Chapter 154
Chapter 154
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 154
Chapter Title: Chapter 29: Beneath the Surface (1)
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In the morning, I recovered my condition with some sleep.
In the afternoon, I attended the attribute stone auction and secured the items.
In the evening, I had dinner with my party members.
And while we were holding a meeting in preparation for tomorrow's departure ceremony, a guest knocked on the door.
“Here, take this.”
It was Ahel. The moment I opened the door, he dumped the basket he’d been cradling in his arms right into mine.
Then, acting like this was his own house, he casually brushed past me and stepped inside.
“Oh? Ahel hyung, you’re here?”
“Hey now, it’s been a while, ain’t it? You been doin’ well?”
The party members, who already knew him, greeted him without any awkwardness.
I quietly stared at the back of Ahel’s head before lowering my gaze.
Inside the basket he’d given me was that mysterious beast I’d picked up a while back.
‘Has it gotten a bit bigger?’
For a moment, I sized up the white beast huddled in the corner of the basket.
“I asked around here and there…”
Ahel said as he naturally plopped down on the living room sofa.
“That thing… it doesn’t seem to be a creature from this world.”
I’d asked him to look into the beast, but the results didn’t sound promising.
“Not a creature from this world… you mean it came from somewhere else?”
“That’s the most likely explanation. It’s not exactly impossible, right?”
Fair enough. Even I, an Earthling, came and went from Vihar.
‘There’s no reason a lifeform from another world couldn’t be in Vihar.’
Based on the information we had so far, Vihar was presumed to have been invaded through holes punched from other worlds.
Which meant this thing could be a lifeform that had crossed over from some unknown world.
If so, it made sense that neither I, an Earthling, nor Ahel, a Viharan, had any clue about its identity.
It even explained why the dot on the map was a different color.
“For starters, the fact that it uses mana as fuel for survival doesn’t match the ecosystem of our world. No signs of mental corruption, either.”
Just as Players absorbed corrupted mana, Vihar had black mages who did the same.
I’d heard most of them turned to forbidden magic out of greed for greater power.
Of course, the outcome was never a glorious one.
‘They lose their minds, get consumed by madness, go on killing sprees, and end up getting put down.’
In Vihar, absorbing mana from other lifeforms was forbidden.
We Players grew by committing that very taboo act, but we weren’t entirely free from mental corruption.
‘We just have ways to deal with it, unlike the Viharans.’
But this thing was free from that absorption-corruption correlation.
Which was why Ahel thought it couldn’t be ruled out as a lifeform from an entirely different world.
I mulled it over while gazing at the back of the head of the unidentified beast for a moment.
“Oh, and by the way, that thing’s been starving itself silly since the day before yesterday.”
Then Ahel tossed something my way out of the blue.
Supporting the basket with one hand, I caught what he threw.
‘An accumulation magic tool.’
So that’s why he’d given it to me.
“The thing’s so damn picky, it only eats Kay’s mana.”
It meant the stored mana had run out, so it couldn’t feed it anymore.
‘Since I made it use up its supply, he’s telling me to refill it without complaint.’
Frowning slightly as I looked down at the beast, I eventually pulled out some attribute mana.
I sent part of it to the accumulation magic tool, and the rest toward the beast.
The reaction was almost instantaneous.
“Nng! Kkiing!”
The beast, which had been utterly still in the corner of the basket, started squealing.
It strained with all its might to crawl out of the basket, so I reflexively had to support it.
Thanks to that, the basket it had been in rolled across the floor.
Suddenly left holding a mana-sucking tool in one hand and a mana-sucking creature in the other, I swallowed a sigh.
Right after, I kicked the basket aside with my foot and walked over to the sofa where Ahel sat.
If he’d gone out of his way to sit down, it meant he had something to say.
Sure enough, the moment I sat on the sofa, Ahel rummaged in his pocket.
‘A letter envelope.’
I set the beast on my lap and took the envelope he handed me.
There were two envelopes, each from different senders.
One was from Rashar, and the other from someone completely unexpected.
“Hazel Volvita…”
“A lot of people still think Kay’s at the Bennett estate. We get plenty of visitors. On that note, I figured I’d bring the beast back while I was at it.”
“I see. Thank you.”
I gave an appropriate reply, but a question lingered.
I couldn’t think of any reason why Baron Volvita would contact me personally.
‘We’re not exactly close or anything.’
Tilting my head, I opened the envelope.
After some standard greetings, what followed was Baron Volvita’s rather abrupt sincerity.
He said seeing me protect and look after the children had cleared up a lot of his prejudices against outsiders.
It seemed the baron had developed a one-sided sense of closeness toward me because of that incident.
I read the letter through with a somewhat awkward gaze.
And at the end, I found news that was so out of left field it was incomprehensible.
「Then out of nowhere, he asks if I know you well. And if so, could I arrange a meeting?」
In short, an apostle of the Kallos Church was looking for me.
「I told him we’re not close enough to exchange private contact, but if he ends up seeking you out, be careful.」
The letter closed with a warning to stay cautious.
The situation made no sense.
‘The baron is definitely a devotee of Kallos.’
I’d done my homework before the supply escort mission, so I was sure of it.
Yet here was a Kallos devotee warning me to beware an apostle of the Kallos Church.
‘What the hell is going on?’
After a brief moment of confusion and thought, I asked Ahel across from me.
“Do you know anything about the apostles of the Kallos Church?”
“Which of the two? Don’t know much about the first, but the second’s a total nutjob.”
The first or second referred to the order in which they were chosen by the god.
‘The numbering shifts forward each time an earlier apostle dies.’
Baron Volvita’s letter hadn’t specified which apostle to be wary of.
But even so, I could tell intuitively.
“Probably the second one.”
What the hell was this guy doing wandering around that “nutjob” came out without a second thought?
No sooner had the question arisen than Ahel explained.
“There’s one who swore to save devotees from misfortune by erasing the very event of birth.”
In other words, he’d reverted the devotees to a state of not being born at all, so they’d never suffer misfortune.
I recalled the moment I’d used Kallos’s authority.
‘The black smoke seemed to take the form of whatever the user considered misfortune.’
So if an apostle viewed a devotee’s birth itself as misfortune, it wasn’t impossible.
It was more than enough to understand why Ahel called him a nutjob.
As the question settled, Ahel leaned back on the sofa and spoke.
“Why don’t you read the other one?”
I wondered why he was unusually insistent, but when I opened Rashar’s letter, I understood.
‘Take Ahel with you from now on.’
I’d wondered why she bothered sending a letter when they had the church website.
She must’ve sent it with Ahel to make it harder for me to refuse in advance.
It wasn’t welcome news, so I didn’t even finish reading before furrowing my brow.
I turned to Ahel and asked point-blank.
“You didn’t just come along obediently, did you?”
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Ahel tapped the restraint collar around his neck in response.
“You know I don’t have a choice, right?”
I knew too much to take that at face value.
Rashar and Ahel had been childhood friends, raised together.
Because of the mages’ betrayal, Ahel wore the restraint collar, controlled by Rashar.
But she wouldn’t ignore his wishes and force her way through without cause, especially when he hadn’t stirred up trouble or picked fights.
‘Having that guy around would just wear me out.’
I still couldn’t quite read Ahel’s true intentions.
This kind of vague information felt like pressure—I couldn’t control the situation.
I had a battlefield on the line where my life was at stake.
An uncontrollable variable not from outside, but from within? Right behind my back?
I had zero intention of taking that risk.
Just as I was about to urge Ahel to head back.
“Did Rashar noona send you?”
Kim Yul, who’d sidled up beside us to eavesdrop, chimed in.
He craned his neck toward the letter in my hand and scanned it quickly.
Yang Tae-ho, curious too, sneaked up behind the sofa and peeked at it.
Ahel clicked his tongue in annoyance and answered.
“Yeah, she spent all day fretting about what if we get hit by another general-level raid like last time, and finally sent me over.”
“Then from now on, we can zip around with hyung’s magic?”
Hearing that made my resolve to send Ahel back waver a bit.
‘If I send him away, she might sulk again.’
After about a week of cold war–not–cold war, we’d finally patched things up.
If it looked like I was rejecting her goodwill again, would the same thing repeat?
In the end, I swallowed my words and alternated glances between the letter and Ahel, lost in thought.
‘Setting aside my personal feelings… he’d be useful to our forces.’
I’d made some effort, but I was still an outsider.
I’d only learned the basics of magic superficially.
‘A couple hours of lessons a day has its limits.’
On the other hand, Ahel was a proper mage, well-versed in elemental hierarchies, interactions, and all that.
Traveling with him would let me learn a ton.
Even space magic, which had usage limits so far, would become more fluid.
It meant enduring that anxiety of imperfect control over variables came with real gains.
Once I started weighing that, my decision was pretty much set.
When I read to the end of the half-read letter, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse.
「He’s the type who might bolt anywhere at any time, so I’ve arranged for the restraint magic tool’s control to be transferable. Inject your mana, and it’ll switch over immediately. If Ahel causes any trouble, don’t hesitate to use it. Wishing you victory and safety, Rashar.」
In the end, I folded the letter and said.
“You staying here?”
I’d gotten my way once, so this time I’d humor Rashar’s request.
If I saw her as an equal friend, I had to compromise this much.
“No need to move my lodging. Gotta pass on Kay’s news to Rashar anyway.”
The casual “Rashar” from Ahel’s lips, who usually called her “Bennett,” lingered oddly in my ears, but it wasn’t worth mentioning.
So I pretended not to hear.
“Make yourself at home.”
“Got it.”
Ahel replied briskly and tapped the restraint collar around his neck.
‘Meaning, hurry up and imprint your mana.’
I set down the beast, who’d gorged on attribute mana and passed out beside me, and stood.
The moment I placed my hand on the restraint collar and imprinted my mana, Ahel’s gaze flicked sideways.
Following it, I saw Kim Yul frowning.
The instant our eyes met, he flashed a bright smile like nothing happened.
But I’d clearly seen the displeased, dissatisfied expression.
Still, I didn’t explain or persuade to smooth it over.
‘I already explained it clearly to him.’
Recruiting party members was entirely my call, and no one could argue.
I’d formally informed the two about Ahel joining.
And I explained to Ahel about the party’s internal rules and hunting methods to watch out for starting tomorrow.
That wrapped things up, and as I was giving Ahel a tour of the base interior.
「Weapon enhancement complete.」
No sooner had I finished reading the message window than I bolted upstairs.
I opened the door and reached straight for where I’d propped up Kerax’s spear.
‘Now I can check what’s changed.’
Half excited, half curious, I gripped the weapon—and froze with a clatter.
-Is my master you?
The spear had spoken to me.
Damn System