Chapter 164 - Gifts for Greymoor

Chapter 164: 164 - Gifts for Greymoor

The morning after leaving Orven’s workshop, Adrien and Amelia walked out of the palace without any particular destination in mind. For once nobody was waiting on him, and the day was his to spend however he liked.

Adrien still wanted to test Umbral Root properly, though, and doing that in the middle of Sylvarin was out of the question.

Amelia led him to a secluded corner of the palace gardens, past a line of crumbling walls where old oaks screened most paths from view. The ground had once served for private training, and the worn formations left behind could still contain a few low-powered spells.

Adrien manifested Umbral Root, and the familiar weight filled his palm. The drain began at once. It wasn’t severe, yet Absolute Mana Sense made the difference impossible to miss. The B-Rank version had drawn only a modest stream, while the S-Rank structure demanded more mana simply to stay manifested, and the Living Core drew a thin trickle of its own.

"More than before?" Amelia asked.

"Noticeably. Not enough to hurt me in a fight, but there’s no reason to keep it manifested all day anymore. The extra formations have to be maintained somehow."

Against the depth of his Bottomless Core, the higher upkeep was still a small thing. That didn’t make wasting mana sensible, especially when dismissing the staff erased the cost entirely.

He raised Umbral Root and opened with Frost Lance. A small Fireball followed, then Veil of Mist, which he kept penned inside the training ground before switching to Zephyr and loosing a tight Zap into one of the weathered targets.

The transitions still impressed him most. The focus swallowed each new flow without the faintest stutter.

Amelia watched the last sparks of lightning fizzle out.

"Do you think showing Orven that many Affinities was a good idea? He knows considerably more about the way you cast now than most people do."

"I needed him to understand what the staff was supposed to do. If I had hidden half of it, he might have built something that worked against me."

Adrien lowered Umbral Root.

"And he doesn’t strike me as someone who talks about his clients. Vael trusted him enough to send me there, and Orven never pushed when I told him my Path was private. I think the risk is acceptable."

Amelia weighed that before nodding.

"As long as you thought about it. People notice unusual things more quickly when they already know where to look."

"That’s why I’m doing this here instead of demonstrating it in the middle of a market."

Adrien dismissed Umbral Root. The staff dissolved back into his Inventory, and the constant drain vanished with it. Afterward they left the gardens and crossed toward the commercial districts.

They spent most of the morning drifting between shops without needing anything in particular. In some quarters magical stores lined entire streets, selling spell components, low-rank focuses, formation plates and preserved monster parts. Grimoires sat behind reinforced cases, priced high enough that Adrien still caught himself checking twice. He halted in front of an A-Rank Aqua manual and read the tag again.

"That could pay a lot of people in Greymoor for a very long time."

"Advanced magic has always been expensive. You’re paying for more than the paper. Someone had to preserve the spell structure accurately enough that another Mage can actually learn from it."

"I understand why it costs that much. I still don’t like looking at the number."

They moved on, and Adrien eventually started hunting for something less extravagant. He had been away from Greymoor for weeks now, and coming home empty-handed after so long in another kingdom sat poorly with him.

For Evelyne, he found a cedar box holding several varieties of Sylvamir green tea, including leaves grown in the river valleys outside the capital.

Ariane took longer. He passed over jewelry that looked too stiff and formal, and several enchanted trinkets priced far beyond their use. In the end he found a glass frost blossom, made by a local artificer so that faint mana stirred inside the petals whenever it was held near cold.

"This one," Adrien said.

Amelia turned it over in her fingers.

"She’ll like it?"

"I think so. And if she doesn’t, she can put it somewhere and pretend she does until I leave the room."

Amelia held the blossom up to the light once more before handing it back.

"It suits what you’ve told me about her more than the jewelry did."

Once the gifts were tucked safely into his Inventory, Amelia steered him away from the main streets toward an older neighborhood by the northern river. She stopped beside a public courtyard ringed with lime trees.

"I spent a lot of time here when I was younger. One of my tutors lived nearby, and I used to come here after lessons before my mother sent someone looking for me."

Adrien sat down with her beneath one of the trees.

"You seem to have had several places where people eventually learned to look for you."

"I stayed in the capital often enough to need them."

They lingered there through the afternoon, talking about nothing that needed a decision. Amelia pointed out which streets had changed since her childhood and which shops had somehow survived exactly as she remembered. Adrien listened, now and then comparing Sylvarin with Valebrand and the quieter life growing around Greymoor.

That last thought clung to him longer than the rest. He had been gone for weeks. Greymoor had people capable of running things without him, and Evelyne would never let the territory crumble simply because he travelled, but knowing home was in good hands was not the same as standing there himself.

When they finally started back toward the palace, Adrien glanced once across the river before following Amelia onto the bridge.

Sylvamir had given him more than he expected. He had answered Laurent’s invitation, strengthened ties between their houses, gained the Mindweave Pendant, and carried Umbral Root away as an S-Rank focus.