“Young Master Igor! Run! Don’t look back!”
Old Bolo’s hoarse, resolute roar was Igor’s last clear memory before he plunged into the Blackwood Forest.
Within the woods, so dense they barely let in any light, the valiant young man ran for his life like a beast driven to the brink, relying on instincts honed by his past mercenary life, stumbling and staggering as he fled.
The infant in his arms was unexpectedly quiet.
She simply stared at him with a pair of watery-blue eyes strikingly similar to her mother’s, not crying or fussing, as if she too knew they were in dire straits.
“Search carefully! He has a brat with him, he can’t have gone far!”
“Tsk, just an illegitimate child born in the shadows, and he actually thought he could stir up trouble?”
“Enough, don’t get careless! Lady Orion wants to end this thoroughly… let’s not have this ‘stain’ dirty the Orion family name!”
The unrestrained chatter of the pursuers behind him stabbed into the young man’s heart like needles.
An illegitimate child…
Yes, he, Igor, was merely a stain left behind by Viscount Orion after an affair.
If it weren’t for his elemental affinity unexpectedly causing a reaction from the Spirit Inheritance Artifact during last year’s test, touching a nerve with the Viscountess.
He might have been able to continue living his meager yet free life in his small mercenary band, living by the sword, holding his beloved woman, raising their child together.
But that scrap of talent became a death warrant.
A meticulously orchestrated frame-up, the charge of harming a kinsman leveled against him.
The mercenary band he had painstakingly built was destroyed in an instant, his beloved cruelly murdered.
Only old Bolo, the veteran who had watched him grow up, taught him swordsmanship, fought desperately to protect him and his swaddled daughter, breaking out from the encirclement.
“Bolo…”
A soundless noise escaped Igor’s throat, indistinguishable between a pant and a painful whimper.
That old man who always smiled, carried a wine jug, scolded him for slacking off during training, yet used his hunched body to block a fatal blow for him at the last moment… was dead too.
Dead…
All dead!
Because of that woman’s viciousness, because of his “father’s” indifference!
Grief and sorrow nearly suffocated him.
Waves of dizziness from excessive blood loss assailed him. The child in his arms seemed to sense the unease and let out a soft whimper.
Igor looked down at his daughter’s innocent, guileless face. A deeper, more profound force bolstered him:
“Survive… we must survive…”
He muttered, unsure if he was speaking to the child or making a vow to himself:
“As long as we live… the Orion family… that woman… I swear, I will make you pay in blood!”
The Blackwood Forest’s terrain was complex, the most mysterious region in Ebony Marsh.
The mana turbulence that swept through the Kingdom of Northeland a decade ago had long turned this place into a forbidden zone for life.
Yet, even after charging into such a dangerous place, the pursuers behind him did not give up.
And in the end, the young man, fleeing all the way, was ultimately driven to a dead end.
Before him was a bottomless cliff, the sound of rushing water rising from below.
Behind him were dozens of well-equipped, murderous family mercenaries.
“You have nowhere left to run, Young Master Igor.”
The lead mercenary captain’s voice was icy, carrying a hint of relief at the imminent completion of the task:
“Why continue to struggle? Spare yourself… and the child… some suffering.”
Igor clutched his daughter tightly, raising his blood-stained face. The eyes that might once have held a glimmer of hope now held only final despair.
He took a deep breath, his gaze sweeping over the closing mercenaries, finally settling on the captain’s face.
Then, he begged hoarsely:
“You can take my head back.”
“But the child… the child is innocent, she knows nothing.”
“She is still Orion blood. If raised properly, she poses no threat to any of you…”
“Can you… spare her?”
Upon hearing this, the mercenary captain’s eyes flashed with a trace of complexity and pity.
He shook his head:
“I regret, Young Master Igor, the orders we received… were to kill everyone.”
“Blame the blood flowing in your veins that shouldn’t be there, and the talent you possessed that shouldn’t have been yours.”
This final pronouncement extinguished the last flicker of hope in Igor’s heart.
Replaced by an abyssal stillness.
He no longer looked at the mercenaries. Instead, he lowered his head, gently touching the child’s warm cheek with his forehead.
Then, he jerked his head up, a fierce glare as if to remember every one of them forever, his voice rasping:
“Go back and tell that woman…”
“If fate fails to devour us here… the day Igor returns shall be the day of judgment for the Orions!”
Before his words faded, he hugged the child and leapt decisively, his figure instantly swallowed by the mist beneath the cliff.
The mercenaries at the cliff edge rushed forward.
They saw only a vast abyss, the faint sound of water, no trace of anyone below.
The captain, a superhuman mercenary, stood at the cliff’s edge, his gaze profound and inscrutable.
After a long while, he slowly withdrew his gaze, his tone calm but with a barely perceptible hint of complexity, as if speaking to himself or to his subordinates behind him:
“A pity…”
“With his talent, if he had elemental stones, he could have hoped to become another superhuman mercenary in Ebony Marsh.”
He shook his head, as if to cast off this useless sentiment:
“Mission accomplished. Withdraw!”
…
Icy water enveloped Igor, pulling him down into the depths.
His consciousness drifted in the darkness.
Am I going to die?
I can’t accept this…
I refuse…
Daughter…
My daughter…
An unknown amount of time later, a strange warmth roused Igor from the icy darkness.
He snapped his eyes open, coughing violently, vomiting several mouthfuls of freezing river water.
“I… didn’t die?”
Igor was somewhat dazed.
But soon, this daze was replaced by elation.
He sat up with difficulty, finding himself lying on the bank of a stream, on wet pebbles.
What shocked him more was that the originally fatal wounds on his body had now miraculously healed.
Exhaustion and weakness remained, but the sense of impending death had vanished.
Right!
My daughter!
Igor’s heart tightened.
As he tried to rise, he heard clear, giggling laughter coming from not far away.
The young man whipped his head around and saw his infant daughter, who couldn’t even walk yet, lying on a patch of soft grass not far away, waving her tiny hands and laughing happily.
Beside the baby girl, a fluffy squirrel was gently brushing its bushy tail against her cheek.
A soft, silvery-blue glow spread out, released from the squirrel’s tail, bathing the infant in its light.
A magical beast?!
Igor’s pupils contracted sharply.
He instantly sprang up, instinctively wanting to rush over to protect his daughter.
But the next moment, he slowed his movements.
The squirrel carried none of the violent, chaotic aura characteristic of magical beasts.
On the contrary, that silvery-blue glow was pure and gentle, carrying a soothing, calming tranquility.
The squirrel tilted its head, its dark, bright eyes looking at Igor curiously, seemingly without malice.
And his daughter, under the glow’s embrace, gradually gained a rosy complexion, her breathing steady, clearly in excellent condition.
“Wait, this is… the power of an elemental spirit?”
Igor, after all, had seen the world and quickly realized.
This wasn’t a magical beast corrupted by mana, but a magical creature that had luckily contracted an elemental spirit, gaining control over mana!
Magical creatures possessed high intelligence, often had their own wills, and could even communicate with people. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
In other words, he and his daughter had likely been actively saved by this kind-hearted magical squirrel.
And that silvery-blue glow was the magical radiance emanating from it.
It was this healing magical that had cured his and the child’s injuries!
“Healing… could it be a Light Spirit? Or a Water Spirit? Or perhaps… the even rarer Ice Spirit?”
A wave of immense exhilaration washed over Igor.
An elemental spirit!
A precious elemental spirit!
This was a being a hundred times rarer than elemental stones, the core heritage of superhuman families!
Even the Orion family, with centuries of heritage and overwhelming influence in Ebony Marsh, possessed no more than five!
And simply by forming a Spirit Contract with it, he could effortlessly engrave an elemental imprint upon his soul, thereby becoming an Elementalist who could wield magic, gaining the superhuman power to exact revenge on his enemies!
But immediately, a wave of bitterness rose in his heart.
The one contracted to a small animal like a squirrel was most likely a low-level 【Lesser Spirit】.
And a Lesser Spirit could usually only have one contracted partner.
An elemental spirit’s contract was almost for life.
Typically, only upon the contractor’s death would the spirit dissolve the contract.
But this squirrel before him had saved them.
No matter how much Igor craved power, he could not repay kindness with enmity, kill it and forcibly seize the spirit!
Was hope right before his eyes, only to be missed?
Igor clenched his fists.
His face was conflicted, his expression shifting, and after a struggle, it finally settled into relief.
No.
He absolutely could not do that.
If he killed the squirrel and took the spirit, what difference would there be between him and those Orion scum?
“There must… be another way.”
Igor murmured.
As if having passed some test, the moment he decided against seizing the spirit, a change occurred—
The squirrel, which had been amusing the baby girl, suddenly paused. The soft silvery-blue glow on its body receded like a tide.
Immediately after, a ball of icy-silver light gracefully separated and rose from the squirrel, like a miniature star, nimbly hovering in the air before darting off into the distance.
And the squirrel, after the light left its body, instantly looked confused.
It looked at its own tail in bewilderment, as if waking from a long dream, then let out a “chitter” and scurried into the bushes, disappearing.
Igor was stunned.
Immense joy flooded him.
‘So… the squirrel wasn’t contracted to the spirit!’
‘Ah, right!’
‘Ordinary beasts cannot withstand a spirit’s sentience. At most, they can only serve as temporary 【vessels】 for a spirit to inhabit briefly!’
In other words…
This Ice Spirit had no contractor!
The one who saved them wasn’t the squirrel, but the Ice Elemental Spirit controlling the squirrel!
This Ice Elemental Spirit… was even more sentient than he had imagined!
Realizing this, Igor ignored his body’s weakness, scrambling up from the ground.
Suppressing his excitement, he locked his gaze on that ball of icy-silver glow flickering in and out among the grass, picked up his child, and swiftly chased after it.
The glow seemed to be intentionally guiding him, always reappearing just as he was about to lose sight of it.
Igor continuously chased after the fluttering Ice Elemental Spirit.
In his pursuit, he unknowingly waded into knee-deep stream water.
The cool flowing water calmed him slightly.
And just then, he saw that ball of icy-silver light gently merge into a shimmering patch at the bottom of the stream ahead…
…