The Villain Who Invests in a Witch to Survive Chapter 139 : Chapter 139

Chapter 139: This Ti, I Won’t Hold Back

During that practical lesson in Whispering Forest, she had lost to Ryan Velt.

She had used the academy’s standard training sword, and anything beyond the scope of a student had been forbidden. She had not used the high-tier equipnt her family had given her, nor had she drawn on her true strength. It was not because she did not want to. It was because she disdained doing so.

She was the Sword Duke’s daughter, a genius renowned across the Empire. If she defeated others by relying on better equipnt and richer resources, that would be an ignoble victory. What she wanted to prove was the resolve in her sword, not the wealth of House Astrea.

And so she lost.

She lost completely. Utterly. Thoroughly.

From that day on, whenever she gripped a sword, her hand would tremble faintly. It was not fear. It was sothing harder to describe, as though a thorn had lodged itself in her heart, one she could neither pull out nor press down.

Her father had noticed.

That night, he called her into his study, poured her a cup of tea, and said, “Losing once is not frightening. What is frightening is losing once and never standing back up.”

She had held the teacup without saying a word.

“You are my daughter,” her father had said. “The Sword Duke’s daughter. My blood runs in your veins, and my sword rests in your hand. If you lose once, then treat it as sharpening the blade. Sharpen it, and strike back.”

She had nodded and finished her tea.

After that night, she had indeed improved. The trembling in her hand had slowly vanished, and the speed of her swings had returned to what it had once been.

She had even begun to look forward to the Starfall Ruins. There, she could cast off every restriction and truly go all out. She would not need to care about the limits imposed by her status as a student, nor suppress the strength she genuinely possessed.

She would pull that thorn out.

But now Ryan Velt had appeared again.

He stood at the edge of the dance floor in a deep ink-blue formal suit, with a girl in a black dress at his side. He had danced three songs with her. At first, his movents had been stiff and awkward, but later he had grown steadily smoother, and when he turned, the hem of his clothes had flared so naturally that he truly looked like a noble young master.

The heart she had finally managed to steady sank once more.

He really was impossible to get rid of.

Eleanor lowered her eyes, and her right hand unconsciously gripped her skirt. That was where her sword would normally hang. If there had been a weapon at her waist now, her fingers would have been wrapped around its hilt.

Last ti, she had used the academy’s standard sword and suppressed her own true power, and she had lost to him.

This ti, if they t in the ruins—

She would not hold back again.

There would be no more stopping at the proper point between students. No more gentleman’s agreent about not using high-tier equipnt.

She would draw her true sword and use her true strength. The resources of her ducal house, the trump cards she had accumulated over the years, and the killing moves she had never once revealed in public—

She would use all of them.

Eleanor raised her head and looked past the cluster of noble girls still chattering beside her, toward the corner by the dance floor’s edge, which was now empty. Ryan was no longer there. He and the girl in the black dress had vanished into the crowd together.

She loosened the hand clutching her skirt, and the corners of her lips curved very slightly.

It was an extrely faint curve, almost impossible to see, but sothing was burning in her eyes.

Then let us et inside the ruins.

Ryan Velt.

This ti, I will not lose again.

Moonlight slipped in through the window, falling across her red hair and across that gemstone as red as congealed fire. Her eyes were light brown, and beneath the candlelight they glead like amber. Sothing was hidden in that light—

Battle intent. Resolve. The humiliation and unwillingness that had burned inside her for an entire month.

The girls around her were still making a fuss. One tugged on her sleeve and asked which young lord had caught her eye, while another stood on tiptoe and peered toward the dance floor. Eleanor withdrew her gaze and let that asured smile return to her face.

“It really is nothing,” she said. “Just soone I happened to know before.”

She lifted her wineglass and took a small sip. The liquid stained her lips red, making her eyes seem even brighter.

In the corner, Ryan set down his glass. Suddenly, he felt a gaze settle on him. He lifted his head and looked toward the other side of the dance floor—but the crowd was dense, skirts swayed everywhere, and nothing could be seen clearly.

Early the next morning, while Rock Bay City still lay beneath a thin veil of fog, the entrance outside the eastern courtyard was already filled with carriages.

Ryan climbed into the Velt family’s old dark gray carriage. The driver was a taciturn middle-aged man who rely nodded when Ryan got in. The carriage itself was very simple. The cushions were worn pale with age, and the curtains had faded from repeated washing, but everything had been cleaned neatly.

Ryan leaned back into the corner and closed his eyes.

Outside the carriage curtain ca footsteps and murmured voices as one carriage after another rolled past. Through a gap in the curtain, he saw that ink-blue carriage glide by. Its curtains were drawn tight, hiding whoever sat inside.

The lights of Rock Bay City gradually receded, replaced by the silhouettes of mountain ranges.

Along the הדרך? no, continue natural:

Throughout the journey, Ryan rested with his eyes closed, while in his mind he reviewed the faces he had morized the night before—Parker’s cold severity, Hayden’s silence, Marcus’s eyes like deep pools, the sharpness hidden beneath Shiloya’s radiant smile, and that brief flicker of a smile in Vera’s gray-green eyes.

And there was also that gaze that had fallen on him, that feeling of being watched. It had felt strangely familiar, yet when he had turned, he had seen nothing.

The carriage traveled for most of the day. Outside, the landscape shifted from hills to forest, from forest to deeper forest. The mountain road grew narrower, the trees thicker, until eventually sunlight could hardly pierce through at all, and only mottled patches of light fell across the carriage floor.

Then the view abruptly opened up.

Ryan lifted the curtain and saw a clearing hacked out of the wilderness.

Thick wooden stakes ford the camp palisade, their tops sharpened to points, with imperial flags planted among them—golden crossed swords against a deep blue background.

Inside the camp were dozens of tents, armored knights patrolling back and forth, supply crates stacked into small hills, and great pots sending smoke into the air. The scent of at stew drifted on the wind.

One carriage after another rolled into the camp and ca to a halt in the central clearing. Ryan jumped down, and his boots landed on the soft earth.

“Ryan! Over here!”

Rex’s voice rang out from not far away.

Ryan turned his head. Rex was standing beside a plain gray carriage, waving with all his strength. Beside him were Lillian, Landel, and Evans.

All four had changed into clothes suited for movent. Lillian wore a slender sword at her waist. Rex carried a huge pack on his back. Landel still wore that perfectly composed smile. Evans stood at the very rear, his pale green hair a little disheveled by the wind.

Rex’s punch landed with no restraint at all, making Ryan’s shoulder sink slightly.

That simple-minded giant with overdeveloped limbs and underdeveloped caution really had no sense of moderation.

But Ryan neither dodged nor said anything. He only glanced at him.

Rex was grinning from ear to ear, his eyes bright, looking exactly like soone who had run into an old friend—even though they had not known each other for very long.

Ryan sighed inwardly.

At so point, this fool of a big man had simply begun treating him as one of his own.

Even though, the first ti they had t, Rex had been so nervous he could barely stand straight. After what happened in Whispering Forest, though, his attitude had changed. First ca awe, then gratitude, and now he had progressed to clapping him on the shoulder without a second thought.