The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 300 - As Below, So Above... The Math Of Care & The Void Out There

Chapter 300: Chapter 300 - As Below, So Above... The Math Of Care & The Void Out There

Blood of the beast soaked into the sand as the elders descended to the arena floor. Their faces withheld a full passing judgment, for none could deny the cleanliness of the kill. The unpleasant looking retreats had led to a result... that none of them would claim that they were capable of at only thirteen.

"An unusual approach."

One of the older elders spoke first while circling the corpse. He demonstrated the upward angle he had seen with his hand.

"Though that final blow... held considerable power from an awkward stance. Most wouldn’t attempt it except in desperation."

"A kind of power that could have ended this a minute sooner. In real combat, such hesitation-"

"Would see ’him’ overwhelmed by multiple opponents."

Anper finished for the other man. His disappointment lay clear in every word. A quality that had seemed to grow ever since that day of her first menstrual period, when her natural womanhood became an ever more glaring issue for them.

"The Descent brings waves upon waves of Voidlings. Not single challenges that can be met like this."

Qatrand stood at attention after cleaning her blade. Her shoulders remained straight, and her gaze respectfully lowered.

"To continue protecting those beside and behind us, a warrior can move the line of fighting away from the noncombatants when possible. The teachings say to do this. That is why I drew it away."

A shift rippled through the assembled elders at hearing their own doctrine voiced in this case. Many were not sure that the meaning applied in a situation like this, but some would not deny that treating every fight so seriously had a certain value.

Anper’s expression tightened, but he could hardly argue openly against their family’s battle philosophy. Especially as he had also forced the mass of Voidlings into one area while Ondua attacked the leaders in the last Descent.

With tension in the air, the eldest of them stepped forward.

"The trial’s requirements have been met. You demonstrated a will and competence to fight. The kill was powerfully done. Though your method was... less conventional, you have demonstrated sufficient skill to release you for Guild training."

Qatrand bowed precisely as they passed, filing out past her as soon as the declaration was made. Her posture was not affected by the debate about her readiness that would likely continue behind closed doors.

When only her father remained, she maintained her formal stance and awaited his judgment. Steel gray eyes searched her face for something - perhaps a sign that this deviation could still be corrected.

"The Ironclad Order expects Yecine swordsmanship to be excellent."

"I will not dishonor our name, father."

The words came low and soft, filled with her genuine desire to meet his expectations. Anper er Yecine turned away without responding, his bootsteps sharp against stone as he left her alone in the arena. Qatrand remained at attention until his steps faded completely.

Only then did she permit herself a visible breath of relief. She had completed the trial and garnered permission to attend her formal Guild training. Somewhere in the Youth Guild, a certain brunette was waiting to congratulate her...

Despite the reincarnator plotting how bad it would be to just lock her beloved away instead, while telling and teaching her everything she knew.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠ ⦒

Qatrand sat on the floor with Elua in her lap. After talking about her First Blood ritual, her wife began to read through random letters and ask her about what she might have thought around that time.

The small brunette had been somber since the tale of a time before they’d met finished. She wanted to share something of her own, but also wanted a while to process the event as described.

To save that concoction of oration and imagination into a memory fragment - her beautiful minded little Qat!

"I remember writing this one. It was the first time I saw you swinging your blade at the Youth Guild. I first filled three pages with advice about stance and breathing. Then I burned it and wrote more... mundanity."

Pigeon-blue eyes drifted to the window, thinking that she would have enjoyed having every single page. Her El held a lot of herself back when they were young... and even now.

"About Nohre and Fusand. They’re alright for their age, but... they’ve never faced real combat. I think you did the right thing."

"You’re worried about them."

"Among others. Many of the younger cultivators haven’t had the same-"

"That’s what I love about you."

The brunette’s vocal interruption was soft but firm, but her spiritual one was firm and *intense*. Her energy pressed into the tendrils of the other teen, passing as much ’love’ as she dared.

"You genuinely care about protecting them because they aren’t prepared."

Qatrand leaned down and turned the girl’s face, catching something raw twitching in her wife’s facade-less expression.

"You care too. You’ve been training your disciples since-"

"No. They’ve become mine because you would want me to help them, should you have met them first."

Mint eyes glowed softly, a lensing effect of her essence field being pulled tight to her physical form as her much greater spirit suppressed it.

"Because people like you, who I respect and emulate, naturally wish to shield and help others. You are the only ones truly worth anything in this world."

The familiar confession hung between them as neither’s gaze wavered.

"I’d help you prepare anyone you asked. I’d use every trick and technique I know to increase their chances of survival. Because their safety matters to you, I refuse to perceive the small attachment I feel to them as insignificant."

"El..."

"Don’t mistake my actions with them for genuine altruism, my love. I learned long ago that I’m not capable of that pure protective instinct you possess. What I do and the way I think... is different."

Qatrand’s spirit dove deeper into the press, while pulsing ’acceptance’ through her wife’s fragment. The wordless attempt at understanding led to another of Elua’s awkward but sincere smiles.

"That’s why I’ll manipulate and scheme and create whatever advantages necessary - not for them, but for you. So you won’t have to carry that burden alone. To create potential allies, even if they are indirect."

The swordswoman reached out and brushed her fingers against the brown bangs over her forehead.

"You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I understand."

"Do you? Even knowing how calculated my assistance of the people I’m supposed to care for is?"

The reincarnator finally looked away, unwilling to watch the eyes that would surely accept her. Feeling guilty for what she was saying.

"When I hugged them, I didn’t want to let go because I thought of their value to you. That I could hide them from the war on my own. But that doing so might cause more eventual problems."

’This is always my problem with having companions, while being in love. Noise of a different kind, but still noise.’

The reborn cultivator wet her lips and gave her ultimate assessment of the moment.

"I froze and needed your help because I couldn’t decide how to be the most useful to you."

"That’s fine enough, El. If that’s how you say you feel."

The brunette closed her eyes as her fortress stroked her face. Her next words were barely a whisper.

"And that kind of acceptance is exactly why you need to be protected from people like me."

The blonde haired Yecine smiled at the girl. The ’amusement’ and ’patience’ that lanced from the young cultivator through her tendrils showed her opinion of that.

"Maybe."

Qat was prepared for it to take a long time for her wife to accept that the difference between caring ’zero’ and ’two’ still had significance - even if the scale went up to more than ten. She would say the one her cute illusionist was using for people went up to one hundred, with both of them at the top.

"Though it might be that you and I just fit together well, as long as we are willing to try. Could it not?"

Elua opened her eyes slowly, leisurely moving her hand to hold Qatrand’s wrist. The heiress pulled it softly away and stood with what seemed like unhurried motions. But the changes in her spirit proved that this was all very forced.

"My love, you really can’t say things like that in a moment like this. Now I’m going to have to take a bath with those words in mind."

Pigeon blues darted away, the ’hunger’ she unintentionally stoked in her mint-drop being repressed but not hidden.

"My apologies. I didn’t-"

"I know. I’ll be good. When I come back... I’ll have my own story to share. Of youth and forced lessons."

Qat expected her to walk slowly away, but the girl bolted into motion. The swordswoman shifted and stood from the floor, scratching at her cheek.

’Is that a rush to run away, to get back, or...’

"Why was she so happy to take the second bath, anyway?"

The tall teenager that accepted too much from the cute reincarnator also accepted that she didn’t understand a lot of the details of her behavior.

⟠ ⟠ ⟠

The fortress walls stretched above her as Elua er Goltbred moved along the northern rampart. Her mint eyes assessed each sigil marking with the scrutiny of someone who had seen variations of these same patterns countless times before.

’Because I have. It doesn’t make them more terrible, though.’

She traced a finger along one sequence before stenciling minor adjustments. More for the benefit of those keeping watch on her than her own need.

"These will hold for now. Though I would have placed the containment sigils in a different arrangement. It’s leaking essence due to the resonant pull as it is."

Nearby cultivators observed with a mixture of respect and unease as the young girl corrected formations their senior sigilists, watching her like a hawk, had labored over for days. Her small hands moved with the chisel in hand so quickly that it made most of them uncomfortable.

Fear that a mistake would bring down the ritual meant to prevent the creatures from scaling the walls. She understood it, but was a little tired that a week of proving herself had still not yet made them stop hounding her every move.

An Ironclad Order senior member approached, his posture as stiff with the importance of his station as any Yecine.

"The commander requests confirmation that the eastern defenses will-"

The hand of the ’prodigy’ raised up and paused him. Her head tilted before she ’listened’ to something beyond mortal and average cultivator perception. The man’s remaining words died in his throat as he recognized something in that motion.

Her stillness... that seemed unnervingly familiar to the way a spiritualist he knew would act when danger was approaching.

Far above, a pinprick of absolute nothing appeared against the evening sky. A spot of vantablack that caused reality to fold inward. The very fabric of existence gave way to something else entirely.

To the mandate of a certain Divinity.

"It’s starting."

She announced loudly in her ’sweet’ tone. A choice that portrayed neither urgency nor concern. Just simple acknowledgment of what they all knew was on the way.

Around her, the less experienced cultivators tensed. Most of them held physical ages years above her own. In contrast, Elua er Goltbred’s spirit and form remained perfectly composed as she returned to finishing her sigil correction.

They’d need it tomorrow, most likely.

The Void expanded, from unwitnessable pinpoint to the size of a coin in moments. Within its ’depths’ something writhed. A humanoid silhouette composed of shifting shadows and jagged angles emerged partially through the void, the incomplete invasion point distorting its image to a massive size.

Six eyes opened in vertical pairs down what might have been a face as the Voidling Leader surveyed the world below. The plane of existence on which all other essence was tinged with material properties.

Its gazes swept across the waiting fortifications in the region, planning. As more pinpricks of darkness began to appear across the sky all over the continent - all over the world... a reincarnator’s lips curved into the faintest of smiles as she stretched her arms.

"The patterns really don’t change much, do they?"

She spoke to no one in particular, having wrapped herself in illusions and allowing her voice to carry a hint of ennui born from the repetition. From participating in yet another trial meant to cull, push, and make statistics of both forms of humans.

Her thoughts turned briefly to Qatrand, stationed at another fortress not far away, as her fingers resumed their precise searching movements across the stone. Distracting herself with sigil work so she would not rush to her beloved’s side.

"Now then, let’s see if we can make a great hero out of her without being too obvious about it, huh?"

This chapt𝙚r is updated by fr(e)ew𝒆bnov(e)l.com