Chapter 34
“Where the hell did that bastard go…”
It had been a very long time since I’d come to the western forest. I’d always preferred buying herbs rather than gathering them myself.
Besides, even though I had hurried out after hearing Ria, Kairos had already left the dormitory thirty minutes before me.
Thirty minutes was more than enough time for Kairos to cross several hills.
I stared at the still-intact uphill path for a moment, then shook my head with a sigh.
‘For now, let’s look a little farther.’
There was a way to find him. I had a special spell that could detect even his mana from a distance of several thousand paces.
But Rene’s ‘constitution without a limiter’ was still unfamiliar to me, and I knew all too well from the treasure hunt just how horrendous the mana consumption of a wide-area detection spell sweeping the entire mountain could be.
I fiddled with the pouch of moonlight grass I had brought just in case, then steeled myself and started walking again.
About twenty minutes passed like that.
‘……This is exhausting.’
Sweat began pouring down like rain. My whole body grew heavy as lead. I stopped walking, panting harshly.
I staggered over to a large boulder and sat down weakly.
‘It wasn’t this hard during the treasure hunt….’
I could guess why.
‘That Ria… She really was an excellent hiking companion….’
Besides, when you walked while chatting together, your pace naturally adjusted and you had chances to catch your breath.
I even found myself uselessly regretting that I should have brought Ria along when, in the end, I reached into my clothes and took out my wand.
‘Let’s save the moonlight grass.’
Moonlight grass’s greatest side effect was mana runaway. The chronic illness of Rene’s that Kairos had warned me about was mana runaway, too. If I lost consciousness here, I might really become food for wild boars.
Having taken out my wand, I consciously distributed mana evenly throughout my body to suppress mana consumption as much as possible.
I pointed the tip of my wand at the sky, squeezed my eyes shut, and recited Evan’s custom detection spell in my mind.
“Huff….”
As the spell activated, my mana began being sucked away at a terrifying rate.
At the same time, information on the location of each hiker and every wild animal in the mountain began flowing into my mind.
‘Damn! This wasn’t the treasure-hunt site.’
It was a mistake. The noise was far worse than I’d expected. My mana was being depleted at one and a half times the expected rate.
But now that I’d begun, I couldn’t stop. I clenched my fist and concentrated, trying to pick out only that bastard’s exceptionally distinctive mana.
Exactly twelve seconds later, I was finally able to pinpoint his location.
‘……Two people?’
Panting, I cut off the mana supply. My body reeled from the exhaustion that exceeded my expectations. I leaned my back against the boulder again.
‘Why are there two? There shouldn’t be anyone gathering herbs with him.’
As far as I knew, Kairos had no friends.
It wasn’t that the first-years ostracized him; it was more that no one could easily approach him because he was in an entirely different league.
Of course, children of the ‘kind-to-everyone’ type, like Ria, got along reasonably well with Kairos too… but that didn’t mean they were close enough to come out and gather herbs together on a weekend.
I pressed firmly between my brows to calm my dizziness and considered several other possibilities.
‘An outsider?’
That was the first possibility that came to mind. Perhaps, like Jibel, Kairos also had a friend outside school.
Besides, Kairos had been raised by his grandfather, an herbalist.
It wouldn’t be strange if he had a childhood friend who was an herbalist.
‘But… would a childhood friend who came all the way to Luminous to see him casually suggest going out to gather herbs?’
Even Jibel, a genuine herbalist, hadn’t suggested gathering herbs to Rene when they reunited after six months.
After thinking for a moment, I arrived at the next possibility.
‘……A secret date?’
It wasn’t an impossible scenario. If that was the case, it also explained to some extent why Kairos had drawn such a firm line with Christina.
Besides, a mage like Kairos, who ‘had ability but no background,’ was an excellent son-in-law candidate for a rising noble family seeking improvements to its magic circuits.
If an older noblewoman had him under her thumb… it made sense that they would meet deep in these mountains, away from everyone’s eyes.
‘Wait… could this also be how Kairos bought off the Ministry of Magic?’
The puzzle pieces clicked neatly into place. It felt as though the suspicious things he had done until now were all being explained at once.
‘This is a scoop, isn’t it?!’
Energy suddenly surged through my entire body. I could finally get that shameless bastard by the tail!
Kairos was about a twenty-minute walk away. If I ran, I could get there in under ten minutes.
I tucked my wand into my clothes and immediately started running in his direction. Perhaps because my heart was pounding so hard, I barely felt the fatigue from my depleted mana.
And exactly ten minutes later, I finally found Kairos.
“……?”
I had found him, but…… something about him seemed strange.
‘……Gasp.’
I blinked blankly, then hurriedly hid behind a tree. I clapped a hand over my mouth and quickly assessed the situation.
‘Did he… kill… kill her?’
With his back to me, Kairos stood in the middle of a clearing, holding his wand.
And in front of him…… a small girl lay collapsed, covered in blood.
‘What… what is this?’
My breath caught, and my heart began pounding like mad.
Trembling, I peeked out from beside the tree and saw Kairos slowly approaching the girl.
“……Cough.”
Perhaps sensing Kairos’s presence, the girl flinched and turned her body. She coughed repeatedly and muttered with difficulty.
“How… how….”
“Tenebre suffocatio.”
Along with Kairos’s low incantation, something invisible began tightening around the girl’s neck.
“Ghk…!”
The girl’s face went deathly white in an instant.
Kairos stared down at her for a moment, then crouched before the girl and aimed the tip of his wand between her brows.
“Where are the others?”
“Ugh….”
“Ah, right. You can’t talk like this.”
Kairos lightly waved his wand. The girl hurriedly sucked in a breath and trembled violently.
‘That’s too much, even against a child!’
There had to be some explanation for this. Some deep reason I knew nothing about.
But even so, driving a little girl that far was still far too extreme.
If she had done something wrong, he should call the knights and let the law deal with it; private punishment could never be tolerated, no matter what.
“Tell me. Where are the others?”
Kairos’s wand was once again pointed between the girl’s brows.
“I-I don’t know….”
“……Do you still think I’m playing around?”
“I-I really don’t know! The communications network still hasn’t been restored… urk!”
Once again, the girl’s face began turning deathly pale.
I couldn’t watch any longer. I slipped a hand into my clothes and began creeping toward Kairos.
Rustle!
‘Ah….’
But my plan to approach in secret fell apart the moment it began. A dry branch beneath my foot broke with a loud crack.
“Who’s there!”
Kairos immediately raised his voice and pointed his wand toward me.
“Huh?”
His expression froze in disbelief when he saw me. He apparently hadn’t even dreamed that I would be here.
‘This is my chance…!’
I wasn’t about to let that opening pass. Instead of taking out my wand, I charged straight at him with all my might.
Naturally, I couldn’t beat him in a head-on magical fight. I had already spent more than two-thirds of my mana on the detection spell, too.
So what I had to target was….
‘Iron Fist!’
Of course, Kairos’s physical strength might have been greater than I expected. Rene’s small body might not be able to keep up with the knowledge and experience I had.
But hand-to-hand combat was developed to subdue opponents stronger than oneself. And as a noble, I was a practitioner who had trained in it for years.
Unless that bastard Kairos was some absurd monster who had mastered hand-to-hand combat as well, I was sure to win!
“R-Rene?”
Kairos finally called my name in a flustered voice. But the distance had already closed to less than ten paces.
My target was his solar plexus. I would incapacitate him with a single blow. I pulled my right arm back and gathered all my strength.
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, I drove my fist forward with the sole intention of knocking him down!
“Ah…?”
No—it was just as I was about to throw it.
Suddenly, I felt something clamp tightly around my ankle. At the same time, my balance pitched sharply forward, and the ground rushed toward me at terrifying speed.
“Rene!”
As Kairos shouted desperately, he thrust both hands toward me. Even then, my body continued falling helplessly, and through my blurring vision, I finally identified what had grabbed my ankle.
‘That little brat from earlier…?!’
It was the very girl Kairos had been attacking.
The next moment, the girl’s mouth opened impossibly wide, and a decisive, sharp cry rang out.
“Exitus!”
At the same time, Kairos’s hands seized my shoulders.
“Thud!”
My vision went black, and something soft—probably Kairos’s chest—pressed against my face.
“Urgh….”
With Kairos’s brief groan, we rolled across the ground as one tangled mass.
“Crash…!”
For an instant, it felt as though the world had turned upside down. An unfamiliar grassy scent and a faint smell of ozone stung my nose.
“Gasp….”
The impact knocked the breath from me. Every bone in my body screamed.
No matter that Kairos had caught me, I had still been sprinting at full speed before slamming straight into the ground.
“Ugh….”
“Eek?!”
At the small scream from directly beneath me, I lowered my head and saw Kairos pinned beneath me, his face scrunched up in pain.
I hurriedly moved off him and instinctively stared toward the spot where the little brat had been.
“……?”
Even through the pain, my vision was bizarrely clear. But the girl was nowhere to be seen.
“……Huh?”
No, more importantly… the surrounding scenery itself was completely unfamiliar.
It was a forest, but not the clearing where Kairos had been moments ago. The forest path I had run along was no longer visible, either.
“W-what happened?”
Flustered, I turned back to Kairos without thinking. I figured he might know the reason.
“……Kairos?”
But Kairos couldn’t even open his eyes. He merely curled into a ball and let out faint groans, wearing an expression of agony I had never seen on him before.
“Are you… okay?”
For a moment, my heart dropped with a thud.