"You want me to fight you? Do you know you're at the third rank now? Do you know my abilities aren't suited to combat?"
Dorothea's eyes widened.
"Yes, that's exactly why I picked you!" Vanessa raised her head proudly. "With Maeve, I'm worried she'll turn into a monster. Allen keeps blinking all over the place, so I might not be able to hit him. You're the easiest to deal with."
Dorothea laughed in exasperation. "Why don't you wait until Flora gets back and fight her?"
"Well, she isn't back yet..."
Vanessa averted her gaze.
What none of them knew was that Flora had actually returned. She had just reached the door and was knocking, but everyone in the house had gone down to the basement to watch Vanessa's advancement, so no one heard her.
Hopefully, she would be patient enough not to break in.
Dorothea eyed Vanessa's fingers warily.
"Don't worry, I promise not to use [Secret Art · Trigger], and I can even tell you about my new talent!"
Vanessa gave her a rough explanation of how [Hypnosis] worked.
"You want to hypnotize me?" Dorothea frowned. "But this art requires sustained eye contact. Wouldn't it be hard to use in combat?"
"So you don't need to worry. Let's try fighting!"
Vanessa spoke eagerly.
Dorothea hesitated for a moment, but nodded and stepped forward.
She had no intention of holding back. More precisely, she wanted nothing more than to give Vanessa a good beating.
"All right, then... begin!"
Dorothea summoned several mirrors right away. She wasn't trying to use them to spy on anything. Quite the opposite-she wanted to block their line of sight!
At her will, the mirrors blocked Vanessa's face perfectly, preventing her from making eye contact.
[Hypnosis] only worked with eye contact. That meant that as long