Author's note : Check out my other fiction : End of Life

Please point out any grammar errors.

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Lisa somehow made her way down to the third floor. But It’s still not looking good for her. There are too many maids and servants on this floor compared to upper floors. There is a bunch of them right in front of her. They seemed to be chatting casually. Time is running out of her hand. She has to make it outside of the castle before they find out about her escape. Lisa is afraid that if she comes out in front of other maids, they will realize that she is not part of their staff. The problem that is the only way to cross this floor.

“Alright..Calm down Lisa..you can do it..”

She takes out the knife and fork from before. She throws the fork down on the floor. It makes noise that is loud enough for maids to hear.

“What was that?”

“Don’t know. Let’s check it out.”

Two of them starts moving towards Lisa. Lisa quickly infuses mana into her hands and hides behind a pillar. The maids come to the spot where the fork is dropped. One of them picks up the knife. Lisa quickly comes out of the pillar and punches right in the head of one maid. The other one gets startled by her appearance. Lisa kicks her on the legs. The maid crotches down. Lisa does a spin kick on her head.

“Alright, two down..”

There are still three of them. Luckily, they are not close enough to see what happened. But they heard the noises. Lisa runs at them as she infuses mana into her legs. Lisa quickly jumps on one servant with amazing speed. Lisa broke his teeth when she punched him. Two more remaining. But one maid ran away. Lisa takes out other servant as she cursed. Lisa followed last maid with all her strength. She infused all the mana in her legs to increase her speed.

The maid runs while breathing heavily. She was just a little far away from the guards room. She looks behind to see Lisa chasing her like a monster. The maid turned blue as she ran with all her might. She sees the door in front of her. This is it if she goes inside the guards in there will see her. She stretches out her hand at the door knob but her hand falls down with her body as Lisa knocks her out from behind.

“fewwww...That was close.”

Lisa wipes her head and drags the body away from the door. Lisa moves down to the second floor. Her heart starts to beat faster. It’s already lunch time. The maid responsible for taking care of Lisa is going to come to her room anytime. Lisa has to do it fast.

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After everyone leaves to complete their task. I chatted with Mila and Aria. I was curious about Aria’s progress. I don’t want to take any risk like last time. If Aria is not prepared yet. I won’t take her with me.

“So Miss Mila, you taught Aria everything.”

“She surpassed even me. Her growth speed is ridiculous. You both are monsters.”

I guess it is the effect of her speed learning ability. Miss Mila says she is strong but I am still not convinced. So I thought of an idea.

“Hey, Aria let’s have a duel.”

“wh-why..” She became flustered.

“I want to test your strength myself. It’s not like I doubt you but I don’t want to make any mistake like last time.”

Aria stares at me for a second before making a serious expression.

“Okay. I get it. Let’s do this.”

We moved towards the area where I fought with Carlos before. It seems Aria has been using this place to train herself. I brandished my sword and Aria takes out her knives. She holds one in each of her hand. She glares at me like a hunter watching at her prey. I gave surprise look at her expression.

“Here I come, master..”

She dashes at me. Fast, She is too fast. She is much faster than Rodrik even when he was in that room. She quickly closes the distance between us. I dodge her with hair’s breadth. I jump some steps behind to make some distance between us. But she gets closer to me again. I dodge her again but she quickly follows up with a kick. I doge her again but she continues with a roundhouse kick. This time she caught me. I had to block it with my two hands.

I manage to take some distance between us. I realized that I have to get serious if I want to fight her. She is a lot stronger than she was used to be. This time I dash at her and perform a vertical sword strike. She turns her body slightly. But I change the direction of sword in the middle of the attack and turn it sideways. Aria bents backwards. What the hell? She is too good.

I knew that Aria would quickly follow it up with some counter so I made some distance between us. Aria gets her body up and throws a knife at me. I blocked it with my sword. It made a metallic sound as the knife flew away after hitting the sword. Aria moved towards the direction where the knife flew away and catches it. At the same time she throws her other knife at me. I block with my sword too and Aria catches it again.

Aria looked at me with those predator eyes as she spinned the knives in her hands. Where is my innocent Aria? This is totally someone else. I thought as I wiped the sweat from my face. But on a serious note, I was glad to see her improvement. She has a mindset of a someone who wants to win and survive. Before she was not confident in her own abilities. But now she looks like someone who will find her way to win even in oddest of situations.

I grinned a little as I looked at her. She dashed at me this time with even greater speed than before. It seems she infused mana into her body. So I guess she is going all out now or who knows maybe she has some more secrets that I don’t know of. Our fight continued for a while as the sound of metal clashing with metal resounded over and over. We both got cuts here and there. We made sure to not to make a lethal move. But I think It’s time to end this duel. I am satisfied with her results already.

I infused mana into my body and dashed. Aria was surprised at my speed. But she quickly took cover. It wasn’t enough for me as I kept coming at her like shadow sticking to her body. In seconds, her movements became dull, and she showed an opening. I used this chance to knock off the knife from one hand than the other hand. Finally, I pointed my sword at her.

“Alright, This is over.” Miss Mila said from the corner.

Aria drops her predator expression and quickly comes closer to me. She touches my wounds ignoring hers.

“Master, Are you okay? It doesn’t hurt much right.”

There is my innocent Aria. Sweet as sugar. My wounds are going to heal anyway. Well, most of them are already healed. So I let Miss Mila heal her while I check my and her status.

Status WindowName:DenRace:HumanGender:MaleAge:16Health:????Mana:350Strength:890Agility:990Vitality:670Intelligence:250

Status WindowName:AriaRace:????Gender:FemaleAge:16Health:1500Mana:150Strength:630Agility:950Vitality:450Intelligence:210

Her agility is almost equals to mine, but it seems her mana pool is lower than me. Maybe I should bring her to the mana room in Rodrik’s mansion. Well, I guess she is amazing even like this. I think I can take her with on this and this time she will definitely survive. I have confidence in her.

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Lisa is now on the ground floor. Just few more hurdles on her way before she reaches to the entrance leading outside. The problem is that her escape has already been found out. The guards are moving here and there in search of her. Her cover has also blown up as they also found the unconscious nude maid in one of the room. She is hiding behind a pillar at the moment and waiting for right chance.

There are just way too many guards between her and the main entrance. She won’t make it even if she run for it by infusing all the mana in her legs. When she was troubled by what to do? she sees a group of people going towards towards main entrance while their body is covered by robe with hood over their faces. Lisa remembers that priests are allowed to enter the castle.

She moves from pillar to pillar. She closes her distance between priest group and takes out one priest from behind. She quickly removes his robe and wears it. She leaves the body, only slightly hiding it behind the pillar since she doesn’t have much time. She follows behind the group as they make their way to the main entrance.

They moved between the guards until they reached main entrance. The three guards stopped them at that point and asked them to show their faces. Lisa quickly jumps at the guard who is checking them and punches his face. Since she is close to the main entrance now, it is possible to make it out for her. She makes a run for the outside. All the guards who saw her runs behind her but Lisa is too fast. She can easily make it.

Lisa started thinking that once she is outside she will go straight for the forest. It will be harder for them to follow her. She ran with all her might. That’s when a knife struck right into her leg. Lisa fell down on the ground. She looked back in agony and pain.

“That’s enough for you..”

There stood her former maid Meryl. She came closer to Lisa and takes her knife out of her leg forcefully. Lisa screamed in pain. But she doesn’t want to give up, not after coming this close to exit. Lisa infused mana in her body and tried to punch Meryl. But Meryl caught her hand and slapped Lisa’s face.

“Don’t make it harder for yourself…”

Meryl warned Lisa as she puts her knife on Lisa’s throat.

“Don’t be too rough with our guest, Meryl.”

“Lord Nestor..”

Nestor called out to Meryl from behind. Meryl understanding his intentions brought back her knife and backed away from Lisa. Nestor looked at Lisa while smiling. He looked at the wound on her leg.

“Now that’s a problem. Heal her and bring her to her room.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Nestor told Meryl to which she replies obediently to her lord. Soon enough Lisa was healed and taken back to the room by Meryl. When she got into the room Nestor was already there. He motioned the guards to leave. There is only three people in this room now, Lisa, Meryl and Nestor.

“How is your leg now?” Nestor asked Lisa.

Lisa just stared at him. Meryl was ready to take her step but Nestor stopped her.

“It’s fine even if you stay silent. I only wanted to tell you that not to do something like this again. It was good that I was there this time but you might get killed by someone next time. I can only imagine what would have happened if I wasn’t following you.”

“What……”

“Oh, you really think that I wouldn’t notice you when you were hiding in that room or I wouldn’t set up some kind of mechanism to let me know when you are not in this room. I knew from the beginning that you escaped from here. You didn’t notice it but I was following you all along. It was quite fun to see you making your escape. I must say I am impressed. I want you even more than before now.”

Lisa’s face turned blue at his words. Certainly, Nestor was known for his intelligence. Someone as him will not let her escape this easily. She was too naive. Nestor then moved closer to Meryl.

“You also did a good job there, Meryl.”

“I am not worthy of your praise, my lo-mmm”

Nestor closed her lips as he kissed Meryl. Meryl doesn’t show any resistance as she accepted it. Lisa averted her eyes as she was disgusted by it. Nestor looked at Lisa and grinned.

“Don’t worry. You will take her place very soon.”

“Who would want to do something like that with you?” Lisa replied angrily.

“Don’t worry, I have something special for you.”

Suddenly the door was knocked by someone.

“ah..It looks like it is already here. Come in”

Nestor said to the person behind the door. A maid comes inside while holding a tray in her hand. There is a collar in that tray. The collar is engraved with gold and diamonds. There is snake head like shape on it. Nestor took the collar from the tray. Meryl held Lisa. Lisa didn’t understand what was going on, but she struggled to push away Meryl because she sensed something was not right here.

“Alright calm down this is going to hurt just a little.”

Nestor said as he brought the collar closer to Lisa’s neck. Collar started to give ominous aura as the jewels started to shine. Lisa tried to back away but couldn’t as Meryl held her tightly. Nestor slowly puts the collar on Lisa’s neck. Collar grips on Lisa’s neck tightly like it has life of it’s own. Lisa felt needles entering her neck. She screamed in pain and struggled to take the collar out of her neck.

“What did you do?”

Lisa screamed at Nestor.

“Didn’t I tell you that I won’t force anything on you? So instead I am going to make you ask me for it. This is a special collar that I made for you. It took me a long time. I used a special type of poison in this collar. It will reap your memories and personality from you and make you obey me. In simpler words, It is brainwashing.”

Lisa turned pale at his words. She doesn’t know what to do now. It doesn’t seem like Nestor is lying either.

“Well, It will take some time so I should take my leave. A maid will bring you lunch shortly. I hope you like it. It’s my favourite dish.”

Nestor pulled Lisa’s head and smelled through her hair. Lisa pushed him away. Meryl tried to take a step again but Nestor stopped her.

“Don’t worry, Meryl. Soon she will come asking me for it.”

Nestor left with Meryl. Lisa cried all day after that. She doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her now. She wants to escape. She wants to leave. She wants someone to save her.