Three weeks later,
Feeling the hot water wash over her, Beatrice couldn't help but let a soft sigh escape her lips, slowly closing her eyes, not even cleaning her body, merely letting the water wash over her.
Ever since she was little, Beatrice had enjoyed bathing a lot, and as such, had her maids bathe her multiple times a day.
As she moved her hands over her smooth skin, a satisfied smile couldn't help but appear on Beatrice's face.
"It looks like my muscles have receded a bit since I came to the academy," mumbled Beatrice as she opened her eyes and stared at her clenched fist.
Moving one of her hands over her other arm, feeling the soft and seemingly harmless arm in her hands, Beatrice smiled once again.
"This looks much better than those muscle monsters," said Beatrice as she female knights she had seen entered her mind, compared to them, Beatrice felt like her current form was much more appealing.
Suddenly, Beatrice took her clenched fist towards her body before punching the flowing water in front of her.
Merely a moment after Beatrice's fist hit the water at speeds far beyond those possible of a normal human, drops of water were launched towards every corner of the shower.
Seemingly unsatisfied and somewhat pent up, Beatrice's bare fist suddenly launched itself at the wall at a speed far beyond her previous punch.
Suddenly, large cracks appeared in the wall as a deep fist-shaped imprint appeared in the middle of them, causing Beatrice to smile.
A moment later, a hole suddenly appeared in the wall of the shower, with some text above it.
'Deposit two elemental stones for repair fees'
After reading the sentence, Beatrice couldn't help but feel somewhat conflicted as she walked out of the shower, before returning a few moments later with two small stones in her hands.
"This place really knows how to drain it's apprentices of any and all elemental stones that they have, I bet that costs almost nothing to do," mumbled Beatrice as she watched the wall suddenly begin repairing itself, completely unaware of just how right she was.
Having messed up her flow, Beatrice no longer lingered inside of the shower, walking out, dressing up, putting on a robe and walking out of the bathroom and then sitting cross-legged on the bed.
Ignoring his mistress, who had began refining mana, William suddenly got up from the chair he usually resided in and began walking towards the bathroom.
Then, as Beatrice's best and only servant, began cleaning both her clothes and the bathroom, as he had nothing else to do right now.
Unlike the first few days after Beatrice controlled him, right now, William felt like somewhat of an actual human being with thoughts and emotions of his own, not feeling like a machine created by someone.
As he washed his the clothes of his mistress, a heartfelt smile appeared on William's face, when suddenly he felt something weird, as if a chill blew past him.
...
Feeling the elemental energy she had just absorbed being transformed into pure Dark Mana by her mind, Beatrice couldn't help but unknowingly let her thoughts wander.
Usually, this would have been enough for Beatrice to lose control of the Rune created by the Inner Darkness meditation technique, causing her to stop transforming the elemental energy, and prompting her to stop letting her thoughts wander.
But right now, it seemed as though the rune in Beatrice's mind maintained itself as Beatrice went from one thought to another.
Seemingly influenced by the dark mana she was creating, Beatrice's thoughts slowly but surely moved to that topic, as several questions began appearing in her mind.
Eventually, though, Beatrice couldn't help but focus on one relatively simple question, that had completely annoyed her, but even so, not only was she not able to figure it out, she couldn't manage to find any answer in any of the books she had read.
'Is a Mage's elemental affinity determined by their personality, or is their personality determined by their magic affinity?' thought Beatrice as she continued refining Dark Mana before sending it into the deep reaches of her body.
Although this question seemed inconsequential, knowing the answer would allow Beatrice to answer another question, one which she was just as eager to know the answer to.
All mages knew that becoming a mage would enhance certain traits of their personality, causing dark mages to become even more reclusive and demented, light mages even more heroic, and fire mages even braver and more eager for battle.
But was this merely caused by the fact that mages just had that much more power compared to normal humans, allowing them to complete their ambitions, or was their own mana influencing them, morphing them in a certain way?
Eventually, after several hours, Beatrice stopped refining mana, as her body had reached it's limit for today, but even still, she still sat cross-legged on her bed, with seemingly no intention of getting off her bed, seemingly in a trance.
...
A while ago,
As she continued refining mana, the rune for the Inner Darkness meditation technique couldn't help but flash in Beatrice's mind from time to time, eventually beginning to morph into another rune altogether, causing the transformation of elemental energy into mana to stop.
But even so, Beatrice seemed to be in a trance, not even noticing such an obvious fact, merely staring at the constantly shifting rune.
After a few minutes, the rune had finally stabilized into one singular shape.
Compared to the previous rune, this one was much smaller, being only around half of the size, with the entirety of the outer part of the rune being completely missing, and at the same time, the Inner Part of the rune seemed to have somewhat changed as well.
As she kept focusing on the rune inside of her mind, Beatrice eventually started feeling as if she was traveling, as all of her senses, which she had previously used to detect the outside world suddenly stopped functioning.