The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

’The hybrid training manual uses the Mana Heart as the main storage center for the whole method.’ Adrian thought. ’But now that mine is broken, the manual doesn’t work either.’

’The only way to use mana right now is to use a knight’s training manual.’ Adrian thought to himself.

He let out a heavy sigh. But even the simple act of blowing air out of his lungs made his entire body burn with pain. So he just gritted his teeth and took the pain.

He thought back to all the training manuals he had read in past. He thought about all the knight training manuals he had read before picking one of the top-tier knight manuals that boasted the fastest training speeds.

He pulled the mana into his body and flooded the mana directly into his blood and muscles. He laid there and grinded the breathing technique in silence. Twenty or thirty minutes passed, and he felt a tiny bit more powerful. His limbs felt slightly less dead.

His intake of ambient mana was not on the level of a normal knight. Thanks to him being a mage before, he had the experience, the mana sense and the technique to pull a lot of mana. And currently, he was pulling mana in at the speed of a third-circle mage.

Though, he didn’t have the massive storage capacity of a mage anymore. The only thing he could do was store tiny fractions of it inside his blood and muscle tissue.

He gathered this tiny, pathetic amount of mana and carefully pushed it toward the center of his chest. He probed his Mana Heart since he could finally feel it.

But it was completely empty. The only reason he could even sense it right now was because he had forced a little bit of mana into his bloodstream to act as a bridge.

He pushed a tiny sliver of mana into the Mana Heart to inspect the damage. He started trying to use the energy to fix the cracks, but the damage was catastrophic. He knew right away this was going to take months to fix since his Mana Heart was completely shattered.

It looked exactly like a ceramic vase that got smashed with a heavy hammer. Because deep and ugly cracks ran all the way from the inside walls straight to the outside edges. It was pure destruction.

The only difference between a broken vase and his mana heart was that his heart somehow kept its general shape. A real vase would have crumbled and dropped its pieces on the floor. His old training method involved intentionally cracking his mana heart a tiny bit and patching it up to make it stronger. This time, it was different.

His heart was completely shattered and the tiny bit of mana he pushed inside just leaked right out through the deep cracks. And even a tiny drop of raw mana leaking out from his mana heart into his physical body was extremely painful. He could feel the mana burning his internal organs.

It was ten times worse than the pain of moving his broken hands. That was the pure agony that uncontrolled mana would inflict if it slipped through the cracks.

Adrian kept pulling the ambient mana into his bloodstream. And he kept the breathing rhythm going for a few more minutes. Then he just stopped and did the math in his head.

The speed was pathetic.

’Forget a few months... At this miserable pace, it will take me years to fix the heart...’ he thought as he glanced sideways at Serena.

She was slumped over in the small wooden stool right next to his bed. Her head was resting on the very edge of his mattress.

He wanted to wake her up, so he tried to lift his arm and tap her shoulder. But he couldn’t do it. He could not even move his hand.

So he tried to use his mouth instead.

But a sharp spike of pain immediately shot right through his jaw. He tried his best to talk but he still couldn’t form a single word. So he just closed his mouth and forced a bunch of air out through his nose, which was slightly more bearable.

”Hmm.”

Serena didn’t move though. She just kept breathing a slow, even rhythm against the bedsheets.

But luckily for Adrian, someone else was awake. Claire turned around and looked over at Adrian.

She saw his open eyes, and immediately looked down at the sleeping noble girl.

”Serena.” Claire called out.

Once again, there was no reaction.

”Serena!”

Serena jerked upward and gasped. She sat up straight in the wooden stool and blinked wildly.

She looked around the room in a total panic before she turned to look at Claire. And Claire just lifted her chin and pointed straight at Adrian.

So Serena turned around and saw that Adrian was staring right at her face.

”Oh.” Serena gasped. She stood up nervously and looked at him. ”Do you need something? I mean, Lord Adrian?”

”Hmm.” Adrian hummed quietly.

”What do you need?” Serena asked.

She leaned a little closer to the bed. But Adrian just stared at her because he literally could not do anything else. And the pure helplessness felt incredibly humiliating.

”Hmm.” he did it again.

”Okay. Wait.” Serena said quickly. ”Let me go bring Aria. She said she was going down to train... just give me a second.”

She turned around and bolted right out of the bedroom.

And the exact moment Serena left, Claire aggressively kicked her blanket away. She reached over and grabbed the thick wooden stick leaning against her bedframe.

She got off the bed and walked straight over to Adrian.

She sat down on the small wooden stool that Serena had just left. But she did not say anything for a few seconds. She just sat there and stared down at his completely ruined face.

And then her expression suddenly changed.

The tired and respectful knight seemed to have vanished completely. Because there was pure, burning anger on her face as she glared at him.

”Do you have any idea how useless I felt?” Claire spat. Her voice was literally shaking with anger. ”Do you know how helpless I felt when I finally found out what happened to you?”