Elise Denarova? Where on earth is that name coming from?
Osian couldn't understand Terence's words anymore. Or, more accurately, he vaguely understood, but didn't want to.
“You.......”
A hypothesis flickered in his mind.
“Do you like her?”
“Yes......!”
Terence's mouth clenched shut, speechless.
His eyes rolled wanderingly.
“What do you mean I like her? Me, a wizard like me and a warlock like her? Ha! That’s not even funny! That can’t be happening!”
“.......”So he did like her.
There was nothing strange about it. If Terence was attending the Magic Academy, he would know Elise, who was from the Black Magic Academy.
Besides, Elise is a strikingly beautiful woman.
It was understandable that Terence, with his young blood, would have such a reaction.
“That.......”
Osian felt sorry for Terence.
Even if he likes her, why does he like that kind of woman?
Terence wondered if he felt the emotion in his eyes.
“What, what, why are you looking at me like that?”
“You're in trouble.”
Osian patted Terence on the shoulder to cheer him up.
Falling for a crazy woman who liked human corpses. Love was so scary.
“Then why were you so angry with me?”
Now that I thought about it, he had no reason to be angry with me because he liked Elise.
“What? Don't you know?”
“Only if you tell me.”
“Eh, Elise Denarova is......following you around!”
“Huh?”
For a moment, Osian thought he'd heard something wrong.
Terence's words didn't make sense.
“Following me? Are you mistaken?”
“I heard you were at the Goldiron house not long ago!”
“Who told you that?”
“That's a...... secret, but you did meet!”
“I guess we did.”
“Look!”
“But that was for work, not because we were trying to meet.”
“That's not all! We all know that Elise is interested in you!”
“No.......”
It's true that Elise is interested in Osian. It's just that it's not a rational crush.
What kind of interest is it to hold out a contract and offer to use his body if he dies?
Osian felt he had to clear up the young man's misunderstanding.
“That's a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?”
“Yes. Elise Denarova. She's interested in me, but it's not a rational crush or anything like that. It's just that she wants my body.”
“She wants your body?!”
Terence was aghast. How unscrupulous of her to covet his body without giving him her heart!
Was that what they were after all?
‘Damn it, I didn't like him from the first time I saw him!’
The moment he saw him, Terence was shocked.
He had heard the stories, but seeing him in person was even worse than the rumors.
His eyes soaked in the rain, his sculpted features, his charisma that made him look like the child of a prominent noble somewhere.
That alone is enough to make him feel defeated, but what about his bulk? His coat hid it, but not his demeanor.
Terence examined his body.
‘Me too, I've been working out.’
Being a wizard didn't mean being sedentary.
Physical strength was also important, and Terence had worked harder than most to build and shape his body.
But even so, he was still far from as strong as Osian, the knight.
'I wonder if Elise prefers big men? No! There's no way she'd do such a shallow thing as chasing after a body! This guy is deceiving me!’
Defeat washed over him, and Terence could hardly contain his anger.
“Damn it, we'll see!”
He shouted a typical third-rate villainous line and stormed off.
A misunderstanding piled on top of a misunderstanding.
Osian could only stare after Terence's distant figure when someone walks up to him and thumps him.
It was Thalia, Terence's sister.
“I'm sorry, my brother is a bit of a nuisance, isn't he?”
“If you know, stop him.”
“That’s because he doesn’t listen even when I tell him to stop. He’s usually quite intelligent, but when it comes to Elise, he can’t tell what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“Well, I guess that's the perk of being young.”
Thalia's eyes narrowed at Osian's grown-up retort, and she nodded.
“Hmm. Perhaps my brother has met too strong a match.”
“......You seem to have some kind of misunderstanding, too.”
“Ahaha. Just kidding. I'm sure that idiot brother is the only one who thinks that. Anyway, it's nice to meet you, even if it's just inside the ruins.”
I'd realized it from the first time I'd seen her, but Thalia was definitely a spunky character. She wasn't like the other mages.
The other academy cadets were uncomfortable with this space itself and had uncontrolled expressions the whole time.
Sometimes they would complain or get annoyed with the people in the Archaeological League.
That was to be expected from those who had become Academy cadets at such a young age with a magical gift.
‘At least Terence is keeping them in check, so there won't be any unnecessary conflicts.’
If Thalia's words were to be believed, he was indeed a gifted mage, unless it involved Elise.
The exploration of the ruins continued.
It was much more pleasant now that the mages had joined the party.
The mage's presence was more than just an inconvenience, though.
They could find traps with their detection spells, find paths with ease, and, especially, find hidden spaces with their magic detection.
“There's a hidden room this way.”
Terence tapped the wall.
At his words, the Archaeological League members came forward and examined the wall, finding a device that opened the entrance.
The stone wall slid open, revealing a small chamber inside.
Inside were artifacts that can only be found in ruins.
Most of them were old and broken beyond recognition, but some of them still looked like they could fetch a good price.
Osian, Balud, and Illua could only watch the scene.
Since they had no role in this, they were naturally left out of the distribution.
It wasn't that they were disappointed, but the sight of all these versatile mages made them suddenly regret their past choices.
'I should have raised a mage after all.’
As Osian thought this, his eyes met Terence's.
Terence smiled a proud, 'See?’
Osian chuckled at the absurdity of it all.
Terence bit his lip, as if to take it as another taunt, and walked away.
'So you're doing all the drumming and pounding yourself.’
I should thank him for keeping me from getting bored in these tense ancient ruins.
He acts like a child at times like this, but his demeanor quickly changes as soon as the exploration begins.
It was clear from that alone that Terence had his wits about him.
The exploration continued. They found a few artifacts, but that wasn't what the people here wanted.
The heart of the ruins, where most of the rewards lay, was what they wanted and they wouldn’t stop until they had it.
‘The wizards have done all the work, and we can't go all the way to the heart of the ruins and still not get the reward.’
At the very least, we had to make a contribution that they would have to recognize, so that when we distributed the loot later, we would get a percentage of it.
Of course, that could only be done by reaching the deepest part of the ruins.
-Woooooooo.
A wind blew in the distance. Osian sensed something and stopped in his tracks.
“Wait.”
Everyone turned to look at Osian as if he hadn't realized what he was doing.
“Can't you feel it?”
“I don't feel it. What the hell?”
Several of the mages frowned in displeasure at his words.
Osian stared in the direction the wind had come from and muttered.
“Black magic. Someone's fighting.”
“You expect us to believe that bullshit?”
An impatient Magic Academy cadet spoke up.
“If it was black magic, there's no way we wouldn't have sensed it, but a fixer who doesn't even know how to use magic? Cut the bullshit.”
“Do you really think it wasn't?”
“What? This......!”
It was Terence who restrained the angry cadet.
As the leader of the pack, the disgruntled wizard was forced to back down.
Terence turned to Osian, his face uncharacteristically serious.
“Can you take responsibility for those words?”
“If you don't believe me, you might as well check it out.”
There was no tremor in Osian's voice, and Terence's gaze immediately went to his sister, Thalia.
Thalia unfurled her magic as if she'd been waiting for it.
Her mana resonated with the atmosphere, spreading invisible waves.
It was search magic.
Like the ultrasound a bat uses to catch its prey, the waves of magic traveled through the ruins.
Thalia closed her eyes, concentrating, and opened them a moment later, startled.
“There's been a fight.”
Thalia's words startled the other mages and explorers.
“Really?”
“No, how could the fixer know what we didn't feel.......”
“That's not the issue now, you said the warlocks were fighting, right?”
Osian could tell by her reaction that Talia had very good detection skills.
Terence asked, as if to confirm the situation.
“Uh-huh. I can sense the dark magic used, and it's quite powerful. He must be a very skilled warlock.”
“If it's a warlock who got in here, he's a 4-star warlock from the Warlock's Union.”
“He's not the only one. There are other warlocks with him, and they're still fighting.”
“Who are they?”
“I don't know, but it's not many, and they don't seem to be fighting the same people.”
That could only mean one thing.
A short distance away from here, the party that hired the warlock was facing the guardian of the ruins.
“How far away?”
“Far enough away that my detection is faint.”
“Such.......”
Terence looked at Osian again.
His sister, Thalia, looked like this, but she was very skilled at detection magic and other things.
She was a genius in a different way than he was in combat. Even his sister couldn't sense the fight now, and Osian had sensed it before anyone else.
Was it a coincidence? It was so unrealistic that he would rather think so.
“What are you going to do?”
Thalia asked as Terence consulted with the explorer who had hired him.
“We could just keep going.”
“Yes. But from the looks of things, the warlocks are having a hard time holding out. Once they're done, I wonder if it's our turn.”
“That's what I'm thinking, too. We can't avoid the Guardians forever; we're bound to face them at some point, so we might as well deal with them now, just in case.”
Fighting the guardians is dangerous.
The guardians of these ruins, in particular, were unmistakably strong.
It was best to avoid confronting them. But if you headed to the very center of the ruins, you would inevitably come face to face with the Guardian.
It was better to aid the warlocks in destroying the Guardian now.
“Let's go.”
At Terence's command, everyone moved quickly.
Osian joined the front of the procession, his senses on high alert.
“Thalia, where are they?”
“Keep checking.”
Thalia scanned the warlocks' movements, casting detection spells periodically.
“The fight is intensifying!”
Thalia's voice was urgent. Everyone who didn't know what was going on over there focused on her voice.
“Their numbers are dwindling. The warlocks are at a disadvantage!”
“Oh no. Let's move!”
The movement picked up speed.
Meanwhile, Thalia's report continued.
“Ten men left!”
How many people came with the warlock? At least twenty. If half of them were defeated, it meant that the combat personnel were practically wiped out.
“Five men left!”
So quickly?
In that split second, five men were dead.
The men ran with their mouths agape.
The sounds of the fight, once faint, were now close enough for everyone to recognize.
-Kwagwagwagwang!
A powerful blast of black magic echoed through the ruins.
“We're almost there!”
Terence was certain. This was it.
At that moment, Thalia spoke up, her voice trembling.
“There are no......left. They've been wiped out.......”
“What?”
In that short period of time, they were all wiped out? No matter how strong the ruin guardians are, how could a party with a 4-star warlock be annihilated so fast?
Everyone stopped in their tracks.
The place that had been so noisy just moments ago had become so quiet you could hear their breathing.
In the suffocating silence, I could feel something approaching in the distance.
‘It's coming.’
The monster that had already wiped out more than three parties, The Guardian of the Ruins, was coming for them.
At the same time, a memory flashed through Osian's mind, along with a tingling, palpable sense of danger.
“Oh no.......”
Osian realized the identity of the Ruin Guardian in hindsight.
“That was him.”