Chapter 151: The Magic Gemstone
Evan's blade drove into the werewolf's body, but the creature's instinctive dodge kept the strike from finding anything vital. Evan gave the blade a twist regardless, vital hit or not, and withdrew as he stepped back — enough to make it count. The werewolf let out an agonized howl, blood pouring from its stomach, fully lucid again at last. Evan expected it to press the attack — instead, it turned and fled.
Startled for a moment, Evan gave chase at once. Jessica followed. Xiaoshuang, watching from above with obvious enjoyment, wrinkled her nose. "What a coward!" and darted after them too.
A werewolf's regenerative power ran deep, but Evan's blade worked differently — the sword-force that struck home carried a trace of death itself, detonating within the body. Even without hitting anything vital, the creature was already dying by inches; even if Evan gave up the chase now, it wouldn't survive.
The werewolf fled ahead on all fours while the group pursued, heading deeper into the thick, mountainous forest. Within moments, all trace of it had vanished from the ridge behind them.
Not long after they'd gone, a figure appeared atop the ridge — golden-haired, blue-eyed, strikingly handsome, tall and lean, malice glinting in his eyes. He hadn't expected to find such formidable opposition in a place like this, let alone more than one. He'd assumed Father Storm was some washed-up failure, only to discover the man was a master hiding in plain sight as well. His plan had failed. He'd been so certain that within the Norma Empire, a nowhere place like Shrimp Peninsula would draw no one's attention at all — and instead this forgotten corner had turned out to hide real strength.
His name was Reinhardt von Rosenkram, descended from a fallen minor noble house, and not even the eldest son besides — not that his family could have afforded to send even the eldest to a knight's academy or a school of magic in the first place. He'd grown up cultivating a cruel, calculating nature beneath a mask of impeccable courtesy.
As a boy, his elder brother had once shoved him into a mountain cave, and after narrowly surviving the ordeal, he'd stumbled upon a monster reduced already to bare bones, a lingering fragment of spirit clinging to it — a fragment his own mind had somehow swallowed whole, awakening in him a gift for reading minds. Against anyone no more than two tiers above his own level, he could perceive their current thoughts entirely, and even guide them, unknowingly, into carrying out tasks he'd arranged for them — though using the gift left him a full month of debilitating weakness afterward, during which he could manage nothing at all.
Once he'd recovered from that first encounter, he'd used the gift to send his own brother tumbling to his death from a height, unnoticed. His family held more than one brother, though, and he'd known better than to push his luck too openly, for fear of drawing suspicion.
At thirteen or fourteen, he'd used the same gift against a young apprentice of the Solomon Academy, claiming the boy's learning and his wand for himself, discovering in the process that he carried a dual affinity for light and wind. His family couldn't afford proper training, but he'd set out on the mage's path regardless, as a freelance practitioner outside any formal school.
Once, when a knightly order passed through his home region, he'd used the same gift to absorb a knight's own combat skill. His ambitions grew from there, and before long he'd charmed his way into the affections of a viscountess, hungering more and more for a place among the upper nobility. Through her recommendation, he'd secured knighthood — though earning an actual noble title proved far harder to come by. Poring over maps, he eventually found Shrimp Peninsula, a place with no ruling noble house at all, and set his sights on it. His knowledge of the wider world ran thin, though — one couldn't expect too much worldliness from a fallen noble's son, however clever Reinhardt genuinely was.
A werewolf had happened to slip into human territory around then, and he'd spotted it, hatching what he thought was a brilliant scheme — use the werewolf to threaten this region, then step forward as its protecting knight, eventually claiming noble title over the territory himself. With a foothold like this secured, everything else would follow.
He'd used his gift, enduring the discomfort of it, to seize control of the werewolf and use it to build up a following of his own — a small werewolf legion in the making. And now Evan and Father Storm had torn it apart within moments, while he himself sat trapped in his own month of weakness, having nearly been discovered just now, saved only by hiding in time.
He made his way down the mountain. Having seen Evan and the others, he knew this place held real danger beneath its surface, and decided he'd rather scout things out further before doing anything else. Still weakened, he wisely chose the path down toward the town — a fallen noble's son, and a wandering one at that, drawing far less suspicion heading into a settlement than someone alone out in the wilderness. Safer, and more plausible, either way.
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Evan had no idea a person's scheme lay behind any of this. He kept chasing the fleeing werewolf, Jessica close behind, Xiaoshuang flying above. The creature ran on all fours now, astonishingly fast, though the bleeding never let up.
At first, Evan had to work hard to keep pace, but as time passed, the werewolf's speed dropped steadily, blood loss draining its strength.
Formidable as a werewolf's healing power was, it had proven useless against Evan's blade. As the blood loss mounted, its speed kept falling, until it finally spotted a small cave ahead and darted inside.
Evan reached the cave mouth and hesitated a moment before sending his Wraith Eye ahead, the shape fading into translucence as it drifted inside.
Jessica caught up, Xiaoshuang dropping lower as well. Seeing the cave, Jessica asked, "Did it go in there?"
"It did. There's no escape for it now," Evan said.
The Wraith Eye pressed deeper into the winding, narrow passage. The werewolf hadn't gotten far — its wound had finally overwhelmed it, and it lay curled up just past the second bend.
The creature was already at death's door. Evan, seeing this through the Wraith Eye, knew it wouldn't last much longer, and stepped inside. Jessica followed. Xiaoshuang hesitated a moment, muttering, "I've got claustrophobia, you know!" before giving her wings a flutter and flying in after them regardless.
Evan didn't slow his pace, walking forward directly, blade held level at chest height, his expression unreadable, drawing steadily closer to where the werewolf lay hidden.
A gust of air stirred, and the werewolf lunged out at him — all restraint gone now, life and death set aside entirely, a last flare of vitality lighting its body with a faint red glow.
As it lunged, Evan moved too — not backward, but forward, dropping low and closing the distance in an instant, blade flaring white as it drove straight into the creature's chest.
For a single frozen moment, time seemed to stop. Long white claws hung just short of Evan's shoulder, stopped dead in midair, strength gone. The werewolf's face twisted into a bitter, rueful smile. "Such regret... I should never have come into human territory. Then I'd never have been someone else's puppet..."
The words died unfinished, its head dropping. Evan caught that last murmur — someone else's puppet — and something flickered in his mind. He looked closer, but the creature had already breathed its last, a trace of that same bitter smile still lingering on its face. Whatever lay behind it remained an unsolved mystery now.
He let out a breath. "Seems we've stumbled into someone's scheme."
Jessica blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I'm not entirely sure myself. Something felt off from the start, and now this werewolf claims, with its dying breath, that it was being controlled by someone. Unfortunately, it died before it could say anything more," Evan said.
"Whatever the scheme, we should warn Mage Mikoyan once we're back — tell him to stay alert. We'll be heading home soon anyway. This was a fairly high-tier werewolf, though. I'll take the body back for study," Jessica said, setting the matter of the scheme aside and storing the corpse away without further comment.
"Ooh, look at all these shiny rocks! So pretty!" Xiaoshuang's voice called out. She'd found a spot along the cave wall, tugging with all her strength at a glinting stone embedded in the rock.
The stone sat lodged in the wall, and only now did Evan and Jessica notice the wall itself was studded with gems in three colors — red, blue, and clear — sizable, though irregularly shaped, and clustered in only one section of the wall. They hadn't seen it before in the dark; what little moonlight slanted into the cave hadn't reached this particular spot.
However Xiaoshuang had spotted it, Jessica cast a quick Light spell, a globe of illumination rising to reveal the wall clearly. Evan dismissed his faint sight, no longer needing it. Looking closer, he found a scattering of loose gems on the cave floor as well, clearly worn free over long years from the wall above.
Only seven or eight lay scattered on the ground, though. Evan reached out, and three of them leapt into his palm. He selected one each of red, blue, and clear, and from experience recognized them at once — a ruby, a sapphire, and corundum, all of remarkably fine quality.
Jessica picked up a few of her own, examining them for a moment. "These are genuinely fine gems. Who'd have thought a gem vein was hiding in this mountain — good enough quality to be worth mining."
Evan nodded, then turned to Xiaoshuang. "You still haven't gotten that one loose. Need a hand?"
"About time you offered. Easy to stand there talking when it's not your arms doing the work," Xiaoshuang huffed.
The moment Evan's hand touched the large ruby, he made a small sound of surprise. "What's wrong?" Jessica asked.
"This is a magic gemstone," Evan said. "I hadn't expected to find one of these mixed in with ordinary gems."
A magic gemstone carried a faint trace of its own magical power, with one particular property — the ability to amplify magical fluctuations. Typically set into wands and similar tools, unlike ordinary gems, which could be set for decoration but carried no amplifying effect at all.
"What — a magic gemstone?" Jessica hurried over and touched it herself, confirming it at once. A vein like this, containing genuine magic gemstones, meant something entirely different to Hollingburton.
"Of course it's a magic gemstone. Does Xiaoshuang bother with ordinary gems?" Xiaoshuang said, thoroughly pleased with herself.
Ignoring her preening, Evan put his strength into it and wrenched the stone free from the wall, tossing it over to her.
The vein ran in an oval shape through the rock. Evan cut into the wall with his blade, chunks of stone falling away, gems tumbling loose along with them. Cutting half a cubit deep into the wall, they came away with over thirty gems of various kinds, two more of them magic gemstones — a ratio somewhere around one in ten to one in fifteen.