Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 56: Rabbit’s Foot

That night, Myss slept exceptionally well.

He opened his eyes in satisfaction only to be greeted by the sight of two massive dark circles under Salaar’s eyes.

Myss: “?”

Hadn’t this guy fallen asleep the moment he hit the bed last night? Was he faking it?

The instant he noticed Myss looking at him, the Great Hero swiped a hand over his face, and the dark circles vanished on the spot. Silently, he propped himself up and tugged at Myss’s sleepwear collar.

A beam of sunlight slipped through the gap in the curtains and fell near Myss’s collarbone. It looked like molten gold running over his pale skin, glaringly bright.

Following Salaar’s gaze, Myss lowered his head and realized that the top half of his sleepwear had come loose. He simply stripped it off and wrapped himself in a ranger’s outfit woven from magic.

The entire process was carried out in broad daylight, openly, completely naked the whole time.

Salaar was silent for a long moment. “We’ll be sleeping in tents during the expedition. Don’t change like that when other people are around.”

Myss shrugged it off. “I’m not stupid.”

The clothes woven from annihilation magic were one of his secret weapons.

Salaar saw right through what he meant. “I’m talking about human etiquette.”

“Isn’t it just ‘don’t walk around naked in front of other people’? Of course I know that.”

Myss reached back and started tugging at Salaar’s clothes, peeling at them like corn husks. “You’re so annoying. You’re not other people anyway.”

Salaar: “…Haa.”

With a complicated expression on his face, he reached out and knocked lightly on Myss’s head.

The Archdemon’s skull made a solid thunk. Enraged, Myss and Fork both pounced on Salaar, and another round of noisy hand-to-hand warmup broke out.

Other than that early-morning stretching routine, nothing else went wrong.

Tass didn’t speak with much refinement, but he was impressively efficient when it came to supplies. He had prepared dried bread and jerky in advance, as well as honeyed candied fruit. Besides the necessary medicines, salt, and sugar, he also gave each of them a magical water pouch that could condense water from the air.

Kalen, meanwhile, brought the final piece of news from the cat intelligence network.

“A lot of people have shown up near the Rabbit Hole over the last few months. A few wild cats came over from there, and they’re especially angry about it.”

Father Kalen continued, “But this morning I did another divination just to be sure, and I still didn’t sense any ill omen.”

Tass said, “A sudden influx of humans? I remember that place being wasteland. Do the cats know what’s going on?”

“They only know that humans brought a lot of pet cats and dogs and took over their territory,” Kalen said honestly.

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Salaar said.

With one ear, Myss listened to the humans jabbering. With the other, he listened to the birds chirping outside the window. His mouth was too busy sweeping up the jam pies on the table for him to join the conversation.

All he cared about was what the ruins themselves looked like. He had no interest in these bits of trivial gossip.

He had Salaar, a “local,” on the team. He had experience fighting two Abnormal Fruits already. He had the crow priest’s promise of luck. Myss felt confident that nothing could go too terribly wrong.

Compared to that, the Kingdom Archmage was much more irritating.

That man hadn’t been able to escape the Divine Realm, yet he had endured the Perfected Creation’s mental lashing and consciously spied on their battle… So far, everyone kept saying that Professor Gentry had a good temper, but nobody had mentioned his actual abilities.

The power of two Abnormal Fruits was certainly a welcome asset, but when it came to Professor Gentry, Myss had no intention of underestimating him.

His silver fork speared the last piece of tender meat on the plate. Myss popped it into his mouth, leaving behind only a faint smear of blood-colored juices.

……

The Rabbit Hole really wasn’t far from Semper. It lay on the main route between Semper and the capital, Serpentia, separated from the main road by only a single mountain. It wasn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere.

The only troublesome part was that Rabbit Hole sat at the junction of several mountains. The roads were bad, and there were no nearby rivers or lakes, so no proper village had formed there.

Once they left Semper, the weather turned gloomy.

The nearby mountains were rounded, with little forest and lots of brush. The whole area felt oppressively strange. Myss sniffed the moisture in the air and had the feeling it was going to rain.

Salaar had his arms folded and, uncharacteristically, nodded off several times. His head drooped and swayed until at last he slumped against Myss.

Myss frowned at him.

The carriage was packed tightly. He, Salaar, and the priest sat on one side. Professor Gentry and his two students sat opposite. Tass, taking advantage of his race, was resting inside a piece of emerald.

If Myss wanted to shove Salaar away, his only option was to push Salaar’s head onto the priest’s shoulder.

…Myss imagined it for a moment, realized he didn’t want to see that, and let it go.

The carriage jolted, and Salaar’s head settled fully on Myss’s shoulder.

His breathing rose and fell evenly. Myss couldn’t tell whether he was just putting on a show for Professor Gentry or if he really had slept badly. As revenge, Myss tugged Knife out of Salaar’s sleeve and idly coiled it in his palm.

“What’s the relationship between you two?”

Beverly blinked and asked the question directly.

Myss pretended not to hear.

But Beverly clearly wasn’t someone who cared about social etiquette. She stared at them with the gaze of someone scrutinizing research specimens, and it made Myss uncomfortable all over.

Kind Father Kalen came to the rescue. He gave her a slight nod, then shook his head.

“Oh.” Beverly understood. “A same-sex couple. That explains it.”

“Don’t worry. We’re not Church of Cadence devotees, so we don’t have any prejudice about that sort of thing. Well… more accurately, I suppose we count as broad believers in the Cadence Church?”

“Nothing is ever that absolute,” Professor Gentry said with a smile, without answering directly.

Beverly gave a serious oh and went right back to chattering. “Even so, you don’t need to worry. My teacher and we are in roughly the same situation. We’re all nobles from Aufon, so publicly we have to believe a little.”

“Except for idiots who go looking for trouble, no noble would deliberately jump out and advertise themselves as an atheist. So on matters like this—”

“…Beverly, my ears hurt,” Asp said painfully, cutting her off.

“Then let them hurt,” Beverly said mercilessly. “I’m explaining things clearly so there won’t be unnecessary misunderstandings. We’re not on some sightseeing trip underground. The fewer misunderstandings among teammates, the better.”

Asp silently took out a pair of bright yellow earplugs and carefully put them in.

Beverly clicked her tongue and turned back toward Myss, only to discover with disappointment that he had already turned his head to look out the window, radiating a clear don’t-talk-to-me attitude.

Salaar was much taller than Myss. With his head resting there, half his body leaned against Myss as well. Yet despite the carriage’s slight jostling, Myss remained perfectly steady, showing no sign of being weighed down, as if solid, sturdy Salaar were nothing more than an oversized feather.

“You’ve been staring at Myss the whole time.” Salaar, who had woken up at some point without anyone noticing, curved his eyes into a smile as he looked at her. “Is something the matter, Miss Beverly?”

“Just Beverly is fine.”

Beverly’s gaze remained on Myss. “I’ve attended quite a few high-society gatherings and seen many of Aufon’s top beauties. Your lover would rank among the best of them.”

“Thank you,” Salaar replied politely. “But I suspect that isn’t the only reason, is it?”

The way Beverly looked at Myss was neither admiration from the opposite sex nor simple attraction to beauty. There was no amazement in her eyes. Only pure inquiry.

“Roman’s condition was a bit similar to Mr. Myss’s—white hair and red eyes.” Beverly said, “Though Roman’s hair was whiter, his irises were closer to pink, and his complexion was more sickly.”

“Roman had albinism, but he believed that appearance was his good fortune. Because he feared sunlight, he chose to study underground cities from the Night Scourge era and became the greatest explorer of them all in one stroke. And Roman’s Magibase was an enormous white moose. He thought it was fate compensating him.”

“I was just thinking that even though the coloring is similar, Mr. Myss looks extremely healthy. If Roman had been cured, maybe he would’ve looked like this too.”

After saying all that in one breath, Beverly paused slightly, as if only then remembering that Roman was already dead.

Her gaze dropped to the floor, and her face went pale.

Professor Gentry patted her shoulder and sighed softly.

“My condolences,” Salaar said quietly, sitting up straight.

“We have to see the body before we can officially confirm Roman’s death.” Asp had apparently taken out his earplugs at some point. “Status crystals aren’t one hundred percent accurate. Roman was a genius. Maybe he came up with some strange trick again…”

It was rare for him to speak such long coherent sentences so fluently.

Myss caught a key word. “A genius?”

Now that someone had responded, Asp’s voice weakened again. “O-of course. Students of a Kingdom Archmage are all geniuses. Being able to use magic before summoning a Magibase is the absolute minimum…”

“Ah, I mean formal apprentices like Beverly and I, not those students taught at the university…”

Myss looked Beverly and Asp up and down and regretfully discovered that neither of them carried the slightest scent of an Abnormal Fruit.

“What a waste that we let it get away. Couldn’t we use these two as bait to lure out… you know what?”

He shot Professor Gentry a glance and whispered into Salaar’s ear in a bare audible voice.

“Absolutely not,” Salaar whispered back with a smile.

“Stingy.”

“This isn’t a matter of stinginess. They’re not worms in the mud.”

“I already lent you my shoulder to sleep on.”

“…That still isn’t something you can use to bargain with.”

“What a miser!”

Myss shoved Knife back into Salaar’s arms and turned to look out the window again.

Watching the two of them huddled together, muttering and bickering, Father Kalen tacitly turned to the people opposite.

“…My apologies. Our party is just like this,” he explained somewhat sheepishly.

……

Honestly, there wasn’t much to see outside. Along the way, Myss saw only a few supply inns and no proper human settlements.

…Until they reached their destination.

“Is that a circus?” Beverly said in disbelief, pointing at an especially large red-and-white striped round tent.

Everyone else—including Myss—was just as surprised as she was.

The destination was packed with all sorts of tents. Some people had even used wooden planks to build something resembling a tavern.

As far as the eye could see, the place was full of bizarre little stalls. At first glance it looked like the market in Rosha City, except much filthier and more chaotic.

Some people had turned wagons into makeshift homes, squeezing them into the spaces between tents, with wooden crates stacked into makeshift steps. The sparse grass had been trampled into a mess by passing horses, and the place was full of wet mud, as well as the smell of horse dung and urine.

Rotting vegetable scraps, broken wood, and gnawed bones were everywhere.

The place was basically a temporary little town made of wagons and tents. Judging by the quality of them, the people here were almost all commoners.

“Welcome, welcome, guests!”

A sharp-eyed child spotted them and ran over, clutching a little cloth bag.

“Would you like to buy a lucky rabbit’s foot, ladies and gentlemen? These are the luckiest rabbit’s feet in all of Aufon, only six silver shields each!”

The child held the bag high and showed them the rabbit feet wrapped in goatskin.

Myss wrinkled his nose. He smelled a heavy herbal scent, along with the stink of rotten meat it was trying to hide.

Salaar smiled at the child, casually bought a white rabbit foot, and used up some of the few silver shields left in his purse.

“What’s your name, kid?” Salaar asked brightly.

“Labi, sir.”

Seeing that Salaar hadn’t even haggled, the little boy looked startled.

“Good, Labi.”

Salaar bent down, bracing both hands on his knees so he could meet the boy’s eyes. “Can you tell me what happened here? The last time we passed through, there weren’t nearly this many people.”

“Oh, this is magical land, sir. If you stay here for a while, your luck gets better. Look! I’ve stayed here the longest, and right away I ran into you!”

Labi rubbed his nose, his mouth sweet as honey.

“The longest, huh? Very impressive.” Salaar smiled. “Suddenly I feel like buying another rabbit’s foot. Tell us about this magical place.”

Labi drew out a long “Hmm.” “That’d take time away from business. You’d have to buy me a roast chicken leg too.”

“No problem.”

Salaar straightened up and reached out to pull Kalen over.

Kalen: “?”

“One rabbit’s foot, one chicken leg, and the six silver shields from the rabbit’s foot just now.”

Salaar lowered his voice. “Reasonable investigation expenses. No problem, right?”

Kalen: “…”

It wasn’t a problem, exactly, but back in Semper, Salaar wouldn’t have bothered charging even the cost of a chicken leg.

Noticing Kalen’s confusion, Salaar flicked a glance at Myss and gave a small hum. “He cares a little about this.”

Kalen: “…………”

The Lord of Shadows taught them that they should respect the beautiful affections between people.

Filled with a strange solemnity, the priest paid without hesitation. Two minutes later, Myss and Salaar each had a white rabbit’s foot in hand, while Labi had gained a chicken leg.

Professor Gentry merely watched the whole process with an amiable smile. His two students didn’t join the conversation either.

Myss was a little dissatisfied, but before they had set out, Salaar had specifically warned him.

This sort of investigative small talk was what assistants were supposed to do, and what “those under observation” were supposed to do too. If they hid things or responded too passively, that would only make them more suspicious.

Since Salaar was the one doing the social work, Myss didn’t care. He lowered his head and absentmindedly fiddled with the shriveled rabbit’s foot.

Rabbits didn’t have paw pads. The foot felt somewhat hard when squeezed.

He wasn’t sure whether it was his imagination, but Myss kept feeling a faint prickly numbness at his fingertips, like touching the fine hairs on a plant. Whenever he touched it more carefully, though, the sensation vanished again.

Myss kneaded the yellowing white fur over and over. Suddenly, inspiration struck. He lifted it beneath his nose and inhaled hard.

Myss had no idea whether this tiny corpse fragment could bring luck.

But amid that overwhelming blend of scents, he really did detect an extremely subtle trace of an Abnormal Fruit.

…Beneath layers upon layers of herbs and carrion stench, it was faint as a sigh.

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