Chapter 134.
"No, that"s enough." My aunt’s expression seemed to indicate that it was more than enough.
That"s too bad. If I knew this would happen, I would have used some techniques that I hadn’t gotten a chance to show off before using "World Reversal."
"Really? I thought you would do more because you haven’t used your swords’ abilities yet."
If my aunt had used her swords properly, I was certain that no matter how powerful the magic I used was, I wouldn"t be able to harm her. The swords my aunt was carrying were that high-level of cheat items. Of course, that was also why I excitedly used my magic. If my aunt had fought sincerely, I would have had no choice but to fight with my life on the line.
"It’s fine." My aunt also looked tired from using too much mana.
I took out a mana recovery agent, nicknamed MP potion, from my pocket s.p.a.ce and threw it to my aunt.
My aunt received the MP potion and spoke indifferently, "If you take this outside Olympus Forest, you"ll be in big trouble."
It seemed my aunt tried doing this before. Normally, there shouldn’t have been any need for her to drink it. I wonder if the request she was going to give was difficult enough to require an MP potion from me?
"I know. I drank it before. You can drink it because it has been tailored to the environment outside.”
"Really?" My aunt became delighted and thanked me, then downed the MP potion.
"Hmm, did you improve the taste too?”
"Yes. It’s usually pretty bad. Elder Mirpa doesn’t like to make improvements on things aside from magical components, but he"s not even here, so it’s fine."
It was an MP potion that I intentionally created by developing synthetic flavoring agents. For reference, it was grape flavor. My aunt nodded.
"Good job. Honestly, it wasn"t edible before." Aunt Talaria shook her head with a look of horror.
After quickly recovering her mana, my aunt put the two G.o.d swords into her pocket s.p.a.ce and used voice-transmitting magic somewhere.
"It"s all over. You can come now."
Judging from the direction of the mana, she seemed to have sent a communication to Swan Mask.
"You talk down to me, but you talk to your daughter with respect?" [1]
My aunt snorted and asked, "Why? Do you want me to speak respectfully to you too?”
Uack, it gave me the creeps to imagine my aunt being respectful to me. "No."
When I showed my disgust, my aunt smiled playfully and disheveled my hair. "I actually want to converse comfortably with that child just as I do with you, but she doesn"t feel comfortable with me."
"That makes sense. It would be weird for her not to be afraid of you.”
My aunt hit me in the back of the head.
"Ouch!"
My aunt even calculated which direction I would flee and whacked me in the head. Then she sighed. "From now on, that child will be in charge of contacting you."
My aunt smiled at Swan Mask flying here from far away. I thought she was quite iron-blooded, but she was unexpectedly clumsy.
"I would prefer not with someone whose face I don’t even know." Even if she was my cousin, it was too much to ask to be on good terms when it was my first time meeting her.
“Oh, you probably know her.”
“What?” We know each other?
Considering that I didn"t have many exchanges, it could be one of the adventurers I saw when I was working at the adventurer"s guild. Swan Mask quickly arrived and had a brief conversation with my aunt. Then Swan Mask took off her mask with hesitation.
"You!" The face behind the mask was Milpia, who often came to the boarding house to meet Alice and Yuria.
“No way! Were you keeping an eye on me?”
“That’s not it!” Milpia frowned and shouted at my shocked face.
Milpia calmed her agitated self with a dry cough and introduced herself with cold eyes, "I will introduce myself again. I am Milpia, the head of the Big Mama Information Agency headquarters located in the capital."
"Big Mama?"
When I looked at my aunt in surprise, she grinned. "Big Mama-nim, your aunt, is the head of the Big Mama Information Agency."
Let"s just skip over my aunt"s grotesque naming sense, which was similar to some cooking research nicknames.
I now realized when my aunt had discovered me. "When Director Pelgrant was almost poisoned, was it you in the secret s.p.a.ce behind the wall with the painting?”
Aunt Talaria nodded lightly. I felt like a fool, as I had been acting carefully to avoid getting identified when I had already been discovered two months ago.
Then my aunt looked at me with a smile and asked, "You"re the one who visited Granwell, right?"
Milpia looked at me in surprise at my aunt"s question while I lied out of habit, "No, that wasn’t me."
"What do you mean no? There’s no one else but you who would want information about b.l.o.o.d.y’s location and the forces that he could mobilize. With your magic, it would be easy to change your face, and most of all, it coincides with the time you ran away from home.”
I laughed at my aunt"s reasoning. "Then, how did I know the location and pa.s.sword of the information agency when I had just run away?"
My aunt had no reply. I really had visited because of a coincidence, not intentionally.
After thinking for a moment, my aunt laughed. "Do you realize that what you said just now is no different from admitting you came to Granwell?”
I looked back on my words before I realized my mistake and clicked my tongue. "Tch, I made a mistake. Yes, that was me."
When my aunt asked me if it had been me who visited Granwell, I shouldn"t have said no. Instead, I should have asked where Granwell was or if Granwell had a Big Mama branch. From the moment I answered "No," I admitted to knowing that there was a Big Mama branch in Granwell.
"Then! The middle-aged man with the scarred face is?"
As Milpia became shocked, I casually put an illusion over my face. "You mean this face?"
Milpia looked at me with dejected eyes when she heard a deep modulated sound from my voice and said, “I suffered because of you!”
“What suffering?”
"It’s fine. You won’t know even if I tell you, and anyways, it"s cla.s.sified."
Milpia looked as if she had organized her feelings just now. I don"t know why, but it felt like resignation. However, what"s important now wasn’t Milpia’s emotions.
"Anyways, are you sure you will keep my location and ident.i.ty secret?” The most important thing was whether or not I was going to be dragged back to my hometown.
Aunt Talaria nodded happily. "Yes, if you"ll listen to my requests later.”
“You mean ‘request,’ not "requests.’”
My aunt and I looked into each other"s eyes and laughed. It seems wanting to sleep tonight is just wishful thinking. d.a.m.n, I"m on night duty tomorrow. I"m doomed.
* * *
Early in the morning of winter, just as the sun was rising past the mountain ridge, Orphina and b.l.o.o.d.y looked at the same place with serious faces.
"That"s incredible," b.l.o.o.d.y said as he started to cold sweat.
Usually, Orphina would have told him to shut his mouth because it was annoying, but she kept silent and nodded heavily. The sight before their eyes was just that surprising. The huge craters, which had a radius of one km, were surprising by themselves. Yet, the craters and other parts of the crater were covered with soil and trees as if they had been hit by landslides.
In addition, the mountain top, which was visible from far away, was cut into a circular shape as if it had been dug up by rats. The horrific mana wave observed last night was so unprecedented that not only the nearby city but also the imperial army stationed in the faraway capital were about to enter a state of war.
"Did a demon of legends or something come by this place?”
Orphina rebuked b.l.o.o.d.y"s words, "If the Four Great Demons had moved, it would have been a mess in the demon’s territory, not the middle of the empire."
"Even I know that, but if it’s not a monster like that, there"s no way something like this could happen. What, or did Hyung-nim briefly come here or something?" As far as b.l.o.o.d.y knew, the only thing that could make these traces without being noticed was Doomstone.
"Well, I guess we have no choice but to contact William. Aside from that, we should contact everyone else who can make these traces.”
As she said so, Orphina recalled a list of monsters that could create these traces. The first people that came to mind were Doomstone Blade and Mirpa Ainsmall, the great madosa who was with Doomstone.
Besides them, there was the Dragon King, the leader of the Dragon Tribe, and the Great Elder, who was head of the b.u.t.terfly Tribe’s elders. Of the four great madosas, there was the Curse Magician whose whereabouts were unknown and the s.p.a.ce Magician who was in the Kingdom of Magic.
Zendia Blade, the former chief of the Crow Tribe, was one of those people as well. Also, of the confirmed masters of the 12 Zodiacs, Scorpio and Libra were suspicious. In particular, Scorpio and Libra were strong enough to smoothly escape the capital during the joint efforts of William, Orphina, and Glont in the "Spider Trap" operation, which was a large-scale subjugation operation in the past.
Orphina bit her lips and mumbled, "What happened here?"
* * *
"Ha-am~." Oh, so sleepy. I was bickering with Aunt Talaria until late last night, and with the negotiations on top of that, I couldn"t get enough sleep.
Flam was worried as he poured some coffee and handed it to me. "You look very tired. Didn"t you go straight home yesterday?"
"Oh, thank you. I ran into a relative by chance on my way home yesterday. After talking for a while, I ended up going home late." I roughly told Flam the same excuse I made when I crawled back into the boarding house.
In the morning, Alice, Yuria, and Lisbon were asking why I came back so late, so it was the excuse I made up for them. Well, it was true. My aunt brought a daughter I didn"t even know existed and asked me to help her with some business.
"You have relatives residing in the capital?"
"No, they don’t live here. She just dropped by for a while."
Yesterday, after heated negotiations with Aunt Talaria, she decided to overlook my civil servant life in return for listening to three of her requests. Furthermore, she promised that she would block not only my uncle b.l.o.o.d.y but also the people dispatched to catch me, which included my younger sister, Mac hyung, and Lancelot.
And she said that she would sell any information I wanted for a low price at the Big Mama Information Agency. She said she would sell it, not give it for free. What a cheapskate.
All these agreements were stipulated in my own magic contracts and bound me, Aunt Talaria, and even Milpia. If the contract were broken, the violator would immediately suffer from hair loss and horrible athlete"s foot. In the end, it was a contract with family, so death was a little excessive.
On top of that, there was a curse of weakening which would make the violator weaker than a senior knight in the empire. The curse was pretty strong, and since Milpia was also tied to the contract, if she broke it, she might die immediately. In reality, her blocking them from finding me was to prevent myself from getting caught and dragged back to my hometown before I could help out with her requests.
Although the contract was signed, it was best to prepare for the worst-case scenario. There was no guarantee that I wouldn’t get stabbed in the back just because we were family. This was especially true if I consider the fact that I stabbed my father in the back quite hard when I ran away.
Let"s always start with greetings like this when I meet someone close to me. Is your back safe?
By the way, my big sister’s cleverness had no equal. Knowing that I"m weak against Lancelot, she sent him to catch me. It may not be a bad idea to disguise myself and go see Lancelot later.
I felt like he could become my spy if I conciliate well. Well, it would also be nice to meet a friend from my hometown after a long time.
1. Talking about honorifics (formal speech)