Stirred up by sneaky gusts of wind, the crunchy shifting of dry leaves underfoot tangled with the rustles of fresh ones overhead, merging into a symphony of the night. The black-haired duo scurried to the wooden guardian statue at the cleared ground where the class had taken place. They were currently within the safe zone of the forest mandated by the Academy to be swept clean of any real dangers to the students—wildlife, unbound Spirit Familiars, and alike.

  From the novel, she knew Raine had headed east, where he stumbled upon both the mage who had cast the spell and the artifact later on. It was clearly the work of his Protagonist Role that had him fated to all things grand, whether good or bad.

  “Before you ask, the ‘first gift from my father’ part is nonsense. Trust me when I say the duke doesn’t care that much about me at all. Elves value ancestral connections. At least most of them do, according to what I’ve heard. He didn’t even let me finish, though...” Alira had a bad feeling about how agreeable Professor Sigor had been, even with how suspicious she was.

  “I don’t care,” Raine said. Alira might have believed it if she hadn’t noticed how tense his shoulders were. “When do you plan to explain how this forest has anything to do with my mother? Tomorrow?”

  Alira turned away, batting her eyelashes as she counted the number of leaves overhead. She was slowly but surely leveling up the skill of feigning indifference and acting clueless as if she didn’t even feel the burning gaze of his golden eyes. “I told you we’re here to look for something. You’ll know exactly what it is the moment you see it.”

  “Try anything funny, and you won’t like how it will end.” Raine threatened.

  It would work if she didn’t know from the novel that he wouldn’t hurt a fly unless it did something to deserve it. Killing his mom, for example. Even failed assassination attempts on his own life didn’t count when the assassins were simply desperate people doing desperate things to feed their families. There had been many—alas, frustrating—instances where he’d let off minor villains simply because they hadn’t crossed his vague bottom lines.

  Too nice for his own good.

  Alira freely rolled her eyes since he likely couldn’t see her face in the low light. “Puh-lease, I’m the defenseless, cute little cat-girl, not you, mister.”

  At his utter speechlessness, Alira couldn’t help her curiosity and used Narrate on Raine even though she entirely expected it to fail. And it did fail when golden runes refused to show up.

  Hmm.

  Alira wondered if this could mean anything to support the theory that a Scene equaled a day. There should still be a few hours before midnight if she wasn’t wrong.

  The walk felt longer than it was with just the two of them. With neither of them being chatterboxes, all noises from the living died down as they dived deeper into the arms of the forest. Alira curled her tail to wrap it around her leg. She’d hate for anything to suddenly pop up and drag her away from the outstretched appendage.

  Despite internally repeating to herself that the forest was empty in this section—though it wasn’t exactly reassuring to be completely on their own either—Alira found herself jumping at every soft whistle of the woods. She wouldn’t be this spooked out if she had been alone; her anxiety came from the trouble magnet in a human body scouting in front of her.

  If only my mana affinity were good enough for me to deal with the damned magic spell...

  From the hollow darkness ahead, a featureless face emerged as bluish light from Raine’s artifact shone upon its dark wooden structure. Alira squawked—for half a second, she’d sworn the protagonist’s aura had summoned a cursed demon. Heat rushed to her cheeks as she realized it was just yet another guardian status, feeling glad Raine couldn’t see her flustered state. Unfortunately, she knew he could and did hear her from the amused sniffle that escaped him.

  Alira pretended it didn’t happen and pretended she didn’t hear him.

  “Ahem,” she started, fake clearing her throat. “From here, we go left. The thing we’re looking for is within the safe zone, at the border of the lecture area.” An abrupt pause for dramatic measure, before she added, “That’s what I saw.”

  “Let’s hope your eyes or whatever you’re ‘seeing’ with are working fine,” Raine said, taking a sharp turn. “We’re about half an hour from the border. Let’s hurry up before Professor Sigor catches up.”

  “Alright. How about we split up to cover more ground?” Alira said, testing the water. The spell was somewhere to the north of the cave. It would be perfect if she could nudge Raine there. “Your water magic thing glows, right? You can give your artifact to me. I promise to protect it with my life.”

  Raine kept silent for a moment. She could only hear the imaginary sound of the gears in his brain turning. “No.”

  “Oh, come on. You said it yourself that we don’t have time.”

  As the two followed down a faint path cleared of leaves to the eastern border, a conspicuous tree with two branched trunks showed up on the side. Raine had a bloody gush on his side as he escaped from one of the cult members when he passed by this tree. They were nearing the destination.

  “No means no. Do you want to hear it in Rafelian? Ha’ek.”

  “Huh?” Alira stared at Raine, speechless and dumbfounded. From what she recalled, Rafelian was the main language of the Rafel Kingdom on the Eastern Continent. “That’s so random. Why Rafelian?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  Raine turned and shoved the artifact right in her face, taking a good, long look as Alira squinted at the bright light. He hummed, mostly to himself, before turning the light to shine back onto the path. “You really don’t know that you have Eastern blood in you? Your mother.”

  Oh, her mother. The one she made up about dying in the hybrid dungeon. Alira wondered whether her character backstory already existed, or her lies had woven them into existence.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  Guess I’ll never truly find out about the extent of my Role, at least for a good while...

  “Creep,” Alira said, huffing. “Doing a background check on an innocent young maiden. Tsk. Tsk.”

  Raine tensed up slightly. It would have gone unnoticed if she hadn’t been staring a hole into his back. “Anyone can tell. Even without special means...”

  Right. Black hair.

  The Western continent had all shades of the rainbow for hair, but apparently, black was only for the people of the East. Some novel logic.

  Fine.

  Since she couldn’t convince him, they might as well take care of the spell first. Then, she could ditch him to go snatch the artifact.

  Alira subtly directed Raine to where the spell setup should be, looking out for any sinister-looking magic circles and evil sacrificial rituals. Her feet began to ache from walking for what felt like hours. Still, no matter where she looked, there were just trees and shrubs.

  She knew from the mage’s mandatory villain dialogs that he had set up the spell months in advance, waiting for the right moment. Yet, the two found nothing for a long time. Alira couldn’t help but begin to feel the need to rush. Soon, Professor Sigor might come after them. She needed to find and bind with the artifact to secure it.

  Should I forget about the spell and find the artifact first?

  Alira shook her head. No. The spell was more important. Just a bit more, maybe. She needed the artifact just so she could push Raine down the path of alchemy. In contrast, lives were on the line with the spell. Lives that once lost would haunt her all the way back home if she failed to do something about them. If she couldn’t resolve it on her own tonight, she would have to inform the professors, which would definitely raise a dozen eyebrows. That’d make things more difficult for her.

  Just when the familiar heat of anxiety coiled up in her stomach, along with the urge to chew on her finger, Alira froze in her step. Raine, who had likely been paying attention to her every move, stopped in his tracks as well.

  “What?” he asked.

  Alira stooped down, sitting on her knees. She scented something. Not a real scent, but the feeling of an unrecognizable smell.

  “I just had a feeling that something’s around. Hey, aren’t you the mage? Stop slacking and sniff it out.” Though it tasted bitter to admit it, Raine was obviously the better alchemist and mage than her. So, the fact that he didn’t notice the obvious shift in the air meant he wasn’t taking this seriously at all.

  The taller male—actually female, but you get it—stood still for a long time. Who knew if he was concentrating or wordlessly seething from the damage to his pride.

  “You asleep?” Alira asked, stepping toward Raine to wave her hand in front of him.

  “Don’t move!” Raine placed a heavy hand on top of her head, forcing her to a halt.

  Alira swatted the hand away. “Geez. Alright. I know how to listen to words.”

  “No, I mean, we’re in the middle of a magic spell. I sense strings of mana around. Triggering any of them might make the spell go off.” Raine waved around the artifact to get a look, but there was nothing to see.

  Seriously? Alira’s muscles tensed up, imagining a web of invisible lasers around the two of them. What the heck. Why was there an auto trigger? Why would the cultists make the spell go off before they had arrived? The Lock spell could simply be broken by destroying the medium if the caster himself weren’t around, and this would only inform the Academy about the invasion and put them on guard.

  Still, they should try not to trigger it anyway—just to be safe.

  “Um,” Alira called out, considering how she could go about it. “I have a feeling that the spell isn’t that dangerous. We could just focus on finding the medium—that’s where your answer is, by the way.”

  “That’s—” Raine stopped mid-sentence, head snapping toward the side.

  A rustle sounded from a bush nearby. The ears on top of Alira’s head twitched. She heard it too. Even more clearly. It was someone. Raine extended his arm across Alira’s chest, instinctively shielding her from whatever it was.

  The bush shook further, as if the person was trying and failing to keep themselves hidden.

  “Come out! We know you’re there,” Alira said. She had no way to deal with them, but with the protagonist acting as her guard, she was fearless, especially when only a single opponent was involved.

  Raine glared at her as he always did, but still moved to cover her smaller frame behind his. “Come out unless you mean harm,” he said.

  What could only be described as a pitiful whimper came from the spot before a head of bright purple came to view, with the rest of the person slowly showing up like a slideshow transition. Alira let out an ‘oh’, peeping from Raine’s side.

  “Miss Lillian?” Raine said before she could.

  The guilt on Lillian’s small face shifted to a bright joy. “Y-You know my name?”

  Raine nodded, taking a careful step to the side, resigning from his short-lived career as Alira’s knight. “I do. What are you doing here, Miss Orllel? Alone at that, too...”

  Lillian frantically shook her head like a wet puppy trying to shake off water. “No, no. Lillian is fine. I came because I was worried about you, Raine. The forest is very dark,” she said. Then proceeded to plainly turn toward Alira as if to make her point.

  Really? Alira tried not to sigh. She couldn’t help wondering how Lillian would react if the girl knew her prince charming was also a girl.

  Instead, Alira grabbed Raine’s arm, trying to get him to deal with the more urgent matter. Oh. Nice Muscles. She took another squeeze just because. Raine didn’t seem to care about her half-groping at all, focusing on feeling the mana from the spell to pinpoint where the medium was.

  Lillian’s eyes almost popped out of their sockets seeing Alira and Raine clinging close together like they couldn’t afford to separate themselves. Alira didn’t care until she noticed Lillian shifting. She barely managed to put her hand up in an attempt to stop the girl while Raine had just opened his mouth when the purple-haired girl took a large stride—then froze.

  All three of them heard an unmistakable sharp snapping of a string.

  “Oh, dear.” Alira exhaled at the panic-stricken girl who no doubt knew she had messed up somehow. Seeing Lillian’s already pale face becoming ghastly dull with panic, she felt the need to add, “Don’t worry. It just means we now know where the source is. The spell is not dangerous at all—”

  A sharp screeching similar to nails on a chalkboard rang through the dead of the forest.

  “Don’t worry,” Alira repeated. “It’s just the spell going off. We can destroy the medium and free—”

  She wasn’t given enough time to feel irritated when something interrupted her yet again. Blood red glow leaked out from underneath the layers of leaves beneath their soles. It was the Lock spell going off as she said. From now on, they just had to follow the light and find the medium to destroy it. Simple enough. Right.

  If only she didn’t feel her stomach drop with a terrible premonition. Was it something like the spider sense, but cat version? Alira’s heart drummed, trying to beat out of her ribs in an attempt to escape, and ran away by itself. Without understanding the reason, her body moved on its own to yank Raine by his shirt, pulling him away from where he stood.

  A sharp object whooshed through the air, slicing across the spot Raine had been a second ago. Blades, no, nails. Long, sword-like nails extended from a hooded figure’s hand, having emerged from the center of the spell within a blink.

  A pair of white hands grabbed onto the man’s face tightly, looking closely, it was actually a porcelain mask shaped to resemble hands. The trademark of the Retrievers.