Chapter 25: Hunter or Prey?

“You… did you guess something?” Garick swallowed with difficulty, his voice trembling.

Ailiya’s tone remained flat, without a hint of fluctuation. “Since the opponent was able to break through your defenses and instantly deal you such grave injuries, it means their strength is far above yours.”

She turned her head slightly to look at Garick on the bed.

“Then the question arises: if they had such overwhelming strength, why not just kill all of you to silence you? Instead, they left survivors, letting you drive the carriage all the way back to the estate, unobstructed.”

Garick’s eyes widened sharply, and his face, already pale from excessive blood loss, turned white as a sheet.

“Are you saying…” Garick’s lips quivered as a terrifying thought flashed through his mind, “those guys… let us come back on purpose?!”

“They knew full well that Lady Elsa is a potionist, and they knew that this type of high-level toxin cannot be cured by ordinary potions or healing magic.”

Ailiya calmly dissected the truth for him. “To save you, the Captain of the Guard, the Lady’s only choice was to leave the estate in person and go to the holy see in the city to seek help.”

Garick finally realized the situation.

He had become a pawn in the enemy’s hands.

A deep sense of powerlessness surged in his heart; Garick gritted his teeth, wishing he could punch himself.

“Get some rest.” Ailiya stood up and pushed the chair back into place. “All you can do now is not get in the way and try to stay alive.”

Watching Ailiya turn and walk toward the door, Garick called out weakly, “Where… where are you going?”

“To work, of course.”

Click, the door closed.

Meanwhile, on the second floor, in Leo’s room.

The fire in the fireplace was burning brightly, the firewood crackling, yet the temperature in the room did not seem to rise much. A stifling, indescribable tension permeated the air.

Leo lay on the table like a puddle of mud, his expression melancholic and irritable.

He carefully recalled his life over the past few years.

Although he was a bit foul-tempered and loved pranks, he swore that he had never done anything atrocious, nor had he offended any ruthless characters who would want him dead.

Usually, when he got into trouble, he was the one getting beaten up on his own.

“Ian…” Leo rested his chin on his arm and spoke in a muffled voice. “I think you would be better suited to go to the city gate and set up a stall as a diviner.”

Ian, who was standing by the window observing the outside, turned his head and pushed up his glasses, speechless. “Young Master, for no reason at all, why are you starting to be sarcastic again?”

‘I have a bad feeling about this,’ Leo thought.

Leo raised his head sorrowfully and looked at Ian. “You said if something were to happen, it would, and just the day before yesterday you were hypothesizing—look, today it’s already happened.”

He sighed, his voice carrying an undisguisable panic. “Uncle Garick is seriously injured, and the guard team is crippled.”

“Now even Mother has left the estate. If something happens at a time like this, there are only a few of us left here. If we run into an enemy so powerful that even you can’t block them, what can we use to fight back?”

“Rest assured, there won’t be that many unlucky incidents.” Ian smiled helplessly. “The primary duty of a diviner is to glimpse the future through the stars and magic, not to curse others.”

‘And those things I said to you earlier were called hypothetical questions, intended to give you a sense of crisis so you would study hard,’ Ian thought.

Leo curled his lip and muttered, “The good doesn’t come true, but the bad does—that’s a curse.”

“There is a huge difference; divination is foreseeing variables about to happen, while a curse is the active imposition of malicious causality…”

Ian pushed up his glasses and reflexively launched into a lengthy academic explanation. “As for hypotheses, that is logical deduction and taking precautions.”

Ian habitually wanted to share some common knowledge, but after the two of them traded a few sharp words, his voice suddenly stopped.

As a student of the Arcadia academy of magic, although he modestly claimed to be only a student of a remote branch, those who could get into that place had instincts for danger and magic power fluctuations that were far sharper than those of a greenhouse flower like Leo, who had never seen blood.

Just a moment ago, he felt an abnormal fluctuation of magic power.

Swish—!

He suddenly reached out and pulled the heavy curtain shut, completely blocking the last bit of daylight from outside.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

Leo was startled by his sudden movement and wanted to complain.

“Shh!” Ian immediately put a finger to his lips, his expression unprecedentedly serious. “Leo, stay in the room honestly, don’t go anywhere, and don’t walk around.”

“What’s wrong?” Leo looked at Ian’s look of facing a great enemy, his own heart pounding as well.

“There might be trouble knocking at the door.” Ian gripped the wand in his hand.

A few hundred feet away from the Kastian manor.

At the top of a very high bell tower spire.

Night had just fallen, and a mass of pitch-black shadows was silently clinging to the edge of the stone carvings.

Soon, the shadow, which resembled asphalt, twisted and gradually revealed a humanoid silhouette.

The Black-robed Man crouched on the slanted tiles, the night wind blowing his cloak with a snapping sound.

He took the long package from his back and placed it in front of him.

The rough linen was slowly unwound, revealing the true form inside:

a heavy firearm with an exaggerated design, radiating a metallic luster.

The barrel was extremely long, and the surface was densely covered with complex runes.

He skillfully pulled back the chamber, and with a click, he inserted a magic crystal emitting purple-black light.

The Black-robed Man slowly laid down, steadily resting the cold gun barrel on the gap of a stone carving.

He slowly pulled down his hood; in front of his right pupil, several rings of runes were slowly rotating and intersecting, emitting a faint, ghostly glow.

Through this eye, which had been augmented by magic, the distant Kastian manor instantly changed its appearance in his field of vision.

The original thick walls became translucent, and the flow of magic power and the distribution of heat from living beings within the entire estate were presented as clearly as thermal imaging in his view.

He saw that the doors and windows of the main building were tightly shut, all the curtains were drawn tight, and not even a single lamp was lit.

“Detected… so they’ve hidden away.”

The Black-robed Man pressed against the stock, the corners of his mouth curling into a cruel and disdainful sneer.

Hiding in the house was merely a few more layers of obstacles to him.

His gaze moved slowly, sweeping across the windows of the main building, past the corridors, and finally, fixed on the side of the fountain.

In the empty courtyard, there was one figure that was not hiding.

It was a Silver-haired girl wearing a maid outfit, holding a broom in her hand, calmly sweeping the fallen leaves by the fountain.

The surroundings were terrifyingly quiet, yet she acted like nothing was wrong, doing her chores.

A flicker of bloodlust flashed in the Black-robed Man’s eyes.

“The hunt has begun.”