Sigrid was struggling to escape from the water, but it was not easy. Eustar tried everything to extract Muge from the invisible barrier, but none of his methods worked.

“Damn it!”

As the sword was deflected, Eustar, unable to contain himself any longer, cursed and gasped for breath. Laila was focused entirely on holding onto Sigrid and couldn’t help him.

Small noises, the sound of Muge’s body breaking bit by bit, were constantly heard, and it made Laila’s nerves stand on edge. Sigrid, submerged in water, was still alive but seemed almost unconscious.

While concentrating on confining Sigrid, Laila racked her brain as much as she could. Magical tools are useless. Eustar’s physical strength is of no use. Then…

“Huk…!”

Laila’s body, which had been concentrating all its strength while standing firm, suddenly jerked forward.

It felt as if someone had struck her lower back with a huge, heavy whip. There was no pain, but the sensation of her breath being cut off as her ribcage bent forward was surprisingly vivid.

“Laila!”

She faintly heard Eustar’s surprised shout at her appearance.

The sight of him running towards her with his sword drawn looked very slow… Laila felt her entire body fill with a boiling heat. She felt like she was about to burst.

— Aagh—!

Eustar, who was about to support Laila, turned to look at the screaming Sigrid. The snake-shaped water was slowly collapsing, with steam rising like a thick fog.

Sigrid was writhing in agony in the boiling water. His wrinkled skin could be seen turning bright red.

The slowly collapsing water wall disappeared completely with a loud noise. It was as if a dam had burst and all the trapped river water was pouring out at once. It was then that Eustar tried to turn his body to protect Laila.

— Kill.

Someone spoke to him in a clear voice. It sounded like Laila’s voice, but also like someone else’s. It continued without interruption.

“Eustar.”

Laila, who had been panting, grabbed his shoulder. “Eustar,” she called him once more, then looked up at him. “We need to finish him off now.”

Sigrid, with burns all over his body, was writhing. Flames were trying to rise again from his palms.

Without hesitation, Eustar swung his sword, maximizing the runner’s output as he thrust forward. There was a flash of light like lightning, and Sigrid’s mouth, pierced by the sword, twisted horribly as he spat out black blood.

“You witch…”

In his dying moment, the last thing Sigrid saw was not Eustar. It was Laila.

Laila still looked shocked, dazed like someone who had been in an accident and didn’t know what had happened to them.

She stared blankly at Sigrid, whose chest had been pierced by Eustar’s sword, and then, as if drawn by something, approached Muge.

Eustar, who had pulled out his sword, turned with a start when he saw Laila reaching out towards Muge.

“Laila, it’s useless. That…”

Laila, as if she couldn’t hear Eustar’s words, reached out towards Muge, or more precisely, towards the barrier surrounding Muge.

Though invisible, she could feel something like a smooth membrane beyond her skin. The stinging pain in her palm was gone now, but Laila could sense the malice layered multiple times on that barrier.

Eustar said,

“Laila, there must be another way…”

As he tried to approach, black smoke suddenly poured out from Laila’s palm.

No, Eustar couldn’t organize his thoughts for a long time afterward about whether it was right to call that thing smoke. What burst out from the inside of Laila’s palm had the form of smoke, but it wasn’t just simple smoke.

It was a pitch-black darkness that could blind living eyes. Although no light entered the tower, even if it had, it would have been sucked into and disappeared into the darkness Laila emitted if it touched it.

While you could clearly sense its existence, in reality, the essence of its existence was ‘nothingness’.

What could that be?

Eustar unconsciously raised his sword and took a step back from Laila. That dark something swirled around Muge like a whirlwind… and with a sound like a very thin glass breaking, that ominous darkness dissipated.

“Laila!”

Laila barely managed to catch Muge just before she fell. Eustar, unable to believe what had happened before his eyes, looked at Laila several times, then alternately at her hands and Muge.

Laila placed her palm in the middle of Muge’s chest.

“I can still feel energy.”

Her voice trembled faintly, and then a moist vitality returned to her red eyes.

“Eustar, she’s still alive.”

“Yes.”

Eustar replied. He too could feel that Muge hadn’t completely ‘died’ yet.

Although she was in a terrible state with one arm and one leg missing, something that kept Muge alive was still moving.

Eustar said,

“How did you do that, Laila? What was that just now?”

To his question, Laila looked down at her arms holding Muge with a troubled expression. She slightly twitched her tingling fingertips and moved her lips, then finally said this:

“I’m not sure.”

Laila’s voice sounded as strained as wringing water from a dry cloth.

“I’m not sure either, Eustar. I felt something, but what it was…”

Eustar, realizing that Laila was in distress, shook his head. “It’s okay,” he said. He took Muge from Laila’s arms and looked around.

Turning his eyes away from Sigrid’s corpse, almost swallowed by a pool of black blood, Eustar realized that the ground beneath the tower was vibrating faintly.

“Let’s get out of here first.”

Laila nodded. As they were about to run outside, suddenly, as if a gust of wind had blown, the door swung open inward with a bang!

Eustar and Laila, who had almost smashed their faces directly into the door, stepped back in surprise. There was a sound like a giant bee flapping its wings, followed by an ear-piercing scream.

“Waaah! Young lady!”

What burst through the opened door was the blue, strange fairy that Muge commanded. It seemed more bulging-eyed than when they first saw it, probably from crying too much.

Every time the fairy blinked, tear drops the size of its head fell from its eyes with a plop, plop.

“Young lady! Young lady! Huuuung…”

The fairy, wailing loudly, snatched Muge from Eustar’s arms and lifted her up. The cracked and broken tissues that were barely hanging on floated in the air. It seemed to be another ability of the fairy.

The fairy, shedding tears profusely, said to Laila and Eustar:

“The wizards are gathering! The wizards are gathering armed under Lady Nierdora’s orders!”

“What?”

Eustar asked back in a harsh tone. The fairy was effortlessly supporting the floating Muge, but it was crying so much that it looked like it might faint at any moment.

The fairy—Laila suddenly remembered that its name was ‘Blueie’—said:

“The wizards are going to war. They’re going to kill the non-wizard humans. Lady Nierdora wants this, and now all the wizards in every city will be unable to disobey Lady Nierdora’s orders!”

Laila asked in an urgent voice:

“Where is this wizard called Nierdora? Where can we find her?”

The fairy answered. It shuddered fearfully every time it mentioned the name ‘Nierdora’, and when it heard Laila’s question, its trembling became visible.

Laila urged:

“Hurry!”

She pointed at Muge.

“If we don’t stop that person, Muge won’t wake up either. Don’t you know?”

The fairy, with eyes wide open, looked at Muge again, whimpering. There was an instinctive resistance to listening and following the words of a human who wasn’t a wizard, and a witch at that…

Nevertheless, Muge was the most precious being to it. It wasn’t just a relationship between a master and a serving fairy, but could be called comrades who longed for something.

It wanted to keep Muge safe, and Laila had accurately grasped this point.

The hesitating fairy cautiously opened its mouth:

“Lady Nierdora is at the ‘Well’. All the other elder wizards might be there too. Master Sigrid was here because he wanted to see Young Lady Muge, but the other elder wizards are different! They don’t love Young Lady Muge like Master Sigrid did…”

Eustar said:

“In my opinion, you seem to cherish Muge the most in this city.”

At that moment, the fairy raised its round blue head and blinked its tear-soaked eyes.

“That’s obvious! There’s no need to state the obvious, descendant of Hyanmorik!”

“My name is Eustar. Anyway, where is this ‘Well’? We need to stop that wizard called Nierdora. We can’t let the tragedy of the past repeat itself.”

Eustar added:

“Can you guide us to the ‘Well’?”

The fairy replied. Its voice was sulky:

“I can guide you. But I can’t take Young Lady Muge with us. If other wizards see her, they’ll try to kill Young Lady Muge, and we can’t let that happen. Above all, Young Lady Muge needs immediate treatment now. She needs energy. If not, she’ll die. She’ll die forever. And if Young Lady Muge dies, I’ll drop dead too!”

Large teardrops fell again from the fairy’s eyes. Laila and Eustar looked at each other. After a brief sigh, they silently agreed on the same conclusion.

Eustar said:

“Alright then. You take good care of Muge. In return, tell us where we need to go to find the ‘Well’, how we can find and stop that wizard called Nierdora. In detail.”

The fairy nodded.