An Unexpected Encounter

The sensation of a sharp blade smoothly slicing through a solid object vibrated up through the tips of her fingers and echoed throughout her arm. Unable to resist the thrill of the momentary rush, Lily blurted out a line straight from a cliché novel.

When she looked back at Agniele, he was giving his blood-dripping sword a light flick in the air while nodding in agreement.

Splash— thick, blue blood splattered onto the muddy ground. Lily, too, shook the blood off her blade and looked down at the Harpy’s cleanly severed neck.

“Wow, that’s a clean cut.”

Even though she had successfully severed a wing, Lily couldn’t help but admire Agniele’s sword work. Normally, a monster’s hide grew tougher near its vital points. While wings were certainly important, they were thinner than the neck, making them relatively easier to cut through.

“Should we gouge out the eyes to bring back as proof of the subjugation?”

“Yes. And the mana stone.”

While Agniele began extracting the eyes from the severed head, Lily gave a short grunt of effort and flipped the Harpy’s massive body over. Mana stones were usually formed near the heart, so they needed to open the chest.

“—Ensi! Should we grab a few wing feathers too?”

“Yeah, please. I’ll make some daggers with them.”

“Ack, you scared me!”

Startled by the voice coming from right beside her, Lily jumped and made a fuss.

“But instead of making new ones, can’t you just find the dagger you threw at it?”

“…Why would I?”

To find that dagger, he’d have to search the entire area, and Ensi had zero desire to do that. He didn’t see the point in such a tedious task.

“That thing was expensive. It had a mana stone embedded in it too.”

“I can just embed a new one. Mana stones for daggers don’t cost that much.”

In Korean Won, maybe around 100 million?

Objectively, it was a high price, but since Ensi had money flowing in through the merchant guild, it didn’t feel prohibitively expensive to him. If mana stones were a rare resource in this world, it might be a different story, but they weren’t. While they could be mined from natural mana stone caves, they could also be harvested from monsters, so the supply was fairly steady. That “100 million” figure also included the time and cost of finding a stone that matched both the quality and Ensi’s specific mana affinity.

“Must be nice. The leisure of a self-made man.”

Unlike Ensi, Lily lamented her own situation of having to fret over money as she sliced into the Harpy’s belly. She poked around the heart area with the tip of her knife, waiting to feel a hard sensation.

Ensi stepped back to give her space. Given the Harpy’s size, finding the mana stone would likely take a while. Thinking he should rest for a moment, he looked for a place to sit.

“How many feathers do you need?”

Agniele, who had already finished collecting the eyes, suddenly appeared at Ensi’s side. Because he had approached without a sound, it was Ensi’s turn to be startled. His shoulders flinched, and he reflexively gripped the bow slung over his shoulder.

“I’ll do the collecting.”

“No. It’s too early to be at ease… Ensius, I would prefer if you kept watch.”

Agniele spoke in a roundabout way, but the conclusion was that he wanted to do the work. Ensi, who had intended to let Lily handle it, felt awkward having effectively dumped the chore onto Agniele.

Unaware of Ensi’s internal awkwardness, Agniele looked at him with eyes filled with a subtle sense of expectation. Ultimately, unable to withstand that intense gaze, Ensi spoke up hesitantly.

“Then, maybe… just about ten of them…”

“Understood. I’ll be back shortly.”

Ensi rubbed his mouth as he watched Agniele walk away with a back that looked visibly lighthearted. Agniele’s inner state was so transparent that Ensi began to suspect he had reached a level where he could read the man’s mood just by the way he walked.

“He really is something.”

Lily, who had approached as if tagging out with Agniele—perhaps to show Ensi the mana stone she had finally found—shook her head while cleaning her blood-stained sword. The man was consistent, to say the least. One would expect him to be tired after using so much mana, but he showed no sign of it.

“But Ensi, could you make me a dagger too?”

Lily, who was secretly quite greedy for weapons, leaned in and whispered. Ensi gave a sidelong glance to Lily, who always acted exceptionally affectionate whenever she wanted something. It wasn’t that he couldn’t do it, but he had no particular reason to.

“I’ll make you one once you’re better at throwing daggers than I am.”

“…Is that just a very long way of saying no?”

It was just a passing thought, so Lily let out a huff and quickly dropped the matter.

“Anyway, the subjugation ended faster than expected. Should we just head back early?”

As Lily grumbled about it being a bit anticlimactic, Ensi was reminded of what he’d seen at the valley. To make sure she couldn’t run away, he grabbed her shoulder in advance and asked.

“Lily, you went to get water at the valley yesterday, right?”

“Huh? Y-yeah? Why?”

Lily shivered slightly at the low, sinking tone of Ensi’s voice. For some reason, she felt a sudden chill. Was it because Ensi’s hand was so cold?

Ensi gazed silently at Lily, whose eyes were darting around as she tried to gauge his mood. She seemed to have no inkling of what she might have done wrong. Finding that strange, Ensi tilted his head and narrowed his eyes.

“There were Harpy tracks at the valley. You didn’t see them?”

“Tracks at the valley? That’s impossible.”

No matter how busy she had been lamenting her fate yesterday, Lily hadn’t forgotten her primary goal. She had definitely finished a proper scout of the area before filling the canteens. Lily tilted her head in sync with Ensi as she answered.

“…Really?”

“I’m serious! There was definitely nothing there yesterday. I’m not so stupid that I’d neglect my duties, no matter what!”

Ensi gave a dismissive wave of his hand to Lily, who was practically jumping up and down to be believed. At his signal that he understood and for her to calm down, Lily took a steady breath.

“Is something the matter?”

Noticing the commotion, Agniele approached them, cradling the collected wing feathers in his arms. Lily almost burst into laughter seeing the serious-looking man carefully clutching a bundle of feathers, but she managed to hold it in.

“Ensi says there are Harpy tracks at the valley that weren’t there yesterday. We were talking about how weird that is.”

She cleared her throat and gave her answer. Perhaps because she was barely holding back a laugh, her tone was quite light, but Agniele’s expression turned grave instantly.

“If the tracks appeared overnight, that means—”

“Kii-ooooh—!”

A rage-filled screech cut through Agniele’s words and echoed through the mountain. Hearing the ominous, ear-splitting sound, Lily’s head turned slowly, like a creaking machine.

“Oh, son of a—”

Lily’s voice cut off just before it turned into a curse. The three of them caught sight of a Harpy even larger than the one they had just killed and, without needing to think, reflexively moved into action.

“I thought you said there was only one…!”

One, my foot! Thinking of the professors and assistants sitting comfortably back at the Academy, Lily trembled with rage.

Because the first Harpy had completely leveled the trees that would have provided cover, it took a considerable amount of time to subjugate the newly appeared one. Still, thanks to Agniele’s performance, they managed to take it down.

Ensi let out a sigh, massaging his hands which were trembling from firing so many arrows. Fatigue was weighing heavily on his body. Furthermore, perhaps because he hadn’t taken Sun Grass for a long period, his body was shivering with a deep chill.

In short, his condition was at its worst. He scowled, chewing through a handful of the pills Luke had given him.

“It must have been mating season.”

“Ugh, I’m dying. But mating season? It’s almost summer.”

“Harpy breeding seasons vary by individual. Summer or winter, they decide the timing based on their physical condition, regardless of the season.”

Ensi sat on a pitifully fallen tree, listening to the conversation between Lily and Agniele as they collected the mana stone and eyes from the second kill.

“But what does mating season have to do with two of them showing up?”

“…You don’t know? Harpies are normally solitary monsters. Usually, they attack any of their kind that trespasses on their territory. However, during mating season, they share a habitat with their mate. It’s also a characteristic of theirs to move to a new habitat to live with their joined partner.”

Considering that one of the conditions for moving habitats was a rainy night, it wasn’t strange for new tracks to appear at the valley in a single night. Lily nodded in response to Agniele’s kind explanation and pulled out the mana stone she had finally recovered.

“So you’re saying it was an exceptional situation? Talk about rotten luck.”

The mana stone this time was significantly larger than the first. Looking at the energy flowing inside, it was no empty shell. It was a stone that would clearly fetch a high price; unable to hide her rising greed, Lily’s eyes sparkled.

“Ensi! How much do you think this stone would sell fo—?”

She turned toward Ensi, but her eyes widened in shock. She’d wondered why he’d been so quiet!

“Hey, hey! Are you okay? Are you alive!?”

Lily rushed to Ensi and crouched in front of him. she placed the back of her hand against his deathly pale cheek, only to recoil at the freezing temperature.

“I’m alive… don’t make a scene.”

“A scene? You look like you’re about to drop dead! Where’s your medicine?”

“I took it.”

But his condition simply wasn’t improving. Even though Lily was asking calmly, Ensi felt a throbbing sensation in his skull and pressed a hand to his forehead.

“Where’s your pipe?”

“I think… I left it in the tent…”

He didn’t have the strength to go get it right now. He wasn’t even sure if he’d left it in the tent or lost it during the fight with the Harpies. At his weak reply, Lily anxiously wrapped her hands around Ensi’s ice-cold fingers.

“The Sun Grass is in the tent too, right? Hang on, I’ll go get it. No, wait. Would it be better if we went together?”

It had been a long time since she’d seen Ensi in such bad shape, and Lily was struggling to remain calm.

“Lily.”

Despite the pain, Ensi noticed Lily’s state. He called her name softly and gave her forehead a light flick.