The Duke Stole Everything - Chapter 68
The expression of Shukadi, a magician belonging to the Crofl mercenary group, soured slightly.
A constitution that is immune to magic is rare.
Generally, since mana accumulates in the body just by breathing, Ren’s constitution was an especially rare case. The reason magic didn’t work seemed to be because his body was already filled with energy other than mana, unable to accept any more different energy.
“So in the end, it’s better for me to stay away even when my master is sleeping.”
Despite being informed of the possibility of such a constitution, Ren showed no signs of welcoming it.
Rather, he looked displeased and seemed quite discouraged.
“Even though you didn’t directly cast magic on me, does it make sense that my constitution caused a gap in the protective magic? For the magic of a tower master, it’s full of flaws.”
Not only that, he grumbled, was crooked, prickly, and even sarcastic.
Shukadi simply kept her mouth shut tight and hurriedly observed Ren’s mood.
‘Magic isn’t omnipotent! Of course, I also find it strange that the tower master made a mistake! Anyway, he has no manners even with a magician in front of him. While he’s so polite in front of the doctor!’
Ren did not hesitate to speak ill of the Crofl mercenary group and the tower master.
At least when Sharti stopped him, he just closed his mouth. Shukadi inwardly complained bitterly, wishing they had covered his eyes too, but suddenly tilted her head curiously.
‘Wait, so he’s acting like this because he can’t be by the doctor’s side?’
Shukadi sighed briefly with an incredulous expression.
Only then did she notice that Ren’s gaze was fixed only on Sharti. All his regret and difficulty centered around Sharti.
‘At first I thought he was a guard knight, but he said he was an assistant, yet he’s no different from a slave.’
Isn’t he acting like Sharti’s guardian?
“I’ll be nearby. There’s nothing bad about being careful. The tower master’s magic was broken, so how would the mercenaries’ magic be any different? Nothing is more important to me than my master’s safety. Should I feel that my blood is drying up from worrying about my master again?”
To others, Ren seemed excessively fussy.
Moreover, that glib way of speaking.
‘Are they in a relationship or what?’
Could it be? Shukadi carefully observed Ren and Sharti again.
Even with his face hidden by a hood, there were emotions that came through. And the flow between a man and a woman was naturally felt.
Shukadi covered her slightly raised corners of her mouth with her sleeve.
“Ahem, you don’t have to do that.”
Shukadi gestured for Sharti to hold out her hand. With a simple casting, she poked Sharti’s palm with her staff.
Whoosh-. A pale green mana enveloped Sharti’s body and then disappeared.
“What did you do now?”
Of course, Ren showed obvious wariness towards Shukadi. Because of Sharti’s mood, he used polite language, but his tone remained the same.
Hmph, Shukadi raised her head with a confident expression.
“I cast a protective spell on the doctor personally. If an unauthorized person touches her, they’ll be repelled.”
“Won’t the magic weaken again if I’m nearby?”
Since learning about his constitution, Ren had been expressing his distrust of magic more blatantly.
Shukadi pouted her lips.
“If it were the textbook magic of tower-affiliated magicians, yes, but I used a slight workaround, so it doesn’t matter. I cast the protective spell to activate only for people other than the assistant.”
“Excluding me?”
Ren looked surprised for a moment, then nodded.
“That’s fine.”
As expected, it was an irritatingly quick change of attitude.
“Thank you.”
Ren bowed his head without showing any dislike.
It meant that Sharti’s protective spell was worth bowing to.
Shukadi cleared her throat at the much more dramatic change in attitude than expected.
“I know a magic that could be helpful for the assistant as well.”
“Didn’t you say magic doesn’t work on me?”
“I’m not offering to do it, but to teach you.”
Ren raised an eyebrow.
He didn’t seem particularly interested.
But Shukadi was confident.
“Besides face transformation magic, there’s a way to achieve a similar effect in a semi-permanent form, even without magic.”
“Yes! As expected, doctor, you know about it.”
Ren glanced at Sharti. Of course, since she had to cover her face for 5 years, she would have looked for various methods besides hoods. However, with a wallet situation where even buying a single magic stone was difficult, magical tools were out of the question.
Unlike magic stones, magical tools required elaborate and complex formulas, so they were expensive.
“So what about it?”
As Sharti looked bitter, Ren immediately asked indifferently, losing interest.
“We have magical tools in our mercenary group too. We don’t sell them, but we lend them to each other among the group members.”
Sharti nodded. She knew about this as well.
The lending wasn’t free, and for Bireta, who had to earn living expenses for 4 people including Sharti’s share without even being blood-related, even the rental fee was a burdensome amount.
“Want to try working? Instead of wages, you can borrow magical tools!”
From a mercenary’s perspective, Ren’s constitution that was immune to magic was highly valuable.
He would certainly be able to join the mercenary group.
However, Ren answered immediately without even considering it.
“I was rejected.”
“…Pardon?”
Shukadi blinked blankly.
“I was already rejected.”
For some reason, Ren’s expression looked sulky as he crossed his arms.
Shukadi, who had looked bewildered, carefully guessed the reason for rejection.
“Could the reason be your personality…”
“…”
“Ah, never mind.”
As Ren’s brow furrowed slightly, Shukadi quietly closed her mouth and lowered her gaze.
“Uh, but if you say you were rejected, does that mean you first proposed to join our mercenary group?”
“I didn’t specifically ask about any particular mercenary group.”
Ren had just wanted to find a job, and unable to find any talent other than physical labor, he had asked Bireta about mercenary conditions. More precisely, he didn’t particularly care about the type of job as long as it was a job that could earn money.
However, like Sharti, he was in a situation where he had to cover his face first, and the wall of reality was high. As Bireta advised, there was nothing he could do besides being Sharti’s assistant.
“I was confident in my strength, but having no experience wielding weapons, I thought I could only get a job as a porter at best, so I looked into it.”
“A porter? That’s really tough work.”
“My master also works hard to earn money,”
“Of course, but…”
Ren tilted his head crookedly.
“My master wakes up at dawn, climbs mountains to gather herbs, then washes, dries, trims, grinds, and stores those gathered herbs. Then, cutting down on meal times, she goes around treating patients seeking a doctor, and even after returning home, she records and organizes herbs and symptoms. And…!”
“…!!”
Sharti immediately covered Ren’s mouth.
The glimpse of her delicate white fingertips looked reddened.
Shukadi, who had been listening blankly to the sudden praise of Sharti, smiled faintly.
‘Are you the doctor’s spokesperson?’
It also seemed like bragging about a lover.
Either way, it was equally unpleasant to see, so Shukadi tried hard to manage her expression as she looked at Sharti.
“The doctor must work very hard.”
“…”
Unable to bear the embarrassment any longer, Sharti stood up abruptly.
Then she hastily wrote a note.
Ren didn’t insist on staying by Sharti’s side.
There was protective magic, and it was well past midnight, so Sharti needed to get some sleep soon.
Instead, he hinted to Shukadi for Sharti, who would have difficulty moving. Fortunately, Shukadi wasn’t completely tactless, and she comfortably transported Sharti to the next room using levitation magic.
“…”
A brief silence fell over the room where Ren and Shukadi remained.
Ren leaned comfortably against the wall with an impassive face.
“Do you have anything else to say?”
The implication was why are you still here and not being more vigilant about possible intruders.
“If something comes up, it will be communicated through magic communication.”
Ren looked at Shukadi with eyes that said it was a flimsy excuse.
There was certainly a difference in his gaze with and without Sharti nearby. His expressionless face created a solemn atmosphere as if all emotions had sunk, and his teal eyes were shaded dark.
Left alone, Ren overall looked lonely.
More precisely, he looked like someone who had cut off interest in others altogether.
“Just state your business briefly.”
“Don’t you want to become a mercenary?”
Feeling it would only get awkward if she dragged it out, Shukadi didn’t beat around the bush.
“For magicians, a constitution immune to magic is highly valuable for research. And for mercenary magicians like me, a companion with your constitution is most needed.”
The requests that come to mercenaries basically required combat. And every time, magicians could only retreat to the rear.
If asked whether swordsmanship or magic is stronger, one could say magic without hesitation, but magicians couldn’t use magic infinitely. If the mana in the body that is squeezed out by magical power is depleted, the reality is that they can’t even block a paper knife.
“I’ve never held anything that could be called a weapon.”
“That can’t be true.”
Shukadi scanned Ren’s arms, legs, and body.
“Those muscles of yours couldn’t have been built with farm tools or chopping wood, right? It’s a body that can only be made through years of swordsmanship. Even the calluses on your palms are in the exact shape of holding a sword.”
Shukadi was just a magician, not keen-eyed enough to distinguish the difference between a swordsman and an ordinary person.
However, living and working closely with colleagues, more than half of whom were swordsmen, she had seen and heard a lot.
“I don’t know why you’re hiding that you’re a swordsman in front of the doctor, but if you join the Crofl mercenary group and become a comrade to protect magicians including me-”
“I refuse.”
“…Pardon?”
“I have no intention of becoming a mercenary.”
When Ren flatly refused, Shukadi was taken aback.
He had applied to be a porter for the mercenary group, an extreme job, but was refusing to be a mercenary which had better pay and treatment. From Shukadi’s perspective, it didn’t make sense.
“We’ll lend you magical tools, and the pay is better than a porter’s.”
Ren shook his head as if he had no intention of changing his mind.
Shukadi rolled her eyes around. A constitution immune to magic was helpful for research as well as developing attack magic. For her, Ren’s cooperation was absolutely necessary.
“Are you perhaps being cautious, afraid your life might be in danger?”
Ren let out a deep sigh.
“I can’t leave my master alone.”
“…?”
“I have no intention of leaving her side.”
“…Ah, I see…”
It was an unyielding attitude that said persuasion wouldn’t work.
But Shukadi had long since learned the know-how of dealing with lovers while rolling around in the Crofl mercenary group.
“But magical tools would be useful, wouldn’t they?”
“I can cover my face well enough like this.”
“Then neither the doctor nor you would be able to see each other’s faces.”
“…”
Ren, at a loss for words, narrowed his eyes.
“There are magical tools used by lovers. They can’t transform the face itself, but they interfere with people’s facial recognition.”
“…Lovers use such things?”
“There are lovers who have different social status, or want to share their love away from the eyes of the world.”
In fact, it was a set of magical tools that mercenaries wore for undercover work, but the reason for use was the same.
“Above all, when lovers wear those magical tools together, they can see each other’s real faces.”
“…!”
Finally, an interested response came from Ren.
“Even with a constitution immune to magic, those magical tools don’t directly cast magic on the wearer, and touching them doesn’t nullify the magic.”
Shukadi drove in the final nail.
“The magical tools come in the form of a pair of rings.”
Ren’s Adam’s apple moved up and down greatly.
Shukadi waited with a confident face for Ren’s mouth to open.
“I can’t, be a mercenary.”
“Pardon?”
Ren frowned with a disappointed face and bit his lip.
It was a face beyond regret, looking very frustrated.
“I can’t reveal my identity.”
For Ren, having no memories meant he didn’t know his identity to reveal it.
Instead of admitting he had amnesia, Ren made the excuse to Shukadi that it was impossible because he was a runaway slave.
This time, Shukadi drooped her shoulders with a face that had lost motivation.
If mercenary registration itself was an obstacle, there was no way around it.
“…”
The two fell into silence.
Then the one with greater regret spoke first.
“…If you’re proposing I become a mercenary because my constitution has research value, couldn’t I personally become a test subject for your research until my master leaves this village?”
“T-test subject?”
“Surely you wouldn’t conduct inhumane experiments on me while I’m alive.”
“Of course not!”
Shukadi’s eyes sparkled.
It was a research opportunity that wouldn’t be given even at the magic tower.
“And there’s something I want to ask.”
Ren hesitated for a moment, then looked at Shukadi with resolute eyes.
“Are there also magical tools that can restore forgotten memories?”
Male lead reborn without memories — but he still falls for her.
The person he finds displeasing in this life turns out to be his cherished wife-master in previous life…
Xie Zhi and Fang Xianxing who had known each other for less than three days through a blind date sat in the same car in front of the civil affairs bureau. They had a disagreement and failed to get married.
Xie Zhi immediately took out his phone, slid through his contacts, and randomly selected the next marriage candidate.
The woman snatched his phone and hung up. Looking at his phone wallpaper, she awkwardly changed the subject: “An ancient painting, eh? It looks pretty good, it’s just that the person in the painting looks a bit like me.”
When he heard this, he sarcastically mocked her for being so delusional, completely unaware that, the person in front of him was the reincarnation of Wen Ru, the famous prime minister of Yuan Shun whom he most admired…
The female CEO who doesn’t want to get married with a divorce agreement in hand × The male archaeological researcher who will only get married if he’s sure he can get divorced
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