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Bermuda Chapter 120
🕑 Added 2024-05-26 09:16:04 +0000 UTCChapter 120
Darkness had fallen even inside the cave where bright light had been entering.
Kenis was lying on a blanket spread next to a column with his eyes closed, exhaling even breaths. Perhaps because the sleeping spot was uncomfortable, he occasionally tossed and turned and scratched his neck. A little distance away from him, another thick blanket was spread out, but that spot was empty.
Originally, he had intended to immediately find and rejoin the ranks as soon as Leonardo regained consciousness and recovered his condition. It was because being separated from the ranks due to a sudden accident and being away from his seniors for a long time was quite a burdensome situation for a newcomer to handle.
However, the reason Kenis was still here even after packing all the luggage was because of Leonardo's persuasion, saying that it would soon get dark, so they should spend the night here and leave when the day brightened.
He had learned that in the wilderness like this peninsula, as soon as darkness fell, everything would become pitch-black and the probability of danger would double, so Kenis agreed with Leonardo's opinion and decided to spend one more night.
From where he was, if one followed the railing of the structure and turned two corners, there was a small courtyard with several vine-covered statues and a carved roof hanging over it, amidst low blades of grass. One light and two silhouettes flickered there. The owner of the empty spot next to Kenis was also there.
The scholar pulled out the syringe needle he had stuck in his arm and rubbed it with cotton, saying,
"Tsk, to make me overuse this precious thing like this."
Leonardo, who had been watching what the scholar was doing while leaning against a column at an angle with his mouth covered, made the floating flames a little larger, then slowly examined the ingredients written on the vial he was holding in his hand.
The so-called mana stabilizers that were released and distributed on the market only imitated stabilizing mana, and in fact, they merely slowed down the heart rate and had large side effects. Therefore, most organizations used the somewhat crude method of controlling unstable mana with restraints or mana restraining stones instead of mana stabilizers.
However, the stabilizer this scholar guy claimed to have developed was somewhat different. At first, he had some rejection as he was unconditionally wary, but as time passed, he felt the flow of mana becoming calmer and the control becoming more precise.
Still, it was just as suspicious, so Leonardo demanded the scholar to inject the stabilizer into his own arm first. Then, thinking there might be something extraordinary in it, he examined the ingredients of the drug, but there seemed to be only components similar to painkillers, nothing particularly special or problematic.
After staring at it for a while, when he handed the vial back without a word, the scholar received it with a smile.
"How is it, do you trust me a bit now?"
However, Leonardo's expression was still cold.
"I still can't say I trust you. How do I know if abnormal symptoms will appear later?"
"You're so suspicious. Then why do you say you'll make a deal?"
"I said I'll hear you out."
"Oho."
The scholar let out a light laugh and put the vial and syringe back into the small backpack he had placed next to him. Then, he took out a map that had been rolled up and stuck in the backpack.
The scholar, who was about to unfold the map right away, hesitated for a moment, then rolled up the unfolded end again and held it in his hand, saying,
"First of all, my condition is simple. You just need to take me to a location within this peninsula undetected and safely. Since the person who was accompanying me for personal protection has disappeared, you can replace him for that task. Simple, right?"
His action of not unfolding the map showed his will to not reveal the location yet. It seemed he was hiding it in case the negotiation fell through.
"I need to know what kind of place that is. And if it was such a simple task, why would you make a deal?"
"It's nothing else, but there are quite a lot of monsters on the way there. Still, it's not very far from here. It's a place we can sufficiently reach within two days at most, and of course, it might take a little longer if we try to avoid the eyes of the Council."
"..."
"Ah, and as for the return trip, I'll take care of it myself, so as long as you take me to the destination, I'll consider the contract fulfilled."
Just listening to it, it wasn't a more difficult request than he had thought. Of course, if that location the scholar was talking about was a place anyone could easily go to, he wouldn't have brought up the deal in the first place, but it wasn't a place that took that much time, and if he did it well, it seemed he could extract various information.
"Now, what about you? What do you want from me?"
Leonardo, who had been observing the scholar's expression, slowly rubbed his lips with the hand that had been covering his mouth and opened it.
"There are three things I want."
"Three things?"
"First, guide me to the place where you discovered 'etaide'. Second, explain everything you know about the eggs you were trying to study, the outsider you said you briefly accompanied, and this Elder Millie Peninsula. Third, do not disclose to anyone else about the deal, the conversations we had, and everything you learned. These are the conditions I'm setting. Simple, right?"
Etaide was the unofficial name of the blue mineral Leonardo had been searching for.
At Leonardo's words, where he listed off several things and added 'simple, right?' at the end, just like himself, the scholar made a displeased smile.
"It's not difficult, but isn't it unfair? I have only one condition, but you're telling me to confess everything I know and even trying to block my mouth. No matter how I look at it, it seems like I'm getting the short end of the stick."
"So you're saying you won't do it?"
"It's not that I won't do it, but... I'm saying there needs to be something more that benefits me. By the way, etaide seems to be popular these days? Seeing as you're also looking for it."
The scholar's words sounded as if there was someone else besides Leonardo and himself who was also searching for etaide. And it sounded as if he had deliberately dropped that information to gauge the level of interest.
"I guess someone else is also looking for etaide?"
At Leonardo's words, indirectly probing while responding to the expectation, the corners of the scholar's mouth slightly rose.
"I can only tell you the answer to that if we make a deal contract?"
"..."
The smiling face was annoying. Although the scholar was the one who proposed first, it seemed like he had become the one in the disadvantageous position. However, even putting aside the information about etaide, in order to continue probing the scholar who might know something, he had to at least pretend to continue the deal anyway.
"...So are you saying you will make the deal or not?"
"I'm saying let's make a fair deal. So I guess it would be neat for me to set more conditions on my side to balance it out, right?"
The scholar, who had been pondering for a moment about the conditions he could set, soon opened his mouth with a grin as if a good idea had come to him.
"I have a few drugs I've been developing recently, and I need quite a lot of test subjects."
"..."
"S-grade mages are also rare. If you just take a few, there will be no harm to your body..."
"I think you're misunderstanding something."
The smiling eyes seemed to think they had the upper hand. Feeling displeasure at that, Leonardo frowned and said,
"There are no conditions you can add. I was going to threaten you from now on."
"Hmm?"
The scholar tilted his head with a brazen smile. Leonardo looked at that face with an annoyed expression, then eventually relaxed his expression and gave him the same smile.
"The story about your bag being stolen. It's a lie, isn't it?"
The smile instantly disappeared from the scholar's eyes that had been narrowly curved. Only his mouth was smiling.
What was this? A parabola was drawn on his lips as he saw him.
One of the things he had learned while interrogating the outsider with threats was that there might be other collaborators on the peninsula who knew about etaide and the unidentified egg besides him.
The outsider, who had been avoiding giving proper answers the whole time, said that he himself didn't even know the egg was in the bag and that he knew nothing because he only 'transported' them, crouching his body in fear of being hit.
At that time, he had been skeptical about whether those words were true or not, but now that he had probed, it became certain that the scholar's words were lies, and he felt like things were starting to make sense.
When he first woke up here and grasped the surrounding situation, Leonardo had scanned the scholar's backpack with his eyes and discovered something attached to it, so he hadn't rashly touched it. Later, without fail, there was also something attached to the small backpack the scholar had been carrying when he returned with Kenis.
It was a kind of lock using magic, and whatever it was, he could tell that the purpose was to prevent someone else from touching the backpack. Usually, the more things someone had to hide, the more they tended to pay attention to their belongings in various ways. Just like how he had put multiple layers of locks on his artifacts.
However, the bag the outsider had didn't have such a thing, and of course, there were no traces of it being forcibly torn off. It didn't make sense that he hadn't discovered it even though he had searched so thoroughly, and it seemed right to think that it hadn't been attached in the first place.
Then the question moved on to the next point. Why did a guy who attached locks to all his backpacks to the extent of taking care of his belongings not attach anything to that bag? Moreover, judging from this guy's personality that he had seen so far, even if briefly, it didn't seem like he would have left the outsider to steal the bag so easily.
Leonardo, who had been speculating all along, reached a conclusion.
"You either left the bag knowing it would be stolen, or you directly gave the bag to him and told him to transport it. Right?"
The scholar said nothing. Neither denial nor affirmation could be found in his expression.
"Well, I'm convinced it's the latter for now. How do I know? That outsider said he only heard the words to transport and knew nothing."
The scholar's expression crumpled subtly.
"But when I thought about it like that, something seemed strange. If there's something I must keep, I need to hold it myself to feel at ease. But does it make sense to have an outsider you met and briefly accompanied on the peninsula transport precious materials for your research? What if that guy just takes it and runs away?"
"..."
"I don't know what kind of relationship you two are entangled in, but judging from how you're treating me, your relationship is probably also based on a deal. You would have promised to give him money or compensation corresponding to transporting the bag, or the minerals inside the bag could have been a kind of compensation."
Leonardo laid out his speculations without hesitation.
"So you didn't have much attachment to what was inside in the first place. You would have told the guy to transport it, thinking of it as discarding it. Then, I thought about what you were trying to gain by having the guy transport the bag."
The scholar asked with a relaxed smile,
"Interesting. Yes, and what did you think?"
There was no way the scholar knew nothing about the egg in the bag. It was still a guess, but the egg had a strange power to attract Dermocas. If this scholar had the egg the monsters cherished so much without knowing anything, there was no way he would have been alive and well until now.
Moreover, the scholar, who said he had accompanied the outsider for personal protection, had reached this place alone and had even gone out with Kenis to get food. In other words, it meant that even without the outsider, he had the ability to wander around the peninsula to some extent on his own.
It made him wonder if the outsider had any use value to such a person, but he was able to get a hint from what the scholar had said to him a little while ago.
"You seem to like experiments, so I thought you might have experimented with that guy."
Leonardo continued with a relaxed smile,
"The egg in the bag. It’s not an ordinary egg that a clueless scholar would pick up from somewhere."
"..."
"It would also be a lie that you know nothing about the egg. It’s a terrifying egg that attract Dermocas if you have it, so just having it..."
"I knew it was like that."
Leonardo slightly furrowed his eyebrows and paused for a moment at the scholar's words interrupting him.
"That's right, it was like that."
The scholar had a face as if he had heard a satisfactory answer. Seeing that face that seemed to be genuinely happy, Leonardo's thoughts momentarily stopped.
'What the hell is wrong with this bastard?'
The scholar, who had been slowly ruminating on something, grinned like a madman and suddenly began to readily admit one by one.
"It's true that I experimented. I wanted to know if monsters reacted to those eggs. In fact, I only knew that Dermocas had flocked in that direction, but I couldn't be certain because I didn't know the proper results, but by you telling me the results, my experiment has been completed."
Leonardo, who had been listening, momentarily lost his words, then managed to open his mouth with a frown.
"What, completed? Isn't this attempted murder? That guy might be dead."
"Attempted murder, you say. If you knew what that outsider you're talking about had been doing outside, you wouldn't think much of it either? That fellow is a notorious vicious criminal famous in the slums around Barmot. Rather, if he dies on the peninsula after being used as my experimental material, wouldn't that be more beneficial to the world?"
At the scholar's confident words, Leonardo made an absurd expression, unlike his usual self, then let out a laugh of disbelief.
So this guy had lured the outsider, who was a criminal that wouldn't matter even if he died anyway, made him carry the bag, and sent him into the middle of the peninsula. To check if monsters moved following the egg.
Comments
Jesse Gibson
Mmmm.. Leo get the flow back
