course I should go.”

“Okay, then what about the other two?”

At my question, Scott shrugged. 

“I should complete one last mission with my Captain before getting discharged.”

Rin seemed to have the same sentiment as Scott, too.

By the way, this guy was still a dick to me despite calling me Captain. I didn’t know what was up with him.

I mean, I trusted him and Rin enough, but I didn’t trust them as much as I did Petra. After all, she was the only one that took care of me after Ray’s death.

Well, I wasn’t saying that Rin and Scott wouldn’t take care of me. In fact, I was pretty sure they would if Petra didn’t hog me all for herself.

Anyways, we walked for a day and made a camp when it was dark. Scott and Rin went hunting, while Petra and I prepared the fire and tents. 

While I was eating dinner, Rin called out to me.

“Ast! Ast! How about a story?”

“Serious, again?” I sighed.

“They’re interesting though…”

There was a reason why I hadn’t told her many stories as of yet, and it was because I was running out of them. 

‘Hey, Sixth, do you know any good stories?’

|...|

‘Sixth?’

I sighed. Another bad thing… The woman that appeared to me in the enemy’s base was…gone for the past year. She disappeared right after telling me to call her ‘Sixth.’ No matter what I did, she just wouldn’t show up again.

Sighing once more, I decided to just tell her the story of the Martial manual. She wouldn’t know if it was true, anyways.

“The freezing forest, home to various monsters, dungeons, and the location of a V-grade Martial manual.”

Rin gulped. “I-Is it really true?”

Scott smacked her on the head. “Of course not! How could something like that be here? Even if it was, Ast wouldn’t know it.

“Can you stop interrupting me?” I frowned.

“Okay, sorry.”

“Ehem, so, the Martial manual, which was tailor-made for people with space affinity, lies in a cave right beneath the only cliff on the Southwestern part of the forest, near a city, but not near enough to be discovered even after all these years.”

‘Huh?’

“A criminal, chased by the guards of the city for thievery, unknowingly ran towards the direction of the manual. Thinking that dying was much better than rotting in a jail cell for Lumaria knows how many years, he decided to jump off the cliff. However, fate had different things in stores for him.”

‘Why did I even go looking for this…’

“As he closed his eyes and waited for the sweet embrace of death, he landed on solid ground. Not on the frozen soil deep below, but on a ledge sticking out of the underside of the cliff, connecting to a peculiar cave. Rejoiced, he ran into the cave, thanking the gods for giving him a second chance at life.”

‘...When I don’t even know for sure if I will even awaken to Space affinity?’

“And then—”

“Alright,” Petra clapped, interrupting my story. “It’s late enough. Let’s sleep.”

“But Ast still haven’t finished her story!” Rin pouted.

“That can wait until tomorrow. I’m sure Ast is tired after a full day of walking.”

‘Nice save!’

I was indeed getting pretty tired, and revealing any more information would be dangerous, so Petra really saved me there.

Anyways, I went to sleep and woke up six hours later. 

‘It’s time.’

Using the time when everyone was asleep, I snuck out and—

“Took you long enough.”

I jolted in surprise at Petra’s sudden voice. Looking to the side, I saw her, fully equipped, crossing her arms and tapping her foot impatiently.

“What are you doing here?”

“Looking for the Martial manual with you.”

“W-What?!”

Petra simply sighed and placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Come on, did you really expect me to believe that you came up with that story on the spot?”

“...”

“I won’t say anything to anyone. I’m just here to protect you.”

Staring into her eyes, I could see nothing but good intention and overprotectiveness. So, I sighed and allowed her to come.

Her coming wasn’t something really bad. After all, I did need help getting out of the cave.

.

.

.

.

“Found it.”

“Where?”

I pointed down the cliff where we were at. There was a ledge that was barely visible, but luckily, I knew what I was looking for.

After handing Petra a rope, I jumped down. Since she’d heard my story from before I could guess the reason for her silence was that she knew I was fine.

I made sure that everything was in order before walking into the cave. Inside, there were no legendary altars, no Gargoyles guarding a gigantic door, or anything grand at all. Just a skeleton with loots sprawling on the floor near it.

‘This must be the Space mage.’

The loots were practically useless. I didn’t want any of his rusty old equipment, I only needed the Martial manual.

“Nope, useless, useless… Ah, here it is!”

It didn’t take long to find the manual, which looked like a bunch of papers that were hastily glued together. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought that it was useless scrap just like the stuff I found before.

Wasting no more time, I took out a lamp from my backpack and lit it up. I held the manual in my hands and read through it.

===

{V} [World Splitter]
Creates a lingering trail of Spatial Distortion that can shred everything as long as the practitioner has the Mana required for it. Useless against Mana-protected objects unless the practitioner pours in a disproportionately massive amount of Mana. Long activation time that can be shortened with each step of mastery. Since it was transformed with its creator’s last wish, the manual is only compatible with weapons.
Contains seven Movements—one of which is still unfinished.

===

Well, that was the gist of it. Now came the problem of actually learning it: I had to have Space affinity—which I wasn’t sure I did.

‘Good thing there’s only a few months until my eighteenth birthday.’

Sighing, I stuffed it inside my backpack and made my way back toward the ledge.

“Pull me up!”

“Alright.”

Just like that, Petra dropped the rope down and pulled me up.

We made our way back toward the camp; chatting along the way. Petra, true to her words, didn’t ask anything about the Martial manual, so I was thankful for that.

Eventually, we got back to the camp. But…something was strange.

-”Ahh~ Scott! Harder!”

-”R-Rin, don’t moan so hard! What if Ast and Petra comes back?”

-”I don’t care. Just keep going~”

While I was somewhat expecting this to happen (since it was blindly obvious, even to blind people, that Scott and Rin like each other), Petra didn’t, so she soon averted her gaze down in embarrassment.

“...Let’s go hunting for a bit. They should be done by the time we get back.”

“Y-Yes, agreed."