Arc 2 - Chapter 37: End of Mission (1/3)

"Yurine, don't let him die!"

Yurine knew what she had to do. On her way to her mother, Sony had to survive and be delivered to the Wizarding Academy. Then she would be able to search for a way to get her mother back. To do this, she would keep Sony alive, even if it meant completely draining her mana.

During Yurine's healing spell, Sony was dying and distracting Yurine. Yurine held her with one hand while she poured healing mana over the wound with the other.

"Mr. Valarfin! Sivina! Please let's find her!"

Ana continued to shake Yu by the shoulders. She was scared and crying because her friend was in danger. Meanwhile, they had all forgotten about the puppet on the floor because they each had their own priorities.

Yu could not refuse her. Not only because she was sweet and beautiful, but also because he felt indebted to both Ana and Sivina for their contributions during his mission and did not want either of them to be harmed.

"Where did she go?"

"The direction the puppet came from!"

Ana started to run, thinking that Yu was coming after her, but Yu caught her and pointed at Yurine.

"You wait with her."

He didn't want to leave Yurine alone, if Ana was with her, Yurine would be safe. After all, Ana would do a much better job than him when it came to protecting someone.

He started running, leaving Yurine and Ana behind. He was running in the direction the puppet came from.

"Shit! What the fuck am I gonna do if the killer shows up?"

Yu wished he could sense mana. Yurine realized this as a rock fell on Yu's head during the fight and turned away.

After that, she also noticed Sharley throwing crystal swords and turned around and defended himself against them.

He hadn't asked her how she did it, but he had a strong hypothesis that she did it by sensing mana, and that every living creature, except Yu, had mana.

If Yu could sense mana, perhaps he could sense the mana in Sivina's body and locate her.

But Yu had no such qualities, so he kept running on a straight course, hoping to meet Sivina.

"It would be nice if Sivina could walk over there."

If she was killed by the killer and the killer survived, Yu would be in trouble. Maybe he could have fought the killer if Ana had been with him, but Yu didn't believe that his luck against the killer would have been as good as it was with Sharley.

"Fuck!" he yelled. "Why do I do such stupid things?"

At any other time he would not have gone deep into the forest alone. He thought of the creature in the village of Urta. If he met a monster now, he would die here.

"If I don't get a monster, I'll get a killer, fuck my luck!"

He felt his lungs burning with every breath he took. His spleen was also burning and signaling him to stop running, but Sivina's life was in danger, he couldn't stop.

"What are you going to do if you don't stop, you fucking Yu? Ow!"

He kept running while continuing to mutter to himself. He was tired, he had been running for nearly an hour and he was sleepless. Yurine's healing spell had given him a brief respite, but now the fatigue was taking a stronger hold.

"God damn it!"

He took a sudden sprint, feeling as if his heart was getting heavier. Hoping not to have an attack, he continued running on a straight course. As he ran, he noticed dents in two trees. Someone had stepped on them with their feet and the outer surface of the tree had collapsed inwards.

"How can you step on the tree like that?"

If the fingertips of the footprints on the trees were pointing upwards, he would have thought someone had kicked the tree, but with the fingertips pointing downwards, it was hard to tell.

After some thought, though, he realized that there was no need to be surprised. He was used to such scenes and had seen worse.

In the high school he went to, there were maniacs who managed to shit on the ceiling of the toilet, while it was considered normal for people to walk on trees.

"But Sivina must have done it, she's ahead."

As he was about to move forward confidently, he was stopped by the footprints in the tree in front of him. Had she been thrown backwards?

He stopped and thought, should he turn back? The footprint had made him disoriented.

"But I would have seen it in the back, I have to keep going."

He started running again, thinking it would be a better idea to follow the route he had taken. If Sivina had gone in a different direction after that point, he would have been going in the wrong direction, but he had no choice. He kept running.

"Sivina!"

A few meters from an alcove there were two people lying on the ground. The one with red hair was dressed in tattered clothes, the other in blood-soaked pajamas.

The red-haired man had a knife stuck in his throat. He had to be the killer, the sight of the knife made him sure that he was dead for sure.

Sivina was lying a few meters away from him. Her body was covered in blood and there was a wound on her stomach. Sivina was foaming at the mouth, he opened her mouth with his finger to stop her from choking and turned her head to the ground.

"Sivina! Hey!"

With one hand on his finger, he put the other to her throat and checked her pulse. Her pulse was so slow, Sivina could die at any moment. He picked her up and turned in the direction he had come from. If she wasn't healed with a healing spell soon, she would die.

Even his own weight was too much for Yu, and now he was carrying a sixty-kilogram girl in his arms. His center of gravity slumped forward, and Yu had to make an extra effort to keep his balance. If he wasn't tired he would have been fine carrying her, but because he was tired Sivina felt much heavier than she was.

But he was responsible for one life. He didn't want to kill one more person. So he had to run.

"Faster!"

This was the highest speed he could run. Even he himself did not know how he could run after so much fatigue. It was only a matter of life and he was doing what he had to do. If he slowed down, Sivina would die. He had to run.

When he came to the area where he had left Yurine behind, he realized that others were there.

Komodors, rinos, horses and wagons pulled by them, along with dozens of guards and their pursuers, poured into the area.

Yu's eyes searched for Yurine as several water and earth mages tried to extinguish the flames on the ground.

He saw a white figure being carried with a tail behind it. Meanwhile, Ana was crying in front of him.

"SIVINA! SIVINA!"

He knelt down and took Sivina's dangling hand. Another man came to Yu's side and Yu left Sivina with him.

"Wounded, poisoned," he said and ran to the white figure being carried to the wagon, leaving Sivina and Ana behind. As he ran to Yurine, he pushed the two men trying to hold him back and jumped onto the wagon in one leap.

"Yurine!"

Yurine's eyes were closed, Yu immediately checked her pulse.

"She's alive."

She had a pulse and was alive, as the man in the white coat who came to him said. Despite this, Yu couldn't take a deep breath. He kept checking Yurine's heartbeat and breathing again and again, never letting go of her hand.

When the men who had stood in front of Yu and tried to hold him back came up to them, Yu looked at them.

"I'm her father."

At first the men looked at each other in disbelief that Yu looked so young for a man with a nine-year-old daughter, but then they nodded.

"Sorry, we didn't know that."

As they left, he looked at the man in the white coat who came up to him. He was checking Yurine's temperature.

"What happened to her?"

"He's run out of mana. Even if she is a mage, she is a child after all, so it is not unexpected that she fainted from exhaustion. Don't worry, there is nothing physically wrong with her. She will just have a very long sleep."

"Is it too long? How long?"

"A day and a half or two days."

"How will she be fed?"

"She'll probably be given honey. Don't worry, she won't die or be maimed."

When the man checked Yurine and was satisfied that there was nothing he needed to intervene in, he started to move away from the carriage Yu was on.

"Wait a minute!" Yu called out to the man. "Are you a physician?"

"Yes?" the man replied.

"She's going to be really good, isn't she?" Yu could have kept asking the question until morning.

"Yes," the man smiled. "She'll be fine, she's fine."

As the physician left, Yu looked around. There was another wagon in the direction he was going, and on top of it two healing mages were trying to keep Sivina alive while Ana was out of breath from crying.

Yu took one last look at Yurine and jumped out of the carriage and went to Sivina. Ana noticed him and looked at him with teary eyes, then turned her face back to Sivina.

"Please, not too many people."

Yu meekly turned back the way he had come as the physician from earlier warned him. Two guards grabbed Ana and tried to pull her away from Sivina.

"You are distracting the mages, please don't make this difficult."

It broke his heart to see Ana crying, so he went back to Yurine without looking at her anymore. Then he lay down next to her and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he hoped everyone was alive.