The Villainess Is My Cute Daughter

Adrian reached out and picked the ring up from the table.

He didn’t bother slipping it onto his finger. He just pushed a tiny pulse of his mana straight into the silver ring, establishing a quick connection with the spatial storage. He sensed inside with his mana and second later, a long, heavy object materialized out of thin air and dropped right onto the wooden table.

It was a staff.

Adrian just stared at it. It was made completely out of solid steel. There were no intricate carvings, no leather grips, and no fancy magical gems attached to it. It was literally just a thick, incredibly heavy steel rod.

He looked up at Draven, raising an eyebrow.

"A staff?" Adrian asked flatly.

"Yeah. A staff." Draven grinned, crossing his massive arms. "It is heavy and it is ridiculously sturdy. And more importantly? Unless someone actively attaches a forged blade to the top of it, I don’t think it will be classified as a weapon of war."

Draven pointed at the steel rod.

"Staffs are traditionally used as blunt weapons for honorable duels, not for frontline military warfare." Draven explained smoothly. "And even then, the only people who actually use them in real combat are those isolated monks living up in the hills. Universally, we do not consider that a war weapon."

Adrian blinked as the realization smacked him right in the face.

A huge grin broke out on his face as he stared down at the metal pole. He wrapped his fingers right around the middle and hoisted it up.

It was extremely heavy. A normal, unranked human would struggle to even get one end of the staff off the table. But Adrian was not a normal human anymore. He was an E rank knight now. His muscles were pretty strong and he could also reinforce them with mana so lifting it wasn’t that big of an issue.

But he could tell that to actually use this in battle, he would need to train a lot more and rank up. Lifting it up and using it properly were two completely different things.

He hoisted the heavy steel staff straight into the air with with both his hands and... nothing happened.

The Pacifist’s Shackles curse did not activate. His muscles did not lock up and his nervous system did not short circuit in an attempt to paralyze him. He felt completely fine and felt zero restrictions.

Adrian could not help it. He gripped the heavy steel staff and grinned like an absolute maniac.

He looked back up at Draven. "I can actually lift it."

Draven burst out laughing. His deep, booming laugh was loud and it even made Adrain laugh with him.

"I figured you would be able to!" Draven grinned proudly. "So you finally have a proper weapon in your hands. So what is the verdict? Are you going to use this thing full time now? Or are you sticking with those weird flying rings you always use?"

Adrian tightened his grip on the steel.

"Well," Adrian started. "Using those chakrams does consume quite a bit of my mana. It is not an overwhelmingly huge amount, but in a long, drawn out fight, every single drop of mana matters."

He swung the heavy staff experimentally.

"So swinging this around is probably going to be vastly more efficient for my mana efficiency." Adrian decided. "But I feel like I will continue using the chakrams too. It will just heavily depend on the specific combat situation. If it’s a situation where I can win with a single sneaky hit, I’ll use the staff but for every other situation I’ll have to continue using chakrams. I’ll need to rank up as a knight first to be able to use this staff properly."

He set the staff back down on the table.

"Thank you for this gift, Draven." Adrian said sincerely. "I honestly did not expect that a simple steel stick would actually be the ultimate loophole to my curse."

"Do not worry about it, brother." Draven waved his hand dismissively.

Adrian looked back down at the steel staff and suddenly, a completely different thought hit his brain.

"Oh, shit." Adrian muttered, his eyes widening. "I completely forgot about something."

He looked back up at the Marquis and let out a dry, awkward chuckle.

"Well," Adrian rubbed the back of his neck. "I originally wanted to go directly to the capital first. But I changed my mind midway through the journey so I could get up here to the borders quicker. And I completely forgot about the things I actually needed to do in the capital."

Draven, looking curious, leaned forward slightly.

"What exactly did you plan on doing in the capital?" Draven asked.

"Well, two things." Adrian said and sighed, "Firstly, I wanted to buy some raw Mithril. And secondly, I wanted to hire some mages to work for me back in Oresfall."

Draven frowned in total confusion.

"You want to hire mages?" Draven asked. "But aren’t low ranking mages completely useless in combat unless they manage to reach at least the third circle?"

"Well, yeah. They usually are." Adrian nodded. "But with the specific training method that I gave you, they can become incredibly strong."

Adrian smirked. "I can turn those useless mages into Magic Knights."

Draven’s eyes widened as the realization finally hit him.

The Marquis had been so deeply conditioned by the strict, societal separation of knights and mages for his entire life that he genuinely forgot to consider the insane potential of Adrian’s hybrid manual. He had not even thought about applying it to low ranking mages.

"And recruiting them will also help me a massive amount with my territory management." Adrian continued smoothly. "I can put those mages on dedicated production lines. They can help my people with a lot of things"

Adrian gestured with his hands.

"For example, water distribution." Adrian explained. "As long as I hire a few mages who specialize entirely in creating clean water, the regular citizens will not have to walk all the way to the river just to haul heavy buckets back home. Well I could just make a canal system but I’ll need to experiment a little on that first."