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I opened my eyes after an hour-long meditation, covered in sweat and feeling utterly exhausted. But this was not exhaustion of the body, no, this was exhaustion of the soul.
And I am not using "soul" in the metaphorical sense; I am quite literal. It was shortly after returning home from the meeting with the wyrm elders and O'zet's back that Professor Sageira followed up on her promise to teach me the method of strengthening my soul so that I can eventually be capable of using dimensional magic on myself to link a dimensional storage to my soul.
She even passed me an old tome in some forgotten language, along with the text to translate it into common, and left it to me as homework. With the right tools to translate, that was the easy part; the hard part was the description of the soul-strengthening process and the commitment I would have to make in both time and suffering.
Time, because the training method had to be done a few times a day for consecutive days, and suffering because this soul-strengthening method was very much like training muscles, but many times more dangerous. And because I had a lot of things to handle, like finishing the smithing commission, touring the territory, and renovation to install the plumbing and water recycling, I had put off the soul-strengthening training until after the renovation was done.
To strengthen my soul, much like muscles experiencing microtears during exercise and healing to make stronger muscles, I had to purposely maim my own soul and let it recover on its own, leaving me feeling weak, lethargic, and hollow.
And seeing that this was such a dangerous way to strengthen my soul, I knew that if I wanted to have my own dimensional storage within my lifetime without resorting to drastic measures like becoming a powerful undead, I had to know the limits of how far I could train. So Professor Sageira attacked my soul with escalating levels of intensity until I came close to permanently scarring it. So now, when I performed the soul-strengthening exercise, I knew at what level of pain I had to stop.
On the upside, because my soul has already experienced death once, it is already stronger than the vast majority of creatures alive and even most undead. So I was well on track to achieve a soul powerful enough to support a dimensional storage attached to it.
As I tried to stand from my seated position on the floor, my legs wobbled, but a pair of hands held me by my shoulders to steady me as I stood. I turned to the side to see Emma in her maid uniform, supporting me with a gentle smile that made me feel things that I dare not say aloud.
Even in the months she had been away for her studies, she had grown more beautiful, and I got to say, unlike her parents, who did not grow up dirt poor by any means but did not have as many resources available to them as Emma did, at the rate Emma's figure was filling out in all the right places, she was going to overtake her mother's voluptuous figure that gave me wet dreams while i was, and still in some ways, going through puberty.
"You did not have to stay." I said weakly to Emma as she started dabbing my forehead with a towel.
"I did not, but I wanted to." She replied as she helped me over to a chair in my room and passed me a glass of juice that she chilled with magic.
After letting me down the entire glass and sitting back for a moment, she informed me that the bathtub was already filled and the hot water tank was already heated. I thanked her and made my way to my room's attached bathroom.
As I entered, I heard Emma ask in a soft voice, "Do- Do you need assistance with your bath?"
It took me a second to register what she asked, but once the gears in my head realigned, I almost got whiplash turning to her, wondering if I really heard what I did, only to see her blushing while looking at the floor, while nervously twiddling her fingers. And judging from her reaction, I was not just hearing things.
It has been a few days since I started this soul-strengthening training, and after the first day, she had always been there to help me up, a towel and a cold cup of juice waiting, before preparing a bath for me… what changed today?
As the implications of Emma asking to join me in the bath ran through my mind, and toward the part of my monkey brain that wanted me to do things with Emma that neither of us was old enough to do yet, my mind blanked, and I said, "Thank you, but I can handle it," before rushing into the bathroom before I said or did something I would regret.
I was not proud of it, but I ended up needing to choke the chicken multiple times with the sound of the tap running to cover the sound of my shame before I was able to calm down my rampaging thoughts. And when I came out of the shower, I could not look Emma in the eyes.
***
As I went toward the kitchen to ask the chef to cook me up something simple to tide me over until dinner, Emma and I ran into our mothers having tea, and when they caught sight of us, I don't know why, but they had an expectant glint in their eyes.
It was then that I caught Emma at the edge of my peripheral vision, shaking her head slightly. The moment she did, I saw the look on our mother's face change. They were still smiling, but they looked disappointed.
I had no idea what was going on, but at dinner time, Emma's family was apparently invited for dinner, and our mothers started talking about wanting grandchildren, and making the hints so obvious that even my dense ass picked up on it. As for our fathers, they were smart enough to keep out of this battle, so I was on my own.
Throughout that dinner, all I could do was shovel food into my face while trying to ignore the obvious hints bombarding me. When I looked at Emma, her face was flushed, but she seemed happy.
As for why our parents were so insistent on encouraging the relationship this early, I do not know. But legally, as long as both sets of parents agree, under-age couples are allowed to be married, but I am not going to do that, especially to Emma. She is still young and still in school. If she marries me into a noble family, not only would she lose her school life with her friends, but she would also be tied down by noble customs and obligations.
These were things I was born into, so unless I abandoned my family, I had no choice. But that was not the same for Emma, and I would only pursue this relationship further when she is old enough to think about it properly.