The silence stretched once more after my answer.

I let it linger, giving her the time to process that there was more than one mysterious organization that was interfering with the workings of her little Empire without showing the slightest respect to its supposedly-exalted nature.

“So, which organization do you belong to if not with them,” the princess said, doing her best not to give any information, but the great difference in our current skill configuration working against her.

The brute force approach was not just useful for combat but also for more political activities. My overwhelming speech and subterfuge allowed me to detect the undercurrents of the word ‘them’, loaded with hatred and fear, but no mystery.

It was clear that she was aware of the identity of the Eternals and their position in the world, at least to a certain degree in terms of their domination of the Material Plane. Whether her information included their dubious struggle against the gods was a mystery.

Yet, she avoided mentioning their name, clearly not intending to volunteer any information, no matter how small.

Interesting strategy.

Unfortunately for her, she was not the only one that could play that game. Rather than answering her question, I let out a soft, dismissive snort, which was all I needed to inform her that she was not worthy of questioning my origins.

I was happy to see that the first thing my reaction brought out of her was angry, even though she had managed to hide it behind the calm geniality that was cultivated by a lifetime of training. It meant that there was a fire to support her ambitions, the ambitions that forced her to fight against difficult odds rather than using her abilities to disappear.

A view that was enhanced by her improperly loose corset as she took a deep breath, enhancing her cleavage even further.

Yet, I felt a flicker of mana from her, one that was only possible as I was continuously observing her Soul Space. She pulled her mana to her Soul Space, letting it dance in her core before pushing outward, and started building her fake soul space once more.

I was impressed, both by her daring to create such an attempt against me, and by the subtlety of such an attempt. I might have missed it if it wasn’t for my mana already lodged deep into her Soul Space, giving me real-time observation of what she was doing.

As the mana danced in her core, I watched as it transform. Mana was normally bright and filled with energy, but as it dragged in her Soul Space, it slowly lost its more noticeable qualities, turning almost invisible.

Between a shadow and a whisper.

It was a simple nature transformation, but watching it happen slowly rather than through a skill shortcut was interesting. Well, more accurately, it was through a different shortcut, as it was still much simpler than actually forcing such a transformation with the skill blocked.

The purity of it, however, looked even better than what could be achieved through the skills. Though I had no idea whether it was about her application method, or an illusion that was about the nature of the darkness mana.

Unfortunately, I lacked the ability to compare.

Yet, while both the process and the results were interesting, I couldn’t say the same for the flexibility of her application. Despite the impressiveness of the result as she slowly built up her fake soul space, her ability could best be defined as fumbling in the dark — I thought as I forced myself to hold my chuckle back at the unintended pun.

She wasn’t incompetent, of course. But her actions showed she lacked my ability to look inward and analyze her own soul space at the same time, yet she was familiar enough to be clearly checked it before.

My best guess was that she had used her fake skills to maximize her detection capabilities to examine it, until she developed a method to fumble in the dark.

“How can I help you, then,” she asked after half a minute of silence, trying to reframe the situation once again. Extending unrestricted favors to strange men was hardly the smartest strategy, but still, it was a reasonable attempt for her to understand my objectives.

Especially since my barging implied that she couldn’t exactly reject me if I pushed.

“Ah, the arrogance of the nobles. Do you think there’s anything you can do that I would actually care about?” I said, followed by an extended sigh that made her tense, which made her focus on the construction of her soul space even faster. Which was exactly what I wanted, as her speedy construction made the process even easier to decipher for me.

Just to extend the pressure a bit more, I removed my hood, though not before casting a spell to change my face, turning it into a generic man in his early fifties.

Though, even as I watched her fake soul space settle over her real one, obscuring the presence of the Darkness Spark — which was undiminished by the process, showing that Divine Spark was not an expandable resource like mana during the process — and her real soul space, and the fake skills started to appear.

Interesting, I thought as I took a note of the changes, including the expansion of her mana reservoirs, though the speed they filled was certainly underwhelming.

She lacked a perk similar to my Mana Regeneration. I wondered whether it was the lack of knowledge that was holding her back, or it was a limit to her faking ability.

While the process had been interesting, the same couldn’t be said for the results. Her new fake level barely reached fifteen, which was hardly the greatest improvement, but that didn’t mean it was a wasted effort. Her new skills were split between Speech and Subterfuge, and her stats shifted heavily into Charisma and Manipulation, giving her the ability to manipulate the conversation better.

Well, at least it would have if I didn’t use the opportunity to throttle the effects of her skills and stats like I had done against Oeyne during our game.

The fun thing, since those skills and stats were much subtler than Strength and other physical stats, the princess didn’t even realize that manipulation, still under the impression that she received the boost ability.

Leaving her overconfident in her new abilities.

To make things even more advantageous, pushing her into the perilous waters of overconfidence was just a side benefit. The real benefit was watching her create those fake skills, tricking the system.

The process was interesting, both easier and harder than I had expected. The first thing I noticed was the automatic nature of the process. She was the one that provided the mana to create the fake soul space and the skills, but she certainly lacked the ability to form the intricate nature of her skills, meaning that her rough control only created a seed for her skills, and the System handled the rest.

No, I corrected it a moment later. Her mana didn’t just use to create a seed, but also fed into the System, duplicating the effects of the experience, which clearly made it much harder for her to level up.

After all, leveling up had two fundamental aspects, the ever-growing experience requirement for higher levels, and — for the lack of a better term — the quality and the strength of the experience source, which led to the classification of beasts.

A fact that I had used my tantric skill to validate, confirming that a part of the soul space of the beasts had been devoured directly through the soul space of the slayer while most of it disappeared onto the air.

Of course, my knowledge about the system had been significantly limited at that time, and I had assumed the rest of whatever the beasts contained was dispersing back into nature. But, after the discoveries about how the System constantly absorbed the mana and divine spark all across the material plane, I had long realized that it was an inaccurate solution.

The system absorbed the Soul Space equivalent directly while a small portion was absorbed by the attacker, working more as a proof of achievement to record — hence the amount that was absorbed not exactly helping.

As far as I could see, her technique was using her Darkness mana to replicate the signature of monster kills, earning rapid reward from the System, creating her fake skills.

Or maybe, it was more accurate to define them as temporary skills, similar to my own perk-provided specialized ones. Still, their temporary nature came from the fact that they were created from her transformed mana, and required a constant feed of mana to maintain.

Which meant my earlier guesses about its usability were correct. The stronger the skills and higher the level, the more mana was required to sustain, putting a time limit. As far as I could see, she could use external mana — like the one that was stored in her complicated vase — to trigger her high level.

The same freedom didn’t apply to maintaining. As its growth stabilized, the new Soul Space couldn’t use its own fake reservoir or outside mana to support itself — though, based on my own tantric experience, I could see that it was mostly about her lack of ability to manipulate her own Soul Space rather than a theoretical restriction.

I was tempted to test that directly but I decided to leave that research project for a later date, giving myself more time to observe the princess first. I already had enough projects to deal with.

Still, that decision was unrelated to the chill that covered my insides.

Altogether, it was supposed to be a great discovery, but realizing the ease with the System could be manipulated by another Divine Spark actually scared me. Not because it meant Tantric was not unique in that aspect — a fact that I was already aware of — but because it only made me adjust my estimation about the Eternals.

Even if their control over the System was imperfect, how much power they could manage to gather after hundreds of dominance?

A tough question, though one that was best left another time.

I still had a tense, barely dressed princess to pay attention to. A barely dressed princess that was under the impression that she had just received a great boost to her Speech and Subterfuge to handle a dangerously political conversation…

[Level: 36 Experience: 631374 / 630000

Strength: 46 Charisma: 63

Precision: 40 Perception: 42

Agility: 40 Manipulation: 45

Speed: 39 Intelligence: 49

Endurance: 39 Wisdom: 51

HP: 7334 / 7334 Mana: 9000 / 9000 ]

SKILLS

Grandmaster Tantric [114/140]

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [100/100]

Master Craft [85/100]

Expert Speech [75/75]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (0/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Titania – Level 35/38]

[Cornelia – Level 22/26]

[Helga – Level 22/26]

[Marianne – Level 21/29]