Chapter 1011: Learning to Cut

Strax found Vex in the middle of the corridor, still wearing the little pajamas Mercedes had put on her before bed. Her blue hair was completely disheveled, part of it fallen over her face, and her golden eyes still carried that sleepy look of someone who clearly should have been under the covers.

Despite that, the little girl paced back and forth, looking behind vases, under benches, and even inside a decorative suit of armor, as though her toy might have grown legs during the night and decided to flee the palace.

"It disappeared!" Vex declared as soon as she saw Strax. "Vex put him to bed and now he’s gone!"

Strax stopped in front of her and looked around.

"The wooden dragon?"

Vex immediately looked offended.

"No! The other dragon!"

"You have a lot of them."

"The white one!"

That finally clarified everything.

Vex was looking for a small white dragon plush that Frieren had made for her some time ago. The toy had disproportionately large wings, two small soft horns, and blue eyes made from enchanted crystals, although Frieren had sworn there was nothing dangerous about the magic in them.

According to the elf herself, she had only used the crystals because "ordinary buttons looked ugly."

Vex had loved the gift immediately and, since then, almost always slept with the dragon beside her pillow.

Strax looked at Mercedes.

She had stopped a few meters behind them, clearly willing to leave the matter in his hands after her earlier teasing.

"Good luck," she said.

Strax narrowed his eyes.

"You’re not going to help?"

"You’re the father being called in the middle of the night."

"Betrayal."

Mercedes smiled and returned to her own chambers.

Vex grabbed Strax’s hand.

"Come on!"

He let himself be dragged along.

The search naturally began in her room, although Vex repeatedly assured him that she had already looked everywhere.

Strax started with the bed, lifting blankets and pillows while the little girl checked a chest where she kept her toys again.

There were wooden dragons, small animals made of permanent ice, dolls, glowing stones that someone probably ought to inspect before they exploded, and even a small wooden sword that Strax did not remember giving her.

He picked up the sword.

"Who gave you this?"

Vex looked over.

"Aunt Samira."

"Of course."

Strax put it back.

Then he knelt to look under the bed.

Nothing except a sock, two pieces of some toy, and something that looked like half of a very old cookie.

"Vex."

"Hmm?"

"Why is there food under your bed?"

She went completely still.

Strax slowly looked at her.

Vex averted her eyes.

"I don’t know."

"Interesting."

"Maybe the dragon put it there."

"The plush dragon."

"Yes."

"The one that disappeared."

"Yes."

Strax began to smile.

Vex immediately tried to change the subject.

"We have to find him!"

She ran out of the room before the interrogation could continue.

Strax laughed and followed.

Over the next several minutes, the two passed through half of that floor of the palace.

Vex vaguely remembered taking the plush to play after dinner, but every time Strax asked where she had gone afterward, the answer changed.

First, she was certain she had been in the library.

Then she remembered that maybe she had gone to one of the training rooms.

Five minutes later, she concluded that she had possibly taken the dragon to the kitchen because he had been "hungry."

Strax opened a kitchen cabinet.

Nothing.

Vex opened another.

"He’s not here."

"I noticed."

She closed the door and spent a few seconds staring at the floor.

That was when Strax realized her restlessness no longer looked like nothing more than a child worrying over a lost toy.

Vex pressed her little fingers together and kept looking from side to side even when there was nowhere logical left to search in the room.

He crouched in front of her.

"Hey."

Vex looked at him.

"Are you okay?"

She tilted her head as though she did not understand why he would ask that.

"Vex is always okay."

Strax stared at her for a second.

Then started laughing.

The girl wrinkled her nose.

"What?"

"You talk about yourself like you’re someone else."

"Vex is Vex."

"I know."

"Then it’s right."

"Not exactly."

He lightly touched the tip of her nose with one finger.

"You say, ’I’m always okay.’"

Vex became thoughtful.

"I’m always okay."

"That’s it."

"Vex is always okay."

"You did that on purpose."

She started laughing.

That small, clear laugh echoed through the empty kitchen, and Strax ended up smiling too.

It was exactly what he had told Mercedes a few hours earlier.

That child’s laughter completely transformed any place she was in.

There was no blood between them.

No shared bloodline.

Strax was not the man who had fathered her and had no natural kinship with Vex.

Even so, something inside him had simply decided a long time ago that this little dragon was his daughter.

There had been no ceremony, no contract, no grand moment.

The relationship had simply happened little by little, every time she called him Dad, every ridiculous worry, every attempt to protect her, and now even during a nighttime search for a missing plush toy.

He ran a hand over her hair.

"We’ll find your dragon."

Vex nodded with absolute confidence.

"Because Daddy finds everything."

Strax raised an eyebrow.

"That expectation is getting dangerous."

They returned to the corridor.

This time, Strax decided to reconstruct the little girl’s path.

After dinner, Vex had taken some toys to a side room where she often played near the windows. From there, she had gone to Mercedes’s chambers, then had probably returned to her own room.

Strax entered the small room.

There were cushions scattered across the floor, a low table, and several drawings left on top of it.

Vex entered behind him.

"He’s not here."

Strax walked toward an armchair near the window.

He looked behind it.

Nothing.

Then he lifted a large cushion that had fallen onto the floor.

Two small white wings appeared.

Vex’s eyes widened.

"DRAGON!"

She practically threw herself at it.

Strax barely managed to lift the plush before Vex snatched it from his hands and squeezed it against her chest.

The white dragon was crushed between her small arms, its blue eyes glowing faintly in the dim light.

"You were here!" Vex complained to her own toy. "Vex looked everywhere!"

Strax crossed his arms.

"He was probably hiding after eating cookies under your bed."

Vex immediately looked at him.

Silence.

Strax smiled.

"I’ll find out that story later."

"Vex is sleepy."

"Convenient."

She yawned at that exact moment, and this time it was not fake.

Strax approached and picked her up.

Vex did not complain.

She simply hugged the plush with one hand and wrapped the other arm around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder as he carried her back to her room.

When they arrived, Strax placed the little girl on the bed.

Vex immediately settled among the pillows, still clutching the white dragon.

The plush was almost half her size, but apparently that did not bother her at all.

Strax pulled up the blanket.

"You’re very spoiled."

Vex looked at him.

"What does spoiled mean?"

Strax thought about the best way to explain it.

"It’s when you get a lot of things from people who love you."

Vex lowered her eyes toward the plush.

Then looked at the toys scattered around the room.

Then back at Strax.

"Daddy loves Vex?"

The question was simple.

So simple that Strax remained silent for a moment.

He pulled the blanket a little higher, bringing it close to her neck.

Vex continued clutching the white dragon, only her golden eyes and part of her blue hair visible above the covers.

Strax tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"Time to sleep."

Vex narrowed her eyes.

"You didn’t answer."

Strax smiled.

"You already know."

She stared at him for a few seconds.

Then a small smile appeared.

Vex hugged the dragon even tighter against her chest.

"Vex knows."

"I’m always okay," Strax corrected automatically.

She muffled a giggle against the plush.

"Vex knows."

"Stubborn."

"Daddy too."

Strax could not argue with that.

He turned off the small light beside the bed and began walking toward the door.

Before leaving, however, he looked back one last time.

Vex already had her eyes closed, the white dragon trapped between her arms and an almost imperceptible smile on her face.

Strax remained there for a few more seconds.

Then he slowly closed the door.

On the other side of the corridor, Mercedes was leaning against the wall.

She had heard everything.

Strax looked at her.

Mercedes said nothing.

She only smiled.

He walked past her and muttered:

"Don’t start."

Mercedes followed him down the corridor.

"I didn’t say anything."

"Your face did."

...

Far from the silent corridors of Mercedes’s palace, in a remote region of Asgard reserved for destructive training, Samira stood alone before an enormous rock formation.

The place already bore the marks of previous sessions: shallow craters, severed trees, deep grooves in the ground, and fragments of stone scattered across hundreds of meters.

Even so, that morning there was no sign of the violence that usually accompanied her training.

No crushing aura surrounded her body.

No energy overflowed from her legs or arms.

Most importantly, she did not wear that irritated expression that seemed to demand the entire world accept being broken apart by force.

Even her weapon was different.

The enormous sword that for so many years had seemed like an extension of her own body was gone.

After burying the remains of her old blade, Samira had spent some time training practically from scratch under the merciless eyes of Zi Bai and Kryssia.

Now she held a thin sword, almost delicate compared to the monstrously heavy weapons she had preferred for most of her life.

The blade was straight, narrow, and simple, with little weight beyond what was necessary to maintain perfect balance between hilt and tip.

In anyone else’s hands, it might have looked like an ordinary weapon.

In Samira’s, it looked far too small.

Zi Bai had chosen it for exactly that reason.

If Samira tried to compensate for any flaw with strength, she would notice immediately.

If she poured in too much energy, she would lose precision.

If she let emotion take control, the thin blade would expose every unnecessary movement.

That sword did not allow her to hide mistakes behind muscle, mana, or impact.

Samira stood before the enormous rock without moving.

Her eyes were closed.

The wind lightly touched her hair while dry leaves crossed the training field.

She breathed slowly, without forcing any special rhythm, simply allowing her own body to find balance.

For a long time, that part alone would have been impossible.

Standing still in front of something that needed to be cut had always felt like a waste of time.

Her old response would have been simple:

Advance.

Gather energy into her arm.

Use enough speed to increase the impact.

Smash the obstacle until it stopped existing.

Now she simply listened.

The wind.

Her own heartbeat.

The faint vibration of the sword inside its sheath.

The weight of her left foot against the ground.

The position of her shoulders.

The distance.

Nothing needed to be rushed.

Samira opened her eyes.

The enormous boulder ahead stood dozens of meters tall, its broad base forming what was practically a small isolated mountain.

It was exactly the kind of target she would have used weeks earlier to measure brute force.

She would have wondered how many tons she could move, how much mana she needed to concentrate, and whether she could destroy everything with a single impact.

This time, she did not think about destroying it.

She thought only about the cut.

Her right hand rested on the hilt.

Not a single muscle tensed beyond what was necessary.

Samira took one step.

The sword left its sheath.

There was no roar.

No explosion.

No gigantic wave of energy swept across the terrain, and no crater formed beneath her feet.

The movement was short, almost too elegant for someone like her.

The blade passed through the air along such a fine line that, for an instant, it looked as though Samira had not even struck the boulder.

She completed the motion.

The sword returned to its sheath.

Silence.

Samira remained still.

Then a line appeared across the stone.

Subtle at first.

Then deep.

The fissure crossed the entire formation from bottom to top, perfectly straight, without any lateral explosion.

A second later, the two halves of the enormous rock began slowly separating.

The ground trembled as tons of stone slid in opposite directions and fell with heavy crashes, raising a cloud of dust across the field.

Samira had not merely split a rock.

The cut had passed through the entire formation and continued beyond it.

Far in the distance, a thin line appeared along the slope of the mountain behind it.

Then the mountain split.

The two halves remained separated by several meters, as though an invisible blade had passed through kilometers of matter without encountering any resistance.

There were no signs of wasted energy along the path.

No devastated forest.

No indiscriminate destruction.

Everything that had not been directly on the line of the strike remained intact.

Samira observed the result in silence.

Her hand still rested on the hilt.

No trembling.

No excitement.

None of that old need to stare at the destruction and feel that the next strike needed to be even bigger.

She slowly exhaled.

A small smile appeared on her lips.

"So that was it..."

Samira looked at the thin sword at her waist and then at the mountain perfectly divided in two.

For years, she had believed that becoming stronger meant putting more of herself into every strike.

More strength.

More energy.

More anger.

More will.

But for the first time, she was beginning to understand that a true cut might require exactly the opposite.

Removing everything that was unnecessary.

Samira closed her eyes again, feeling a strange calm settle into her chest.

Then she let out a small sigh.

"Me becoming calmer really is something surprising."