Chapter 1281

“Why is that, seniors?”

Salco turned his head and asked when he felt their gazes from behind.

Palga quickly waved his hands.

“It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”

If that really was an artifact like the portrait of wisdom, he could not let it show.

Because...

“You judged well, Palga. Even if they’re juniors, it won’t be easy to take their stuff if they’re on guard.”

“...No! What kind of ridiculous nonsense are you talking about!”

Palga jumped at his friend Ivanna’s words.

This corrupt friend was insulting the honor of House Ukim.

“I had absolutely no intention of taking it! Do you think I’d steal something the juniors found?”

“Got it. Got it. I understand what you’re trying to say.”

When Ivanna spoke as though placating him, Palga’s expression relaxed a little.

“You’ll only pretend to stop me, so you’re saying I should be the one to take it, right?”

“...You!”

“That’s not it either? Geez. You’re picky.”

At his friend’s reaction, Ivanna answered as though annoyed.

Even among White Tiger Tower students, Palga definitely had quite a troublesome personality.

Normally, the words ‘We have the dignity of a knightly house, so how could we possibly commit robbery or theft?’ were something students abandoned during the first week of the first semester of first year.

By the second week of the first semester of first year, White Tiger Tower students had already finished rationalizing it with things like, ‘Come to think of it, there’s even the term robber knight,’ and ‘Historically speaking, knightly groups themselves practically grew by feeding on plunder.’

But once in a while there were a few students like Palga who still said things like, ‘We have our dignity, so how could we steal from juniors?’

From Ivanna’s perspective as the person in charge of supplies for White Tiger Tower, it was frankly annoying.

If he was going to act like that, he should have gone to Phoenix Tower!

“Guys. Seriously, listen to me.”

Meanwhile, whispering was also going on among Gainando’s group up ahead. Gainando spoke with a serious expression.

“I know you think I’m making a fuss. But this time it’s really suspicious. I think those seniors are targeting us!”

“Mm. The prince bastard has a point.”

“?!”

Gainando was greatly surprised when Salco agreed with him.

He had expected to be cursed at for suspecting innocent people?!

“Didn’t you say they were trustworthy seniors?!”

“When did I ever say that? I said they were at least seniors we could talk to. We can’t even trust seniors from our own tower, so how could we trust seniors from another tower?”

Salco glanced behind them with an uneasy expression.

At Einroguard, seniors were beings who could always turn into robbers.

The way they were looking this way and whispering right now was quite suspicious.

Ratford agreed.

“That’s classic stage-one robber behavior. Looking someone up and down while whispering means they’re estimating the value and thinking about the method.”

“But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”

He could not understand why the seniors were acting like that right now.

If they had already found the portrait of wisdom and were trying to steal it, that would be one thing, but revealing their true colors just because the juniors had found a way deeper into the marshlands?

Wouldn’t causing internal conflict here be a loss for them too?

“We haven’t even secured the portrait yet, so I don’t understand why they’re acting like that.”

“What’s there to understand? They’re White Tiger Tower. I’m telling you, they’re beasts who plunder for no reason at all! I told you before, didn’t I? Not long ago, a White Tiger Tower senior came up while I was eating snacks on the seventh floor and stole them!”

“If you tell that story one more time, that’ll make it a hundred times.”

“And it wasn’t even ‘not long ago.’ That happened at the beginning of this year.”

The two looked at Gainando as though they were sick and tired of hearing it.

With this level of persistence, even the White Tiger Tower senior who had stolen his snack while passing by would come back and apologize for being wrong.

How could a person be this obsessive just because someone stole one snack?

-Hmm. I don’t know either. Does Gainando look somewhat wealthy?

Even Wardanaz could not really come up with a good answer to this.

He could never have imagined that the seniors had mistaken the second-year students’ little group for some incredible artifact.

-Anyone have a guess?

-What do you mean Gainando looks wealthy? They were probably hungry and happened to see Gainando eating something.

-Maybe they’re trying to eliminate competitors in advance? After seeing how you broke through the marsh, they may have judged that you were more capable than expected.

-But if they’re White Tiger Tower seniors, shouldn’t we not be talking about this here?

-Hey. What exactly do you mean by that?! You think I’m going to act like some spy!?

-That’s not what I meant... Lord Wardanaz. I think this might be a good opportunity for us to make a new artifact...

-Wardanaz, you’re not really going to do that, right? Don’t leave only White Tiger Tower out.

-Alpha. Please just shut up. You’re embarrassing me.

‘Damn it. These useless bastards.’

Salco cursed.

As expected, the people who were not on site just kept spewing useless nonsense because it was not their problem.

What did it matter whether they made some new little group without White Tiger Tower or not!

‘But the idea that the seniors seriously see us as competitors is fairly plausible.’

He even felt a little proud.

If they had initially ignored them because they did not think of them as competitors, then became wary after seeing their magical ability, that made sense.

...Of course, strictly speaking, it was not their magical ability but Wardanaz’s remote control, but still!

“Should we attack first? Attack first? Let me attack first!”

“...Prince bastard. Are you confident you can fight two third-years from White Tiger Tower and win?”

Among Einroguard’s four towers, most White Tiger Tower students came from knightly families, so many of them were capable with both magic and swordsmanship.

And yet he wanted to fight when the opponents were even a year above them.

‘Did hanging around with Wardanaz make third-years seem easy to him?’

“I’m not confident I can win, but I’m confident I can stop them. I’ve got a pouch with poisonous fog in it. If I release it, I think it can cover about this much of the passage.”

“The seniors would probably withstand it with enhancement magic.”

Ratford looked worried.

Poison was a powerful element, but it was difficult to immediately bring down sturdy, durable types like White Tiger Tower students.

“Lee Han gave me this. He told me to use it if I met a magical criminal outside.”

“Then it’s reliable. Let’s release it right away.”

“......”

After glaring once at Ratford, whose attitude changed instantly the moment his friend’s name was mentioned, Gainando looked at Salco.

“What should we do?”

“...Let’s wait a little. Attacking first right now is too risky. The seniors don’t seem to have made up their minds yet either, so let’s keep our distance for now.”

As they spoke, the end of the marshlands began to come into view. The loud sound of water came from somewhere.

“A lake? A waterfall?”

“Good thing we didn’t throw away the small boat and brought it with us.”

Even though they could walk, they had deliberately brought the small boat because of Einroguard’s ever-changing terrain.

The seniors following behind them seemed to have heard the water as well, as they could be seen preparing to move over water.

Ratford’s expression suddenly hardened. Since he had the sharpest hearing of everyone present, he noticed the abnormality first.

“Sirens! They’re sirens!”

“We need to cover our ears!”

“...You’re really a second-year?!”

Salco was dumbfounded.

A siren’s song directly struck the soul, so covering one’s ears would not do anything.

Hadn’t they all seen sirens together in class last year!

“R-right! Ugly skull, howl!”

Gainando took out a skull, threw it, and chanted a spell.

The skull began emitting an irritating, noisy sound.

As soon as the other students heard it, they suddenly felt nauseous. Salco shouted with an incredulous look.

“Crazy... Prince bastard! What are you doing cursing us!”

“Ugh, but... it blocked the sirens’ attack!”

What Gainando had just done was simple but effective.

He had first made the area noisy by casting <Song of Dizziness> around them.

Since that curse also operated through sound waves, it could interfere with the sirens’ song.

The problem was that his nearby friends had no choice but to get hit by the spell too.

“A little... dizziness is better!”

“What the hell are those guys doing?”

The White Tiger Tower seniors behind them stared in bewilderment.

Blocking the song by setting off a curse first was effective, but wasn’t it far too extreme?

Palga and Ivanna activated the amulet artifacts they had brought.

If someone descended underground without preparing for sirens, they were not a third-year but a first-year.

As the amulets shone, the strength of their souls increased, becoming firm enough that ordinary songs could no longer shake them.

“Maybe that isn’t the portrait of wisdom after all? I don’t think it would teach them such a brute-force method.”

“That seems unrelated to the portrait—no, that artifact. There wasn’t enough time for that either.”

“True... More importantly, if sirens are nearby, we should be careful. I heard those Blue Dragon Tower bastards raided siren territory before.”

Ivanna’s expression hardened as though she had become angry while speaking.

She should have raided it first!

“Right. Let’s retreat for now and wait until the sirens get tired.”

Palga knew well how to deal with sirens.

Their songs were powerful, but their stamina was not particularly good.

If they retreated and waited, the sirens would tire themselves out and move somewhere else.

“...What are those guys doing?”

“?”

At Ivanna’s words, Palga turned his gaze.

Surprisingly, the second-year students were moving forward!

‘Were they bewitched?!’

For a moment, he thought they had been caught by the song, but the juniors’ eyes were perfectly clear.

Instead, they picked up that suspicious paper artifact of wisdom from earlier and started shouting something.

-Is... Miss Parthenope... there?

-Miss Parthenope! Lee Han... has something to...

-♪♪♪♪♪

The sirens’ song suddenly cut off.

Then, with splashing sounds, the sirens all disappeared at once.

“?!?!?!”

“W-what? What was that?”

The two White Tiger Tower seniors were horrified.

To think a single spell could drive away those violent and petty sirens.

‘There really... must be something in that paper!’

***

-Wardanaz. It worked out well, just like you said.

Lee Han smiled with satisfaction at Salco’s message.

As expected, friends were useful at times like this.

Who would have thought the friendship he had built with the siren Parthenope would be useful like this?

-Right. Parthenope came out and mediated, didn’t she?

-Huh? No. The sirens just disappeared. Wasn’t it a spell that makes them disappear?

Salco was puzzled.

When they shouted, ‘Wardanaz is looking for Parthenope,’ and ‘Lee Han is looking for Parthenope,’ they had all vanished at once, so he had assumed it was some kind of spell.

-...Uh, she didn’t come out and mediate?

-I’m telling you, they all just vanished.

-Isn’t that not friendship, but them getting scared and running away?

Anglago asked in puzzlement.

Maybe it was just his imagination, but Wardanaz did not seem particularly friendly with the sirens like he had claimed.

Rather, it seemed they were afraid of him.

And considering Wardanaz’s track record, that was not very surprising.

Unless they were an exceptionally unusual, eccentric, and powerful race, they generally ended up getting scared.

-Come to think of it, it was a mistake to talk about this here when White Tiger Tower seniors are involved. We’ll have to make a new one.

-...S-sorry! Don’t make a new one! Wardanaz! You’re not really going to do that, right?!

“......”

Even though Wardanaz was on his side, Salco could not help thinking he was incredibly petty.

Why was someone generous enough to forgive people even when they ambushed him normally so petty only about trivial things like this?

Fortunately, Wardanaz seemed to collect himself and spoke again.

-It must be because I didn’t go there myself, so she didn’t come out. She probably didn’t want to socialize with people she wasn’t close to. Instead, she read my intentions and mediated on her own. Anglago. See? They withdrew.

‘It looked more like they ran away than withdrew...’