Chapter 11 Duke's Study

Breakfast was a tense affair for Duke Evens Lockheed. Someone in the kitchen staff had added chiles to his eggs and some sort of hot sauce to his drink. These were minor trivialities to the two ladies seated further down the table. His daughter and wife sat closer to him, but his eldest daughter and maid sat further down. Waves of happiness radiated from the two as they enjoyed breakfast after some light morning exercise made the fruits all the sweeter.

Few things on this earth irritated more than source of your irritation and suffering being happy and joyous.

His door was being replaced as he sat there the morning escapades of had reached his ears. Several large impact craters, multitudes of cuts and gouges, all which made it look like a warzone. All made by just two people. Furthermore, it showcased their incredible combat prowess, making it impossible to order his knights or any troops to subdue either of them.

"Daughter, I will see you in my office after breakfast. It seems something destroyed a courtyard." Valentine had not yet decided on whether to bring her father to heel. Iris didn't care as he and everyone else on this continent were insignificant to her. The only one that mattered was Valentine and she still wasn't sure what they were to each other. They were companions but that was as far as the sage was certain of. She knew she wanted to stay with the quiet girl more than anyone else, but at four hundred plus years did they even have a shot together?

"Very well, if you must know we spared lightly this morning-"

"Lightly? The field is effectively destroyed, it will take weeks to fix." Duke Lockheed snaped back.

"I can fix it if it makes things easier." Iris Interject popping another scone in her mouth, good pastries were hard to find in the martial realm after all.

"That's not necessary, I'm sure the duke has people who can fix fields and doors after all." Lady Lockheed spoke looking at her beloved lady.

"Why don't you just hear what your father wants, so you can get it out of the way? We also wanted to hear the rest of the story Lady Iris told us." Lady Charlotte interrupted this time, aware that neither her daughter nor her husband would back down. It was easier to just push the two off together and let deal with each other, rather than come up with a solution to help her stepdaughter.

Duke Lockheed noticed the honorific and found it distasteful to address the common as such. However, there was only so much he could do least his youngest daughter lose faith in her daddy.

"Very well I will come by shortly." Setting her utensils down she gently dabbed her face with the cloth napkin. Standing, the noble lady did something unnoble. Iris was still eating and had not made move to stand so she leaned over behind her chair. Draping herself over the sage, she gently kissed the crown of her head, her arms loosely hung over the smaller girl. After a long moment she stood back and left the room.

Lady Iris just stayed still; her hand frozen as she had reached for another biscuit. She had enough time to come to terms that she might have finally found a significant other. This possibility made everything feel so giddy and significantly more embarrassed. So, she pretended nothing was wrong, resumed eating and ignored the dark flush across her face.

!@# !@# !@#

"Tell me about how you destroyed the courtyard." The duke didn't bother to offer his daughter.

"I answered that question." Valentine may have been on the fence, but her father was being simply to rude to her. He didn't ask, he demanded. He offered not a seat or tea, or any other amenities to his daughter. The noble responded simply and coldly before sitting.

"You also destroyed my door and bookshelf, not to mention, you nearly killed Count Gerald. How did my weak useless daughter suddenly be capable of such destruction?"

"I was never useless. You simply saw me as tool to free my sister and your mistress from any obligations."

"Charlotte is the rightful duchess; I will not stand for you to referee to her in such disgrace." Evens responded furiously.

"Ignoring the truth is not something I can do and still pursues my own truth, let alone great truths. I have no care for how you chose to call things, but it will not change what is." Valentine responded evenly to her father. She had long known that he never loved her mother, that it was a political marriage. He failed her as a father and as a family. However, he made vows, and in choosing to break them for her stepmother was enough to tell her that he was scum.

"Yet your dalliance with that maid is somehow truth" Duke Lockheed spat back.

"She is the Rainbow Saint, an ascend immortal. There is no truth that will ever allow you to stand on her level. I love her, that's truth enough." Same sex partnerships and marriages were huge red flags. Holy doctrine and a strong patriarch culture insisted that no man should lay with man, no women with women. The martial realm on the other hand cared about one's strength and one's conventions. If someone didn't like the idea, they would have to be able to withstand the other parties.

"If nothing else, I have the strength to stand against this world and win, do you?" The question was a barb to her weak mortal father. No councils or sects existed here that would prevent the intervention in mortal affairs. Father Lockheed was a duke, one of the strongest men in terms of power on the continent, useless before a nascent realm cultivator much less an ascend immortal. If he wished to sidestep his abuse to her, than she saw no reason to hold back that he was the weaker of the two.

"The whole world? Madness. It's not even possible." The duke spurted out in wake of her declaration. Allowing herself to be lead, Valentine responded.

"I cultivated my strength through my own efforts." She had suspected that he wanted to know about their powers. It wasn't a question of weather or not Valentine could take the seat of the duchy. It was how much time she would have to spend with the day to day running and management. There was no way she wanted to give up those hours that she could spend with her precious Iris. It seemed simpler to tell this story and let her father run the show while she spent time with the sage.

"Your efforts? How did your efforts amount to shattering doors?" He couldn't quite manage to hold the gleam of greed out of his eyes.

"Practice, with enough practice anyone can cultivate."

"Cultivate? Cultivate what." The edge in his voice lessened.

"Dao" Valentine said simply. The word didn't exist, and her father couldn't tell what it meant from the context.

"Dao? What is Dao? Could I-"

"Perhaps it would be better if I told the whole story, starting from how I feel into the martial realm…"

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It was difficult to say when the noble lady had woken, what was certain is she was far from her gardens, Iris nor the winged fire monster were anywhere to be found. Trees where everywhere, in fact she was half collapsed over one. This dense forest was completely foreign to her.

Valentine didn't know what to make of the events that happened. There was underbrush stuck to her dress, and she had been wearing flat shoes. Her first order of the day was to lay still and hoped she woke up. Actually, it was to shake and sob, then lay still to wake.

An undetermined amount of time passed, gray sky formed above, and soon large droplets were slamming into her forehead. It didn't take long for the rain to drive the young noble to action. Struggling to her feet in her quickly soaked dress she managed to stagger forward. There was no clear path, so she forced her way into the dense jungle. Despite being a pampered noble, she didn't seem to have much trouble. In fact, other than the searing ache with each step she surprisingly functional. Her body moved and worked better than it ever had, perhaps this was part of her building her foundation.

Scratches and blood accumulated on her arms and legs; the forest unforgiving in its tithe. Shortly a predator caught wind, recognizing the blood of a cultivator. Night bay frost ocelots like most ocelots were small cats. When they hit 100 years, they were still small cats as a tiger could be consider a small cat.

Noble lady didn't know what was causing every hair on her body to stand on end, but she knew enough from Iris that it meant run. Had this been one of the books she was so fond of it would have kicked off an epic dramatic chase scene in which one would barley escape. In a real dense forested area, she took two large steps into a tree branch that clotheslined her. It was a stroke of luck that the quadruped was made warry. Cultivators did not run into tree branches there fore this might not be prey worth the effort.

Dazed and still hackled by something she couldn't see, Valentine picked a direction and kept moving. Rather than an action chase scene, this turned into a heart thumping thriller. Crawling through the underbrush as fast as she could without hurting herself was hard enough for someone with zero wilderness experience sans a park trip.

That presences never changed even as she became more and more battered and exhausted. Despite the constant hammer against her sense, it was hard to maintain a sense of panic. Heavy rain continued to fall, but the forest did well enough at keeping her just sopping wet, rather than wet and rained on.

Rock formations were common in this region, some ranging small stones to sit on to peaks. Some of the boulders took shapes as they cultivated to become mountains, others ground themselves to dust to produce gems. Caves were a common form of cultivation for mountains as small bits of energy would come from those who took shelter.

In her case this one was a young formation the size of a small-town shop. A narrow cave formed on the surface of the entrance of the "thousand year" earthen eminence It was large enough to squeeze into for a thin duchess. Narrowing quickly to the rear, she was able to get several feet into it before she felt that she would get stuck if she tried further. For a short while she heavily breathed tension slowly leaving her. Cold set in shortly after, shivering the girl to the point of vibration.

Giant paws with claws that glistened in the darkened cave caused also caused the duchess to shake.

Valentine found she could get further back into the cave than she thought.

Each twitch and gasping reach brought the paw and its sharp points closer elicited whimpers from the noble. It did become clearer that neither the cat nor its paw could enter her small cave. When it finally gave up, Valentine could get a glimpse of the retreating form. It had violet purple fur with blood red spot rings about its body. It was also the size of a small carriage, no wonder her hair stood end on end.

How much time passed after it disappeared the girl couldn't tell. The sky had darkened, and she was too numb to even shake anymore.

She heard the trees outside the clearing fall before she could even notice someone standing there. From what little she could tell; he wore robes like what they had found Iris In. Behind him the cat she had been avoiding was in pieces. It was her first person that she had been privy to since she had arrived, tears streamed down her face.

"I know you are there, foundation realm women! I Gin Wu Lin, Sect leader of the Bladeless sect, demand you come forth. If you refuse than don't blame this elder for what I do next!"