Episode 463

“Get drunk, like a drunkard!”

“Slip and fall!”

“Sink deeply!”

When Lee Han arrived, a battle was already raging near the main gate.

Students stood atop the barricade, casting spells at the monster ramming the gate.

‘Mak!’

At first glance, it looked like a huge bear, but with an elephant’s trunk, rhinoceros eyes, tiger’s paws, and the tail of a cow—a peculiar appearance.

Lee Han recalled the characteristics of the monster, which he had learned from Professor Lightningstep.

A monster that delights in eating others’ nightmares—what was it doing here?

‘Well, the Einrogard library would be densely packed with nightmares.’

Come to think of it, there were probably no others who dreamed nightmares as frequently as studying Einrogard students.

■■■■■…

The mak slowly but heavily rammed the main gate.

The students bound its ankles with magic, but its determination to enter the fortress was clear.

White Tiger Tower students were dumbfounded as their enchanted javelins bounced off the creature.

“What’s that thing’s grudge? Why does it want to get inside so badly!?”

“Well, we did snatch all the library furniture and use it for barricades…”

“…Bring more spears! Wardanaz! Hurry up, Wardanaz!!”

“Hey. Don’t shout my name so loudly, it’s embarrassing! I’m already coming!”

Arriving, Lee Han headed for the barricade. Then Giselle, looking grave, spoke.

“Wait. Wardanaz. Mak doesn’t have the ability to sneak in and kidnap students.”

“!”

It was true.

Looking at the mak’s current behavior, it was not a monster who would sneak in and kidnap students quietly.

Giselle glanced around, then lowered her voice so others couldn’t hear.

“…Honestly, I have a place in mind that’s suspicious.”

“Is that true? Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”

“No good would come of saying it. Did you see Tutanta?”

Giselle smirked with a shrug.

If she’d mentioned a suspicious place, someone would’ve just tried to incite a move there anyway.

“My guess about the culprit is…”

Lee Han focused on Giselle’s words.

After a pause, the northern elf’s lips parted and the long-awaited answer slipped out.

“…the Principal, I think.”

“……”

Lee Han stopped concentrating and gave Giselle a look reserved for seeing a low-rent conspiracy theorist.

But Giselle didn’t notice and continued whispering.

“Even if Einrogard is crawling with monsters, do you think anything could get in and just snatch someone with this many mages around? The suspect has to be a mage.”

‘Scary how convincing this gets the more I listen.’

That was the danger of conspiracy theories—they started to sound believable after a while.

And the Skull Headmaster theory was surprisingly plausible. Lee Han found himself wavering.

‘Is it really the Principal? Certainly, he could pull that off. But…’

He’d only just gone to visit the Skull Headmaster for dark magic reagents.

If the headmaster had intended to kidnap a student, he’d be smiling from ear to ear, but Lee Han hadn’t sensed any of that.

Had he been tricked?

“Ahhh! Wardanaz! Wardanaz!”

A White Tiger Tower student screamed.

Leaning over the barricade, he had been snatched up by the mak’s whip-like trunk.

“I’m coming. Shine bright!”

Lightning exploded, startling the mak but not stopping it.

As a fellow magic resistance expert, Lee Han immediately gauged that this beast had a formidable resistance.

‘Then…’

“Paralyze, fracture, blacken. Bones, bind the enemy!”

A textbook combination that would have earned a standing ovation from senior dark magic students.

Against a magic-resistant foe, you layered curses to strip its defenses, then used bone element magic to restrain its movement.

“Cold, become arrows and shoot!”

But that wasn’t the end—frost arrows followed.

Resistant as the mak was to lightning, it wasn’t harmed by the cold arrows, but as ice and frost built up in layers, it was inevitably slowed.

As his opponent slowed, Lee Han summoned a water orb.

‘Even if it doesn’t penetrate, the impact…’

Not perfect, but the blow from the spinning water orb was on another scale compared to previous magic.

The mak, hitherto ramming the gate, now faltered, pivoted, and began to flee.

“It’s running away!”

“Let’s chase it!”

“No!”

“……”

As opinions again diverged, Lee Han was getting a headache.

And this time, the situation was different.

‘If the Skull Headmaster orchestrated this, it’s a different story.’

Lee Han usually favored the safest method, but if all this was the Skull Headmaster’s doing, then the story changed.

He’d need to do the opposite of what the Principal expected.

“Wardanaz. Remember: if you give chase, a few more students might disappear.”

“But we can’t not chase! If the Principal’s behind this, all the more. Moradi, hold the fort. Salko and I will go.”

“……”

Giselle froze, not expecting that response from Lee Han.

She hadn’t thought he would ask her to guard here.

“Lee Han. Wouldn’t it be better to go with Moradi?”

Deorgyu said, sounding anxious.

Salko’s party was reliable enough, but there was no one more tenacious or ruthless in White Tiger Tower than Moradi.

And those traits were particularly valuable in a dangerous pursuit.

“…There’s no one as tenacious and savage as Moradi. Wouldn’t it be better to go together…”

“Deorgyu, did Moradi hit you or something?”

Lee Han was flustered.

It wasn’t like Deorgyu to dish out such barbed words…

“And the reason I’m not going with her is because of Salko. If we go together, you two would just fight.”

“Oh.”

Deorgyu immediately understood and looked embarrassed.

“I thought you trusted Moradi’s ability and left her in charge.”

“Huh?”

Lee Han paused, just a touch late in replying.

“Haha. Oh, of course, that was why.”

“…Lee Han…”

• * *

Sharkan skillfully followed the mak’s trail.

Mak was dangerous when attacking, but tracking one on the run was not that hard.

For one thing, it was huge, and it didn’t have much talent for hiding.

The problem was…

“A swamp!”

“Why is there a swamp near the library…”

“You’re acting surprised?”

‘Really, now, it is funny to be surprised at this point,’ Lee Han thought to himself.

Getting startled by new surprises at this school was almost comical by now.

“If this swamp is its lair, that would be good.”

Salko said with a worried look.

The disappearance of a fellow towermate weighed on him.

Say what you would, but that attitude toward his friends was worthy of respect. Lee Han nodded.

“Let’s hope. Salko, you’ve been working hard, taking care of your friends.”

“It’s nothing compared to you.”

“Yeah. …Huh?”

Lee Han replied absentmindedly, but then sensed something off.

“I’ve never really…”

“It stopped!”

“I didn’t really take care of…”

“Wardanaz, get down!”

Ratford frantically pushed down on Lee Han’s shoulder. Lee Han wanted to protest he wasn’t that caring a friend, but there was no time.

The mak, now stopped in the middle of the swamp, stretched and submerged itself. Bits of bone and ice stuck to its body sloughed off.

‘I don’t see the student it took.’

At that moment, someone splashed through the swamp behind the mak.

A siren, astonishingly.

“…Such sneaky bastards!”

Lee Han muttered.

A siren was the culprit.

There had been friction between them, but that was all about legitimate test matters.

If there was a grudge, it should have been taken out on Professor Lightningstep, not some unfortunate student.

It made Lee Han all the more glad he’d passed off responsibility for the hut incident.

“Everyone, stay back. It’s dangerous to get close to a siren.”

“U-understood.”

“Let’s go, Sharkan!”

-♪♩♩???

The siren, spotting Lee Han and Sharkan, sang in a flustered tone.

Pointing at both the mak and Lee Han in turn, it sang once more.

-♩♩♩♩!

“Water…”

Lee Han readied himself to attack the siren.

Just then, the mak snatched up a log with its long trunk and hurled it at the siren.

“??”

The siren barely dodged.

The mak, seemingly intent on driving out the siren, began to pelt it repeatedly.

The siren sang to counterattack, but as the mak staggered under the magical assault, it went berserk, shoving the siren away.

‘What? Some sort of feigned alliance?’

Lee Han was thrown off.

He’d thought the siren was controlling the mak, but this looked like a territorial dispute between the two.

As the mak raised havoc, it turned and spotted Lee Han and Sharkan.

Recognizing the wizard who’d battered it on the barricade, the mak let out a roar and prepared to attack.

“…Spin!”

Lee Han hurriedly cast, redirecting his attack.

With a heavy thud, the mak reeled.

“Sharkan, to you!”

Ready for the mak’s charge, Lee Han summoned bone restraints.

‘Bone explosion… Will the siren get caught up? If so, would it really mind?’

While Lee Han was mulling over these fiendish considerations, the siren hastily swam across the swamp toward Lee Han, signaling to him.

“To come into the swamp?”

The siren nodded.

Lee Han looked at the siren with the same suspicion he reserved for the Skull Headmaster.

A look of downright distrust.

-Grrrrrr!

With a piercing howl, Sharkan sent a warning to Lee Han.

The mak had locked its sights on Lee Han, ignoring all other distractions. The threat felt greater than ever.

“Listen, about that time before…”

Before Lee Han could explain, the siren scooped him up in her arms and swam rapidly to the other side.

Crash!

At that moment, the mak rolled its body, crushing debris in its path as it charged straight ahead—a chilling sight.

“Wardanaz, I’m coming to join you!”

Having confirmed that the siren was not the enemy, Salko could wait no longer and shouted out.

If things were left as they were, Wardanaz seemed to be in real danger.

With a metallic click, a crossbow imbued with infusing magic was fired. The mak grew angry at the arrival of more wizards.

“Bones…”

With a sinister incantation, Lee Han’s mana surged.

The siren, still holding Lee Han, was startled by the density of his mana.

“Detonate!”

With a boom, the bone fragments on the mak exploded.

There weren’t many, but it was more than enough to send the mak fleeing in fright.

■■■■■…

The mak, as if disgusted and wanting nothing to do with them, turned and ran the other way.

Lee Han and the group let out a sigh of relief.

For any mage, battling a monster of that bulk and defense was a waking nightmare.

“Did we get through it…?”

-♩♩♪

The siren sang a thank-you note to Lee Han and the others.

Of course, the other mages were instantly entranced.

“So you reveal your true colors, then!”

-♩♩♩!

When Lee Han raised his staff and yelled fiercely, the siren panicked, stopped singing, and shook her head.

It wasn’t easy to avoid enchanting the wizards with even a single careless note, and the siren, knowing that, was trying to be careful.

Abandoning song-based communication, the siren scrawled letters on the shore.

‘Terrible handwriting.’

‘Really awful handwriting.’

Lee Han studied the writing with a serious face.

Despite the worm-like letters, it said that, even though they had bad memories between them, she was grateful they helped fight off the mak.

“?”

For a moment, Lee Han didn’t understand.

‘Ah. She must think my attack on her was actually aimed at the mak.’

It made sense from the siren’s point of view.

He’d turned the attack and hit the mak with it.

“As a wizard of Einrogard, that’s only natural.”

“?”

Salko looked at Lee Han as if he were talking nonsense.

Even the siren tilted her head.

Somehow, wizards of Einrogard just didn’t seem like that kind of person…