Chapter 56

I decided to test him once. Leaning back, I stared at the black mage, curious to see how he would react.

“Well, well. So I was right after all. How could you possib—!”

“Silence.”

I cut him off with killing intent directed straight at him. It was sharp and heavy enough to clamp his mouth shut. Since I focused it only on him, no one else in the carriage felt a thing.

“Hmph…”

A faint murmur slipped past the black mage’s lips. His grip tightened around his staff.
It still wasn’t time to reveal that I had come from the Demon Realm. That truth would wait until he was fully mine—until I could trust him.

“Hyah!”

With the coachman’s cry, the carriage rolled forward. After a long time, the sun outside had already sunk low, the scenery darkening. Beside me, John had closed his eyes and dozed off. The black mage still fiddled restlessly with his staff, his movements betraying a nervous edge.

From outside came the coachman’s calm “Whoa there,” and the carriage slowed to a full stop.

“Let’s rest here for the night. We’ll head out again in the morning. Everyone can sleep inside the carriage.”

“Mmh, what’s that?”

John rubbed his eyes at the voice from outside and looked at me.

“Nothing. Ignore it.”

I answered flatly.

“Mm, okay. Good night then.”

That guy lived such an easy life. Nothing seemed to rattle him. John wasn’t normal. Neither was the black mage. Then again… neither was I.

“Yeah.”

That was all I said before leaning against the wall of the carriage. With my eyes closed, I sent a voice transmission to the black mage.

[Do not ever speak of where I came from.]

“Well… maybe, maybe.”

Maybe? Bold of him.

Either way, tomorrow would be the real test.

The next morning, I awoke to a faint vibration. Through the carriage window, sunlight streamed in, bright and warm. To my left, John lay sprawled in the same carefree posture, muttering nonsense in his sleep. His slurred mumbling made it impossible to catch the words.

But his sleep-talking was vigorous enough to shake his whole body around. At one point, his hand shot out toward the black mage. If he didn’t dodge, that hand would smack him square in the face.

Though sluggish and unfocused, the movement was still easy to avoid for anyone paying attention. The black mage simply tilted his head aside and then swung his staff.

Crack—

The gray staff slammed into John’s skull. A hard, splintering sound rang out, followed by a groan.

“Urgh…”

With John’s skills, he should’ve been able to avoid even in his sleep, his body reacting on instinct. But the black mage’s strike had been too fast. For a mage to move like that—he was no mere scholar. He was a battle mage, and a trained one at that.

“Ugh, why’d you hit me?”

Clutching his head, John sat up and looked around, then noticed the staff pointed his way. He frowned and started to protest. Normally, mercenaries would’ve retaliated immediately. But against a black mage? Who knew what would happen.

Being struck in the head with a staff while sleeping—that too, brutally hard—and the culprit was a black mage. How would a mercenary react? Fight back? Or just swallow the pain? My idle thoughts scattered when the mage spoke.

“Sleep quietly.”

His voice was as eerie as ever. He hugged his staff and went back to rubbing it obsessively. His gaze never strayed from it, not even for a second.

What was with that staff? Yes, it carried faint mana from another dimension, but compared to the reserves in his own body, it was negligible. No reason to obsess over it like that.

I probed for any hidden enchantments, but found nothing. If it truly concealed itself even from my eyes, then the one who inscribed it had skills rivaling a dragon’s.

“Quiet? Ah! Hahaha, sorry about that.”

John rubbed the sore spot on his head, thinking it over. Then, as if he finally understood what the black mage meant, he laughed sheepishly and apologized. But what if that swing had carried killing intent? Unless the staff was forged of something impossibly durable, it would’ve been sliced apart instantly. After all, in sheer physical speed, John far outstripped the black mage. That much was obvious.

Especially with those chakrams of his.

I let their little spat fade from my mind and turned my attention to the carriage interior. It was a plain rectangular box, nothing ornate. Two windows sat on either side, and where the sunlight from both met in the center, the space was unusually bright.

As my gaze wandered, it naturally landed back on the black mage. The mana flowing from his body placed him at the 5th circle, but his actual mastery was only 4th-class. Was that mana something granted through a contract? Or had he spent years painstakingly filling himself up? Either way, he stood at the level of a 4th-class master—still one step short of the enlightenment needed to reach 5th-class.

John, meanwhile, was a complete Sword Expert. In truth, the distinction between Sword Expert and Sword Master came down to a single test. I remembered the paper they handed out when I first joined the mercenary guild: if you could fire an Aura Blade through your sword, you were a Sword Master. If not, you were only a Sword Expert.

And with chakrams, projecting an Aura Blade was far harder than with a sword. John would have to put in serious effort to ever reach Sword Master.

Hm? Something unnatural brushed against my senses. An odd disturbance, close by.
I was still trying to place it when the frantic neighing of horses cut through the air.

“Ne-e-eigh!”

“Ne-e-e-e-eigh!”

The team outside went wild, and the carriage shook violently. Looking out the window was useless; the small panes gave no clear view. But that strange energy—I could feel it distinctly. Not far away at all. One, two, three… eleven, twelve. Wait. Twelve? Then…

“The horses won’t go any further. This is the end of the line. Just walk a little from here, and we’ll wait for you at a safe distance.”

The coachmen’s voices overlapped outside. Right after, I heard what had to be the knights from the subjugation party.

“Fine, just don’t go running off scared later! Hahaha!”

“Yeah, don’t chicken out! Puhahaha!”

One burst of laughter turned into many, spreading through the group. Well, laughter was one way to bleed off nerves. Judging by their voices, they’d already disembarked.

“Kain. Let’s go. You too, Black Mage.”

John opened the carriage door and called back to us. Strange—was he actually looking out for the mage now? I pushed the thought aside and stepped down. Sunlight poured down from above, but as soon as my boots hit the ground, a heavy, stifling pressure pressed in around me.

It was a mountain. A massive mountain loomed ahead, blocking the way.

Before leaving the mansion, the mayor had said this place was supposed to be an open plain. And indeed, it stretched wide enough that the horizon should’ve been visible. Yet at its edge, an enormous mountain cut it off.

The ridgeline extended left and right, forming an unbroken wall of peaks. Behind us, the carriage rattled away across flat land. But turning back again, I saw clearly that we had entered a kind of dead end, shut in on both sides by towering ranges.

It felt as if the mountains had closed around us. The space was broad, yes, but the sensation of being enclosed gnawed at me.

Glancing back, I spotted two men standing some distance behind the retreating carriage, watching over us. Witnesses, just as the mayor had promised. Or perhaps… guards.

“Oh-ho, if minotaurs came at us from all directions here, that’d be dangerous, wouldn’t it?”

John’s voice was bright, but there was a flicker of genuine unease beneath it. And he wasn’t wrong. If minotaurs surged in from every side, the situation would be dire. Not for me personally, but for everyone else, certainly.

With the way people were scattered loosely across the plain, the danger grew worse. True, the fighters here were skilled enough to regroup quickly once the monsters appeared—but even so, on such open ground, it would come down to the minotaurs’ speed. And they were not known for being slow. This was hardly a favorable setup.

“Good. Good. It’s been a while since I’ve had a taste.”

A taste? Did he mean blood? Why did that thought come to mind so naturally?
Beside me, the black mage spoke in his gloomy voice, head bowed slightly. And strangely, it suited him perfectly. The very image of a black mage: a figure steeped in shadows, an ominous weight hanging heavy in the air around him.

As I made that simple judgment of him, I caught the approach of five presences from behind.