Chapter 18

Mages who have reached a certain level can, through meditation, contemplate their own mental world. Claire was one of those capable of doing so.

Returning to her sleeping place, she sat cross-legged and closed her eyes.

… A large pond appeared.

Flowers and shrubs grew around its edges. Blue butterflies fluttered in, drawn by their fragrance. Claire watched them briefly before turning her gaze to the surface of the pond. Beneath the calm water, fish of many colors swam gracefully.

This pond was a mental image projecting Claire's abilities. As her mana reserves increased, the pond expanded. Each time she learned a new spell, another fish appeared within it.

One particularly large carp, tinged with red, stood out.

'Raging Flame.'

A sixth-circle incineration spell.

Among all the spells she had mastered, it was the highest in rank, the most difficult, and the most dangerous. At times, she felt as though she might be swallowed by the spell itself if she lost control.

Perhaps because of that anxiety, the red carp was massive and fierce—a tyrant of the pond. The other fish always swam cautiously, wary of it.

·Until a few days ago.

Claire shifted her gaze toward the center of the pond.

There lay a black shark.

Twice the size of the carp, it rested motionless on the pond's floor, as if asleep.

That shark was not a spell Claire had learned.

'… A power I received unintentionally.'

She recalled what had happened a few days prior.

When she infused mana into Woojin's back… some of her mana had been taken. At the same time, an unknown force had surged back into her, as if flowing upstream.

At the time, she hadn't fully noticed it. It had taken a considerable amount of time for that new power to settle into her body, and she had only become aware of it two days ago.

The black shark, whose identity she couldn't guess.

Today, she finally knew its name.

'Karma.'

After unconsciously absorbing Claire's mana, Woojin had, as if paying a price, transferred a massive amount of karma in return. The unusual vitality she had felt recently had also been due to that karma.

One long-standing question had been answered.

But in its place arose another.

'Why… is the karma so docile?'

For mages, accepting karma was taboo. Its energy was violent and savage, tearing apart everything within one's mental world.

But the karma Claire now held—the black shark—was strangely calm. At a glance, it almost seemed asleep.

In truth, it wasn't. Occasionally, the shark would move its head slightly, as though observing the other fish.

It was astonishingly gentle—except toward the red carp. With it alone, the shark behaved sharply and irritably. As a result, the once-dominant carp now lingered in a corner of the pond, subdued and cautious.

Despite the shark's apparent mildness, Claire feared it.

"This is power far too great for my vessel."

If the black shark chose to, it could devour everything in her mental world.

And if that happened… Claire would lose herself entirely. Her convictions, her magic, even her personality.

If she had cast just one more spell on Jin that day, she might have crossed a point of no return.

'Did Rex know this… and stop me back then?'

If so, the wolf's intelligence was far greater than she had imagined.

Naturally, another question followed.

Why would such an extraordinary magical beast willingly serve as a human's hunting dog?

For now, there was no way to find out.

Claire had been idly observing the pond when she decided to rise. There was still a long journey ahead tomorrow. It was time to return to reality and sleep.

But then—

A large butterfly entered her field of vision.

A blue butterfly resting atop a white flower, its wings fluttering endlessly in a strangely pitiful manner.

"… Huh?"

A chill ran down her spine.

As if entranced, Claire stepped closer.

The butterfly wasn't simply resting on the flower.

Something was gripping its body tightly with its forelegs, holding it in place so it couldn't fly away.

A small mantis was devouring the blue butterfly greedily.

Mid-meal, it lifted its head.

Their eyes met.

"—Hah!"

Claire gasped sharply as she jolted awake from meditation.

She coughed and retched repeatedly, as though she had just been dragged from water.

Panicked, she looked around frantically.

Familiar bedding and the tent interior came into view.

Reality.

Realizing that, she forced herself to calm down. Her pounding heart gradually steadied.

'Just once… I'll check again.'

Regaining her composure, Claire slipped back into meditation.

Soon she stood once more within her mental world. She hurriedly inspected the flowers and shrubs one by one.

There was no mantis.

The blue butterflies flitted peacefully among the blossoms, as if nothing had happened.

'… Was it my imagination?'

Perhaps the recent events had become a kind of trauma, reflected into her mental landscape.

She chose, for the moment, to interpret it that way.

Leaving behind a lingering unease, Claire opened her eyes again and returned to reality.

And then her thoughts returned to the troubling subject.

"What was that mantis?"

Two main hypotheses came to mind.

The first: that the mantis represented Woojin's own mental world.

But that alone couldn't explain his inexplicable abilities.

The second…

'… The Dark-Side Clerics.'

A term referring to fanatics who had existed long ago.

They claimed that the monsters from beyond the rifts were gods and angels. They believed that the world being consumed by the Demonic Realm was a process of unification with the divine realm.

An ideology fit to be called madness.

Yet the Dark-Side Clerics possessed power. They communicated with otherworldly monsters, embraced karma, and commanded vicious magical beasts like hunting dogs.

Naturally, the authorities had no intention of tolerating such a dangerous faction. The Dark-Side Clerics had been burned at the stake by the Order Alliance. The last confirmed sighting was nearly two hundred years ago.

Still, some scholars argued that a few had survived—that their secret power and teachings continued in hiding.

'Could Jin be a descendant of the Dark-Side Clerics…?'

Claire let out a small, dry laugh.

The idea was absurd.

'Someone that ignorant of the world couldn't possibly be one.'

If any Dark-Side Clerics had survived, they would blend in quietly and cautiously among others. They were a secret sect that must never reveal itself.

But Woojin's behavior was the complete opposite.

He stood out in every possible way.

He had no intention of hiding his strength. He was eager to learn, yet strangely lacking in common sense. His ignorance of the world was almost unnatural.

It was safe to say the possibility of Woojin being a Dark-Side Cleric was zero.

And once she reached that conclusion, the situation became even harder to understand.

'… I don't know. I can't gauge what power Jin holds—or what that mantis truly is.'

In the end, she had come full circle.

Claire gave up and lay down comfortably.

It was better to get a bit more sleep than to lose rest over an unsolvable worry.

But even that did not go as planned.

"Claire. It's time to switch watch."

"… Ah, damn it."

With a sigh, Claire forced herself up.

Recently, dissatisfaction among the mercenaries had been steadily growing.

For some reason, their employers had begun urging them to depart at dawn—before the sun had even risen.

Waking people early and working them late would make anyone angry. Still, the mercenaries kept their complaints to themselves.

'They promised extra pay… It's not a bad deal.'

Woojin walked along, thinking that way. He usually woke earlier than most anyway, so it didn't bother him much.

Claire, however, was taking a noticeable hit.

"Haaam…"

She trudged forward, yawning repeatedly.

Woojin had noticed before: this mage completely lost composure when she didn't get enough sleep.

"Very tired?"

"Yes… I barely… slept last night."

Recently, Claire had mentioned several times that her stamina had improved.

But with the long forced marches piling up fatigue—and having stood night watch yesterday—she looked worse than usual.

Even now, she staggered along half-asleep.

'At this rate she's going to trip and crack her jaw.'

Woojin tilted his chin toward the wolf beside him.

Rex, apparently thinking the same, acted immediately.

Fwish—

A tentacle-like appendage gently wrapped around Claire's body. Rex lifted her and placed her on his back.

Lying across the wolf's back, Claire blinked drowsily… and then slipped into deep sleep.

The holy knight watching nearby couldn't hide his amazement.

"Hah, truly remarkable. To think there's a magical beast trained that well…"

Woojin glanced at Raymond.

Honestly, this situation repeated often enough to feel strange.

"Aren't you supposed to be attending your escort duties? Why do you keep coming over here?"

"I swear, if you had my role, you'd be slacking off here too. Walking around is preferable to entering that damned tent."

Perhaps stress had accumulated. Lately, Raymond had begun making such blunt remarks.

On a whim, Woojin asked again.

"Have you reconsidered telling me what happened to Derek and Cedric?"

"As I've said many times, that's difficult. Even so, there are boundaries I must keep."

As expected, a firm refusal.

Despite his grievances about his employers, Raymond still fulfilled his duties earnestly. He rotated shifts with the other holy knights, coming over only during his free time to exchange small talk.

'It can't be helped.'

Just as Woojin was about to drop the matter—

"… However, I suppose I can speak about their father. Golden Maggot Wolf's death is fairly well known in these circles."

Raymond spoke unexpectedly.

Woojin nodded at once.

"I'd appreciate hearing it."

"It's nothing extraordinary. Wolf's death remains an unsolved mystery. No one knows who killed him, why, or how. Because of that, both the Order Alliance and the Pioneer Corps have had headaches over it."

In other words—

"He was murdered?"

"Indeed. Judging by your reaction, you expected as much."

It wasn't surprising.

When unnatural events stack one after another, it usually means someone's intent is involved.

Raymond continued.

"I saw Golden Maggot's corpse myself. It was… bizarre. Truly bizarre. That's the only word for it."

"Can you describe it in detail? I can't quite picture it from that alone."

Raymond stroked his chin silently, as if replaying the memory.

Then he spoke again.

"… Physically, the body was intact. Not a single wound. But the eyeballs alone had rotted and liquefied. Like fish eyes left out for days. The sockets were filled with black pus."

Even a seasoned holy knight seemed unsettled by the memory; Raymond frowned repeatedly as he described it.

Now Woojin understood what Raymond had meant earlier.

No one knew who, why, or how.

It was grotesque—impossible to determine the cause of death. A true enigma.

A thought suddenly occurred to Woojin.

"Was Wolf given a proper funeral? I mean… was he buried or cremated properly?"

"Of course. He was a famous merchant. Many wished to see him off."

Wolf had been buried in the Fourth Pioneer City.

"Then the two brothers must have seen their father's corpse with their own eyes."

Now, the blood heirs of Golden Maggot were fleeing from an unknown death.