Episode 007
Beneath the warm sunlight, the blond girl shook out her tousled hair and stretched.
“Mmmm—!”
Had she been at her family estate, she might have been scolded for being an unrefined noble young lady, but she was in the royal capital now.
What was more, not even a single ant came anywhere near her.
‘I’m bored…’
It had been a month since she had parted with the other party members. In other words, quite some time had passed since she had joined the Hero of the Spear’s party.
It was only meant to be a temporary party until Tanas returned after receiving his punishment.
“Haaah… I’m bored.”
It wasn’t as though she had been this unmotivated from the very beginning.
Lurain, a graduate of the Magic Tower, was a mage of considerable renown even within the kingdom.
If she were to set foot in the adventurer or mercenary industry, countless merchants would be the first to try scouting her.
And yet what she was doing now was…
“……”
She was guarding a mansion.
For an entire month, no less…
After looking around and confirming that no one was nearby, Lurain muttered under her breath in dissatisfaction.
“…Are they seriously insane? Making me do this kind of work!”
But she did not have the courage to say such a thing in front of the Hero of the Spear’s party members.
After all, no matter how well-known a mage she might be within the kingdom,
within a hero’s party, she was the weakest mage.
Perhaps offended by the thought that she was doing menial work, she ruffled her hair wildly with both hands.
‘I wonder what Tanas is doing.’
Whenever stress piled up like this, there was one way to dispel it all at once.
And that was…
…to administer corporal punishment to Tanas.
“……”
The soft sensation she felt when she slapped his cheek.
At first, when Seria had asked her to do it, she had hesitated slightly, but now, on the contrary, she could no longer hold herself back.
‘I need to hit him at least once a day…’
Because seeing the red handprint left on his pale cheek
gave her a strange sense of conquest and pleasure every single time.
She had desperately denied it in front of Rein and Arche, but the truth was…
‘Ah… I want to see Tanas soon.’
But to meet him again, she would have to wait at least two more months, no matter how soon.
Perhaps because that fact came to mind,
she let out a long sigh, digging pointlessly at the ground with her foot.
“Haa… Arche is probably getting along well with the Hero of… Meanwhile, Rein and I—what are we even doing…?”
She had joined the Hero of the Spear’s party, yet she had not completed a single quest so far.
Why was that?
It was not because she was being ostracized or deemed useless.
It was simply because the Hero of the Spear had suffered a serious injury.
Ironically, on the very day Tanas’s trial had ended,
he claimed that he had gotten into an argument with another hero and exchanged blows.
They had apparently fought so fiercely that bones were broken and bruises covered his entire body.
In the end, after their desperate struggle, a maid had found them, or so the story went…
‘Now that I think about it, it is a little strange… It isn’t as if they were sworn enemies.’
Everyone knew that the five heroes competed with one another,
but the Hero of the Spear and the other hero were a little different.
‘I’m sure I heard those two heroes were both from the same allied kingdom and were on rather close terms, so what happened…?’
Since she had nothing in particular to do, she propped her chin on her hand and sat down.
“Lord Dario, are you all right now?”
“I’m fine now.”
“Why exactly did you fight with that hero?”
“W-Well… something like that happened.”
“Hahahahaha! Dario, fighting with your fists instead of your spear… I thought you were just a cowardly bastard, but you’ve got a surprisingly manly side to you, don’t you? I like it!”
“Shut up!”
Various voices drifted out from inside the mansion.
‘Did he finally wake up?’
Thank goodness.
She had thought she would be stuck standing guard again next month, unable to budge.
Lurain immediately rose from her seat.
“Hero of the Spear, my name is Lurain Argent, and I have joined your party as a companion for the time being.”
She greeted Dario according to the kingdom’s etiquette.
“Hm? And who are you…?”
When he showed confusion at her sudden appearance,
“Lord Dario, she is…”
the woman standing beside him with a staff leaned in and whispered something into his ear.
“What? The mage from that incompetent hero… Tanas’s party?”
“That is correct. I will be in your care for a while, so I look forward to—”
Having spoken that far, Lurain sensed that something was wrong and raised her head slightly to look up.
“Well, isn’t this perfect. Heh…”
For some reason, Dario clenched his fist and looked at her with eyes filled with deep hatred.
As if he might hit her at any moment.
“…Eh?”
**********
‘What in the world is going on? That baron bastard… did he forget the scheduled report?’
I should never have joined hands with that trashy noble!
The Deputy Master of the Magic Tower nervously bit her nails and looked around.
It was not merely because contact with Prisson Prison had been cut off.
After all, given the long distance, it was common for communication through crystal orbs to be interrupted.
“……”
But the fact that the magic portal gate had been closed one-sidedly meant that something had happened…
There was no doubt about it.
Something bad had occurred.
“……”
Inhumane experiments, forbidden magic, and more…
Could it be that they had been discovered?
If so, she was finished.
Far from becoming the greatest Tower Master on the Rodos Continent, she would rot in prison for the rest of her life.
She could not meet such an end…!
“…No.”
Her confusion lasted only a moment.
She coldly set her mind to work and slowly shook her head.
Logically, it made no sense.
There was no way this rotten kingdom would pay attention to such a remote region.
The only somewhat plausible possibility was…
‘If the kingdom’s special investigation unit moved…? No, those incompetent fools couldn’t possibly have noticed my experiments.’
And that was not all.
Did the Magic Tower not offer a tremendous amount of wealth to the royal palace and the Church of the Three Goddesses every year?
There were more than a few nobles blocking information in the middle, and once it reached the level of the Chief Priest, they were now knowingly turning a blind eye.
Even if they had moved directly by royal command, word would have reached her first.
Then had it simply been a fire or an earthquake?
“……”
Perhaps.
The latter was more realistic than the former, after all.
No,
if she thought about it by process of elimination…
That was the only possibility left now.
‘Those idiots! Surely nothing happened to my research records too?!’
She frantically racked her brain as she hurried toward her private study.
“No… no!”
The modification of the giant monsters was not yet complete, and there was still a great deal of biological experimentation left.
If things ended here, the losses would be immense.
On top of that, had she not recently obtained an excellent subject called a hero?
As soon as she heard the story from her foolish former disciple, she had taken action and brought him in…
This was an opportunity she had obtained with difficulty. She could not simply let it slip away.
‘All right… In that case, irritating as it is… I’ll have to request support from another Magic Tower.’
If that did not work, she would have no choice but to reach out to the faction of the First Prince or the Second Prince.
In any case, from her point of view, all she needed was to recover the data.
She could accept a certain degree of loss.
“It’s still all right.”
Reassuring herself, she stopped in front of her private study.
The “Tenfold Isolation Barrier Magic” that had made her the Deputy Master of the Magic Tower at a young age.
Even compared to nearby countries, there was no one who could rival the Deputy Tower Master in the field of barrier magic.
‘This is proof that I am a genius…’
Perhaps seeing the ten layers of magic circles improved her mood, for a faint smile appeared on her lips.
There was no need to be anxious.
What was so important about a few foolish commoners dying?
If anything, they should be grateful that they could serve as the foundation of her research.
Shoooong—
As she stepped inside the barrier wall,
“…Huh?”
a foolish sound came from somewhere.
“Finally here?”
Of course, it did not take long for her to realize
that the sound had come from her own mouth.
“H-How on earth? The T-Tenfold Isolation Barrier Magic…”
A white-haired man sat cross-legged atop her desk, smiling cheerfully.
‘Im-impossible!’
Why was he here?
He was not a man she did not know.
If anything, one could say she knew him better than most.
…After all, she had seen his face every day for an entire month.
The incompetent hero, Tanas.
‘Why is a man who should be locked in solitary confinement…?’
“Do I really have to say this myself too…? There was a door, so I came in through it.”
As if it were obvious, the hero shrugged and rose from his seat.
“……Ugh!”
Cold sweat ran down her back, and alarm bells rang in her heart.
“You’re not as surprised as I thought. Being quick on the uptake is a good thing.”
“……”
Because she had always been the one who took from others, she could tell.
That was no incompetent hero.
He was a predator.
And one higher in rank than herself, at that…
“What are you doing? Kneel.”
“……”
His oppressive voice sent a chill through her.
Instinct.
Instinct, intuition, was more important than anything else.
“I keep my promises. If you kneel now, I’ll spare your life at least.”
Especially for someone like her, who had avoided danger time and again thanks to such intuition.
‘With skills that barely let him defeat a single soldier, there’s no way he could have evaded the traps and guards to get here…’
An unknown being was bound to inspire fear.
And because she knew that all too well, her terror multiplied several times over.
However,
“……”
“Have you decided?”
Unfortunately, in the end, her essence was that of a researcher…
“Thunder Spear!”
So she decided to trust reason rather than instinct!
As the Deputy Tower Master stretched out her hand, spears of lightning surged up from every direction and rushed toward the hero.
“Honestly…”
“Die!”
At this range, even a hero would not be able to escape unscathed.
“You made a truly unwise decision.”
At those words, he—
“…Huh?”
vanished from before her eyes.
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