Quin smiled playfully, folding his extended finger in response to Ruon’s warning.
“Well, it’s a pity, Amella. The deal is off.”
“Quin, calm down. The deal is between you and me. Don’t involve others.”
“I just stated what I wanted.”
With a serious expression, Quin now pointed at Kyle’s shield.
“Well, how about that? It’s an incredibly appealing artifact that disrupts magical frequencies.”
“You want a fight? This is a shield!”
Amella extended her arm, signaling Kyle to calm down as he gripped his dagger.
“Quin, stop it.”
Staring at Quin with a stern gaze, she bit her lip and spoke.
“The deal should only be related to me.”
At that moment, Kyle interjected.
“Amella, I may not know exactly what it is, but do we really need to reinforce that seal? Can’t we just hurry up and go to the Tower?”
Quin chuckled.
“It seems like your companion hasn’t fully grasped the gravity of the situation.”
Then he looked straight at Kyle and spoke.
“This girl cannot remain in this state for more than a week. She will be consumed by the essence of the stone before that.”
“What… Is that true, Amella?”
“… “
Seeing Amella’s lack of response, Kyle’s expression quickly became complicated.
Quin, with a sneering smile directed at him, turned his head to look at Amella and spoke.
“That has always been the problem with you, Amella. You’re too hasty for your exceptional abilities. How many times have I told you to think about what comes in the future before you do something in the present?”
Not wanting to hear any more, Amella held out her palm and said, “We’ll make a blood pact. Will that be enough?”
Quin’s eyes widened, forming a crescent shape. He smiled brightly, as if he had received the answer he wanted. Seeing him, Ruon found it difficult to dismiss the thought that all the previous demands for the Holy Sword or the shield were deliberately intended for this moment.
“You know what that implies, right?”
“I know.”
Quin extended a short sword towards Amella, nodding his head.
Without hesitation, Amella grasped the blade with her palm, causing blood to drip from the edge and onto the floor.
She immediately licked her lips, and as the blood dropped to the ground, defying gravity, it floated up into the air and transformed into a small red circle with tiny inscriptions.
Amella gently extended her arm forward, and the red circle followed its trajectory, slowly moving forward.
Grinning, Quin caught the red circle in his hand and nodded.
“I’ve received it clearly.”
The palm of his hand, as he spoke, was engraved with the red circle, resembling a tattoo.
“Hey, enough with the glaring. How about handing over that stone now?”
At Quin’s words, Ruon looked at Amella.
When Amella nodded silently, he swiftly threw the stone. Quin effortlessly caught it and said,
“Enough with the delays. This should be sufficient. Let’s start right away.”
As he spoke, a bright light emanated from his hand. The stone wildly trembled and released a mixture of blue energy and crimson sparks.
With the opposing energies in turmoil, Quin pressed his other hand into it, twisting and pulling, while the light filled the room.
After a while, as the light subsided, Ruon could see Amella, who had lost consciousness and collapsed, and Quin, whose hands were completely charred.
“…Belducias.”
Whispering softly, Quin handed the stone back to Ruon and said, “When Amella wakes up, will you tell her? This stone is nothing less than the relic of Belducias. I took over the task that she started, but you’d better hurry, because it’s not going to last long.”
Quietly lifting Amella, Ruon looked straight into Quin’s face and spoke.
“Step aside.”
Only then did Quin realize that he was blocking the way and exaggeratedly raised his hands.
“Oh, my apologies.”
Without looking back, Ruon and Kyle left the mansion and exited through the rusty iron gate.
Kyle, who had been tensely holding up his shield all along, let out a sigh of relief and lowered his hand.
“Damn it, the way things are going–I’m not going to survive another day.”
He looked at Amella, who was folded in Ruon’s arms like a bundle, and asked, “Is Amella okay?”
“If she was okay, there wouldn’t have been any need to make a deal,” Ruon replied dryly.
With that curt response, Ruon continued walking towards the dark alley where the sun had yet to rise. Kyle followed closely behind.
In Dumfreese, the old orphanage, which was considered an eyesore, has been a source of steady notoriety, as it is impossible to forcibly tear it down due to the documented ownership of the site.
Quintuanus, known as the owner of the property and the director of the orphanage, watched Ruon and Kyle move further away through the overgrown thicket, his face hidden behind thorns, and smiled softly.
Though his hands were still charred, he paid no attention to such trivial matters and shifted his gaze to the palm of his hand, seeming to enjoy himself.
Looking at the red circle imprinted on his palm like a seal, Quintuanus said, “’Till next time, Amella.”
***
Amella opened her eyes to the sunlight tickling her face. Sensing the smooth circulation of magic within her body, she was startled to find a gaze fixed on her.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
Ruon shrugged his shoulders.
“About five minutes, give or take.”
“Did I sleep for three days or something?”
“Not at all. After noon, we would have had to pay extra. Neither me nor Kyle wanted to spend more money on that lousy inn, so we were just keeping watch until noon.”
“Oh,” Amella exclaimed as she stood up. Stretching her body and relaxing her stiff muscles, she turned to Ruon without saying anything and said, “You must have many questions.”
Ruon raised an eyebrow.
“Is there anything to discuss?”
“About the orphanage, the fairy who called me his daughter, and other things like that.”
Ruon scratched his chin.
“Hmm, well, if it was something deeply related to me, I might have pried into it. But as you mentioned yesterday, isn’t that something between you and that fairy?”
Amella smiled lightly, seemingly pleased with his answer.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For going with me.”
Ruon gave a puzzled look.
“What?”
Ruon rolled his eyes and turned to leave as if he’d heard something strange, and Amella hurriedly tidied up her clothes and followed.
***
The old gravedigger, relentlessly striking the ground with a pickaxe and a putrid corpse lying beside him, looked up as he felt a presence from beside him.
With the sound of footsteps, two men and a woman on horseback approached. They took turns looking at the gravedigger and his dilapidated house before dismounting and approaching him.
The man with a large shield on his back smiled broadly and greeted him.
“Hello, sir.”
The gravedigger hesitated for a moment before responding.
“Who are you?”
“We are travelers. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, may we impose on you for just one day at your house? We will pay the proper fees.”
The gravedigger hesitated for a moment before speaking in a polite voice.
“If you keep walking this way, you’ll come to a village in less than half a day’s journey. I think you should go there rather than sleep in a graveyard.”
In response to his tactful refusal, the young woman answered.
“The sun is already setting, sir. Our horses are easily frightened, so we are worried that if we camp out unnecessarily, it will be difficult to settle them down.”
As she spoke, she handed a few silver coins from her pocket to the old gravedigger, who sighed and held onto them.
“I will finish my work and then go inside. You all can go in and rest, though there might not be a suitable place to sit.”
As the gravedigger turned away and resumed his work, the three men and women tied their horses to a nearby tree and headed straight for the house.
When they opened the worn-out wooden door, they noticed the modest but neatly organized interior.
Placing his shield on the floor, Kyle commented.
“I thought it would be more eerie.”
Amella chuckled in response.
“Did you expect a gravedigger’s living quarters to be like a coffin?”
“No, it’s not that…”
The group sat around a table in the house, chatting and roughly organizing their belongings. Outside, the sound of pickaxes crunching through the soft earth could be heard.
Amella spoke up.
“Thanks to our diligent movements in the past ten days, we have covered quite a distance considering the changes in our route. It’s really fortunate.”
She added.
“Although it’s still unstable, the seal on the fragment is still intact. If we move quickly, we should be able to reach the Clarensis Mountains within a few days.”
Ruon nodded.
“I see.”
Upon his brief response, Kyle squinted his eyes.
“Ruon, you look like you’ve got something on your mind… Am I mistaken?”
“You catch on quickly.”
Ruon, who had found the smooth journey of the past ten days rather dull, shrugged his shoulders.
Just as before, he didn’t have much interest in when the seal on the fragment would be released or when the minions of Belducias would chase after them.
As long as there were no major issues, his plan was to reach the Tower of Magi as quickly as possible and eliminate anyone who hindered their progress.
Kyle, sensing Ruon’s thoughts from his expression, looked exhausted. Just then, the door opened, and the gravedigger entered.
He took off his coat and placed several potatoes on a plate, transferring them onto the table.
“I don’t have much to offer, but…”
Amella clapped her hands.
“No, sir. We will enjoy them.”
Although they were plain, the potatoes themselves were flavorful enough, so the group ate them without a word.
At that moment, Ruon asked, “The condition of the corpse didn’t indicate a natural death. Did something happen nearby?”
The gravedigger, who realized a beat late that the question was directed at him, hurriedly replied.
“The body has decayed rapidly, it would have been hard to recognize… You have a good eye, young sir.”
Having swallowed the remaining potato, the gravedigger placed his hands, calloused and dirtied, on the table and leaned forward.
His actions seemed to be a prelude for a serious tale, and the group instinctively held their breath and looked at him.
“How long do you think the body I buried a little while ago has been dead?”
Without waiting for an answer, he held up his index finger.
“A day, to be exact, barely two days. The decomposition was advanced to the point where maggots were crawling inside the body, do you think that makes sense?”
After saying that, he let out a sigh.
“In the past week alone, we’ve buried nearly twenty corpses like this. Even though I’m someone who gets paid to do this work, it’s still unsettling. When I asked what happened while I was collecting the bodies, the villagers said it was suicide.”
“Suicide?”
When Kyle inquired, the gravedigger nodded.
“Yes. People started suddenly going insane and mutilating themselves with knives used for butchering pigs or sticking their faces into boiling pots.”
He cleared his throat, then continued.
“It didn’t start like that from the beginning… At first, they began to go crazy. Then suddenly, they started killing themselves… And then they would quickly rot after dying. The village is in chaos, claiming it’s a curse.”
When the story was finished, Amella asked the gravedigger, who had begun munching on potatoes.
“Which village did this happen in?”
“The place I told you about earlier. If you continue down this road, you’ll reach it within half a day.”
Amella’s face stiffened upon hearing the gravedigger’s words, prompting Ruon to ask, “What?”
“…Could there be such a coincidence?”
Amella, who had been biting her lip, said, “Madness, self-harm, and decay. They are all words associated with Belducias.”
