CHAPTER 09…………………………………….
A chilling sensation shot up my spine, and I let out a silent scream as I bolted without thinking. My body, stiff with terror, refused to move properly.
Someone help me!
Tears spilled out on their own.
Waaah! Why on earth did the door connect wrong?!
It was supposed to lead to my room, but of all places, it had connected to the duke’s hunting grounds! And to make things worse, after a round trip, the door had closed.
With this already frail body, there was no way I could shake off the pursuit of an aura master. I hadn’t even run that far, yet my breath was already caught in my throat.
Think! Use your head—find a way!
The weak survive by using tricks and schemes against the strong. But…
This is like throwing an egg at a rock. No, honestly—even if you froze the egg, you still couldn’t break the rock, right?
There was no escape in sight.
As the world blurred white, I roughly wiped my eyes with my sleeve. Even now, it was lucky that my hood hadn’t fallen off.
Slash.
As I wiped my eyes and swung my arm forward to run again, a golden aura grazed past my forearm. The blade of light, missing me by a hair’s breadth, split the plaster statue in front of me cleanly in two before slamming into the wall.
Crash!
The upper half of the neatly severed statue toppled backward and shattered into pieces.
I-if I’d stuck my arm out just a little faster, my arm would’ve looked like that…
My head spun.
“Oh dear, I made a mistake.”
A mistake? What mistake? The mistake of not cutting off my arm?
I was in a panic and couldn’t think straight. My legs, which had frozen for a moment, were driven back into motion by sheer survival instinct. But like this, there was absolutely no way I’d escape.
I needed a miracle.
Someone help me!
For me, a miracle meant only one thing.
As I ran, I glanced out the window and saw a brilliantly bright moon hanging in the sky.
That’s a full moon! Just a tiny bit chipped! No matter what anyone says, that’s definitely a full moon!
So a miracle had to happen.
Throwing caution to the wind, I grabbed the handle of the nearest door. I didn’t care what kind of door it was.
Please!
I prayed more desperately than I ever had in my life.
“[To my room!]”
My mind was a mess, but in that fleeting instant, I calculated countless possibilities.
This is near the Cyrus Empire. The sun has already started to rise, so the full moon has passed. The probability of a miracle is…
And in the end, despair turned into a single desperate wish.
Please, connect!
Just as I was about to despair at the door that wouldn’t budge no matter how hard I pushed, a bright light burst from the crack. My body staggered as the door suddenly flew open.
“Yes!”
A miracle finally happened.
“…Were you a mage?”
At that moment, I heard the duke’s flustered voice behind me—he was almost upon me. When I looked back, he was accelerating, rapidly closing the distance.
“Hii!”
Once again, my nerves were stretched to their absolute limit.
“Where do you think you’re running to?”
But the instant the duke reached the door, for some reason his red eyes seemed to waver violently. I had no time to think about why—using all my strength, I shoved the door.
“Wait!”
Just as the duke raised his hand in alarm—
I slammed the door shut with every last ounce of strength I had.
Bang!
“Haa! Haa!”
The door closed.
My breath was so ragged that my mind went blank. Only after taking about three breaths did I realize that the door was truly shut—and that I had escaped safely.
“H-ha… I lived.”
Only then did I feel the stinging pain in my wrist. A thin, straight cut marked the skin. Even though the duke’s sword aura had missed, it had still injured me. A chill ran down my spine.
Come to think of it, my mother’s necklace had been wrapped around that wrist—but it was gone.
I bit my lip.
If I think of it as the price of my life, it’s cheap…
Still, my chest ached at the thought of losing my mother’s keepsake.
And after barely escaping that terrifying hunter, of all places, I had fled to the Yuberis estate.
Let’s just grab the money pouch and get out quickly.
At least this door really was the wardrobe door in my room. This time, it seemed I’d arrived properly.
But then—
“What the heck? Where did you suddenly come from?”
A voice that shouldn’t have been there came from behind me.
Why is Cosette in my room…?
The moment I turned around, something flew straight toward my head.
Thud!
The last thing I remembered was Cosette’s furious face—then my vision went dark.
“Your Grace?”
Beric was startled when Lektarion returned to the camp outside the estate with an unusually grim expression.
“Why do you look like that?”
After a hunt, he always looked refreshed somehow, but today was different. He even looked like someone who had just fought a fierce battle—his clothes were completely tattered.
This place was an abandoned estate near the border of the Kingdom of Ruinac, discovered during an investigation as a hideout for magical criminals.
The moment he heard that illegal mages who had snuck in from abroad were secretly kidnapping people and selling them somewhere, Lektarion had decided to relieve some stress and attacked alone, capturing them all.
That was why he should have returned looking refreshed. Instead, he came back with an even stiffer expression, making it clear to Beric that something had gone wrong.
The Duke of Northdian stared absently at something in his hand, then asked,
“Any issues with the barrier?”
At Lektarion’s question, Beric immediately checked his magic. But he found nothing unusual.
“None.”
“No sign of interference at all?”
His tone suggested there had been an intruder. Beric prided himself on having the best barrier magic in the world—but this place was a den of lunatics.
Feeling uneasy, Beric cautiously asked,
“Did something happen?”
“A woman was inside. Inside that barrier you cast with ten top-grade mana stones.”
As he answered with a bright smile, Lektarion shrugged into the outer garment handed to him by a knight. At that dazzling smile, Beric—who had mana stones dangling all over him—flinched.
He knew well that a single top-grade mana stone was worth an entire mana-powered carriage, but he still had something to say.
“Then maybe stop doing this to me every time and hire more people? This was supposed to be a three-person cooperative spell.”
“And you think mage scum would line up to work for me?”
“……”
He couldn’t deny that.
Any mage the Duke of Northdian required had to be capable of at least sixth-tier magic, since the job involved hunting criminals. Considering that only low-tier mages could realistically be hired with money, it was safe to say—
He had no one he could hire.
Left speechless, Beric glanced at him and hurriedly changed the subject.
“But a woman? If she was inside the barrier, wouldn’t she be part of that crazy group?”
At the question, Lektarion let out a short scoff.
“If she were, she’d have used magic the moment I pointed my sword at her. Mage scum find it most humiliating to be beaten by someone like me who can’t use magic.”
“…Did you kill her?”
“No. She got away.”
“…What?”
For a moment, Beric thought he’d misheard.
“She got away.”
After receiving confirmation in that flat reply, Beric gaped.
“T-that’s impossible. You let a target escape?”
Lektarion quietly furrowed his brow.
“…I may need to reconsider our contract next year.”
“Aah! That’s cruel! You know I’ve got nowhere else to go!”
It was the Duke of Northdian who had taken Beric in after he caused an incident on the Sky Ark and was expelled. Though expelled, he hadn’t committed a crime, and the duke had happened to need a mage for hunting.
“Seems I’ve been too lenient lately. Your mouth’s gotten far too free.”
“N-no, I mean, ahem! You’re human too, Your Grace—mistakes happen and all that.”
It was a lightning-fast change of attitude after Beric saw the golden light in the duke’s hand.
“You know how I feel, right?”
At Beric’s hand-heart gesture, Lektarion’s expression twisted.
“Get back to work.”
As he spoke, he tossed something over. Beric hurriedly caught it—it was a necklace.
“What’s this?”
“Something the woman dropped.”
“Hm.”
Beric held the necklace up in the air and examined it.
“It’s pretty old.”
He first dispelled the barrier magic. Even with top-grade mana stones, maintaining a barrier consumed so much mana that it prevented the use of other spells.
As the transparent barrier covering the huge estate disappeared, Beric clasped the necklace in both hands.
“[Bi Canter Nassa.]”
A faint blue light flowed from his hands and wrapped around the necklace. The tracking spell should seep into the object, read its record, and lead him to its owner.
Or at least, it should have.
Ting!
Beric’s hands were knocked back as if repelled by something.
“Huh? There’s an anti-tracking spell on it.”
“What?”
For the first time, confusion appeared on Lektarion’s impassive face. Beric might be loose-lipped and careless, but when it came to skill, he was unquestionably reliable.
Beric examined the gem on the necklace more closely and groaned.
“Of all things, it’s custom-made. And at least seventh-tier. If you give me time, maybe—but right now, tracking it here is impossible.”
Custom magic was a special type of spell where a mage altered standardized Sky Ark formulas to suit their own preferences. But that was something only high-level mages of at least the sixth tier would even attempt—it required extremely advanced magical knowledge.
That tiny woman was a high-level mage capable of designing custom magic?
He hadn’t sensed that level of mana at all. His mana detection was second to none. If anything, she’d felt ambiguous—barely like someone with mana at all.
Lektarion recalled the strange space beyond the door the woman had fled into.
At the time, it had looked like a small, dark room crowded with people—but when he reopened the door, it led to a dust-covered, empty reception room.
For a moment, he had to wonder if he’d lost his mind.
“Beric.”
