Chapter 15
“A wallet? Someone with that much money should just buy a new one. How stingy. How much was it worth, anyway?”
“It seems the wallet itself was important, not the money. They said it was an old leather pouch embroidered with the Mage Tower Master’s name.”
“An old leather pouch?”
Yurian narrowed her eyes. Then, as if something occurred to her, she abruptly jumped up and rummaged through the pocket of the robe she had worn yesterday, which was hanging on the wall. Before long, something emerged—so ragged it felt almost insulting to even call it ‘old.’
One of the public etiquette lessons Yurian taught her students went like this: if you see trash lying on the roadside, pick it up and throw it away properly. This pouch had been something she’d found discarded on the road while returning to the Alliance yesterday. She had picked it up, intending to throw it away later—and then completely forgotten about it.
“That Mage Tower Master… what was his name again?”
Who would’ve thought there’d be a name written on a piece of trash? Yurian immediately opened the pouch to check its contents, and her eyes widened. A strange light flickered in her vivid blue eyes.
“Damn it all—me, of all people, a Mage Tower Master, reduced to this!”
Lucas Kalten complained incessantly, roughly once every thirty seconds. Being outdoors would’ve been one thing, but they were currently sprinting through a narrow underground passage with walls pressing in from all sides. His complaint-filled voice echoed threefold, multiplying everyone’s irritation along with it. The knights escorting him at close range—tasked with making sure he didn’t escape—were rapidly reaching the limits of their patience.
‘If you weren’t the Mage Tower Master, I swear—’
‘The Mage Tower Master is already an enemy of the Alliance, but starting today, he’s a personal enemy.’
‘They say the Mage Tower Master will do anything for money—how much would it cost to punch him once?’
Despite all that, the reason they were running together was simple: they were fleeing from devout—and utterly unhinged—holy knights who had been praying in someone else’s backyard for eighteen straight hours.
This passage was originally an emergency escape route for the Knights’ Alliance, meant for fires or enemy attacks. After hearing the situation, the local branch commander deemed their circumstances close enough to an emergency and allowed its use.
Even so, revealing a secret passage with outsiders like Yurian and the Mage Tower Master included was an extraordinarily unusual—and generous—decision for the Alliance. Unfortunately, Lucas was not the sort of person who appreciated such consideration.
“If they’d just temporarily lifted the mana barrier around the Alliance, we wouldn’t need to take this long detour. This is why people say that when your brain doesn’t work, your body suffers.”
“……”
“And teleporting this many people at once? Knights, no less?! Everyone knows mana consumption increases with weight during teleportation—have you no conscience at all?!”
That was right. The only reason Yurian’s group had brought Lucas along wasn’t exactly goodwill—it was to squeeze out his teleportation magic. Or, to put it politely, to ask for his help.
Both sides were in the same predicament anyway: neither could afford to be discovered by the holy knights. And if you wanted to escape without leaving a trace, teleportation was the best option.
So they struck a temporary alliance, wagering Lucas’s freedom and the release of the imprisoned mages. Magic couldn’t be used within the Alliance grounds, so for now, only Lucas accompanied them. Once everyone escaped safely, the other mages would be freed as well.
What they hadn’t accounted for was Lucas himself.
Bringing him along had been a mistake.
Because he never, ever stopped talking.
“Blah blah, blah-blah-blah! Grumble grumble, grumble-grum-grumble!”
‘How can someone move their mouth that nonstop?’
Even surrounded by enemies, with no allies in sight, Lucas never lost his nerve. Worse, in the tiniest gaps between breaths, he managed to brag—again and again and again. The knights genuinely wondered if he even remembered that he was a prisoner.
By the time the barrage of machine-gun complaints reached its peak, Yurian—who had been running silently—finally spoke.
“Hey.”
“‘Hey’? Young Lady, did you just call me ‘hey’?”
“Do you want to be friends with me?”
“W-What kind of horrifying thing is that?!”
“Then why do you keep talking to me? Shut up and just run.”
Picking fights when you’re already at a disadvantage. At her vicious tone, not only Lucas but even the surrounding knights clamped their mouths shut and swallowed dryly. Yurian hadn’t slept a wink last night because of the holy knights occupying the backyard. That meant she’d gone two full nights without sleep—and was now sensitive enough to smack the Mage Tower Master’s flapping mouth without a second thought.
Sensing something dangerous in her gaze, Lucas cautiously glanced at her, then lowered his eyes.
“—You’d better keep your promise, villainess.”
“You worry about keeping yours first, prisoner.”
“Hah! You never let anything slide, do you!”
“Then why do you keep picking fights you can’t win?”
Lucas’s shoulders trembled with humiliation. It was frustrating, but he couldn’t beat her in words. Realizing that continuing would only hurt himself, he snorted and sharply turned his head away.
Naturally, no one bothered to soothe him.
With the excess noise gone, only the sound of footsteps echoed for a while. The sudden silence made the group uneasy, and they began stealing glances at one another. Just as someone was about to crack a joke, Yurian spoke again.
“Sol, I’m sorry.”
“For what, my lady?”
“This happened because I got discovered. I should’ve been more careful—I was too careless.”
Yurian apologized to Sol with a deep sigh. She truly felt ashamed. She wouldn’t have endured this situation alone. Thanks to Sol’s ability and position, they’d been able to escape relatively comfortably. And yet, instead of helping, she’d caused him trouble.
As Yurian grew visibly dejected, Lucas seized the moment to mutter, ‘Seriously, what a nuisance!’—but everyone was too absorbed in the strange atmosphere between Yurian and Sol to pay him any attention. Sol himself was startled, cold sweat beading on his forehead as he waved both hands frantically.
“This is not your fault, Lady Yurian! If anything, it started because the Mage Tower Master sent you flying into the shopping district. This is the Mage Tower Master’s fault.”
“Ah. That’s true. It’s all his fault.”
“How is that my fault—!”
Lucas once again failed to read the room and butted in, only to have knights clamp a hand over his mouth. Thanks to that damned Mage Tower Master, the mood between the two kept getting disrupted. No one wanted impurities interrupting their immersion.
‘Those are the eyes of someone who got rejected? No way.’
Yurian said she’d been dumped, but the knights weren’t convinced. After all, the depth in Sol’s gaze when he looked at her was unfathomable. If that was just loyalty, then forget having a lord. There was clearly something between those two—even if they themselves didn’t realize it. Sol’s subordinates were intensely curious.
With an average age of twenty-three, this was a knight corps at the prime age for loving romance stories the most.
“We only need to get past this point. Lady Yurian, please be careful.”
“Ah, yeah. Thanks—wait, what’s that?”
However, it didn’t take long for the soft, fluttery tension of budding romance to turn into a different kind of pounding heartbeat. As the group emerged from the musty passage and prepared to step into the light, a long shadow suddenly loomed over their heads.
