Chapter 130
Chapter 130
Academy’s Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Chapter 130
Life is harsher than one might think.
Humans survive within the nest of society and parents, buying time to shield themselves from the world's harsh storms.
But ask if children abandoned by society and even orphaned by their parents have the means to protect themselves.
Nine times out of ten, they'd deny it.
This world is too brutal for a child to survive without any help.
It's harsh even alone, but impossible for two young kids in a world where human rights and ethics haven't fully taken root.
Just like what's right in front of my eyes now.
"H-Help us! My sister...!! My little sister!!!"
"Come here and show me."
"Wait. It might be the work of rebels..."
"Get a grip on the situation."
Two kids in beggar rags came running.
More precisely, the older brother was carrying his little sister on his back as he rushed toward me with a desperate expression. The moment he saw Termiya standing beside me, his face twisted in terror, but he grabbed my hand anyway, as if it didn't matter.
"There's nowhere to treat my sister...!"
"Where's she hurt?"
"Around her leg. She got stabbed by some flying needle-like thing."
"Is the needle still lodged in her? Or did it just graze?"
"It grazed her."
Let me see.
The girl on the boy's back looked pale.
Her pulse was faint, the wound near her leg was unlike a normal cut, and her breath carried a peculiar smell.
"It's poison."
From the symptoms, I could even guess the type.
Thanks to chewing on toxic herbs every day.
It's not a deadly poison, per se.
Just a toxin anyone could make by boiling common weeds in a pot until thick.
But could a kid who doesn't even look school-age withstand it?
"P-Poison? Th-Then my sister... what...?"
"Enough chatter. Do you know when she got poisoned? I need to know that to decide on the treatment."
"T-Time? We don't have a clock, so not exactly, but roughly..."
The boy's explanation was too vague.
If I pieced it together, they arrived at the attack site around sunset.
And got hit right after some ritual.
Since the siblings were in the canal, gauging time from the sky was impossible.
I wondered why they were in the canal of all places, but the girl in front of me took priority.
"Do you remember the order or sequence of the ritual?"
"Roughly, yeah."
"Then recite it. Tell me up to where you got poisoned, too."
"There are two statues in that canal. One's called the divine image, the other the holy image. First, you pour liquor on top of them..."
Given their age, specifics on the ritual didn't come out of the boy's mouth.
All subjective views of the sequence.
But by coincidence, it matched what I knew.
"Fengshen Rulai."
A ritualistic offering sealing the God () and those who approach transcendence following truth (). In other words, rooted in apostasythat's the Fengshen Rulai rite.
"You know the ritual?"
"Not in detail. I only read a passage in a book at the library yesterday."
"Library? You mean the one inside the mansion?"
"What else? There's no library in this land. Anyway, you're a localwhy don't you know this?"
It's right there in the library books.
At my hint, the knight captain flushed and looked away.
Knights are supposed to be versed in both letters and arms, so she must be embarrassed not knowing the books in her own mansion.
While she stayed silent, I hugged the girl whose body temperature was dropping and recalled the book's content.
It wasn't a key part, so details escaped me, but I managed to remember the essentials.
Let's see.
'She got poisoned around when they sprinkle liquor on the ground and dance with swords. That was probably the sixth step.'
Most steps take one gaka quarter hourso six would be an hour and a half.
Ritual started at sunset, poisoned an hour and a half later, reached me in about 30 minutes generously.
That means the poison hasn't reached her heart or lungs yet. Early stageeasy to treat.
"Thirty minutes in, no need to cut out necrotic flesh. Just a simple antidote flush should do."
I let a drop of my blood fall on the girl's wound.
My blood is near-lethal poison, but I can control its nature and form with my resistances.
I neutralized her poison as much as possible, then synthesized a short-acting toxin right after. Ten minutes after applying it to the wound, her expression improved.
"Mary, was it? If she rests well for a day, Mary won't die."
"Thank you! Really... thank you!"
"If you're that grateful, can you do one favor for your brother?"
"What?"
"Tell me how to get to that canal where Mary got hurt."
A kid got poisoned in the canal where revolutionaries are.
That sparked something in me, leading to...
"Bingo."
I arrived near the canal.
But the entrance wasn't in the canalit was in the grass.
Just as the boy said.
They camouflaged it with grass and dirt, but not enough to fool my eyes.
Glinting purple Demon Eye.
Even through walls, it pierces any mana-formed barrier, revealing the massive outline tied to this city.
See anything?
"Look with your own eyes. Too good to keep to myself."
Show me... What the hell is that?
Tamamo's spirit eyes rival minereading mana flows and 'gaps' where the world loses color.
Her eyes, transcendent even in her fall from human or gumiho to undead, widened fully.
I can tell since we're linked.
Hers surpass mine.
So the moment she opened them, she beheld a more precise scene than I could.
What's that?
"You seriously asking?"
Even with those eyes, she lags in analysis.
Or maybe just denying what's in front of her.
"You made the idiom 'wine pool and meat forest,' and you don't know that? Surprising."
So what is it?
"Chopped-up corpses. Can't you tell?"
For real...?
Blood pools and meat on spitsa veritable wine pool and meat forest.
The difference from the original idiom? Meant for humans, now targeting them.
'Not much difference.'
Elites revel freely.
Commoners get exploited.
King Zhou and Daji filled ponds with wine, sating appetites and lusts with meat and people. Here, Viscount Efots soaks the land in blood and performs rites with flesh.
The culprits are obvious.
"Then those people... no way?"
"This land's citizens and parentless vagrants, probably."
Clunk!
A massive door to the underground.
We descended.
The deeper we went, the thicker the blood scent filling my lungs.
Rot of blood and bodies.
The familiar smell of home.
The only lights in the dark depths: a few nearly spent torches.
The path was treacherous, hard to press forward.
But like salmon leaping waterfalls instinctively homeward, or one feeling inexplicable longing decades after birth, I moved forward on instinct.
No hesitation in my steps.
At the end awaits what I seek.
A week's toil.
The conclusion will be sweet.
"Show me..."
The secrets Viscount Efots and Frontier hide.
Their dirty laundry, every bit.
Present it to me, in all your naked purity.
* * *
Late night, the students had long left the mansion.
Even the beastman who seemed their guide hadn't returned since morning.
The young students came and went a few times.
The mansion folk worried.
"Anyone know where the viscount's guests went?"
"No idea. Never seen 'em before, even if guests."
"Damn it, good thing the viscount's holed up in his workshop like always. If he finds out we didn't entertain his guests properly..."
"We're dead. He's mild usually, but strict and scary on that stuff."
Not Seung-woo's worrytheirs.
Not close friends or deeply tied to Frontier house.
No reason for servants to fret over them.
But Viscount Efots, the north's sole noble with fierce chosen-people ideology, felt deep affinity for a fellow noble.
If he learned they neglected him, punishment awaited.
Not that entertaining new guests mattered that much, nor fearing punishment contrivedbut that's noble vs. commoner divide.
"Heard that handsome guide guy's a southern noble."
"South... Great Forest? Elves and beastmen only. Caste system's a human thing, right?"
"Who knows. Even without, his gait, demeanor, etiquette scream noble."
"Honestly, that face seals it. No commoner could handle or manage a face like that."
Commoners mustn't doubt nobles.
Nobles do as they please; commoners just suffer.
So the lowborn prostrate at blue blood's passage.
That's the hierarchy.
Unlike current hollow nobles with only honor and wealth.
So the cleaning servants revered yet feared nobles. They'd shrunk from whatever nobles did.
But...
"H-Help... someone...!!"
"Bali? Running like that in the mansion?! If the viscount or his kin catch you..."
"N-Now! That's not the point!!"
What the hell?
One servant snapped at the noisy hall-crosser.
"Hey, quiet down."
"P-People are dying...!"
"Where? Vagrants starve or freeze all the time."
In an era without proper human rights.
In this medieval shadow world, commoner deaths aren't big deals. Noble deaths, maybe.
Why fuss over ordinary deaths everywhere?
"Hey! Think I'd run like this for that?!"
"Then the viscount died?"
"Don't jinx it! The gatekeeperthe gatekeeper's dead!!"
"...Gatekeeper?"
The mansion's gatekeeper dead.
That halted even frame, picture, floor cleaners.
"What? Our main gate has no dedicated gatekeeper. Knights rotate two at a time. What's that mean?"
"...You didn't know."
"What do you m?"
Squelch!
Something sharp and long pierced flesh.
Clean instant death.
So clean it gutted organs in one thrust and twist.
Blood gushed; a balloon deflating sound followed.
Onlooker servants, unsurprised or horrified, cleared the corpse like cleaning extension.
Wiped spilled blood.
So natural, clear they'd done this many times.
"Never thought my friend wasn't one of us. Shocking."
"Butler Bali."
"Ah, my sisters. Something to say?"
Frontier maintains eternal early spring.
Outside's brutal cold, inside not warm. Daily firewood heats it, but today burnable organics crackled instead.
Ah, dead make it inorganic?
"His body's cleared."
"Good work. Didn't expect a non-kin in this sector."
"That's us cleaners' job. What was that just now?"
"Ah...! The gatekeeper death? Literal. Found dead at the underground passage entrance."
"...Pardon?"
The servant looked incredulous.
Gatekeeperstrongest warrior born and bred in this harsh north, bar the knight captain.
Mid-tier Sword Expert, two steps from pinnacle.
Two years at that level.
Who killed him?
"Knight captain did it? She only moves on viscount's word, not really with us."
"True, only one could kill a gatekeeper here. But two days ago, she reached Expert high after sparring someone."
"That beastman...?"
"Likely. Gatekeeper and nearby siblings martyred with same wound."
"What wound?"
"Burn marks. Like half-burnt coal or charcoal. But..."
Too brutal for a mere beastman, suspiciously so.
All corpses shared palm-like burns around necks. As if a fire spirit's hand twisted throats.
But spirits and summoners extinct a century agono such thoughts.
Instead, superstitious guards did rites before reports, delaying response.
Meanwhile.
"Mansion's bigger than I thought. Need to shrink the radius a bit."
Then tons of servants inside die painfully burned. Okay?
"Well... merciful end for them?"
Compared to what they've done.
Across the mansion.
In deserted underground.
Whooshflames roared.
The arsonist's master, having glimpsed the core clue to this shadow world's end in the city's depths, felt no guilt or hesitation in burning or killing.
He'd seen this land's truths.
All of it, and morehis hands held no mercy.
He was ready to burn whoever in the mansion.
Navigating underground, though...
Too damn spacious.
He sensed blood like homecoming, no issuebut students couldn't.
So.
Burn halfperfect for review?
For the students.
Justified, he resolved to arson.
Roar!!
That night, as Frontier's sky should moon-full, sun rose.
Mansion as firewood lit Frontiercurse sun so close and huge it scorched skin.