Lilly POV.
Two weeks after Ray was thrown below.
I slowly open my eyes after particularly long session of cultivation.
Even though I didn't have enough Kingguy, I could feel it I was close to a breakthrough.
It was a feeling that was impossible to understand for anyone who wasn't a cultivator, it felt as if your flesh was somehow too small for your bones, or as if your bones themselves were inflated from the inside.
A breakthrough and what exactly I wasn't sure, but I would learn eventually.
Looking around my particularly magnificent room, I reached out to hand for the water that sat on my dresser.
I shouldn't have been able to reach it, even with me being a cultivator I wasn't , physically anyway.
Activating enchantments I had a woven into a ring around my middle finger, the ring flared with white light, even as the cup on the table did the exact same.
Then in a flash set cup was in my hand, not a drop of water wasted.
I smirked as I leaned back into what had to be a dozen pillows, letting my legs stretch out instead of being in a cross legged position I have been in before. There were perks to being a genius.
If Leon had heard my thoughts, he would've said something along the lines of. "Benefits to being father's favorite, you mean."
Leon would say father only gave me these materials because I was his favorite, but what he didn't seem to understand is, I, wasn't his favorite. He didn't even particularly like me or any of his other children, it was just my talent.
Talent was all our father cared about, and since I had that in abundance. He treated me better than my other siblings, but if anyone with talent, matching or surpassing, mine appeared, all of the preferential treatments would disappear like a fart on a wind.
Tossing those gloomy thoughts in my mental equivalent of a trashcan, I downed every drop of water in the cup before, throwing it back on the dresser.
It landed with barely a shake, this time it wasn't because of my talent with enchantments, just a testament to the amount of control I had over my strength.
"You gained such things when you stepped onto the battlefield."
I thought as memories of blades flashing, blood spray, and voices of both rage and fear mixing in the air around me.
It wasn't like I had been standing anywhere, particularly dangerous, if anything I have been standing in one of the safest spots during the skirmish.
I had been standing among the first and second ring cultivators of the iron blood family.
While I was considered a talent among my peers now, out there all of my achievements.
All of my accomplishments throughout my life seemed like nothing.
What I had made my first enchantment at nine? Would that enchantment somehow cause the enemies in front of me to stop in awe and my greatness.
What I had reached the second ring and barely 10 years old? Again, what did it matter, yes, some people would probably hesitate seeing me on a battlefield, but those people were idiots fools that would rather underestimate their enemy instead of thinking about just how could anyone truly weak make it on a battlefield of this scale.
My fist clenched, as I thought about the hours, no days of constantly swinging my blade.
Until I couldn't lift it anymore, until there was nothing else to raise my blade too.
Even with all of these problems, and realizations, I had never truly been in danger.
Throughout the entire battle, my father, the iron blood patriarch had been observing, monitoring the entire battle, and when it look like I was in true danger, he would come in out of nowhere.
Then, suddenly whoever I was facing would be dead, and I would be standing behind the Iron blood Warriors, my father's own gray eyes and black hair, traits I had inherited locked on me with absolutely no emotion.
"Do you know what you did wrong?"
The only words he said to me, not are you OK, or are you tired, just do you know what you did wrong.
I had once resented my father for his emotionless expression, but I realized with time that I was just how he was.
If I gave him the answer, he wanted to hear, I would be sent back into the battle, and if I didn't well, even I didn't know what would happen. No one because I had always had the right answer, until the last time.
I could see it now, the last battle I had participated in, by this point, everyone on the battlefield knew their enemies like the back of their hands, we no longer just struck with the strength of our cultivation realms, but with the ether of them as well.
People who I had seen use their ether so appallingly that it made me want to kill them just to save our enemies The effort, were now using it with precision, a mir six months had taught people something that would have taken years if you're not forced by circumstances.
That precision in a battle was much more important than brute force.
I had just crossed blades with a peak, second ring spear user, the force of his blow had nearly knocked my feet out of my boots and nearly threw me to the ground, but due to enchantments that are in throughout my armor, I was able to stay on my feet.
"Impressive, for a child anyway."
He said, his voice, indifferent, even as the amount of ether surrounding him made the hairs on my arms, stand up and alarm.
Then with no hesitation, wind ether surrounded his entire body before he began to move in a blur.
Instincts honed from months of standing on battlefield just like this kept me from dying instantly. Instantly, realizing my great sword, normally A great asset in fights like this would be too slow, if I used it how I had been anyway, I quickly used my left hand, which I had taken off the hill of the grate sword to hold onto the back of it so I could have more control.
Then, using the great sword as somewhat of a staff, I began to block the flurry of spear strikes he was throwing at me.
I could only keep this up for so long though, eventually, after I couldn't enhance my body with ether anymore, he knocked my sword free of my hands.
" Die with honor, after all you fought well."
Then he stabbed forward, the ether around the tip of a spear swelling into a miniature tornado that I knew instinctively was dangerous.
I would like to say, I tried my best to block it, or that I strained to dodge the blow, or that I even watched it fly towards me. I did none of that, though, because of the simple fact that the spear was moving so damn fast near my eyes or my instincts could keep up enough for me to do anything.
Before familiar tugging on the back of my shirt, told me I have been yanked from the battle again.
When I could tell up from down again, I was behind the Ironblood troops, the back of my armor jacket being held by my father.
"Do you know what you did wrong?"
I normally would have Answered immediately, but something had caught my eye.
The patriarch of the Ironblood was always immaculately, dressed in shades of black red and silver, the colors of our house. Somehow, throughout the entire battle, he would be able to walk out without getting a single drawing of blood on disclose, or even slight crease or wrinkle out of place about his outfit.
Yet now, at this moment, he looked nothing like the patriarch I know. Once carefully combed back shoulder, length, black hair, was now thoroughly disheveled, and there was a rip going down his sleeve, starting from the elbow and what I thought was blood was slowly seeping into the arm of his black button down.
'I said, do you know what you did wrong?"
I noticed something else as well, his voice normally emotionless, was now showing a bit of anger, and when the patriarch of the Ironblood clan became angry, either someone was about to die due to his anger, or someone had to fail to die when he had wanted him too, causing him to be angry in the first place.
Considering the gash on his forearm, or what I thought was a gash from the angle he was holding me. I wasn't really sure, I would say it was the ladder.
"And maybe the former as well, if I don't answer him soon."
I thought as I saw his lips tightened an annoyance.
Before I could open my mouth and try to answer this question with a satisfactory answer, he had already thrown me through the air. Turning around, he spoke without looking back as he walked into the woods around the clearing where the battle has started.
"Just fucking useless, captain call up two of the guards to take her back to the manner, she's obviously not fit for the damn battlefield, are all of my spon gonna be this fucking pathetic? What was the point of giving birth to four children if only two of them are even worth the effort?"
My body shot through the air like an arrow, before slamming into a tree trunk with enough force to make my teeth rattle.
Once again, I hadn't even seen him move before I was in the air, it was pathetic.
"You heard the patriarch, miss please come with us."
My head snapped around as I saw two middle-aged guards, from their aura I could tell they were only in the first ring, yet as soon as I thought about doing anything, but coming with them, I felt instinctive danger. I had just thought about knocking them both out with my blade before following my father to wherever he had Been going, but just the very thoughts made cold sweat appear on my back.
As if they knew what I had just been thinking, they both spoke in unison.
"Miss. Please come with us, you heard the master."
They were eerie to say the very least, their voices were entirely monotone, and their eyes were blank, as if the concept of emotion what is entirely foreign to them.
They weren't remarkable in any particular way, both of them looked extremely simple, someone you would look at once on the street and let your eyes pass right over them we're out a second glance, someone who could probably look you right in the eye, and standing not 3 feet away from me, yet in less than five minutes, you would forget it never happened if you knew what happened at all. They were all that and more, because they were designed to be like that, they were designed to be unremarkable, plain, simple, someone who didn't stand out from the crowd.
They were the patriarch's personal guard, and they were here showing me back to the Ironblood Manor.