-There’s plenty of food prepared, so don’t rush!
-Is the soup ready yet? Bring more pork fat and salt!
“Sigh...”
The person responsible for spreading the enormous rumor throughout Granden City let out a long ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ sigh.
“Wardanaz. If you’re tired, go get some rest. You’ve already done more than enough.”
Palcrius spoke gently after noticing how exhausted his junior looked.
And it wasn’t just empty comfort.
This junior had truly worked several times harder than everyone else.
Without Wardanaz’s help, there was no way they could have prepared this overwhelming amount of extra food.
Even the priests from various temples and the club students who had come to help were astonished by the sheer quantity gathered.
“No, I’m fine. I’ll make more water.”
Lee Han casually waved a hand and raised his staff.
The priests busy preserving and drying the food for distribution stared in shock as massive amounts of water appeared out of thin air.
‘He’s creating that much water?’
‘The mana consumption must be insane!’
‘Are we... overworking our junior?!’
“...Wardanaz! Come over here for a second!”
“The priests are staring at us strangely!”
“Ah. Right.”
The upperclassmen hurriedly dragged Lee Han behind the temporary kitchen tent.
They wanted to explain, We’re not exploiting him—he just naturally has absurd amounts of mana! but even they knew it wouldn’t sound convincing in the current situation.
After moving behind the tent, Lee Han filled another pot with water and sighed again.
‘...I let my emotions get the better of me.’
At the time, he had been furious after the other side not only picked a fight but insulted his senior on top of it.
But now that his head had cooled down, regret slowly began creeping in.
No matter how lowly the other side had acted, hadn’t he gone too far in taking revenge?
Lee Han swallowed down the regret and carefully retraced the events.
Even thinking about it again was exhausting, but reflection required honesty.
***
Consumed by rage, Lee Han disguised himself as Stedal Nago and easily smashed through the wall.
The defensive and surveillance magic protecting the estate was obliterated by 【Valdororn’s Mana Hammer】.
‘Ha. Instead of wasting time rebuilding the manor, they should’ve improved the magic. They didn’t even prepare impact-dispersion measures?’
Most mages would strongly disagree, but Lee Han firmly believed that magical barriers absolutely needed structures designed to disperse external force.
After all, if some lunatic with effectively infinite mana simply swung mana around like a giant hammer, wouldn’t even sophisticated magic collapse eventually?
No matter how expensive or time-consuming it was, defenses should’ve been built with that possibility in mind.
‘Well, it worked out nicely for me. I’ll smash everything.’
***
“Ugh...”
Lee Han suddenly stomped his foot.
The upperclassmen preparing food nearby jumped in surprise.
“A-are we working too slowly?”
All the Kitchen Club students knew that Wardanaz and Palcrius had come out first to prepare the massive emergency food supplies.
Normally upperclassmen didn’t pay attention to their juniors’ moods.
But the Wardanaz family junior in front of them was a special case.
Wasn’t he the one who usually secured absurd amounts of ingredients and practically carried the Kitchen Club on his back?
And after seeing what he had prepared this time, ignoring his mood was impossible.
“No. It’s not because of you. I was just thinking about a mistake I made.”
“What? Even you make mistakes, Wardanaz?”
“...”
“Ah. No, I mean... what kind of mistake?”
The upperclassmen immediately put down their ladles and knives and gathered around him.
They genuinely couldn’t imagine Wardanaz making mistakes, but if he truly had, they all wanted to help somehow.
“I acted emotionally recently. I even muttered embarrassing things to myself...”
“Hey. That’s not a mistake.”
“Wardanaz, don’t worry about it. I mutter things too while doing alchemy. Stuff like, ‘I’m throwing this in the principal’s face once I finish it,’ even when he isn’t there.”
“Same. I always mutter that I’m coming back to assassinate Professor Verdus after graduation.”
The upperclassmen’s comfort was crude, but sincere.
And Lee Han could feel that sincerity.
“Thank you.”
“That barely even counts as a mistake. Unless you blew up a building or something, there’s no need to worry.”
“...”
Lee Han fell into deep thought again.
***
After infiltrating the manor, Lee Han headed directly toward the western annex.
Since it had only recently been rebuilt, the security was full of obvious gaps.
After concealing himself with invisibility magic, dulling the guards’ senses with illusion magic, and leaping up to the second floor with telekinetic force—using the main entrance during infiltration was amateurish—a familiar spirit slowly drifted through the corridor.
“...”
-...
It was the same water spirit from before.
Even through the invisibility spell, the spirit reacted to the traces of Lee Han’s contract with a king-level spirit and trembled violently.
The moment it turned to flee, Lee Han realized ordinary concealment magic wouldn’t fool it.
“Wait! Stop!”
Of course, spirits almost never stopped just because someone told them to.
Lee Han immediately prepared a spell.
He couldn’t allow the spirit to run outside and raise an alarm before he was ready—
Thud.
Surprisingly, the spirit actually stopped.
Lee Han blinked in confusion.
There really were spirits that obeyed when told to stop?
“...You actually stopped?”
The water spirit nodded.
“...Aren’t you supposed to be guarding this manor? Is it really okay for you to listen to me?”
The spirit immediately denied it.
Meaning: no, it wasn’t okay.
“It doesn’t seem like a normal contract. Then let me confirm something. I naturally get along well with spirits, so I’ve contracted with several. I’ll summon them to communicate.”
The spirit nodded respectfully.
In truth, what it felt toward Lee Han was closer to fear than friendliness.
But it had no intention of doubting a mage contracted with a spirit king.
If someone like that said something, it had to be true.
Surely such a mage wouldn’t bother lying about something so trivial.
The sparrow spirit and squirrel spirit immediately appeared beside Lee Han.
Though initially confused, they quickly grasped the situation and began communicating with the water spirit.
“It’s not a formal contract?”
Even without spoken language, communication through spiritual resonance and contract links allowed Lee Han to piece together the truth.
The water spirit guarding the manor wasn’t under a legitimate contract at all.
Normally, when borrowing a spirit’s power, a mage negotiated compensation and formed a proper agreement.
Though admittedly, some mages ran away after promising payment.
But Bardan hadn’t done that.
He had captured the spirit, sealed it, and was forcibly exploiting its power.
‘What?!’
Lee Han was genuinely shocked.
No matter how difficult spirit contracts were, doing something like this—
“What a complete piece of trash.”
The water spirit nodded furiously in agreement.
Seeing such an honest reaction, Lee Han became certain that this spirit had simply misunderstood him earlier because of his overwhelming magical presence and the traces of his spirit contracts.
“Wait. Then the rampage last time was also...?”
Lee Han suddenly realized something unbelievable.
Last time, he had definitely only stolen the artifact.
Well, he had knocked out the manor owner in the process, but he hadn’t destroyed the estate itself.
Yet afterward, the rumors claimed half the manor had been destroyed.
Could it be—
The water spirit immediately nodded.
‘I knew it!’
After Bardan lost consciousness, the weakened seal had loosened enough for the spirit to partially escape—and in the process, it had gone berserk.
Lee Han was furious over having been falsely blamed.
“Does that even make sense?!”
The water spirit’s opinion of him improved even further.
After calming himself, Lee Han asked,
“Fine. Then where’s the sealing artifact that bastard Bardan’s using?”
For someone like Bardan, who wasn’t even a mage, sealing and controlling a spirit absolutely required an artifact.
There was no way he had captured the spirit personally either. He must have bought it from someone else.
If Lee Han destroyed the artifact, the spirit would be freed.
Shrug.
The sparrow spirit and squirrel spirit helplessly indicated they didn’t know.
Apparently, after the previous incident, Bardan had hidden the artifact somewhere inside the manor instead of carrying it around.
“...Hmph. I was planning to smash everything anyway. If I destroy enough of the place, it’ll turn up eventually.”
-!
The water spirit looked deeply moved.
A mage willing to go this far for a spirit without expecting anything in return—
The spirit resolved itself and declared it would help.
“You’ll help? But aren’t you bound by the seal?”
The water spirit insisted it was fine.
It wouldn’t be able to resist for long, but if it pushed itself to the limit, it could disobey its master temporarily.
Seeing the spirit step forward despite the risk to its very existence made Lee Han’s determination blaze even hotter.
“...Good. Then I’ll also do my best to destroy everything.”
***
Returning to the present, Lee Han felt slightly better.
‘Right. At least the spirit was freed.’
A corner of his conscience still wondered whether he had gone too far, but there had been a valid reason.
As he happily demolished the manor, the sealing artifact must have been destroyed somewhere in the process, because the water spirit had thanked him before departing.
At one point, Bardan had surrendered and desperately asked what Lee Han wanted.
But honestly, Lee Han had no answer.
The food supplies had already been smuggled out by the undead during the chaos.
-Nothing.
-...What?
-I said I want nothing.
-...
And it didn’t end there.
Living up to his status as the Teleportation Club’s future ace, Lee Han had also tossed other valuables over the walls to muddy the situation further.
From Lee Han’s perspective, it was part of crafting the perfect crime.
From Bardan’s perspective, it was a horrifying disaster that multiplied the damage several dozen times over.
‘...Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown out the treasures too? There weren’t any witnesses anyway, so I probably wouldn’t have been caught...’
“Wardanaz. Look over there.”
Palcrius, who had approached quietly, pointed ahead.
The poor and hungry people of Granden City were receiving food with bright smiles.
“This happened because of you. Thank you.”
“...No. It wasn’t just me.”
The sight before him eased Lee Han’s heart far more effectively than any excuse could have.
In the end, hadn’t it led to something good?
Come to think of it, the old Skull Principal used to destroy entire cities while trying to help people, so wrecking one evil noble’s manor was only a little—
‘No. Why am I comparing myself to him?!’
Lee Han hurriedly snapped himself back to reality.
If he started compromising with himself like this, he really would become the Skull Principal’s evil youngest disciple.
“Oh, right. Wardanaz, did you hear the news?”
“What news?”
“They say all the commissions for the Stonemason Club got canceled this time. The nobles withdrew them because they were afraid of looking too extravagant.”
“Ah. Because of that vigilante? What an incredible mage. I hope they’re from Einroguard.”
“If they were from Einroguard, they wouldn’t be doing good deeds like that. If it were one of our seniors, they’d probably be on the side getting attacked by the vigilante.”
“That’s true. ...Wardanaz?!”
The upperclassmen panicked as their junior suddenly collapsed face-first onto the ground in despair.
