I cannot say she was not completely shocked by the peculiar information about me, which she could not even deny. The window that appeared in front of her was more than enough proof of it. She knows quite well that controlling the information about the status of someone else is, at least to her knowledge, completely impossible.
But still, mainly because of the wendigo, I discovered that she was actually completely terrified of the idea of trying to defeat a hungry wendigo. It could, with its martial skills and extremely powerful nails, chop even solid steel. Being one of the fiercest monsters of the entire region was a simple detail.
She did not want to do it; actually, she thought that his plan was completely crazy. But because of the covenant, something she had accepted without even knowing, she was simply incapable of refusing that plan. Her mouth and face were just not responding to her desperate attempts at recovering control of her body.
At that moment, I was literally controlling her without even knowing it.
But now that everything had settled down, we could understand what had happened to each other. Now that she discovered I am the Dark Lord, she was trying to understand what I actually was, since I showed clear signs of a mortal in my status, while at the same time she was teaching me some of the most essential knowledge in her possession.
To begin with, it seems that the terms Dark Lord and Hero were concepts she had never heard of before. But then she remembered that sometime in her youth, her mother had told her an old fairy tale about a hero saving a princess from a dragon, which was a really generic medieval trope.
But since she had nothing to tell me about being a dark lord, I thought that our conversation was ending there. However, she perceived that I was indeed from another world, without even the most basic knowledge that I would need in her Sídhe house, and so she began to teach me many essential things about monsters.
In her own words, monsters are basically a unifying term used to define separate and completely different groups of beings that have the sole characteristic of being made purely of mana.
Yes, it seems that Mana, pure magical energy, indeed exists in this world, and it is not just a metaphysical concept.
And it appears that monsters, unlike mortal beings such as humans and elves, have biological-seeming bodies whose entire functionality is purely related to magic, with magic itself being the reason for their existence. Thus, while goblins, wendigos, and diabolical hares have structures like meat, bones, and brains, all of these things are constructed from magic. Mortals cannot even consume their meat, since it cannot provide any substances like proteins, fats, minerals, or vitamins for their bodies.
And just as I had anticipated, since a monster's body is not truly biological, its body also has a limit to how much power it can contain. This means every monster race possesses a specific limit to how its body can physically and magically increase in size and power. This differs from mortals, who can slowly increase this limit by training. As biological creatures in a magical environment, they are gradually shaped to support ever higher burdens, thereby becoming naturally stronger through continual physical training.
Meanwhile, mortal magicians can continually consume all of their magic daily to slowly increase their mana reserves and mana control, even without using a skill for that purpose.
However, this does not happen with beings whose bodies are already predefined by a standard. A goblin will never be stronger than a troll. And no matter how much a goblin trains to be the most competent magic user, his mana reserves will never be larger than the evolved magical version of his own race.
But by consuming other monsters, they can slowly and continually become homogeneously stronger, until the moment they become capable of evolving. This moment, in many cases, will never arrive since one needs to consume much more magical energy than one's body is consuming. But if the monster is capable of it, then its evolution will be one of the multiple possible evolutions of its current race, based on what the creature has mostly done and trained for in its life.
For example, if a goblin practiced swordsmanship for decades and then became capable of evolving, this goblin would become a species of goblin with a much more intense affinity for physical power and martial arts than another goblin that had studied the arcane arts its entire life. The latter would receive an evolution that permits him to naturally become a stronger wizard more easily, just by evolving and receiving a larger upgrade to his magic reserves.
With this short conversation, I gathered much more information about this world, and mainly about monsters. But one detail made me think much more than was reasonable: it appears monsters cannot level up, nor can they even learn skills by being taught, just as I did yesterday. They actually need to keep training the same thing for months, perhaps years, just to learn some of the most basic skills. This would put them at a complete disadvantage, if not for the fact that, as literal magical beings, they do not really age.
Lyx herself appears to be more than one hundred years old, and if the years in this world are similar to those where I am from, this means that she is really, truly old.
"Okay then, thank you so much for answering some of my questions. I know that it is quite strange, but yes, this body is not even four days old. And I am really sorry about the covenant. I do not have a clue how that was activated, and I don't know how to disable it. But don't worry, the first time I learn how, you will be free. Not that I will do anything, though."
"Ehhh, how can we prepare this wendigo? Wait, the wendigo is edible, right?"
Hearing this and thinking for a bit, she just said:
"Obviously it's edible, and about preparing.. Well, you were a human… so this is probably a bit strange, but we usually just eat the entire creature. If a part is excessively big, then we will try to split it into multiple smaller parts. I do not know why we do it, but since this is taught even by our White Fae, I believe this is the best way of becoming stronger, since you are eating all parts of the monsters. But now it is almost completely dark. Let's bring this to my house, and then we can prepare it there after we register you. Damn, this will be boring, but anyway. I will take it, and you follow me. And now do not run without directions!"
She ended this conversation as if she were talking to a child, and as if it were nothing, she literally just grabbed the wendigo's entire body with just one of her arms and put the whole carcass on her shoulder.
"Okay, let's go."
I was a bit scared by this, since I couldn't even imagine that she was so physically strong. But, thinking that she has been living in this world for probably more than a century, I think that this actually makes sense.
This strength, though, is probably not much related to her combat power, since in the end, a sharp knife can easily bring death to any MMA champion.
After nine, maybe ten minutes of continuous and silent walking, with the forest becoming darker and darker, which in no way disrupted my vision, we finally arrived at a part of the forest that at first appeared to be just like any other. But then I heard Lyx saying:
"Take my hand. Without the seal, you can't pass through the defenses."
Listening carefully to what she said, I quickly held her hand. Then, after just a few more steps, I suddenly felt my body become completely paralyzed, and a strange electrical sensation passed down my spine. However, this only lasted for perhaps less than two seconds, as we resumed walking immediately after, with Lyx saying nothing about it.
Now, after a few more minutes of walking, I finally began to see some traces of civilization. We started to pass a bunch of rustic houses, most of them made of rock and wood and probably with no more than two or three rooms. We then finally found a street made of flat stones which strangely reminded me of those houses from a trip I took with my family to the northwest of Spain. In a small village in Galicia, the entire scenery was almost exactly like what I was seeing now; actually, the cold was almost the same, too.
During the entire journey, I was completely mesmerized by the entire place, trying to look carefully at every house that we passed and wondering when this street had been created. But then, after a few more minutes, I finally began to see what was now clearly a proper wall made of stones. And then, when I least expected it, I was in front of the gate of what could be any common medieval city in Europe with fewer than some thousands of inhabitants.
So this is the 'House' that she was speaking of? But... it is just a city... a city for goblins?
This could have been the case if I had not just passed by what I think was a gnome, a literal fairy probably less than forty centimeters tall, and a very tall blue being with a tall, clearly human appearance, but what I thought were bull ears? However, there were no horns.
This person was walking with an extremely large sword and just passed by us as if we were not even there.
Lyx appeared to know what we needed to do, and we quickly met with the chief guard inside the gate.
I was about to say something, but Lyx was just quicker and said:
"Hadragol, are you here?"
She said this as she was entering a small building just past the gate.
"Oh, if it isn't the most beautiful of Hadragol's daughters. What can I do for you?"
Since I was still outside, I bent to see who was speaking through the door and discovered that the chief guard was actually a kind of gnome, probably less than one meter in height. He was, despite his height, wearing an entire and quite large plate armor, one that was making his head appear even smaller than it actually was.
"And… who is this gentleman? You're not coming here to invite me to your wedding, or were?"