That night, Ash dragged Ghislaine out for drinks.
Meanwhile, with the help of an insider, Eris's situation took a sharp turn for the worse.
The butler had clearly been plotting this before he even spoke with Ash. He acted cleanly and efficiently, and without much trouble, he easily tied Eris up and secretly transported her to the neighboring town.
It was only after Ash finished drinking with Ghislaine, told her not to worry about Eris, and prepared to go look for her that he discovered that Eris was no longer in this fortified city.
This made him spend some time flying through the air at high speed. Using magic to scan the surrounding ground, he soon discovered that Eris had already been transported to the neighboring town and was inside an abandoned house that looked quite a lot like a prison.
Inside the room, the walls all around were mottled and dilapidated, and the floor was covered with discarded junk. Dust floated through the moonlight coming in through the cracks, while several rats scurried noisily through the corners. The entire place was dirty and gloomy.
The once-proud and willful red-haired little girl who was like a flame was now sprawled on the filthy floor like a puddle of mud, completely devoid of any dignity.
Her originally bright red hair was scattered messily across the floor, while her once neat and beautiful clothes were covered in footprints and stained with dust and blood.
Her mouth and nose were in an even more terrible state. After being kicked until they were battered, blood was still continuously flowing out. The bright-red blood ran down the corners of her mouth and chin, dripping onto the floor drop by drop and gathering into a small pool of dark-red blood.
Quite a few of her teeth had also been kicked out and were scattered across the floor. Her mouth was slightly open, making her look utterly miserable.
At this moment, she barely reacted to the outside world. Her eyes had become unfocused and lifeless as she stared blankly ahead.
Yet even though she was already in such a sorry state, she was still muttering something continuously. Listening closely, they seemed to be things like, "I'll never forgive you," and "I'll have Grandpa come after you," all words filled with the desire for revenge.
"Trying to make this child submit through force really can't be done in one go."
After diagnosing her with magic through X-ray vision, Ash could clearly see that the child had probably broken three ribs, and the bones in her hands had also been crushed underfoot.
But even after being beaten so horribly, she was still thinking about revenge. That did make him admire Eris's toughness somewhat.
After looking through the butler's memories, he could also roughly understand why an ordinary kidnapping had ended with her being beaten like this. Because, to some extent, this child had truly surpassed the standard for spoiled brats. She had probably provoked the kidnappers before he arrived, right?
Even among noble children, she was considered exceptionally fierce. She never knew how to hold back when beating people, and because she had been learning from Ghislaine, beating people until they vomited blood or breaking their bones was practically an everyday occurrence.
Although there were plenty of nobles more twisted than her, noble children were mostly more devious. At the very least, they would gather a group of lackeys. But at Eris's house, even those lackeys could not get mixed in. Other than the beastmen, the servants basically all suffered.
It was said that Eris's father would even get beaten by her grandfather whenever nothing was going on. Could this be some kind of skipping-a-generation inheritance? To be honest, he really did not understand what was going on with this family's education.
His muttering while crouched beside her immediately brought a flash of surprise to Eris's eyes. She raised her gaze slightly in astonishment and looked at him.
"Ghi... Ghislaine..."
"Sorry, Ghislaine isn't here. It's just me right now. From now on, if you obediently listen to me, I'll guarantee your safety and won't let anyone bully you... How about it?"
"No! No! Ghislaine! Ghislaine!"
Perhaps because seeing him made her think Ghislaine had arrived too, Eris suddenly summoned the last of her strength and shouted toward the sky at an extremely high volume.
However.....
BANG!
Ghislaine did not appear. Instead, a bald, middle-aged man with a completely bare head and several scars across his face, practically looking as though someone had written the words "I'm a bandit" all over him, crashed through the door with a fierce expression.
"Shut up! You damn brat! You can still yell? I'll make sure you...", The bald man had just crashed through the door and was halfway through his curse when he noticed Ash crouching nearby. He immediately warily drew the sword from his waist and shouted, "Brat! Where did you come from?"
"Over there," Ash helpfully raised his hand and pointed toward the window he had forcibly pulled open.
"You... Are you looking down on me?", The bald man's face filled with anger, his eyes wide as bells. Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly kicked off the ground and charged at Ash like a raging bull, sword in hand, shouting as he came, "Now that you've seen us, you can't possibly—Gaaah?"
Before the bald man could finish speaking, barely two steps into his charge, something suddenly happened.
Without warning, a sharp earth spike suddenly emerged from beneath the previously flat ground. In the blink of an eye, the earth spike pierced straight through his chest.
The tremendous impact pushed his body upward, and with a "puff!" it directly impaled his entire body against the ceiling.
Behind the bald man, another man who had hurried over after hearing the commotion witnessed this horrifying scene. Before he could even recover, he let out a desperate scream the next moment.
Because the same fate had befallen him.
Another sharp earth spike burst out of the ground. With brutal force, it instantly pierced through his body, making him follow in his companion's "footsteps." Like a suckling pig placed on a spit, he was firmly pinned to the ceiling.
There was no warning, no grand display, and not even any chanting. The earth spikes that emerged from underground solved every problem.
Even without chanting, the casting speed was still faster than an ordinary sword's speed. At least among the magic teachers Eris had seen, no one's magical attacks had ever been this fast.
It was not merely the casting speed. The speed of the magical attack itself completely overturned her impression of magic.
Even as the two men were pierced through and hung from the ceiling, blood splattered throughout the room, and Ash picked her up like a chick and held her in front of him to block all the splattered blood, making the scene even more terrifying and utterly lacking in elegance.
This left Eris frightened and terrified, but at the same time unable to understand how a Sword Emperor could be even better at magic than a magician?
"Actually, I'm a fake Sword Emperor. My real strength is mainly magic. If you work hard, maybe you can catch up to me."
Before she could figure it out, a familiar voice came from behind her, and her body was tossed aside.
"Okay! Huh? It doesn't seem to hurt much? Ah, no, it still hurts?", The little girl who landed on the ground instinctively cried out in pain at first, but immediately afterward, she was surprised to discover that all the pain throughout her body had suddenly disappeared.
She tried moving her mouth and found that she could speak normally again. The teeth that had been knocked out had also somehow grown back, with the only pain remaining being from hitting the ground.
She searched all over her body in confusion, only then discovering that the injuries on her body had somehow completely healed.
But even though she could guess that Ash had healed her, she still curled up and warily looked at the man who did not have a single drop of blood on him.
"What? You think helping me once like this means I'll forget everything and let go of what happened before? I remember you using me as a rag!"
"Are all children these days this vindictive and confident?", Looking at the super-brat who was like a kindergartener and would not even temporarily submit, Ash was more than a little speechless.