Chapter 59
“—Grrrroooowl!”
After the cry of what seemed to be the leader, the howls of the other wolves began to join in one by one.
A suffocating pressure filled the air, making the servant’s skin tingle and tightening around the back of his neck.
Cold sweat instantly formed and ran down his forehead. His frozen legs trembled violently.
The servant instinctively understood.
That howl had been a declaration of territory by a giant wolf.
It was a warning that every enemy in this area would be bitten to death.
The plan had gone terribly wrong.
‘I… I’m going to die.’
There wasn’t even a single strand of the giant wolf’s tail in sight. Yet it felt as if one wrong step would result in his throat being torn open. Fear consumed his entire body.
In the end, he collapsed to the ground. Lionel passed by him.
“If you can’t walk, crouch and hide under that tree. Try not to make any noise.”
“Y-Yes?”
“When strength returns to your legs, run toward headquarters. And don’t use the fireworks you hid. You’ll only provoke the beasts.”
“Y-You knew…?”
Ignoring the servant, who had started hiccupping in fear, Lionel grabbed the servant’s quiver and began running toward where the screams were coming from.
“Y-Your Highness! It’s dangerous!”
The words burst out before he could even think.
But Lionel ran as if he hadn’t heard anything.
“Your Highness! Please don’t go!”
No one had spoken kindly to him. So why did he suddenly regret what he had done?
He hated his trembling legs. After calling out a few more times, the servant finally pulled out a firework and set it off.
“The Second Prince! His Highness has gone to fight the giant wolves!”
He kept shouting.
After some time—his voice nearly gone and only hoarse sounds coming out—he heard approaching footsteps.
“Is someone there?”
They were imperial knights assigned to security for today’s hunting competition. Their bodies clearly showed signs of fierce battle.
“Here! There’s someone injured!”
“Can you stand?”
“I-I’m fine. More importantly, His Highness! The Second Prince went toward the giant wolves. We must hurry and save—!”
“We know.”
“What?”
The two knights helped him to his feet, their expressions grim.
“We were just there.”
“Y-You were…?”
Only then did the servant realize their injuries were from beasts. He could even see bandages beneath their armor.
With injuries like that, they should have been resting. Instead, they had done basic first aid and returned to deal with the aftermath.
“W-What happened? Why were giant wolves here in the first place?”
“A cub wandered down here. The adults likely came as a pack searching for it.”
The servant already knew that much. The hunters had said they would use a cub as bait.
“But someone at the hunting competition mistook the cub for a silver fox and shot it with an arrow.”
“Oh no… The giant wolves…”
“Yes. Their sense of smell is sharp to begin with. The scent of their own blood made them even more sensitive.”
Especially the blood of a cub. The wolves must have gone completely mad.
The servant understood the disaster.
‘The cub must have escaped—or been lost.’
Exhausted, it had been shot. If it had been an adult wolf, a normal arrow wouldn’t have pierced its hide. But it was a cub, so it was injured—and this chaos followed.
‘That’s why they howled!’
Giant wolves moved in packs because of their strong bonds as family and companions.
And someone had hurt one of their cubs?
If everything had gone according to plan—if they had harmed only Lionel in a quiet place and then returned the cub—the casualties might have been limited to him alone, or at most a handful of people.
But once the cub bled, the wolves would try to kill everyone in this area. Anyone within hearing distance of that howl was as good as dead.
And most likely—
“I-Is His Majesty safe?”
The wolves’ declared territory might include the headquarters where the Emperor was staying.
If the Emperor were even slightly injured—
‘This won’t be overlooked. They’ll investigate everything!’
As the servant trembled at the thought of being charged with treason, a knight gave him some relief.
“His Majesty is safe. The Second Prince took the wolf cub and lured the wolves away.”
“Lured them? Where?”
The knights shook their heads.
“We only know it was in the opposite direction of the lake.”
“A pursuit team has been organized to follow their tracks…”
Their faces darkened. They dared not speak ill of a prince, but the servant understood what they left unsaid.
The Second Prince would not return unharmed.
He felt it too.
* * *
“Alright!”
I put down my fountain pen and lifted the notebook filled with magic formulas high above my head.
Eunice looked at me.
“Did you learn a new spell again today?”
“Yep! I’ve got the feeling. It’s perfect!”
“What kind of feeling?”
She asked again, curious.
“Isn’t magic different in theory and in practice? Don’t you only know if you’ve mastered it after actually casting it?”
“That’s true. You don’t really know until you try it. But I’ve spent the last five years making magic tools, remember?”
Five years of crafting magic tools meant converting simple formulas into complex magic circuits.
If a spell only needed “1+1=2,” making a magic tool was like turning it into a tangled, complicated equation.
I had spent years adding unnecessary calculations to create magic tools. Extracting only the necessary formulas for a pure spell should be easy.
This wasn’t baseless confidence.
It was like someone who had dived underwater without equipment their whole life to catch shellfish being confident they could swim freestyle.
“Of course, guessing and actually using it are different.”
“Then when you receive mana from the Second Prince next time, try casting it.”
“Mm… no. I can’t use this one.”
“What? Why?”
“Well…”
I rolled my eyes before answering.
“It’s Hellfire.”
“H-Hellfire?”
Eunice blinked.
“The fire spell known for its overwhelming destructive power? The worst fire-element attack magic?”
“Huh? I don’t think it’s the worst…”
Though it could only be canceled by the caster and would burn the target to ashes unless stopped—so maybe “worst” fit.
“It is the worst! The Fire Magic Tower registered it as a forbidden spell!”
“What? Forbidden? When? Why? I didn’t hear about this! And how do you know when I don’t?”
“I always read the newsletters from the five magic towers.”
“Oh.”
I had told Eunice to read those quarterly newsletters for me. I didn’t want to read them myself—seeing others freely use magic annoyed me.
But they sometimes included stories about my master or reviews of magic tools I developed. So I asked her to summarize anything interesting.
“Hellfire being forbidden… definitely not something past me would have cared about.”
“From now on, I’ll tell you immediately if a spell gets registered as forbidden. Actually, I’ll go make a list of all forbidden spells right now.”
“Thanks.”
Eunice left at once.
Alone, I looked down at the notebook containing the Hellfire formula and sighed.
‘I really wanted to try it once.’
A spell that relentlessly chases the designated target until it burns them to ash—how cool was that?
But it was dangerous. Cast on a person, it guaranteed death.
With reluctance, I tore out the page with the Hellfire formula.
‘Still… maybe I could try it somewhere no one’s watching?’
Leaving that lingering thought behind.
* * *
Whoosh. Crackle.
A massive wall of blazing fire surrounded the giant wolves, threatening to swallow them whole.
“Grrroooowl!”
Trapped inside, the wolves desperately tried to escape the thick wall of flames.
But as if mocking them, the fire danced with the wind, growing larger, thicker, and taller.
The heat on the cheeks and forehead was real. The surrounding bushes and trees had caught fire and were burning fiercely.
If not extinguished quickly, it would become a wildfire and destroy the entire area.
Lionel knew that. Yet he could not move carelessly.
Not because he was trapped inside the flames with the wolves—
But because—
“Peep! Peep-peep!”
That tiny blue bird flying high above, chirping as if laughing at the scene—
Was the one who had created this fierce inferno.