"And with that said, what are you trying to suggest?"
Leo made use of the opportunity the girl presented to him, grabbing a hold of her waist and stopping her before she could move away or turn to face him.
And with nothing but the back of Camila's head to talk to, Leo couldn't see the girl's expression. But that didn't mean he couldn't get a read on her.
Just by holding Camila by her waist, he could tell when the girl twitched if not nearly jumped when he laid his hands down on her. Yet, when she heard his words…
Camila froze all over.
'Hmm?' Leo raised his left eyebrow. 'So was I right, or did she just realize what her actions implied so far?'
To say that Leo was in a pickle would be a gross understatement.
On one hand, this girl clearly panicked when she first, likely by an accident, used her strange powers on him. She was equally as panicky when she did it the second time, even though it came with proper warning and only served an educational purpose.
Still…
'She has the power to control me. Meaning, I'm at the mercy of her wishes,' Leo thought, struggling to accept such a scenario.
He was an outsider. A force to be reckoned with as he proved with his actions thus far. And being the stranger that he was, no sane native would dare to claim they could see through his motives or goals.
Or, in much simpler words, if he were to switch positions with Camila, he would never reveal anything to the girl that could help her overcome the power of those strangely compelling words.
And yet, there she was, hurriedly trying to showcase how this power worked and why Leo was susceptible to it.
To top it all off, the very moment he distributed a fresh portion of food to everyone, the same fluffy doggo from before returned to its spot at his legs, comfortably lying down on his feet as it lazily snacked on the meat-flavored ration…
"Haaa…"
Breathing a long sigh, Leo let go of the girl's waist before taking a step back.
"I'm sorry. Holding you like that was unbecoming of me," Leo spoke out, realizing only halfway through his sentence that the slightly numbing sensation of nanites changing how his tongue and lips modulated sound acted on and off.
'Right, simple wording, short sentences,' Leo reflected upon his mistake, taking another step back before slightly lowering his head before the startled glances the girl sent him over her shoulder.
"But I do wish to know." Leo followed his own rules and spoke as simply and plainly as he could. "Why did you show me all of this? I can't see a benefit to revealing what you just did," he pointed out before closing his arms over his chest and squinting his eyes.
Camila slowly turned around, her face still as panicked as before.
'No, she's even more scared than she was just a moment ago.'
"I-I…" Camila opened her mouth, her eyes skirting from Leo's face to the fluffy dog at his feet, then to the alpha of the pack, finally, the pup happily devouring its own ration… and then back to Leo's face.
"I swear, I didn't plan to…" Camila finally spoke out, only to get herself stuck in the middle of her sentence, right before revealing what she claimed to only realize now.
Which was the obvious development that her explanation led to.
"Bark!"
The fluffy dog at Leo's feet suddenly voiced out its concerns… or maybe just tried to get Leo's attention?
Either way, upon looking down, Leo's sight fell down the abyss of the majestic creature's black eyes.
And strangely enough, a few moments later, Leo raised his eyes back up. In that short moment, most of Leo's stress, anxiety, and wariness came and went. Not all of it, but a chunk big enough to let Leo clear both his thoughts and his mood, taking a fresh, unbiased look at the situation.
With his analytic self back in shape, Leo quickly counted out all the instances of Camila acting somewhat weirdly.
'She put herself right in harm's way, despite seeing with her own eyes what I was capable of doing, just to stop me from attacking them before I actually went ahead and did it. Then, she kept trying to de-escalate the situation and show her lack of hostility, even going as far as to force her men to stop their attack slash approach.'
Leo sighed.
'And now, she happily explained her powers to me, how I'm vulnerable to it, how to remedy it… All in a situation where she could easily make use of those powers to make me do whatever the hell she wanted, from swearing never to hurt her or her men to making me a damn slave…'
Coming into this world with the emotional baggage of the massacre he witnessed in his first rift world and then all the anxiety and stress he had to live with ever since… Leo couldn't exactly bring himself to just accept the facts.
He knew this girl did all she could to stop them from fighting each other. But knowing it and actually trusting that neither she nor her men would drive a dagger into his back the moment he lowered his guard…
Feeling the hesitation well up inside of him again, Leo sighed and looked down… Only to fall into the trap of that majestic dog's eyes again. And by the time he raised his head for the second time, no more doubts were visible in his eyes or present in his mind to cloud his judgment.
In the time that Leo battled his own thoughts, Camila finally managed to gather get wits and raise her chin just high enough for her eyes to reach Leo's face.
"It is true that I've only realized it when you asked, but…" the girl gulped down her saliva and averted her eyes, "but if any noble can make you do whatever the hell they want…"
"Then it would be better if you were the only one capable of doing so instead, isn't it?" Leo finished up what the girl likely wanted to say, only to then amuse himself with Camila's startled reaction.
Still, maybe it was the change to his face and, by extension, to the air around him, or maybe the girl finally decided to care not for her instincts screaming for her to escape. Either way, when she raised her startled face and looked properly at Leo's face, the young man could no longer spot the same hints of panic on her expression.
"That's…"
Camila no longer panicked, but that didn't mean she failed to see the audacity of her suggestion.
'Instead of being the slave to any noble who will realize your vulnerability, you should just be my own slave instead,' Leo thought, reminding himself of how insanely bad his situation was…
'But she doesn't need me to accept her dominance to order me around. She can do it already but is refusing to use this ability against me… to show her sincerity?'
Leo took a deep breath, struggling to balance the benefits, risks, and odds of both in any of the several scenarios on how to proceed that he created in his mind.
But there was one more element, one notion that he realized all the way back when Camila used her strange voice for the second time.
It was still a distant feeling, but when he tried to resist the urge created by the girl's voice… Leo felt the nanites in his flesh react. They were burning hot inside of his body, doing their utmost to keep Leo in control.
That alone was no biggie, just a natural way in which the nanites tried to protect their hosts…
But it was the feeling that soon appeared to emerge from the pain of being scorched from inside that got Leo so curious.
"That's right," Camila nodded her head before looking down and pinning her eyes on her own two feet, trying not to tremble in terror when the doggo pup finished up its snack and casually walked up to her, brushing its side against the girl's shin before looking up to her face with both happy and expecting look on its snout.
"I guess it wants you to pet it," Leo suggested with a sigh, struggling to keep himself serious and focused in the face of a frolicking ball of cuddly fur.
Camila gave him the stare of a century as if for just this one instant, she wiped all of her reservations in the face of something extremely ridiculous that only someone from another world could say.
'Thinking about it, isn't she a bit too scared of those dogs?' Leo thought, momentarily looking down at the fluff at his feet.
"Bark!"
Leo raised his eyes back to the girl… only to see her on the verge of tears and with the pup's snout raised up to the girl's face.
"Seriously, just do it," Leo rolled his eyes, recognizing the demand perfectly clear in the pup's eyes.
Camila threw the young man yet another baffled and annoyed glare… But in the situation she was in, she had little to no choice on how to react. And so, with great reservation and at an extremely slow and steady pace, she brought her hand lower and lower…
All the way to the point where it rested upon the top of the pup's head.
Feeling the pleasant touch upon its head, the pup simply parted its jaws… and pushed his tongue out, breathing in a relaxed manner as Camila's fingers picked up the pace and started to scratch various spots on the pup's head.
"Now then," Leo spoke after giving the girl a moment to enjoy petting the dog. "Life is all about giving something and taking something in return."
Camila raised her face, where all the anxiety, stress, and outright terror ended up being replaced by the look of unbridled bliss.
'It seems people love to pet their pets in this world too,' Leo thought, struggling to keep his face smirk-free when he noticed it.
"Give and take…?" Troubled by the task of somehow keeping herself focused after she just managed to relax for the first time since everything had begun, Camila repeated the crux of Leo's sentence while raising her now softer eyes to his face.
"It's not the exact truth, but you could say that I'm here to collect precious artifacts, just like the armor of that guy that managed to resist my light weapon," Leo explained, patting himself on the special body holster where he kept his SMG… and the presence of which he was sure Camila was aware of.
"But, while it would certainly be convenient for me if you were to help me with that task, there is one thing that I need to know in advance," Leo stated before throwing a look around the place.
The armors of the knights, while not of a legendary grade or anything, were still way too good for the skills they displayed during the battle.
They simply rushed up to him, as if hoping to outrun his ability to turn the gun around to take aim at them.
What's more, Camila, Urk, and Zion…
Even though they had no proper armor or even proper weapons of any sort that Leo could see, he would have to be blind not to realize that they were on a whole other level than those wannabe knights.
'While I didn't see much… It seems like only the leader of those knights could compare to those three.'
With just that, Leo was able to narrow down the list of possible scenarios to just a few. Adding up how much the 'noble' appeared in tandem with 'authority' and the very meaning of the latter word…
And the list of the possible scenarios of what those three were doing here narrowed down even further, pretty much putting Leo in the know of what really happened.
Still, for him to figure out and for Camila to actually reveal the truth…
'Let it be the last test of her sincerity for now,' Leo thought, feeling as if a weight suddenly lifted off his shoulders now that he put the uncertainty of the girl's motives into a certain element of his plan.
"What I want to know is," Leo took a deep breath before opening his mouth again, "what it is that you desire of me?"
///Author's note:///
Hey everyone, just a quick heads-up about several things:
- Chapter's late today because I happened to reread the last one to get into the story's vibe... Only to realize just how many small stylistical and other types of mistakes I made. From changing the subject in the middle of the sentence, not clearing up the sentences that I changed etc. And with that in mind, I just felt like dropping writing in its entirety >.> But yeah, because of this, it took me a lot longer to get myself to actually write the story. And what's more, before the next chapter will be published (sometime in the next 12h I believe, likely within 8h) I will actually go back and try to do a general editing of the first 2 chapters of the story. That's how it's also going to be from now on, with 1 chapter published a day and 2 chapters getting the fixes they need, as small or insignificant as they might be. Fear not, though, the story won't change at all, it's just going to be me doing some spring cleaning.
- In general, what I consider to be a day goes according to the Bejing timezone, since that's how it works on the main site I'm writing on. That's why, whether the chapter is published at 3am Bejing Time, or 11pm Bejing time, as long as its within that 24h windows, I don't consider the chapter to be late (Just like this chapter. It's on schedule, but its later than when I'm wish I posted it)
- Kind of a spoiler here, so read at your own risk
The aspect of power speech was something that I added to the story randomly, back when I was still figuring out how this encounter would go. But since that time, following Brandon Sanderson's rules of writing magic systems, it grew from a simple and straightforward ability to something that literally shapes the society of the rift world we are in right now. So, if at any point you think you fully understood the impact of the power speech or any of the variety of small hints/foreshadows I threw in so far... Then let me tell you this:
YOU KNOW NOTHING, JOHN SNOW.
And with that, I hope you like the story so far and I promise I will do my best to deliver it to the heights it deserves! (unless it totally flops despite all my efforts, then I will have no other choice but to move on. Life sucks, doesn't it?)
"And with that said, what are you trying to suggest?"
Leo made use of the opportunity the girl presented to him, grabbing a hold of her waist and stopping her before she could move away or turn to face him.
And with nothing but the back of Camila's head to talk to, Leo couldn't see the girl's expression. But that didn't mean he couldn't get a read on her.
Just by holding Camila by her waist, he could tell when the girl twitched if not nearly jumped when he laid his hands down on her. Yet, when she heard his words…
Camila froze all over.
'Hmm?' Leo raised his left eyebrow. 'So was I right, or did she just realize what her actions implied so far?'
To say that Leo was in a pickle would be a gross understatement.
On one hand, this girl clearly panicked when she first, likely by an accident, used her strange powers on him. She was equally as panicky when she did it the second time, even though it came with proper warning and only served an educational purpose.
Still…
'She has the power to control me. Meaning, I'm at the mercy of her wishes,' Leo thought, struggling to accept such a scenario.
He was an outsider. A force to be reckoned with as he proved with his actions thus far. And being the stranger that he was, no sane native would dare to claim they could see through his motives or goals.
Or, in much simpler words, if he were to switch positions with Camila, he would never reveal anything to the girl that could help her overcome the power of those strangely compelling words.
And yet, there she was, hurriedly trying to showcase how this power worked and why Leo was susceptible to it.
To top it all off, the very moment he distributed a fresh portion of food to everyone, the same fluffy doggo from before returned to its spot at his legs, comfortably lying down on his feet as it lazily snacked on the meat-flavored ration…
"Haaa…"
Breathing a long sigh, Leo let go of the girl's waist before taking a step back.
"I'm sorry. Holding you like that was unbecoming of me," Leo spoke out, realizing only halfway through his sentence that the slightly numbing sensation of nanites changing how his tongue and lips modulated sound acted on and off.
'Right, simple wording, short sentences,' Leo reflected upon his mistake, taking another step back before slightly lowering his head before the startled glances the girl sent him over her shoulder.
"But I do wish to know." Leo followed his own rules and spoke as simply and plainly as he could. "Why did you show me all of this? I can't see a benefit to revealing what you just did," he pointed out before closing his arms over his chest and squinting his eyes.
Camila slowly turned around, her face still as panicked as before.
'No, she's even more scared than she was just a moment ago.'
"I-I…" Camila opened her mouth, her eyes skirting from Leo's face to the fluffy dog at his feet, then to the alpha of the pack, finally, the pup happily devouring its own ration… and then back to Leo's face.
"I swear, I didn't plan to…" Camila finally spoke out, only to get herself stuck in the middle of her sentence, right before revealing what she claimed to only realize now.
Which was the obvious development that her explanation led to.
"Bark!"
The fluffy dog at Leo's feet suddenly voiced out its concerns… or maybe just tried to get Leo's attention?
Either way, upon looking down, Leo's sight fell down the abyss of the majestic creature's black eyes.
And strangely enough, a few moments later, Leo raised his eyes back up. In that short moment, most of Leo's stress, anxiety, and wariness came and went. Not all of it, but a chunk big enough to let Leo clear both his thoughts and his mood, taking a fresh, unbiased look at the situation.
With his analytic self back in shape, Leo quickly counted out all the instances of Camila acting somewhat weirdly.
'She put herself right in harm's way, despite seeing with her own eyes what I was capable of doing, just to stop me from attacking them before I actually went ahead and did it. Then, she kept trying to de-escalate the situation and show her lack of hostility, even going as far as to force her men to stop their attack slash approach.'
Leo sighed.
'And now, she happily explained her powers to me, how I'm vulnerable to it, how to remedy it… All in a situation where she could easily make use of those powers to make me do whatever the hell she wanted, from swearing never to hurt her or her men to making me a damn slave…'
Coming into this world with the emotional baggage of the massacre he witnessed in his first rift world and then all the anxiety and stress he had to live with ever since… Leo couldn't exactly bring himself to just accept the facts.
He knew this girl did all she could to stop them from fighting each other. But knowing it and actually trusting that neither she nor her men would drive a dagger into his back the moment he lowered his guard…
Feeling the hesitation well up inside of him again, Leo sighed and looked down… Only to fall into the trap of that majestic dog's eyes again. And by the time he raised his head for the second time, no more doubts were visible in his eyes or present in his mind to cloud his judgment.
In the time that Leo battled his own thoughts, Camila finally managed to gather get wits and raise her chin just high enough for her eyes to reach Leo's face.
"It is true that I've only realized it when you asked, but…" the girl gulped down her saliva and averted her eyes, "but if any noble can make you do whatever the hell they want…"
"Then it would be better if you were the only one capable of doing so instead, isn't it?" Leo finished up what the girl likely wanted to say, only to then amuse himself with Camila's startled reaction.
Still, maybe it was the change to his face and, by extension, to the air around him, or maybe the girl finally decided to care not for her instincts screaming for her to escape. Either way, when she raised her startled face and looked properly at Leo's face, the young man could no longer spot the same hints of panic on her expression.
"That's…"
Camila no longer panicked, but that didn't mean she failed to see the audacity of her suggestion.
'Instead of being the slave to any noble who will realize your vulnerability, you should just be my own slave instead,' Leo thought, reminding himself of how insanely bad his situation was…
'But she doesn't need me to accept her dominance to order me around. She can do it already but is refusing to use this ability against me… to show her sincerity?'
Leo took a deep breath, struggling to balance the benefits, risks, and odds of both in any of the several scenarios on how to proceed that he created in his mind.
But there was one more element, one notion that he realized all the way back when Camila used her strange voice for the second time.
It was still a distant feeling, but when he tried to resist the urge created by the girl's voice… Leo felt the nanites in his flesh react. They were burning hot inside of his body, doing their utmost to keep Leo in control.
That alone was no biggie, just a natural way in which the nanites tried to protect their hosts…
But it was the feeling that soon appeared to emerge from the pain of being scorched from inside that got Leo so curious.
"That's right," Camila nodded her head before looking down and pinning her eyes on her own two feet, trying not to tremble in terror when the doggo pup finished up its snack and casually walked up to her, brushing its side against the girl's shin before looking up to her face with both happy and expecting look on its snout.
"I guess it wants you to pet it," Leo suggested with a sigh, struggling to keep himself serious and focused in the face of a frolicking ball of cuddly fur.
Camila gave him the stare of a century as if for just this one instant, she wiped all of her reservations in the face of something extremely ridiculous that only someone from another world could say.
'Thinking about it, isn't she a bit too scared of those dogs?' Leo thought, momentarily looking down at the fluff at his feet.
"Bark!"
Leo raised his eyes back to the girl… only to see her on the verge of tears and with the pup's snout raised up to the girl's face.
"Seriously, just do it," Leo rolled his eyes, recognizing the demand perfectly clear in the pup's eyes.
Camila threw the young man yet another baffled and annoyed glare… But in the situation she was in, she had little to no choice on how to react. And so, with great reservation and at an extremely slow and steady pace, she brought her hand lower and lower…
All the way to the point where it rested upon the top of the pup's head.
Feeling the pleasant touch upon its head, the pup simply parted its jaws… and pushed his tongue out, breathing in a relaxed manner as Camila's fingers picked up the pace and started to scratch various spots on the pup's head.
"Now then," Leo spoke after giving the girl a moment to enjoy petting the dog. "Life is all about giving something and taking something in return."
Camila raised her face, where all the anxiety, stress, and outright terror ended up being replaced by the look of unbridled bliss.
'It seems people love to pet their pets in this world too,' Leo thought, struggling to keep his face smirk-free when he noticed it.
"Give and take…?" Troubled by the task of somehow keeping herself focused after she just managed to relax for the first time since everything had begun, Camila repeated the crux of Leo's sentence while raising her now softer eyes to his face.
"It's not the exact truth, but you could say that I'm here to collect precious artifacts, just like the armor of that guy that managed to resist my light weapon," Leo explained, patting himself on the special body holster where he kept his SMG… and the presence of which he was sure Camila was aware of.
"But, while it would certainly be convenient for me if you were to help me with that task, there is one thing that I need to know in advance," Leo stated before throwing a look around the place.
The armors of the knights, while not of a legendary grade or anything, were still way too good for the skills they displayed during the battle.
They simply rushed up to him, as if hoping to outrun his ability to turn the gun around to take aim at them.
What's more, Camila, Urk, and Zion…
Even though they had no proper armor or even proper weapons of any sort that Leo could see, he would have to be blind not to realize that they were on a whole other level than those wannabe knights.
'While I didn't see much… It seems like only the leader of those knights could compare to those three.'
With just that, Leo was able to narrow down the list of possible scenarios to just a few. Adding up how much the 'noble' appeared in tandem with 'authority' and the very meaning of the latter word…
And the list of the possible scenarios of what those three were doing here narrowed down even further, pretty much putting Leo in the know of what really happened.
Still, for him to figure out and for Camila to actually reveal the truth…
'Let it be the last test of her sincerity for now,' Leo thought, feeling as if a weight suddenly lifted off his shoulders now that he put the uncertainty of the girl's motives into a certain element of his plan.
"What I want to know is," Leo took a deep breath before opening his mouth again, "what it is that you desire of me?"
///Author's note:///
Hey everyone, just a quick heads-up about several things:
- Chapter's late today because I happened to reread the last one to get into the story's vibe... Only to realize just how many small stylistical and other types of mistakes I made. From changing the subject in the middle of the sentence, not clearing up the sentences that I changed etc. And with that in mind, I just felt like dropping writing in its entirety >.> But yeah, because of this, it took me a lot longer to get myself to actually write the story. And what's more, before the next chapter will be published (sometime in the next 12h I believe, likely within 8h) I will actually go back and try to do a general editing of the first 2 chapters of the story. That's how it's also going to be from now on, with 1 chapter published a day and 2 chapters getting the fixes they need, as small or insignificant as they might be. Fear not, though, the story won't change at all, it's just going to be me doing some spring cleaning.
- In general, what I consider to be a day goes according to the Bejing timezone, since that's how it works on the main site I'm writing on. That's why, whether the chapter is published at 3am Bejing Time, or 11pm Bejing time, as long as its within that 24h windows, I don't consider the chapter to be late (Just like this chapter. It's on schedule, but its later than when I'm wish I posted it)
- Kind of a spoiler here, so read at your own risk
The aspect of power speech was something that I added to the story randomly, back when I was still figuring out how this encounter would go. But since that time, following Brandon Sanderson's rules of writing magic systems, it grew from a simple and straightforward ability to something that literally shapes the society of the rift world we are in right now. So, if at any point you think you fully understood the impact of the power speech or any of the variety of small hints/foreshadows I threw in so far... Then let me tell you this:
YOU KNOW NOTHING, JOHN SNOW.
And with that, I hope you like the story so far and I promise I will do my best to deliver it to the heights it deserves! (unless it totally flops despite all my efforts, then I will have no other choice but to move on. Life sucks, doesn't it?)
