Chapter 132

Whether they like it or not, all mages leave behind traces depending on the magic they usually use. Like a scent clinging to their clothes.

And mages with keen senses like Shannon could read those traces.

From Guildmaster Dawson, she smelled rotten meat and blood.

Of course, in a magical sense.

“Rita, step back. That man is a dark mage.”

“Dark magic? Then, as I suspected…?”

“He’s the one who kidnapped those people.”

Winter Winslet’s accusation aimed at Guildmaster Dawson. His suspicion.

The kidnapped people inside the warehouse.

The lingering traces of dark magic that had put them to sleep.

By now, the circumstantial evidence was more than overwhelming.

But one last time, Shannon asked for confirmation.

“Guildmaster Dawson, do you have anything to say about the people locked up here?”

Instead of claiming ignorance or misunderstanding, Dawson grinned slyly.

“Well. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to explain.”

“You kidnapped them. To use them as sacrifices for dark magic.”

“Dark magic, you say? Kekeke. Well, you’ve got it about half right.”

“…? Anyway, you admit your crimes, then?”

“Oh, absolutely. I admit it all.”

“You’re surprisingly cooperative.”

“Let’s just call it a final mercy…for you two, who will soon be lying beside those sacrifices.”

Rita hurriedly cut in.

“Wait a minute. We’re students from the Academy. If students who came out for volunteer work suddenly go missing, an investigation will definitely start. And when that happens, you’ll be in trouble too, Guildmaster.”

It was a logical, well-reasoned argument.

If only their opponent had been sane.

Dawson’s eyes were bloodshot, and he looked frantic, as if something was chasing him.

“What does any of that matter?! If I don’t meet this quarter’s quota, I’m as good as dead!”

Spit flew from Guildmaster Dawson’s mouth as he shouted in agitation.

Shannon frowned and asked,

“‘Quota’… So someone assigned you a task? Who is it?”

“You don’t need to know that. Dammit. I’ve wasted too much time talking. They’ll be here soon…”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

Shannon was trying to gather as much information as possible….for Professor Winslet and the mission she was entrusted with.

But Dawson suddenly flew into a rage.

“I said you don’t need to know! If you hadn’t gotten curious about this warehouse, someone else would’ve ended up as the sacrifice instead of you two… but now that you’ve seen what’s inside, it can’t be helped. Curse your curiosity!”

“What are you planning to do to us?”

“You’re better off not knowing. Don’t resist, just stay still. It’ll be easier for you. I’ll make it painless. Kekeke .”

As he spoke, Dawson reached into the thick leather bundle he had in his right hand.

Then, with a look of disgust even on his own face, he pulled out the contents.

It was a lump of rotting meat.

Looking closely, it seemed to be the head of a dead animal.

Rotten scales, flesh, and fur were grotesquely tangled together around a beast’s skull.

Dawson thrust it toward Shannon and Rita and shouted,

“O cursed head of the basilisk! Put my enemies to sleep!”

Shannon and Rita flinched.

It was because the basilisk’s head looked utterly revolting.

But that was all.

“……”

“What are you doing right now?”

As the two blinked and asked, Dawson began to panic.

“Huh? Why… why isn’t anything happening? Is it broken?”

The artifact made from the head of a dead beast, which had worked just fine until yesterday, hadn’t suddenly malfunctioned overnight.

The invisible power of the curse had indeed reached out toward Shannon and Rita.

But the moment it touched their mana fields, it simply bounced off.

Dawson shouted in disbelief.

“No way! Even if they’re mages, they’re just rookie first-class students….there’s no way they could resist a curse like that! At the very least, they should’ve collapsed from dizziness…”

“Aha.”

Having already surpassed the wall of sixth-class, Shannon could only respond with a mocking smirk, and Rita who was slightly embarrassed gave a small shrug.

“We did a bit of studying ahead, you see…”

“You crazy—You’re second-class or higher?!”

Second-class? That was just the beginning.

Shannon spoke in a cold, cutting voice.

“Don’t tell me you were seriously talking about luck and painless death, thinking that little toy would work on us?”

“Tch!”

Clicking his tongue, Dawson hurriedly began chanting a dark magic spell.

Even though Shannon had braced herself for this, she couldn’t help but grimace.

She hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

“What’s taking him so long?”

He was the very definition of a novice.

Guildmaster Dawson was so unskilled that it was almost a joke to even call him a mage.

There’s a reason this world has dedicated institutions for training magic users, after all.

In places other than the magical city of Karaf, magic learned through unofficial methods among civilians was usually only of that level.

Without the artifact that could put people to sleep on eye contact, Dawson wouldn’t have stood a chance even against ordinary first-year students.

That’s not how you do dark magic…

“Grrk…”

Dawson let out a pained groan.

Veins bulged across his gaunt body. These were clear signs that he was struggling even at the stage of converting life force into mana.

Shannon thought to herself that even she could probably perform dark magic better than this.

Still, despite the mess, it looked like he was barely managing to complete his spell.

So Shannon expanded her mana field to disrupt him.

Boom!

A small explosion followed from the failed spell.

Faced with overwhelming power, Dawson dropped to his knees.

“Wh-What?! Why?!”

Watching his desperate expression, Shannon felt a bit of the joy one might feel as a professor….like Professor Winslet might feel when looking at his students.

I guess this is how Professor Winslet feels sometimes.

Without much thought, Shannon extended a hand.

An explosion burst out at Dawson.

Boooom!

It was a rapid-cast spell. The same quick-cast explosive air spell she had used in her duel against Professor Winslet.

Since she’d held back the force, it didn’t draw a drop of blood, but Guildmaster Dawson suffered damage elsewhere:

His pride.

“H-How can you cast magic with that much power… without even chanting?”

“You just do it.”

“Hrk…!”

“Don’t move. Unless you want to get hurt.

Rita, I’ll keep him covered. Can you tie him up?”

Finding something to use wasn’t hard.

Maybe because it was a warehouse meant for holding kidnapped victims, ropes were lying around everywhere.

But neither Shannon nor Rita had ever kidnapped anyone before, so they didn’t know how to handle ropes properly.

After a few failed attempts at tying clumsy knots, the two exchanged glances.

“…Should we just knock him out?”

“That might be safer.”

“S-Stop! I oppose violence!”

Guildmaster Dawson who had somehow become more polite shamelessly spoke up.

Rita let out a sigh.

“I’ll just wrap him up as best I can.”

“Yeah, that’s probably better.”

After some struggle, the two finally managed to bury Guildmaster Dawson in rope.

With only his head sticking out, Dawson looked like a giant caterpillar.

He pleaded.

“W-Wait! I was wrong. I’ll apologize, just untie me. I must’ve lost my mind for a bit. That’s right! I was under a dark magic spell… mind control!”

“Cut the nonsense and stay like that until Professor Winslet gets here.”

“No! There’s no time for that!”

“You think we’re doing this because we’ve got time to waste?”

Shannon snapped back, but Dawson shook his head frantically.

“No, that’s not it! You have to get out of here….now. You can’t stay here. They’re coming. If they get here, you’ll all die too!”

“They?”

Shannon, sensing something ominous, was about to press him further—

Woof woof!

A dog’s bark rang out from outside the warehouse.

At the sound, Dawson’s panic intensified.

“Damn it. They’re already here. Hurry and untie me. I said untie me!”

As Dawson thrashed so violently that he started hurting himself, Rita turned to Shannon and asked:

“What should we do?”

“If we untie him, he might attack us.”

Of course, there was no way either of them would lose in that case… but still, you never know.

Dawson glared at Shannon as if he wanted to kill her and shouted.

“At the very least, let me draw a sigil! A protective sigil on my arm with blood… If I don’t inscribe one now… h-hiiik!”

Dawson shrieked and swallowed hard.

His eyes were fixed on the entrance of the warehouse.

“Shannon! Over there!”

At Rita’s shout, Shannon turned her head as well.

Through the open warehouse door, black hunting dogs were charging in.

Calling them dogs might’ve been too generous.

They were grotesque monsters….hairless, faceless, and horrifying.

Sensing danger on instinct, Shannon shouted,

“Rita! Step on the boxes and get to higher ground!”

At the same time, she fired a magic arrow, aiming at the hound leaping toward Rita’s back.

Whimper!

The hound went down easily.

Shannon instantly grasped the nature of the enemy.

They’re fast and agile, but their defense is weak.

If it was one-on-one, they could be taken down without much trouble.

The problem was the sheer number of them.

Shannon quickly followed Rita to higher ground and gathered her mana.

But she couldn’t cast a spell right away.

What spell should I use?

A single-target attack wouldn’t be enough.

She needed a wide-area spell to suppress the enemies.

Part of her wanted to just ignite the whole area, but doing that in a confined space would mean not only killing herself and Rita, but also suffocating all the people trapped in the warehouse.

What would Professor Winslet do in a situation like this?

“Eek!”

Rita screamed.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine. But Guildmaster Dawson—!”

“Aaaargh! Stop! I’m not a sacrifice! Let go of me! Gaaaah…”

Dawson’s groans turned into a death cry in an instant.

The hounds’ bite force was so strong that there wasn’t even a chance to save him.

Their next targets would surely be the girls.

There’s no time to hesitate!

Shannon finally decided to stop thinking ahead and loaded a fire-based area spell into her magical circuit.

Just as she was about to pull the trigger without delay—

Shoop!

A light sound, like an arrow landing.

But it wasn’t an arrow. White streaks of light flew in from somewhere, piercing through the hounds.

“What is this?”

Shoop. Shoosh, shoosh!

The streaks of light kept flying in.

The frenzied hounds were instantly skewered and fell one by one.

Shannon turned toward the warehouse entrance…to their savior.

Could it be… Professor Winslet?

Her guess was completely off.

It was a professor, yes.

But when the figure pulled down their deeply drawn hood, the hair that spilled out wasn’t Professor Winslet’s blond. It was brown.

A gentle expression followed.

It was a face Shannon recognized.

“Professor Sophia?”

It was Professor Sophia, a visiting professor from the Academy’s Theology Department and known as the Saintess of the Eternal Order of Aeon.

“Professor Winslet asked me to come, but what in the world is going on here? Where is he right now? His letter said a student was badly injured and needed urgent help…”