Chương 33: Chapter 32: Let's Go

Jorm stood with her focus narrowed to a razor's edge. She gripped the heavy sword with her right hand, pointing it forward, while her left hand extended empty, parallel to the blade. Elma watched quietly from the damp grass. According to the massive clock face shimmering above the maid house, Jorm had been attempting to replicate the weapon's patterns for nearly an hour. A warm, faint mist rose from the damp earth, wrapping around Elma's legs and making her even sleepier than she already was.

The grounds were perfectly silent. No maids were awake, no guards patrolled this strategically useless patch of grass, and crucially, no one else seemed to feel the deep, rhythmic thrum of the ley veins vibrating beneath the soil. Ever since she had left the estate and returned, Elma could feel them pulsing with startling clarity. She let out a quiet sigh. Jorm had claimed that internalizing her Resonance Field was simple—that she just felt it enter her body.

Elma watched her now, carrying Gund one-handed with the loose ease of someone who'd forgotten it weighed anything, and ran the numbers without meaning to. Half her TRO flowing inward, coating bone and muscle. The other half still active outside, feeding the weave.

Simple how? There had to be an operational mechanic Elma was missing, or perhaps this infantile body was fundamentally incompatible with internal compression. Sable would likely have a solution. Her toes curled inside her small shoes at the thought. She needed to rectify the situation with Christa before Sable showed herself again.

"Uhh..." Jorm grunted, her brow furrowing with intense effort. A jagged, irregular slag of metallic mass began to materialize over her extended left palm. Elma stood up, brushing the damp grass from her dress.

"You are doing it." Jorm's breathing turned ragged, but her eyes gleamed with determination in the moonlight. She held her focus for a full minute, forcing small chunks of metal to aggregate and clumsily attempt the shape of a blade. Then, the cohesion failed. The structure shattered, crumbling into useless silver dust on the grass. Elma's eyes narrowed. Unlike water weaving, solid elements required rigid precision. The structural integrity couldn't be stitched together piece by piece after the fact.

"You can't build it gradually," Elma said.

"Try to weave the entire structure in a single sequence." Jorm gave the 'whatever that was' nod and closed her eyes. She took a deep, centering breath, and visualized the construct. A moment later, a seamless silver rectangle manifested in front of her palm.

"I think I'm getting the hang of it," Jorm whispered as she manifested another square. She repeated the process ten more times, iterating on the complexity until she started producing crude, low-resolution silhouettes of Gund. Weaving Geo was vastly more complicated than Elma had initially calculated. Then, a sound fractured the vast quiet. Footsteps. Approaching from the direction of the manor. Two sets. Elma's water auxiliary moved before the thought finished forming.

It snatched Gund from Jorm's grip mid-swing and drove it straight down into the soil, burying it hilt-deep until the earth closed over it and the grass looked undisturbed. Jorm's mouth opened. Elma pressed one finger to her lips. Jorm closed her mouth. Her eyes dropped to the patch of ground where Gund had just disappeared, then back up. The footsteps were closer now, accompanied by low voices moving along the far side of the hedge. The footsteps cleared the hedges. Two weightless figures emerged from the shadows.

Lucien and Silk. They froze, startled by the presence of the two small girls in the dark. Silk's hand flew instantly to the hilt of her blade, stopping only when the moonlight caught Elma's golden hair, identifying the toddler. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Elma stared back at them, her expression completely flat. Silk's metal mouth guard caught the pale light, her eyes hidden deep in the shadows of her hood. Yet, Elma could feel the intense, rapid calculation behind them.

Lucien's brow furrowed in deep confusion.

"What the hell are you doing out here at this hour?" Elma slowly crossed her arms.

"I should be asking you that."

"What? Come on," Lucien scoffed, stepping forward. He reached out to grab Elma's wrist.

"You shouldn't be here at this hour." Elma smoothly pulled her arm back, subtly shifting her Resonance Field. The air immediately surrounding them thickened, turning heavy and oppressive. Lucien snatched his hand back as if he'd been burned.

"Are you crazy? If you blast me again, I'll tell your father."

"Uhh," Jorm stammered from the grass behind her, her voice trembling.

"I think I am going to go to sleep now."

"No," Elma said softly, her small hand snapping out to grab Jorm's apron, anchoring the maid in place. Lucien glanced past them, his eyes landing on the crude, jagged piles of metallic slag Jorm had woven and discarded on the grass.

"What are you even doing?" he asked.

"Training," Elma answered coolly.

"I assume you are out here to train as well." Lucien's eyes briefly went vacant with panic. Beside him, Elma detected a microscopic, rigid shift in Silk's posture. They desperately wanted to keep their nocturnal activities a secret, and they were failing miserably.

"Of course," Lucien deflected awkwardly.

"So are we," Elma said, her tone dripping with calculated innocence.

"Perhaps I shouldn't keep these outings hidden from Valerius. If he knew you were out here with us, he would surely approve." Lucien's eyes blew wide open.

"No, no, no, why even tell him? We could... we could just keep it a secret together, like..."

"Why?" Elma asked, widening her green eyes to feign perfect, childlike ignorance.

"It's just... well, we just don't need to tell him, alright?" Elma smiled internally. Blackmail was an incredibly efficient tool.

"But if we tell him, we won't have to sneak out like this anymore."

"I..." Lucien stammered, completely cornered.

"I can even tell him about the cool, extremely close-range maneuvers you were practicing in the dark corridor earlier..." Elma pressed. A sharp, metallic shing rang through the night air. Silk drew her blade in one seamless, lethal motion.

"Let's just kill them." Lucien whipped around to face her, waving his hands frantically in the air.

"No! No, Silk, we are not doing that!" Jorm let out a terrified squeal, shrinking completely behind Elma.

"I didn't even say anything!" Elma immediately closed her mouth. She had pushed it too far.

"Silk," Lucien warned, his voice unusually sharp. The two locked eyes in the dark for a tense, silent second. Finally, Silk let out a faint, metallic sigh through her guard and seamlessly sheathed her blade.

"I will not tell anyone," Elma stated, her voice returning to its perfectly flat baseline.

"If... we train together."

"Train together?" Lucien repeated, looking at her as if she had just grown a second head. In response, Elma raised a hand. A water auxiliary shot straight into the earth, hooking around the hilt of the buried sword. With a violent jerk, it hauled Gund free from the dirt, tossing the heavy iron slab directly into Jorm's panicked hands.

"You know, I think I'm actually done for the night," Lucien deflected, forcing a wildly unconvincing yawn and taking a step back.

"But you only just arrived," Elma pointed out, narrowing her eyes.

"Could it be that you were not actually here to train—""What do you want?" Lucien interrupted, his shoulders slumping in defeat. Elma smiled. She pointed a finger at Silk.

"Train her." She shifted her finger to point at Jorm.

"But... you are my teacher," Jorm whispered, nervously clutching the massive sword against her apron.

"You want to use a blade," Elma corrected without looking back.

"She knows how to use a blade."

"Are you out of your mind? A spar out here will wake up the entire estate, not to mention the guards," Lucien hissed.

"I can manage that," Elma said dismissively.

"I am a highly skilled Resonant." For a fleeting second, she realized she sounded exactly like that smug, insufferable librarian, Arem. She immediately buried the thought. Silk let out another heavy sigh, the sound grating against her metal mouth guard.

"We do this, and you keep your mouth shut?" Elma stared at her sister for a long, unblinking moment.

"Yes." With a sharp flick of her wrist, Silk drew her weapon once more. The steel didn't just catch the ambient light; it glowed faintly, emitting an unnatural, cold luminescence under the moonlight. Jorm stumbled backward, her boots slipping on the damp grass as she nervously gripped Gund's massive hilt with both hands.

"Well? Do your Resonance thing," Lucien muttered. He uncapped a stainless steel hip flask, took a long drink, then retreated toward the safety of the hedges. Elma raised both hands, her palms facing outward. She expanded her Field, gripping the atmospheric pressure around the clearing. With a sharp, pulling motion, she compressed the air into a massive, invisible dome over the patch of grass, creating a dense acoustic seal that would completely deaden the transfer of sound.

Elma stood silently next to Lucien, watching the two combatants level their weapons in the center of the clearing. Despite her newfound strength, Gund trembled slightly in Jorm's hands, the sheer mass of the sword betraying her nerves against Silk's imposing stillness. Jorm glanced back over her shoulder. Elma met her gaze and gave a single, slight nod.

"You wanted to be stronger, right?" Elma whispered. Jorm couldn't possibly have heard the words across the distance, but she seemed to read the exact calculation behind Elma's eyes. She turned her attention back to the flawless, lethal stance of the silver-clad guard waiting before her. Jorm drew a deep, centering breath. As she exhaled, her Internal Reinforcement locked into place, and the massive sword finally stilled in her grip.

"Let's go."