“It’s a beautiful day Isn’t it ?” I said while drawing the curtain open.

From my room’s windows, I could see beyond the Rosetta manor domain, the verdant forest which seemed to extend infinitely endlessly.

“ Yes, it truly is.” Said Syrus with a very zealous tone.

“Where is Maa ?”

“She’s talking with the merchant and his wife about what they should bring over for the next week.”

Maa is back from her errand.

Of course, she’s back, after all, it’s already been three years since she was summoned to the main house.

Many things have changed over these past three years.

As she had promised, Maa came back in the third month after her departure, bringing over twelve newsbooks from the castle as a souvenir. Everything went smoothly until the third day. On the third day, the news of my accident reached her, both I and Syrus were heavily scolded by Maa. I was expecting her to release her wrath on us for months but she strangely let it go after several days, to be honest, a part of me was disappointed.

One of our housemaids and a guard has dropped off, apparently, she got impregnated by one of the guards. One must say that with this place and this setting this kind of thing was bound to happen, I was even wondering why it didn’t happen earlier. Their departure was really an emotional one, I mean, it even managed to bring tears to my eyes, not that I was particularly attached to them but seeing the four maids hugging and bidding each-others farewell, That was really moving stuff.

The others were still mourning their not-really-deceased comrade when a carriage anticlimactically came to deliver a new guard and a new maid.

Apparently, Maa has requested a replacement the day she had heard about the pregnancy of the previous maid.

As expected of Maa, as professional as ever.

The merchant and his wife had a daughter, she’s almost five now. She was named Shania by her parents. She often accompanies her parents on their journey to the manor. She’s basically the first child I’ve seen other than myself in this world. I’ve become very well acquainted with her thanks to a certain person.

I still haven’t received any updates from my parents, not that I was expecting any at all.

Physically I did grow taller but nothing exceptional. Other than that, there were no big changes, I was as handsome as ever since I wasn’t allowed to cut my hair, it had grown to the point where I had to ponytail my hair. Yes, there were two ponytailed men in this household: me and Roger the gardener.

These past three years I’ve spent most of my time in the library, whether reading books or training my aina.

Never in my life, I would’ve thought that one day I would say that but lately, I’ve lost interest in the library.

Lately, my interest has been cast on something entirely new, well not really new since it has always been there: The Iharana forest.

The thing is that in these past three years I’ve read all the interesting books in the library.

And about my aina training.

Oh god, how should I explain it?

I spent my two first years only focusing on perceiving and controlling the aina and my effort paid off. There were three that have greatly changed with my control of aina.

The first big change is that I no longer needed to close my eyes to perceive aina. I could even do it while running.

The second change is from the way I perceived aina. At first, I perceived aina as a floating ball of light, lately, instead of floating balls, I saw a dark fog. While perceiving aina I do see that black fog but it doesn’t get in the way of my sight. This black fog was still there it’s just that I could clearly see through it without any problem.

The third and most important change lay in enhancement, things like sending a superhuman punch, lifting an object twice my weight, I could do it. In fact, it was so easy to do that it was scary. To use enhancement all I had to do was, to attract a portion of the fog (yeah because I can do that) and to envelope the part of my body I wanted to enhance with it.

For example, if I wanted to enhance my hand grip all I had to do was to control the fog to form a glove-shaped membrane surrounding my hand.

As time went by the experiment I performed on aina became more and more difficult to perform in the library.

It was spacious, I’ll give you that, it’s extremely complicated to send a herculean punch in a closed room surrounded by bookshelves. Basically in the library, I was bound to hold back whatever I wanted to do.

I once tried discreetly conducting my experiment outside but too bad for me, the mere sight of me outside the manor was such a rare occurrence that every eye in the manor was cast on me.

This is why lately, I’ve been thinking about going into the forest in order to train my aina.

I know it’s a dangerous place but the book mentioned that monsters loathe the enclosed feelings generated by the barrier so I should be safe as long as I stay within the first five kilometers.

For the moment, I have not yet gone to venture into the forest for 2 reasons. The first one being that I haven’t yet found a way to sneak outside the domain without being spotted. There are eleven people living in this household and the yard is so extremely spacious and the lawn so well maintained that If I were to run to the fence, I feel like someone from the house would obviously notice me. I had once considered the idea of going there at night, but after deliberation, I decided to reject the idea. Who knows what kind of bullshit was lurking in the forest at night time and if I were to do it at night, that would mess up with my sleep schedule, after all, I still have a growing body.

And the second reason is the barrier. The barrier is a dome-shaped force field englobing the entirety of the human continent, the barrier was there to prevent monsters from entering the human continent but it also prevents humans from venturing outside the monster continent.

Hahahaha As if there was someone dumb enough to willingly want to go there.

During the crusade like the one Syrus has taken part in, he said that they could pass through the barrier without being obstructed by the barrier thanks to a special belt, they were wearing, Those belts were provided by the legion to every legionnaire and was to be returned when one would resign from being a legionnaire. Since he wasn't in the paladin order he didn’t know if nobles were wearing similar items in order to pass through the barrier.

So basically even if I were to be able to escape the manor domain unnoticed, there was still a fifty-fifty probability whether or not I would get into the forest.

Aaah…

It's no use worrying about that for the moment, we'll see that when the time comes. The problem at hand right now is how to escape this manor surveillance.

Aaaaah if only aina could turn people invisible. I’m pretty sure magic can do that.

If only the baptismal didn’t take away my ability to use magic, I might have been able to use something like invisibility or fly to pass through Maa and Co watchful eyes without being noticed.

“Damn you, Clergyman.”

“Pardon?” said Syrus with a

Oops, it came out loud.

“Oh nothing, I was just lost in thoughts, you said that Maa was talking with the merchant? Is his daughter also here ?”

“Yes, do I brin-summon her over?” Asked Syrus in a humorous tone.

My question may sound a little fishy but it is by no means the case.

Ever since the merchant and his wife started bringing their daughter to the mansion for delivery, Maa would often snatch away the baby from her parents to show it to me.

I think she did that, to make me interact with something other than books. In any case, it happened so frequently that it even became natural.

“No need, I’m going there myself and I also have a special command for the merchant.”

“A special command?”

“Yeah, Syrus, a very special one.”