Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 19: Chanter of Flesh

“I’ll go in first.”

When Myss’s name was called, Salaar passionately cut in line.

The mustached man keeping order at the door: “Huh?”

Salaar: “I’m in a hurry to use the restroom. If I miss my time slot, Lord Fabian would have to wait for me.”

The mustachioed man flipped through the list and saw that Salaar was last. They certainly couldn’t keep Lord Fabian waiting, so he readily agreed.

Salaar straightened his collar. As he walked past Myss, he tilted his head with meaningful intent.

While Myss lacked common sense, he wasn’t stupid. When it came to serious matters, the Demon Lord knew how to show restraint. For example, at this moment Myss quietly met his gaze and said nothing more.

Salaar stepped into the room and gently closed the heavy wooden door.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Salaar. May the cycle remain unbroken.”

Hearing that name made Fabian smile slightly. Then he gazed into Salaar’s blue eyes for a while.

“Please stand at the center of the circle and don’t move. The duration of the exorcism depends on your constitution. It won’t exceed five minutes at most.”

“By the God of Cadence above, may the cycle remain unbroken.”

Salaar swiftly sorted through his recollections and responded naturally. “Thank you for the explanation. During the ritual, do I need to remain silent?”

“No need. You can think of it as a physical checkup,” Fabian said with a calm tone. “As long as you don’t leave the center of the circle, even singing is fine.”

Salaar obediently went to the center of the circle.

The center was pleasantly warm. It felt as if he were stepping into a hot spring and every pore loosened.

Those fine threads of magic bored into his body, and Salaar took a moment to savor the sensation. The blessing spell was trying to merge into his magic in order to enter his magic circuits and filter out impurities.

However, that power and Salaar’s power were like oil and water and couldn’t merge at all. From Fabian’s perspective, Salaar’s magic itself was an oversized impurity.

Without changing his expression, Salaar dispersed the foreign magic and resolved the blessing spell. The whole process flowed smoothly, like wiping dust from a window lattice.

From what he observed, once the circle began operating, Fabian had nothing more to do. The old man only needed to replenish the circle’s power at intervals. He didn’t need to chant the entire time and wouldn’t notice this small anomaly.

By his count, he still had about five minutes. That was… more than enough.

As he had told Myss, this was a rare chance. He could make full use of the Demon Lord’s new discovery.

Recalling the look of satisfaction when Myss had shared that discovery, Salaar let one corner of his mouth lift. Then he briskly rolled up his left sleeve.

For this moment he had worn a loose linen shirt on purpose. He pushed the sleeve to the shoulder, baring the elegant length of his left arm.

Under Fabian’s puzzled gaze, Salaar’s right hand slowly brushed across the skin of his left arm.

With the sound of flesh turning, six milky-white tendons rapidly grew. Like sprouting plants they pierced through the skin, stretching from Salaar’s left shoulder to his left palm, their bases anchored in faintly quivering flesh.

Salaar extended his left arm slightly, and those strange tendons went taut, forming a shape somewhat like… six strings of a lute.

Salaar lowered his eyes and tilted his head slightly to the left. His posture was exceedingly gentle, as if cuddling an invisible lover or cradling a child who didn’t exist.

Framed by that black hair and the dark blue cast of his eyes, he looked like a wraith half hidden in a chilly sea mist. Strikingly handsome and equally dangerous.

Fabian was about to speak in shocked inquiry when Salaar laid his right hand on the strings.

“Come, Mina. Calibration is complete,” he said with a smile. “This time let me assist you.”

Before his words finished, the strings took on a faint wash of pink.

Salaar’s fingertips glided, and soft notes rose and fell lightly through the room. Mina’s magical fluctuations were caught and magnified by the melody and flowed around Fabian like the wind.

After a heartbeat of confusion, tears rolled down Fabian’s cheeks in large drops and soaked into his white beard.

“Ah, Mother…” He stood up unsteadily and stretched out both hands, his clouded eyes fixed on Salaar.

“Look at me. Look at what I have achieved now… I know you will be proud of me.”

Salaar plucked the warm strings of flesh and blood. The tone was winding and gentle, like murmured whispers. Fabian wept like a child and confided in a mother seen only in his mind.

“Yes, I have always overseen Rosha’s Magibase Summoning Ritual and never had an accident… I still remember the day you took me to attend a ritual…”

“Something memorable at the ritual? Not recently… Ten years ago? Ha, there was something odd ten years ago…”

Fabian kept sniffling and his words tumbled about. Even so, Salaar quickly put the story in order.

In this world there are a very few so-called “Chosen Ones” who can use magic before receiving a Magibase.

People generally believe that such children have extraordinary magical talent and can summon exceptionally powerful Magibase.

Ten years ago in Rosha’s Lower City, there was one such child.

Her name was Scintilla. Back then many big names in the Upper City took notice of her and she received considerable support. Unfortunately, her performance at the Magibase Summoning Ritual fell short. She summoned only a caterpillar.

After that the important people withdrew their kindness. Rumor had it that Scintilla couldn’t accept the sudden change in her prospects. She fell seriously ill, grew quiet and withdrawn, and gradually vanished from public view.

…Aside from this small episode, the records of Rosha’s rituals are plain and unremarkable and not worth mentioning.

The music cut off. Mina’s magical resonance dispersed at once and failed to touch Fabian in the slightest.

The wound on Salaar’s left arm healed rapidly. The overgrown tendons and flesh lost their anchor, sloughed away like scabs, and were then cleared completely by magic.

At the same time, a warm wind of brilliant gold brushed away the old man’s memories and tears, like a mother’s hand saying farewell.

Fabian’s eyes became vacant again, as if startled awake from a dream, and exactly five minutes had passed.

“Ah… forgive me, child. I think I nodded off for a moment.”

The old man tightened his throat and wore the look of someone who had woken from a beautiful dream, both nostalgic and relieved.

“May you find a brief moment of peace,” Salaar said softly. “There’s no need to dwell on it. Being able to receive your exorcism and consecration was already my honor.”

Fabian nodded and smiled again. For some reason, his smile was much more relaxed this time.

“Don’t worry. Just quietly erase Fabian’s magic and then come find me,” he whispered to Myss after leaving the room.

……

“By ‘excellent opportunity’ you meant asking Fabian directly?”

Myss had passed the exorcism and consecration with ease, and he was heading to the Hammer Tavern with Salaar.

Salaar: “Yes. I made a small use of Mina’s aura so Fabian would trust me completely. If you hadn’t identified Mina’s magical traits, it wouldn’t have gone so smoothly.”

That was right. Thanks to himself. Salaar did have some discernment.

Myss hummed. “So what did you learn?”

“A child named Scintilla.”

Salaar rubbed his chin. “Scintilla had astonishing talent. She could use magic before summoning a Magibase, so she received quite a lot of support from the Upper City. I would guess she also had decent educational backing.”

“Yet ten years ago she failed at the Magibase Summoning Ritual and then disappeared from view.”

“A magical prodigy, a decent educational background, a ritual ten years ago. Does that sound familiar?”

It did sound a bit like “Patience”. Myss said, “What about her mother?”

“Not sure. That is exactly what we need to confirm,” Salaar said. “Luckily we happen to have a good connection.”

After a moment’s thought, Myss realized he meant Hailey and Huey.

Scintilla had once been a Lower City celebrity and had attended the Summoning Ritual with Hailey. Those two were certain to know something.

At this hour Hailey would be at the Hammer Tavern. On her days off she had been working there part time as a waitress, so they could see her shortly.

Excellent, Myss thought. If Scintilla was Patience, they could investigate Scintilla directly and give up participating in the Magibase Summoning Ritual. That way the bird-beaked demon wouldn’t immediately trouble them.

But would things really go that smoothly?

After all the highs and lows before his unsealing, Myss had a bit of trauma when it came to the word “smooth”.

Facts proved the Demon Lord’s jitters weren’t without cause—

“Scintilla? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

Hailey hesitated, her expression somewhat complicated. “Her health isn’t good. She’s always in a daze and rarely goes out. We’re the same age, but we’re not really close. She hardly speaks to anyone.”

“In earlier years she would sometimes edit letters for people or go to the Upper City to buy and sell used books. Later she stopped going out altogether. No one knows how she gets by.”

She pursed her lips and added quietly, “But there are lights on at her place every night, so she should be all right.”

Salaar: “I heard she took part in the summoning ritual ten years ago, the same year as you.”

Hailey nodded. “I remember that. But we were too young then. I only remember she summoned a caterpillar. For the details you would have to ask my uncle.”

“When would Mr. Huey be free?”

Hailey hesitated for a moment. “I don’t know, but he shouldn’t be here right now.”

“A priest just came by to ask about Scintilla. Mr. Hammer didn’t know her address. I wanted to lead the way, but he turned me down. The priest said that was work for adults.”

“So I recommended my uncle and said he could help… The priest was carrying a Kingdom Religious Certificate. If something happened to him in the Lower City, it would be trouble for everyone.”

Salaar’s eyebrow twitched. “A priest?”

“Yes. Very tall and very polite. Why are you all looking for Scintilla? Did something happen to her?”

“Nothing, there’s just a document that needs her confirmation,” Salaar said with a soothing smile. “Please tell me her address. A simple sketch map will do.”

Outside the window, a crow perched quietly on the eaves, its pupils reflecting the blood-red sunset.

---

The author has something to say:

Saint Salaar’s skill set isn’t all that holy.

He’s somewhat of an unorthodox bard.

Myss: Got it. No wonder you told me not to trust bards. Turns out it was professional rivalry. (x

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 18: Kalen

“Order of Shadows? Is there such a sect?” the night watchman asked back.

In this world there are only three religions that truly count: the Church of Cadence, the Secret Garden, and the Night Listeners. The rest are all small fries. Even so, the watchman had at least heard of those small fries. 

As for this so-called Order of Shadows, he had never once heard the name.

“He has a Kingdom Religious Certificate in his hand. I checked it. It’s real,” reported the guard.

The fact he had a Kingdom Religious Certificate gave the office executor a headache.

In their country, the Kingdom of Aufon, the Church of Cadence holds absolute dominance.

The royal family granted the Church of Cadence the authority to oversee religion. Other faiths must receive its recognition before they can obtain the Kingdom Religious Certificate. In other words, anyone who holds such a certificate is a legitimate cleric endorsed by the Church of Cadence.

“Let him in,” the executor said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

After he saw the visitor’s face, the executor’s mood improved a little.

The priest was very young, about twenty-five. His looks were above average, and his bearing put people at ease.

His flax-colored short hair was slightly wavy, neat and clean, and his eyes were a very pale aquamarine. A gentle smile graced his features, and his gaze was warm, like a soft woolen blanket by the hearth in winter.

The executor’s expression eased.

His eyes skimmed over the man’s tidy black clothes and the bone-white matched rings on both middle fingers. Good. Young, yet plainly dressed. Not one of those showy charlatans at a glance.

“What’s your name?” he asked with a measure of friendliness.

“Kalen. No family name. From Atra.”

Priest Kalen placed one hand lightly to his chest. “May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed.”

So that was it, a commoner cleric from a neighboring country.

“Unseen and unharmed,” the executor replied with practiced ease. “Father Kalen, you said you have leads on the ‘Lower City plague’?”

“Yes.” Kalen sighed softly. “I saw it with my own eyes in the Lower City…”

…Father Kalen gave a precise description of two men. One with striking gray-white long hair, the other with black hair and blue eyes, adept at spellcasting. The gray-haired man spread the plague with his own hands and hastened its infection.

However, according to Kalen, no remains were left. Everyone else present had been struck by memory magic and remembered nothing at all. The whole matter was as unreal as a nightmare.

After hearing Kalen’s account, the executor frowned.

“Father, even if you are a legitimate cleric, if there is no physical evidence and only your testimony, we cannot open an investigation. Are there any other witnesses? Even one would do.”

Kalen paused for an instant, then shook his head in the end.

“My lord, I fully understand your difficulty. I didn’t come to ask you to arrest anyone,” he said in a warm voice.

“Oh?” The executor raised an eyebrow.

“I heard the court mage in charge of the ritual is named Fabian. He is also a high priest of the Church of Cadence and very skilled in sacred matters. Before the ceremony begins, could you ask him to perform an individual exorcism for every staff member?”

Kalen spoke slowly, as if he wasn’t very used to this mannered way of speaking.

“…That way the filth in the shadows can be cleansed, and the children will be kept from the plague’s taint.”

The ritual’s staff? The executor thought for a moment.

Not counting the guards, there were sixteen staff members in all inside the venue.

Fabian himself, who would preside over the ritual; one “Pure Soul”; six “Holy Guards”… and eight “Disciples of Mercy”, elders of high standing who were responsible for watching over the children.

The “Disciples of Mercy” were all prominent figures in Rosha. They had long wished to befriend a high priest. Yet the Church of Cadence advocates restraint. Believers may accept banquets or gifts only under specific circumstances, so it was difficult for the two sides to interact in a proper, aboveboard way.

Father Kalen’s idea was quite good. With the right handling, this could be a win-win arrangement.

“I will report to His Lordship and discuss the matter with Lord Fabian,”

The executor cleared his throat. “Thank you for your lead, Father. On behalf of Rosha, I grant you one gold ring as a reward.”

Kalen bowed and didn’t take the gold ring on the table.

“May His Veil shroud you, unseen and unharmed,” he repeated the blessing with solemn sincerity, then he turned and walked into the night, his figure gradually swallowed by the shadows.

……

Noon the next day, at the inn where preparations for the ritual were underway.

“Exorcism and consecration?” Salaar repeated.

“Yes, yes. The notice came this morning. Lucky you,” said the mustachioed manager. “That’s a blessing from a high priest, and it will be one on one. They say it’s to ward off the plague. If I weren’t too old, I would want to find a role to play myself.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Salaar glanced at Myss. “If I remember right, exorcism and consecration include a purification phase…”

“That one is especially good for your health,” the mustachioed man said with longing.

Salaar offered a polite smile and ended the topic.

The ritual would begin the day after tomorrow. This arrangement was a little abrupt.

If his guess was right, this was very likely the work of the bird-beaked demon. For the past few days, they had gone to the inn that was preparing for the ritual, right on schedule, with their intentions as plain as day.

The “demon” was forcing them to withdraw from the Magibase summoning ritual. From the bird-beaked demon’s point of view, he and Myss were nothing but suspicious sources of contagion.

The good news: the bird-beaked demon truly had no malicious intent. He only wanted the two of them to stay away from the children, and he didn’t even wish to involve Hailey, the young eyewitness.

The bad news: between the two of them, there really might be someone who’s allergic to purification…

“I handled Barlow so cleanly. He clearly has no evidence. Humans are really unreasonable,” Myss said with displeasure after hearing Salaar’s inference.

Salaar rubbed his temples. “That’s not the point. Forget it. Do you have anything else to say?”

“Oh, I still have to kill someone,” Myss said. “Last time I only ‘assisted’ Mina’s magic. This time I want to separate the Magibase in my own way and see what happens.”

“Since the mage is coming to purify anyway, one more time won’t make a difference.”

Salaar’s look grew a touch complicated. Myss could faintly read big words on his face: “You’re hopeless.” Myss turned his head away and pretended not to notice.

“No.” Salaar stepped in front of him. “Don’t think I don’t know. You just want to get a taste of the Magibase.”

“Tsk.”

“The urgent matter is to solve the problem of the blessing.”

Salaar pondered. “Let me think. For more than twenty years, that same mage has been in charge of Rosha’s rituals. Hm. This might be an excellent opportunity.”

Myss: “An excellent opportunity to purify me?’

Salaar: “Fair point. It might actually be two excellent opportunities.”

Myss pulled out that deadly dinner fork in a threatening way.

Salaar looked at him with amusement. “The other great opportunity, you will know it when the time comes.”

The court mage Fabian worked with remarkable efficiency and arrived at the inn that very afternoon.

Fabian fit people’s image of a “mage” perfectly. He wore a crisp, elegant, religious white robe, and his long white beard was groomed with meticulous care.

Beside him Myss saw a Magibase stag. Its antlers branched in luxuriant tines, and it strolled at the old man’s side at an easy pace. Thanks to that creature, even the sunlight spilling into the room seemed a little more sacred.

“Let’s finish things here quickly and take a nap,” the stag muttered lazily to itself. “The exorcism for the Disciples of Mercy is set for after the banquet. I hope the banquet has Mamzi sweet wine. Hm…”

What a big deer. Myss stared at the stag’s plump body and suddenly remembered the rosemary venison steaks you could only get in the Upper City.

The stag shivered under his gaze, looked over in alarm and doubt, and happened to lock eyes with Myss.

“You… You rude brat,” it cried. “Lower your head.”

The reaction was too strong, and Myss couldn’t help glancing at Fabian. He found that the court mage showed no response at all and was completely unaware of his own Magibase’s unease.

How curious. These Magibase were just like their masters’ subconscious. They faithfully reflected the owner’s inner state, yet the owner knew nothing about their behavior.

“Pleased to meet you, Roasted Venison,” Myss mouthed silently at the stag.

The stag stamped hard, snorting thick and loud. “As expected, a ranger from a backwater. Low birth and lower morals.”

Myss: “Low morals? You’re mistaken.”

“Where is the mistake?” The stag lifted its head high.

Myss bared his sharp teeth. “I have no morals.”

At his side, Salaar let out an earthshaking cough.

The stag was scared out of its wits. It clip-clopped around to Fabian’s other side and tried to use the old man’s withered body as a shield. Fabian was speaking with the mustachioed manager when he suddenly broke off, his brows drawing together.

“My goodness, my lord, what’s wrong?” The mustachioed man’s voice turned syrupy, his tone obsequious to the point of absurdity.

“Nothing,” Fabian said mildly. “My magic fluctuated for an instant. This place is indeed unsanitary… Let us begin at once.”

The moment his words fell, his Magibase stag bolted in impatient flight.

The mustachioed manager cleared out the inn’s largest room to serve as a temporary exorcism chamber. The materials table was piled with salt, all kinds of herbs and essential oils, and even fresh lamb’s blood.

Fabian picked up a crystal flask and added herbs, then oils, then blood in that order. After that he took out a small vial from his pocket and dripped in a few drops of golden liquid.

Heated by flame, the murky mixture gradually turned a clear violet. A faint note of frankincense drifted through the air.

When preparations were complete, he drew a finely worked silver staff and began to chant quickly.

The Magibase stag bounded lightly about the room. The liquid in the flask flew out as if it were alive and traced a complex and beautiful giant magic circle on the floor.

All the curtains had been drawn. In the dim space, the circle shimmered with a warm white glow.

“All right.” Fabian smoothed his beard and turned to the seven staff members waiting at the door.

“Anyone not involved is to step out. When I call your name, you will come in one at a time.”

“We’ll now begin the exorcism.”

---

The author has something to say:

The first support cast member has appeared!

Kalen is actually twenty-six years old. (This shouldn’t count as a spoiler, I hope.) Salaar’s physical body is twenty, Myss’s physical body is nineteen. Looks like Mr. Kalen will be chaperoning two kids (?)…

This chapter is from Salaar’s point of view: observing the Demon Lord mouthing his lips while he argues with air.

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<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 17: The Informant

Myss was in an excellent mood.

He could now be sure the strange plague in Rosha was Mina’s doing. Mina—whatever her true form was—had mixed crimson magic into certain foods.

Once people ate the tainted food, that wisp of magic began corroding the victim’s mind. In other words, it slowly stripped out the person’s Magibase and devoured it.

In the end, the so-called “meat-cocoon corpse” was nothing more than a candy wrapper after the bonbon was gone, a shell with the kernel missing.

And after the patient died, part of the proliferated magic would contaminate nearby food and repeat the cycle of infection.

Looks like I don’t need to worry about “Mina’s” long-term effects, Myss thought cheerfully.

He had no Magibase, so no matter how much contaminated food he ate, the crimson magic wouldn’t be able to harm him. He only needed to wait for it to dissipate on its own.

As for what Mina actually was, how the memory distortions worked, and how to clean up the mess in front of him… all those fussy little headaches could be left to the great hero.

Right this moment, Salaar was looking down at him from the rooftop.

“You’ve made trouble again,” Salaar sighed.

“And you enabled me,” Myss said.

Salaar smiled, his gaze still locked on Myss. The next second, ignoring the bird-beaked demon just a few paces away, he sprang straight toward Myss.

Salaar’s leap seemed to punch through the sunlight, scattering ten thousand glittering shards of gold.

Those flecks of magic became a rain of gold; wherever the light motes fell, people bowed their heads and sank into sleep.

Except for two—

The bird-beaked demon snapped his cloak, and a dozen crows beat their wings to shield him from the flying motes. Hailey was spared by Salaar; she sat there dumbfounded, watching Salaar lightly land on the ground.

Myss caught a speck of gold on his fingertip and touched it to his tongue.

“Tastes like illusion magic,” he smacked his lips.

“I scrambled their memories. When they wake, they won’t remember you. They’ll just think Barlow disappeared,” Salaar said. “Good thing there weren’t many witnesses.”

“What about the little girl here?” Myss pointed at Hailey.

Salaar shrugged. “Miss Hailey knew you were coming and personally led you here. To make her forget you entirely would take stronger magic… which would damage her mind.”

He explained while keeping a keen eye on the bird-beaked demon.

The bird-beaked demon didn’t attack them; he simply stood there. A huge crow perched on his shoulder, its gray-white nictitating membrane kept blinking repeatedly.

After a brief stillness, the flock of crows plunged to the ground.

Half-full casks were knocked over with a crash, wine gushed across the floor and seeped into the cracks between stones. Cups and plates clattered down, and the food upon them was snatched away by the crows, leaving only filthy scraps.

Myss narrowed his eyes at that pitch-black silhouette.

With that ruckus, the Mina-tainted wine was all spilled. Then the crows spiraled upward, casting a dozen drifting shadows.

As the shadows swept by, the bird-beaked demon vanished into thin air once more.

Hamer had said the rumor claimed the bird-beaked demon appeared twice before a patient.

The first appearance meant the person had fallen ill. The second meant they would sicken and die.

Was it Barlow’s death that summoned him here?

But from Myss’s spur-of-the-moment infection of Barlow to Barlow’s attack and death, the entire process had taken only a few minutes. Salaar had tailed him the whole way, so being on the scene wasn’t strange… the question was how the bird-beaked demon managed to show up in sync.

Myss was still thinking when his view suddenly jolted; someone had grabbed him around the waist.

Salaar tucked him tight under one arm as if the Archdemon was a sack of potatoes. With his left hand he kept casting, gracefully suspending Hailey in midair—the girl was utterly stunned, staring blankly at the two of them.

“Let’s leave here first,” Salaar said flatly.

A dozen minutes later.

Instead of returning to the Hammer Tavern, the three of them found a little restaurant with hardly any patrons—a place so tiny it was almost cramped, bare-bones in its decor, with a faint smell of cow dung in the air.

The menu offered only boiled turnips, baked potatoes, and cornbread with crumbled bacon.

Salaar ordered three steaming baked potatoes, scored crosses in them with a dinner knife, then, as if by magic, produced three pats of butter and tucked them into the potatoes.

“Eat.” He slid one serving to Hailey. “Something hot will help settle you.”

Hailey gripped her fork mechanically and jabbed at the potato, nearly sending it flying.

“Barlow is dead.” After a long while, she managed to stammer out the words.

Myss forked a potato cheerfully. “You said you wished he were dead.”

“I, I…” Hailey looked both confused and heartsick. “He deserved it, but…”

“You told Myss about Barlow, and then he killed Barlow. You feel like you have blood on your hands, don’t you?”

Salaar’s voice was gentle and even. “Miss Hailey, you aren’t pitying Barlow; you just aren’t used to the weight of a life yet. Believe me, this isn’t your problem at all…”

He glanced at Myss as naturally as breathing. “…It’s entirely Myss’s fault.”

Myss: “?”

“Mr. Myss isn’t a saint. If he makes up his mind to kill, he will act. From what I know of him, even if he hadn’t met you, he would have picked some ‘bad guy’ to kill anyway.”

Salaar’s tone was rock-solid, as if he had eavesdropped on Myss’s very thoughts.

“Child, you actually did a good thing—you picked the one who most deserved to die, didn’t you?”

Myss: “Hello? I’m right here listening.”

Though to be fair, Salaar wasn’t wrong.

Hailey’s confusion turned into bewilderment. She looked from Salaar to Myss. “But Mr. Myss…”

“In fact, we’re secret investigators from the capital, assigned to handle the Lower City plague.”

Salaar lowered his voice and gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Four investigators died of the illness in just two months. Clearly something is off, so we’ve kept our identities hidden.”

Then he tapped his own temple, his tone a shade suggestive. “As for Myss, he’s a professional executioner. It’s just that up here… Well… He’s been overly influenced by the bards, so his notion of ‘evil’ is a bit extreme.”

At the words “secret investigators”, color finally returned to Hailey’s face.

So they were experts sent from above; no wonder they had dared to use Barlow to study the illness. She peeked at Myss out of the corner of her eye. “Th-then, if I hadn’t mentioned Barlow…”

“Myss might have randomly killed some unlucky thief.” Salaar gave her a smile.

“May I tell my uncle about you two?” Hailey asked, still a little rattled.

“Of course. As your guardian, Mr. Huey has a right to know.” Salaar’s smile remained unchanged.

At last, Hailey let out a long breath, as if she could breathe again.

……

Night, second floor of the Hammer Tavern.

“What if Huey tries to verify our identities?” Myss challenged.

He normally couldn’t be bothered with this kind of nonsense, but the Magibase Summoning Ritual was about to begin. If anything went wrong at this critical moment, he would have to swallow Salaar alive.

“He won’t.”

Salaar was still fiddling with his charcoal pencil. “From his point of view, we only just arrived. We can’t possibly be the ones spreading the plague.”

“Officially we are secret investigators. If Huey asked the soldiers to confirm it, he would be deliberately exposing us. He’s not that foolish.”

Myss hugged a pillow and leaned against the headboard. “All that trouble spinning a lie just to fool a little girl…”

Salaar smiled. “Who said it was for her?”

“‘Mr. Myss, the righteous executioner,’ from now on you can only kill the wicked. Otherwise, Huey and Hailey will notice something is off, and the city lord’s soldiers will come knocking at once.”

“And by the way, don’t think about killing those two to silence them. Huey has quite a network, which may include some powerful figures.”

Myss: “……”

Damn it! This kid actually plotted against him!

He didn’t care about human life and death, but he truly didn’t want a fuss. His power was far from restored; if he attracted the wrong sort of attention, trouble would snowball.

“You cunning guy.”

Myss buried his face in the pillow. Three centuries away from the world, and the great hero was still infuriatingly capable.

“Live long enough and you pick up some experience,” Salaar crooned like a bard. “Ah, sorry, I forgot you are much older than I am.”

Rip.

Myss shredded the pillowcase, and a few light tufts of feather drifted out.

Salaar’s gaze swept over the feathers, and his smile faded a touch.

“Alright, business. I saw you ‘infect’ that Barlow with my own eyes. What exactly did you do?”

There it was again. This guy always changed the subject right before Myss was about to explode.

Myss scooted over and turned his back to Salaar. “I thought you weren’t interested in the plague. What was it you said? Border towns are easy to seal off, and the sacrifices are still… manageable.”

Salaar’s face remained expressionless. “Fine, I won’t ask.”

He bent his head; the pen tip hissed across the page. Night deepened, and the room slowly filled with shadow.

Ten minutes passed. Myss rolled over. “You really aren’t going to ask?”

The Demon Lord considered his new discovery quite brilliant. But if Salaar wouldn’t ask, he could hardly sidle over and interview himself.

“I’m not the kind of man who pesters others,” Salaar said evenly.

Myss grunted for a while. “What if it has to do with ‘Patience’?”

Salaar’s tone turned theatrical. “Wow, sounds like a big discovery!”

Then he fell silent again.

Feeling aggrieved, Myss climbed off the bed and planted himself in front of Salaar. He cast his not-so-large shadow over the damned guy, every pore of his body broadcasting, “Ask me!”

“Pfft. On second thought, it really might have something to do with ‘Patience.’”

Salaar nearly burst out laughing.

“Those lines in the letters, like ‘Mom sends her regards,’ could be Mina’s doing. Your clues are extremely important, so please share them with me.”

That was more like it. Myss put on a stern face and began explaining the plague’s transmission mechanism.

He even stated with authority that the two of them had been infected on the same day—Salaar by eating tainted croutons, and Myss by eating food at Covington’s death scene.

“In short, Mina cuts the Magibase out of the infected, which causes the magic to mutate. Since we don’t have Magibases, we’re mostly fine,” Myss concluded solemnly.

Salaar lowered his eyes, a faint crease forming between his brows.

“Contaminated food causes infection. When a patient dies, the abnormal magic inside them leaks out and contaminates nearby food. But so far, those around the deceased are unharmed…”

“The bird-beaked demon appears when the patient is infected and when the patient dies, which just happen to be the points where ‘contaminated food’ shows up…”

“When Barlow died, the bird-beaked demon destroyed the food and drink nearby…”

“Interesting. That ‘demon’ seems to be preventing transmission.”

Myss raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look pleased.”

“If that thing is tracking the plague out of goodwill… think about it. First Covington, then Barlow. To him, you’re the most dangerous person in the entire city.”

Salaar gave Myss a long, gloomy look and let out a heavy sigh.

“He doesn’t know our ‘secret investigator’ cover story. He might blow this wide open.”

…

At the same time, in Rosha’s Council Hall.

“My lord, someone outside claims to have information about the plague.”

“Tell him to come back tomorrow. Look at the time. It’s probably some vagrant angling for the bounty…”

“No, my lord. He calls himself a priest of the ‘Order of Shadows’.”

---

The author has something to say:

The first named sect has appeared!

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 16: Pathology of the Mutation

The croutons were still in their original paper bag; a small portion had been eaten by Salaar.

Myss suddenly thought of the two bowls of cranberry soup that Salaar had knocked over not long ago. Mina might have used the same trick: the person who gave him the croutons was actually someone else, and she simply replaced that person’s image with “Mina”.

Thinking it over, every time Mina appeared there was food nearby. Even if there wasn’t, she would remind them to eat.

Could it be that “Mina” needed to use food to influence others?

It wouldn’t be hard to test. He still had croutons in hand. He only needed to find a human to try them on.

Hailey… Hmm, not Hailey. The girl is still somewhat useful.

What about the supervisor? No. He had already swallowed his pride to wear this outfit. If it affected the Summoning Ritual, that would be shooting himself in the foot. And Myss was certain Salaar would give him trouble.

Then—

“Is there any scum around here, the kind you would gladly see dead?” Myss asked Hailey.

Hailey froze for a few seconds. “You always like to ask very particular questions.”

“Is there or not?” Myss repeated.

“If I have to name someone, it would be Barlow the Cripple.”

Hailey still answered. She tightened her too-youthful face, her eyes full of contempt. “Barlow is a pervert who likes children. Several of my friends—boys and girls alike—were molested by him when they were little.”

“Two street kids also died at his hands. He said they broke into his house to steal and he accidentally strangled them. My uncle was furious. Those two were always well-behaved, and Barlow’s house had nothing but a pile of rotten straw! Pah, everyone knows what really happened.”

As she spoke, she grew more emotional. The long-tailed chickadee on her head fluffed its feathers and grew even rounder.

As usual, Myss let her words go in one ear and out the other. His mind sifted out only one piece of information: it didn’t matter if Barlow died.

“Where’s Barlow?” Myss asked.

Even Hailey, slow on the uptake, sensed the problem. “Are you planning to…?”

“Where’s Barlow?” Myss ignored her question.

“Sir, Barlow is a big man, and he’s always drunk.” Hailey was a little frightened. “The soldiers don’t really care about disputes in the Lower City. You’d better not provoke him.”

“Mm,” Myss said. “Tell me where Barlow is.”

……

When she realized Myss was set on finding Barlow, Hailey still told him the place. Out of a certain stubbornness, she also insisted on coming along.

“The streets in the Lower City are a mess. You’ll definitely get lost if you go alone. That would be dangerous,” she said with a strained smile. “And there are people there you can’t afford to provoke. You are not yet familiar with Rosha…”

Her fingers twisted the hem of her clothes. She seemed to regret having brought up Barlow at all.

Naturally, Myss couldn’t care less about such details.

While Salaar was away, Myss changed out of the cumbersome costume and back into a practical ranger outfit. Seeing that he carried no weapon, Hailey quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

She still didn’t quite understand why Myss brought along that half bag of croutons.

The Lower City wasn’t very large, yet Myss felt as if they had walked for a long time.

As they went deeper, the buildings on both sides of the road lost their color and turned withered and dilapidated. They looked more like the remains of houses than actual houses.

Many doors and windows had been nailed shut with boards. Hailey told him there were corpses of the victims that died from the “strange disease”. Those eerie bodies hung suspended in midair, and not even mages could remove them, so the soldiers had boarded the places up.

Further in, even the cover of buildings disappeared.

Most of the walls had collapsed, and the roofs were half gone. The living and the dead lay together by the roadside, and those bizarre meat cocoons hung brazenly in the sunlight.

Myss was strikingly handsome, and Hailey was young. The two of them drew every eye in that filthy neighborhood. Many damp, greasy stares clung to their heels, trying to trip them up with sheer attention.

Amid the malicious whispers, Hailey held her breath and walked close to Myss.

Fortunately, their destination wasn’t far ahead. There was a tavern here as well. There was no signboard, no servers, and only grimy casks and swill full of dead flies.

Compared with the Hammer Tavern, this was at best a “watering trough”. The air reeked of sweat and urine. Even so, the men gulped their liquor and laughed hoarsely.

Myss stopped.

The men in the tavern naturally noticed them. Whistles sounded again, interspersed with filthy greetings.

“All right, before it gets dark, let us go back,” Hailey whispered, sneaking a look at Myss’s face. “I-I know you want to punish Barlow. But you see how it is around here…”

“Which one is Barlow?” Myss asked the drunks.

Another shrill whistle, and the drunks roared with laughter.

“Ha ha, Barlow, your little sweetheart is looking for you.”

“Did you change your tastes? These two are too old for you.”

“That pretty boy looks like that, so what if he is older—”

“Who?” Amid the laughter, a hulking man with bloodshot eyes swayed to his feet and squinted at Myss. “Who are you, and what do you want with me?”

Myss sprang like a leopard. In an instant he landed in front of Barlow and shoved a fistful of croutons into his mouth.

The tavern fell silent. No one moved.

They didn’t know whether to marvel at Myss’s skill or to be baffled by his inexplicable act. Yet when they saw Myss lift Barlow like a chicken, they wisely kept quiet.

Myss was under one meter eighty, while Barlow was close to one meter ninety, yet he was able to grab the front of Barlow’s shirt with ease and hauled him up into the air.

Barlow instinctively swallowed the croutons.

Myss: “How do you feel?”

Barlow: “……” How should he feel? Was the stuff poisoned?

Seeing that Barlow showed no particular reaction, Myss grunted and focused on observing his Magibase.

Barlow’s Magibase was hidden on the right side of his chest, symmetrical to the heart, though the sizes didn’t really match. Judging by the shape, it seemed to be a fly.

Myss was more focused than he had ever been. He felt carefully for the fly buried in flesh and finally sensed a faint wrongness.

Barlow’s Magibase was a little loose.

Myss had noticed that for both him and Salaar, their magic and their flesh were completely integrated, like milk and flour baked into a cake.

Other humans were more like sandwich cookies. The “Magibase filling” and the “body cookie” had fused to a degree yet could still be separated in the end.

A similar situation was appearing on Barlow.

A pale red filament of magic slipped out of the croutons. It bored into Barlow’s flesh, delicately breaking the points of adhesion and trying to slice the Magibase away in one piece.

Unfortunately, it was far too feeble, so the process crawled along. What if he sped it up?

Myss split off a trace of pitch-black magic, turned it into hundreds of fine threads, and sent them into Barlow’s mouth and nose.

At once, patches of pitch-black necrosis bloomed around Barlow’s mouth and nostrils, and a blackened half of his tongue dropped out. Myss’s magic didn’t devour him outright, but the slow corrosion looked even more terrifying, as if an invisible swarm of insects were gnawing him alive.

Barlow let out a scream no living thing should make and thrash frantically. However, Myss’s grip was like an iron clamp. No matter how Barlow jerked and writhed, Myss’s arm didn’t even tremble.

It was his first time controlling his strength like this, and he wasn’t very practiced at suppressing the annihilating power. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Barlow stayed alive.

His pitch-black magic had already reached the Magibase. Myss mimicked that pale red filament and quickly severed the connections between Barlow and the Magibase.

All at once the air filled with the smell of baked flatbread. As the cutting went on, the aroma grew stronger.

“Bastard, stop,” Myss heard the Magibase fly buzz in a wail. “No, no… Mommy, it hurts…”

With the keening, the pale red filament became strangely active.

No sooner had Myss cut the last connection than the pale red thread sprang up, wrapped the Magibase fly completely, and writhed without stopping. In a few seconds the Magibase was gone without a trace.

At the same time the smell of baked flatbread vanished too, leaving only a faint aftertaste.

The pale red filament stretched out again and multiplied into a dozen or so threads. Three or four snaked out of Barlow’s mouth and crawled into a nearby cask, while the rest disappeared into thin air.

The pale red magic was too weak. Myss’s power hadn’t yet recovered. He focused for quite a while and still couldn’t make out where the vanished magic had gone.

Before he knew it, only dead silence remained around him. Myss finally pulled his attention back to the present.

Barlow in his hand had mutated.

He had gone still and was floating in midair, turned into a strange meat cocoon identical to Covington’s. Black traces of Myss’s corrosive magic still marred his skin.

From the moment Myss hauled Barlow up, only two minutes had passed.

Myss shifted his gaze, and the corrosion marks spread with speed. In a single instant the cocoon turned jet black from top to bottom and was annihilated before everyone’s eyes.

There were no screams and no commotion. People were so shocked by this nightmarish development that they hardly dared breathe.

Beside Myss, Hailey had fallen to the floor.

The girl’s lips trembled; her expression caught between terror and daze. Instinct told her to run, yet she tried to convince herself that “Myss is not a bad person,” so she froze in place in miserable awkwardness.

Clatter. The tavern keeper’s ladle hit the floor, like a thunderclap.

Myss blinked and flexed his wrist.

“This is… truly interesting.”

His voice was soft, yet very clear. “Don’t you think so?”

As he spoke, he lifted his head and looked toward the broken roof not far away.

Two figures were standing there.

One of them was Salaar, as expected.

Myss knew this old adversary. Salaar wasn’t someone you could simply shake off. Not long after they left the inn, he had followed in silence.

Before using Barlow as a test case, Myss had specifically checked for Salaar’s presence. Since the great hero didn’t plan to heroically save the wretch, that meant he had tacitly agreed to help clean up afterward.

Salaar looked at Myss in silence, his expression dark and unreadable.

The other figure was the bird-beaked demon. He stood just as quietly, his beak turned toward where Barlow had been.

A crow alighted at his feet and gave a soft caw.

---

The author has something to say:

Don’t expect too much humanity from Myss.

He is, in every sense, a pure nonhuman, not some misunderstood good guy. Salaar’s hostility towards him is justified; the title “archenemies” isn’t a joke…

In short, this is something Mr. Hero will have to resolve personally.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 15: Croutons

“Three gold rings.”

At the very first glance at Myss, the person in charge jumped straight to discussing compensation.

To prepare for the Magibase Summoning Ritual, people had cleared out the best inn in the Lower City and turned it into a temporary workplace. It wasn’t far from the church, and outside the window one could see the vine-covered spire.

Myss stared at that spire in a daze and began to question his life choices—to investigate the Summoning Ritual, did he really have to go this far?

The so-called “Pure Soul” was essentially the ritual’s mascot, a role filled each year by a beautiful young person.

The role required no lines. He only needed to put on traditional clothing, keep a smile the whole time, and scatter white rose petals over the children at the end of the ritual.

He, smiling, children, those damned white rose petals.

Myss felt those words should never appear in the same sentence. However heartless Salaar might be, he should at least put a stop to something as absurd as an “Archdemon blessing humans”.

As it turned out, Mr. Salaar truly hadn’t a shred of conscience. He was working hard not to laugh, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“Four gold rings. I assure you my friend is the most suitable person in the entire city for this role.” Salaar actually began to haggle.

The person in charge was a short, plump man with a little mustache. He lifted his pinky, rubbed the tip of his mustache, and sized Salaar up and down.

“Four gold rings plus six silver shields,” he said. “But you have to play a Holy Guard.”

Holy Guards were the other type of ritual mascot. They didn’t actually guard anything. They only needed to stand around the ritual array and provide a symbolic visual effect.

The ritual armor was very form-fitting, so the role had strict requirements for physique, though not for looks, since the guards’ faces would be covered by helmets.

“A pity about that face. If only your demeanor were sunnier,” the person in charge lamented.

“Five gold rings. I checked the going rate,” Salaar didn’t let up. “Believe me, I’m also the most suitable person in the entire city to be a Holy Guard.”

The person in charge put on a critical look, ready to nitpick. Then he realized Salaar wasn’t simply overconfident—

This gentleman had broad shoulders and long legs, with excellent proportions. His muscles were the right thickness, the lines graceful and smooth, like a lithe beast, but not at all bulky.

“All right, five gold rings, not including room and board.”

He deflated. “I’ll take you to sign the contract. Remember to report each morning. You’ll need to train in etiquette beforehand. Don’t think that ‘just standing there’ requires no practice.”

“Also, try on the clothes before you leave. We’ll need to adjust the sizes a little.”

Myss stared at Salaar in shock. The man had bundled the two of them into a package deal in all of five minutes.

“Prime seats to watch the ritual, plus five gold rings. Perfect,” Salaar said with satisfaction. “Come on, let us try on the clothes.”

Myss: “I’m not going.”

“Then we will lose five gold rings of income.”

Salaar announced this solemnly. “Hired carriages are expensive. If funds are short, we’ll have no choice but to leave on horseback. Or worse, walk.”

“We might have to take a longer route and could run into bad weather or bandits. Overnight, you and I would have to squeeze together on alert and keep watch in turns…”

Imagining that scene, Myss clutched his head in agony.

He had modest demands for lodging and food, but he loathed trouble, especially when trouble involved “Salaar”.

In the end he slouched off toward the fitting room.

The “Pure Soul” costume wasn’t all that ostentatious.

It was a dignified, gender-neutral white robe, loose enough to reach almost to Myss’s ankles. There was also a silver circlet decorated with laurel leaves and pearls, and a matching pair of ankle boots.

The slave body was on the slender side, so Myss slipped into the robe easily. His look of utter deadpan despair partially canceled out the inhuman aura and, strangely enough, did lend him a touch of “purity”.

However—

“Smile a little, sir,” said the staff member in charge of costumes. “Your expression is too serious. You’ll scare the children.”

Myss gave him a blank sideways glance.

Salaar, dressed in the Holy Guard armor and idly hooking a helmet with one hand, came over in high spirits to watch. Seeing Myss’s constipated expression, he started laughing again.

“I will teach you a little trick,” he whispered. “…Imagine my death.”

Myss almost immediately thought of the Salaar on the eve of the unsealing, old, sickly, and on his last legs in the dark.

He couldn’t help the corners of his mouth from curving. Only after he smiled did Myss realize he was smiling.

The staffer drew in a quiet breath. “Yes. Yes, sir. Exactly like that. You did very well.”

Salaar was silent for a moment, then shook his head with a smile.

“Now there is only one last thing,” the staffer said cheerfully. “You don’t have fixed lines, but if the children come up to you on their own, you’ll need to interact with them kindly.”

“Here, imagine I’m a child.”

Before Myss could react, he crouched and looked up, putting on a childish tone. “Sir, you look so nice. Can you give me your blessing?”

Myss’s brows twitched. Interact? His only interaction with humans, including Salaar, was destruction.

Now he was supposed to bless… bless…

“May you live,” Myss said stiffly. It was the greatest kindness he could imagine.

Staffer: “……”

Salaar slipped behind the staffer and mouthed, “May you be blessed with outstanding wisdom.”

Myss got it. “You’d better be smart.”

Staffer: “……”

Salaar: “……”

Perhaps Myss was unfamiliar with the language of social niceties. Salaar wiped a hand down his face and decided to change tactics.

He gestured again and mouthed again, “Give his head a gentle pat.”

Myss kept a straight face and reached out. There was a tremendous thump, and the staffer landed on his rear, nearly pressed into the floor.

What was that about? It had certainly not been this over the top when he patted Salaar.

Myss looked to Salaar for a new cue. Salaar let out a long sigh and clapped a hand over his eyes.

The next second he rushed over to help the staffer up. “My friend is a bit hungover and has no sense of his own strength. I apologize on his behalf. Let me buy you a drink later…”

“I am fine,” the staffer waved it off. “Don’t drink for the next few days. Don’t let it interfere with the real work.”

Perhaps it was because Myss’s appearance was too impressive that the kind-hearted man didn’t fire him on the spot.

“Mm, you’re very suitable. This presence is exactly what we want.”

After assessing Myss, the staffer turned to Salaar. “If you dyed your hair blond and made your expression more compassionate, you could even play the real ‘Salaar’.”

“Thank you for the compliment,” Salaar replied, after a pause, with sincere courtesy.

“…Unfortunately, I may be the single least suitable person in this city to play ‘Salaar’.”

……

The next few days were peaceful, almost boring.

Rosha had given them a welcome that was hectic and strange, and then everything fell into silence. Over these days the bird-beaked demon vanished, and no one else died of the strange disease.

Even Mina stopped appearing. Their newly formed memories sat intact. The events of a few days ago felt like a dream, a joke of a nightmare.

Myss got up on time each day, ate three meals on schedule, and during ritual practice he fantasized about Salaar’s death.

Once they solved the mystery of the body swap, how should he kill Salaar?

Perhaps he could pierce the man’s heart with his hand and let the warm blood lick his palm. He could also clamp a hand over that hateful mouth and watch Salaar slowly suffocate until his lips turned cold.

What he wanted most, what he looked forward to most, was for everything to return to its rightful track. He would return to his true body in the dark. Salaar would be dragged back to that failing mortal shell and would watch with his eyes wide open as He shattered the seal and restarted the Night Calamity.

Thinking of that last possibility, Myss smiled with particular delight.

Once he got so engrossed in his fantasies that he nearly turned the white rose petals in his hand pitch black. If he scattered a handful on the day of the ritual, they could annihilate every participant in an instant.

Aside from that, practice went very smoothly.

Things went smoothly on Salaar’s side as well.

Training for the Holy Guard was simpler. Myss had to practice smiling, blessing, and scattering petals. Salaar only had to master holding his head high like a warrior.

By midday on the first day Mr. Hero met the standard, and he spent the rest of his time chatting away—

“I’m a little worried about job safety. Has anything ever gone wrong with the Rosha ritual? … Never? That’s really wonderful.”

“I wonder what kind of Magibase the children will summon. Have there ever been unusual ones in past years? … Ah, caterpillars are indeed unusual.”

“Has that court mage always been in charge of Rosha? … More than twenty years? Then he must know everything!”

…

Throughout his inquiries, Salaar always kept his helmet on.

This didn’t surprise Myss. Once that gloomy aura was exposed, anything Salaar asked would feel like it had ulterior motives.

“Would anyone ever summon a Magibase on their own?”

Today Salaar was also pulling people aside to chat, playing the part of a moderately enthusiastic and excessively nervous outsider.

“I mean, a place like Sepanti is strict. Rosha is a bit out of the way. What if someone wanted to dodge the kingdom’s registry and set up a private array to summon…”

“Haha, absolutely impossible.”

The man facing Salaar, the mustached supervisor, burst out laughing. Over these days Salaar had gotten friendly with him.

“The incantation for the Magibase Summoning Ritual is adjusted every year. Without the correct spell, even if Langesia came in person it would not work.”

Myss remembered the name. Langesia was a legendary mage who was still alive, one of the bards’ favorite protagonists.

As for the protagonist the bards favored most of all—

Salaar’s tone carried a frightening reverence. “I see. Managing the ritual must be no easy task. You work even harder than I imagined.”

“All for the children’s future…” the mustached man said modestly.

“Mr. Myss!” Hailey bounced into the room like a chickadee, hugging a bag of croutons.

Then she noticed the supervisor was present and first bowed to him. “Good morning, sir. My uncle sends his regards.”

“I should thank Huey for the introduction. These two are rare talents.”

The mustached man waved a hand, his smile less mercenary than before. “Off you go. There’s lemonade in the kitchen if you are thirsty.”

Hailey thanked him with appropriate gravity, then ran up to Myss. “Heavens, I knew it. You look perfect in that outfit.”

Myss grumbled perfunctory and stared with total focus at the chickadee on her head.

How would a Magibase have to mutate to give off such an enticing aroma? Even if it did mutate, it might still not be enough for a single bite.

Hailey knew nothing of this. She held out the croutons. “These are from your room. My uncle asked me to bring them over. Leave them any longer and they will go bad.”

…Croutons from their room? Right, those were the ones Mina had given him, and he had stuffed them into Salaar’s hands.

The problem was that Myss and Salaar had just cross-checked last night that “Mina” only appeared in their memories. In the daytime, when Myss met her at the cheese stall, Salaar had watched him the whole time yet had not seen Mina. At night Mina brought cranberry soup to the door, and Salaar thought he spoke with her, yet Myss saw only Boss Hammer.

The “bookstore encounter with Mina” was very likely a polluted false memory. The croutons shouldn’t exist.

So, what was this?

---

The author has something to say:

Salaar’s physique was tuned to his former combat habits, so he already had an excellent body.

The Demon Lord simply hadn’t noticed, but eventually he will.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 14: Raw Meat and Roasted Meat

The next second, Salaar resisted by reflex. Using his larger build, he rolled and pinned Myss beneath him.

Myss twisted his body in an unimaginable way and slipped out through the gaps of Salaar’s limbs. Then, he hooked a long leg, plopped down on Salaar’s lower back, and clamped both hands on the back of his neck.

The single wooden bed creaked under the strain, thumping against the floor.

Seeing that Myss wasn’t using offensive magic, Salaar stopped struggling and said helplessly, “What is it now?”

“Don’t move. I need to smell you,” Myss said. “You have picked up a strange scent.”

Salaar: “……”

Salaar: “You could’ve asked for permission.”

“Ah, why would I need your permission?” Myss bared his teeth. “You brought an army to attack me before, and you didn’t ‘ask for permission’.”

Salaar was left momentarily speechless. “Then smell away.”

Myss was satisfied.

He climbed off Salaar’s back, and Salaar obligingly rolled over, lying spread-eagle on the bed in silent resignation. Myss propped himself over him, and with a smug look, buried his head to sniff.

Salaar liked to keep clean. Although they had been out and about most of the day, he hardly smelled of sweat.

His black hair was infused with an herbal fragrance. His collar carried a faint soapy scent. His collarbones and the hollow of his throat exuded a warm “Salaar smell”—like warm amber, sun-dried linen, and a hint of musk.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the scent Myss was after.

Impatient, Myss yanked open Salaar’s shirt and rubbed the tip of his nose over his mortal enemy’s chest. Very soon he found his target—that curious aroma hidden deep within his flesh.

Sure enough, Salaar’s light personal scent was still there, only now there was an added smell of butter cookies. The latter was extremely faint. Rather than something Salaar gave off himself, it was more like something that had accidentally rubbed off on him.

This was it. He had smelled the same aroma on Mina.

Thinking back, that scent was identical to Covington’s, only far weaker than Covington’s.

Just to be safe, Myss tugged Salaar’s shirt open farther. He sniffed hard along the man’s chest and abdomen, then all the way back to his throat and jaw, as if he meant to suck Salaar’s soul out.

His breath pressed close to Salaar’s skin, leaving warm damp traces as it went.

Yes, it was definitely Covington’s scent, Myss judged fairly.

He now strongly suspected that Mina had picked it up from Covington, and that Salaar, after close contact with her, had picked up a little as well.

He closed his eyes and carefully recalled Kai on the carriage, Mina in the bookshop, and the dead Covington… even that bird-beaked demon that radiated a strong scent.

“I understand.”

Myss shifted and rested his chin on Salaar’s chest, naturally treating the man as a cushion.

Salaar covered his eyes with the back of his hand, his expression a little stiff. “If you understand, get off me.”

Myss didn’t move. He shot Salaar a triumphant look. Salaar’s heartbeat sped up, his chest rose and fell without stopping, and Myss’s field of vision trembled lightly with it.

Myss liked this commanding vantage point. It reminded him of the past.

Sadly, the good moment didn’t last. Salaar couldn’t take it anymore and tightened both arms as if to choke Myss to death against his chest. Myss sprang up as if pinched by a clamp and hopped off the bed in a flash.

He straightened his clothes in dissatisfaction. “You should show me some respect. I have made a remarkable discovery.”

“Oh, then would you mind sharing it, Your Illustrious Lord Myss?” Salaar propped himself up and took a few deep breaths.

“I very much mind, actually, but I want to finish the investigation quickly,” Myss said. “Long story short, I seem to be able to smell the scent of ‘magic’.”

Salaar blinked and, rare for him, looked at Myss in confusion. Myss glanced at the cranberry soup on the floor and drew out a long “Mm”.

“If we compare human magic to food—don’t look at me like that; it’s just an analogy—then to me, magic falls into two kinds.”

“One is ‘raw meat’. The smell is very faint. You have to sniff for it on purpose to catch it.”

For example, the vast majority of humans, the faint-smelling Kai, and Salaar, whose scent is a little unripe.

“The other is ‘roasted meat’. Its scent is extremely strong. I suspect it’s caused by a mutation of magic.”

For example, Covington on the verge of death, and the bird-beaked demon while its wounds were healing.

“Mina is an exception. The aroma on her is too superficial and thin. Rather than smelling like roasted meat, she is more like someone who has just eaten barbeque.”

Myss climbed back onto his own bed and did his best to describe to Salaar what was peculiar about Mina and their encounter during the day. By the time he finished with gestures and metaphors, night had just fallen.

Salaar lit the lamp by the bed. The firelight lit up his pensive expression.

“A mutation of magic, is it. Interesting.”

“At present the Magibase is the source of human magic. By your account, Mina seems to have had a hand in Covington’s Magibase.”

Mr. Hero made the call almost at once. “…But how exactly she pulled it off, and whether it’s connected to Covington’s magic mutation, are both still uncertain.”

Thinking of that tempting butter-cookie aroma, Myss swallowed.

It was a shame he didn’t know the cause of the mutation. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have minded getting some for himself to taste.

“Back to the point.” Salaar idly toyed with the charcoal while he doodled on the page. “It seems you are extremely sensitive to magic, and you find this mutated magic very tasty.”

“Since you’re good at sensing magic, I suspect the Magibase looks different in your eyes as well. Earlier you mentioned a ‘strange hamster’, the way you looked at the old carpenter was off too, and you suddenly asked us whether the Magibase can talk…”

“…You can see the Magibase at any time and talk with them, right?”

Myss’s scalp prickled, and he shot back out of stubbornness, “Wrong.”

What’s with this kid? Things were plenty weird. Shouldn’t Salaar keep digging into Mina? How had the topic swerved back to him?

Salaar looked at him with something close to pity. “Heavens, I never imagined you would be this bad at lying.”

Before, he couldn’t read the emotions of a gigantic monster. Now Myss had been stuffed into a human shell, and that shell was flushing red and bristling with wariness right in front of him.

“Fine. Now I know why the old butler turned into mincemeat. You crushed his Magibase hamster.”

Salaar watched Myss’s face and went on ruthlessly.

“Looks like I really don’t have a Magibase. Otherwise, you would have jumped up triumphantly ages ago and waved it over my head as a threat.”

Right on the mark. Myss grabbed the sheets in despair and wrapped himself up like a cocoon.

“Good evening?” Salaar leaned close and knocked on the bundle in mock formality. “Anyone home?”

Myss pulled the blanket tighter. “You should think more about the connection between Mina and that strange disease. I gave you a new lead—”

“And you should put less stock in a bard’s nonsense,” Salaar said. “I don’t know how many bullshit hymns this slave has listened to. Remember this. My target has only ever been you.”

……

Myss slept with his head under the covers all night and was especially listless the next day.

Just last night he had lost his little secret, the way an animal loses the soft fur that hides its skin. Reality turned chilly and left him feeling unsafe.

He admitted it. His head really was stuffed full of hymns—

For slave traders, bards were the cheapest form of appeasement. For a few silver shields those paupers would sing to the slaves for a week, and they might even teach the slaves some new words along the way.

At this moment Myss almost wished Salaar were the legendary great hero.

If that were true, he could easily guess Salaar’s intentions. A great hero would never sit and watch a strange disease spread. He would immediately track Mina down and save Rosha from disaster, instead of…

“The inn’s barbeque is too expensive.”

Salaar sliced the roast beef on his plate. “Back in my day it was at most two copper teeth a piece, with a side of mashed beans. Shall we go stroll around the ritual grounds again today? The skewers over there are more affordable.”

“What about ‘Mina’? If even we were affected, ordinary humans have even less hope of resisting.”

Myss tried to rouse the conscience of Mr. Hero.

“Good morning, child.” Mina—or rather the Mina that existed only in memory—sat at his elbow. “Picky eating is bad for you. You need to finish the chicory in your bowl.”

Myss pointed at her for emphasis. “My memories are still twisted right now.”

Then he pushed the chicory on his plate even farther away.

“Ignore it. She can’t alter our real memories. So far, she has had no effect on the investigation.”

Salaar waggled his table knife. “Eat your chicory. Don’t waste food.”

Annoyed to the point of exasperation, Myss picked up his fork and speared the bitter chicory leaves into his mouth.

He could faintly sense that Mina couldn’t influence them any further.

The two of them were too unusual. They didn’t even have Magibase. She could only wedge herself into the memories of their shell bodies and play at being “mother”, which was pointless anyway.

“What if she keeps following me?” Myss muttered.

Salaar laughed. “Isn’t that better?”

“She targets consciousness rather than flesh. If she actually manages to hurt you, that would be very valuable reference information.”

“Are you insane? She’s tangling with you too.”

Salaar cut another slice of roast. “How perfect! I can be your control sample.”

The silver knife parted the meat, and the cut surface slowly bled. The juices crept across the white porcelain, like a tiny pool of blood.

On the pale red sheen there was a reflection of a lapis-blue eye.

In the next second that eye, through the reflection, caught Myss’s gaze.

It curved slightly. That trace of a smile felt like a curse.

……

They had barely finished breakfast when Hailey came barreling into the inn. Though her nose was still swollen, her smile was dazzling.

“Both of you are here. Perfect. Yesterday Mr. Myss said you wanted to see the Summoning Ritual.”

Hailey tilted her nose up with a “go on, ask me” look.

Salaar played along. “Yes. What about it?”

“My uncle knows of a temporary job that would be perfect for Mr. Myss. If you two are willing, he would be happy to make the introduction.”

Hailey lowered her voice mysteriously. “That way you can not only watch the ritual up close, you can also make a little money.”

Talk about just the pillow he needed when he was about to snooze. Salaar was surprised. “What job is it?”

“Playing the ‘Pure Soul’ that symbolizes love and magic, and bestowing blessings on the children.”

Hailey spoke with longing. “The role has no gender requirement. The applicant only needs to be good-looking and gentle in temperament. Mr. Myss would absolutely be chosen.”

Salaar: “……”

Myss: “?”

---

The author has something to say:

A Demon Lord’s blessing.

How exciting, children! A one-of-a-kind in history.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 13: Strange Happenings

“Anything strange?” Hailey looked even more at a loss. “How could that be? Every year court mages preside over the ritual, and the ritual has never had a problem.”

“All done,” the stall woman cut them off loudly, pointing at the ten bowls of cheese and berries lined up in a row.

“Ten copper teeth a serving, one silver shield buys exactly ten.”

Myss worked hard to scoop up six servings but couldn’t carry any more. He turned to Hailey. “The other four are yours.”

Hailey’s mouth fell open. She was just about to decline when Myss added impatiently, “Take them, and count it as your fee for answering.”

“Wow, thank you. You really are a good person.” “Thank you!”

Hailey and the chickadee cried out together.

So much for getting his hopes up.

Myss had thought he might fish up some key lead, yet in the end they still had to honestly go investigate the ritual. Hugging a big armful of cheese and berries, he turned gloomily toward Salaar.

“…You bought that many, Myss.”

Madam Mina was still there. The moment Myss turned, he saw her at a glance.

She stood precisely between Myss and Salaar, her left arm cradling a brimming basket of candy and croutons, her right hand carrying two bowls of cheese with berries, as if she had been waiting there for him.

Her smile was unusually gentle, with not the least trace of displeasure at being kept waiting.

Myss felt a subtle discomfort.

Seeing Madam Mina again, his mind and body slipped out of alignment for an instant. The feeling was like the brief weightlessness when a horse jolts—his chest swelled, his stomach felt heavy, and he almost wanted to retch.

His mind told him this human wasn’t only rude but a bit abnormal. His body shouted the opposite, that he was looking at the person he trusted most.

Myss only knew a single human, so “the person he trusted most” could only force him to think of Salaar. Feeling this eerie “trust” made his mood even worse.

“What do you want?” he asked coldly.

“I only wanted to speak with you, child,” she whispered. “I am sorry I upset you. Let us meet again another time.”

“I don’t want to see you again,” Myss said bluntly.

Mina didn’t answer. Smiling, she smoothed her tawny bun, hugged the basket of treats to her chest, and her figure melted into the crowd.

Myss suddenly recalled the first time they met. Back when they were still on the caravan wagons, Mina had been sitting at Kai’s side with a food basket full to the brim in her arms.

What had she and Salaar talked about then? He had slept through most of the journey and hadn’t heard much.

Forget it. Overthinking was pointless. Madam Mina was only a human of no importance; not worth the effort.

……

“Your social skills are beyond my expectations,” Salaar said lightly, reaching out to take the cheese and berries.

Myss darted away, not giving him a single bowl, even though he could barely hold them steady anymore.

The Demon Lord had the air of a fire dragon guarding its eggs. If Salaar dared to snatch his food, he could breathe fire on the spot.

Moved by a certain curiosity, Salaar waited until Myss was distracted, then snatched one bowl with the speed of a duelist. Before Myss could get a curse out, the dessert had gone down Salaar’s throat with a gulp.

“Tastes great.” Salaar licked the berry juice at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t be so stingy. You already gave Hailey four bowls.”

Myss raised his brows. “I would rather dump another four into the gutter.”

Salaar: “Either way you can’t finish them. Just pretend I’m the gutter.”

Myss gave him a scornful once-over and started stuffing his mouth on the spot. By the fifth bowl, he had to admit Salaar was right. Human bodies were a nuisance. The feeling of hunger was miserable, and the pain of being overstuffed wasn’t any better.

Before night even fell, Salaar had no choice but to take the indigestion-stricken Demon Lord back to the inn.

It’s not really a big deal, Salaar thought. Nights in the Lower City weren’t suited to going out anyway, and they still had time—

There were several days before the ritual. When the time came, they would go observe the Magic Initiation Ritual and find a way to get the records from ten years ago.

Rosha had fewer than two thousand people. At most thirty to forty children would take part in the ritual, and there wouldn’t be many guardians and staff who had access to it.

That mysterious pen pal had to be among them. At worst, they could go down the list and check one by one.

…Unless the summoning ritual in “Patience’s” letters referred to something else.

Salaar sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the notebook filled with copied letters.

In the glow of the setting sun, he flipped through the pages and reread the letters about Patience. Myss sprawled on his own bed, stretching his limbs and wrestling with the mountain of cheese in his stomach.

Knock, knock. A soft rapping sounded at the door.

Myss heaved himself on the bed with difficulty. “Hey.”

He compressed “Someone is knocking,” “I don’t want to move at all,” and “Go open the door” into a single word.

“Probably food from the inn. I ordered two bowls of cranberry soup. I’ll get it.”

Salaar actually understood. He snapped the notebook shut and walked to the door.

Sure enough, the same kitchen helper from last night was standing there with a tray that had two bowls of cranberry soup on it. They were served in light wooden bowls, the rims garnished with fresh mint leaves.

“Your cranberry soup is here.” Seeing Salaar open the door, she smiled gently. “Does Myss have indigestion? I added extra cranberries. It’ll be good for him.”

Salaar took the tray and stared steadily at the woman before him.

The woman fussed with concern. “If he still feels unwell before bed, try hot apple cider boiled with herbs. Hammer has stocked plenty of herbs. Just tell him.”

“Who are you, exactly?” After a brief daze, Salaar asked bluntly.

“Me? I’m Mina.”

The kitchen helper blinked, and her tone was as if they had known each other for years. “Child, you’re a little strange today. Are you feeling ill?”

Salaar stepped back two paces at once and slammed the door. A golden protective spell flared into place and completely sealed the room.

The two bowls of cranberry soup flipped to the floor with the tray. Deep red soup ran along the wooden boards, resembling blood.

Silence fell outside. The kitchen helper, who called herself Mina, made no response at all.

“What’s wrong with you?” Myss picked up the wooden bowls with a pang. Only a little soup was left inside.

“You didn’t see her?” Salaar kept his eyes fixed on the door.

“Her? The one who brought the soup just now was Hammer,” Myss said in puzzlement. “He said he could also make hot apple cider, gave you a greeting, and left.”

“Then you suddenly slammed the door and even knocked the soup over…”

Salaar’s face was as dark as still water.

He strode back to the bed, grabbed his notebook and a charcoal stick. After a few swift strokes, Salaar held the notebook up. A half-length portrait of a woman had appeared on the page, rendered so realistically it looked like a magical photograph.

In the picture the woman wore an ordinary linen dress, her long hair coiled into a bun at the back. Her brows and eyes were gentle, and a loving smile hovered at the corners of her mouth.

“Tawny hair, brown eyes.”

Salaar pointed at the person in the portrait. “She’s the one I saw at the door. She said her name was Mina. She gave me a feeling…”

He paused for quite a while here.

“She gave me a ‘motherly’ feeling,” he said after a few seconds. “Not the kind of ‘reminds me of my mother’, but the kind of ‘she is my mother’.”

Myss stared hard at the portrait. What a coincidence. He knew the woman in the picture too.

Without a doubt, it was Madam Mina.

Only a few hours ago he had just met this woman. She had been carrying a heap of food then, with a bonnet on her head and a dark apron, more than what the picture showed.

“I don’t have a mother. Try describing it another way,” Myss said, unusually earnest.

Salaar thought for a moment. “My subconscious finds her very kind. I feel relaxed by her side and can trust her unconditionally.”

“She definitely altered my memories. I have extra fragments in my head, scenes where she raised me.”

“If your memories have been changed, how do you know she isn’t your mother?”

The words were barely out when Myss regretted them.

Of course that was nonsense. How could Salaar’s mother still be alive three hundred years later? He kept forgetting how short human lifespans are. Myss sighed inwardly and waited for Salaar’s sarcasm.

But Salaar didn’t answer at once.

For an instant he looked at Myss with a complicated, almost sorrowful gaze. Then the feeling vanished, and only the usual Salaar remained.

“Oh, she didn’t live that long,” he said lightly. “In short, this is very wrong. We didn’t even sense any magical ripples. Which means I may have been affected at an earlier point.”

Myss thought it over. “When the four of us rode the carriage into the city together?”

Salaar drew a deep breath. “Myss, in that carriage it was only you, me, and… uh, Kai…?”

As he spoke, his eyebrows twitched, as if he wasn’t very sure of what he was saying.

Myss fell silent.

He tried to recall the past, and sure enough, more abnormal memories surfaced.

He remembered the child version of “himself” held in Mina’s arms, her embrace warm and soft. He remembered her shielding him from the slave owner’s whip, warm blood dripping onto his skin.

She hid flatbread for him when he was hungry, taught the ignorant boy to read a little at a time, and wove a fine cocoon of motherly love. Not long ago they had been bought together by Lord Kearns.

On the day he was sacrificed, she was locked in the mansion basement, and the corridors echoed with her despairing cries… In the end… They both escaped. They rode a carriage together to Rosha and took rooms on the second floor of the inn. Mina, his most beloved mother Mina…

…As if.

Myss sorted through the memories without a ripple, coolly watching those farces called love, like looking down at two ants touching feelers.

Mina had only tainted the memories of the body belonging to the slave. The part that belonged solely to Myss—the long years in the dark—hadn’t changed in the least.

Compared with such odds and ends, at this very moment Myss was more interested in another discovery.

On the opposite bed, Salaar was still studying the portrait of Mina, when suddenly, Myss lunged forward and shoved Salaar down onto the bed.

---

The author has something to say:

Mina (to Myss): I’m the one you trust most…

Myss: I only know one human, Salaar. Are you sure you want to remind me of him?

Mina (to Myss): I’m the mother who loves you most…

Myss: I don’t have a mother.

Salaar: …

Pure nonhuman, 360-degree defense, cannot be targeted.

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 12: Absolute Taboo

Myss sounded completely casual, as if he were asking, “The pears at breakfast were too sour, how about apples instead?”

Salaar rubbed his temple. “Using a human corpse is an absolute taboo.”

“They say it causes magical backlash. The offender drops dead on the spot, and even if someone survives by luck, they won’t live more than a few days.”

“What about the young lord’s live offering?” Myss glanced at him.

Salaar: “That was a demon summoning ritual of his own invention. Come to think of it, ‘Patience’ never shortened demon summoning to just ‘the Summoning Ritual’. I suppose that was to keep it distinct from the ‘Magibase Summoning Ritual’.

“Interesting, I sealed you for not even ten years and the ‘Magibase Summoning Ritual’ appeared.”

Assuming Lord Karns’s memories were correct—

The creator of the “Magibase Summoning Ritual” was unknown. Several scholars published similar theories around the same time, and each faction had its own view on who should count as the founder.

As for why it emerged, some say it was due to the Archdemon’s “whale fall” dispersing magic, while others credit the prosperity that followed the end of the Night Scourge.

In effect, it allowed everyone to use magic, and humanity stepped into the “Age of Magical Enlightenment”.

The topic became increasingly academic, and Myss felt a headache coming on.

“Let us stick to common knowledge,” he said dully, and casually took the tea Salaar had just set to cool.

Salaar nearly sighed in his face. “All right. The basics are simple.”

“First, a Magibase takes the form of an animal, and it is equivalent to a spiritual organ acquired after birth.”

“Second, when a person gets emotional or uses magic, the Magibase becomes highly active.”

“Third, if the Magibase is destroyed, its owner dies with it, so people do everything they can to keep their Magibase hidden.”

Fourth, Magibases aren’t supposed to talk, Myss added quietly to himself.

That did clear up quite a few things.

…No wonder when he crushed Old Aiken’s hamster, Old Aiken exploded along with it.

…No wonder the mage and Covington showed their Magibases at the moment of death. Apparently, the principle is similar to incontinence.

It was a shame that he was too focused on Salaar as he was killing people, that he didn’t pay attention to the bandits, or he would have noticed more.

To be honest, Myss didn’t think humans hid their Magibases very well.

After the old carpenter drew his Magibase back into the back of his hand, Myss looked a few more times. He was certain he could still pull it out of the flesh, quite simply as if yanking a human heart out of a chest cavity.

They couldn’t hide from him. All he had to do was focus to feel that distinctive magical aura.

Thinking of this, Myss couldn’t help running his eyes over Salaar from head to toe again.

Unfortunately, the man truly had no Magibase, so Myss couldn’t pinch at a weak point. Then again, if Salaar did have one, it would certainly be just as annoying as he was.

……

They kept talking intermittently, waiting for the “Resolve to Elope” to wear off.

The hands on the clock moved at an unhurried pace, and the tavern filled up bit by bit. Ruffians and drifters came to kill time, merchants dropped in for a drink on their break, and even some prostitutes came by to sell themselves.

Proprietor Hammer sat rigid behind the counter, muscles taut, and the tavern’s mood was unusually harmonious.

By the time Salaar finished his fourth cup of herbal tea, the effect finally faded.

The two of them were striking in appearance. Without the potion’s cover, glances brushed them like feather tips. A few ruffians were itching to sidle over and chat, but Salaar’s piercing stare drove them off.

It had to be said, the villainous aura of that face was quite effective.

Some people were more polite. An elegant lady came over with a drink and praised Salaar’s eyes. “Such a rare cobalt blue, very much like Karns’s lapis lazuli,” she praised him while edging her body closer to Myss. “…Dear, who is this little lamb? Your younger brother?”

At the second half, Myss frowned. “You people have a remarkably varied range of insults.”

“Perhaps I am a member of House Karns,” Salaar subtly steered the topic aside.

“Heh. As if the Karns would come to a place like this.” The woman smiled with her eyes. “Plenty claim to be Karns bastards. Your eyes are a lot more convincing than theirs.”

“Thank you for the compliment.”

Salaar lifted his cup and made a toast in the air, without actually touching her glass. It was a tactful and proper dismissal.

She gave them a sweet smile and glided away. Seeing even she had failed, no one else came over.

“We can skip the potion for now,” Salaar said once she had gone. “It seems this eye color isn’t that rare, and there aren’t many who dare to judge bloodlines.”

Myss remained silent. He still thought gouging out this brat’s eyes would be the simplest solution.

By afternoon they stood in front of the largest building in the Lower City.

It had started as a church of some religion. Later that religion vanished into history, and most of the structure was burned down. During the plague, the city lord repaired it as a temporary hospital for the Lower City.

Now it had changed once more and had become Rosha’s designated venue for the “Magibase Summoning Ritual”.

It’s said that the people of the Upper City chose this site to display their “goodwill and inclusiveness”, while the people of the Lower City generally believe the nobles simply don’t want crowds from the Lower City marching into the Upper City and dirtying their fine neighborhood.

The first Saturday of September was almost here, and the church was nearly ready.

Its crack-veined walls had been newly painted, and the badly damaged spire had been reinforced with magic. The exterior was decorated with laurel branches and silver bells that symbolized blessing, and a long red carpet ran up the stone steps, giving the place a touch of festive atmosphere.

Two long tables stood crosswise by the church doors.

The table on the left was piled with free candies and croutons. The one on the right displayed neat rows of small bones, insect wings, and pig bristles and horsehair tied up with bows. These were free as well for poor children who had brought no offerings. All of the above were provided by court mages who organized the ceremony.

Merchants from the Lower City didn’t want to miss this once-a-year chance either. They set up rings of stalls farther out, selling all manners of offering materials, snacks, and sundries.

Myss looked around with keen interest. As a slave he only had memories of being confined indoors, so all this was new to him.

“Here. Buy whatever you want, and don’t steal anything.” Salaar produced two silver shields in advance. “The last thing we need right now is a commotion.”

Myss: “I’m not stupid.”

As he said it, he kept sneaking looks at a stall where a woman was selling cheese mixed with berries. The portions were served in leaves folded into bowl shapes, bright with reds and greens.

Then he sensed something was amiss. “So you would rather risk letting me buy things on my own than go with me?”

“I’m not your babysitter,” Salaar stated frankly. “I’m also curious what you’ll do.”

Which meant he would be watching Myss every second. Myss gritted his teeth.

Business was brisk at the cheese-and-berries stall. Myss suppressed the urge to scatter the crowd and lined up obediently.

“We meet again, handsome young man.” The woman in front of him turned around.

It was the middle-aged woman from the bookshop. She still carried a faint aroma of food, although this time it smelled less like hot pancakes and more like butter cookies.

Remembering that she had bought the trash called “Brave Salaar”, Myss had no desire to talk to her. He only nodded perfunctorily.

“My daughter has wanted that book for a long time. Thank you for letting me have it,” the woman went on, apparently unable to read his aversion. “She even pestered me to read it to her last night.”

Unfortunate child, Myss thought. So young and already forced to listen to such a lousy story.

“My name is Mina,” the woman, Mina, continued to chatter. “The cheese here is very good. It has a clean, refreshing tang…”

“Oh my, Mr. Myss!” another voice sounded behind him.

This time it was Hailey. The inn girl’s cheeks were rosy, and her nose was still a little swollen.

She was clearly excited, since Myss could see a translucent long-tailed tit above her head.

The fluffy little bird hopped and chirped, “Good person! Good person!”

At last, a well-mannered Magibase. Too bad he was neither good nor human.

Why are you here?” Myss turned his head and decisively ignored Madam Mina.

Hailey said brightly, “My nose was injured. The boss was afraid I would scare customers, so he told me to stay home for now. There are few customers anyway, and the shop isn’t busy.”

Myss: “Oh.”

“By the way, are you here to watch the Summoning Ritual?” Hailey was very enthusiastic.

“Something like that,” Myss replied absently.

A couple more chattering of small talk and the line would move. He would reach the front soon.

“My uncle brings me every year,” Hailey chirped. “The children summon all kinds of Magibases. Last year someone summoned a puppy. It was especially cute.”

Myss watched her for a moment, then a thought struck him. “When did you take part in the Summoning Ritual?”

Hailey was just fifteen. If she had taken part on schedule, her ceremony would have been ten years ago, which would put her in the same session as “Patience”.

“Ten years ago.” Hailey blinked. “As soon as I reached the age, my uncle sent me.”

The tit on her head cocked its head and blinked along with her.

At the same time, the line reached Myss. “How many?” asked the woman selling cheese and berries.

“This much,” Myss said, tossing down a silver shield. His eyes stayed on Hailey. “Were the children in your session all five years old? Was anyone unusual?”

The question didn’t sound like small talk, and Hailey was a bit at a loss. “There were definitely children of other ages.”

“The Upper City is strict about age. In the Lower City people are less particular, so some are registered a year or two late. The oldest in my session was eight, maybe nine. Sorry, I don’t remember very clearly…”

“But there were definitely no adults,” she added briskly.

“Then did anything strange happen?” Myss paused, then asked.

---

The author has something to say:

How they currently see everyone else:

Myss’s view: Hateful Salaar >>>>>> other insignificant humans (regardless of age or gender)

Salaar’s view: Research subject Myss >>>>>> other juniors with a massive generation gap (regardless of age or gender)

---

<<< || Table of Contents || >>>

Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

---

Chapter 11: The Summoning Ritual

A middle-aged woman stood at the door, holding a candlestick.

She had a kind face with fine lines at the corners of her eyes, wore a long linen nightdress, and had tawny hair pinned at the back of her head. She carried no weapon, and her presence was no different from an ordinary person.

“We’re fine, thank you for your concern.” Salaar didn’t open the door fully. He stayed in the half-open doorway, giving her a genuine smile. “May I ask who you are?”

Thanks to that brooding face of his, the smile made the woman a little uneasy.

“I help in the tavern kitchen,” she said softly. “I am glad you are fine… By the way, there’s always some light wine and dried figs in the kitchen cupboard. Help yourselves.”

With that, she gave a small nod and hurried away.

Salaar didn’t close the door immediately. Only when a door clicked shut at the far end of the corridor did he close theirs and turn the lock with a snap.

He then lowered the ritual dagger he had been hiding behind his back. In the shadow-draped room, Myss rolled over and smacked his lips in his sleep.

The next day.

At the table, Myss was still drowsy.

There were few patrons at the tavern in the morning, and most of the diners were lodgers from the second floor. The “Resolve to Elope” still had a lingering effect, so few people paid them any attention.

Breakfast was decent. Hammer provided them with crispy fried bacon, black bread that was somewhat soft, and pears that were firm but not tough.

There was only water to drink, served in a round-bellied jug. The surface caught the soft light of morning.

Myss squinted against the glare and gave a huge yawn. “I didn’t dream about anything last night.”

“Humans don’t dream every day,” Salaar said as he buried his head into the thick bacon. “But humans get up every day. You need to get used to that.”

Myss gave a disgruntled “oh.” He secretly infused a little magic into his table knife, which made slicing the bacon easier than cutting butter, although a small portion of the bacon mysteriously evaporated.

“I am practicing magic control,” the Demon Lord announced at once when he noticed Salaar glancing at him hesitantly.

The bacon was a little salty, but the fat was wonderfully flavorful. He glanced at the bright sunshine outside. Fresh air poured in through the window and loosened him up.

Myss suddenly felt that this kind of life wasn’t so bad, although it would be even better if Salaar wasn’t watching him.

Once he shook off his drowsiness, the events of the previous night flooded back to him.

In short, the mysterious pen pal “Patience” had studied demons and summoning rituals, then the bird-beaked demon and the strange illness appeared, and “Patience” cut off contact around the same time.

Unfortunately, there was no definite link between them.

There was one thing Myss couldn’t figure out.

If they were truly connected and “Patience” had botched a summoning ritual ten years ago, why did the bird-beaked demon and the strange illness only appear in the last two months?

Ultimately, what they most ought to investigate was this—

“We need to look for death records from ten years ago,” Salaar said. “‘Patience’ seems to have used the summoning ritual in an attempt to resurrect someone.”

“You don’t want to investigate the disease first?” Myss bit down on his fork in surprise.

They had three leads right under their noses: the summoning ritual, the bird-beaked demon, and the disease. Only the disease was actually killing people, yet the great hero was willing to let it go for now.

Salaar was silent for a few seconds. “If it really is a plague, a small border town like this is easy to seal off, and the losses are still controllable.”

“But if my delay lets you return to your true body, the death toll will multiply a thousandfold.”

“Wow.” Myss sighed. “You hate me that much and you are still willing to talk to me.”

Salaar smiled as he sprinkled some cracked pepper on his bacon. “If you were human, I would make you regret being born into this world.”

“Humans have choices. We can survive without harming the innocent. Some people insist on trampling others, and if they are trampled in return, they brought it on themselves.”

His tone was almost calm. “For those people, I am more than happy to be the one who tramples. As for you…”

Salaar didn’t finish. He stared at Myss, speared a piece of bacon, and chewed in silence.

Myss watched that piece of bacon go. Was this his way of saying he would love to kill me and turn me into bacon?

So he issued a solemn warning. “Listen. I don’t know exactly what I am, but my flesh would definitely poison you.”

Salaar nearly choked on his bacon. He silently gulped down half a jug of water and let out a long sigh.

……

“You want to see coffin orders from ten years ago to find information on someone who died? That’s hard. I didn’t keep any copies.”

The old carpenter frowned and puffed on his pipe. Hammer had sent them to him, and he was the only coffin-maker in the Lower City.

“Is there really no way?” Salaar asked earnestly. “All I remember is that ten years ago my pen pal lost someone important… we truly have been out of touch for too long.”

“You don’t even know where the deceased lived. Best give it up.”

The old carpenter shook his head. “For the Upper City, it’s customary, but the Lower City doesn’t keep track of the dead. Everyone just dumps the bodies into the communal grave. No one bothers with much else.”

“Would the church have records? Requiem rites or something like that?” Salaar asked.

The old carpenter shook his head even harder. “Rosha has plenty of religions. Each has its own believers. There is no way to keep a unified registry.”

“How does that saying go? In this day and age only one number can be trusted, and that is the count of five-year-olds. Not even the royal genealogies are recorded as reliably as the Summoning Rituals.”

Myss: “?”

Salaar: “???”

Did you just say “Summoning Ritual”, just outright?

“What’s with those faces?” The old carpenter looked puzzled. “What, you don’t call it a ‘Summoning Ritual’ where you are from? Then what do you call the ‘Pure Soul Magic Initiation Ritual?”

Myss immediately looked at Salaar. Salaar let out a few awkward grunts. “Maybe it’s a cultural difference. Would you mind describing it?”

“It’s a free initiation for magic. The one every child goes to at five years old. Even the smallest country has it. Only slaves aren’t qualified to attend.”

As he spoke, his gaze turned a shade more sympathetic. “Don’t tell me you two are slaves who escaped from somewhere…”

Half right, Myss thought. He continued to glare at Salaar in reproach. You, kid, have Lord Karns’s memories at least. How do you not know something this important.

Salaar looked like he wanted to smack himself. He kept a straight face and bluffed, “It’s all in the past. Could you tell us about this ‘Pure Soul Magic Initiation Ritual?”

“Of course, of course.” The old carpenter looked them over with pity and tapped his pipe hard.

A faint magical ripple spread out.

A half-transparent red-headed woodpecker emerged from the back of the old man’s hand and gradually solidified. When he saw the bird with the unusually long tail feather, Myss’s pupils widened a little. Wasn’t this the odd thing he had seen before?

Compared with Old Aiken’s hamster and the bandit mage’s weasel, this red-headed woodpecker felt especially real. Salaar stared straight at it, so he clearly saw it too.

“This is the Magibase, the foundation for using magic.”

The old carpenter spoke while the bird hopped merrily about on the back of his hand. “This isn’t innate. You have to summon it with a special ritual, which requires…”

“… personal participation in the rite, chanting an incantation, and offering a sacrifice. The offering is prepared by the individual and must be the essence of a nonhuman species.”

Salaar murmured in a low voice, “A Magibase is a symbol of its owner’s spirit and magic. Its strength correlates directly with the person’s talent and the quality of the offering…”

“You do know quite a bit.” The old carpenter made a gesture, and the woodpecker vanished. Yet in Myss’s eyes it merely returned to being half-transparent.

Only when the old man’s magical fluctuations settled did it give its wings a shake and burrow back into the back of his hand.

“What are you staring at, brat!” Before it went back, it even glared at Myss on purpose.

Wonderful. He had now witnessed a screaming hamster, a foul-mouthed weasel, and an irritable woodpecker. What a kind world this was.

Myss turned to Salaar speechlessly. “Can Magibases talk like people?”

The old carpenter and Salaar shook their heads in unison.

“In theory they are only a kind of totem and have no ability to communicate,” Salaar explained dryly.

“More or less.” The old carpenter chuckled. “The Summoning Ritual takes place every year on the first Saturday of September. You can still attend even if you are over five. It’s coming up in a few days, and the venue is right here in the Lower City. If you need it, you might as well go and take a look.”

Interesting, Myss thought.

He had no Magibase at all, and Salaar clearly didn’t either, yet both of them could use magic normally. As for seeing Magibases and communicating with them…he was undoubtedly a special case.

But he wasn’t some small human to begin with, so he should be a special case. Myss felt perfectly justified.

“The Summoning Ritual ‘Patience’ had done ten years ago may have meant the Magibase summoning ceremony.”

Back at the tavern, Salaar poured himself a cup of herbal tea. “We jumped to conclusions and assumed it had to be a demon summoning ritual.”

Myss regarded him with great gravity.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to hide anything. That young lord only called demon summoning a ‘Summoning Ritual’. He called the Magibase one ‘creating a Magibase’.”

Under Myss’s complicated look, Salaar added, “Yes, Lord Carnes did have knowledge related to Magibases. I just couldn’t tell what was real and what was fantasy on his part, since the whole thing sounds too far-fetched.”

“It wasn’t like this three hundred years ago?” Myss asked.

“At that time Magibases didn’t exist at all. Only very few people had the talent for magic. If you could do it, you could do it. If you couldn’t, you couldn’t.” Salaar pinched the bridge of his nose. “The world has changed a lot.”

Myss let him off for the moment. “All right. I have only one question left. You said the offering must be the essence of a nonhuman species. What exactly is ‘essence’?”

“That’s an alchemical term,” Salaar said. “It actually means body parts from a nonhuman creature. Blood and flesh, bones, scales…things like that. Most people bring livestock offal. Some use dead rats and insect corpses.”

“Oh,” Myss replied in a casual tone. “Then what would happen if you used a human corpse?”

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The author has something to say:

Mr. Hero: some roundabout, meaningful reflections on life.

Demon Lord: blah blah blah what are you even saying, I’ve turned off my ears off.jpg

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Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong

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

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Chapter 10: Ominous

Salaar instantly moved.

He pivoted and shot forward like an arrow, slamming hard into the bird-beaked demon. Unable to dodge in time, the demon was carried out of the tavern with Salaar.

The crows burst up after them, wings thundering, cawing without pause.

Even through the night, Salaar’s aura shone like fireflies. Myss ran straight for it, black power gathering to strike.

The beaked demon was pinned to the ground by Salaar when his face snapped toward Myss.

The crows seemed to receive an order. They beat their wings and flung themselves at Myss’s face with reckless abandonment. Myss hesitated for a heartbeat, and the demon used the chance to slip free of Salaar and spring back to a safe distance.

Thrown off, Salaar’s face turned grave. He lowered his center of gravity and set himself to defend.

“Ominous…”

The beak of the “demon” pointed at Myss, and a muffled voice seeped from the mask.

You dress like that and have the nerve to call me ominous?

Since Salaar was unharmed, this guy had to be taken alive. Myss broke off a piece of iron railing and whipped it at the “demon’s” right leg.

Relying on three centuries of tacit understanding through mutual brawling, Salaar lunged for the bird-beaked demon at almost the same instant. Caught between the two, the “demon” reacted a beat too slow, and the iron rod punched straight through his shinbone.

Salaar’s hand pressed for the back of the demon’s neck and was about to pin him again when—

“Don’t go over there!” Myss snapped.

Salaar abruptly stopped, as if that shout had hit a pause button.

Every hair on Myss’s body stood on end as he fixed on the bird-beaked demon. A wildly wrong aura burst from the man, like a fragrance made too rich, already edging into stench.

Sure enough, the bird-beaked demon yanked the iron bar out in one clean pull, flinging a spray of blood. The ghastly hole sealed over in an instant, and he stood up as if nothing had happened.

That wasn’t Salaar’s healing magic. It was something more primitive, akin to an earthworm dividing or a salamander regenerating—a power drawn from the body itself.

…Is this guy truly human? Myss was not sure.

The bird-beaked demon turned toward Myss again, and Myss could feel the scrutiny behind the mask. It clung to his skin like burrs and showed no sign of letting go.

Amid the beat of wings, the figure slid into the shadows without a sound and vanished before their eyes.

Myss took a few steps to reach Salaar. He hauled him up and checked him over from head to toe. Luckily this fragile human was at least intact, with no parts missing.

“His physical strength is high, about one tenth of me at my peak. In strength alone, I’m not his match as I am now,” Salaar said gravely, patiently enduring Myss’s prodding. “And he didn’t chant a spell to either control the crows or heal his wound.”

“I know,” Myss replied tersely.

After being forced to change bodies, his power was roughly neck and neck with Salaar’s. His magic might not be that effective on the bird-beaked demon. He could only be sure of one thing: if they ran into that “demon” again, he would have to fight with everything he had, with no room to hold back in order to keep himself alive.

Could there really be demons in this world?

While the Demon Lord pondered, he pinched Salaar’s face and reached in to check his teeth and tongue. Salaar finally had enough and bit his finger.

……

Second floor of the Hammer Tavern.

“You two have guts,” Hammer said, chewing tobacco as he threw open the window. “Last time that guy showed up near the tavern, everyone was scared out of their wits.”

“Last time?” “You know him?”

Myss and Salaar asked almost in unison.

Hammer leaned at the window and looked out at the silhouette of the Lower City.

“He’s an unlucky sort,” he said with a touch of awe. “Huey told you about the strange illness in the Lower City, right? He appeared around the same time the illness did and showed himself to the patient twice.

The first time means the person has contracted the disease. The second time means the attack comes and the person dies. It’s no secret down here, but no one likes to mention it for fear of attracting him.”

“Oh,” Myss said. “So you never chatted with him.”

“…Well, he doesn’t seem very talkative.” Hammer gave a dry laugh and shot a glance at Salaar. “Not until your friend tackled him out the door tonight did we realize he’s not some kind of grim reaper.”

“We’re not friends,” Myss corrected.

Hammer raised his brows high and let his gaze travel between them a few times.

“All right, I get it. You two are in that kind of relationship,” he said with sudden understanding. “I can swap the single beds for a double.”

Myss: “…” 

Myss swallowed his pride. “Just think of us as friends.”

Hammer gave him an “understanding” look. “No need to be so reserved. No one here cares what anyone else does in their beds—”

“No need to trouble you. We’ll just push the beds together ourselves,” Salaar cut the topic short before it spiraled into more dangerous territory. “Do you have paper and a pen I can buy?”

Ten minutes later, Hammer returned to the room.

He brought a bottle of mead to help with sleep and a thick blank notebook. The cover was sheepskin with a distinct grain and was completely blank.

“I picked a blank ledger. Use it as you like,” Hammer said, setting down a quill, ink, and a bundle of fine charcoal sticks wrapped in rough cloth with a clatter.

He also threw in a bonus jar of sweet-smelling lube. After he left, Salaar promptly tossed it into the very back of a drawer.

Then he began to write.

The pen tip slipped over the parchment with a soft rustle. The ink became countless lines of text, the scripts varied as if written by different hands.

Myss found among them the correspondence between the young lord and the one called “Patience”.

The wording, the punctuation, even the scratched-out edits and the blurring from corpse fluid were perfectly reproduced. It seemed they didn’t need Huey to fetch the letters after all, since Salaar had copied every one of them into his mind.

Myss drank more than half the bottle of mead in slow gulps, just as Salaar finished recopying the letters.

“The young lord and ‘Patience’ last exchanged letters exactly two months ago,” he said as he turned the vellum notebook and pointed to a page where the ink was still wet.

The sweetness of the mead swirled on Myss’s tongue, and his head went fuzzy. With one hand braced on the table and half his weight leaning on Salaar, he tried to make out the words on the page.

Judging from the handwriting, this was a letter from “Patience” to Lord Karns—

[Dear Pilgrim, 

Perhaps you’re right. “Consciousness” is a privilege of the living, and what people call a “soul” doesn’t exist.

Death is so cruel that no one can call the dead back from eternal sleep. A revived body would be a walking corpse, and any soul that reappears would only be a composite afterimage patched together from memory.

Mother sends you her regards.

Looking back now, the summoning ritual ten years ago can’t be considered a success. I made a mistake, an irreparable one. I naively believed that I truly brought [illegible] back, yet in the end it was only [illegible].

[Large section illegible]

I want to stop, but I can’t. We always have to pay the price for our madness, do we not?

Mother sends you her regards, Mother sends you her regards, Mother sends you her regards.

This is the last letter I am sending you. At present I can scarcely think clearly, and I don’t know how long I can go on living. I have decided to meet death calmly and wait for it to step through my door again, the way it did ten years ago.

For me it’s no longer a heart-rending poison but a sweet release.

If back then [an entire line has been struck out] Mother sends you her regards. Mother sends you her regards.

Lastly, I will remember to say goodbye to our mutual friend. Thank him for introducing us. My exchanges with you have inspired me greatly.

Wishing you good health.

With love, 

from Patience.

P.S. Mother sends you her regards.]

Myss: “?”. Perhaps he had drunk a little too much.

The content of the letter was a bit absurd. The Demon Lord even hesitated for half a second, unsure whether to doubt his own mind or Patience’s.

“As you can see, two months ago ‘Patience’ had basically gone mad.”

Salaar pointed at the line “Mother sends you her regards”. The strokes there were clumsy yet gentle, at odds with Patience’s crisp hand, as if written by someone else.

“The timing is too coincidental. If the new plague in Rosha is connected to ‘Patience’…”

Salaar talked on for a while, and his shoulder grew heavier. Myss was half draped over it, giving off a fine snore, with a faint scent of mead lingering on the corners of his lips.

Myss clearly didn’t hold his liquor well. The Demon Lord would have to learn that humans can’t sample every edible thing they see.

Salaar scooped up the now limp Myss and tossed him without mercy onto the single bed. He yanked off Myss’s shoes with brisk efficiency, pulled the blanket over him, then began to worry. How had they arrived at this point?

At this time last year, he had still been battling one of Myss’s trivial tentacles that never wore shoes, and he had never imagined that the word “taking off shoes” would enter their relationship.

Back then Myss didn’t tire and wanted nothing… He simply existed with blinding clarity.

Now, the Demon Lord lay down when tired, slept when sleepy, and stuffed every edible thing he saw into his mouth. He was lively as he practiced “being alive”, but he wasn’t very adept at it.

Salaar couldn’t help looking at Myss again.

The Demon Lord slept curled like an infant, out cold. By reflex he had cocooned himself in the blanket, becoming a puffing bundle of cloth. His long gray hair spilled over the pillow, and the blue scarf tucked among it stood out conspicuously.

Salaar sat at the bedside, picked up the mead with only a little left, and took an unhurried sip.

…It was quite good.

Knock, knock! A gentle tapping suddenly sounded at the door.

“Salaar, Myss,” a soft female voice came through the door. “There was quite a noise in your room just now. Are you all right?”

Ah, that was probably the sound of him tossing Myss onto the bed.

She knew their names, so she was likely from the tavern, yet even so…

Salaar tiptoed to the door. He hid the dagger in his right hand behind his back and slowly opened the door with his left.

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The author has something to say:

I suddenly wish Jinjiang could support font effects, things like italics or strikethrough… I would really like some new ways to present text.

The Demon Lord can’t hold his liquor at all, while the Hero should be the sturdier drinker in theory.

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