Imryll sat awkwardly in the leather chair. Damien didn't pay her any more attention and just continued reading his books, as if he hadn't been almost assassinated five minutes ago.
Imryll studied his face. He must be incredibly powerful… His skin felt stronger than magicsteel, not to mention he seemed so unfazed by my pathetic assassination attempt. What a mysterious man. He somehow has a deep relationship with the queen and knew luna runes. He's also a psychic mage that's also invincible to an assassination? What kind of monster is he?
Since Imryll worked in intel gathering, she knew how impossible Psychic mages were to deal with. They could foresee your approach with clairvoyance, relay information faster with telepathy, and even fly away with levitation.
Luckily for her, Psychic mages were terrible in life-or-death situations and had no offensive abilities. The only notable one was petrification, which was restricted to A-grade.
Psychic mages could also use telepathy to flood their opponent's mind with useless information or noise to disrupt their spell casting, but to an assassin, that was useless as a dagger to the throat didn't need spell casting.
While Imryll took another sip of the watery tea, she noticed one of the books Damien was reading.
The Secrets of Spatial Magic.
"Lord Damien."
Damien looked up with a slightly annoyed face but quickly hid it.
"Hmh?"
"Do you know Spatial magic?" Imryll asked with anticipation. Maybe he could shed some insight on Spatial magic. She wasn't allowed to attend university, so learning magic had to be done alone at home. As a result, she had been stuck at the C-grade of Spatial magic for the last three years.
"I know all magic," he answered with unwavering confidence. "Although I cannot use anything other than Psychic magic, I can teach anything else."
Imryll summoned up some courage and asked, "Could you teach me Spatial magic?"
A dangerous glint passed through Damien's eyes, and his blood-red eyes seemed to stir as he considered the request.
"Sure," he snapped the book he was reading closed, "But what's in it for me?"
Imryll's initial glee at the acceptance turned into concern. What could she possibly offer this man? He had connections to the queen and soon the princess when she delivered the parchment of runes.
Imryll considered what she had to offer. She had no money that was of any significant value, and she owned no family heirlooms or magical items. She did have intel about the royal family, but that was all confidential, and he likely knew it all already considering he even knew her name.
Imryll gulped hard. She had nothing! She glanced at Damien's amused and handsome face.
Maybe…
Her pride as a Silvermoon elf almost made her shoot that idea before it could blossom in her heart, but she really wanted to reach a higher grade and not be so useless!
Was there really nothing else she could offer him?
She looked over at Fay, who sat in a chair and reading over some notes Damien had provided her. They seemed really easy to understand, and she could almost see the mana moving around her body. Was she at D-grade already?
Fay looked up from her notes and gave Imryll a smile and said, "It's not that bad. He's rather gentle, all things considered."
What did that mean? How was he gentle?
Damien had amusement plastered on his face, as if he expected her to give up and let him return to his reading.
Darn it!
"I-if you can get me to B-grade…I can let you… Ahhh, this is too embarrassing."
After a deep breath, she said, "You can have my body! Goddamn it, I have nothing else!"
Damien rose from his chair and pulled at his shirt's cuff links to straighten out his suit.
"Fay, can you please go run a bath for Miss Imryll? This shouldn't take long."
"No, teach me first, then I will pay. I promise and swear on Princess Emilia's honor!" Imryll quickly responded. Thoughts of Damien taking her right here and now were shooting through her head.
Damien looked confused and tilted his head. "Relax, Miss Imryll. I was planning to teach you right now. It will only take a few minutes."
"O-okay?" Imryll was very confused and afraid but went with Damien's statement anyway.
Fay left the room with a slight smirk on her face, and Damien brought over a piece of paper.
"Miss Imryll, when you use Spatial magic, how do you visualize going through something in your mind eye?"
Imryll took a second—her mind was a little muddled at the thought of the impending payment—but she answered quickly. "I imagine myself as breaking up into lots of little pieces, and then I push myself through."
Damien nodded and brought over a piece of parchment.
"At your level, Miss Imryll, you are trying to force your way through matter like so."
He floated the piece of parchment in front of himself and punched a hole through the middle with his fingers. The parchment made a ripping noise as his fingers tore through.
"This is how you are currently treating Spatial magic: you forcefully punch a hole through reality to go through matter. This is terribly inefficient mana-wise and also creates noise as you do so. This mindset also restricts you to only going through matter rather than around it."
"How can I go around it?" Imryll asked with a lot more interest and concentration now that Damien was explaining such a topic that made sense to her.
"You are treating the spatial plane as if it's 2D or flat, but as you can see, even though the parchment is thin, it's not completely flat. Instead, try to imagine bending the matter and going around it."
Damien proceeded to bend the parchment at the middle. He then did his punch motion again but hit thin air as the parchment had been moved out of the way. Moving his finger to the side, he circled the paper demonstrating that by bending matter he could move around it without making a sound.
"Instead of forcing your way through matter, try to bend like this instead. This way you can pass easily and make no noise in the process. Now watch this."
Damien once again unfolded the parchment.
"For teleportation, imagine this parchment is the ground."
Damien then marked two spots on the parchment with ink.
"If you wanted to travel between these two distances, you can simply fold the parchment and poke a hole through reality and pass through like you have been doing till now. It will make a noise, but do you see how I can shortened the distance between these two marks on the parchment to zero by folding the parchment first?"
Damien folded the parchment and lined up the two ink dots before punching a hole through.
Imryll just stood there with her jaw gaped open. This wasn't the knowledge in the textbooks she had read, but it made way more sense!
Damien then wrote two runic spells along with their translation in this world's language on a piece of parchment.
"You can translate runes?" she asked as if she was in the presence of a god.
"Indeed, it's just a language, after all," Damien answered as if it was easy.
"No, no, no, nobody can read the runes. We just simply memorize the runes that were left behind by the ancestors. We have no idea what the runes mean!"
Damien just grinned. "This should be enough to justify the payment?"
"Ugh! This is more important than that! This could change the way everyone views magic!"
Damien's eyes became dangerous. "It's a bad idea to go back on a deal with me."
Imryll's face went pale. Damien was a little scary but seemed kind and gentle enough considering how strong he was…but now he was looking at her as if she was just food.
"Eek, okay, okay! I'm sorry! I will go and prepare!"
Imryll promptly ran out of the room in distress and found Fay waiting in the corridor. "The bath is this way."
"Lady Fay, is he going to eat me?" Imryll asked, half serious and half as a joke. Fay just gave a weird smile and didn't reply.
The bath was enormous and fitting for a noble's house. The ones in Princess Emilia's part of the palace were larger, but obviously, Imryll had never used them. Instead, she used water provided in a bucket at the inns she stayed in to clean herself.
She looked down at her feminine figure that lay in the warm water. She was proud of her body that was slightly toned with muscle from her years of training.
Her mind was scattered. Everything was too confusing. She expected it to take Damien a few days or even weeks to teach her, and that was assuming he could even promote her to B-grade in the first place. She made the deal half assuming it to never be fulfilled.
But in just half an hour, she felt the familiar feeling of enlightenment she hadn't felt in years. Her grade had increased to C+, and with a bit more practice, she should be able to reach B-grade in no time.
Imryll was only eighteen years old, though, and had little experience in this side of being an adult. She had spent her whole life training under Queen Kaylessa and only recently was pushed over to Princess Elizabeth due to her slow progress and lackluster results on missions.
"Sigh…" She felt very wrong for trading her body for knowledge, but this world was not kind to the weak, and she had nothing else to offer. Although she had to admit she was slightly curious…
Slumping down into the warm water, Imryll started blowing bubbles into the water to try and distract herself.
After another few minutes of bathing, she gracefully got out and dried herself with the fluffy and clean towel that was provided.
"Guess it's time." She was not happy at the thought of losing her virginity to someone she had just met and had no plan to marry, but she couldn't regret her slightly rash decision-making earlier. Who could have known he knew how to read runes?
Her clothes had been removed and replaced with a bathrobe. Probably by Fay while she was occupied with her thoughts.
Her damp silver hair clung to her neck as she used the bathrobe to cover herself, and she exited the room and walked down the corridor to the master bedroom. She had seen it on the way to the bath, so she knew its location.
Inside, lying on the bed, was Damien. He was naked and seemed to be enjoying her staring at his abs.
Eventually, Imryll gathered the courage to walk over to the bed and lay down next to Damien. She was incredibly stiff and felt this whole thing was awkward.
Before she could even remove her bathrobe or prepare herself, Damien came over. His eyes had become a deep, scarlet red, and his mouth opened, revealing inch-long fangs.
A vampire?!
Imryll almost screamed in shock, but Damien grabbed her and pulled her body into a tight hug. He then whispered into her ear.
"Be careful when making deals with vampires—especially starving ones."
His fangs punctured her delicate skin, and he greedily drank her scarlet elven blood that tasted and smelled like vanilla.
Imryll let out a yelp and struggled against Damien's hold, but his strength was insane. She tried to activate her spatial skills, but Blood magic had started circulating in her body and disrupting the flow of her mana.
Soon, Imryll became disorientated from the lack of blood and fainted in Damien's embrace.