Adrian watched Renelle pet Noctis with a single thought in his mind, ’she’s different.’
If the manhwa’s events were anything to go by, then after leaving the ballroom, she’d completely break down, hurt both in pride and heart.
But the scene before him was quite different, not that he wanted to see her like that.
There was also the fact that she sohow seed to know that he didn’t belong here, bringing him to a couple of conclusions.
Either, like him, she was also a reader of the manhwa who transmigrated into Renelle which was highly unlikely, well, not the reincarnation part.
The fact that her behavior remained similar to Villainess self even to the tinest of expressions made him discard the transmigration idea.
And that left him with the most likely,
Regression.
Or perhaps she had rely inherited mories from the future, but either way, it explained why she was still herself... and yet refused to follow the script.
Was he certain? not really, at least not until he observed her more, but would that change anything?
Of course not, his obsession was not so shallow that her gaining future knowledge would cause it to disappear.
Besides, this was going to work in his favor.... mostly.
Renelle lifted her head, her gaze moving from Noctis to Adrian and she noticed he was also looking at her.
"Is sothing wrong?" She asked with a small frown on her face.
"Nothing," he shook his head in response, "I was just admiring my Lady’s beauty."
That had co out so smoothly that Renelle was almost caught off guard.... almost.
"You haven’t introduced yourself yet," she said, ignoring his comnt.
"I’m simply the lady’s butler," he answered with a smile on his face.
"I ant your na," she clarified, "I can’t just refer to you as ’butler’."
Of course he knew that she was asking for his na earlier, but just telling her would keep their conversation short, and he’d very much like to keep hearing her voice.
Still, acting dumb would just get her annoyed, so he chose to answer.
"Adrian," he introduced.
Renelle paused at his na, wondering why it sounded so familiar. She was sure that she had heard it before but at the sa ti, couldn’t recall who it belonged to.
Whilst Renelle was lost in her thoughts, Adrian poured a bit more mana into his glasses and the colorful mana world appeared again.
But he was neither interested in the mana or the spirits swimming in them, instead, he looked towards Renelle again and sure enough, his target was there.
Hiding warily behind Renelle because of Noctis’ dark aura, while still curious about the type of spirit Nox was, was what seed to be a white fox.
It was small enough the one wouldn’t be able to spot it quickly when they took a quick glance.
"Do you mind if I borrow her?" Adrian drew Renelle’s attention towards him again, pulling her out of her thoughts.
"You can see her?" She looked a bit surprised at that fact.
"Hmm," he nodded before tapping on his glasses, "thanks to these.’
"I see,"Renelle also nodded.
Of course she knew of magic tools, especially as soone who had co across a few in her past life, so she wasn’t surprised that he had one.
Instead, she finally paid attention to her spirit and then noticed that it seed hesitant to get any closer because of this cat, which was a strange sight.
But suddenly, the spirit’s ears perked up and it suddenly turned towards Adrian’s direction causing Renelle to follow suit.
Now resting in his palm was a lotus with crystal like petals with a frosty mist rising from it.
The Frost Sovereign Lotus.
The fox spirit imdiately floated to Adrian, looking up at him for a second before resting in his open palm and it imdiately began nibbling greedily on the lotus.
Renelle, on the other hand, was still a bit shocked by the sudden appearance of such a treasure.
She knew how hard it was to acquire, hell, it’s almost impossible to get one with this much mana concentration, and yet, here he was, calmly feeding it to her spirit with a smile on his face.
"Do you have any idea what that is?" Renelle asked after a while, the surprise evident in her tone.
Adrian didn’t look up from the small white fox happily devouring the lotus in his palm.
"Of course," he replied calmly, "that’s why I acquired it in the first place."
"That’s not sothing you just acquire," she said, her brows furrowing. "Even in my—"
She quickly stopped whatever else she was about to say, probably sothing related to her past life.
"Even in your...?" he repeated, looking directly into her eyes.
"Even in the royal treasury, you wouldn’t find many of those," she corrected smoothly, regaining her composure.
He smiled at her save before turning back to the fox that was still chomping on the lotus before muttering, "compared to what I’m willing to give, a simple Frost Sovereign Lotus is nothing."
If anyone who had even the slightest bit of knowledge about these types of treasures heard his words, they’d cough up blood.
The Frost Sovereign Lotus....was nothing? And he even dared to call it simple?
Renelle didn’t quite understand what he ant by that but before she could ask, a change started happening with in the carriage.
The temperature suddenly dropped and the carriage’s interior got colder and colder, so much so that their breaths created fog in the air.
The two turned to the little fox spirit and noticed that it was now glowing.
The glow was subtle at first, but the more it absorbed the lotus, the brighter it got, until Renelle had to squint a little whilst looking towards it.
What was happening right now was pretty obvious.....
An Evolution.
Spirits, as stated before, were beings that couldn’t normally increase their mana capacity or even regenerate it unless bounded to a human.
But like everything, there were exceptions to this rule.
Once such exception were beast cores, also known as mana cores. These mana storage orbs that are found in beasts were capable of speeding up a spirit’s mana growth, thereby evolving them faster, rather than them siphoning mana from their contractors.
Another exception were treasures like the Frost Sovereign Lotus, it acted similarly to mana cores but it was a lot more potent, and it allowed spirits to skip multiple ranks despite their age.
And that’s exactly what was happening to Renelle’s fox spirit.
The glow slowly died down, revealing the results of the evolution....
"T-that’s..."
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