The Elusive Sorcerer

Chapter 128

Late at night, in Belan Village, there stood an empty house that villagers rarely passed by, whether the weather was clear or terrible. Rumor had it that the house they were using to shelter themselves from the freezing weather outside held strange stories ever since its owner fled the village without informing the village chief or the residents living at the far left side of the abandoned house.

The house was located near the village entrance, by the roadside and directly facing a mahogany tree whose leaves sang along with the wind.

Inside the central room that connected three hallways with different functions, Zavi, Hana, and Mine were still waiting for Aaron to regain consciousness.

Time was limited, and the night was growing later. Zavi thought about bringing up something important that had been on his mind earlier.

"You two," said Zavi as he looked at them in front of him.

Hana turned toward him and asked in confusion, "What is it?"

"I'm curious. Why aren't you sleepy even though it's already this late at night?"

Mine let out a sigh.

Zavi lowered his bamboo hat slightly as he prepared to answer, though he twisted the truth a little.

"I've got a supernatural being attached to me, and..."

The sentence never finished as Mine let out a restrained breath, as if she already understood what Zavi was going through.

"You can't sleep because that supernatural being keeps giving you nightmares?" Mine interrupted calmly as she carefully observed Zavi's body.

The two women stood in silence as though digesting his earlier statement. Seeing an opportunity, Mine sighed to hide her disappointment before adding;

"If Munien were by my side, she might be able to help you."

'Munien?' Zavi wondered who she meant, but a few seconds later he realized she was talking about her Recipestele.

"Thank you," said Zavi. "I'd appreciate it if you'd help me get rid of the supernatural being attached to my body."

Zavi lifted his bamboo hat with his thumb, looking at both of them with a smile that was completely genuine.

Aaron, who had already regained consciousness, suddenly wore a sharp grin for some unknown reason like a madman as he stared at Zavi and muttered quietly.

Zavi immediately realized it after seeing Hana and Mine staring at Aaron with curved brows and wrinkled lips.

"Hey, Sirius," said Zavi in a restrained voice. Then his tone abruptly jumped as he tried to clear up the misunderstanding. "Th-This isn't what you're thinking, oi."

"Khu khu khu... not what I'm thinking, huh? Then what's with that smile?" Aaron repeated mockingly.

'But now that I look at it, you actually suit that woman,' Aaron added inwardly while glancing deeply at Hana.

The 18th. Friday. 00:10 AM.

'He really loves thinking about things like that.'

Once again, Zavi glanced at Aaron with moving lips, still sneering at him.

Then Aaron cleared his throat, instantly stopping Zavi's mockery as he turned toward him. Hana and Mine looked at him intently, fully aware that the discussion about their next move was about to begin.

Zavi immediately revealed the real reason he had gathered the two of them in the same place, inside the central room lit only by the dim glow of a lantern.

"This might be related to 'Intersection Society,' but it also isn't. I don't plan on discussing that organization again," said Zavi as he sat down, his right leg raised while his right wrist rested on his knee.

"The same discussion? It's connected, but you don't want to talk about it?" Mine tried to understand what he meant with her hand covering her mouth, her thoughts clearly working hard.

"Yeah," Zavi answered with a sigh.

Aaron immediately responded to the statement, not because he wanted to find out more, but because he wanted to speak his mind.

"I'll just listen," Aaron grumbled as he pulled the lantern closer, while all of them nearly formed a circle after sitting down on the dirty, cold floor.

Hana, seated beside Mine on the left, kept playing with the edge of her jacket as she tried to interpret Zavi's earlier statement.

"Sorry..." Hana finally said. "Can we start this conversation already? And I'm wondering why you didn't ask about this when you came knocking on the room we were staying in."

Zavi answered without hesitation, "The answer's simple. Because I wanted Sirius to hear this too, and we're already on the same team now..."

He stretched out his hand with an open palm, pointing directly at Aaron.

Understanding what he meant, Aaron cleared his throat once and spoke to reassure them.

"Yeah, at that time I wasn't in Tezny. I was still wandering around Krensen District looking for additional information."

That was a lie. The truth was that when Eaurealis Castle was destroyed, Aaron had been fast asleep in broad daylight from exhaustion after the incident where he slaughtered the bounty hunters chasing him.

Moreover, before dawn that same day, he had been forced to fight Celina, who intended to kill him after being consumed by vengeance because he mercilessly massacred her squadmates, making his sleep afterward even deeper.

Yeah. Back then, he had briefly wondered why Celina could be in Niki and find his location as though her arrival in Niki District carried some hidden purpose, and his instincts told him that something massive was about to happen to Moran City.

That instinct was correct; several days after the destruction of the castle and Celina's attack on him, Moran was shaken by the appearance of ten demon horses that burned everything with their mouths and left pools of lava with every stomp of their hooves.

Even though he never saw them directly, when night fell Aaron realized that nearly half of Niki had been wiped away by black flames, or scorching orange fire from creatures he had never known about at the time.

Leaving behind the scent of blood and iron lingering in the air for a long time, turning the city that was once filled with bustling crowds into silence like the stillness of a graveyard.

Only the western and northern parts of Niki remained. Aaron survived there for several days while trying to find out who had done all of this. He feared that agents secretly working for the Soas Repena Order had come looking for him, but it turned out to be nothing more than a strange organization and groups working together to carry out mass arson.

Intersection Society. Black Cage.

And because of that incident, he met three people whom he initially thought were agents of the Order or bounty hunters. That assumption turned out to be completely wrong after he was saved by someone he had once knocked unconscious with Extraction, by removing the deadly poison that made his internal organs feel as though they were being crushed and ready to burst.

Remembering those moments in the span of seconds, Aaron immediately touched his chest, feeling his heartbeat stabilize as he slowly opened his eyes again and looked at the three of them.

The conversation resumed as soon as Zavi saw Aaron moving slightly with half-closed eyes.

"So, do you two know who destroyed Eaurealis Castle and..."

The sentence stopped midway as Zavi gave up on continuing, realizing how dangerous it would be if he revealed information related to the Finiscya sect kidnapping several people, including his mother.

For now, he chose to keep it hidden and would only tell them once the situation allowed it.

"Yeah, I know," both women answered at the same time, their expressions serious and no longer caring about hiding their involvement.

"Who?" Zavi's shoulders instantly widened as he lifted his bamboo hat upward with his thumb.

The two women exchanged glances. Both of them clearly knew who the mastermind was, and their eyes showed hesitation over whether telling Zavi this was the right decision.

Mine, who always acted as the mediator whenever the atmosphere between them turned tense or unpleasant, signaled subtly by shifting her eyes quickly to the left and right.

Hana answered with a nod. Then afterward, Mine's gaze swept across everything in front of her, including Zavi and Aaron, before she spoke:

"The terrorist group that calls itself Mukaden, led by a man named Vabian Roca and commanded by someone whose identity I currently know...."

'Someone important? Or the supreme leader of the terrorist group called Mukaden?' Aaron thought as he tried to piece together the evidence from the various disasters connected to the terrorist group known as 'Mukaden.'

Zavi once again became trapped in memories of an incident he could never forget because he had once believed that event pushed him deeper into this world and became the trigger for him becoming a wanted fugitive.

'If I remember correctly, after the building cracked and caused that rumbling noise, the castle visitors panicked and rushed outside to avoid whatever disaster was about to happen to them. Then several police officers arrived, and one of them acted strangely friendly toward me? And a few minutes after the police arrived, gunshots rang out, making the castle visitors and the pedestrians nearby stop what they were doing. Not long after that, a man appeared on top of the castle roof, right?'

After muttering to himself for quite a while, thinking whether it had anything to do with why the Finiscya sect and bounty hunters could track him so easily, he eventually gave up because he found no clues whatsoever.

However, a few seconds later, Mine added a piece of information that made his heart seem to forget its rhythm.

"Jack the Ripper..."

Hana immediately responded to that name. She had once considered following the person known as Jack the Ripper, but abandoned the idea because his identity was heavily concealed by both 'Intersection Society' and 'Black Cage.'

"Ahh, yeah... That man is known as Jack the Ripper... and the rumors about the insanity of his plans when orchestrating terrorist attacks have apparently never failed..."

The two women praised Jack the Ripper's impressive acts of terror, even though he himself never directly did anything during those attacks despite being present at the scene in disguise while observing the situation.

Aaron, who sat to Hana's left, though from Zavi's perspective he was on the right, had already heard rumors about Jack the Ripper's madness two years earlier while he was still in Vinohoshi, in Tafox. However, Aaron had never been interested in the details surrounding Jack the Ripper because he himself was constantly hiding and moving around to avoid the Order and bounty hunters.

Then he shifted his gaze to the left, noticing Zavi's bamboo hat had lowered enough to nearly cover his face after he pulled it down with his right hand. Aaron immediately realized that Zavi was hiding something, though he had no idea what it was from the gesture alone.

Zavi was left speechless, his pupils widened as he sank into his thoughts.

'Jack the Ripper? Impossible....'

His lips trembled and his shoulders tightened as he continued his thoughts.

'Could there be someone else who got transported into this world besides me...? Or is that name... just something people in this world came up with?'

He fell into both fear and relief at the same time, for reasons he himself could not understand.