Chapter 39
No more hideous laughter was heard. But Cadel didn't stop. He increased the number and range of his streams of fire as he was about to burn the entire forest. He was determined to bring them out in front of his eyes.
What if they still didn't come out? Did not matter. If he burnt the whole place, there would be no place to hide. They couldn't leave without showing up.
Following his combative mindset, the magic formulas in his head gradually increased in perfection.
Currently, the ratio of ‘Fire” and ‘Wind’ in his formula was 1:2. It was because he left 10 attribute points that had not yet been distributed and used the 10 Wind points obtained from the magic book directly. The reason he kept the points was to prepare for an emergency.
‘However, in this situation, I can just use it for Fire. The ratio will be the same, so I won't be able to use fire as lightly and quickly as I can now, but it will be more powerful. It's good enough for a threat.’
He was unilaterally caught, but that didn't mean that he was overwhelmingly inferior. As much as he didn't know the other side's power, the other side also didn't know his bottom line.
The more he pretended to be strong, the harder it was to gauge his strength. Cadel opened the ‘My Information Window’ to use the attribute points he had been stocking up on.
‘I'm being cautious because I don't want to make it harder to get away, not because I want to lose.’
If he couldn't get away, he would just have to catch them and kill them.
Cadel's eyes flashed fiercely. But the moment he tried to upgrade his attributes for an enhanced spell.
“Stop, stop! Are you serious about burning down the forest? You're insane!”
Across from him, something the size of a palm floated up.
‘Bug……?’
……Not that. Cadel quickly covered up his bewilderment, staring at the little ‘lump’ in front of his eyes.
‘As expected, they were fairies.’
Except for their surprisingly small size, they resembled humans. Though they did have two pairs of wings on their backs.
It was still a bit of a distance away, so Cadel couldn't make out the details, but it was unmistakable. As he had first suspected, the source of this irritating situation was the fairies, but only one had appeared.
‘There were definitely two voices. Where's the other one?’
Even as he wondered about the other one's whereabouts, his gaze never left the fairy in front of him. The suspense was so intense that his entire body was tingling.
“We just wanted to have a little fun. Did you have to be so rambunctious? After all, humans don't know how to have fun.”
“Why did you come out alone? Where is your companion hiding?”
“He's very shy. He doesn't want to come out.”
“Don't waste your breath and bring him out.”
“Kkyahaha! You think I listen to human orders?”
The fairy circled the air and laughed at Cadel, and soon flew close to him like a butterfly.
Only then did the face of the fairy appear clearly. Reddish hair, upturned eyes, plump, adorably chubby cheeks like a doll's, freckles covering the bridge of his nose and cheekbones. Cadel recognized the face as soon as he saw it.
‘It's D-grade. His name was…… Aiden.’
He was an obsessive card collector, regardless of performance or grade. He analyzed each card thoroughly, and most of the characters were still fresh in his mind.
The fairy in front of him was Aiden, a D-grade knight, whose performance was just right for his grade. There were no skills that could pose a major threat to the enemy. But if there was a problem, it was his race.
Fairies were usually eccentric in character. Their ability to act as they pleased was no less than that of Lumen, and their ability to empathize was also poor, perhaps because of the difference in races. If you let your guard down because they don't pose a threat, you're in for a nasty surprise.
‘I wonder if this was the first knight the system alerted me to because I haven't gotten any new notifications since then…….’
The system said that the number of recruitable knights was ‘3’. If the three of them had been moving together, that meant there were not one, but two fairies hiding in plain sight.
Cadel pondered for a moment.
D-grade knight Aiden.
Should I kill him or not?
It wasn’t hard to kill one Aiden. Even killing a D-grade one without Van’s abilities was no problem for the current Cadel.
‘But I don’t know the grade of the other two yet. It doesn't matter if they're the same D-grade or C-grade, but if they’re A-grade or higher fairies…….’
Victory was not guaranteed. He might be fighting alone, but he had Van to protect now.
Cadel glanced over at Van, who was still leaning against him. Normally, he would have joined the fight, ankle torn or not, but perhaps the illusionary trap had been laced with some strange drug, and Van was in a different state.
His eyes were cloudy, he spoke very little, and all he could do was break out in a cold sweat and breathe heavily. He shouldn't have asked for help.
‘What options do I have if I don't kill them?’
Runaway? Persuasion? Negotiation? Nothing seemed likely.
Cadel tried to regain his composure. When your mind is racing, you can't think about what you can think about.
‘Nice talk won't work. All he wants is fun. So for now, I need to create a situation where he has to give up the fun.’
He'd gotten pretty good at wringing a smile out of a man who giggled without sense. He faced Aiden, completely hiding his earlier anger.
“Two hidden ones, if you're not going to bring them, you might as well leave them alone.”
“……What do you mean by two?”
“As you can see, I'm in a bad mood right now.”
Cadel raised the volume of his voice as if imitating the fairies. He emphasized the highs and lows of his tone and smirked as if everything in the world was interesting.
If he didn't want to listen to humans, just talk like a fairy. It wasn't difficult. Since being possessed, acting had always been Cadel’s forte.
“Hey. Do you know what my personality is like?”
“Huh? You're human, so you're probably pretty normal.”
“Do you know how strong I am? Do you know if that attack I just did was my best or not? Do you know why I came all the way to this place called the ‘Forbidden Forest’? Do you know that?”
“That's what I…….”
“Then, do you know how precious this poor subordinate who is now hanging on my side is to me? Did you know and intentionally play tricks to keep us from getting out of the forest? Huh?”
“Sh, shut u―!”
“I have a bad temper! The attack just now? It's easier than eating. I could show you all day if you wanted. Should I do it? Do you want me to? Do you want me to be your favorite funny guy? Can you handle it? I can!”
The corners of his mouth went up, but his eyes didn't smile at all. The gaze looking down at Aiden from the crooked head was disturbing.
“Answer me! I thought you wanted to have fun? Don't worry, I'll play with you as long as I feel like it. I'll make you have so much fun until this forest becomes a plain! The ‘Forbidden Forest’ becomes the ‘Forbidden Plains’, isn't that wonderful? Do you want to test your limits with me, huh? Let's have some fun!”
As the madness added to the innocent face, anyone could feel a frightening sense of alienation. Something about the way he spoke seemed out of sync with his calm demeanor, making him seem even more like a madman.
Perhaps that was the same in the eyes of the fairies, and Aiden's previously relaxed expression began to falter.
Cadel craned his neck to get closer to the nail-sized face, and his eyes shone with a chillingly emotionless intensity, as if he were observing a tiny goldfish in an aquarium.
“If you can't handle it, let me go.”
Cadel's method was neither runaway, persuasion, nor negotiation. It was intimidation.
What if it didn't work? Then he had no choice but to fight. How could he spend more time here? What would be good to drag on? Van was slowly losing consciousness right next to him, and Lumen, whom he didn't even know his whereabouts, was still missing.
If he weren't going to give up everything, he should at least be prepared to fight to the death.
Cadel's eyes flashed dangerously as he realized he had given up many options.
“…….”
And Aiden, for the first time in a long, long time, was feeling a pressure that sent chills down his spine.
‘What the hell is this human……?’
At first, Aiden thought it was just a toy that had come into his possession after a long time. Since it had been a long time since he had had some entertainment, he would have to play with this human to his heart's content, tear him limb from limb and display him in front of the forest. There was only that much interest and intrigue.
However, the human in front of him used fire magic so powerful that he couldn't stop it, and now he was acting like a madman with a few screws loose. Actually, that human wasn't acting like a crazy person, he was like a perfectly crazy person.
‘Could that be true?’
If he wanted, he could set fire to the forest all day and play. Was it true?
Outwardly, Aiden feigned disbelief. If it weren't for that crazy look in his eyes, Aiden would have sneered and encouraged him to try it. This place was home to the great ‘Fairy’, their magic was great, and nothing could harm the forest as long as the elders stood by.
However.
However, if that human nonsense wasn't bullshit.
He would become a traitor who had caused great damage to the forest for fun. Even if he borrowed the power of his kind to kill humans, he wouldn't be able to escape the consequences.
‘……I don't want to get in trouble.’
It started out as a bit of fun. Everyone did pranks like this. And yet, no one was punished, because everyone involved in the prank had done a perfect job of disposing of the intruder without disrupting the forest.
Aiden, on the other hand, was not confident. He had two friends who hadn't shown up yet, but could they alone stop this human?
‘First, no Henge. He has no combat experience, and he's too much of a coward. Lydon. If it’s Lydon…….’
He might be able to take this human down.
But there were no guarantees. That guy was too fickle, and there was no telling if he'd even come when called.
Aiden flapped his wings frantically through the air, thinking, thinking, and thinking. With each flap of his tiny wings, the light reflected off them, making them glisten dreamily.
Of course, Cadel had no intention of admiring the sight, nor of waiting for Aiden's tortured deliberations. Without hesitation, he reached out and grabbed Aiden in one hand. Aiden's eyes widened at the sudden capture.
“Yah! What are you doing!”
“I’ll give you 10 seconds. Decide.”
“I'll kill you! Let go!”
“If you don't answer in 10 seconds, you're dead. I'll blow you up and kill you.”
“What……!”
“They say that fairy corpses are sold at a high price. Shall we check?”
His eyes, which had a terrifying presence, narrowed like crescent moons. A hiccup burst out of Aiden's mouth at the heinous thing that couldn't be dismissed as a joke.
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