“It’s a bracelet your master prepared for you. It seals you so you can’t use magic. Thanks to it, I’ve had it easier too, so it worked out well.”
“This is….”
“So give up appropriately, mage kid.”
Such a thing exists? Kaniel turned pale. If he couldn’t use magical power, if he was neither a mage nor a Monster Tamer, he was nothing. There was nothing he could do. Really nothing except shouting like a captured wild animal while gripping the bars.
“That can’t be….”
Will Taeyon come to rescue me? Fear filled Kaniel’s face as he looked down at the white forest.
He didn’t think Taeyon would easily give up on him. But it seemed like Taeyon would have no way to chase this man who had fled flying through the air without leaving traces in the forest. Especially since they’d come so far that even the trees composing the forest had changed.
Taeyon can’t come.
There was no one to save him.
“……”
The Winged Tribe man, noticing Kaniel had sunk into despair, grinned with satisfaction. He’d finally become easy to handle. Now it was time to soothe him.
“Don’t worry. What that person wants from you is just to use magic. It’s not even difficult magic.”
“……”
“If you just use the magic they want, when they want it, where they want it, you can live a very luxurious life. Not only will you receive delicious food, very soft clothes and a warm bed, you’ll be able to employ servants too, right? I’m sure they’ll give you plenty of allowance. Because they’re a very wealthy person.”
What use is all that?
When I’ll be living as a slave.
Kaniel much preferred the free life with Taeyon, sleeping on dirt floors, eating jerky and dry bread, with sand rolling around inside his clothes.
“What kind of magic?”
It must be illegal work. If it were ordinary work, they would have handled it not this way but by formally requesting a mage dispatch to the Floating Island.
“That person is conducting research related to contaminated demonic energy, you see? It’s magic to help with that.”
“Contaminated demonic energy…?”
Because rifts to the Demon Realm opened frequently, research on contaminated demonic energy was actively conducted on the Floating Island. And as a result of many mages researching in various ways, what they learned was that contaminated demonic energy had nothing but bad points.
Thinking of the people who had collapsed due to contaminated demonic energy in the underground city, he didn’t think the Surface would be particularly different.
Yet they’re conducting research on contaminated demonic energy to the point of kidnapping humans and making them slaves? Only bad thoughts came to mind.
What on earth were they trying to do?
“Anyway, just think that if you listen well, you’ll live a pretty decent life. Of course, if you don’t listen, you’ll be crying while getting whipped.”
The man sneered threateningly.
“Well, magical power doesn’t recharge well on the Surface anyway. Right?”
“……”
Was that so? He didn’t think it was like that.
Kaniel lowered his gaze, pretending to be depressed.
“It’s difficult to naturally replenish magical power on the Surface. That person will solve that too. You know there’s something called magic stones? If you use those, you can replenish magical power at once.”
He’d never thought magical power recharged slowly. Rather, recently his magical power had been recovering quickly, so he’d thought that might be a characteristic of the Surface.
Was this also because he was a ‘special human’ like the man said earlier?
Kaniel curled up his body, hugged his legs, and buried his face in his knees. The man continued to rattle off the good points of becoming ‘that person’s’ slave, but Kaniel didn’t listen anymore.
He missed Taeyon.
* * *
Washing didn’t take very long. Taeyon, who quickly washed his body, was about to leave the lake when he suddenly recalled what Kaniel had said.
‘Look at this. I’ll catch more later. Let’s grill and eat them together.’
Yet the fish he’d caught while washing was a minnow the size of a finger. A small fish that seemed like it would yield only a thumbnail’s worth of flesh even if grilled.
Taeyon, who recalled Kaniel’s excited expression, chuckled. Somehow seeing him happy over something trivial made him laugh.
He went back into the water. It didn’t take even five minutes for Taeyon, a natural hunter, to catch a fish the size of a forearm.
He returned to the campsite where Kaniel would be only after perfectly putting on his clothes as he always did.
But no matter how much he looked around, Kaniel wasn’t visible.
“…Kaniel?”
Even when he called his name, thinking he might be looking around nearby for a moment, Kaniel didn’t appear. Come to think of it, Kaniel’s scent remaining in the air was too faint to say he’d been here until just moments ago.
“What the….”
Taeyon carefully examined the surroundings. Then he discovered a small minnow fallen on the ground. The fish was already dead and drying up.
“……”
There was no way Kaniel would have abandoned like this the fish he’d bragged about catching.
Taeyon carefully breathed in the scent in the air with a hardened face. The scent of wet Kaniel, and mixed in between was an unfamiliar scent. No, it wasn’t completely unfamiliar.
This was from the day he first met Kaniel. That day, it was one of the scents coming from Kaniel. At the same time, it was also a scent that had come from one of them when the kidnappers had attacked.
A chilling coldness firmly gripped Taeyon’s heart.
CRASH!!
Lightning that fell from a clear sky fiercely scorched the ground and disappeared. Electric sparks crackled and flew from Taeyon’s body too.
Taeyon felt heat rising hotly to his head with intense anger and emptiness he was experiencing for the first time in his life.
‘How dare they take my Tuner….’
It was a Tuner he’d found after decades. For Taeyon, who had never experienced proper tuning in his life, contact with Kaniel was an unprecedentedly intense shock.
That complete peace and tranquility was, really….
‘That damned bird bastard dares…!’
His vision flickered with rage.
When he was by his side, he’d thought he was just a protectee who needed to be taken care of, but the moment he disappeared from view, he realized it wasn’t simple protective instinct. This was possessiveness and at the same time monopolistic desire.
Also, it was survival instinct underlying everything.
It was a desire not to escape from tranquility.
It was a trap of stillness he’d become addicted to after feeling just once.
Taeyon clenched his faintly trembling fist once then opened it and picked up his sword.
And he took a deep breath to restore his reason.
‘No need to worry about safety.’
After the first kidnapping ended in failure, they could have kidnapped another human. The fact they didn’t meant there was a reason it had to be Kaniel.
Then they wouldn’t treat precious Kaniel roughly.
‘If they disappeared into the air, the scent will disappear soon.’
Taeyon searched which direction the scent remaining in the air led.
“North.”
Taeyon, who gauged the direction, launched his body.
Crackle, Taeyon’s body seemed to flicker then revealed itself in a distant place.
The ability wavelength that had been completely stable slowly writhed. It wasn’t to a dangerous degree, but the speed at which it began to rampage was excessively fast. However, with the thought that he had to chase Kaniel immediately, there was no time to think about what was happening to his ability wavelength.
It was while he was repeating movement after movement like that.
Taeyon suddenly realized that the dirty bird scent and Kaniel’s fragrance were getting stronger.
“Kaniel…!”
After that, it didn’t take long to discover the bird flying in the sky. Taeyon transformed into lightning and appeared behind the bird’s back in the blink of an eye.
“What…! Gaah!”
Slash, the sword imbued with electricity slashed a long cut across the bird beastkin man’s back. Actually, he’d tried to cut off the wings, but it missed because he moved. Crackle crackle, the kidnapper, who had been trembling from the shock of electrocution, soon lost strength and began to fall.
“Taeyon!”
Kaniel was startled and clung to the birdcage bars while calling Taeyon. He really hadn’t expected it. He’d thought there would be no way to chase the kidnapper who had flown up into the air and fled. Yet Taeyon had chased him.
Emotion and joy surged up until he felt like he would cry.
“Taeyon, Taeyon…!”
Not only Taeyon but even Kaniel and the kidnapper were falling. While the kidnapper with an injured back couldn’t flap his wings properly, Taeyon gestured for Kaniel to lower his body, then cut off the top part of the birdcage.
Next, Taeyon’s hand pulled him out of the birdcage and drew him into his arms.
‘I got him back.’
Only then did the heat in his head, which had been filled only with the thought that he had to get Kaniel back, subside. Kaniel’s body temperature and the texture of his skin that he’d lost imprinted his existence on him even more intensely.
He never wanted to experience this sense of loss again.
Never again.
“T-Taeyon, we’re falling!”
Kaniel shouted in a frightened voice.
Taeyon gently patted Kaniel’s back while looking down below. It seemed like they’d reach the forest canopy in just a bit more.
