Chapter 10 – Misunderstanding (5)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read it only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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After the golems were destroyed, Evan could no longer restrain his curiosity.

As he prepared camp by the carriage, he asked:

“Were you hiding your strength?”

“Of course not.”

“…Then was that really second-circle magic?”

“It was.”

Evan still looked unconvinced

but he had learned by now that pressing Alon rarely produced more answers.

With a sigh, he returned to the practical business of making camp.

Alon, though outwardly expressionless, felt somewhat wronged.

He himself had no idea why the spell had turned out like that.

He had known Constraint would strengthen magic to some extent.

In Psychedelia, combat had been turn-based.

Hand seals and incantation phrases consumed turns in exchange for amplifying spell damage.

The correct hand seal boosted the spell itself

and choosing the correct phrase from among many options strengthened its quality.

The spell he had just cast, known in the game as Chain Lightning, had used four phrases:

Refraction.

Repulsion.

Azure Light.

Diffracted Line.

That meant the equivalent of a five-turn setup in game terms, counting the seal itself.

Even allowing for that, he had not expected enough power to outright obliterate the golems.

Still, the conclusion was simple.

The trip had gone well

and discovering that his magic could become even stronger than expected was cause for celebration.

More than celebration, really.

It awakened his curiosity.

He wanted to experiment.

The hand seals and phrases he used this time were only one set among many he still remembered from building a glass-cannon mage in the game.

And more importantly, he had noticed something during the casting itself.

In the game, the phrases merely increased damage by ten percent apiece.

Here

that was not what happened.

A normal mage might not have noticed

but Alon had extraordinary sensitivity when it came to controlling mana.

He had observed that each phrase altered the very nature of the mana itself.

Not merely its power.

Its quality.

Once his mana recovered, he fully intended to begin testing that.

With that pleasant thought, he closed his eyes in the carriage.

* * *

At that same time, a girl with deep green eyes appeared where the shattered remains of the golems still lay.

Rine.

Or rather, the girl who in another future would have been known as the Greed called Rine.

Without a word, she walked past the piles of rubble and looked at the doorway Alon had entered earlier.

The frame of the entrance was cracked and worn, yet the carvings along it made it clear the structure had been intentionally built.

And Rine knew those carvings were not meaningless decoration.

She possessed the Ancient Library from birth, an innate gift that allowed her to consult forgotten knowledge at will.

So she could read the script.

It was writing from the Alaranef Empire, from the age of the forgotten Outer Gods.

She read the inscription.

For the coward Palaon, for the friend who would be left behind alone.

“…Ha.”

She laughed softly.

Because in that ancient language, there was only one being whose name was written as Palaon.

The great Palaon.

The brilliant emperor who had repelled the invasions of the black things

and defeated Al-Akulakka, the horror that could make subjects rip out their own hearts just by being seen.

Only that one emperor bore the name in such a form.

And then another memory returned.

Palaon made it.

A friend of his.

Alon’s voice.

The way he had stood there earlier, expressionless but somehow distant, looking at the outer frame of the labyrinth.

Rine’s mind tipped back and forth between denial and belief.

Then she remembered the magic he had used after emerging from the labyrinth.

The spell itself had not seemed especially ornate.

But the phrases he spoke had.

The Great Moon had uttered words that did not even exist in her Ancient Library.

That threw the scale back into balance.

She had already known that anyone worthy of being followed by Yutia Bloodia, the future Bloody Queen, could not be ordinary.

Yet now another thought settled into certainty.

The Red Moon who led Blue Moon.

The Great Moon.

The friend whom even Palaon had respected enough to humble himself before.

The moment Rine accepted that as truth, gooseflesh ran over her skin.

For the first time, something clear and bright took root in her eyes.

It was reverence.

Then she sensed another presence.

“You’ve returned.”

She looked aside and found Deus there, his violet eyes faintly glowing.

“Did you learn anything?” she asked, recalling how he had gone after the black-clad follower who had shadowed Alon a week before.

Deus shook his head.

“No.

I learned nothing.”

“Why?”

“The black-clad one died while I was pursuing him.

His neck twisted around twice in empty air.

He died on the spot.

I sensed nothing.”

Rine fell silent.

“…Then we should report this.”

“I agree.”

After exchanging a few more words, the two of them vanished, leaving only lonely moonlight behind.

* * *

Two months after Alon obtained Constraint from the Labyrinth of Whispers, House Altia fell into chaos.

The reasons were threefold.

First, the duke’s second son Kig and second daughter Pairinne died suddenly.

Second, Duke Altia

who had long been bedridden and expected to die soon, finally passed away.

Third, the day after that, the duke’s eldest son Timalian and eldest daughter Malianne also died, stabbing each other to death.

Overnight, the line of succession vanished.

That left Roria as the sole remaining heir.

Much as Alon had unexpectedly become heir of House Palladio, she now sat in an office she had never once imagined would be hers.

Rumors were already beginning to circulate about her.

And yet, strangely, no one could actually touch her.

She possessed too clear an alibi.

When the second son and second daughter died, she had only just been returning from the ball.

The eldest son and daughter had killed each other.

She had not even met with them recently.

And most importantly

while she had been away at the ball, her own organization had already been destroyed by her wretched family.

So in every official procedure, she remained beyond suspicion.

It was all too clean.

Something good will happen.

Roria recalled Alon’s words.

The line had sounded careless.

Nothing that followed had been careless at all.

By now she was convinced that everything that had happened was his doing.

The pattern was too deliberate for coincidence.

So what does he want?

He had outwardly refused her plea

and yet he had resolved the matter more decisively than anyone could have imagined.

Even now, more than a month after every other heir of House Altia died, he had still made no move to contact her.

Not even after she had quietly absorbed the remnants of the ruined organizations with minimal damage.

Pure goodwill?

She laughed at herself.

It was nonsense.

After enough thought, she reached the only conclusion that made sense.

Alon was drawing some larger design.

She had no idea what that design was.

But she had realized one thing.

House Altia was necessary to it.

Someone who could casually erase members of a ducal family without leaving a trace must be after something he himself did not have.

Most likely, House Altia’s prestige.

And what could be done with that prestige…

At that point, Roria stopped.

She finally understood what sort of demon she had effectively made a bargain with.

Even so, she did not flinch back.

A person who had already seen four precedents understood perfectly well what happened to those who broke such a bargain.

So she pushed betrayal out of her mind and focused on the work before her.

At the very least, she wanted to send thanks.

For the first time, a faint smile rose to her lips without her even realizing it.

One week later, a bottle of wine and a card arrived for Alon in the family office.

The wine came from Sernance, an imperial domain that produced only three bottles a year, each worth thousands of gold.

The card said only:

With respect.

“…?”

Alon stared at it in total confusion.

Then, two months later, he heard another report.

“So you’re saying Roria, the third daughter of House Altia, became Duke Altia?”

“Yes.”

“Roria Altia?”

“That is correct.”

“…?”

At that point, Alon realized something in this world had gone badly off the rails.