Darkness' Touch

Chapter 21: The struggles of learning something new

(The day of the training)

"Mi'lady, no one is going to take away the food. You might choke, slow down," Mariel frantically reprimanded Avy who was literally finishing plates in less than ten seconds before going to another. It was still early in the morning and the lady woke up saying she was starving to death, telling the whole kitchen to cook her something to eat, and it already has been an hour and a half and she was still gobbling up the food given to her while the kitchen staff cooks another batch.

"What do you mean? I'm chewing properly," she replied after finishing another big serving of steak, not worrying about indigestion. All of the servants were nowhere to be seen after Avy told them to go away and only let her knight and her maid stay with her as she ate, thus she was able to eat to her heart's content without being conscious of the people around her.

"Us, Knights are encouraged to eat as much as possible to support our training. Since the Lady will be using her body more starting today, it's a good thing that she's eating more than she usually does," Clerivan commented on the side.

"But the Lady might suffer from stomachache later if she eats too much, Sir Clerivan," Mariel worriedly said before handing Avy a glass of freshly squeezed lemon juice.

"It's understandable since the Lady slept almost all day yesterday," the Knight stated.

"Well excuse you both. The Lady is right here stuffing her face like a glutton. So stop yapping and let me eat in peace," Avy told the both of them in a sarcastic tone, joining the conversation.

Of course, she was also annoyed. Ever since she agreed to be Ares' host, she has been feeling completely abnormal and all of it was nothing but an inconvenience to her daily life. Her energy leaves her body quicker than normal, and when that happens, she barely has the strength to stand up on her own two feet and ends up sleeping for a FUCKING LONG TIME LIKE SLEEPING BEAUTY, as she calls it. And when she wakes up, she feels extremely weak because of hunger which makes her unable to move like a wilted plant. She's basically useless during those times and the only way for her to last like a normal person is to eat like someone who was starved for a month, or maybe worse. Since she sleeps all day, she has trouble sleeping during the night, so she looks like a dead body walking with her eyes open and dark bags under them in the morning.

Not only that, all the magic stones inside her room run out of mana and Mariel has to replace them more often, much to everyone's surprise since stones are supposed to be replaced once every three months since they are so expensive that each illumination stone that can light up a single room for three months costs no less than fifty silver coins. And as a noble lady, she doesn't use only a single stone but much more. From ventilation stones, heating stones, and cooling stones, that means even without doing anything, living as a darkness holder is annoying and high maintenance.

'Fuck you Ares.' she internally cursed her snake servant.

"You know I can hear your thoughts when you want me to, right?" Ares who was in his snake ornament form resting on Avy's hair responded.

'Yeah. That was intentional.'

Avy glanced at the clock on the wall, it was already past eight o'clock and she still hasn't seen the two young boys when they were usually the first ones to be in the dining hall before her.

"Did Ciel and Light oversleep?" she asked, looking at her maid.

"They didn't come out of the training hall all day yesterday, Mi'lady. They didn't even go back to their respective rooms." Mariel answered, since Avy was asleep the day before, she helped the other maids to do the household chores and she was one of the maids who delivered the food to the two boys inside the training hall located in another building inside the estate. It was a hall designed for the knights to practice mana circulation because it was well ventilated and spacious that can hold more than five hundred people at once.