Catch That Promise
Rune carefully etched the words like he was carving them into stone. Slowly, he continued his promise.
[I will give you my tooth and send you away without harming you. If you do not accept this condition, this body will disappear.]
The hedgehog-pajama-wearing Rune thumped his chest with his front paw.
[Your turn.]
The tooth fairy swallowed hard and continued his promise.
—I swear on my body as a tooth fairy that I will grant you the ability to create Fairy’s Path and allow you to manipulate all the paths I have already made. But if you are unable to control the paths, these abilities will return to me. If you do not keep this promise, this body will also disappear!
As the words fell, a faint link of mana connected the two for a moment.
Uung.
With a faint tremor of mana, the constraint of the Word of Power took hold.
‘The promise is complete.’
And Rune quietly smiled inside himself.
‘Gotcha.’
The tooth fairy also cheered inside himself.
‘It’s done!’
Even though he was a hatchling, since the pact was made with his very existence, this silly hatchling would definitely keep his promise!
‘If I take that fellow’s tooth and leave, the demon race will definitely take the soul of this arrogant Dark Clan hatchling.’
The tooth fairy continued to think, drunk with victory.
‘Then I’ll get my paths back and also take those teeth from the elf who’s been turned into a demon!’
Of course, even though it was only temporary, handing over ownership of the paths was a bit bitter.
But it would only cause discomfort for a while.
‘As long as that hatchling doesn’t get his soul taken by the demon race, I can come back.’
‘Hoo, good, good. Once I get my power back, it’ll be fun to watch that annoying black hatchling’s soul get snatched by the demon race!’
The tooth fairy was dreaming big.
Moments before this unthinkable event could happen for the other silly tooth fairies.
Crunch!
Suddenly, the tooth fairy’s body began to tighten.
—Cough! What, what is this!
A pitch-black darkness began to descend before his bewildered eyes.
Instinctively sensing that he was being erased again, the tooth fairy shouted.
—I promised not to send you away! Y-you’re not planning to break the promise, are you……!
The hatchling who had looked so gentle and innocent just moments ago raised one corner of his mouth without expression.
[I don’t have any reason to do that.]
With those words, Rune’s black pearl began to suck in the tooth fairy.
—You! Y-you forgot the promise? If you do this, your body will disappear!
[This body?
His front paw thumped his chest again.
Crack!
Rune’s appearance began to shatter like broken porcelain.
A faint smile appeared on the cracked face of the young hatchling.
[It’s a shame. It was the best one I made recently among my dolls.]
While the tooth fairy was being eaten by the darkness, Rune had swapped in a Curse Tool Crafting Kit to create a decoy doll.
It was an unusually successful doll made during his practice of doll crafting.
[But if this is the price, I have no choice.]
Crack!
Crack, crack!
The doll’s body that Rune had made under the promise completely shattered.
And it slowly broke apart and fell away.
Rune watched his own form dissolving for a moment.
[Thanks for the path. And.]
The tooth fairy tried to shout something, but it was impossible to resist in the state of being sucked into the black pearl.
Even the ability to create Fairy’s Path was completely handed over to Rune.
[This won’t be too painful.]
Inside the black pearl, the tooth fairy looked up and saw massive thin needles piercing into the bead.
The tooth fairy instinctively knew that something worse than death was happening right now.
The old fairy’s mouth twitched while completely trapped inside the black pearl.
—Nooooo!
Puff!
The scream became an impossibly small and quiet sound.
Black fluid pierced through the tooth fairy’s body, and the fairy’s time stopped just as it was.
Rune examined the bead.
The tooth fairy felt no presence, no movement.
‘I practiced this while watching Christina. Good work. This should keep the world from noticing.’
After finishing his work, Rune floated a mana key onto his front paw.
Uung! Uung!
The key sparkled with a rainbow of colors.
As if any color key would do.
Rune tested it by fixing it with an oddly old light mana and using the key.
A moldy wooden door appeared.
Rune instinctively knew that beyond that door was the tooth fairy’s hideout.
‘Good. As I thought, this key can take me to Fairy’s Path.’
Rune had instinctively understood that the various colors of the key symbolized the already-created paths.
He would have loved to check which places each key connected to, but doing that in Christina’s lair was out of the question.
‘For now, I just need to confirm that I can use this power.’
Rune pulled back the darkness.
The black space vanished, and in its place stood the hatchling wearing a hedgehog-pajama outfit.
“Quyuhu.”
Rune sighed and rolled the black bead containing the tooth fairy into his spatial pocket.
And looked around.
‘No one noticed, right?’
Then Rune looked up at the ceiling and was startled.
“Quyuu?”
[Rai, when did you get here?]
Rai, who had turned into the smallest light, was spinning in the air.
And drew a picture with light.
[(￣(?)￣)?]
A relaxed gesture of waving his hand as if asking about the question.
The slow movement looked almost leisurely.
It seemed he didn’t know the details.
‘This was probably just seen as using power.’
At this point, Rune decided to let it go.
“Quyuu, kyuuwuu.”
[I used a bit of power, but don’t tell anyone else.]
Although Rune had stayed calm, he wasn’t sure if his intention had been conveyed clearly.
The light spirit projected a picture.
[( ??.???)?]
‘Did you understand?’
Reading the light spirit’s pictures was hard even for Rune.
[(>^)b]
Seeing this picture, Rune breathed a sigh of relief.
Although he wasn’t sure if it was good or not, it felt like a message to not worry.
‘Anyway, I didn’t see it with my own eyes…… judging by the reaction, it should be fine.’
Just in case, he had done the work inside the dark space where only Rune and the tooth fairy could enter.
At least, unless Christina had come directly, the chance of being caught was almost zero.
Just as he felt a moment of relief.
Gurgle.
“……Quyuk.”
The loud sound of a belly rumbling echoed loudly.
Rune rubbed his empty stomach with his front paw.
‘After using power, my stomach is empty.’
It was good to have obtained Fairy’s Path, but the mana consumption had been heavy.
‘Well, it’s still good.’
Because of their nature, tooth fairies possessed the power to transcend space.
Using this, Rune could go to places he couldn’t reach otherwise.
‘The key had already shown its limits, but luckily it worked.’
The mana key he had obtained from Jed through the dwarf village.
After the late-night meeting with the tooth fairy and learning that he could obtain or travel on paths made with Fairy’s Path, Rune had used the key to explore various paths from time to time.
But the randomly generated paths had many problems.
There were many cases where paths connected to places that weren’t paths, and there were also paths with problems themselves.
‘I even pushed my head into a bright sky-blue one and saw a scene full of white clouds underneath.’
There were even abandoned and broken paths.
Rune couldn’t fix those paths, and if he stepped wrong, he risked getting lost in an unknown place.
In short, there were plenty of duds.
But now that he had the ability to manipulate tooth fairy paths, he should be able to fix some of those issues.
‘Now I finally have proper paths I can use.’
He hadn’t created any new paths yet, so he would have to try that, but at least the existing tooth fairy paths should be easy to travel on.
‘It’s time I met them.’
Rune recalled the promise he had made to the brown dragon Rand during lessons on handling the Seal of the Forest.
Rand, who could no longer be part of the forest clan, had mentioned another clan of forest beings.
A hatchling, but treated as an adult—the Lizeae about whom everything was known.
Gurgle gurgle gurgle gurgle.
“……”
“……”
Both of them fell silent for a moment.
Christina was the one to speak first.
“……You must have been very hungry, Rune.”
“……Quyuu.”
The one who had eaten enough supper the night before.
Normally, at this time he wouldn’t be this hungry.
Seeing Rune’s drooping tail, Christina stroked his head.