Chapter 121
Just before Rafaella was completely swallowed by the sphere of black mist, Leo succeeded in cutting away all the strands of hair binding William.
Freed, William immediately tried to rush toward Rafaella, but his body, floating in midair, was forced by Leo’s magic to fly in another direction.
William struggled violently, rage exploding from him.
“Let me go!”
Leo answered not with words, but by increasing the speed of the flight magic slicing through the sky.
“Leo!”
Regardless of William’s will, the two men shot rapidly toward the center of the Forest of Loss. They could barely even keep their eyes open. The roar of the wind hurt their ears, and the sheer speed made it difficult to breathe.
Only then did William realize that Leo, too, was panicking.
Anyone could see that Rafaella was losing the fight. The black mist of Blehel’s sinister power was savage and overwhelming. Rafaella’s strength looked as fragile as a lone candle flickering in a pitch-dark night without even a trace of moonlight.
Leo didn’t want to leave Rafaella alone in that situation either. He wanted to descend at once,解除 his concealment bracelet, and use every gem on his necklace if that was what it took to help her.
But Leo had no choice but to think rationally.
“I’m trusting only you. William may look strict and rigid, but he can be surprisingly emotional at times. So you have to handle this well, Leo. I’m counting on you.”
Rafaella’s words echoed in his ears—the small note she had handed him along with the map. Thinking back, behind her ever-playful eyes, there had been a strange hint of bitterness.
Leo unconsciously bit down on his lower lip. Rafaella had trusted a coward like him with this task. He didn’t want to disappoint her.
But he also couldn’t allow her to be injured—or killed.
That left only one conclusion.
‘We have to find the fragment as fast as possible and return to Elaela!’
He was already flying so fast that William’s shouting beside him couldn’t even be heard, but Leo poured in even more mana. The pressure from the speed made his ears ring.
Before long, a structure came into view in the distance. Just as Rafaella had predicted, it was a massive black castle.
Leo didn’t slow down until the very last moment before impact. He aimed straight for the highest tower of the castle—specifically, a large, ornate window—and charged.
There was no time to enter through the gates and search for the fragment methodically.
Crash!
Leo and William smashed through the window. William rolled smoothly to absorb the impact, while Leo blocked the shock with a shield spell.
The room was vast and dazzling, reminiscent of a grand banquet hall. It was likely both an exhibition room and a workshop; large display cases lined the walls without a single gap between them. On the desk in the center lay an array of tools whose purposes one would rather not imagine.
Kiiiiii—!!!
The moment they got back on their feet, a shrill alarm echoed throughout the black castle.
Only then did Leo release the concealment magic on his bracelet. He hurriedly covered one ear with one hand while gripping a white gem on his necklace with the other.
“Ugh, figures the alarm would be as obnoxious as its owner.”
As Leo poured mana into the white gem, a translucent, milky barrier formed like a soap bubble. It rapidly expanded, spreading out from Leo and William, sweeping through the entire castle before vanishing.
The alarm stopped.
No sooner had the silence fallen than William lunged at Leo and grabbed him by the collar.
“You bastard! Why didn’t you leave me behind?!”
“To follow Elaela’s plan, obviously.”
Seeing William so disheveled and openly furious was a first. He looked ready to snap Leo’s arm at any moment.
But Leo didn’t back down either. Scowling, he tried to knock William’s arm away.
Tried.
William’s arm didn’t budge an inch, like solid rock. Instead, Leo’s hand slipped off, losing its strength. His attempt to coolly shrug him off failed miserably.
“Tch. Guess you really are a block of stone—hard as hell.”
Leo gave a short laugh at the embarrassing situation, but his voice was serious.
“I know you’re worried about Elaela. I am too.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have done this.”
“We don’t have time to argue among ourselves. We need to get back as soon as possible. So let’s find the mirror fragment first—”
“Lady Rafaella was being pushed back. You could have come here alone. Send me back there. Now.”
“You think my mana is infinite or something? We don’t know what kind of mechanisms this castle has. If I run out of mana, that would really be the end.”
“Then send me back before that happens.”
“Elaela clearly said she’d hold out until we returned! Don’t you trust her?”
“And you do?”
“Of course I do! That’s why I flew us here!”
“Is that truly how you feel?”
“…What?”
“I’m asking if you truly believed Lady Rafaella’s words when she said she would hold out.”
The ever-smirking expression on Leo’s face stiffened.
William’s pale blue eyes pierced straight through him, sharp enough to dig out the doubts Leo had tried to bury deep inside.
“You felt it too while we were flying,” William said. “Blehel’s black energy was surging even more violently.”
William’s brows twisted with sorrow.
“Lady Rafaella…”
He had to steady his breathing before continuing.
“Lady Rafaella is strong. But right now, Blehel’s power was slightly greater. Even someone like me, who doesn’t sense mana, could feel it. There’s no way you didn’t notice.”
“……”
“She may have hoped we wouldn’t come back. From the beginning, this plan might never have had an ending where all three of us left the forest unscathed.”
The thought Leo had desperately avoided finally spilled from William’s lips.
“She’s always been… unconventional. Ahem. Creative. She may have calculated things far beyond what we imagined.”
“…I did think something felt off too.”
The truth was, Leo was afraid. Blehel, who wielded not mana but demonic energy, terrified him. So even when he sensed the plan gradually unraveling, he pressed on, rationalizing it by the fact that Rafaella hadn’t given any signal.
Leo’s heart was split in two. Half of him genuinely believed Rafaella would hold out. The other half deliberately ignored the possibility of failure out of fear.
“Elaela would come up with some trick and escape somehow, no matter what!”
Leo shouted louder, trying to drown out the ominous thoughts. But he flinched at his own words.
Because nowhere in them was the possibility that Rafaella would be safe—only that she would hold out or lose.
The one most shocked by that realization was Leo himself.
William’s gaze shifted toward the shattered window.
Beyond the vast black marshland, toward the place where Rafaella was fighting alone, he forced himself to swallow Leo’s hopeful words.
In truth, this wasn’t Leo’s fault alone. William himself had grown careless, despite knowing her tendency to push herself straight to the edge of danger.
…Lady Rafaella.
The image of Rafaella—who never lost her playful smile even at the edge of death—made William’s chest ache.
He steeled himself and lifted his head.
“Since we’ve already come this far, then as you say, it’s best to accomplish our objective as quickly as possible and return. We can’t go back empty-handed.”
William had no choice but to believe that Rafaella would endure somehow until they returned. No matter how exceptional his swordsmanship was, without Leo’s teleportation magic, there was no way for him to cross that distance in time.
“The map.”
Even at William’s request, Leo stood absentmindedly, lost in his own thoughts. In a black castle larger than most lords’ estates, checking the map for direction was clearly the wiser choice.
“Hurry.”
Impatient, William reached into Leo’s clothes himself to retrieve the map.
At that moment—
Whoosh!
A long wooden spear came flying in with a sharp whistling sound.
Thunk!
William caught the shaft midair and, at the same time, wrapped an arm around Leo’s shoulder, twisting his body to pull him aside.
Thud! Thud!
More wooden spears slammed into the spot where they had just been standing.
William pushed Leo back and used the spear he’d caught to knock away the incoming ones.
Clang—! Chang!
“Liam!”
Snapping back to his senses, Leo spotted arrows pouring down from a mechanism in the ceiling above William’s head and shouted.
At the same time, he lunged forward, pulling William close from behind and erecting three layers of shields in rapid succession.
Fortunately, the arrows raining down from the ceiling weren’t enchanted—ordinary arrows. They all bounced harmlessly off Leo’s shields.
“Huff—! Whoa! That scared me!”
