Ch. 37

The chance to tell Winter how I honestly felt would never come in this lifetime.

Because if I told her, she might really kill me, as she liked to say.

"I said answer me!"

"Yes!"

"What? You're saying I'm sloppy?"

"No, I was answering your 'answer me,' not answering what you said before telling me to answer!"

"Huh...? So you answered what I said, to 'answer me'... Damn it!"

Winter, as though irritated that her words had gotten tangled, swung her fist.

If it landed, I felt I'd be sent to my grave, so I shifted back slightly and dodged it.

"Oh ho? You dodge?"

"Could you listen to me for a moment?"

"Talk? Go ahead, but if it's pointless, you die, got it?"

"The woman you were just talking to... she herself is a problem, but do you even realize how dangerous the group she belongs to is?"

At my question, she clasped her hands behind her head and answered with a sullen expression.

"Yeah. I know."

"You know it's best not to get entangled with them too, right?"

"I know."

"Then how did you end up involved with them?"

"...It just kind of happened?"

"What a backstory!"

"...Are you making fun of me? Do you want to die?"

Since she seemed angry and was clenching her fist again, I quickly kept talking.

"Actually, whatever the reason, I figured it wouldn't be a good topic to discuss in a place like this, so I changed the subject."

"Hmm... that's true."

"Then what do you think about moving somewhere else first? You know, someplace extremely personal and private."

"...Aren't personal and private the same meaning?"

"Just think of it as emphasis."

For this woman, a personal place was probably nowhere other than her lab.

Honestly, I wasn't sure whether heading to her lab right now was really the right choice.

But as the saying goes, even if you enter the tiger's den, you can survive as long as you keep your wits, and I figured that if I just kept my wits sharp, I'd be able to extract everything I could from this hopelessly sloppy person.

And since she seemed to be connected to Silver Ring too, smashing up her lab and running away also seemed like a good method.

Of course, I didn't know whether that would be possible.

"Fine. But not just anyone can enter my lab."

"Are there conditions or something?"

"Conditions, I guess you could call them? How old are you?"

"Twenty-thr... no, that's wrong, I'm eighteen."

"What's with saying twenty-three and then eighteen? Are you lying again? Do you want to die?"

"I'm definitely eighteen!"

"You know you're really an annoying type, right?"

"Thank you for the compliment."

"See! You say thank you, but it feels bad! It feels bad! Why?"

"..."

It felt like only a moment ago that my assessment of her had dropped from a scary witch to an ordinary brat, and this time it seemed to have dropped another notch, to a dumb brat.

"By the way, Miss Witch, could you please tell me the conditions for going to the lab first?"

"Conditions? Oh, that's what we were talking about, right? The easiest way, to start with, is to become my test subject."

Becoming a test subject might sound bad, but it wasn't entirely a bad thing.

In fact, it was through her human experiments before the regression that my Body score had shot up, which was also how I'd been able to start my mercenary life.

But back then I'd probably been held for at least a month, and now I had to be back at the academy by tomorrow at the latest, and above all, I didn't want to go through her experiments twice.

The results were good, but the process was too painful.

"...What's the other way?"

"If you have something I might find interesting, you can come."

Finally, the line I'd been waiting for had come out.

I flashed a grin and approached her, and Winter scowled hard and backed away.

"Great Witch, do you happen to know about enchanting?"

I said it the way the Order's priests approach you with merciful faces and ask, "Do you know Lazda?"

It was a bait that she couldn't possibly ignore.

"What?! That guy went out alone?"

Beyond the communication orb, the Tower Master, Gilliam Bloodbracelet, wore an incredulous expression.

In front of the orb showing the Tower Master's face, Gary, delivering his report with a troubled look, bit his lower lip.

"...So I'm told."

"And the reason he went out was that he'd found traces of Silver Ring?"

"...Yes."

"And knowing that, you still sent the boy out alone?"

"..."

"No, however plausible a reason he gave... Do any of you have a brain or not?!"

When the Tower Master, as if frustrated, pounded his chest and spoke in a voice full of anger, Gary smiled bitterly and answered.

"Since Mr. Benjamin often shows a side of himself that isn't student-like... I think everyone momentarily forgot that he's a young student."

"What? However ugly the boy is, isn't saying he's not student-like because of his face going a bit too far?"

"Tower Master, I was talking about his behavior, not his face..."

"..."

"Actually, I was talking about that too. That boy has a bold side that isn't childlike. How should I put it? It's like seeing myself in my heyday. If only he'd fix that habit of pointlessly swinging a blade, I could lure him in as a disciple right away and try..."

"Tower Master, right now, more than that..."

"Ah, right. So where is that brat now?"

At the Tower Master's question, Gary began drawing the formula of a location-tracking spell in the air.

"Fortunately, I'd put a location-tracking spell on his brooch in preparation for emergencies, so I was able to find his position. Before the report, his position had been found in a tavern in Laverin, and now..."

"A tavern? Somehow I figured that guy would pretend to gather information while just guzzling booze."

"...Tower Master."

"Hm? What is it?"

"The distance is too far to be accurate, but... Mr. Benjamin has been traced to one of the islands near Verza Spire."

"Verza Spire...? Isn't that the Order's territory?"

"Yes, that's correct."

Laverin, in the north of the continent, and the Holy Kingdom, in the east of the continent.

The signal had been picked up at a place that would take a full week even for a student from Laverin riding the fastest horse without rest.

The Tower Master's expression, upon receiving the news from Gary, turned serious at once.

"Is there a possibility he used a teleport gate from Laverin?"

"There's no gate currently in operation in Laverin."

"Then does that mean someone used teleport magic without a gate?"

"That's right. And since the distance is considerable, the one who used the teleport would be..."

"Someone at least on a similar level to me."

"Yes. And if we assume that, as Mr. Benjamin said, Silver Ring was there, and in the course of tracking them his identity was exposed and he was kidnapped..."

Maybe it was because they'd let him go too easily, but it seemed something terrible had happened.

When the Tower Master let out a sigh, Gary carefully continued, watching the Tower Master's expression.

"On the positive side, it means we've been able to identify the hideout of those who had been shrouded in secrecy until now, and on the negative side..."

"...His death, I take it. What are the chances the boy is alive?"

"If the assumption holds, the chance that he's alive is... frankly, hopeless."

At a situation more serious than expected, their conversation broke off and only silence lingered.

But the silence was brief, and the Tower Master beyond the communication orb suddenly stood up from his seat and began gathering his robe.

"Gary, from now, I'm assembling every person who has been tracking Silver Ring. By tomorrow at the latest."

"Everyone... sir?"

"Yes. Setting aside today's work, we've caught the tail of those bastards on the Northern continent... so we should go kill them all, shouldn't we?"

"Tomorrow evening... no, tomorrow after lunch, I'll have everything prepared so that you can depart for the northern continent."

"Thank you."

"Then what will you do about Mr. Benjamin?"

"Don't worry about that either. I'll go myself."

"Tower Master, there's a possibility it's a trap."

At Gary's worried tone, the Tower Master, who by now had put on his robe and even taken out his staff, let out a snort of a smile.

"A trap? That would be fun in its own way."

The despair of all mages, the Tower Master, Gilliam Bloodbracelet.

He lifted his heavy backside and rose from his seat to save a single student.

A huge lab with papers covered in complicated writing scattered all over the place.

Perhaps because of the reagents left lying around everywhere, a foul smell assailed my nose, and my brow furrowed on its own.

Ugh, couldn't she clean up a little?

Complaints came out naturally at a lab that looked like a pigsty.

"Ugh, what's with the stink of rotten dog food in a room where a person lives..."

"Hey, do you want to die?"

It was a place where a woman lived alone, so I wondered if "rotten dog food stink" had been a bit much.

More to the point, after hearing things like "Do you want to die?" and "You wanna die?" so many times in such a short time, maybe I'd built up a tolerance, because they no longer felt like harsh words at all.

If anything, I felt I'd be disappointed if she didn't say them.

"First, take your clothes off. Like you said, I need to confirm you really have no mana at all in your body. And I need to draw blood too."

At her words, I started taking off my clothes without a word of complaint.

When I stripped off my clothes in a flash, she recoiled and turned her face away.

In front of anyone else it might have been a bit embarrassing, but for me, who had been kidnapped and experimented on by her before the regression, it wasn't so much embarrassment as simply recalling and reminiscing about those days.

The first thing that came to mind was the look in her eyes as she watched me.

The look in her eyes as she watched me submerged in a glass reagent tank wasn't the look one gives a man... no, regardless of gender, it wasn't the look one gives a person at all.

You could say they were the eyes of someone looking at an inanimate object like a doll.

As I'd heard in the conversation with Lily, the fact that she'd sent the children off alive might make one think she was a little bit kind, but fundamentally she was evil.

Probably those children who were supposedly alive were also merely hanging on to their breath, waiting for the day they'd die.

"It'll hurt a little, okay?"

While I was lost in various thoughts, she suddenly approached, pulled out long needles, and began jabbing them all over my body.

The feeling of thin metal piercing flesh was different from a blade.

"Ughh, this hurts a lot, doesn't it?"

"I said it'd hurt a little."

"No, if this is a little... gah!"

"It's fine, it's fine."

Whatever I said to complain about the pain, she drove in every needle she had.

Then, with a satisfied face, she scurried over carrying a few Mana Stones and began drawing a complicated formula.

Since the Mana Stones were glowing, it seemed she really was doing something, but there were too many letters rising up for me to understand what she was trying to do at all.

Only then did I turn my eyes and take a closer look at the needles stuck in my body.

Seeing only the handles of the needles sticking out, it looked as though every needle was piercing through bone.

It wasn't that I didn't know her Talent, but I wasn't sure this was really all right.

"Wow... looking with just my eyes, I thought it was only a slightly unusual body, but it's a more fascinating body than I expected?"

I remembered her saying something with that same nuance as she experimented all over my body back when she kidnapped me before.

The fascinating body she spoke of was probably referring to a body in which mana couldn't take hold.

"It's fascinating that the body rejects mana, and it's fascinating that this much muscle was built in a matter of weeks..."

After muttering for a good while, she brought over a syringe, drew blood from my body, and began dividing it among several reagents.

"Huh? This is bizarre too? It's human, though... is it a different race? No... this is definitely a person too."

"Um..."

"If there were monsters among the ancestors, no matter how diluted, the traits should be inherited... even if he's terribly ugly, his body has nothing but human traits..."

"...Excuse me?"

"What's certain is that with this blood, I can carry out a new experiment..."

"Hey, you damn bastard!"

"..."

"N-no... Teacher?"

"What did you just say?"

It was something that came out because my eyes had rolled back for a moment, and apparently it had seriously struck a nerve with her.