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After her bath and after she changed into comfortable clothes, Radis now sat at the edge of her bed. She stretched out her sore legs.
“Wow, my legs hurt.”
She walked around all day in high heels, so the soles of her feet and her calves were very sore.
If she wiggled her toes even a little, it felt like they’re going to cramp at once.
“Is that really normal? Sending assassins to each other between the Imperial Family…?”
Radis answered herself immediately.
“Yeah, that’s possible.”
Besides that, Olivier already seemed to know who exactly was behind the assassination attempt.
Radis stepped on the cold marble floor, wiggling her toes absentmindedly. She was lost in thought.
‘Why did His Highness look like that?’
When Olivier explained the assassination attempt and said, ‘This happens all the time,’ why did his expression look like that?
Of course, his life had been threatened like that, and it’s only natural that he wouldn’t like it.
But rather than a face of contempt or hatred… He looked so… hurt.
‘What made him react that way?’
And strangely, the other thing that lingered in Radis’ mind was how Olivier had been more concerned about her well-being rather than his own.
Immersed in her thoughts, Radis sat down and began meditating so that she could shake off these worries.
On the outside, it might seem like she was just sitting in a daze. But right now, she was circulating the mana in her body.
If anyone who could see mana were to watch her now, they’d see the slight red hue rising from her whole body.
‘I think this is even harder than manifesting my mana.’
As Armano instructed her in their correspondence, the first commonly done step in mana training was to manifest and conjure mana.
This mana training method that Armano wrote about was actually quite a delicate process of manifestation.
But Radis had never learned any specific training methods before.
All the training she had done was on the go—learning through practical experience.
For someone like her, who had to regularly risk her life while fighting against monsters, she had to do it even if she didn’t want to.
However, that kind of training method couldn’t be done in a place such as the Russell Marquisate.
So, what Radis had been immersed in lately was learning how to do the same mana manifestation she did with her body in her previous life.
To her, controlling mana was like the act of breathing.
When exhaling, one’s breath could be let out strongly or weakly, hot or cold.
But because her mana was inside her body, she was never really sure whether it existed or not.
Back then, she could hardly feel the presence of mana within her body.
However, it was a different story now. When she had accumulated a vast amount of mana after she absorbed all that from the magic stones before, her body changed once her mana core made itself known.
If she were to focus on her core and start from there, she could also feel the presence of the mana circulating in her body—just like breathing.
Radis had been practicing her mana circulation for some time now.
It was still difficult for her.
Her mana core was between her heart and her navel. So from there, she would start pushing mana out.
Radis wasn’t really expecting any significant outcome from this training method.
She just thought that it would help her recover.
Typically, she would feel very refreshed after she had done this.
So, her sore legs might feel better any time now.
Additionally—and this was something she hadn’t known until now—it seemed like this method was allowing her senses to get maximized as well.
All of a sudden, she heard Olivier’s voice from beyond the walls.
“Tell Joel… to be my proxy until tomorrow morning.”
“Your Highness, will it be alright even if you do this?”
“If I don’t do this now, I don’t think I’ll be alright.”
She heard Olivier let out a pained sigh from the next room, then suddenly, the door burst open and someone left through it.
Radis gasped.
And she hurriedly gathered her mana back.
Silence fell over her surroundings.
‘The receiving area of His Highness’ chambers… must be right next to my bedroom.’
She immediately thought of Olivier’s privacy, so she decided that she should stop her mana training here.
Fortunately, the muscle pain in her legs seemed to have disappeared.
Radis sighed as she stared at the wall.
‘I’m sure that His Highness has a lot of troubles, too.’
But if she still continued to eavesdrop, then she’d just be meddling uselessly.
She heard people say this before—that the most useless type of concern was concern for the imperial family.
However, after thinking back on the prince’s expression before, and the conversation she heard just now, she eventually went on to worry uselessly and restlessly.
In the end, Radis put on a robe over her nightgown, then she slipped out of her room.
Radis decided to check a few places then just go back to her room if she couldn’t find him. But soon enough, she found Olivier in the same drawing room they were in earlier. She didn’t even have to go through a lot of trouble to find him.
He was sitting alone in front of the fireplace, blankly staring at the fire that was practically extinguished by now.
Despite saying that he was scared of ghosts, it didn’t seem like that at all right now. Rather, he looked like an apparition right now.