Heir Of The Supreme
Chapter 71: Home Tutor Bodyguard Blaine! (4)

Chapter 71: Home Tutor Bodyguard Blaine! (4)

"It’s too inefficient."

Blaine’s words cut through Cecelia like a blade.

Basically, Blaine was telling Cecelia that teaching her was a waste of time.

Given that she showed no growth despite two days, it was a logical statement.

However, it was under the assumption that Blaine had taught her anything.

But was that truly her fault? No! Blaine hadn’t actually taught her anything! He had simply thrown her into the fray and expected her to ’figure it out on her own.’

That was just too unfair.

"What do you mean by that, exactly?" Cecelia pressed, trying to keep the frustration from creeping into her voice.

Blaine’s cold, blank eyes studied her for a moment before flicking to the dagger in her grasp.

"You’re nowhere near ready for a real fight," he stated. "Even seasoned professionals have trouble coordinating in battle. What do you think a complete newbie like you would do? You’d only bring more harm than good."

Cecelia’s lip quivered.

...So that was how he saw her. Not as a student worth investing time into, but instead as a liability.

If Blaine had previously treated the princess like glorified baggage, now he was likening her to an unruly child.

The bitterness in her chest swelled. "So... for that reason, you’re trying to kill my motivation? Just to keep me from being an even bigger burden?"

Blaine gave a curt nod.

Cecelia opened her mouth, ready to lash out, but Blaine spoke before she could.

"There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get stronger, but we don’t have time for you to learn at your own pace."

The only reason Blaine even let Cecelia go this far in the first place was because he needed time to let his arm heal.

While it wasn’t anywhere near being back to normal, at the very least, scar tissue had begun to form in earnest, stopping the constant flow of blood.

Blaine would need more time to be able to actively utilize his disabled arm again, but at the very least, he didn’t have to worry about blood loss.

The young lionheart only bothered keeping this charade since there was nothing else for him to do. However, he never had the intention of actually allowing Cecelia to put herself in danger.

What frustrated Cecelia the most was that, deep down, a part of her agreed. She understood the logic behind Blaine’s words, but at the same time, there was a high chance of her dying either way.

However, Cecelia was a 1-Star now and could supplement her inadequacies by utilizing her Mana Art.

Despite being on the cusp of completely filling his own Mana Core, Blaine had instead given all the spoils from the four slain Rank 1 monsters to Cecelia.

Unlike Blaine, who would only see a minute increase of roughly 1%, Cecelia had virtually no mana in her core to begin with. Every sliver of mana she absorbed was exponentially increasing her current maximum mana storage.

But even that wasn’t the real reason her growth was so rapid.

Filling one’s Mana Core was usually a slow and arduous process, taking an average 1-Star, the equivalent of around twenty to thirty years of active military service, to fully saturate one’s core.

Yet Cecelia’s core... was already over 75% full.

In the course of only two days, Cecelia had somehow gone from finally forming a Mana Core to saturating it three-quarters of the way.

Surely, she’d broken some kind of record for this.

While seeming completely crazy, the reason for her rapid growth was actually quite simple.

It was because Blaine had also given her something else along with the four from the Rank 1 monsters... The Mana Core of the deceased Kelonian captain.

After stripping the very clothes off her back, Blaine had gone even further and extracted the Mana Core from her chest.

While it was pretty cruel to treat another human that way, Blaine saw no problems with it.

To him, it was nothing more than an available resource, something better off in his hands than wasted on the creatures prowling the area.

However, considering that his core was pretty much fully saturated, consuming the Kelonian woman’s core was too big of a waste.

While human Mana Cores were locked at the Imp class and unable to increase in class, the Mana in their cores was far more concentrated and pure.

If a 1-Star were to entirely rely on killing other 1-Stars to saturate their Mana Core, it would only take them a year or so to fully fill their core.

However, this was an extreme case that typically only occurred during all-out wars between countries.

Instead, Blaine had been planning on saving it for after he became a 2-Star, as his core would have a higher absolute limit then, or perhaps even as an emergency Mana battery.

Fortunately, he wasn’t given enough time to shatter during his earlier confrontation with the Rank 2 Unknown. If he’d done that, that would have been too much of a waste.

Although it wasn’t possible to completely absorb every last wisp of mana when consuming a core, as a sizable amount of it was lost to the environment during the shattering process, one Mana Core shouldn’t have shot Cecelia’s capacity upwards by seventy-five percent.

That is... If the core didn’t belong to a 2-Star.

...Though Cecelia understood the logic behind his seemingly inhumane actions, she still wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that.

However, as the ultimate beneficiary of Blaine’s actions, she didn’t have the right to criticize him.

With this much mana at her core, Cecelia was sure she’d be able to at least do something productive in a battle. She even began experimenting with her Mana Art to see what it allowed her to do.

However, every time she entered battle, her body refused to move.

Fear wrapped around her chest, gripping her heart in its icy clutches... Frankly, it was infuriating.

She needed to learn how to overcome that instinctual fear, and the only person who could teach her how refused to do so.

Cecelia needed to find some way to convince the auburn-haired youth to genuinely impart his knowledge onto her and not use crackhead logic to make her give up.

Taking a slow breath to steady herself, Cecelia lifted her chin.

"If me trying to fight alongside you brings more harm than good... then why don’t you just teach me how to stall for time?"

Blaine’s brow twitched slightly.

"If I can’t win, then at the very least, I can hold out long enough for you to step in, right?" Cecelia continued. "That’s more ’efficient’, isn’t it?"

Cecelia hated that she still had to rely on him, requiring him to save her like a damsel in distress, but even more so, she hated how weak she was.

Blaine was silent, his gaze fixed on her face, scrutinizing her.

For a long moment, Cecelia feared he would refuse and simply brush her aside like before, telling her she was wasting his time and that it was time to move on.

But then, at last, he gave a slight nod.

"...Alright."

Cecelia let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

Her lips stretched into a triumphant grin, unable to contain her relief.

Surely this time... Blaine would teach her something actually useful!