“A Wizard…?”
A surprised murmur spread throughout the knights. The man exhaled and turned back around, smiling with a slightly dazed expression as he lowered his hand.
“I apologize. Was anyone hurt?”
“What is the meaning of this?”
At that moment, a sharp blade was placed on the man’s neck along with a cold voice. Before anyone knew what was happening, Ash had approached and pointed his sword at the man. The tip of the sword was cold, s if it could pierce the flesh at any moment.
“Huh? Ah, wait a minute!”
The embarrassed man quickly raised his hands.
“Let’s talk peacefully for a moment…”
“You protected the monster that attacked us. We can’t let a suspicious person roam around freely.”
Ash mercilessly started to interrogate the man, purple eyes glaring at him coldly.
“I will ask one more time. Identify yourself. If it was your intention for that monster to attack us…”
“Wait, wait! I know I look very suspicious, but I never meant for it to attack the knights!”
“Why should I believe you?”
“I have something to prove my identity!”
The man quickly searched his pockets and took out a silver badge.
“My name is Nathan. I am a top graduate of the Helon Royal Academy of Magic.”
All wizards must go through a formal academic process in order to be recognized as a wizard. The badge he took out was issued upon graduation from the academy, it was basically an identification card for a wizard.
The pattern engraved on the outside of the badge had a special magic, making it impossible to camouflage. Ash recognized the pattern; however, his eyebrows rose at the next words.
“And this monster is my test subject. It would be very problematic if it were to die, so I was protecting it.”
“An experiment? Then why is it running around wildly instead of being locked in a cage?”
“Oh, that’s…”
The man stretched out his explanation as if he didn’t want to finish. At Ash’s narrowed eyes, he quickly confessed the truth.
“Actually, I left the cage door open to conduct my experiment, but I fell asleep in the middle… It looks like it had escaped in the meantime.”
“…”
Everyone who heard his words fell silent, overcome with a feeling of absurdity. How could he just fall asleep during an experiment? And with a mid-level monster right in front of him, too? Everyone was shocked, then disbelief and suspicion rose once again.
The Tarthan’s footsteps were loud enough to shake the ground. Even of he had fallen asleep, wouldn’t there have been a very loud ruckus as he left the cage?
The man chuckled nervously, scratching the back of his head in embarrassment.
“Once I fall asleep, I have a hard time waking up… I’ telling the truth!”
As Ash and the other knights continued to look at him with distrust clear in their eyes, the man made an aggrieved expression. He had worked hard to prove his innocence. He had even told them how long he had been on this mountain and what he was doing.
There were many different types of wizards, and often they chose to live in secluded, remote places that no one knew about. This wizard was no different, living a secluded life in the mountain they had come to camp and train on.
When Ash withdrew his sword, the man was finally able to take a deep breath. Afterwards, he cleaned up the mess that had been caused by his experiment, using magic to lift the fallen trees and flatten the dug up ground.
“Well then, I’ll just be going…”
The wizard who had completed the restoration of the land, looked around and started to back away drawing closer to the monster. Then, initially appearing to become increasingly blurry, they eventually disappeared completely.
“Hey! You!”
The knights shouted, pointing fingers at the disappearing wizard.
“Let him be. I’ve confirmed his identity and will be contacting the academy later to verify.”
Ash said this with a small sigh. The wizard was a stranger person in many ways, but he didn’t seem to be plotting anything. If Ash had wanted to, he could have easily tracked him down, but since there were no casualties, he decided to carry on with the training camp. There was also no significant damage to the camp, which was thanks to him for subduing the monster so quickly before it could get inside.
The first night of training camp passed by noisily.
On the second night of training camp, after the day had ended, Elaine quickly left. After the wizard had disappeared last night, she had come to a decision, this was the reason she was now sprinting through the woods.
Her destination was the wizard’s hideout.
After all the commotion, the wizard had simply disappeared, taking the monster with him via teleportation. Teleportation was a magic that moved the subject to a pre-designated location. The longer the distance traveled, the longer the casting took. The shorter the distance, the shorter it took. The wizard yesterday had disappeared almost instantly.
That means there is a designated teleportation location close to the camp. At least, somewhere within these mountains.
The wizard had said that he lived in hiding among the mountains. It was obvious that any place within the mountain that could be designated as a teleportation location could also be a hiding place. Moreover, if you traced back the route the monster had come from as it ran to the camp, there was a high probability of being able to find his hiding place.
Although the wizard erased most of his tracks with magic, there were still subtle traces that remained. If she could reach the hiding place in this way, she would save herself the trouble of having to search the entire mountain to find him. As she followed the traces, a cliff appeared, and the tracks disappeared completely.
She stopped running, then picked up several rocks and threw them toward the cliffs. The stones fell down the long cliff, and then…
Thud, thunk, rattle
Several of them rolled in thin air, making loud noises. It was as if they were caught by an invisible object.
