Chapter 19
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 19
Chapter Title: Hunted by the Pack
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Elin squeezed her eyes shut and steadied her quickening breath.
‘Another corpse.’
It wasn’t laid out plainly, but with the blood sprayed profusely across the upper branches of the tree in a sharp burst, it wasn’t hard to picture what had happened.
Her breath caught in her throat.
She forced her airways open and gulped down air, but the sense of deprivation refused to ease.
‘Still, I have to move.’
She had to move.
As she repeated that to herself, a short, trimmed silver rod was gripped in Elin’s hand.
“I borrowed this wand in a pinch, but since it’s not one I’ve tamed myself, it won’t be much help in a fight.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Rough, chilling words.
Where Elin glanced, the kind and indulgent senior from before was nowhere to be seen.
Just as when she had focused her gaze earlier, there was only a swordsman honed to a razor’s edge.
It felt less like facing a person and more like crossing blades with a single sword.
Elin swallowed hard and turned back to face forward.
Branches were being cleared ahead of her, but that didn’t make the path smooth by any means.
She picked her steps carefully, watching for rocks and tree roots.
They said desperation made you cling to anything, and her scant elven blood less than half helped with the mountain trek.
“Focus on detection. I’ve already written off combat anyway.”
“Because they’ll swarm?”
“…I can’t beat Magic Wolves.”
It wasn’t surprising.
She had expected as much.
Even the one confessing it seemed utterly unfazed.
So it was just something to tuck away in a corner of her mind—no deeper meaning to it.
What mattered more than her inability to beat Magic Wolves was that she had entered the forest anyway, knowing she couldn’t.
‘Linking a failed rescue straight to death?’
They had rallied to Isel’s call partly from a desperate wish to believe, but also from faith that holding out would bring salvation.
The academy had professors who had called for them—among them, Master Aiden.
It was only possible because of that bedrock belief: hold out, and you live.
Without it, they never would have listened to Isel, no matter what.
But Isel’s judgment shattered that faith all the same.
“You could die for nothing if you try to help.”
“I know.”
“Don’t throw your life away like it’s straw.”
“Is that something for the senior heading in alone to say?”
The conversation kept breaking off.
It came in such short, clipped sentences.
Instead, each brief phrase packed more implication than usual.
She knew talking was a bad idea.
With magic beasts around, silence was the best policy, no matter the noise.
But without even those snippets of talk, there’d be no keeping her sanity.
“Did you think the professor wouldn’t come?”
“…A bit.”
Suspicion had returned as reality.
Elin mulled over her despair.
The gap between “maybe” and “actually” cut deeper than she’d thought.
“Everything’s wrong. Something happened—things I glossed over and ignored. Maybe the professor picked up on it and warned me not to go to the practical.”
Elin’s eyes went wide.
“The professor? Just to you?”
Isel only furrowed her brow, offering no firm confirmation.
Once she started seeing things as suspicious, there were far too many that fit the pattern.
“…Unless you were hanging on Professor Aiden to confess your love, what was your real business?”
The sharp question made Elin swallow empty air for a moment.
Isel wasn’t pressing for an answer or subtly prodding.
It was a straight shot, yet dodging it felt impossible.
“…Runes.”
“Runes?”
“I felt mana residue from runes on the professor’s coat.”
Isel’s face twisted.
She bristled at this story she knew nothing about.
“Since when? Why would a swordsman like the professor mess with magic—runes, no less? And if so, why hide it?”
“…I don’t know. He led me to jump to conclusions. Can’t be sure. It’s just…”
But this much, she’d heard straight from him, so Elin said it with conviction.
“Watch out for heretical mages.”
Aiden hadn’t meant it that way at all.
It was a complete misread, but as the pieces fell into place, they edged closer to the truth.
Isel swallowed a groan, her caution sharpening further.
“The security forces couldn’t miss something like this. Distance or not, the back mountain’s academy private land. They patrol it weekly, if not daily.”
“Then it wasn’t undetected—they just didn’t patrol? Negligence?”
Isel shook her head.
“No way. Security includes fifth- and sixth-years stacking achievements before knighthood entry. Guards, maybe—but the student council and discipline committee in the ranks slacking off too?”
“Doesn’t add up. Someone pulling strings, then?”
“Realistically? The magic tower’s sudden shutdown is the suspicious part.”
Every clue circled back to the magic tower in the end.
Isel boiled the sprawling suspicions down to one.
“Something went down at the magic tower. That’s why the hush orders from above, and why they pulled so many personnel the weekly patrol couldn’t catch it.”
She frowned as she spoke.
“We’ve got to get back alive. Too much left to uncover.”
“Me too.”
The conversation cut off again.
She dabbed the sweat of tension with her sleeve and caught her breath.
“Over there.”
Elin pointed.
The hair in her hand quivered faintly.
Vivid magenta—not Isel’s, not Elin’s.
Hair from a third-year Spellcraft mage in the Magic Department.
She didn’t know how the situation had played out, but the mage who’d spoken earlier had been holding it.
Without it, they’d have taken far longer.
Isel eyed the trembling hair.
It didn’t just point direction like a compass—it detected too.
Magic had seeped deep into everyday life, but to an outsider, it was still uncanny.
Isel gave it a curious glance and took point.
A small cave-like hollow.
Dug by magic, perhaps—mana residue lingered everywhere.
And that was…
“Damn.”
She ignored Elin retching behind her.
Mana took heavily after the user’s emotions.
For knights, it showed in their aura’s traits or color; for mages, in output and stability.
That was why knights were told to keep a cool head, mages to stay detached—to avoid being swept up in their own mana.
The mana residue before her eyes had no stability whatsoever.
She’d wrung it out in a desperate bid to survive, only for it to backflow and shred her veins.
The trusted third-year senior had been torn apart by magic beasts.
Clear claw marks, bites from the lower jaw.
Her arm, twisted and yanked free—likely seized by a wild beast that shook its head and ripped—like tattered rags.
Torn into alive, she’d died a gruesome death.
But before any mourning, Isel’s face hardened.
“Elin.”
“Yes?”
“Run.”
Her eyes still wide in confusion.
Wiping the unclear liquid at her mouth—stomach acid or sweat?—as her reddened eye rims stood out, Isel barked in a frenzy.
“Run!”
Wolf howls. Again, resounding once more.
The howls echoed like hallucinations, and she reflexively whipped her head toward the sound.
Magic Wolves emerging one after another.
Isel drew her sword.
The tip trembled oddly.
Proof of fear…but she paid it no mind.
She had no intention of pretending the frightening wasn’t.
Fear just made her clamp down harder on rash moves.
She ground her teeth.
‘Should’ve seen the trap coming.’
Wolves abandoning prey? Leftovers?
The Magic Wolves had been luring her from the start.
To make her easier to catch.
“Th-then what about you, senior?”
“I’ll bolt at the right moment. Not dying with you just to save you.”
Seemingly cold words.
But her eyes held not a shred of deceit.
Elin, who could read emotions with fine detail through the spirits, even caught the intent: a push to get her moving.
“Time’s wasting even now. Run. I’ll hold them first, then escape.”
There, on a towering rise, an enormous body emerged too vast to size up.
The leader.
Its speed had to be as monstrous as its bulk; if that thing gave chase, they were both dead.
Isel locked eyes with the leader.
Utter disinterest, not a flicker of curiosity.
It led the pack but wasn’t pressing the attack.
“At least that’s a break.”
The instant the leader turned its back, it was like a signal flare—the wolves surged.
At the same time, Elin spared one glance and broke into a run.
The misfortune was that Isel had no leisure to see her off.
“Damn it. For real.”
Isel rolled sideways, dodging the lunging wolf’s jaws.
More wolves waited there, but she swung her sword like a mere stick and bounded up the incline.
No beating them anyway.
Escape viability aside, she had no shot in a speed or stamina contest.
Isel’s one play was exploiting the tangled terrain.
That was the only way to shake the wolves.
Elin glanced back at the wolves giving chase.
Most pursued Isel, but not all—a few tailed her too.
She had to run.
She stifled her surging breath and pumped her legs.
She was barely keeping pace, but she could’ve tumbled ages ago and it wouldn’t have been odd.
She wasn’t seasoned in mountain hikes or regular workouts.
A total novice dodging jutting tree roots while sprinting? Fat chance.
Yet truly, her half-breed blood—unthought-of—propelled Elin onward.
The forest was elven domain; elves, the forest’s kin.
That odd bond gradually charted the path.
It steadied her heaving breath, made treacherous ground feel like flatland.
It poured vitality and vigor into her.
But that was it—a yawning gap with Magic Wolves, hunters born and bred.
Elin eyed the wolves closing in and mulled her hopelessness.
No magic.
She’d lost the wand somewhere in the flight.
Without it, the chaos left no room for mental casting.
One botched hasty spell, and mana backflow was guaranteed.
‘Don’t want that.’
She didn’t want to die like that.
Not even tumbling into the dirt.
‘What top? What best?’
She’d been so sure.
Vast knowledge beyond her peers, magic prowess earning her “genius” labels.
Tormented as a half-elf, her life a tangle of hardships.
Revenge as her whip, she’d outachieved her age-mates.
She could handle anything, she’d thought.
Even if not yet.
Just one tiny lead, and she’d reach the pinnacle.
‘But no.’
If her talent was so grand, why this powerlessness now? Nothing she could do?
It was clear.
What she’d denied nonstop since entering the forest.
‘I’m weak.’
Magic took time, and real combat had no foes who waited patiently.
Useless, that’s what it meant.
Talent, whatever.
“Ugh.”
Her vision dropped low as her hands and knees stung.
Her gasping breaths came ragged.
Her mouth tasted of ketones, her head spun with vertigo.
She wanted to stop, just rest.
Maybe her run so far had been sheer luck…
But folding here made it all pointless.
“No, I said no.”
No more, nothing. Anything.
Anything at all. She wanted to live.
The slow approach and the hazy mist creeping in around her happened at once.
Through her sniffling tears, Elin glanced ahead.
Mist in this bright weather?
And… this familiar sensation.
“Spirit?”
Elin swept her incredulous gaze over the mist.