Chapter 15
It was Seniel’s sister.
“I knew it. The two of them are hiding something.”
“Pardon? Professor, what do you mean…”
“Now, everyone get back to work! The weather is fantastic today, so make sure to get some fresh air when you can. Understood?”
Beaming with a bright smile, Kayan immediately sprinted off to find Seniel.
“Seniel! It’s me!”
Seniel, who had been sorting documents in the basement of the detached palace, flinched and took a step back at the sight of him.
“What is it?”
“It’s urgent, so I won’t beat around the bush. Where is Rosia right now? Can I see her?”
At the sudden mention of his sister’s name, Seniel’s expression hardened coldly. He had heard that Kayan had helped Rosia out, but hearing him casually use her first name after meeting her only once naturally raised his guard.
“No.”
“Don’t be like that, just once. There’s something I need to check. Maybe your sister is an Awakener just like you.”
Still brimming with excitement, Kayan revealed the mana stone he had carefully guarded the entire way there.
“Look at this. It’s glowing red. It turned out this way because Rosia touched it. You know exactly what this means, right?”
Transforming a grade-1 mana stone into a processed state suitable for an artifact was impossible for anyone but a 5th-class mage or higher. Hearing that Rosia—who hadn’t even awakened her abilities—had achieved this caused Seniel’s eyes to waver for a fraction of a second.
“Did you see the exact moment the mana stone changed with your own eyes?”
“Huh? Well, no, but… circumstantially, I am absolutely certain.”
“I thought as much. You are mistaken, Kayan. There is no way my sister possesses such an ability. I am busy, so please leave.”
“Come on, just let me meet her once. This is an immense talent! Are you really going to let it rot?”
Despite Kayan’s desperate persuasion, Seniel firmly insisted it was impossible and drove him out of the basement.
Seeing how unusually adamant Seniel was, Kayan concluded that pressing him any further wouldn’t earn him a meeting with Rosia.
Acting like that only makes him more suspicious. I’ll just have to find Rosia and persuade her myself.
Holding a high position at the research institute and hailing from one of the Five Great Families, there was no one Kayan couldn’t track down if he set his mind to it. Harboring the confident expectation that he would see Rosia again within a few days, Kayan deployed his people through other channels.
Unaware, of course, that his expectations were about to be abruptly shattered.
Dawn broke with a dim light spreading across the early sky.
After confirming that the carriage I had requested the day before had arrived in front of the house, I stepped outside. I could have ridden a horse myself, but I wanted to minimize the chances of drawing any unwanted attention. The destination I was heading to today was a remote place barely frequented by anyone; if I ran into somebody there, they would likely remember me.
“Take me here.”
When I told the carriage driver the location written on the land deed I had retrieved from the bank yesterday, he gave me a strange, skeptical look.
“This is a mountainous region, ain’t it? I won’t know for sure until we get there, but if the road cuts off, I won’t be able to take you all the way.”
“Just getting close enough is fine.”
“Hmm…”
I remembered having to wade through pathless wilderness for quite a while to get there, so I had fully anticipated the driver’s hesitation. I casually tossed a heavy pouch to the deliberating man. Peering inside, the driver checked the sum—which was far more than our agreed-upon fare—and his lips twitched upwards into a grin.
“Alright then, sounds good. Let’s get going. There used to be widespread rumors about magical beasts appearin’ out there, but I reckon that ain’t the case lately…”
Hearing the driver’s muttering, I narrowed my brow and asked, “Magical beasts? Out there?”
“Only folks like us drivers really know about it. Everyone else tends to keep quiet when it comes to magical beasts. Just ten years ago, there were quite a few people who claimed they saw ’em out in those parts.”
Having lived on that mountain without ever encountering a single magical beast, I found the driver’s words hard to believe. However, looking back, it did seem like an unusually high number of travelers and customers who visited our store were injured.
It couldn’t be, right?
Unless my parents were out of their minds, there was no way they would have run a business in such a dangerous place. I decided to investigate this matter further later and stepped into the carriage.
“How long will it take?”
“If we ride without stoppin’, about a full day? We’re departin’ now.”
Once inside, I kept staring out the window to calm my unsettled heart.
When my parents passed away so suddenly and I left with Aunt, I hadn’t been able to pack much of anything from the house. Thoughts of the cabin where I spent my childhood would often come to mind, but I deliberately pushed them away. I was afraid that comparing my bleak reality to those happy times would make me want to give up on everything entirely.
“I wonder if the cabin is still there.”
If it had been left unattended for over a decade, it couldn’t possibly be in good condition even if it was still standing, so I emptied my mind of expectations.
After stopping a few times to rest and have a light meal, the carriage slowly reduced its speed and came to a halt. The moment I stretched and stepped out into the crisp air, I was greeted by a severed dirt path and a dense, lush forest.
“Is this it?”
“Yes, miss. This is near the location written on the deed. There’s no road, so the carriage can’t go any further. But is there really anything where you’re headin’? You sure you ain’t mistaken?”
The driver seemed doubtful, but from the very moment I stepped out, I felt a deep sense of familiarity and comfort in the forest air rushing toward me.
Aunt really did pass my parents’ land down to me.
I had braced myself not to be disappointed if that wasn’t the case, but now that I was confirming it with my own eyes, my heart raced.
“I’ll go take a look inside.”
“I’ll be waitin’ right here. Drivin’ the horses for so long has me beat…”
Leaving the driver behind, I crossed the broken path. As I ventured deeper into the forest and scanned my surroundings, I became certain. This was undoubtedly the area where I had spent my childhood.
Thinking about it, since my father was in debt to Aunt, it wasn’t strange that she had retained possession of the land where our store used to be.
“Should I be thankful?”
Thankful that she had held onto it instead of selling it off. Then again, considering its remote location, it might have been land that wouldn’t have sold anyway.
I continued trekking into the pathless mountains. It wasn’t that I consciously remembered the exact way, but somehow, my feet moved on their own. Then, realizing that this was absolutely not a path meant for human travel, I stopped in my tracks.
In my memories, it had been a place with fresh air and clean water—a place that was always peaceful. But looking ahead, it didn’t seem like such a space could exist any further in.
Just as I was about to turn back, swallowing my regret, I spotted an old piece of cloth tied to a tree.
“That’s…!”
It was the marker I had tied there myself as a child, grunting with effort while riding high on my father’s shoulders.
‘This is where our territory begins. You must never go beyond the trees with the cloth tied to them all by yourself. Understand?’
‘Me! I want to do it!’
The memory of excitedly accepting the scrap fabric from my dad without even knowing its purpose, and tying it to several trees, was still vivid in my mind.
“I did find the right place. To think that’s still here.”
I had thought that my emotions had dried up with the passage of so much time, but I suppose I was wrong. The moment I saw that frayed cloth, an intense emotion gouged at my chest. Unable to gather myself from this storm of feelings I couldn’t even name, I gently stroked the bark of the tree.
I had run around inside this boundary every single day, so the path was now crystal clear to me.
“Did Dad set up a barrier around here or something? Is that why we never encountered any magical beasts?”
I realized that because I had been so young at the time, there might have been many things I simply didn’t notice.
Regardless, as I pushed through the thorny brambles next to the tree and stepped inside, a space so peaceful that any newcomer would gasp, ‘A place like this exists here?’, revealed itself.
A quaint cabin nestled in a flat clearing, a massive, thick tree standing guard beside it, a pristine spring flowing behind the cabin, and a diverse array of flora. This ridiculously tranquil atmosphere made it look nothing short of a hidden paradise.
“I found it.”
Truthfully, the biggest reason I had wanted to return here was because of the graves my parents had left behind.
When they suddenly passed away in an accident ten years ago, we buried them behind the cabin. The people who brought their bodies back had dug the graves, and I later learned that they, too, were Aunt’s people.
Pressing down on my pounding chest at the thought of soon facing them, I walked to the back of the cabin. I was so nervous that my lips were completely parched. Walking a little further toward the mountain edge, I saw the rounded burial mounds next to the trees, along with the headstone that Seniel and I had erected ourselves.
With no time or extra hands to prepare a proper tombstone back then, we had substituted a large piece of firewood and carved our parents’ names into it with a knife ourselves.
I cried like a madman back then. The wood was so hard to carve that my small hands were covered in cuts.
Looking at the headstone that still bore the desperate traces of that day, the raw emotions from back then flared back to life.
But something was strange.
“…How can a cut piece of wood not have rotted at all?”
The wood, which should have decayed long ago after being exposed to the elements for so many years, was entirely intact. It was as if someone had cast a powerful preservation spell on it the very day we left.
The graves themselves were the same. I had expected them to be completely overgrown with weeds and barely recognizable, but that wasn’t the case at all. They maintained a neat, pristine appearance, as though someone had painstakingly tended to them.
Seeing that not just the graves, but the surrounding area as well, were perfectly tidy, a wave of confusion washed over me.
“Has someone been taking care of them?”
