After hesitating for a moment, Damon carefully opened his mouth. He was now digging a trap in earnest to catch the dragon.
“I intend to go to Dontrel. I’m currently traveling, so it should take about ten days to get there.”
“Dontrel? Do you mean Dontrel in the Kingdom of Tervia?”
“That’s right.”
Watching Zengart nod silently, Damon turned away without another word.
“I’ll be going now. If I need more money, I’ll come back.”
“Please come by anytime.”
Zengart, who had not noticed anything at all, saw Damon off with a bright smile. As Damon looked at his face, one resolve hardened in his heart: he would kill the dragon no matter what, so Zengart could live safely in Lorvain. If Damon died, Zengart would not be able to survive either.
‘That bastard will die by my hand.’
Damon stepped onto the magic circle, thinking of one thing and another. A moment later, his body was buried in a cluster of light and vanished, as though he had urgent business to attend to.
“He seems a little strange today.”
Tilting his head, Zengart soon turned away, completely unaware of the tangled web of affairs centered around him.
The place where Damon appeared was not Dontrel. His destination was a low hill located four days from Sevain.
It was the very place where Mitchell and Juliana had fled with the provisions. Damon intended to begin leisurely tracking them from there. Of course, his goal was to make their lives thoroughly miserable. A look of great interest rose on Damon’s face.
“The mercenary fellows will be holed up for another ten days or so, practicing the internal energy cultivation method… In that case, I can take my time wandering around and teaching those brats a lesson.”
With a triumphant smile, Damon immediately cast tracking magic. Since he had already personally placed magic on Mitchell and Juliana’s bodies, he could detect them at once as long as they were within a radius of 200 kilometers. Moreover, no matter how quickly they moved, it was impossible for them to travel 200 kilometers in only three days.
“They didn’t get very far.”
Having detected their presence not far away, Damon launched himself forward without delay.
“I told you we should have stolen the map too!”
A girl shouted, her hands planted on her hips as if she were furious. The young man looking at her was just as angry.
Of course, the two were Mitchell and Juliana. They were currently lost in an unfamiliar mountain, and Juliana was taking out all her frustration over being lost on Mitchell.
“You call yourself a member of the Carsel Guard, and you can’t even find one road? And you still call yourself a knight?”
Mitchell, who was listening, was just as enraged. His fists, gripping the reins of two horses, trembled in midair.
‘Damn it…’
She was the one who had suggested doing this in the first place. He had even lost his honor as a knight by taking the party’s provisions. In other words, he had committed theft. And yet Juliana was blaming only him. Following her suggestion from the start had been the root of the trouble. Mitchell protested as if he could no longer endure it.
“You’re the one who suggested we take the provisions and run. Because of you, I even stole—something I never would have done otherwise. Isn’t this going too far?”
“Then you should have guided us properly. If you didn’t know the way, then naturally you should have brought a map.”
Juliana did not back down in the slightest. Since Mitchell was the only person she could vent her anger on, he was the one suffering this ordeal.
In the end, Mitchell’s anger exploded.
“You damned…”
Throwing aside the reins, Mitchell glared and strode toward Juliana. With both fists clenched, he looked as if he would swing first, princess or not. At that sight, Juliana flinched and took a step back. As a woman, she could not help but feel afraid.
However, she knew very clearly how to break through this situation.
“If you do this, I’ll tell your father. Along with what happened before…”
“Grrr.”
Mitchell’s fist stopped in midair and trembled. Somehow, whenever he heard the words that she would tell his father, the strength naturally left his hand. His father, Hales, was that absolute a presence to Mitchell. But when he saw Juliana return with a triumphant expression, his anger boiled up once more.
‘Should I just kill this wench right now? Then pin the crime on bandits…’
Mitchell was so furious that he even thought of killing her to silence her. But Juliana was an extremely quick-witted girl. When she saw the killing intent gleaming in Mitchell’s eyes, her attitude softened noticeably.
“Don’t be too angry. I’m just so upset that we got lost and wandered around. And as promised, I won’t breathe a word about what happened before, no matter what.”
“Ugh…”
Seeing Juliana ask for reconciliation at just the right moment, Mitchell let his fists droop powerlessly. He let out a long sigh and took hold of the reins again. He could only think of having been born in the same village as her as a truly ill-fated bond.
“Let’s stop. If we don’t hurry and walk, we may have to sleep outside again tonight…”
Mitchell climbed onto his horse weakly, then rode off without even looking back. Juliana hurriedly mounted her own horse and followed after him.
“Giddyup.”
Before they parted, Kasim had said it would take about two days to reach another village, so the two had been riding hard. Juliana’s scheme was to find a large village and hire another mercenary corps. Of course, she intended to demand hefty compensation from Kasim’s Mercenary Corps. What Kasim had worried about was finally becoming reality.
However, the village they had aimed for did not appear. For them, who had thought they would be able to hire a guide once they reached the village, it could not help but be disheartening.
The two had already been forced to sleep in the mountains with their horses for two nights. Because of that, they longed more than anyone for warm soup and a comfortable bed. Mitchell, who had been trudging along, stopped his horse.
“Whoa, whoa.”
He had been moving all day and was feeling hungry. Mitchell picked up the pouch tied to the horse’s side. Taking out a few pieces of dried meat, he looked back at Juliana.
“Want some?”
“No. I’m sick and tired of dried meat. What on earth were you doing instead of learning how to cook? The mercenaries could make something fairly edible even with this kind of thing.”
Once again, her anger was poured out on Mitchell. Mitchell turned away without another word. By now, he had been so thoroughly trained by her that he had become numb to it. Tossing a piece of dried meat roughly into his mouth, Mitchell rode on without looking back.
Chew, chew.
The dry, stale taste unique to dried meat filled his mouth, but Mitchell said nothing. If it were up to him, he wanted to get rid of Juliana as soon as they found a village. He felt as if he would finally be able to live if only she were gone. But that, too, was not a wise thought. As long as she was alive in this world, Mitchell would always have to live in fear of his father. Thinking this and that, the two entrusted themselves to their horses and wandered aimlessly along the mountain path.
“There they are. No matter how they run, they’re still Sun Wukong in the Buddha’s palm.”
Spotting the two trudging along in the distance, Damon smiled faintly. They had not gone as far as he had expected. It seemed they had gotten lost in the mountains and gone around in circles. Still, this time they appeared to have chosen the right direction. There was a small village about half a day away along the road they were taking. Looking at their backs, Damon’s eyes gleamed.
“First, I should make those fellows walk a bit. Invisibility.”
As he cast the magic, Damon’s body suddenly vanished on the spot. Through the power of magic, he had distorted the light and become invisible. In that state, Damon completely suppressed even his scent and presence. Since his opponent was a paladin capable of controlling mana, he had to be thorough in every respect. Damon’s body soon changed into a state where even a dog with a keen sense of smell standing beside him would not notice him at all.
“Kekeke. Shall we begin the operation now?”
Invisible, Damon glided toward the two. As expected, they did not notice his presence in the slightest. Damon approached close enough that he could touch the horse’s rump if he reached out, yet the two simply rode on in silence. After briefly observing Mitchell, Damon reached out and lightly touched the horse’s side.
Neighhh!
“Huh? What’s wrong with this horse?”
When the horse that had been walking well collapsed limply on the spot, Mitchell was startled. With a knight’s reflexes, Mitchell nimbly leaped down from the horse, quickly drew his sword, and kept watch in all directions.
But there was nothing around. After looking everywhere with flashing eyes, Mitchell cautiously approached the horse. The moment he saw the horse’s condition, his face twisted.
“This is…”
The horse he had been riding could not use its legs at all. Watching it struggle on the ground, it seemed to have sprained its ankle. For Mitchell, this was a situation as troublesome as could be.
“This is driving me mad. As if things weren’t bad enough, why now of all times…”
Mitchell, who had been stroking the horse’s head in frustration, had no choice but to raise his sword. He thought he should at least end the horse’s life and lessen its pain. However, Mitchell could not bring himself to swing the sword down. The horse he had ridden was one he had grown deeply attached to since his days in Carsel. He let out a long sigh and sheathed his sword again.
“I can’t do it. I just can’t kill you.”
Since he could not take along a horse that had sprained its ankle and could not even move, Mitchell ultimately abandoned it with tears in his eyes. If he left it like this, it would most likely become wolf food, but he could not bear to kill it with his own hands.
“If you’re lucky, you may survive. Farewell.”
After bidding the horse goodbye with a lonely expression, Mitchell turned his head and looked at Juliana. Perhaps her earlier feelings had not yet faded, because she was looking at Mitchell with an expression of great satisfaction. When her eyes met Mitchell’s, Juliana shook her head violently.
“No! My horse is small, so it can’t carry two people. Besides, you’re even wearing heavy armor.”
Unable to bear it any longer, Mitchell shouted. Even if he died of exhaustion here, he did not want to ask Juliana for a favor.
“I didn’t ask you to let me ride.”
But the moment he saw the many bags loaded on the horse’s back, Mitchell’s pride collapsed entirely.
“Just let me move the luggage over. I’ll walk…”
He could not refuse even that.
“That much is fine.”
Juliana agreed as if she did not feel like it, watching with an irritated expression as Mitchell transferred the luggage from his horse to hers. After moving all the luggage to Juliana’s horse’s side, Mitchell tried to take off his armor while he was at it. He thought he had to reduce the weight somehow in order to walk. But Juliana mercilessly stopped him.
“No! I won’t allow the armor too. For one thing, the horse will have a hard time, and besides, you have to protect me. What are you going to do if a pack of wolves appears? So keep the armor on.”
Mitchell calmed the anger boiling inside him and tightened the breastplate he had been about to loosen. She truly was a selfish girl who thought of no one but herself.