“Father is truly something else. To think he’d drag a guest along on a magical beast hunt. Does he have that little faith in us?”
Izela, the only daughter of the head of House Lug, grumbled with an air of disbelief. She was dressed not in an elaborate gown but in a practical tunic and trousers, and she turned her complaint toward Boran.
“Ah, no offense to you, of course,” she added quickly. “I just think my father is making an unnecessary fuss.”
“Calling the head of the house fussy? That’s a bit much, don’t you think, cousin?” a young noble standing beside her rebuked in a low voice.
It was Marvin Tengiz, Lug’s nephew. For a moment, his gaze locked with Izela’s, and sparks seemed to fly between them. Just as quickly, Marvin turned to Boran with a polite smile.
“This is our first time meeting, isn’t it? I am Marvin Tengiz. It’s a pleasure to have you with us.”
“And you,” Boran replied.
After exchanging greetings, Boran’s eyes drifted to the twelve knights standing at attention behind the two nobles. Unlike their masters, who seemed to be treating this as a leisurely stroll, the knights’ tension was palpable. It was understandable. They were marching out to hunt an unknown enemy that had already slaughtered four of their own without leaving a single survivor.
A short while later, the party of three nobles and twelve knights strode confidently through the city’s north gate. Every resident they passed knelt, bowing their heads low until they were gone. The only ones who remained standing, merely inclining their heads, were armored men carrying swords. Boran realized these must be the city watch he had heard about. Commoners, armed to maintain order.
They were, of course, utterly useless for hunting magical beasts or waging war between noble houses. Even an inexperienced noble like himself, Boran knew, could cut down thousands of them.
Once they were beyond the city walls, an old brick road from the era of the empire stretched out before them. In the ten days since the beast had started attacking travelers, the road had been completely abandoned. Not a soul was in sight.
“I just want to get this over with so I can go back and rest,” Izela muttered, kicking a loose stone from the edge of the road.
Boran trailed slightly behind, staring blankly at her back. Marvin fell into step beside him, lowering his voice.
“Boran, do you by any chance have an interest in my cousin?”
“No,” Boran said, shaking his head without hesitation.
Izela had been flirting with him consistently ever since their rather shocking first meeting, but it was all lighthearted and teasing. He didn't find her particularly appealing. Her frivolous, carefree nature was far from his ideal, and more importantly, marrying into a different Lineage would mean becoming a son-in-law bound to her family. The library here was magnificent, but he had no intention of chaining himself to this place for life just to access it.
“That’s a relief.” Marvin’s face visibly brightened. Boran wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but his answer seemed to have been the right one.
They walked for about an hour, making small talk as they headed north. Soon, they came upon a broken cart in the middle of the road, surrounded by several pieces of blood-soaked, torn clothing. It was the scene of an attack.
“Was this its work?” Izela asked.
“Probably,” Marvin replied. “We’ve strictly forbidden travel north from our lands, so they must have been coming down from further up when they were hit.”
While the cousins talked, Boran crouched to examine the wreckage, searching for clues about the magical beast. The scent of blood wasn’t overwhelming, which meant the attack had happened only a few hours ago. The gashes in the clothing suggested something incredibly sharp had torn through them. And there, pressed into the splintered wood of the cart, was a grotesque, five-fingered handprint, much like a human’s but monstrously large. With that final piece, he knew.
“It’s a monkey,” he said.
“A monkey?”
“Look at the handprint here.”
“Ah.”
In truth, Boran had never seen a monkey in his life. He only recognized it because the description in the magical beast guide he’d been reading perfectly matched the evidence before them. If not for that book, he would have simply assumed it was another unidentifiable monster.
“It looks like it attacked the merchants and then retreated into the forest. We should be able to follow its trail.”
“Tracking…” Izela grimaced. “I’m not very good with that sort of magic. Marvin, what about you?”
“Not me either. Perhaps one of the knights could—”
“Let me try,” Boran cut in.
Izela’s face lit up. “Oh? Is that one of your Lineage abilities?”
“I’ve just had a lot of practice with it,” he lied smoothly, activating his Detection Magic. He focused his senses on the bloodstains clinging to the torn scraps of cloth. As the spell took hold, the world of scent narrowed, and the smell of blood intensified, becoming a clear trail leading off the road to their left.
“This way.”
Following Boran’s lead, the hunting party left the road and plunged into the forest. The lack of a path hardly slowed them. The three nobles were one thing, but even the knights could clear four or five meters in a single, effortless bound.
After thirty minutes of following the blood trail, they arrived at a stream. A few deer drinking from the water startled at their approach and fled in a panic.
“The trail ends here. It seems the beast washed itself.”
“You’re saying a mere animal would do something so clever to hide its tracks?” Marvin asked, incredulous.
“It probably just wanted a bath,” Boran replied. The guide had mentioned that some monkey species had a culture of bathing.
He released the scent-tracking spell, letting his normal senses return. The moment he did, a strong, musky odor hit him. He spun around just in time to see two large, golden eyes glaring at him from the shadows.
“Behind us!” he yelled.
His shout was answered by a piercing shriek. A massive monkey, nearly two meters tall, burst from the bushes. Its form was both disturbingly human and unnervingly alien. It began hurling fistfuls of gravel at them, its hands disproportionately large even for its hulking frame. It scooped up and threw dozens of stones at once, each one imbued with magical power that made them fly faster and hit harder than any normal projectile.
“Aaargh!”
“Dodge!”
A few of the knights were struck and sent sprawling. Boran had already leapt to the side the moment he shouted, narrowly avoiding the barrage. When he turned back, he was shocked to see that both Izela and Marvin had each pulled a knight in front of themselves, using their own men as shields.
“Ugh… are you alrigh—” one of the shielded knights stammered.
“Attack!” Izela barked, shoving the injured man aside.
The eight remaining knights drew their weapons and charged. But the monkey let out another earsplitting screech and darted back into the trees. It moved with impossible agility, leaping from branch to branch so quickly it was like a blur. Despite its size, its speed was like the wind, making it impossible for the knights to give chase on foot.
As the others stood stunned, a single stone shot through the air after the fleeing monkey. It was from Boran’s slingshot, enhanced with his three most familiar spells: Strengthening, Acceleration, and Pursuit. The stone curved around several trees before striking the monkey squarely in the small of its back. The creature screamed and tumbled from the canopy, landing in a heap on the forest floor. It writhed in pain, its spine clearly broken.
“Die!” Izela shouted, thrusting her hand toward the fallen beast.
Flames erupted from her fingertips, twisting into the shape of a serpent as thick as a tree trunk. The fiery snake lunged, sinking its fangs into the monkey and incinerating it instantly, engulfing a dozen meters of the surrounding forest in a roaring inferno. The sheer speed and scale of the attack were on a level far beyond anything Boran could manage. This was the power of House Tengiz’s famed Pyromaniac Lineage.
So that’s what it is, he thought. Any mage could light a fire, but it was nothing compared to the raw, destructive power of a Lineage that specialized in it.
Following Izela’s lead, Marvin conjured a volley of over a dozen flaming spears, which rained down upon the corpse, reducing what was left of the monkey to ash.
A collective sigh of relief went through the hunting party.
“Wow, I got chills when those stones came flying at us,” Izela said, feigning nonchalance.
“Were you scared, cousin?” Marvin teased.
“Shut up. You’re the one who screamed like a little girl.”
“I did not!”
While the two nobles bickered, Boran went to check on the knights who had been hit.
“Ugh, I think my arm’s broken…”
“His head is still bleeding, what should we do?”
“Apply this ointment for now.”
Fortunately, no one had died. The two knights who had been used as shields were the most seriously injured, but even they had only suffered concussions and a few broken bones. Boran clicked his tongue, the image of Izela and Marvin’s callousness replaying in his mind. Nobles, with their magic-enhanced bodies, were several times more durable than ordinary knights. And yet, they had used weaker men to protect themselves.
It was a stark reminder of something his mother had once told him: to the high nobility, knights were little more than disposable hounds.
Noticing Boran’s stare, Marvin asked, “Hmm? What is it?”
“No, nothing,” Boran said, brushing it off. But he couldn’t hide the subtle contempt in his eyes as he looked at the two of them.
Just then, Izela waved him over. “More importantly, Boran, come quickly! It’s time to absorb the magic power!”
“Right.”
The three nobles stood side by side before the half-burnt, ash-covered corpse. Extending their hands, they began to draw its power into themselves. A familiar, pale green light emanated from the remains, seeping into their bodies. Boran shivered at the familiar rush of pleasure, even as he gauged the increase in his own magical strength. The power he gained from the monkey was greater than that of the leopard, but less than the rabbit.
Considering the monkey hadn't been an exceptionally powerful beast, it was astonishing how much energy the three of them were absorbing.
It seems it’s true… the amount of enhancement doesn’t diminish even when multiple people absorb it together.
Up to four people could draw power from a single magical beast, and each would receive the full amount, undivided. Why the limit was four, and not three or five, was a mystery. But it was why noble houses often formed hunting parties of this size. Of course, even with an extra spot, they would never include a knight. Another testament to their arrogance.
“Ah, I can’t absorb any more,” Izela said.
“Me neither,” Marvin agreed.
As they spoke, faint green light began to leak from their bodies, dispersing back into the air. They had reached their innate limits for growth, and any excess power they tried to take in was now being expelled. Boran, however, felt the envious gazes of the two nobles as he continued to draw in all the remaining energy for himself.
On the way back to Orem, Izela and Marvin recounted the battle again and again, bragging about how heroically they had fought. Considering they had hidden behind their knights, the claims were laughable, but Boran humored them with polite nods and agreeable murmurs.
“You know, if it weren’t for you, Boran, we probably wouldn’t have caught it,” Izela admitted. “From tracking it down to landing the blow that crippled it, it was all thanks to you.”
“It was nothing special,” he said, though he privately agreed. Without him, the hunting party would have been devastated by the ambush. They never would have been able to pursue and kill the fleeing monkey, either. They would have been at the mercy of its hit-and-run tactics, helpless. Izela and Marvin might have saved themselves by fleeing back to the city, but their knights would have all been bludgeoned to death by a hail of stones. Even the nobles themselves wouldn’t have escaped unscathed if the beast had started throwing boulders instead of gravel.
The hunt had ended easily, but Boran now understood how this creature had overwhelmed and devoured four knights so completely.
“It’s a shame I noticed it so late,” he said. “I gave it the advantage of the first attack. I didn’t expect it to have tracking abilities of its own.”
“Tracking abilities?” Marvin asked.
“Yes.” Boran recalled the monkey’s appearance. The massive build and exceptional strength were common to most magical beasts. What had stood out were its unusually large hands and eyes. The shadow leopard he’d fought had developed an ability to hide by manipulating shadows. The rabbit had evolved its teeth into tools that could gnaw through anything. Following that pattern, he speculated that the monkey’s large hands were for throwing objects with immense force, while its large eyes were adapted to see over great distances, piercing through the dense forest canopy.
When Boran shared his theory, the entire hunting party stared at him.
“Wow…”
“To think you figured all that out in such a short time!”
They were looking at him as if he were the wisest sage in the world. From their reactions, it was clear that none of them had ever so much as glanced at the magical beast guide in the library. When Boran subtly asked about it, Izela tilted her head.
“The library? That stuffy old place… no one ever goes there.”
According to her, the Celestial Archive was more of a cultural landmark than a resource. Few people were actually interested in the books. Getting permission from the family head was a hassle, and even if one had the time, there were far more pressing or enjoyable things to do. At most, someone might visit once every few years on a tour, or look up a specific text for a special occasion. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen a single other person in the library these past few days.
“I went in once out of curiosity a long time ago,” Izela continued, “but it was full of difficult books. I left before I even finished one.”
From this, Boran learned another new fact: not everyone in the world found joy in gaining knowledge.
“If you get the chance, you should ask the librarian if there are any easier books to read,” Boran suggested casually, thinking that he, too, might have lost interest in reading if he had started with something overly complex.
The response he received, however, caught him completely off guard.
“Librarian?” Izela asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.
“Yes. The person who manages the library.”
“There’s a person like that in the library?”